This Safety Innovation Challenge seeks all approaches and technologies that can reduce heat stress in workers or reduce human exposure to high heat environments or situations. Controlling heat hazards in the workplace requires recognizing when workers are exposed to excessive heat, evaluating heat hazards, controlling heat hazards (at any level of the Hierarchy of Controls), training and being prepared to respond to emergencies. Technologies addressing any of these areas are of interest in this Challenge. In-scope technologies include, but are not limited to:
- Technologies designed to eliminate or reduce human exposure to high-heat environments or situations
- Wearables providing thermal stress data to individual workers and/or site safety supervisors
- Active thermal management technologies for:
- Individuals
- A given location – interior or exterior
- Passive thermal management technologies, including:
- Insulative textiles
- Thermally reflective fabrics
- Software platforms that provide:
- Alerts/insights to workers and/or site safety supervisors or
- Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) systems that specifically deliver heat stress training and education
- First response technologies to safely lower temperature for individuals exhibiting signs of heat stress
All proposed technologies must have the potential to make a demonstrable reduction in either hours of exposure to heat and/or in the number or severity of injuries or fatalities due to heat stress events in a workplace environment.
Proposed solutions may be fixed or for mobile use. Likewise, proposed solutions can address a specific workplace environment or occupation or may be applicable to a broad spectrum of workers, locations or roles.