The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has published an update to their EXAMiner software, a tool used to train miners to find and address hazards.

The software allows workers to perform a virtual workplace examination, utilizing their risk recognition skills. It includes 31 pre-loaded scenes that were developed specifically to test their hazard detection ability. These scenes are panoramic images of 4 locations at a surface limestone mines.

Trainers can also customize the software by uploading images from their own worksites and labeling hazards for their workers to find. Training scenarios can be saved for revisiting later or exported to share with colleagues.

“EXAMiner serves to find the gaps between what mineworkers think they know about workplace hazards and the reality of what they see when they are in the work environment,” said Dr. Jessica Kogel, NIOSH Associate Director for Mining. “It is a versatile tool that safety trainers can use to increase their workers’ ability to find hazards before they face those hazards on the jobsite.”

EXAMiner is available from the NIOSH mining website.