Occupational Safety Context Research Proposal

The proposed research would focus on the search on the influence of the work context upon the assurance and improvement of the work conditions, well-being and safety and health at work. In this respect, a conceptual model would be developed predicting how the organization's work context might influence well-being, safety and health at work, together with the implementation of the found model into a method for work context safety analysis.

The conceptual model is worker oriented- including worker characteristics, requirements and heuristic knowledge from experience and also job oriented. The conceptual model would finally lead to improved work regulations, better collaboration and involvement, link to productivity etc.

The process of research would also develop a safety context analysis framework on the basis of three important antecedents of work motivation: job goal specificity, job specific known and new and emergent risks, and self-efficacy in dealing with these risks.

An UML like language for describing the safety context in order to be able to improve understanding into a multilingual environment would be also pursued in this project.

Based on the framework the conceptual model would be improved and tested- and a new methodology for safety context analysis would be developed.

Also a better, innovative training model and procedure in the safety field would be described and prototyped.

Final results: -UML language for describing safety context:

                        -Safety training by context

Proposed main work packages

WP1: Development of the safety context conceptual model.

Activities:

1.1. Operational analysis of the existing knowledge content- research regarding the defining and optimization of work hypothesis and concepts. .

1.2. Development of an operational research (using significant statistical lots) in order to reveal the importance of safety context for specific industries and how could the safety context influence well-being and health at work.  Development of significant use cases describing the day to day work context, the unexpected event context, etc. Check-out and improvement of these cases.

1.3. Analysis on the use-cases and building of a knowledge frame for the model.

1.4. Development of the safety context conceptual model prototype.

Figure 1 WP1

WP2: Test-up of the model on specific pilots. The pilots would be chosen from Norway and Romania, considering the most sensitive industries like construction, mechanical manufacturing, fishing, etc.

2.1. Design of the test process

2.2. Definition of the ideal pilots

2.3. Pilot training

2.4. Test-up and result collection and processing

WP3: Development of the framework for context analysis 

3.1. Conceptual design of the framework- definition of the systemic elements that would be included.

3.2. Physical design of the framework- definition of the best practice procedures for knowledge collection that would be included.

3.3. Assembly and test of the framework in paper format.

Figure 2 The conceptual framework

WP4: Development of an UML-like language to describe the context

4.1. Study of the existing industrial UML

4.2. Definition of a specific ontology

4.3. Build-up of terms

4.4. Build-up of predicates

4.5. Development of specific examples and test-up using real cases

WP5: Development of the safety context assessment method

5.1. Design of the methodology

5.2. Development of a prototype

5.3. Test

WP6: Wrap-up into an integrated package

6.1. Development of training modules

6.2. Development of friendly, contextual user interface

6.3. Integration and development of the prototype

The whole structure of the research is presented in the next figure.

Figure 3 Research structure