This project was aimed at developing ways to expertly identify risk that may pose injury and harm to the researcher in a university and to provide and encourage safe-working practices. Many researchers especially students, may tend to neglect or are initially ignorant of the potential risks involved with their projects. The ultimate objective of this thesis is to develop an easy–to–use algorithm aimed at individuals without specialized safety training. The algorithm would help the researchers identify critical risk in a research facility in order to take appropriate actions to minimize the risk and maintain a safe working environment.
The algorithm content was developed using various sources such as academic study materials, Occupational Safety and Health Act guidelines, manuals of various industries and national consensus standings. A team of non-experts attempted to identify risk for two Ohio Coal Research Center projects Zusing the algorithm. Subsequently, a group of expert instructors and safety specialist were asked to list all the potential risk for the same two OCRC projects without using the algorithm. Based on the correlation of the results obtained from the nonexperts and the experts a conclusion can be drawn that using the algorithm a naïve researcher can identify most of the potential risks that otherwise an expert would determine.