Book excerpt: Safety has become very important because each year a vast number of people die due to workplace and other accidents. For example, in the United States for the year 1996 as per the National Safety Council, there were 93,400 deaths and 20,700,000 disabling injuries due to workplace accidents, with a total loss of $121 billion. Today there are a large number of books available on safety, but to the best of the author's knowledge none covers both general and systems safety (i.e., at a significant depth) and application or specialized areas such as software safety, robot safety, health care safety, and maintenance safety. This book has been written to satisfy that vital need.