New dashboard launched to capture real time tracking of on-farm fatalities and injuries

Disclaimer: This following article discusses on-farm injuries and deaths. If this is a particularly triggering topic please proceed with caution. Please remember if you ever need to talk to somebody, you can always call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

The first real-time dashboard for tracking on-farm fatalities and injuries has launched, giving journalists, farm safety advocates, researchers and the farming community early insights into where and how agricultural incidents are occurring.

Developed by AgHealth Australia as part of the Ag Safety Data Net project, the Rural Media Farm Injury Dashboard draws on live media reports to give timely snapshots of incidents occurring on-farm, before official coronial or workers compensation data become available. The Dashboard has been funded by the Rural Safety and Health Alliance (RSHA), a partnership of seven Rural Research and Development Corporations.

Member of the AgHealth research team and NSW broadacre farmer Kerri-Lynn Peachey said the development and release of the dashboard is a critical step forward in improving farm safety.

"We're very excited to finally get the dashboard launched," Ms Peachy said.

"We wanted to create something that could provide those early insights for people such as journalists, farm safety advocates and farmers themselves into what's happening on farms and what are those leading agents causing injuries on farms."

Ms Peachy said the dashboard was developed to serve as a simpler, more easily accessible placeholder for coronial information - that currently takes a long time to become publicly available.

As a farmer herself, Ms Peachy is all too aware of how quickly things can go wrong, but maintains that farming is a great industry to work in.

"We're just trying to make our farm workplaces safer - trying to do better each and every day and talking about safety with our workforce to ensure that everyone is involved in making those safety decisions on our farms."

She said it's also the hope that farmers can utilise the dashboard to see what type of incidents are most prevalent in their area and reflect on their own safety practices so make sure it won't happen to them or their workers.

"It's also there for farmers to identify what's happening in their area and see where incidents are happening."

"Farmers in the area can look and say, well, okay, there's been a fair few motorbike incidents, for example. So perhaps if we're using motorbike on our farms, we need to think about are we doing them safely? Are we using the right vehicle to undertake that task?"

The Dashboard allows users to customise infographics and heatmaps by date, injury type, age group, industry sector and location – making it a valuable tool for policy makers, industry bodies and community safety campaigns. The Dashboard is now freely accessible online here.