SafetyTech Weekly #004

SAFETYTECH WEEKLY #004

It's only 4 weeks until New Years Eve and only 4 more editions of the SafetyTech Weekly newsletter project left before I need to make a decision to either keep the format & frequency, pivot to something different or chalk it up as learning... Your feedback will help shape the future of STWN so please send me a DM, comment, like, share, tell your friends, tell your dog...

With that being said - let's kick off with another week of #safetytech goodness.

SO...WILL ROBOTS TAKE OUR JOBS?

The ubiquitous conference panel question continues to be relevant. A couple of interesting views this week - firstly from Wired suggesting robots won't close the warehouse worker worker gap any time soon and a conundrum presented by USA Today suggesting robot orders are surging to fill the warehouse worker shortage! One thing is for sure - robots will be more commonplace in the workplace: how prepared are you for that?

FIRST-EVER GLOBAL AGREEMENT ON THE ETHICS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

All 193 member states of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), last week, adopted a historic agreement that defines the common values and principles needed to ensure the healthy development of AI. This is a major step and will have flow on effects for #safetytech companies who are using AI. More on this to come...

DASH TOOLS: BEST-IN CLASS EXAMPLE OF SAFETY TECH INDUSTRY-WIDE COLLABORATION

One of the things I love about working in tech is the opportunities for collaboration. We are smarter and more effective together - there is no better example of industry collaboration in #safetytech than BHP's Dash Maintainer Tools . Alex Bertram provides his insights regarding the

huge opportunity to change the game for frontline safety across our industry

Have a play with DASH TOOLS here...

OPINION: THIS ARTICLE ON THE BENEFITS OF AUGMENTED REALITY FOR WORKPLACE SAFETY MAY BE DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD...

The World Economic Forum published this article during the week. It's written by a consultant from one of the major tech consulting firms - catchy title but it is a quote early in the piece that raises concerns for me...

Of the various risk indicators for workplace accidents, human negligence requires particular attention.

Framing the benefits of AR for safety with this quote has the potential to destroy trust. Have a read about my thoughts in this LinkedIn post - I'd love to know whether you agree or have other ideas.

FIVE WAYS AUGMENTED REALITY IS CHANGING THE FABRIC OF CONSTRUCTION

In contrast to the article above - this article presents a far more valuable set of use cases for AR in enterprise. These use cases are not unique to construction and easily be applied across other sectors.

SAFETYTECH CHALLENGE ANNOUNCED BY DISCOVERING SAFETY & SAFETYTECH ACCELERATOR COLLABORATION

A new #safetytech innovation challenge has been announced between Discovering Safety & Safetytech Accelerator.

This particular challenge requires technology-based solutions that can directly provide capabilities to increase the level of data-driven automation of assurance and compliance in the construction industry.

XR SAFETY WEEK STARTS NEXT WEEK

XR Safety Week is created and promoted by the?XR Safety Initiative, the first global non-profit with the mission of helping build safe and inclusive immersive realities. The event is fully virtual, hosted in AltspaceVR (Fun!) featuring industry leaders from around the world spanning five days. Each day has a unique theme - for #safetytech advocates I recommend the immersive storytelling sessions on Day 1 , diversity & inclusion sessions on Day 3 and the privacy & safety sessions on Digital Human Rights Day 5. Click for more.

FUTURE OF EHS EVENT ANNOUNCED

The?2022 Work to Zero Summit & Expo is the premier event of the #safetytech calendar for 2022 - registrations are now open

the event is focused solely on the intersection of safety and emerging technology.?

OPINION: THE DANGER OF CONFUSING HOLLYWOOD EXOSKELETONS WITH REALITY

Exoskeleton Report provides a thought-provoking rebuttal to a video that suggests Exoskeletons are a non-event: check it out; who do you agree with?

FEATURE IN MS OUTLOOK FOR DIVERISTY & INCLUSION

Not specifically #safetytech but a cool tech hack that can be applied to health & safety management system documents ... shared recently by the amazing Sarah Cuscadden, WW Senior Safety Leadership & Engagement Manager from Amazon. I love this.

NOTIFY: WINNERS OF THE '21 TECH FOR GOOD AWARD

Never missing an opportunity to celebrate successes in the #safetytech world... SafetyTech Weekly sends a virtual tip of the hat and high fives all around to the team at Notify for their award. UK SaaS solution, Notify Technologies won the 2021 Tech for Good Award, for helping to improve worker safety through their safety management software. Great work team.

FINDING (SAFETY) VALUE IN INDUSTRIAL DATA WITH AI

This article provides insights into how you can extract value from data generated from inside and outside your organisation... Published via IoTforAll, the article is written by VROC, an Aussie Software as a Service (SaaS) Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) platform, specifically?built for Industrial Big Data. No-code Artificial intelligence gives non-data-focused?roles insights to help them make more informed decisions throughout the day.?We need to do more of this to extract health & safety insights from our datasets. Users can build models of their equipment and processes to provide calculated predictions and insights to hopefully, improve the safety of work!?

A term called ‘data democratization’ occurs when individuals throughout an organization start using data in their everyday positions. These people are not statisticians, mathematicians, data engineers,?or data scientists. In fact, they are not interested in data at all; they are only interested in what the data can tell them.?

SPEEDCAST UNVEILS SMARTVIEW VIDEO STREAMING SOLUTION IN COLLABORATION WITH HARVEST

USA-based communications and IT services provider Speedcast announced the release of Smartview - the result of a collaboration with Aussie-based Harvest Technology Group leveraging their ultra low bandwidth network optimised technology for livestreaming in the most remote environments. This unique solution enables remote video collaboration in bandwidth-challenged environments with excellent quality - the solution also runs on RealWear head mounted tablets for hands-free collaboration. More here:

DON'T FORGET... REALWEAR EVENT NEXT WEEK

This is super exciting... Click the banner below for USA/EMEA event at 9am PST on 8 December or click this link for APAC friendly timezone event that I will be facilitating Q&A at 2pm AEDT on 9 December #LookForward

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!

That's a wrap for this week ending 3 December... next edition dropping 10 December. If you come across any great #safetytech news make sure you nudge it into my feed. Tag me in a comment or send me a DM. For now... Stay Curious!

Cameron Stevens is a technologist & chartered safety professional, most comfortable exploring digital transformation and the intersection where safety & technology meet. Cameron is a Solutions Engineer for?RealWear Inc.?deploying wearable computing for enterprise & volunteers on ISO Standards Committees for Artificial Intelligence, Augmented & Virtual Reality. Cameron enjoys coaching individuals & teams to improve the design & experience of work with responsible innovation & emerging technologies.