Development of risk indices for underground coal mine workers in India

Abstract

The traditional way of assessing the risk of accidents and injuries in mines is inadequate due to the lack of application of sound statistical techniques in their estimation. The indices currently in use in reporting accident statistics are accident rates encompassing incidence, severity, and frequency of injuries. These approaches, however, do not include the individual miner's information in quantifying risk of injury to themselves. This paper attempts to develop risk indices for underground coal mine workers. Based on the miner's individual and workplace characteristics, the workers are categorised into different groups and, using the logistic regression model, the risk indices of these groups are evaluated. The case study results show that older workers are more injury prone than their younger counterparts. Occupation-wise, haulage workers are at the same level of risk of injuries as that of the workers. Among the workplace variables, the location categories show that workers in outbye locations are more accident prone.