Safety ergonomics is an important branch of safety science and environmental engineering. As humans enter the era of big data, the development of information technology has brought new opportunities and challenges to the innovation, transformation, and upgrading of safety ergonomics, as the traditional safety ergonomics theory has gradually failed to adapt to the need for safe and clean production. Intelligent safety ergonomics (ISE) is regarded as a new direction for the development of safety ergonomics in the era of big data. Unfortunately, since ISE is an emerging concept, there is no research to clarify its basic problems, which leads to a lack of theoretical guidance for the research and practice of ISE. In order to solve the shortcomings of traditional safety ergonomics theories and methods, first of all, this paper answers the basic questions of ISE, including the basic concepts, characteristics, attributes, contents, and research objects. Then, practical application functions of ISE are systematically clarified. Finally, following the life cycle of the design, implementation, operation, and maintenance of the system, it ends with a discussion of the challenges and application prospects of ISE. The conclusion shows that ISE is a cleaner research direction for ergonomics in the era of big data, that it can deepen the understanding of humans, machines, and environment systems, and it can provide a new method for further research on safety and cleaner production. Overall, this paper not only helps safety researchers and practitioners to correctly understand the concept of intelligent safety ergonomics, but it will certainly inject energy and vitality into the development of safety ergonomics and cleaner production.
Keywords: big data era; intelligent safety ergonomics; safety management; safety system; system safety.