SAfE-AWARE: Safety Algorithms for Enhanced Assessment of Workplace Activities, Risks, and Environment

Military aircraft maintainers face heightened risks to their health and safety in the workplace due to long work hours, exposure to particulates, noxious gases, dangerous noise levels, and adverse weather conditions, to name just a few examples. Industrial hygienists help to mitigate these risks by identifying and anticipating potential hazards as well as recommending changes that minimize future risks. Hygienists’ workplace investigations traditionally involve the manual observation and logging of events and work activities associated with potentially hazardous exposure levels. However, this approach is time-consuming and limited by manpower; a single hygienist can only observe so much of the workplace at any given time. This also means that the hygienist’s feedback is necessarily general, since continuous, simultaneous monitoring of individual workers is not feasible when observing manually. The proposed SAfE-AWARE system automates the monitoring of occupational environments and can alert workers of hazardous conditions/tasks. SAfE-AWARE represents a force multiplier for industrial hygienists that will ultimately improve the safety and health of workers in the military aircraft maintenance industry and beyond.