Glossary

85 terms used across workplace safety and safety technology.

A

Administrative control: A change in how people work, such as procedures, training, signage, rotas or supervision. Most safety analytics and alerting tools support administrative controls.Related: Hierarchy of controls, Engineering control, Permit to work (PTW)
Alert fatigue: When people receive so many alerts, especially false ones, that they start ignoring or dismissing them. It is a common reason AI safety pilots fail.Related: False positive, Human in the loop
AMR (autonomous mobile robot): A robot that navigates a facility on its own using sensors and maps, often moving goods in warehouses and factories. Unlike older AGVs, it does not need fixed guide paths.Related: Cobot (collaborative robot), Physical AI
Anonymization and pseudonymization: Anonymization removes the ability to identify a person; pseudonymization replaces identifiers but can be reversed with extra information. Blurred video often remains personal data, for example when the original footage is kept or people can be identified from context, so data protection law usually still applies.Related: Data minimization, Privacy by design, GDPR

B

Bird triangle: Frank Bird's 1969 extension of Heinrich's model, based on a large study of incident reports, proposing about 600 near misses, 30 property damage incidents and 10 minor injuries for each serious injury.Related: Heinrich triangle, Near miss, SIF (serious injury or fatality)
BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight): Drone flights where the pilot cannot see the aircraft directly. In the US they currently need an FAA waiver or other case-by-case approval. The FAA proposed a dedicated rule, Part 108, in August 2025; it had not been finalized as of September 2026.Related: Physical AI, Privacy by design

C

CAPA (corrective and preventive action): Actions to fix the cause of a problem that has occurred (corrective) and to prevent similar problems elsewhere (preventive). EHS software tracks CAPAs to completion.Related: Root cause analysis (RCA), EHS software
Cobot (collaborative robot): A robot designed to work near or with people, with limits on speed and force or sensing that stops it on contact. Safety requirements are set out in ISO 10218, which since 2025 includes guidance formerly in ISO/TS 15066.Related: Physical AI, AMR (autonomous mobile robot), Functional safety, Machine guarding
Computer vision: The field of AI that interprets images and video. In safety, it detects people, vehicles, PPE, zone entries, postures and other conditions in camera footage.Related: Object detection, Video analytics, Edge AI

D

DART rate: Days Away, Restricted or Transferred rate: the number of recordable cases that caused days away from work, job restriction or transfer, per 100 full-time workers, using the same 200,000-hour base as TRIR.Related: TRIR (total recordable incident rate), OSHA recordable, Lost time injury (LTI)
Data minimization: The principle of collecting and keeping only the personal data needed for a stated purpose. In safety analytics, it can mean storing event clips rather than continuous footage.Related: GDPR, Privacy by design, Anonymization and pseudonymization
Digital twin: A software model of a physical site, process or asset that is updated with real data. Safety uses include testing layouts and traffic plans before people are exposed.Related: Synthetic data, Physical AI, AMR (autonomous mobile robot)
DPIA (data protection impact assessment): An assessment required under GDPR Article 35 before processing likely to result in high risk to individuals, such as systematic monitoring of workers. It describes the processing, assesses necessity and risks, and sets out safeguards.Related: GDPR, Privacy by design, Data minimization

E

Edge AI: Running AI models on hardware located at or near the camera or machine, rather than in a remote cloud. It lowers latency and bandwidth use and can keep raw video on site.Related: Computer vision, Data minimization
EHS (environment, health and safety): The function and discipline that manages an organization's environmental impact and the health and safety of its workers. Common in North America; the same function is often called HSE elsewhere.Related: HSE (health, safety and environment), HSEQ (health, safety, environment and quality), EHS software
EHS copilot: A generative AI assistant inside EHS software that drafts reports, classifies incidents, summarizes trends or answers procedural questions. Outputs need review by a competent person.Related: EHS software, Large language model (LLM), Human in the loop
EHS software: Software that manages safety processes such as incident reporting, investigations, inspections, permits, training records, risk assessments and compliance reporting.Related: EHS (environment, health and safety), CAPA (corrective and preventive action), EHS copilot
Engineering control: A physical change that isolates people from a hazard, such as machine guarding, barriers, interlocks or ventilation. Engineering controls sit above administrative controls and PPE in the hierarchy.Related: Hierarchy of controls, Machine guarding, Interlock
Ergonomics: The study of fitting work to people. In safety, it focuses on preventing musculoskeletal disorders caused by lifting, awkward postures, force and repetition.Related: MSD (musculoskeletal disorder), Exoskeleton, Pose estimation
ESG social pillar: The "S" in environmental, social and governance reporting, which covers how a company treats workers, suppliers, customers and communities. Worker health and safety metrics such as injury rates and fatalities are usually reported under it.Related: Lagging indicator, TRIR (total recordable incident rate), LTIFR (lost time injury frequency rate)
EU AI Act: The European Union's regulation on artificial intelligence. It bans some practices, including emotion recognition in the workplace except for medical or safety reasons, and sets obligations for high-risk systems, including some used to monitor workers. The prohibitions have applied since February 2, 2025; after the Digital Omnibus amendment entered into force on July 27, 2026, high-risk obligations apply from December 2, 2027 for Annex III systems and from August 2, 2028 for AI in Annex I products such as machinery.Related: GDPR, Human in the loop, DPIA (data protection impact assessment)
Exclusion zone: An area people must not enter while a hazard is present, such as around a crane lift, a reversing vehicle or an operating robot. Computer vision and proximity systems can detect entries.Related: Proximity warning system, Vehicle-pedestrian separation
Exoskeleton: A wearable device that supports the body during lifting, bending or overhead work. Passive types use springs; active types use motors. Evidence of injury reduction is still mixed.Related: Ergonomics, MSD (musculoskeletal disorder), Personal protective equipment (PPE)

F

False negative: A real event that the system failed to detect. In safety, missed events are usually more dangerous than false alarms.Related: False positive, Recall
False positive: An alert raised when the event did not actually happen, such as flagging a missing hard hat on a worker who is wearing one. High false positive rates cause alert fatigue.Related: False negative, Precision, Alert fatigue
Fine-tuning: Further training of a pre-trained model on a smaller, task-specific dataset to improve its performance on that task.Related: Foundation model, Training data
Fire and smoke detection (video): Computer vision models that identify flames or smoke in camera footage. They can supplement, but should not replace, certified fire detection systems.Related: Computer vision
Foundation model: A large AI model trained on broad data that can be adapted to many tasks, for example through prompting or fine-tuning. Large language models and vision-language models are foundation models.Related: Large language model (LLM), VLM (vision-language model), Fine-tuning
Functional safety: The part of overall safety that depends on control systems working correctly, such as an emergency stop or a safety-rated sensor. Standards include IEC 61508 and ISO 13849.Related: Interlock

G

Gas detection: Fixed or portable instruments that measure toxic or flammable gases and oxygen levels and alarm when limits are exceeded. Connected detectors send readings and alarms to a central system.Related: Wearable
GDPR: The EU General Data Protection Regulation, which governs processing of personal data, including video of identifiable workers. The UK has its own version, the UK GDPR, enforced by the ICO.Related: DPIA (data protection impact assessment), Data minimization, EU AI Act
Good catch: A report of a hazard or unsafe condition spotted and corrected before any event occurred. Many organizations use the term to encourage positive, blame-free reporting.Related: Near miss, Just culture

H

Hallucination: When a generative AI model produces content that is fluent but false or unsupported, such as an invented cause in an incident summary.Related: Large language model (LLM), VLM (vision-language model), Human in the loop
Hazard: Anything with the potential to cause harm, such as a moving vehicle, a chemical, a height or a repetitive task. A hazard becomes a risk when people can be exposed to it.Related: Risk, Risk assessment
Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HSWA): The main UK law on workplace health and safety. It places general duties on employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of employees and others affected by their work.Related: HSE (health, safety and environment), Risk assessment, RIDDOR
Heinrich triangle: A model from H.W. Heinrich's 1931 book Industrial Accident Prevention suggesting a ratio of about 300 no-injury accidents to 29 minor injuries to 1 major injury. Its data and the idea that reducing minor events proportionally reduces serious ones are widely questioned today.Related: Bird triangle, SIF (serious injury or fatality), Near miss
Hierarchy of controls: A ranking of risk controls from most to least effective: elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment. Higher controls act on the hazard; lower ones rely on people behaving correctly.Related: Engineering control, Administrative control, Personal protective equipment (PPE)
Housekeeping: Keeping work areas clean, orderly and free of obstructions, spills and waste. Poor housekeeping contributes to slips, trips, falls and fires.Related: Slips, trips and falls
HSE (health, safety and environment): The same discipline as EHS with the words in a different order, widely used in the UK, Europe, the Middle East and the energy sector. In the UK, HSE also refers to the Health and Safety Executive, the national regulator.Related: EHS (environment, health and safety), HSEQ (health, safety, environment and quality), Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HSWA)
HSEQ (health, safety, environment and quality): A combined management function that adds quality management to health, safety and environment. Organizations often run it as an integrated management system covering standards such as ISO 45001, ISO 14001 and ISO 9001.Related: EHS (environment, health and safety), HSE (health, safety and environment), ISO 45001
Human in the loop: A design in which a person reviews, confirms or decides on an AI system's output before it is acted on. Required or expected for significant decisions under several AI and data protection laws.Related: Alert fatigue, EHS copilot, EU AI Act

I

Incident: An unplanned event that results in, or could have resulted in, injury, ill health or damage. Definitions vary; many organizations use the term to include both accidents and near misses.Related: Near miss, Incident investigation, OSHA recordable
Incident investigation: The process of gathering facts after an incident, identifying causes and recommending actions to prevent recurrence. Video footage and sensor data increasingly support it.Related: Root cause analysis (RCA), CAPA (corrective and preventive action), Incident
Interlock: A device that stops a machine or prevents it from starting when a guard is opened or a condition is unsafe. Some AI safety systems can trigger interlocks, which brings them under machinery safety rules.Related: Machine guarding, Engineering control, Functional safety
ISO 45001: The international standard for occupational health and safety management systems, published in 2018. It sets out requirements for planning, worker participation, hazard identification, controls, performance evaluation and improvement.Related: HSEQ (health, safety, environment and quality), Risk assessment

J

Job hazard analysis (JHA): A step-by-step breakdown of a task that identifies the hazards in each step and the controls to manage them. Also called a job safety analysis (JSA).Related: Risk assessment, Permit to work (PTW)
Just culture: An approach that distinguishes honest mistakes from at-risk and reckless behavior, so people feel safe to report errors while accountability remains. It matters when introducing monitoring technology, because workers need to know how recorded events will be used.Related: Good catch

L

Lagging indicator: A measure of harm that has already occurred, such as injury rates, lost workdays or fatalities. Lagging indicators show results but not what to do next.Related: Leading indicator, TRIR (total recordable incident rate), LTIFR (lost time injury frequency rate)
Large language model (LLM): An AI model trained on large amounts of text that can generate and interpret language. LLMs power most generative AI copilots.Related: Foundation model, EHS copilot, Hallucination
Leading indicator: A measure of activities or conditions that come before harm, such as near-miss reports, inspections completed, training rates or vehicle-pedestrian interactions detected. Leading indicators help teams act before injuries happen.Related: Lagging indicator, Near miss, SIF precursor
Lockout/tagout (LOTO): Procedures that isolate and lock energy sources so machines cannot start up or release stored energy during servicing or maintenance. In the US, it is governed by OSHA's control of hazardous energy standard, 29 CFR 1910.147.Related: Permit to work (PTW), Machine guarding
Lone worker device: A wearable or app that monitors workers who work alone and can raise an alarm on a fall, lack of movement or a manual SOS.Related: Wearable
Lost time injury (LTI): A work injury that keeps the worker from working at least one full shift after the day of injury. Definitions vary slightly between companies and countries.Related: LTIFR (lost time injury frequency rate), DART rate
LTIFR (lost time injury frequency rate): The number of lost time injuries per million hours worked, common outside the US. Some organizations use 200,000 hours instead, so check the base before comparing figures.Related: Lost time injury (LTI), TRIR (total recordable incident rate), Lagging indicator

M

Machine guarding: Physical barriers and devices that prevent contact with dangerous machine parts. It is an engineering control and a frequent source of OSHA citations.Related: Engineering control, Interlock, Lockout/tagout (LOTO)
MSD (musculoskeletal disorder): An injury or disorder of muscles, tendons, joints, nerves or spinal discs, often caused or made worse by work tasks. Overexertion and repetitive motion are leading causes of workplace injury cost.Related: Ergonomics, Exoskeleton

N

Near miss: An event that could have caused injury or damage but did not, such as a forklift passing very close to a pedestrian. Near-miss reports are one of the main sources of leading-indicator data.Related: Good catch, Leading indicator

O

Object detection: A computer vision task that finds and labels objects in an image, usually by drawing a bounding box around each one. YOLO is a widely used family of object detection models.Related: Computer vision, PPE detection, Pose estimation
OSHA: The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, created under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. It sets and enforces workplace safety standards and requires many employers to keep injury and illness records.Related: OSHA recordable, TRIR (total recordable incident rate), Lockout/tagout (LOTO)
OSHA recordable: A work-related injury or illness that meets OSHA's recording criteria, such as one that results in days away, restricted work, medical treatment beyond first aid or loss of consciousness. Recordables feed the TRIR calculation.Related: TRIR (total recordable incident rate)

P

Permit to work (PTW): A formal written system that authorizes specific high-risk work, such as hot work, confined space entry or work on live systems, after hazards are checked and controls put in place. Many sites now manage permits digitally.Related: Lockout/tagout (LOTO)
Personal protective equipment (PPE): Equipment worn to reduce exposure, such as hard hats, high-visibility clothing, gloves, safety glasses and respirators. PPE is the last line of defense in the hierarchy of controls.Related: Hierarchy of controls, PPE detection
Physical AI: AI systems that perceive and act in the physical world, such as robots, humanoids and autonomous vehicles. Because they move and act, they fall under machinery and product safety rules.Related: Cobot (collaborative robot), AMR (autonomous mobile robot), Digital twin
Pose estimation: A computer vision technique that estimates the position of a person's joints from images. It is used for ergonomic risk scoring and to detect falls.Related: Ergonomics, Computer vision
PPE detection: Computer vision that checks whether people are wearing required PPE, such as hard hats or high-visibility vests, in a defined area.Related: Personal protective equipment (PPE), Object detection, Computer vision
Precision: The share of a system's alerts that are correct: true positives divided by all positives raised. High precision means few false alarms.Related: Recall, False positive
Privacy by design: Building data protection into a system from the start, for example by processing video on site, blurring faces and limiting retention. GDPR requires data protection by design and by default.Related: DPIA (data protection impact assessment), Data minimization, Anonymization and pseudonymization
Proximity warning system: Technology that detects when people and vehicles, or two vehicles, come too close and warns the operator or worker. It may use radio tags, ultra-wideband, radar, lidar or cameras.Related: RTLS (real-time location system), Exclusion zone
PSIF (potential serious injury or fatality): An incident or near miss that did not cause serious harm but could reasonably have done so. Classifying events by potential severity, not actual outcome, helps focus attention on the most dangerous exposures.Related: SIF (serious injury or fatality), SIF precursor, Near miss

R

Recall: The share of real events that a system detects: true positives divided by all actual events. High recall means few missed events.Related: Precision, False negative
RIDDOR: The UK Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, which require employers to report certain work-related accidents, diseases and dangerous occurrences to the enforcing authority.Related: Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HSWA), HSE (health, safety and environment), OSHA recordable
Risk: The combination of the likelihood that a hazard causes harm and the severity of that harm. Safety programs aim to reduce risk to an acceptable level, usually through the hierarchy of controls.Related: Hazard, Risk assessment, Hierarchy of controls
Risk assessment: A systematic review of hazards, who could be harmed and how, how likely and severe harm is, and what controls are needed. Many jurisdictions, including the UK and EU, require employers to carry one out.Related: Hazard, Risk, Hierarchy of controls
Root cause analysis (RCA): A structured method for finding the underlying causes of an incident, beyond its immediate trigger. Common techniques include 5 Whys, fishbone diagrams and causal tree analysis.Related: Incident investigation, CAPA (corrective and preventive action)
RTLS (real-time location system): Technology that tracks the location of people, vehicles or assets in real time, often using ultra-wideband, Bluetooth or GPS tags.Related: Proximity warning system, Wearable

S

SIF (serious injury or fatality): An injury that is life-threatening, life-altering or fatal. SIF prevention programs focus on the exposures that can cause these outcomes, which are often different from those behind minor injuries.Related: SIF precursor, PSIF (potential serious injury or fatality), Heinrich triangle
SIF precursor: A high-risk situation in which controls are missing or failing and that could lead to a serious injury or fatality if not corrected. Examples include working under suspended loads or entering an energized zone.Related: SIF (serious injury or fatality), PSIF (potential serious injury or fatality), Leading indicator
Slips, trips and falls: Injuries from losing footing or balance on the same level or falling to a lower level. They are among the most common and costly categories of workplace injury.Related: Housekeeping
Synthetic data: Images, video or sensor data generated by simulation or generative models instead of captured from the real world. It helps train models on rare or dangerous events but needs validation on real data.Related: Training data, Digital twin

T

Training data: The labeled examples used to teach a model. Its quality, variety and similarity to real deployment conditions largely determine how well the model performs.Related: Synthetic data, Fine-tuning
TRIR (total recordable incident rate): The number of OSHA-recordable injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers per year, calculated as recordable cases times 200,000 divided by total hours worked. Related measures used outside the US, such as TRIFR, often use a base of 1 million hours instead, so check the base before comparing.Related: OSHA recordable, DART rate, LTIFR (lost time injury frequency rate)

V

Vehicle-pedestrian separation: Measures that keep people on foot apart from moving vehicles, such as segregated walkways, barriers, crossing points and time-based separation. It is a primary control in warehouses, yards and ports.Related: Exclusion zone, Proximity warning system
Video analytics: Software that automatically analyzes video streams to detect events or measure activity. AI video safety analytics often runs on existing CCTV cameras.Related: Computer vision, Edge AI
VLM (vision-language model): An AI model that takes images or video together with text and produces text, so it can describe a scene or answer questions about it. In safety, VLMs are used for video search, alert verification and report drafting.Related: Foundation model, Computer vision, Hallucination

W

Wearable: A device worn by a worker that senses position, movement, environment or physiology, such as a smart badge, gas monitor, lone worker device or ergonomic sensor.Related: Lone worker device, Gas detection, Ergonomics