Paving a road to safety and sustainability: Construction of theoretical framework for positive systematology and its outlook

Abstract

To pave the way toward safety and sustainable development and to promote the broader applications of systems science, this study divides systematology into positive systematology and negative systematology by adopting an extreme thinking approach. To make this distinction, logical speculation and scientific discipline-building methods are employed to construct a theoretical framework for positive systematology. The fundamental theoretical research proceeds as follows: defining and elucidating the connotation of positive systematology, establishing its sub-conceptual system, delineating its research scope and principal contents, summarizing its basic principles, presenting its research methods and paradigms, and identifying its future research directions and frontier topics. Furthermore, the relationship between negative/positive systematology and Safety-I/Safety-II is compared, and positive systematology is also compared with Safety-III from a multi-dimensional perspective. The findings indicate that positive systematology can serve as a new branch of systems science dedicated to enhancing the positive emergent properties of systems and strengthening engineering resilience, thereby advancing the goals of safety and sustainability.