Safety through the use of the employee's swarm intelligence (sWafety)
sWafety develops processes and instruments that complement safety management. Doing so it makes latest insights of safety sciences applicable by an innovative use of digital means.
The main aim of sWafety is to complement established safety management systems (SMS) by designing a new channel for identifying safety risks. In this channel latest insights from safety sciences are made usable for practice and digital means are used in an innovative way.
«Latest insights from safety sciences» essentially adresses what is referred to as safety-II. In this approach humans are not considered as a risk factor only, but as well as a safety factor.
«Innovative use of digital means» implies that the employees of an organization are included into data acquisition, data-evaluation and data-interpretation through digital networking. Doing so, their swarm intelligence is used to generate a better information basis for safety management. This is done with a low threshold, so that known deficits in SMS reporting channels are compensated for.
Project Dates
| Lead and Team | Prof. Dr. Toni Wäfler (Lead), Sandra Schenkel |
| Funding | Innosuisse – Swiss Innovation Agency |
| Collaboration | AviSwiss, Skyguide, Kernkraftwerk Gösgen, Spital Männedorf |
| Duration | 2020–2022 |
Publications
Schenkel, S., Medici, G., Staender, S., Waefler, T. (2023). sWafety: A Complementary Low-threshold Safety Management Process. In: Pedro Arezes and Anne Garcia (eds) Safety Management and Human Factors. AHFE (2023) International Conference. AHFE Open Access, vol 105. AHFE International, USA.
Contact
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Prof. Dr. Toni Wäfler
- Telephone
- +41 62 957 24 61 (direct)
- dG9uaS53YWVmbGVyQGZobncuY2g=
- FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland
FHNW School of Applied Psychology
Riggenbachstrasse 16
CH-4600 Olten