Predicting injurious events.

Abstract

This paper has attempted to quantify the size and the nature of the industrial personal damage problem, in terms of not only classifying that damage but also showing the predominant damaging energy types. We have shown the majority of the cost of work-related personal damage (in Australia) is from non-fatal permanent disability. It is not possible to make this statement as clearly for the United States. We can find no clear identification of the permanently disabled group for U.S. industry within the national dataset. This could indicate it is being camouflaged, as it was in Australia until definitive work was completed in the early 1990s. The enormous value of the knowledge of the workforce has been expounded. The collection and recording of such knowledge requires a very structured approach using a set of focusing questions that are established against a backdrop of what is known to damage people permanently. In particular, the questions must contain reference to human energy (heavy lifting/pushing/pulling tasks), gravitational energy (falls of people, objects), and machine energy (vehicle/vehicle, vehicle/pedestrian, vehicle/environment). Having harvested the store of knowledge of a workforce, it is necessary to have appropriate goals and expectations in responsibly handling the information you have obtained.