Risk assessment of occupational injuries using Accident Severity Grade

Problem: In spite of recent efforts to improve occupational health and safety, many occupational accidents result in serious injury and death every year. Continued efforts are therefore necessary to improve current safety initiatives and reduce the frequency and severity of these incidents. To identify workplace hazards, many safety surveillance techniques have been used, including severity metrics to determine the significance of an accident. These techniques involve risk assessment to identify potential hazards and the expected severity of injuries which may result from these hazards, usually based on the severity of similar past injuries. However, these severity metrics do not consider important employee and workplace risk factors, such as age, gender, and weather, which may have significant impacts on accident severity. Method: A new severity scoring system is introduced which considers multiple injury severity factors, and is used as part of a novel three-dimensional risk assessment matrix which includes an incident's severity, frequency, and preventability. A case study using the proposed methodology with real data is presented. Discussion: The consideration of additional severity factors improves risk assessment and the estimation of injury severity. A three dimensional risk assessment matrix allows for the analysis of an incident's degree of preventability, frequency, and severity all at once. Practical Applications: This study demonstrates that organizations, industries, and regulatory bodies can improve workplace safety surveillance tools by incorporating this new severity metric in a three-dimensional risk assessment matrix. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.