The 2023 SAF€RA symposium

Symposium banner image

SAF€RA’s 2023 symposium Transitions in safety and safety in transition will be held on May 16th in Toulouse, France.

Our world is ungoing multiple significant transitions, including the progressive response to the sustainability imperative, the growth of digital tools and AI, and industrial implications of the geopolitical tension between world superpowers and the war in Ukraine. These transitions produce new safety risks as well as new opportunities for industry. They affect the strategies of industrial firms and the priorities of the public with regard to different risk categories.

What are the implications of these transitions for industrial safety, for research priorities, for the roles of institutions involved in safety oversight and risk governance?

What to look forward to?

  • Presentation of cutting edge research on industrial safety from SAF€RA-funded projects
  • Keynote presentations on the green transition and on the implications of the platform economy.
  • A roundtable discussion on the tension and complementarity between safety and sustainability concerns: is it relevant to frame this issue around risk-risk tradeoffs, or around potential complementarity (safe-and-sustainable-by-design approaches)?

Practical information

The meeting location is on the outskirts of Toulouse, accessible by metro and bus from the historical city center. We recommend you stay at a hotel in the historical city center, where the social dinner on Tuesday evening will be organized. Some possibilities in the city center (please register directly yourselves, we do not have any reserved rooms):

  • The ibis Styles Toulouse Centre Capitole hotel is conveniently located near the central square, the Capitole, though not the cheapest possibility.
  • The Citiz Hotel in Jean Jaures is conveniently located near a metro station and a stop on the airport shuttle bus.
  • The Mama Shelter also in Jean Jaures is a more trendy urban building.

If you wish to stay near the symposium venue itself (a much less interesting area), the ibis Styles Toulouse Labège is accessible on foot from FonCSI premises.

What to visit in Toulouse?

If you are able to spend a little time before or after the symposium, a few suggestions of places to visit, as a complement to the official information from Toulouse tourism office:

  • The historical city center and the banks of the Garonne river (we will organize an informal walking tour on Tuesday 16th evening prior to the social dinner, for people interested).
  • The Basilica of Saint-Sernin is an important Romanesque basilica in the historical city center.
  • The Canal du Midi is an important technological achievement from the 17th century, a canal crossing from the Atlantic ocean to the Mediterranean sea. It passes outside of Toulouse’s historical city center.
  • The Cité de l’Espace is the space and astronomy museum (Toulouse is an important center for the space industry in Europe).
  • Aeroscopia is an aeronautical museum. A visit of the Airbus assembly lines in Toulouse-Blagnac is also possible.

Picture of Toulouse courtesy Jean-Paul Tonnelier, CC BY-NC-ND licence.