Safety Management and the Blockchain
摘要
Safety management remains a critical challenge for organizations and their supply chains. Current safety solutions are limited by a lack of real-time data sharing, inconsistent compliance with regulations, reliance on manual documentation, and ineffective collaboration between stakeholders. Blockchain technology, with its core features of immutability, transparency, decentralization, and security, has emerged as a promising tool for addressing these limitations and mitigating safety concerns in supply chains. This chapter explores the applications of blockchain technology in safety management, by examining its potential to enhance traceability, accountability, and collaboration in safety management within organizations and across supply chains. Key opportunities for blockchain technology in safety management include continuous monitoring of safety performance, automation through smart contracts, timely incident response, enhanced safety auditing, and transparent data sharing. This chapter discusses the reality of blockchain applications for safety purposes through real-world cases. This chapter discusses the challenges of applying blockchain to safety management, particularly those currently faced in this initial stage of technology integration. These challenges include data accuracy, scalability, interoperability, regulatory and legal uncertainty, stakeholder trust and adoption, and implementation complexity and costs. To resolve the current challenges faced by blockchain applications and to expand their utilizations in safety management, this chapter further outlines directions and implications for future research and practice. These future directions highlight the importance of integrating blockchain with emerging technologies, refining validation mechanisms, developing hybrid blockchain architectures, and advancing regulatory consistency to unlock blockchain’s potential in building safer supply chains.