While emerging technologies can potentially create or transform industries, their development has far outpaced our understanding of their implications for occupational safety and health. Applications of emerging technologies may pose new hazards to workers or they may offer solutions to eliminate or reduce current workplace risks. This report focuses on four areas of research and development needed to identify and evaluate the possible positive and negative impacts of emerging technologies on occupational safety and health.

The first need is to identify and prioritize the emerging technologies that require the most research attention. This report suggests a two-tier approach to fill the current gap in identification and surveillance of emerging technologies and their impact on occupational safety and health. The first tier would use existing sources of information to identify relevant emerging technologies. The second tier would prioritize which applications of these technologies could potentially harm or benefit occupational safety and health. Surveillance needs include:

• Knowing the minimum data needed for the identification and surveillance of emerging technologies;
• Recruiting academic experts to evaluate emerging technology literature for potential negative and positive consequences for occupational safety and health;
• Developing methods for effective early screening of emerging technologies;
• Training developers of new technologies to identify both potentially risky technologies and technologies of value to occupational safety and health;
• Convening consortia around priority technologies to consider their potential for application and concerns regarding worker safety and health;
• Increasing funding and awareness to enable technology developers to appreciate the perspective of occupational safety and health experts and encourage them to develop applications that will improve safety and health in the workplace.

Another need is to develop an iterative risk assessment process to assess new and emerging technologies. A standard risk assessment framework could be adapted to assess emerging technologies’ potential safety and health risks and benefits. This analysis would be based on continuous iterations that build upon current knowledge and informed by findings from targeted research. This proposed framework would contribute to worker safety and health by better understanding the hazards and benefits posed by the production, distribution, use, and disposal of the products of emerging technologies. Research needs include:

• Investigating the use of a risk benefit analysis that would apply an iterative, prospective assessment framework during all stages of a technology’s development;
• Identifying research gaps while interactively analyzing new and emerging technologies so that critical needs can be filled via research agendas for specific new technologies;
• Developing tools for analyzing the hazards and benefits posed by emerging technologies on worker safety and health;
• Developing methods to test technologies at their development stage for potential hazards, which may lead to redesign;
• Developing evaluation criteria that deal not only with hazards but benefits of emerging technologies;
• Developing new methods to analyze the costs and benefits of new technologies.

Third, a new way of thinking about the design of emerging technologies and their deployment is needed that would result in safer workplaces. This new approach needs to consider inputs, products, and processes that are inherently safer for the worker. The focus is on eliminating the hazards rather than controlling them. Research needs include:

• Extending the emphasis on inherently safer principles, currently in wide use in the chemical manufacturing industry, to other sectors such as agriculture, construction, transportation, healthcare, and services;
• Building the foundations of inherently safer processes through scientific research and the translation of research results into practice;
• Developing methods to prospectively identify benign emerging technologies that can substitute for traditionally risky technologies;
• Developing methodologies to measure the degree of inherent safety for the comparison of alternative designs;
• Recognizing that emerging technologies, which are designed to improve the environment, should also improve occupational safety and health;
• Sharing expertise with technology developers so that new applications will either enhance occupational safety and health or at least be introduced safely in the workplace;
• Overcoming barriers in improving workplace conditions, while maintaining high-quality and innovative products or services;
• Informing applied science and engineering professionals of inherently safer design needs;
• Developing methods to interpret data and information upon which technologies are evaluated;
• Increasing receptivity to inherently safer design needs.

Finally, it is important that we create an integrated process for adopting beneficial emerging technologies and avoiding potential safety and health problems with these technologies. This process needs to integrate the identification, analysis, and design of emerging technologies. It must also encourage collaboration between safety and health professionals and technology developers. Research needs include:

• Investigating opportunities for using information technology or electronics and communications to monitor and inspect workplace programs;
• Encouraging the development of specific innovative technologies to control or eliminate persistent occupational illnesses or injuries;
• Developing partnerships for identifying research needs regarding rapid changes in the nature of work and unintended consequences in safety and health associated with new and emerging technologies;
• Extending research linking emerging technologies and occupational safety and health into specific occupational environments such as the construction, agricultural, and service industries;
• Exploring government-funded research programs that can have an impact on the inherent safety of emerging technologies;
• Fostering partnerships among government, industry, and academia to develop and implement inherently safer designs and principles for more benign technologies;
• Applying the precautionary principle to emerging technologies analysis regarding U.S. worker safety and health issues.