How can we contribute?

Many organisations that conduct Led Outdoor Activities (LOA) already have established incident reporting systems and do not want to use the UPLOADS App.  We would like to invite these organisations to contribute information that will allow the research team to evaluate the safety benefits of using the UPLOADS App.

What type of information is required?

• Incident reports collected by your organisation (near misses; injuries; illnesses; psychosocial, e.g. emotional or psychological; equipment damage; environmental damage; and missing or overdue people)
• Information about the programs run by your organisation (i.e. participation data):
  • Types of activities run on program and the number of participants partaking in the activities;
  • Number of people involved in the program (including participants, leaders, supervisors, and support); and
  • The age and gender of participants on program.
• Information about the strategies used by your organisation to prevent incidents.

If your organisation does not collect some of the information, that is ok!  We will collect what is available.   

What about privacy and confidentiality?

To ensure your organisation’s confidentiality, and the privacy of individual’s information:

• Your data will be aggregated with other data collected.
• The research team will ensure that all identifiable information (including names of people, places, and organisations) is removed.
• No individuals or organisations will be identifiable from any publications, case study analyses, or reports produced by the research team.

How do we get involved?

Register your interest here.

Mark Brackenreg has recently announced his retirement from school life at St Joseph’s College. While Mark isn’t retiring from his voluntary work, the UPLOADS Team would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge his contribution to our project and more broadly to the sector.

Mark is passionate about improving risk management during outdoor education programs – with an emphasis on collecting good quality data about incidents:

“to allow all concerned to make informed decisions based on some hard evidence rather than their individual perception of the risk involved.”(Brackenreg, 1997).

That’s right – Mark has long advocated for a standardised approach to incident reporting in the outdoor education sector, and he wrote one of the first peer reviewed journal publications reporting on Australian incident data back in 1997. This work provided an evidence base for the UPLOADS project to build upon.

We’d like to thank Mark for this work, and for all of the feedback he has provided throughout the development of UPLOADS.

We wish Mark all the best for his retirement – and look forward to seeing what he does next.

If you’d like to read Mark’s journal papers:

Brackenreg, M. (1998). Learning from Our Mistakes—Before It’s Too Late. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 3(2), 27-33.

Brackenreg, M. (1997). How safe are we? A review of injury and illness in outdoor education programmes. Journal of adventure education and outdoor leadership, 14(1), 10-16.

Brackenreg, M., Luckner, J., & Pinch, K. (1994). Research update: Essential skills for processing adventure experiences. Journal of Experiential Education, 17(3), 45-47.

Brackenreg, M. (1993). Theories, Practices and Benefits of Debriefing in Outdoor Education. Journal of Outdoor Education, 26, 3-11.

2019 Research Symposium

Interested in learning about new Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) research findings and methods?

Want to put HFE and systems thinking into practice in your organisation?

Join the Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems at the University of the Sunshine Coast (Partner on the UPLOADS project) at the 2019 Research Symposium to take a closer look at how HFEs and systems thinking research and methods can positively impact safety and efficiency in your workplace.

The  one-day symposium and two-day series of HFE methods workshops will be held at USC Sunshine Coast, from Monday 4 February until Wednesday 6 February 2019.

Research Symposium 4 February 2019

The symposium will host leading international and national experts in Human Factors. Keynote speakers will include Professor Neville Stanton from the University of Southampton and Professor Guy Walker from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. In addition, the symposium will feature presentations from the Centre’s research leaders, including Professor Paul Salmon, Dr Gemma Read, Dr Natassia Goode, and Dr Nicholas Stevens. It will provide insights and knowledge into the value, outcomes and opportunities of practice-based research and development in HFE and STS.

Outcomes

Across the three days attendees will hear from researchers and industry about the impact HFE and STS can make.

This event is essential for individuals and organisations that work in safety critical domains; including those involved in HFE, safety management, accident analysis, incident reporting and learning, risk assessment, hazard analysis, and systems analysis and design.

Registered attendees come from a diverse range of industries and organisations; such as from QANTAS and the Outdoor Education Group.

Further, the event will be of benefit for those interested in practical insights and approaches for exploring and understanding the design of teams, organisations, plant, infrastructure and all kinds of systems, which are resilient, efficient and optimise performance.

Some of the outcomes of the three days will include:

• Practical guidance on ways in which to ensure safety management systems consider key human factors issues
• Step-by-step guidance for applying a range of HFE and systems methods for the evaluation and design of complex systems
• How to use the principles of systems thinking to evaluate and enhance your own incident reporting and investigation system
• Provide a structured means for identifying and addressing unintended consequences of systems during design and prior to implementation
• Practical ways to use systems methods in the design of efficient and safe urban development and transport infrastructure

For more information, or to register to attend, please visit the Symposium website or contact the Centre. 

Incidents and injuries involving camp stoves continue to be frequently represented in the UPLOADS data. Earlier this week, two students suffered serious burn injuries requiring immediate evacuation during a school camp in Victoria. The UPLOADS team wishes a full recovery for the young people involved.
 
We have re-posted a useful practitioner article written by Dr. Clare Dallat focused on this specific area of risk.  It outlines strategies that organisations can consider in their planning and management of this foreseeable risk.  To view the article, click here. 

If your organisation or school would like to benefit from the ability to track, analyse and learn from incidents or near misses on LOA programs, and contribute to the sector’s ability to really understand what incidents are occurring and why; why not register to use the new UPLOADS app?  The app is now live, free and accessible. Click here for more information. 

What is it?
The UPLOADS App collects information about all programs run by your organisation, we refer to this as “participation data”.  This information includes the:

• types of activities run on program and the number of participants partaking in the activities;
• number of people involved in the program (including participants, leaders, supervisors, and support); and
• the age and gender of participants on program.

Why do we collect this information?
Participation data is used to:

• calculate your organisation’s incident, injury and illness rates;
• calculate incident rates for specific activities; and
• determine if specific age groups or genders are more at risk of incidents, injuries, or illnesses.

Benefits?
There are many benefits to collecting and analysing participation and incident data. Dom Courtney, Executive Officer of QORF has provided a testimonial of his experience using the UPLOADS App so far:

“Despite working in the “great” outdoors, the Australian outdoor sector has not been great at measuring how we operate.

In addition to providing the outdoor sector with critical data to better understand and help prevent incidents, the UPLOADS App is also a way of measuring participation in outdoor activities.

By measuring participation in different activities across the Australian led outdoor scene, the UPLOADS App can contribute to an improved understanding of what’s happening and where.

The more people contributing data, the better!”

Executive Officer

How to I enter participation data? 

Watch this short video!

Clare Dallat recently received the Charles (Reb) Gregg Award for her contributions to risk management in the outdoor industry at the October 2018 Wilderness Risk Management Conference in Portland. 

NOLS, a Wyoming-based nonprofit global wilderness school that seeks to help individuals step forward as leaders,  praised Clare’s incredible career achievements in a press release this week. You can read the press release, which includes an overview of Clare’s approach to risk management, here.

Congratulations again Clare! What an incredible accomplishment. 

This Friday from 2-3pm (AEST) we will be holding our final Q&A webinar for UPLOADS users and those interested in registering their organisation. If you are unable to attend, but have questions that you would like us to answer, please email them through to the UPLOADS Team.

A list of Frequently Asked Questions has been posted to the website.

To register for the Q&A webinar, please click here.

We hope to see you on Friday!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com