What is the sAIF rate?

SAIF Rate stands for the Severity Adjusted Injury Frequency.

The SAIF rate was developed as a means to review Injury Rate and Severity together rather than as individual injury rates, with smaller subsets of data for more severe injuries. By assessing Rate and Severity together the overall picture of injury performance can change significantly from current approaches to measurement.

The SAIF rate was modelled after windchill. The concept of Windchill was conceived in Antarctica and was originally expressed in units of kilocalories/hour/meter squared. The Alaska Army Command was credited for first presenting windchill in terms of a relative temperature. They did this so that soldiers with a limited understanding of the mathematics could use the concept to dress for the weather.

The SAIF measure is meant to highlight relative differences in severity between categories and groups. Understanding that SAIF is a mathematical representation of two-weeks lost time should be enough for people to understand the differences between groups, periods, or businesses. More importantly understanding the concept should be enough to respond reasonably to what the measure is telling you. Just the way soldiers could dress for the weather without understanding the math.