Editorial Safety Science Special Issue with selected papers from the 1st international conference in safety and crisis management in the construction, tourism and SME sectors (1st CoSaCM) The 1st CoSaCM took place in the Cultural Center of European University Cyprus in Engomi, Nicosia, Cyprus between the 24th and 28th June 2011. Over 100 participants from 22 countries presented and discussed 78 papers. Keynote Speeches were deliv- ered by Professor Jose Luis Torero, BRE/RAE Chair in Fire Safety Engineering, Head of the Institute for Infrastructure and Environ- ment, Director of the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, University of Edinburgh, UK, Assoc Prof Brent Ritchie, Deputy Head of School of Tourism, Chair, Discovery Committee, RHD Coordinator, The University of Queens- land, Australia, John Ludlow, Senior Vice President, Global Risk Management, InterContinental Hotels Group and Dr. Gavriil Xanth- opoulos from the National Agricultural Research Foundation in Greece. The emphasis of the conference on construction, tourism and SME safety represented the three fundamental pillars of the major- ity of the economies of South Eastern Europe. The choice of safety management as well as crisis management as main topics aimed to see the accident process from its very beginning (risk assessment), during its life (safety assessment and management) and at its unfortunate end (crisis management). To that extent the 1st Co- SaCM successfully managed to attain its aims. A variety of thematic areas in a number of sessions were discussed; special sessions in cultural protection management, in fire engineering in south Eur- ope, on migrant workers and safety not only produced high quality papers but they generated a lively dialogue between the confer- ence attendants. I was honoured by the then Editor of Safety Science Dr. Kathryn Mearns to be offered the possibility to Guest Edit this Special Issue; for this I am indebted. The papers included in this Special Issue are selected with the intention to represent the quality, the variety of those presented in the 1st CoSaCM by acclaimed as well as new and upcoming researchers. Fire safety management and fire engineering had a strong rep- resentation in the 1st CoSaCM program. A Special Session Chaired by Dr. Guillermo Rein had a very healthy attendance. Audun Borg’s and Ove Nja’s paper discusses the importance of the con- cept of validation in performance based fire safety engineering. In depth analysis of the concept of validation in various contexts (qualitative and quantitative) is followed by a precise application of this concept in Fire Engineering. Ehab Zalok, George Had- jisophocleous and Yan Wang’s work builds upon the thematic of Borg; it focuses on the application of advanced fire engineering methods for the prediction of safety in the built environment. A two-zone fire model is discussed and presented in this work, applications of the model are presented in detail. Daniel Alvear, Jorge Capote, Orlando Abreu, Arturo Cuesta and Virginia Alonso’s work takes the concept of fire engineering in a different context. The authors discuss the use of a novel tunnel evacuation soft- ware. The model is compared with other, already existing, pieces of relevant software and the analysis of these results is presented. In the same context – tunnel fires – Enrico Ronchi, Pasquale Col- onna, Nicola Berloco’s work combined with performance-based- codes presents the application of a number of fire engineering models in the Italian tunnel network. Important current issues such as the increasing occurrence of occupational accidents in migrant communities were discussed in a Special Session Chaired by Dr. Frank Guldenmund. Jos Hornikx, Kyra Luijters and Annick Starren’s work discusses the importance and the need for a research agenda in relation to occupational acci- dents of migrants in the workplace. Jeannette Paul’s work provides a practical solution to the problem of migrant workers safety. A useful software tool in a number of languages is proposed. Kathryn Mearns, Brian Cleal and Frank Guldenmund’s work presents a very interesting exploratory work which compares the existing situa- tion as well as results from a survey in 3 different European countries. Athanasios Hadjimanolis and Georgios Boustras’s work pre- sents the existing situation of occupational health and safety in Cyprus and attempts to identify the relation of health and safety with job satisfaction; Tamara D. Banks, Jeremy D. Davey, James E. Freeman, and Sarah E. Biggs’s work focuses on safety leader’s per- ceptions in Australian firms. The papers presents an interesting account of safety culture in Australia, based on a number of interviews from safety leaders. Safety culture is also the central theme of Sarah E. Biggs and Herbert C. Biggs’s paper on inter- locked projects in safety effectiveness and safety competency. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is applied in order to conclude that industry engaged collaborative safety culture research has many potential benefits for the construction industry. Finally, the crisis management part of the 1st CoSaCM is repre- sented by Brent W. Ritchie and Jie Wang’s work on attitude and perceptions of crisis managers. The paper uses the accommodation industry and proposes a solution that can have practical implica- tions, the preparation of effective intervention strategies. The preparations for the 2nd CoSaCM are on the way, a number of new thematic areas are already discussed by the Scientific Com- mittee. I hope that the 2nd CoSaCM will generate a larger number of even higher quality papers. 0925-7535/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2012.05.019 Safety Science 52 (2013) 1–2 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Safety Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ssci