The sailport project: A trilateral approach to the improvement of workers’ safety and health in ports

Abstract

This work presents a novel method for the improvement of safety and health in ports. Traditional and consolidated approaches to this goal are based on questionnaires and training activities that Local Health Authorities and the National Institute for Insurance against Accidents offer to the personnel of the companies that work in the port. We propose to complement this method by means of quantitative and pervasive measuring of risks related to safety and health. For the former, we propose a system that measures the collision risk in relevant areas of the port by means of cameras. For the latter, workers wear inertial measurement units and EMG electrodes to estimate the biomechanical overload. The results of these three actions are then merged and presented to the selected companies to make corrective actions, in order to reduce the safety and health risks for the port workers.