The problems faced by the laser safety community are not simply those of laser radiation but also the much larger family of associated laser safety hazards. In conventional laser safety risk assessments, the task is under-taken by individuals who may not necessarily be fully aware of all the risks. The challenge was to encapsulate the knowledge of laser safety engineering and to produce an ontology which provided the basis for a decision support system, ontology definition – ‘an explicit specification of a conceptualisation’. This ontology would be able to guide a user through the challenge of the laser safety assessment by asking informed questions of the user as to their individual requirements. The conventional risk assessment process attempts to identify hazards, those who might be harmed, evaluate the risks, record findings and then review them. This entire process is predicated on the assumption that the assessor is able to identify all the necessary hazards. However popular misconceptions about lasers lead them to carrying out poor risk assessments due to an over emphasis on the beam and radiation hazards. The current available texts concerning laser safety show an average of less than 6% of their content related to the non-beam hazards. This limitation leads to a dramatic absence of ability to correctly identify the necessary control measures for laser systems. Most laser safety officers lack an appreciation of the total relevant legislation necessary for equipment to comply with national regulations.
The generation of an ontology of laser safety, allows us to model all of the various related issues and their relationship within a semantic model. This model has been split down into various Hazard categories which are linked together to form core relationships. This model was then transferred into a knowledge base which when accessed via a suitable user interface provided the framework for a user of minimal knowledge to interrogate the system. The system would then aid a user to produce an informed risk assessment based on a broad range of detailed questions which allowed interrogation of complex relationships to deliver specific answers to the broad range of safety issues related to the complete laser safety challenge.