Could image-based risk assessment help us make construction sites safer? – project update

Safetytech Accelerator recently announced a collaboration with Discovering Safety, a programme of work funded by Lloyds Register Foundation and delivered by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and their key partners. Safetytech Accelerator will run open innovation challenges and pilot innovative technology solutions to maximize the use of health and safety data and help prevent incidents in the construction sector.

Update on challenge 1

This is an update on the first open innovation challenge that we are launching as part of this collaboration.

The challenge is about how to use images taken at construction worksites, e.g., taken by a worker with a smartphone, and extracting contextual and relevant safety-related advice from the extensive HSE database on industrial health and safety information, such as inspections, mandatory reporting, accident investigations and prosecutions.

To help illustrate what this challenge might be able to do – in an example of storage of dangerous substances – image analytics could detect and notify instances of unsafe storage of solvents and recommend how this could be corrected, in real time.

Helen Balmforth, Discovering Safety Programme Director commented, “Our work with the Safetytech Accelerator will show us how image and text analytics can unlock information captured in historic HSE reports. In this way we can use our knowledge in the pursuit of health and safety excellence in construction.

For this challenge we will look for start-ups and scaleups with AI technologies that are able to link images to structured and unstructured textual information in the HSE database.

Maurizio Pilu, Managing Director at Safetytech Accelerator had this to say about the challenge, “With this open innovation challenge we hope to show how AI tech can assist with the real-time automated identification of risk – and how these solutions, could, in time, provide significant improvement in safety in industrial workplaces, especially for small and medium enterprises”.

Please check back soon for project updates – we look forward to updating soon on the technology which will be used for this challenge.

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About the Health and Safety Executive

HSE, through its Science Division, is one of the world’s leading providers of health and safety solutions to industry, government and professional bodies. The main focus of our work is on understanding and reducing health and safety risks. We provide health and safety consultancy, research, specialist training and products to our customers worldwide. Our long history developing health and safety solutions means that we’re well placed to understand the changing industrial, regulatory and societal landscape, and to anticipate future issues. We employ over 360 scientific, medical and technical specialists, drawing on their wealth of knowledge and experience to deliver evidence-based solutions to our clients. Our work is supported by accredited management systems.

About Discovering Safety

Discovering Safety aspires to be a leader in innovative, data driven health and safety with the aim of improving operational performance through the use of data and analytical techniques. To date it has developed and is delivering a programme of work with partners based on extracting insights from HSE and other organisation’s data to feed into a range of industry endorsed proof of concept applications. For more information or to get in touch visit discoveringsafety.com

About Safetytech Accelerator

The Safetytech Accelerator is a non-profit established by Lloyd’s Register and the Lloyd’s Register Foundation. It is the first fully dedicated technology accelerator focused on safety and risk in industrial sectors. Their mission is to make the world safer and more sustainable through wider adoption of safetytech.