ID19: Field Work Safety

Details

  • Full Title

    Strategies for Safe and Responsible Field Work

  • Scheduled

  • Convener

    Jan Beutel, Samuel Weber,

  • Co-Conveners

    Mylène Jacquemart, Alessandro Cicoira and Lindsey Nicholson

  • Assigned to Synthesis Workshop

    4. Social innovation and community resource management

  • Keywords

    work safety, field work, education, training, human factors, inclusion, risk

Program

  • Introduction: Purpose and vision of session: Lindsey Nicholson, approx. 3 minutes)
  • Expert inputs (interlinked, should be 8 minutes each):
    • Team Culture: Mylène Jacquemart; diversity and harassment, building competence, maximizing value
    • Technical Safety: Ludovic Ravanel; equipment and professional courses, first aid
    • Institutional Structures I: Sara Cohen; procedures; insurance, risk assessments, financing safety, admin aspects
    • Institutional Structures II: Christoph Mitterer (RISKK); procedures; insurance, risk assessments, financing safety, admin aspects
  • Moderated discussion with panel and audience (50 minutes):
    • Part 1 (35min): Prepared/guided questions (informed from google forms as well)
      • How to reconcile the need for field safety with efficient work and avoid exaggerated regulations?
      • How can we manage/reserve field work stuff (gears, (personal) safety equipment)
      • Harassment: “what happens in the field stays in the field”, hierarchy
    • Part 2 (15min): Open discussion
  • Poster session with apero

Description

Field work is an integral part of geoscience. It can be inspiring and fun but also challenging, even intimidating and certainly always entails a number of risks that need to be navigated. It is still rare for employers, institutions, or funding agencies to provide adequate resources and structures for in-depth safety training. The nature of fieldwork poses additional challenges for creating a safe and inclusive workspace. Luckily accidents are infrequent; but precedents ranging from harassment, property damage, personal injury, and up to the loss of life illustrate the plethora of possible severe consequences that may arise if risks aren’t managed adequately.  In this session we want to gather and discuss expertise on successful approaches to making fieldwork safer. We invite contributions covering the broad range of themes associated with conducting responsible, safe and productive field work. Topics of interest are risk management and reduction, human and social factors, conflict management, team building, specific field work techniques, regulatory issues, governance and many more.

 

Registered Abstracts

ID35: Discussing transdisciplinary practices for global mountain sustainability
ID14: Communicating mountain research otherwise