VISIMO LLC — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.12

Description

USDA seeks to develop tools appropriate for small farms that enhance farm safety and riskmanagement. Farming remains an extremely dangerous occupation: agricultural workers are 33times more likely to die than workers in other industries (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020).Farm-related injuries cost the U.S economy over four billion dollars per year (Leigh et al 2001).VISIMO will develop a machine learning software application to enhance agricultural safetythrough risk management. VISIMO's model is novel and proprietary and is proven to increasehazard identification by 74% increase risk mitigation by 88% and decrease injury rates by 44% inthe tool's original application area of construction job safety analysis.The proposed work is divided into three primary steps: (1) data is gathered risk scores are assignedand this new information is integrated into the model; (2) data is collected in the field using thedeveloped tool and gathered ground-truth data is used to test risk predictions; (3) machine learningis incorporated into the model to significantly increase the accuracy of risk prediction. Theproposed risk management tool encompasses the complexity of real-world risk is usable in ruralsettings without internet access and takes less than 44 seconds to record an observation calculate arisk score and suggest risk-reducing changes.Phase I will result in a proof-of-concept risk model and native web application that is validated onapproximately 100-250 variables and is ready for expansion and end-user testing in Phase II.Commercial end users are small and mid-sized farms.