The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Work kills and injures millions each year through accidents, hazardous substances, heat and other conditions, and psychosocial risks affect mental health. New technologies and climate change add hazards while removing others. This page sets out how occupational hazards arise and are controlled, how injuries and illnesses are measured, and what evidence serves the labour inspectorates, employers and workers responsible.
GCRI · In development · service level R0
Occupational safety and health is the discipline of preventing work-related injuries and diseases and promoting workers' wellbeing. Heat is a growing hazard, exposures cause disease years later, psychosocial risks affect mental health, and prevention works best by eliminating hazards before relying on protective equipment.
For occupational safety, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, true-colour imagery and daytime surface heat with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Southeast Asia; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
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Layers 3
People and exposure, for this page
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For occupational safety, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, true-colour imagery and daytime surface heat with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Southeast Asia; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Occupational safety · Labour market A · Year 2
| Clerical support | 25,366 | 0.7 | Substitute | Data operations |
| Machine operators | 45,528 | 0.7 | Mixed | Robot maintenance |
| Care workers | 45,227 | 0.3 | Complement | Upskill |
| Analysts | 12,224 | 0.5 | Complement | Upskill |
Human factors and new work hazards. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Rising temperatures increase heat stress for outdoor and poorly ventilated indoor work, reducing productivity and causing illness and death.
Dusts, chemicals and other exposures cause cancers and chronic diseases years later, which are under-recognised as work-related.
Long hours, job insecurity, harassment and opaque algorithmic management raise stress, burnout and mental ill-health among workers.
Eliminating hazards and engineering controls protect better than relying on procedures and personal protective equipment.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Occupational disease | A disease contracted as a result of exposure to risk factors arising from work. |
| Psychosocial risk | A work-related risk to mental and physical health from how work is designed, organized and managed. |
| Hierarchy of controls | An order of preference for controlling hazards, from elimination to protective equipment. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fatal occupational injuries | per hundred thousand workers | annual | Occupational injury statistics | OFFICIAL |
| Non-fatal occupational injuries | per hundred thousand workers | annual | Occupational injury statistics | OFFICIAL |
| Work-related deaths from disease | estimated deaths | per assessment | WHO and ILO joint estimates | ESTIMATED |
| Labour inspectors | per ten thousand employed | annual | ILOSTAT | OFFICIAL |
| Working hours lost to heat stress | percent of working hours | per assessment | Modelled estimates | MODELLED |
| Workers reporting work-related stress | percent | per survey | Working conditions surveys | REPORTED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| WHO and ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury | Deaths and disability from occupational risk factors | Public, WHO and ILO terms |
| ILOSTAT occupational safety and health statistics | Injuries and inspection | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| EU-OSHA surveys and reports | Workplace risks and management in Europe | Public, EU terms |
| ILO report on heat stress and labour productivity | Estimates of working hours lost to heat | Public, ILO terms |
| National occupational injury and illness surveys | Injury and illness counts | Public records, licence per government |
Future of Work and Skills prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Labour inspectorates | Where to focus inspection and enforcement | Hazard profiles; capacity reviews |
| Employers and safety committees | Which controls to implement | Hazard and exposure evidence |
| Labour ministries | Which regulations to update, such as heat standards | Heat stress and disease evidence |
Human factors research shows that accidents usually arise from interactions between people, technology and organization rather than individual error alone. Automation can remove dangerous tasks but create new ones: maintenance of automated equipment, unexpected robot motion, and monitoring tasks that leave people poorly placed to intervene.
Algorithmic management, where software assigns tasks, sets pace and monitors performance, can intensify work and increase musculoskeletal and psychosocial risks. Heat stress reduces safe working capacity and raises the risk of illness and accidents. Workers classified as self-employed may fall outside occupational safety systems entirely.
Records of workplace injuries and occupational diseases. Under-reporting is common, especially for psychosocial harm and in informal work.
Task analysis and incident investigation, using social and behavioural science and engineering methods. Findings depend on access to workplaces.
Measuring heat, noise, chemical and ergonomic exposure. Exposure varies within jobs and over time.
Assessing whether safety measures work, using econometrics. Rigorous evaluations are rare.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.