Despite significant progress in engineering science and design that were made over the last century, and recent developments in information technology, management of many of contemporary industrial and service systems, such as mining, oil and gas exploration, nuclear power generation, transportation (including aviation), or health care, continue to be a major challenge for the global society with respect to human-systems integration requirements for safety and health of people who are involved with their daily operation and maintenance, as well as safety and health of customers/clients, and citizens at large. Although many engineering, technological, organizational, management, human, social, behavioral, legal, cultural and other factors contribute to this challenge, it is the interactions of such factors that lead to increasing complexity of these systems that manifest in their unpredictable and unwanted behaviors. Examples of such behaviors that often result in loss of human life, and/or high potential for ecological, economic, social and environmental damages include recent disasters in the oil exploration industry, in the mining industry, or in the energy sector. It is believed that in order to improve our ability to mitigate their unwanted consequences, we need to gain fundamental understanding of the emergent properties that result from the intricate interactions of complex system's components, including the humans in those systems. Such emergent system behavior (or emergent property) occurs when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective.

This presentation will focus on human-technology-environment interactions viewed as evolving multi-agent systems of systems, in which the safety and health risks can be conceptualized as emergent behaviors of evolving adaptive systems. Such systems are dynamic configurations of people, technology, and shared information that evolve, learn and adapt through networked interactions of their constituent subsystems. The emergent properties of many technological systems that manifest themselves in unexpected and harmful behaviors (i.e. near misses or accidents) represent the most significant challenge to human-systems integration engineering and management today. Furthermore, since many contemporary technological systems also exhibit chaotic behaviors, in order, to adequately address the contemporary challenges of human-systems integration, a new paradigm for managing complex and nonlinear human-technology interactions will need to be developed.


Short Bio

Waldemar Karwowski, P.E. is currently Professor and Chairman of the Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Department at the University of Central Florida, Orlando. Florida. He holds an M.S. (1978) in Production Engineering and Management from the Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland, and a Ph.D. (1982) in Industrial Engineering from Texas Tech University, USA. He was also awarded the D.Sc. (dr hab.) postgraduate degree in Management Science, by the Institute for Organization and Management in Industry (ORGMASZ), Warsaw. Poland (2004). He is a recipient of honorary doctorate degrees, including those from the South Ukrainian State University of Odessa, Ukraine (2004), Technical University of Koscie, Slovakia (2006), and the MIRA Technical University of Moscow, Russia (2207). Dr. Karwowski is Board Certified Professional Ergonomist (BCPE). His research, teaching and consulting activities focus on human system integration, work systems compatibility, human-computer interaction, prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, manufacturing enterprises and management ergonomics, and theoretical aspects of ergonomics science. He is past President of the International Ergonomics Association (2000-2003), and of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, USA (2006-2007). Dr. Karwowski currently serves as Editor of the journal, Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing (John Wiley & Sons), and as the Editor-in-Chief of Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science (TIES) (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., London).

The importance of coffee to the world economy cannot be overstated. It is one of the most valuable primary products in world trade, in many years second in value only to oil as a source of foreign exchange to producing countries. Its cultivation, processing, trading, transportation and marketing provide employment for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Coffee is crucial to the economies and politics of many industrially developing countries. For many of the world's Least Developed Countries, exports of coffee account for more than 50 percent of their foreign exchange earnings. Coffee is a traded commodity on major futures and commodity exchanges, most importantly in London and New York. As of 2000, 52 countries, primarily in Africa, Central and South America, Southeast Asia and Indonesia produced coffee. It is second only to oil in commodity production. In 1999, there were 108 million coffee consumers in the United States.

Coffee is largely picked by hand, with the exception of Brazil where there is some mechanization. Increasing concern has been raised about the role that coffee production has cost to the natural environment, particularly in the areas of biodiversity and water usage. Organic, shade-grown coffee has increasingly been recommended to reduce the environmental cost of growing coffee. The cost to the coffee harvester has received scant attention. Ergonomists have a very important role in bringing to light the human cost of coffee harvesting and in developing ergonomic solutions with the coffee industry using a participatory ergonomics approach.

Researchers from the SHARP program in Washington State and University of Nicaragua-Leon worked with Pueblos en Accion Communitaria (PAC) to organize this project. We assessed musculoskeletal risks and potential risk-reducing solutions for coffee harvesters in Central America and hopefully beyond. Surface electromyography (EMG) was used to estimate loads on the trapezius and erector spinae muscles of 19 workers doing harvesting in Northern Nicaragua. EMG calibration was done at the beginning, middle and end of the shift. The final average work EMG levels are expressed in terms of percent of the maximal voluntary contractions (%MVC) for the trapezius and infraspinatus muscles and the reference voluntary contractions (%RVC) for the erector spinae muscle. Harvesters used traditional baskets and a prototype coffee harvesting bag.

Worker Questionnaires were completed with the harvesters at the beginning, middle and end of the workday, using body maps to identify location and intensity of pain and discomfort, as well as workers’ ideas about how to improve the harvesting tasks. These tasks included picking, carrying, dumping coffee cherries, and carrying 60-70 kg big bags down the steep terrain to the farm house area below. Workers alternated using the prototype harvesting bag one day and the basket the other day. They used a large flat basket for about 30 minutes at the end of one day. This large flat basket was more typically used in less mountainous areas of Nicaragua.


Short Bio

Barbara Silverstein has been the Research Director of the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention (SHARP) Program since 1990. She received her Master of Science degree from the University of California San Francisco, her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Environmental and Industrial Health from the University of Michigan, and her PhD in Epidemiologic Science from the University of Michigan.

She has worked on ergonomics-related issues at the Organization of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the University of Michigan Center for Ergonomics, the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, and the California Department of Health Services. Her major areas of research have been identification and control of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, comparison of surveillance methods and intervention studies to control these disorders. Additionally, she has conducted research in workplace violence in late-night retail establishments and psychiatric institutions. She has conducted field research in a number of industries, including electronics, meat, poultry and fish processing, newspaper publishing, appliance manufacturing, medical equipment manufacturing, office work environment, pulp and paper mills, aluminum mills, saw mills, construction, automotive manufacturing, trucking, nursing homes and hospitals. She serves on a number of national and international commissions and editorial boards regarding occupational safety and health.

Dr. Silverstein received the Jorma Rantanen Award in Occupational Health Research (2008) and the Bernice Owen Award for Research in Safe Patient Handling and Movement (2007). She participated in the NAS reviews of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) programs (Mining and Health Hazard Evaluations). She is the chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Institute of Work and Health (IWH) in Toronto and has served on the NIOSH Board of Scientific Counselors, the NIOSH Study Section, and the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA), Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WMSD) and Health Care Sector committees, the executive committee of the International Ergonomics Association where she serves as chair of the committee on industrially developing countries (IDCs). She serves on the editorial boards of 3 peer reviewed journals.

Current studies include a) evaluation of safe patient handling (SPH) legislation implementation in Washington and Idaho, b) Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) sponsored study of BLS and Workers Compensation claims comparisons for amputations and carpal tunnel syndrome, c) assaults in state psychiatric hospitals, d) prospective study of upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders in industrial and health care settings, e) implementation of SPH in Veterans’ Health Administration (VHA) facilities, f) Trucking Injury Reduction Emphasis through Surveillance (TIRES), g) Impact of consultation and enforcement on workers compensation incidence rates, and Evaluation of musculoskeletal load on Nicaraguan coffee harvesters.

The International Ergonomics Association (IEA) Technical Committee for Human Factors and Sustainable Development was formed in 2009. This address describes some new opportunities and emerging roles for the HF/E community related to Sustainable Development generally and to climate change balanced with poverty eradication in particular. These include involvement in the design of: systems related to the transition to low carbon economies, decision support tools and effective methods of distributed working.

We also offer a cautionary note that social responsibility and social life cycle analysis efforts may have unwanted exclusionary impacts. It concludes that the HF/E community is well equipped to play a valuable part, both in applying traditional skills to new industries, and in new roles in wider teams.


Short Bio

Dr. Dave Moore is a Research Ergonomist within the interdisciplinary Risk and Design Team at Scion New Zealand. Scion is one of a family of state-owned Research Institutes focussed on performance in the land-based industries. Originally architecture-trained, his areas of professional activity now include: the built environment, climate change adaptation, knowledge & technology transfer and system performance in the primary industries.

He has been active with the International Ergonomics Association for a decade; initially as Editor of the IEA newsletter, and for the last five years in various chairing roles within the Technical Committee (TC) for Primary Industries and now Human Factors in Sustainable Development TC.

Dave is the current IEA Council member and a past President of the New Zealand Ergonomics Society, and served as Convener of the Board for the Certification of New Zealand Ergonomists.

Accessibility is a vital component in the social element of Sustainability. It is the degree to which a product, device, service, environment or facility can be used by as many people as possible, including persons with disabilities. The importance of Accessibility is signified by the fact that the number of persons with disabilities, either congenital, acquired or as a result of age is estimated to be around 650 million worldwide. They are the world’s largest minority and the figure is increasing through population growth, medical advances and the ageing of populations.

ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, makes a major contribution to Sustainability through its International Standards, including ISO 14001, Environmental management, and ISO 26000, Social responsibility. At the same time, it strengthens Accessibility by setting the same standards around the world for accessible products, devices, services, environments and facilities, thereby encouraging manufacturers, governments, regulators, designers and architects to offer products, services and environments that improve the quality of life for all.

Accessible design minimizes the design modification of the products, services and environments, saves materials and energy, and thereby further contributes to Sustainability. ISO's dedicated ergonomics committee, ISO/TC 159, develops International Standards that collect data, gather and disseminate accessible design knowledge, and channel the new technologies to designers and the public. Application examples include consumer products, Web pages, buildings, and transportation.

Nevertheless, after two decades of promoting accessibility in society and standardisation, it has to be stated that there is still a lack of understanding, awareness and knowledge, even among design experts. This keynote draws from ISO's experience in developing Accessibility standards in the field of ergonomics, outlines the initiatives taken at the European and International levels to achieve a “social model” of disability, and presents findings from a major international workshop on Accessibility held in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2010.


Short Bio

Kenji Kurakata is a Leader of Accessible Design Research Group at Human Technology Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. He received his Ph.D. degree from Osaka University in psychoacoustics in 1994. His research interest includes human-machine interface design using auditory information and measurement and modelling of aging effect on hearing.

In addition to the scientific researches, he has been engaged in international standardization in ISO as Convenor of TC 159/SC 4/WG 10 "Accessible design for consumer products" and TC 159/SC 5/WG 5 "Physical environments for people with special requirements" and Secretary of TC 159/WG 2 "Ergonomics for people with special requirements". He is also a Member of ISO/IEC JTAG for the revision of ISO/IEC Guide 71, representing TC 159 with Mr Georg Krämer.


Georg Krämer graduated 1983 in Physics at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. From 1983 to 1992, he was a researcher in the field of optics and optoelectronics at Spectron-Optik-GmbH. Since 1992 he is a health and safety executive and a member of the technical board of the VBG, a German statutory accident insurance company.

His main interests focus on safety and health at work in order to improve humans’ wellbeing and safety, as well as the system’s efficiency. In this area, he is responsible for companies in different branches.

Georg Krämer has been active in the field of standardisation in ergonomics since 1999. He is the current chairman of CEN/TC 122 "Ergonomics" and the convenor of CEN/TC 122 WG2 "Ergonomic design principles" as well as the chairman of ISO/TC 159 "Ergonomics" and the convenor of ISO/TC 159 SC1 WG1 "Principles of ergonomics and ergonomic design". In this function he is responsible for the development of European and International Standards in ergonomics.

It is well known that mining is a dangerous activity. The rate of serious accidents is very high and is reflected in the number of accidents, especially in those with fatal consequences. For example, in Chile, statistics of the “National Mining and Geology Service” (SERNAGEOMIN) showed that 43 miners died in work accidents during 2010. These critical figures stress the need to increase ergonomic activities in mining, with the aim of reducing health and safety risks, but there is also a more ambitious goal which is to balance the quality of working life and productivity. This is valid both for underground and for surface mining.

The aim of this presentation, based on experience acquired in Chile after years of promoting ergonomics in the mining industry, is to analyze present and future problems that will have to be faced in many countries where mining is an important source of income and employment.

If we look at the future, we have to stress the need to consider the ergonomic analysis at the initial stage of any mining project. However, it is also true that systems currently in operation require a consistent step to enable the correction of many ergonomic deficiencies found in actual work. In this sense, it is important to overcome the concept of "static" ergonomics, focused on work places which is valid for offices and machine operation, but not for an important number of miners moving around different workstations, integrated in systems of different complexity. For example, the problems faced by workers carrying out maintenance on heavy machinery are a sort of ergonomic “nightmare”, because they do most of their work by applying forces of different magnitude, in uncomfortable positions, in places of difficult access and often while standing on unstable surfaces. The consequence, in some Chilean mines, is that around 50% of absenteeism for health reasons is due to muscular-skeletal disorders. The main problem in these sorts of jobs is that there are no standard recommendations and the search for solutions seems to have to do with implementing participatory ergonomics programs.

Participation requires innovation in the ways of training workers. In Chile we have prepared material in the form of booklets and e-learning courses. Workers are trained in theoretical and practical courses of ergonomics and, afterwards, those interested become part of participatory working groups. The idea is that changes should be made after a careful analysis with workers and managers, so the groups are organized to be representative of both. Examples of participatory innovations will be broadly discussed in the hope that the model applied in Chile might be helpful for other countries facing similar ergonomic problems.

Finally, in South America, particularly in the Andean countries, mining is progressively being carried out in extremely critical environments. In mines located at around 5.000 meters above sea level, the thermal sensation can go down to -35ºC. This presents a challenge on how to protect miners effectively. Adaptation to high altitude and exposure to the cold has traditionally been studied by physiologists, but ergonomists need to carry out research to learn about the limits of work under such conditions and translate the results into recommendations to improve work organization. This is not easy and will be discussed during the presentation in the hope that young researchers will be motivated to become interested in this difficult but fascinating line of research.


Short Bio

Professor Elías Apud is Director of the Unit of Ergonomics at the University of Concepción, Chile. He graduated with a Diploma in Ergonomics from the Arbetsmedicinska Institutet, Sweden in 1971. He holds a Master of Science degree from Loughborough University (1978) and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy from Loughborough University in 1983.

As to his teaching activities, he is Director of the Masters degree course in Ergonomics offered by the University of Concepcion. He is also Director of the e-learning Diploma on Ergonomics of that University.

Professor Apud main research interest is in ergonomics applied to forestry and mining. He has received Awards for his outstanding contributions to the Development of Ergonomics in developing countries from the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO,2000), the Latin American Association of Safety and Hygiene (ALASEHT. 2005), the Latin American Union of Ergonomics (ULAERGO,2007), the International Ergonomics Association (IEA,2009) and the Chilean Ergonomics Society (SOCHERGO, 2009).

User Experience (UX) methodology is one of the best ways to evaluate and/or optimize the human interface. However, UX can be difficult to implement in some situations, mostly due to financial and time costs, inherent to the production of physical prototypes. Furthermore, human safety and/or ethical issues, which might be associated to the nature of the interaction itself, raise other major limitations that constrain the methodologies commonly used in UX. In this keynote we discuss the potentialities of Virtual Reality in improving UX, and thereby enabling a greater effectiveness in the optimization of technological human interfaces.


Short Bio

Francisco Rebelo graduated in 1988 and gained a PhD (1996) in Ergonomics at the Technical University of Lisbon. From 1990, he was a faculty member of the Department of Ergonomics at this University, and is now an Associate Professor and Head of the Ergonomics Laboratory there. Francisco Rebelo is a certified European Ergonomist and the Portuguese representative of the Centre for Registration of European Ergonomists.

His main research interests focus on usability and ergonomic design methodologies in order to improve humans’ wellbeing and safety, as well as the system’s efficiency. In this area, has been responsible for several research projects, financed by the European community, the Portuguese government and other multinational companies.

“Thirty-four million young people having productive and decent employment build progress”. This is the title of a recent book published by the International Labor Organization about decent work and Brazilian youngsters (ILO, 2009). In 2008, there were in Latin American 44.3 million young students and among those, 12.6 million were studying and working (ILO, 2010).

Work provides adolescents with benefits, such as professional qualification, family income, partial financial independence, and feelings of responsibility. However, the literature shows negative consequences of an early entry into the job market.

Work-related diseases and work injuries resulting from the activities performed at work by adolescents are quite significant. A number of studies have documented the negative effects of combined work and schooling on the sleep-wake cycle of adolescents. These studies suggested that work is associated with high levels of fatigue symptoms, sleepiness on the job and at school. Working students reported having difficulty in maintaining attention, insufficient time to do homework and restricted time to engage in social and extracurricular activities. Changes in life styles are also described, such as increase in intake of caffeinated beverages, reduction of physical activities, and bad nutrition habits.

The aforementioned problems associated with teens at work are a complex issue that should be addressed by authorities, nongovernmental agencies, and the private sector. The government and the private sector might offer adolescents part-time jobs, as such an approach would reduce sleep deficit and promote learning. Students would have the opportunity to be trained and learn a profession and, at the same time, carry out educational activities. Under such a regime, the evenings could be dedicated to leisure and rest, instead of attending school.

A sustainable future has to include equity for teens at work. Such goal can be achieved with professional training, a formal work access, and healthy work. This latter should embrace ergonomic aspects of the work activities, the work organization including the working time arrangements, reconciling work and study time.


Short Bio

Frida Marina Fischer is a Full Professor of the Environmental Health Department, School of Public Health, University of São Paulo, Brazil. She holds a BSc in Biological Sciences, Specialization on Public Health and Ergonomics, Master and PhD in Public Health and Environmental Health at the University São Paulo. Post-doc studies were undertaken at the Institute of Occupational Health (Dortmund, Germany).

She is a certified as an ergonomist by the Brazilian Ergonomics Association, and President of the Scientific Council of the Brazilian Society for Ergonomics. She chairs the Scientific Sub-Committee of Work Organization of the Brazilian Association of Occupational Medicine.

Dr. Fischer is the current president of the Working Time Society. She is the chair of the ICOH Sub-Committee Shiftwork and Working Time.

Her main interests on teaching and research are: ergonomics, work organization, night and shiftwork, early aging, teen work and child labor. She has collaborated with public institutions providing advisory services in the area of occupational health.

Dr. Fischer is an associate editor of the Journal of Public Health (Revista de Saúde Pública). She is also a member of the international Advisory Board of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and ad hoc reviewer of national and international Journals, as well as research agencies. She has published 111 manuscripts, 24 book chapters and 10 books. Dr. Fischer is a Fellow of the Federal Brazilian Research Council - CNPq, level IB.

In December 2010 the IEA established an ad hoc committee on the future of ergonomics. The goal of the committee is to formulate a position paper on the future of the discipline of ergonomics.

The committee consists of eight experienced ergonomists who will offer their combined view on the future of ergonomics, based on individual experiences and intensive discussions, and based on inputs from many people inside and outside the discipline of ergonomics worldwide. This view can be used by organizations (including the IEA) and individuals to rethink their strategies, tactics and operations within their own contexts.

At the time of writing this abstract a green position paper is being drafted based on e.g. inputs from over 50 ergonomists worldwide. After other rounds of consultations and discussions, including with people from outside the discipline of ergonomics, a final position paper will be available at IEA2012.

During the keynote presentation the highlights of the position paper will be presented, expressing the committee's views on major developments in the world that are relevant for ergonomics, the required identity and core value of the ergonomics discipline to align with these developments, the strategic direction needed for a sustainable future of ergonomics, and possible consequences for ergonomics organizations and individuals.

The core members of the Future of Ergonomics Committee are Jan Dul (Chair, Netherlands), Ralph Bruder (Germany), Peter Buckle (UK), Pascale Carayon (USA), Pierre Falzon (France), Bill Marras (USA), and John Wilson (UK). Bas van der Doelen (Netherlands) is the secretary.


Short Bio

Jan Dul is a professor of Technology and Human Factors at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, the Netherlands. He has been active for over 30 years in ergonomics research, teaching and consultancy and has published more than 150 academic and professional publications. He is the author of several books including the best-selling "Ergonomics for Beginners" (3rd English edition 2008), which has been translated into several languages. Jan Dul has been a member of the Executive Committee of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA), and council member of the Federation of European Ergonomics Societies (FEES). He has also been member and chairman of several European (CEN) and international (ISO) standardization committees on ergonomics. Currently he is chair of the IEA Future of Ergonomics committee. Jan's research interests include embedding ergonomics in business, ergonomics and business performance, work environments for employee creativity and innovation, and case study methodology. (E-mail: jdul@rsm.nl, Website: http://www.rsm.nl/jdul)

Sri Lanka is an industrially-developing country boasting of better health indices that are on a par with industrially-developed countries. To optimize the compatibility between the user population and the operating environment, an ergonomic perspective is essential. School constitutes an important environment for the child where ‘productivity’ in terms of attainment of expected educational levels is of prime importance to the child, the family and the country as a whole.

A school-based cross-sectional study was conducted in a district in Sri Lanka to assess the situation with regard to ergonomic factors of the school educational environment and its influence on negative health outcomes among school children. A sample of 1607 school children of Grade 6, 7 and 8 were selected from 55 schools using a stratified multi-stage cluster sampling method.

The study revealed the need for major improvements in several ergonomic parameters within the classrooms. Observations included: the need to improve seating arrangements in relation to location of the blackboard and to make the chair and desk combination to be ergonomically optimal. It was noted that the students carried heavy bags in an unhealthy manner and that schoolbags were not ergonomically modeled.

Children perceived severe general tiredness and reported discomfort linked with carrying their schoolbag. Many children reported musculoskeletal pain with one third, suffering from recurrent pain. Ergonomic mismatches were identified as risk factors of recurrent musculoskeletal pain. A smaller proportion of children were found to have significant lateral deviation of the spine.

Research findings necessitated identification of priority areas and formulation of feasible solutions with the involvement of major stakeholders. Issues related to schoolbag were recognized as major concerns. Solutions were contemplated on: strategies for bag-weight reduction, introduction of a model healthy bag and “bag behaviour change”. Findings were disseminated through local mass media and at international forums to share and update good practice evidence. Advocacy of policy makers, ministers, administrative officers, health program managers and health care professionals of both health and education sectors, played a crucial role. The sharing of the research outcome and recommendations with the Ministry of Education (MoE) stimulated further research by MoE into exploring strategies to lighten the schoolbag. Text books were split into several volumes. The size of exercise books was limited to 80 pages. A healthy schoolbag was modeled by the principal investigator in accordance with ergonomic standards. The Sri Lanka Standards Institute was consulted on physical quality assurance. Bag manufacturers were registered and were educated on the criteria to be met in full in manufacturing a “healthy bag”.

A schoolbag regulatory committee was established to monitor implementation of the national healthy schoolbag campaign. Sample bags from bag manufacturers were evaluated by the regulatory committee and bags that complied with healthy standards were awarded a ‘healthy bag’ logo certified by Ministry of Education. Healthy school bags were introduced at national level at the commencement of the academic year 2011.

Children, parents and teachers were made knowledgeable through mass media, leaflets and at exhibitions on a healthy bag and bag behaviour. Nearly four million school children will be the beneficiaries of this project. In addition to promoting a healthy school environment for the child, this work attempted to inculcate an ergonomic culture in a country where industrial development is likely to take an important place in the development scenario.


Short Bio

Dr. Kapila Jayaratne is a medical doctor specialized in public health and child health. He holds master's and doctorate degrees in Community Medicine from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and had the post-doctoral training at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

He currently directs the National Program of Maternal and Child Mortality and Morbidity Surveillance in the Family Health Bureau of the Ministry of Health of Sri Lanka. Dr. Jayaratne has authored several studies on ergonomic factors in the school environment and its influence on the health of school children. In these studies, he has looked at the problem of backpacks carried by children. He designed a healthy model of a backpack in accordance with ergonomic standards, which resulted in a national campaign to popularize and adopt this model in Sri Lanka from year 2011, which benefited nearly four million children.

Dr. Jayaratne initiated many knowledge transfer programs on ergonomics for children in both paper and electronic mass media. He also contributed to World Health Organization (WHO)’s Guidelines on Children’s Environmental Health Units.

Dr. Jayaratne is the coordinator of the National Healthy Schoolbag Campaign and also the chair person of the Working Committee on the Development of Standards for Schoolbags of Sri Lanka Standards Institute.

Ergonomic improvements of workplace conditions are playing an important role in occupational health practice. It is necessary to promote practical ergonomic improvements in diversifying work situations. Recent experiences confirm that by facilitating ergonomically sound improvements, concrete progress can be made towards preventing work-related illnesses and reducing work stress in varied situations. Numerous improvements are reported from occupational health practice with respect to materials handling, workstation design, physical environment, welfare facilities and work organization.

In facilitating ergonomic improvements at the workplace, it is important to focus on (a) building on local good practices that can enhance both productivity and workers’ health and safety, (b) practical, simple improvements that apply basic principles of ergonomics in multiple aspects and (c) provide action-oriented toolkits for direct use by workers and managers.

It is useful to promote localized design of such toolkits, including local good examples, action checklists and how-to guides. Examples of practical toolkits are widely used in participatory approaches responding to local needs in each work situation. It is suggested that exchanging the positive achievements of these approaches through international networking be promoted. It is essential that ergonomics and occupational health institutions and groups collaborate in order to support this international networking.


Short Bio

Kazutaka Kogi, Research Adviser of the Institute for Science of Labour in Kawasaki, has been active in occupational health and ergonomics at international level. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Tokyo in 1957, he conducted applied research at this institute until 1983 when he joined ILO as the Regional Adviser for Asia and the Pacific. From 1988-1993, he worked at ILO in Geneva as the Head of the Occupational Safety and Health Branch and Director of the Working Conditions and Environment Department. He served as Director of Institute for Science of Labour from 1993-1999. Currently he is President of the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH). His main interest is in participatory ergonomics for improving health at work.

Most industrial countries are currently faced with ageing staff, a situation that will, however, become even more pronounced in the coming years. A decreasing number of pupils and students could lead to less “fresh knowledge” being available in business, with the result that drive and innovation capability will decline. Until now, “Active Ageing” has been treated primarily from the perspective of work psychology and personnel policy. Therefore, confronting concrete technical-ergonomic work structuring tends to have been the exception. There are only a few “success stories” from companies that go beyond commonplace issues such as “lifting aids” or “mixed-age teams”.

Encouraging performance capabilities and work motivation is actually a permanent objective of every personnel manager. In that respect, this is not a new challenge that has emerged as a result of demographic change. What is new, on the other hand, is the central significance and necessity now attached to these objectives, with regard to ageing members of staff whose performance capabilities are changing. Whereas up to now it has been possible to follow the strategy in some cases of replacing employees who display decreasing performance and work motivation with younger employees, this is becoming increasingly difficult simply due to the declining “reservoir” of young people.

By now it has been proven – particularly in Finnish longitudinal studies – that, statistically speaking, the ability to work is not age-based, but rather that it stabilises with advancing age, and in some cases even increases. All of these inter-individual differences mean that suitable work design measures must be planned, particularly for the older employee, which will help to balance out any deficiencies. In principle, therefore, an operational age management system needs to be developed. Not only should all the measures of operational health promotion be utilised, but work processes should be improved pro-actively (and not correctively). This demands that management and specialists in the areas of personnel management, work and health protection and line managers must be trained in age management skills. These training measures will enable the individual and flexible employment trajectories of ageing people to be supported. Active age management includes:

1. Determination of the current level of performance of older employees and comparison with the standard levels of performance expected by companies.
2. Development of any necessary ergonomic design improvements, in order to be able to use the employee in a manner suitable to performance and expectation.
3. Training of problematic work processes in industry-tailored model workplaces, so that age-related deficits can be (in part) compensated (work hardening)
4. An operational early warning system for age-appropriate work structuring should identify as early as possible any potential health risks among ageing members of staff.

Short Bio

Professor Landau, born in 1947, studied Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the Darmstadt University of Technology and completed his doctorate (Dr.-Ingenieur) there in 1978.

From 1971 to 1974 he worked as a systems analyst in France (Grenoble University) and Switzerland (European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN), and then spent five years as head of ergonomics and the foreign department at the REFA Association, where he was active primarily in the field of international consulting.

This was followed by twelve years as a university professor in Stuttgart. Thereafter, Professor Landau was Head of the Institute of Ergonomics at the Darmstadt University of Technology from 1995 to 2005.

Professor Landau was president – and twice vice-president – of the ergonomics association Gesellschaft für Arbeitswissenschaft, is the editor for the ergonomics journal Zeitschrift für Arbeitswissenschaft and a member of many editorial boards of international journals on Ergonomics. Furthermore he is a member of the review board for systems engineering in the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). He was honoured as a Fellow of the International Ergonomics Association in 2007.

He has published around 400 journal articles and books, including two encyclopedias on ergonomics and occupational medicine.

A common characteristic of complex, large-scale technological facilities such as chemical processing plants, refineries, energy conversion and generation systems (e.g., nuclear, fossil fuel, thermoelectric power plants, gas processing facilities) and off-shore oil drilling for production rigs, is that large amounts of potentially hazardous, flammable, combustible or pressurized materials are concentrated and processed in single sites under the centralized control of a few operators. The effects of human error in these facilities are often neither observable nor reversible. Consequently, error recovery is either too late or impossible. Catastrophic breakdowns of these systems, created by man-made and natural causes, pose serious threats and long-lasting health and environmental consequences for workers in the facility, for the local public, and possibly for the neighboring region and the whole country. Attesting to this are the accidents at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant (in the US, 1979), the Bhopal chemical processing plant (in India, 1984), the Chernobyl nuclear power station (in Ukraine, 1986), and the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore platform (in the US, 2010). The Chernobyl accident demonstrated, for the first time, that the effects of any such nuclear accident would not be localized, but rather would spill over into neighboring countries and have global consequences. The radioactive fallout resulting from Chernobyl was detected all over the world, from Finland to South Africa. Specifically, Europeans, in addition to serious health concerns, have had to deal with significant economic losses and serious, long-lasting environmental consequences. This phenomenon has been described most succinctly as: a nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere.

For the foreseeable future, despite increasing levels of computerization and automation, human operators will remain in charge of the day-to-day controlling and monitoring of these systems. Thus, the safe and efficient operation of these sociotechnical systems is a function of the interactions among their human (i.e., personnel and organizational) and engineered subsystems. The underlying rationale and major objective of this keynote address is to highlight and demonstrate the critical effects of micro- and macro-ergonomic factors in the safety of complex hazardous, complex, large-scale sociotechnical systems. This is done by analyzing the four well-known accidents to such systems -- Three Mile Island (TMI), Bhopal, Chernobyl, and BP Deepwater Horizon. Moreover, by integrating the common causes of these three accidents, a policy framework and/or guideline facilitating adherence to those safety-ensuring factors identified is suggested.


Short Bio

Dr. Najmedin (Najm) Meshkati, PhD, CPE is a (tenured) Professor of Civil/ Environmental Engineering and a Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California (USC). He was a Jefferson Science Fellow, and a Senior Science and Engineering Advisor, Office of Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State of the United States, Washington, DC (2009-2010). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering/ National Research Council’s Committee on the Analysis of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill to Identify Measures to Prevent Similar Accidents in the Future (2010-2011).

For the past 25 years, he has been teaching and conducting research on risk reduction and reliability enhancement of complex technological systems, including nuclear power, aviation, and petrochemical and transportation industries. He has written many articles on human factors, safety culture and accident causation. In addition, Dr. Meshkati has inspected many petrochemical and nuclear power plants around the world, including Chernobyl in 1997. He worked with the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, as an expert advisor in human factors and safety culture, on the investigation of the BP Refinery explosion in Texas City (2005), and also served as a member of the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Human Performance, Organizational Systems and Maritime Safety. He also served as a member of the NRC Marine Board's Subcommittee on Coordinated R&D Strategies for Human Performance to Improve Marine Operations and Safety.

He is an elected Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, an AT&T Faculty Fellow in Industrial Ecology, a NASA Faculty Fellow (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2003 and 2004), and a recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1989. He received the Ergonomics of Technology Transfer Award from the International Ergonomics Association (IEA) in 2000, and he is also the 2007 recipient of the Oliver Keith Hansen Outreach Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) and was honored by the HFES for his “scholarly efforts on human factors of complex, large-scale technological systems.”

As the Chair of the IEA “Group of Experts,” Professor Meshkati coordinated international efforts which culminated in the publication of Ergonomic Checkpoints by the United Nation’s International Labor Office (ILO) in 1996, and for that he received the 1997 IEA recognition certificate for his role and contribution. This book has been translated and published into Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Chinese, Farsi, French, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai. The second updated edition of this book has recently been published by ILO and IEA.

Professor Meshkati simultaneously received a BSc in Industrial Engineering and a BA in Political Science in 1976, from Sharif (Arya-Meher) University of Technology and Shahid Beheshti University (National University of Iran), respectively; an MSc in Engineering Management in 1978; and a PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering in 1983 from USC. He is a Certified Professional Ergonomist.

The rapidly escalating health care costs associated with work-related musculoskeletal disorders in many industrialized nations have serious implications for the development of sustainable systems. The human element in a sustainable system must not be overlooked, since improperly designing for the human can have implications in terms of the healthcare costs, worker replacement costs, training costs, error rates and product quality. Of all the musculoskeletal disorders associated with the work, low back disorders (LBDs) are typically the most costly and can be the most debilitating disorders to impact the system. Only through understanding the causal pathways associated with low back problems can we effectively control the risk associated with work environments.

Over the past decade it has become clear that health and risk to the low back should be viewed as a complex system. Volumes have been written regarding the associations between LBDs and physical work factors, psychosocial factors, organizational factors, genetics, behavior, psychological state, biochemical status, anthropometry, as well as personality. For the most part, these risk factors have been investigated independently of each other and many have claimed strong relationships between each risk factor and LBDs. Several different studies have claimed that vastly different risk factors explain the vast majority of the risk variability. How can they all these independent risk relationships among vastly different risk factors each be correct? They cannot. The current literature suggests that these risk factors are not independent. In fact, there appears to be a great deal of interactions among the various categories of risk factors. Risk factors can interact to intensify the risk and they can offset each other to mediate risk. Thus, in order to control work-related risk to the low back due to work it is necessary to understand how the system of work and non-work risk factors interact with each other. In this manner it is possible to understand which factors can be controlled and which are immutable, but this must be considered through workplace design.

In order to make sense of the complex interactions among risk factors it is absolutely necessary to precisely measure the impact of the various risk factors’ effects upon the low back’s musculoskeletal system. If one can quantitatively measure the impact of a factor upon the system then one can understand the interactions and trade-offs among factors. Using quantitative assessment techniques, this analysis will propose a means by which various research efforts can adopt a common measure in order to better understand how various risk factors interact with each other. Through this approach it is believed that it will be possible to define the necessary ingredients for optimal low back health and wellness in the workplace.


Short Bio

William S. Marras is a professor and holds the Honda Endowed Chair in the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering at the Ohio State University. He serves as the director of the Biodynamics Laboratory, the Center for Occupational Health in Automobile Manufacturing and is Executive Director for the Institute for Ergonomics. Dr. Marras also holds joint appointments in the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery, Physical Medicine, and Biomedical Engineering. His research is centered on occupational biomechanics issues including workplace biomechanical epidemiologic studies, laboratory biomechanical studies, mathematical modeling, and clinical studies of the back and spine. His findings have been published in approximately 200 peer reviewed journal articles and numerous books and book chapters including a recent book entitled “The Working Back: A systems view.” He holds Fellow status in five professional societies and has been widely recognized for his contributions through national and international numerous awards. Professor Marras currently serves as the Chair of the Board on Human Systems Integration at the National Research Council and has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (the National Academies).