Monitoring the perfromance of safety barriers in daily operations by using QRA and risk influencing factors indicators

Master's thesis in Risk managementThe concept of safety barriers has become a main focus in the oil and gas industry in the last decade. Accordingly, many efforts are being spent from the risk decision makers to improve the understanding of the different aspects in that context. One of the main challenges is how to integrate the quantitative risk analysis (QRA) with safety barrier management (SBM). The integration of both concepts will result in better management of major accident hazards (MAH) on board the production facilities. However, the integration of QRA with SBM can take several forms when it comes to the operations phase. Condition monitoring of safety barriers’ performance can be a good solution for bridging the gap between both tools. The objective of the thesis is to introduce a methodology for monitoring the performance of safety barriers continuously in daily operations on offshore production platforms. The safety barriers are monitored through indicators. The indicators are representing the critical human, technical and organisational (MTO) factors that could influence the performance of safety barriers dramatically during operations. Further, the critical MTO factors are identified through independent uncertainty and sensitivity assessments of the performance of safety barriers as provided in the QRA results. Afterwards, the different indicators of each factors are linked with a risk barometer in order to indicate the status of the particular safety barrier. Such status, as indicated on the barometer, is providing the concerned parties with early warning signals about the performance degradation of the barrier of interest. Accordingly, the operation personnel and management can take the proper precautionary actions to maintain the performance of the safety barrier within the safe limit. In order to produce the proposed methodology, the thesis has covered different aspects of safety barriers and risk assessment on its context. At the beginning, a literature review of the concepts of risk, risk assessment, and safety barriers is introduced. In particular, this part has introduced the scientific foundation of these concepts, in addition to, their different types and methods of classification. Furthermore, the thesis has introduced a brief description of the relevant regulatory requirements and standards in the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). Subsequently, the thesis has also described the methodologies used for including the performance of safety barriers into QRA model. In this part, it has been recommended that the influence of MTO factors on safety barriers performance should be considered when performing QRA. Moreover, the methods of uncertainty and sensitivity analyses have been described and discussed to identify the most applicable approach for criticality assessment of MTO factors. Finally, the thesis has concluded with a case study and discussion to illustrate the possibility of implementing the proposed methodology for monitoring the safety barriers continuously in operations phase

L’intertextualité intra/interlinguale à travers l’écriture du récit de voyage d’al- TahTāwī.

International audienceLes récits de voyage représentent particulièrement le concept d’intertextualité dans lequel s’inscrit fortement Taḫlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talḫīṣ bārīou de Rifā’a rāfi’al-TahTāwī (1801-1873) de par sa macrostructure, sa langue et les sujets abordés. Cette œuvre s’impose en effet comme une véritable mosaïque de langues et de cultures qui s’explique par son parcours personnel intellectuel. Membre d’une mission composée de 37 étudiants envoyée par Muhamed ‘Ali en France, al-TahTāwī séjourne à Paris entre 1826 et 1831. À son retour en Égypte, il fonde une école de traducteurs, écrit et traduit de nombreux textes scientifiques et juridiques. Reçu à l’Ecole égyptienne de Paris, dans un univers érudit, al-TahTāwī fréquente des orientalistes comme Perceval et Jomard, et des Egyptiens qui ont accompagné Napoléon lors de son expédition. Cette orientation vers l’Occident relevait en effet du projet de Muhamed ‘Ali, qui souhaitait faire de l’Egypte une puissance mondiale. Dans une entreprise de représentation de l’altérite, al-TahTāwī rédige sa relation de voyage où il s’évertue à décrire tout particulièrement Paris et la vie politique, culturelle et sociale de sa destination

Alignment, Clustering and Extraction of Structured Motifs in DNA Promoter Sequences

A simple motif is a short DNA sequence found in the promoter region and believed to act as a binding site for a transcription factor protein. A structured motif is a sequence of simple motifs (boxes) separated by short sequences (gaps). Biologists theorize that the presence of these motifs play a key role in gene expression regulation. Discovering these patterns is an important step towards understanding protein-gene and gene-gene interaction thus facilitates the building of accurate gene regulatory network models. DNA sequence motif extraction is an important problem in bioinformatics. Many studies have proposed algorithms to solve the problem instance of simple motif extraction. Only in the past decade has the more complex structured motif extraction problem been examined by researchers. The problem is inherently challenging as structured motif patterns are segmented into several boxes separated by variable size gaps for each instance. These boxes may not be exact copies, but may have multiple mismatched positions. The challenge is extenuated by the lack of resources for real datasets covering a wide range of possible cases. Also, incomplete annotation of real data leads to the discovery of unknown motifs that may be regarded as false positives. Furthermore, current algorithms demand unreasonable amount of prior knowledge to successfully extract the target pattern. The contributions of this research are four new algorithms. First, SMGenerate generates simulated datasets of implanted motifs that covers a wide range of biologically possible cases. Second, SMAlign aligns a pair of structured motifs optimally and efficiently given their gap constraints. Third, SMCluster produces multiple alignment of structured motifs through hierarchical clustering using SMAlign\u27s affinity score. Finally, SMExtract extracts structured motifs from a set of sequences by using SMCluster to construct the target pattern from the top reported two-box patterns (fragments), extracted using an existing algorithm (Exmotif) and a two-box template. The main advantage of SMExtract is its efficiency to extract longer degenerate patterns while requiring less prior knowledge, about the pattern to be extracted, than current algorithms

Carbon nanotubes composite materials for dipole antennas at terahertz range

This paper aims to present two types of carbon nanotubes composite materials (CNTs-composite) for antenna applications within terahertz (THz) frequency band. These composite materials consist of CNTs coated by copper and silver, separately, to construct CNTs-copper and CNTs-silver composite materials, respectively. The comparisons between the dipole antennas of these structure materials with CNTs dipole antenna and copper dipole antenna are presented to exhibit performance evaluation of the presented new dipole antennas. The mathematical modeling of CNTs-composite material is presented in this paper. The results obtained from the comparisons CNTs-copper and CNTs-silver dipole antennas are presented based on S 11 parameters, gain and efficiency

How Qatar’s Food System Has Impacted By Blockade? A Global Trade and Supply Chain Analysis

Due to the fact that most of the food in Qatar are imported from different countries around the world, and given the so-called GCC crisis in 2017, there is a strong need to focus on sustainability impacts of the embargo in term of food security, sustainability and climate impacts in Qatar. This thesis presents an analytical approach to analyze Qatar’s food trade for the period between 2013 and 2018. Furthermore, measuring and managing the CO2 emission and equivalences from freight transport operations for the period 2015 to 2018. The carbon footprint was calculated using the transport CO2 emission analysis and a global Multi-Region Input-Output (MRIO) analysis. The data was carefully stored on a database using MySQL. Then, the data was retrieved using the data visualization tool, the Microsoft Power BI. The results indicate that imported food to Qatar was highly dependent on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the past years. However, there was a huge reduction in the supply chain from those countries after the embargo. Consideration of the supply chain design network that takes global CO2 emission into account is important. There was a significant change in trade data. On the other hand, the total amount of carbon footprint decreased from 2015 to 2018 with around 320,000 tons of CO2 emission. The consumption of MRIO-Raw milk and MRIO-Dairy decreased as well from 2015 to 2018. However, the CO2 emission using the air mode increased sharply from 2015 to 201

Comparison between wood fiber pellets and wood shavings as broiler litter

Physical and chemical properties of wood (W) fiber (F) pellets (P) and wood (W) shavings(S) were determined in the laboratory prior to their use. Laboratory results showed that WS were superior to WFP except for moisture holding capacity on volume basis which is one of the most essential properties of a good litter. WFP were also found to contain high levels of aluminum (311X), calcium (160X), iron (90X), arsenic (58X) and sulfur (42X) than these elements found in WS An experiment was conducted in a conventional ventilated house to compare unused WFP and unused WS. No significant differences in mean atmospheric ammonia, respiratory dust particles, moisture levels, litter caking scores, body weights, feed conversion and mortality (49 days) were found between the two litter types. WFP were found to slightly reduce atmospheric ammonia for the first 6 weeks when used for the first time. Litter caking scores were better in pens with WFP than in pens with WS. Higher levels of respiratory dust were found in pens with WFP which did not have any adverse effect on birds' performance and health. Two experiments of 7-week duration each and four treatments each were conducted to evaluate the utility of WFP as built-up broiler litter. Litter treatments were unused (U) WS, WFP built-up (B) top (1) dressed with unused WFP (WFPB + UWFPT), WS as base top dressed with unused WFP (WSB + UWFPT), and wood shaving built-up top dressed with UWS (WSB + UWST), respectively. Results from these experiments showed that WFPB+UWFPT did not result in the decrease of atmospheric ammonia when WFP was recycled. Respiratory dust particles were higher in the WFP treatments (WFPB + UWFPT and WSB + UWFPT) than the wood shavings treatments (UWS and WSB + UWST). Litter caking scores were better in pens with WFP treatments. In Trial 1 no significant differences among the treatments were found in body weights, feed conversion, and mortality. However in Trial 2, WSB + UWFPT and WSB + UWST had significantly heavier body weights than UWS and WFPB + UWFPT

DiGi Corporate Social Responsibility: A Case Study

Corporate social responsibility strategy and competitive advantage are important issues for the contemporary discussion on corporations in society. This study addresses CSR implementation in practice by first understanding a firm’s corporate social responsibility motives, then exploring how these motives translate to CSR programmes and their alignment to core business and strategy. The objective of the study is met through studying relevant literature and the implementation of practical research. The latter was carried out through a case study of DiGi Telecom; the company brands itself as sustainable company and was the only telecom company in Malaysia to publish a sustainability report in 2009. The research used informal interviews with Vimal L Kumar (Head of Corporate Responsibility) and Susan Tam (Corporate Responsibility staff member) as well as content analysis of DiGi’s sustainability report, website material and other documents. This research concludes that the main motive for DiGi to engage in CSR is strategic, due to recent market and non-market changes. The company’s main focus is environment and climate change, which is in line with the mother company’s (Telenor ASA) CSR focus. The research also concludes that, while there is evidence of “somewhat” strategic CSR in the company, it is still lacking a materiality assessment and measurement of the positive and negative impacts on communities. This has yielded an ad hoc approach to chosen CSR initiatives. The study is expected to contribute to literature by providing implications for business in using a more strategic approach towards CSR and management as well as presenting feedback to DiGi on its first published sustainability report for further improvement

مدى اسهام مديري مدارس التعليم الأساسي في اكتشاف ورعاية الطلبة الموهوبين في مدينة المكلا- الجمهورية اليمنية = The Contribution of the principles of basic education schools in identifying and caring for the gifted students in Mukalla City-Republic of Yemen

This research aimed at investigating The contribution of the basic schools principals in identifying and caring for the gifted students in Mukalla city. The researcher used the quantitative and qualitative approach to achieve the aims of the research, and used two tools; the first tool is the questionnaire which was prepared by the researcher, The second one is the open ended interview. The researcher took all the members of the research community who are the principals of the basic schools in Mukalla city. In the open ended interview, the researcher selected two schools, one is governmental and the second is private. The open ended interviews were conducted with group of teachers, students, and two principals, the results are as follows: The knowledge of the characteristics of gifted students and The knowledge of methods of identifying and caring for the gifted students by the principals of basic schools in Mukalla city was high. The contribution of the basic schools principals in Mukalla city in identifying and in caring for the gifted students was average. The administrative and financial obstacles which face the principals of basic schools in Mukalla city in identifying and caring for the gifted students were high. The results of quantitative research part showed that there were no differences in the significance level (α ≤ 0.05) in the responses of a search community whether the school is ( governmental , private ) in identifying and caring for the gifted students. While the results of qualitative research showed that there are differences in favor of the private school

Quality assurance in higher education in the Maldives: past, present, and future

Quality assurance in higher education is a hot topic with the increased number of students graduating from postgraduate programmes offered by the higher education institutions. This qualitative study aimed to look at the history and the current status of the quality assurance mechanisms in the Maldives; identify its strengths and weaknesses; and make informed recommendations. Critical event narrative inquiry was used and data were collected through interviews and analysis of documents. Content analysis of data collected revealed that Maldives was one of the very first countries in the region to establish such a mechanism and it was very similar to that of Australia. The most significant finding was that the body mandated to assure higher education quality and did not have any power or regulatory authority. Therefore, it is important that the authority be an independent body established by an act of parliament with the regulatory power