Hong Kong

Human factor plays a key role in accident prevention. Unsafe behavior is one of the major causes of accidents. Over the years, safety professionals have tried their best to improve practitioners’ awareness of the hazards and risks involved in such behavior through training, including lectures and demonstrations. With the rapidly developing Virtual Reality (VR) technologies, Hong Kong Occupational Safety and Health Council (OSHC) leverages these technologies in building an immersive training system - OSH CAVE - for providing “participatory” OSH training to improve practitioners’ safety knowledge and awareness, which in turn, change their attitudes. Since early 2000s, OSHC has developed a number of interactive safety training computer games and a Forklift Truck Training Simulator. Feedback from trainees shows that such learning through close-to-real-life-scenario first hand are long-lasting with improved impact. Noting the effectiveness of experiential learning, OSHC started to develop OSH CAVE in 2016 for training and promotion, especially for high-risk work process. CAVE (or Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) is an immersive VR environment created by projectors and a cube of projection screens. Trainees would “work” in the life-like scene and interact with objects, and this will be a “total experience” encompassing both physical and mental dimensions (see photo 2). The OSH CAVE, jointly developed with the University of Hong Kong, aims to achieve people-centered accident prevention by enhancing users’ safety awareness through participation and involvement. It could simulate different high-risk working environments and enable users to “experience” accidents in a safe and controlled environment. One example is the “working at height scenario” which simulates the environment of renovation and maintenance works at the facade of a high-rise building. Trainees would “experience falling-from-height” first-hand without using safety harness when the 3D virtual working platform collapses. Such near-reality accident can be further “augmented” by audio and wind blowing effects as well as programmed motion of a moving platform. By “experiencing” the accident, trainees have a strong and unforgettable impression on hazards of unsafe behaviors, and eventually help to reinforce work safe behaviors. The OSH CAVE is a fully immersive and interactive visualization system that allows great flexibility for OSHC to create vivid stereoscopic views of an unlimited virtual world within a small room of 48 square meters. With this high-power system, OSHC would deliver better and effective capacity building for workers of different industries in Hong Kong.

Level of Education: Initial vocational education and training, Continuing vocational education and training

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