Cristina Martelli, Ph.D., Department of Statistics 'G. Parenti', University of Florence, viale Morgagni 59, Florence, 50134, Italy
Even if security politics are usually considered an economic cost to industries, also work accidents can give rise to heavy costs; improvements on work safety must be considered not only in the perspective of worker’s right to an healthy work place, but also for their economic benefits.
This work aims to describe a statistical information system oriented to manage data on work conditions in which accidents happen and to measure their economic charge, in accord to the costs taxonomy of the European Agency on Safety and Health at Work.
The system, originally proposed in support to public vigilance service actions, is proving to be adequate for work accidents costs evaluation and for acting like a quality certification information system in support to accidents prevention positive politics.
Method
The proposed approach has been applied in several construction contexts: (i.e, Bologna-Milano High Speed Rail Track, motorways tracks, building construction sites). A web-based version has been implemented to monitor 2006 Turin Winter Olimpic Games building yards.
The system has been built through a re-engineerization of the DBMS involved: it comes from the integration of administrative data generated by Public Occupational Health Services (surveillance and sanitary operations) and by current construction companies activities.
Concepts standardization has been done: the system is fully relational and non redundant. It can work at nominative level for surveillance operations, and in an anonymized modality for economic statistical applications: in this case the data have been submitted to severe privacy control procedures and can be accessed at micro and macro level.
Results
In this paper the architecture and the functionalities of the statistical information system will be shown, and its capability in measuring the economic costs of work accidents will be discussed.
A first economic analysis of the collected data will be illustrated, with a particular focus on economic costs of work accidents happened in the Bologna-Firenze High Speed Rail Track construction sites.
Finally, details will be given on a new national observatory on economic costs of accidents: this observatory will be based on the adoption of the statistical information system object of this paper.
Bibliography
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AA. VV. “Economic Impact of Occupational Safety and Health in the Member States of the Union”, Bilbao, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 1999
AA. VV., “Health and safety at work - A question of costs and benefits?”, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work 1999
Buzzigoli L. and C. Martelli (2006), “Organizing Administrative Data for Statistical Purposes. A Case Study”, Working Paper 2006/11, Dipartimento di Statistica G. Parenti.
Haddix et al., “Cost-effectiveness analysis – Prevention effectivenss: a guide to decision analysis and economic evaluation”, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996.
Jos Mossink et al., “Inventory of socioeconomic costs of work accidents”, TNO Work and Employment, the Netherlands, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work 2002
Martelli C,(2007) “A Statistical Information System in Support of the Italian Competence System Governance, Working Paper 2007/17, Dipartimento di Statistica G. Parenti