Ergonomics and Human Factors in Safety Management

Accident prevention is a common thread throughout every aspect of our society. However, even with the most current technological developments, keeping people safe and healthy, both at workplaces and at other daily activities, is still a continual challenge. When it comes to work environments, ergonomics and human factors knowledge can play an important role and, therefore, must be included in, or be a part of, the safety management as a cross-disciplinary area concerned with the understanding of actual work situations and potential variables. This multidisciplinary approach will ultimately ensure the safety, health, and well-being of all collaborators. The main goal of this book is to present theories and models, and to describe practices to foster and promote safer work and working environments. This book offers:· Examples of field practices that can be reproduced in other scenarios· Applications of new methods for risk assessment· Methods on how to apply and integrate human factors and ergonomics in accident prevention and safety management· Coverage of human factors and ergonomics in safety culture· New methods for accident analysis This book is a compilation of contributions from invited authors organized in three main topics from eleven countries and is intended to cover specific aspects of safety and human factors management ranging from case studies to the development of theoretical models.Hopefully, the works presented in the book can be an inspiration for translating research into useful actions and, ultimately, making a relevant and tangible contribution to the safety of our daily and work settings.

Reliability in Occupational Risk Assessment: Stability and Reproducibility Evaluation When Using a Matrix-Based Approach; Regulatory, Organizational, and Operational Issues in Road Construction Safety; Development of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System for Manufacturing Companies in Mexico Using Factorial Analysis; Characterization of the Portuguese Furniture Industry’s Safety Performance and Monitoring Tools; HSEQ Assessment Procedure for Supplying Network: A Tool for Promoting Sustainability and Safety Culture in SMEs; Ergonomics Point of View of Work Accidents in Safety Management Perspective; S-MIS: Identifying, Monitoring, and Interpreting Proactive Safety Indicators; Abilities and Cognitive Task Analysis in an Electric System Control Room for Developing a Training Simulator; Immersive Virtual Environment or Conventional Training? Assessing the Effectiveness of Different Training Methods on the Performance of Industrial Operators in an Accident Scenario; Knowledge Management for Counterbalancing the Process of Loss of Skills at Work: A Practical Study; Human Factors Analysis and Behavior Modeling for the Simulation of Evacuation Scenarios; Development of an Interactive Educational Game to Learn Human Error: In Case of Developing a Serious Game to Acquire Understanding of Slips; Transitional Journey Maps: Reflections on Creating Workflow Visualizations; The Missing Links in System Safety Management, Prediction of High Risk of Drowsy Driving by a Bayesian Estimation Method: An Attempt to Prevent Traffic Accidents due to Drowsy Driving; Space Missions as a Safety Model; Categorization of Effective Safety Leadership Facets; Women with Upper Limb Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and Housework

Pedro Arezes is a Professor of Human Factors Engineering at the School of Engineering of the University of Minho, in Portugal. Paulo Victor Rodrigues de Carvalho is a professor of the Post Graduate Program in Informatics and in the Professional Masters in Environmental Engineering of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.