Lloyd’s Register Foundation, the global safety charity, has launched its Global Safety Evidence Centre, to reduce the three million annual death toll of global workplace harm.

Backed by a £15m (€17.8m) investment over 10 years, the centre will serve as a hub for anyone who needs to know ‘what works’ to make people safer in the face of a range of global safety challenges, including workplace accidents and injuries.

The centre aims to support professionals across different high hazard industries, including the transport and logistics sector, delivering high-quality and actionable resources and evidence

According to the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll, one in five workers globally (18%) experienced harm at work in the last two years, and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates this to be the cause of three million deaths annually.

To address this, the new Global Safety Evidence Centre will collate, create and communicate the best available safety evidence from the Foundation, its partners and other sources on the nature and scale of global safety challenges, and what works to tackle them.

Nancy Hey, director of evidence and insight at Lloyd’s Register Foundation, said: “Many professionals, policy and decision-makers who need to consider safety do not have access to sufficient high quality evidence; either because it does not yet exist, or because it has not been collated and communicated to them in an understandable and actionable form.”

To kickstart its work, the centre is inviting researchers and safety practitioners from all over the world to apply for a share of £2m (€1.7m) being made available to support projects that address OSH evidence gaps, as well as broader safety science work, such as how to measure and value safety and prevention, and how to learn from past failures and fatalities.

Hey continued: “We are keen to partner and collaborate with other researchers, analysts and funders, professional and trade bodies, and most of all, safety practitioners, whose knowledge and expertise we need to harness – not just to identify evidence gaps, but as part of the evidence base itself on how to reduce harm.”

Further projects due from the centre this summer include a report on the growing impact of emerging technologies – incorporating virtual reality training, AI and robots – on workplace safety and on how climate change will help or hinder efforts to keep workers safe.