Abstract Developments in nanotechnology oblige technology regulators and other stakeholders to manage unfamiliar and unpredictable human health and environmental risks. When technological achievement stretches the limits of understanding of risk and safety, the desire to ensure protection can produce unnecessarily prohibitive and costly regulatory policy. This lack of knowledge, referred within this paper as ‘governance gaps,’ requires safety-by-design to overcome lingering governance challenges. However, the fundamentals of safety-by-design are not developed. We propose translating the methodological framing of safety-by-design and related nanotechnology risk governance into a mathematical framing of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to illustrate how safety-by-design might be operationalized. This framing provides a more thorough understanding of technology governance gaps and can help focusing technology development on implementable and safe alternatives. Ultimately, addressing each governance gap can help technology development and technology risk governance keep pace with one another, thereby allowing innovation to flourish while protecting society from undue risks.

中文翻译：

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安全设计作为治理问题

摘要 纳米技术的发展迫使技术监管机构和其他利益相关者管理不熟悉和不可预测的人类健康和环境风险。当技术成就扩展了对风险和安全的理解极限时，确保保护的愿望可能会产生不必要的禁止性和昂贵的监管政策。这种知识的缺乏，在本文中被称为“治理差距”，需要安全设计来克服挥之不去的治理挑战。然而，设计安全的基本原理尚未开发。我们建议将设计安全和相关纳米技术风险治理的方法论框架转化为多标准决策分析 (MCDA) 的数学框架，以说明如何实施设计安全。这种框架提供了对技术治理差距的更透彻的理解，并有助于将技术开发重点放在可实施和安全的替代方案上。最终，解决每个治理差距可以帮助技术发展和技术风险治理保持同步，从而使创新蓬勃发展，同时保护社会免受不当风险。