Applying the Behavior Grid for Improving Safety in Industrial Environments

The Saxion University of Applied Sciences recently started its “Safety at Work” project. Its objective is to increase safety in the workplace by combining and applying state-of-the-art factors from Ambient Intelligence, Industrial & Product Design and Smart Materials [1]. The human factor plays a significant role in safety. Safety is related to incidents happening to people who get injured or even die. 97% of the cases in which an injury occurs [2] concerns something that happens is within someone’s control. Many incidents at work are often the result of human behavior: how people interact with each other, and how people cope with risks and guidelines. Industrial environments need to be organized in such a way that people behave safely in an automatic way and that safety becomes a habit. Encouraging safe behavior starts with safe products. However, in many cases this is not sufficient, and incidents still occur. Therefore, communication is often an effective medium that target people’s conscious mind. One cost-effective, asynchronous, and persistent way of communicating with people is through ICT. The approach to changing behavior through ICT is termed Persuasive Technology. We focus on ambient aspects of safety: influencing people in an invisible (unconscious) way so as to make industrial environments safer. Literature distinguishes between individual aspects of safety (attitudes, individual differences) on one end, and environmental aspects of safety (safety climate, supervision, work design) on the other end [3, 4]. Depending on several factors, like the safety culture of a company, type of workers, and management involvement, these aspects contribute to safe behavior. Looking at these factors, we argue that a right mix of them contributes to improving safe behavior. Hence, our main research question is: