Image copied from Serious Injuries Dashboard
There’s a new user-friendly, interactive way to find specific information on serious injuries to BC workers.
The Serious Injuries Dashboard aggregates injury data and allows users to filter their searches by industry, accident type, and body part injured. You can also break down the results by age, gender, and region.
To find out more about the Serious Injuries Dashboard, I contacted Stephen Symon, a WorkSafeBC manager in Industry and Labour Services who was part of the team that tested the new resource. I asked him for more details on why the dashboard was created and who will use it.
“The primary goal of this open data is for people to be more aware of the types of injuries that occur and to put efforts forward to prevent these types of things from occurring in the future,” Stephen says, describing how the new dashboard offers value to academics, employers, the media, OHS professionals, people on joint health and safety committees, and more.
In the past, people accessed this type of injury info by reading WorkSafeBC’s latest annual report or by placing a data request. Now people can get instant, self-serve access.
Committment to open data
Providing “open data” is a growing trend we’ve seen in government and other organizations. In recent years, databases have become more user-friendly and it’s easier to access, use, and share data.The Industry Safety Information Centre is another open data offering from WorkSafeBC. So is the Employer Safety Planning Tool Kit, which is available to individual employers who want details on their claim history, assessment history, and how they compare to others.
“WorkSafeBC continues to look at all our data sources and find more opportunities to share information,” says Stephen, adding that a new data project underway is the Work-Related Deaths Dashboard.
I will write about the new sources of data as they are launched, and in the meantime, thanks to Stephen for explaining what’s now available. Much of it will be helpful to me, for example, as I seek information for these blog posts.
