Field Work Safety

Field work is an integral part of geoscience. It can be inspiring and fun but also challenging, even intimidating and certainly always entails a number of risks that need to be navigated. It is still rare for employers, institutions, or funding agencies to provide adequate resources and structures for in-depth safety training. The nature of fieldwork poses additional challenges for creating a safe and inclusive workspace. Luckily accidents are infrequent; but precedents ranging from harassment, property damage, personal injury, and up to the loss of life illustrate the plethora of possible severe consequences that may arise if risks aren’t managed adequately.  In this session we want to gather and discuss expertise on successful approaches to making fieldwork safer. We invite contributions covering the broad range of themes associated with conducting responsible, safe and productive field work. Topics of interest are risk management and reduction, human and social factors, conflict management, team building, specific field work techniques, regulatory issues, governance and many more.