Seminar reports

In February 2020, a Focal Point Seminar has taken place to present the new 2019 review articles on the Future of OSH and to discuss them with the EU-OSHA Focal Points.

One of EU-OSHA’s areas of work looks at what the challenges will be in the future with the aim of improving policy, regulation and raising awareness on OSH in order to reduce work-related accidents and ill-health. For example, under this ‘emerging risks’ activity, EU-OSHA ran a foresight project (https://osha.europa.eu/en/emerging-risks) that used scenario-building to explore future risks related ICT developments.
In addition, EU-OSHA commissioned articles by dedicated experts about upcoming topics; for example, on crowdsourcing, 3D printing,  monitoring of workers, Management by Artificial Intelligence, and on the use of Big Data for Inspection Efficiency. The aim of the articles is to stimulate discussion, especially on possible implications for health and safety, and to trigger inspiration.

 In 2019 EU-OSHA commissioned two new articles, The first new review article on ‘Supply Chains and their present and future implications on OSH’ (David Walters, Phil James), and the second on ‘Smart Personal Protective equipment: intelligent protection for the future’ (Michael Thierbach) have been presented by the authors. Moreover, an introduction has been given to the new futures relation project on ‘the future of Agriculture and OSH”. The PPT’s of the presentations have been included. Group discussions were organised to discuss the two review articles. The final discussion papers are available under: https://osha.europa.eu/en/publications/smart-personal-protective-equipment-intelligent-protection-future/view and https://osha.europa.eu/en/publications/supply-chains-and-their-present-and-future-implications-occupational-safety-and-health/view.