Conceptual model to assist Prevention through Design (PtD)

Prevention through Design (PtD) means to minimize or eliminate risks during early design stages of processes and products. This approach is one-and maybe the best-way to prevent injuries, illnesses and occupational deaths. Design issues are essential in risk management because these issues play an important role in fatal injuries and illness. Design by itself is a creative and knowledge based process. Thus a model where creativity, knowledge and tools for risk assessment are combined in an equilibrated way is highly desirable. In this paper is presented a conceptual model that combines effectively creativity, knowledge and risk management tools. The model combines the capacities of the Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) process, the MAPFRE method and the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ theory). The CBR has the ability to capture, index, store and reuse past experience to face new problems. The MAPFRE method is useful for risk evaluation and the TRIZ theory can guide creative effort when facing inventive design problems.