Dr.C.N.Zaharia—The
Romanian National Research Virusology Institute
Ph.D.Stefan
Kovacs-The Romanian National Research Institute for Occupational Safety
Risk prevention is
one of the main objectives connected with the assurance of proper work
conditions at the workplace and also with the health and safety preservation.
Risk action
determines occupational accidents and professional diseases- with thousands of causalities
across Europe , each year.
In this respect,
risk prevention is one of the main duties of every manager, regardless of the
type of enterprise or personnel number.
Biological
hazards, due to their specific action, are one of the main problems in safety assurance.
Action of biological hazards, if not contained properly, could cause major
damage to human life and safety and also to the environment.
Their specificity
implies special prevention activities-allocation of big amounts of money and
other resources in order to prevent the spreading of biological agents into
environment.
„To prevent means
to know” says an old proverb. In order to prevent such risks, especially
biological ones, all the involved specialists must have the necessary knowledge.
At this moment, the main form of transmitting this knowledge is due „classic”
teaching process. The randament of this process is relatively low. It implies
also the physical presence of the students in class and is presuming serious costs.
In the case of already trained specialists, the problem of presence could be
cumbersome, implying the necessity to be replaced during the classes with all
the negative traits implied.
A more efficient
and optimal approach would be the usage of an expert based tuition system.
Developed around the most modern IT and AI techniques, such a system will
eficientize the tutorial process through the usage of multi-media techniques,
simulation and scenarios, eliminating the necessity of physical presence and
being cost efficient.
Such a system is
under development, inside a research program financed by the INFOSOC first competition.
The system was built as an expert based tutorial system for risk management,
having in mind specific risks that could act at work place.
A distinctive
component of this system will be a peculiar module, developed especially for
biological risks.
The presented
system assures in a modern and innovative way, the minimal necessary knowledge
for biological hazards management.
The final system
would include multi-media facilities, scenario simulation, tests and questions
for knowledge enhancement .It could be used also as a decision assistant expert
system.
The paper will
show aspects from the conception, design and development of the prototype of
the tuition system, emphasizing the new revolutionary aspects of the developed
prototype and also the desired effects of the system-considering the importance
of the studied problem.
The economic
aspects of IT tutoring will be especially emphasized-cost reduction could reach
45% of the classic training costs using this system.
Also, the expert
features will be underlined. The expert approach is of primary importance,
considering the assistant feature of the final system. Experts will be able to
submit their knowledge to the system-so that this knowledge will be available
to the users.
A special
importance will be shown to the future development possibilities of these
systems. The continuous improvement of the PDA devices, together with their
improvement of software for these devices will transform, in a few years, these
PDA devices in real computers. In this respect, the system will have a PDA
version, so that specialists will be able to use it at their workplace, without
the existence of a computer.
The next figure is
a general schema of the system
Fig.1.General
schema of the system