Engineering as Law: Injury Epidemiology and Consensus Codes

Rachel Maines HS’83, Monday, January 24, 2011

4:30 pm, Porter Hall 100 (Gregg Hall)

Rachel Maines, Visiting Scientist, College of Engineering, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University

British Field Marshal John Slessor observed during World War II that the first social service a nation can provide for its people is to keep them alive. As the recent experience of the Haiti earthquake has forcefully brought home to us, engineering safety codes and standards play a major role in this vital function of government. From the point of view of keeping citizens alive, the development, incorporation into law, and enforcement of consensus safety codes for the built environment makes safety engineering the instrumental arm of injury epidemiology in industrial democracies. This important concept is not customarily taught as a component of engineering education, nor is it often used as a means of attracting students to the profession of engineering. I intend to discuss the educational advantages of incorporating such material into college curricula across disciplines, and the historical substance and value of the case study material available to educators.

Rachel Maines is visiting scientist in the Cornell University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her principal research interests are in the history of technology, especially issues relating to technology and the body, including sexuality, medicine, technological risk, and injury epidemiology.