Overview of the Safety Genome Project

The Safety Genome Project is a large-scale research project led by the University of Colorado at Boulder that aims to identify and characterize the fundamental traits of the physical work environment that serve as predictors of construction injuries. Our end goals are to be able to predict construction injuries during design and construction planning and to devise simple, cost-effective solutions. Example physical traits from our initial research include uneven work surfaces, heavy materials, mobile equipment, and working below elevated platforms. Although there are thousands of precursors of injuries, our research will use advanced predictive analytics and multivariate statistics to identify and model the precursors that best predict injury occurrence. This overarching method is very similar to weather prediction (meteorology) and genome studies (the Human Genome Project).

Using the science behind this:

To address the problems faced here:

Our research methods are designed to test the hypothesis that injuries can be predicted by a few inherent and basic characteristics of construction environments. Our project addresses the following questions:

1. What are the precursors of construction injuries identifiable in the physical work environment?
2. What precursors can be identified and managed during design and pre-construction planning?
3. How do the precursors relate in time and space to cause injuries?
4. Can injuries be predicted by precursors that are identifiable in design and construction planning?
5. What precursors relate to observable human behavior?
6. What precursor differences exist for high-severity injuries, low-severity injuries, and close calls?
7. Does near miss data predict severe injuries?
8. What energy sources most contribute to construction injuries?
9. What is the relationship between precursors and part of body injured?
10. What precursors can be automatically detected during work packaging?

Ultimately, we hope to create quantitative and qualitative models that provide designers, planners, and constructors with an elegant and proactive approach to identifying, measuring, and controlling safety risk factors. Such models could revolutionize the way that safety is managed and could serve as underlying data in technological systems such as building information modeling, automation  and augmented reality.

Our Team

The Safety Genome Project is a team-based research project in the University of Colorado's Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering Department. The project is supported by an excellent research team comprised of top minds at the University. His team includes the following undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral researchers, all of whom contribute materially to the achievement of the project goals.

Dr. Matthew Hallowell, Beavers Endowed Faculty Fellow and Director of the Project

Dr. Alex Albert, Senior Post-Doctoral Researcher

Mr. Antoine Tixier, PhD Student and CEAE Research Excellence Fellow

Mr. Marc Prades, Graduate Research Assistant 

Mr. Daniel Hansen, BS/MS Student and Graduate Research Assistant 

Mr. Spencer Lacy, Discovery Learning Apprentice and Undergraduate Researcher

Mr. Sid Bhandari, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Mr. Alexander Aguilar, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Mr. Zach Noonan, Undergraduate Research Assistant