Incidents and Lessons Learned in Arctic Fieldwork
Researches working in the field in the Arctic face many challenges to health and safety. To learn from past incidents and prevent future injuries, the Arctic Sciences Section at the National Science Foundation is sharing information about the accidents and near misses that have happened during fieldwork.
The short summaries for each incident can be used to seed discussions within field teams about how to better manage risks in the field. In some cases, Lessons Learned documents have been drafted to emphasize the root cause of an incident to prevent it from happening in the future. The information is not attributed to any individual or projects. The goal is to increase reporting of incidents and near misses while also decreasing the occurrence of incidents in the field.
This effort is one of the outcomes of the 2014 workshop on Arctic Field Safety Risk Management. The Arctic Sciences Section encourages researchers to report incidents and near misses to their cognizant program manager or to their project manager at CH2MHILL Polar Services.
