Industry 5.0: Do risk assessment and risk management need to update? And if yes, how?

Abstract

In relation to the new vision of Industry 5.0 released in January 2022 by the European Commission for pushing the human centricity of any transformative effort in present and future industrial developments, we pose the daunting question of whether the existing and practiced approaches of risk assessment and risk management are fit to follow and contribute to such vision or require updating. Some reflections are provided and, even more, points of discussion are raised. We argue that the human-centric and environment-concerned vision of Industry 5.0 extends the boundaries of the risk landscape, with resilience standing out as a core value to drive industrial decisions on system reliability and operation safety. We argue that a change is, then, needed in the perspectives of risk assessment and risk management, that calls for the introduction of specific metrics to measure vulnerabilities and the performance of preventive, mitigative, and recovery solutions in relation to the objectives of human wellbeing and environment protection.