Risk Management Tool to Increase Farm Safety

USDA seeks to develop tools appropriate for small farms that enhance farm safety and risk management. Farming remains an extremely dangerous occupation: agricultural workers are 33 times more likely to die than workers in other industries (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). Farm-related injuries cost the U.S economy over four billion dollars per year (Leigh et al, 2001). VISIMO will develop a machine learning software application to enhance agricultural safety through risk management. VISIMO's model is novel and proprietary, and is proven to increase hazard identification by 74%, increase risk mitigation by 88%, and decrease injury rates by 44% in the tool's original application area of construction job safety analysis.The proposed work is divided into three primary steps: (1) subjective risk ratings are gathered from subject matter experts and assigned to specific variables, while a customized mathematical model is used to combine these ratings into an overall risk score for any given scenario; (2) data is collected in the field using the developed tool and estimated risk scores are displayed using the model from step 1; (3) machine learning is incorporated into the model to significantly improve the accuracy of risk prediction, by combining the expert risk ratings with what has been learned by observing the historical data. The proposed risk management tool encompasses the complexity of real-world risk, is usable in rural settings without internet access, and takes less than 44 seconds to record an observation, calculate a risk score, and suggest risk-reducing changes.Phase I will result in a proof-of-concept risk model and native web application that is validated on approximately 100-250 variables and is ready for expansion and end-user testing in Phase II. Commercial end users are small and mid-sized farms.