Public safety is a long-standing area of research for the Centre, focussing on issues that arise when taking (some) risk may be part of the benefit - for example in such areas as children's play, adventure sports and common sense risk management of trees.
In all of these cases, and others like them, it is important to properly evaluate all of the potential benefits and not simply concentrate on safety alone. Methods of undertaking risk/benefit analysis and the concepts that need to be included are explored in detail in a book by David Ball and Laurence Ball-King entitled Public safety and risk assessment - Improving decision making.
David Ball has a website dedicated to the issues of risk and public safety.