ACCIDENTS AT WORK: A SEMANTIC ENGINE TO CLASSIFY THEM

Abstract

ESAW (European Statistics on Accidents at Work) is the system for coding accidents at work, born in Europe in the early 1990s and adopted in Italy since 2001.

ESAW compares the cause of the accidents phenomenon between different Member States of the European Union, standardizing the language used to describe the causes and circumstances of these accidents . It also has the purpose of evaluating and identifying interventions to improve the health and safety conditions of workers in compliance with EU directives, reducing the frequency and severity of the injuries. To counter an event, it is necessary to understand how and why it occurs. The initiative, therefore, focuses on the constant improvement of data quality: the more reliable the information, the better the prevention policies that can be adopted.

To this end, INAIL has exploited the potential of the semantic engine IRIDE is able to reduce the uncertainties due to operators in the coding phase of the accident report, and to standardize the process.

The innovative approach of the IRIDE software is in the support of the coders in the attribution of the correct code to the variables that describe the causes and the circumstances of workplace accidents . The basic principle of semantic technology is the interpretation of the natural language used in the accident report. In other words, these engines are able to include the contents of texts and then assign, through the so-called "rules" defined by experts, a code that identifies a word or a concept. Initially, accident reports for specific sectors of economic activity were analyzed, in addition to defining the domain on which IRIDE bases its rules.

In 2018, the project successfully leads to important results in terms of coding quality, and finally today we can discuss the IRIDE-ESAW database.