Leveraging Digital Transformation for Enhanced Occupational Health and Safety in Manufacturing

Dear Colleagues,

The integration of digital technologies is revolutionizing the field of occupational health and safety. This Special Issue explores the industrial impact of enabling technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and generative artificial intelligence, focusing on occupational health and safety (OHS). In high-risk, complex manufacturing environments, the use of innovative tools can significantly improve safety standards, reduce hazards, and promote a culture of preventive maintenance and risk management. Here, the use of digital technologies—such those cited—enables the development of novel tools that promote learning through actions, storytelling, and a first-person experiences-based approach. Furthermore, it permits the integration of non-traditional training content and modes, thereby addressing the inherent variability in digitized industrial contexts. In such a context, it is not sufficient to learn rules and behaviors that are required. Ad-hoc adaptation and response to unpredictable conditions must also be learned. Therefore, in the field of safety management, a new level of expertise is needed. The Skill–Rule–Knowledge framework contains an exemplary level of knowledge. This framework helps one to understand the different levels of conscious effort that workers must apply to industrial tasks and how this affects decision-making. In the event of a unique and unfamiliar situation, the decision is not automatic and reflexive (skill-based), and there are no rules to guide the decision maker (rule-based). So, it is evident that a knowledge-based decision is needed, i.e., the creation of plans and responses based on personal knowledge and experience. In the pursuit of a sustainable working environment, all these concerns must be addressed. So, this Special Issue explores how these technologies can support training, enhance safety protocols, and improve incident management processes. Submissions are invited to present frameworks, models, experimental studies, and practical applications that integrate technologies to support OHS and enhance the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of industrial environments.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following: Innovative uses of immersive technologies for safety training, demonstrating impacts on workers' skills and capabilities; Development and application of AI models for the analysis of safety incident narratives and protocols to identify trends and preventive measures; Comparative analyses of industrial safety performance before and after the adoption of technologies, highlighting their effectiveness and potential improvement.

Prof. Dr. Francesco Costantino
Dr. Silvia Colabianchi
Guest Editors

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• training
• safety management
• smart manufacturing
• sustainable digitization
• virtual reality
• augmented reality
• generative artificial intelligence