AVOIDING SQUARE WHEELS - INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN SHARING SOLUTIONS

Following initiatives in the UK and Sweden, pioneering work was carrie d out in Ballarat to set up schemes for sharing health and safety solu tions in industry. Since 1990 work coordinated from the Netherlands ha s been undertaken to extend and develop the systems available in Europ e and internationally for exchange of information about solutions. An inventory of existing schemes and initiatives led to the establishment of a network of interested organisations at European level and to the establishment of a group under the auspices of the World Health Organ isation (PACE). This network has lobbied successfully for the incorpor ation of the task of information dissemination in the objectives of th e European Health and Safety Agency. Currently a pilot project is bein g set up to develop and test the necessary collection, storage, coding and dissemination networks in a number of European countries. The cor e of a successful scheme is the support it gives to people with specif ic problems searching for useful solutions. An intelligent software su pport system has been developed in prototype and will be tested in the pilot project. Its development has forced the research team to take a close look ar the fundamental principles linking health and safety pr oblems to solutions and to question some of the assumptions underlying them. The codification of existing knowledge about practical solution s and how to stimulate people to consider and use them turns out to be far more complex than most experts at first anticipate. (C) 1997 Else vier Science Ltd.