Public Places Safety Management Evaluation of Railway Stations

AbstractWith more and more attentions paid to safety problems in public places by the whole society, preventions and controls of unexpected events in the crowded places of railway stations are especially important. Aimed at the safety problems in railway station, such as crowded people, complex environment, weak management and so on, in order to make the public places safety management of railway stations more effective, through analysis of public places system safety features and hidden dangers of railway stations, public places safety management evaluation indicators system is constructed and aimed at every specific indicator. Corresponding safety management and control requirements are put forward. Taking Xi’an Railway Station as the example, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to get indicators weight values. Public places safety main control factor is obtained by analysis. According to the evaluation results, aimed at the weak links in safety management, improvement measures are put forward, supplying an important basis of perfect safety management system and improvement of safety management

Assessment and simulation of evacuation in large railway stations

Evacuation systems in buildings are frequently assessed to improve emergency response processes. This paper proposes a method to evaluate the performance of different evacuation modes, and determine a rational mode for large railway stations. We developed a simulation for the evaluation of fire safety in large buildings based on an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. This approach includes AHP-based exploration and simulation-based refinement. We considered a typical railway station for validation, conducted a field survey to collect the data, and calculated the influencing factors based on expert opinion. The influencing factors were further processed based on the principles of a hierarchical model. The relative weights of the influencing factors were calculated through a series of pairwise comparisons using the AHP. Further, we applied factor refinement based on the evacuation simulations to determine the degree and status of influence of each factor. The influence of external factors was generally stronger than that of the internal factors. Among them, the building component characteristics and people’s physiological capabilities were the core of the evacuation assessment in large railway stations. Additionally, the exit width, seat layout, visibility, speed, and reaction capabilities were crucial to the evacuation process. The proposed method is practical as it demands limited computations to provide useful information, such as a priority ranking of each influencing factor, for the evaluation process

Maximum risk reduction with a fixed budget in the railway industry

Decision-makers in safety-critical industries such as the railways are frequently faced with the complexity of selecting technological, procedural and operational solutions to minimise staff, passengers and third parties’ safety risks. In reality, the options for maximising risk reduction are limited by time and budget constraints as well as performance objectives. Maximising risk reduction is particularly necessary in the times of economic recession where critical services such as those on the UK rail network are not immune to budget cuts. This dilemma is further complicated by statutory frameworks stipulating ‘suitable and sufficient’ risk assessments and constraints such as ‘as low as reasonably practicable’. These significantly influence risk reduction option selection and influence their effective implementation. This thesis provides extensive research in this area and highlights the limitations of widely applied practices. These practices have limited significance on fundamental engineering principles and become impracticable when a constraint such as a fixed budget is applied – this is the current reality of UK rail network operations and risk management. This thesis identifies three main areas of weaknesses to achieving the desired objectives with current risk reduction methods as: Inaccurate, and unclear problem definition; Option evaluation and selection removed from implementation subsequently resulting in misrepresentation of risks and costs; Use of concepts and methods that are not based on fundamental engineering principles, not verifiable and with resultant sub-optimal solutions. Although not solely intended for a single industrial sector, this thesis focuses on guiding the railway risk decision-maker by providing clear categorisation of measures used on railways for risk reduction. This thesis establishes a novel understanding of risk reduction measures’ application limitations and respective strengths. This is achieved by applying ‘key generic engineering principles’ to measures employed for risk reduction. A comprehensive study of their preventive and protective capability in different configurations is presented. Subsequently, the fundamental understanding of risk reduction measures and their railway applications, the ‘cost-of-failure’ (CoF), ‘risk reduction readiness’ (RRR), ‘design-operationalprocedural-technical’ (DOPT) concepts are developed for rational and cost-effective risk reduction. These concepts are shown to be particularly relevant to cases where blind applications of economic and mathematical theories are misleading and detrimental to engineering risk management. The case for successfully implementing this framework for maximum risk reduction within a fixed budget is further strengthened by applying, for the first time in railway risk reduction applications, the dynamic programming technique based on practical railway examples

Implementing Sustainable Competitive Advantage to the Public Sector's Management System - By Sense & Respond Methodology in Facilities Services Unit's Preparedness

Tutkimuksen tarkoitus on strategian resurssilähtöinen tunnistaminen kestävän kilpailuedun toteuttamiseksi julkisen sektorin hallintajärjestelmässä. Tutkimuksessa arvioidaan empiirisesti kriittiset tekijät (BCFI, SCFI ja NSCFI) tunnistamismenetelmän sovellettavuutta operatiiviseen johtamiseen. Tämä tapahtuu hyödyntämällä strategista analyysiä ja syventämällä tutkimuksen tuloksia ja johtopäätöksiä haastatteluin. Tutkimusmenetelminä ovat tapaustutkimus ja kaksivaiheinen kyselytutkimus, jossa oli yhdistetty analyyttiseen hierarkiaprosessiin pohjautuva lomake ja kaksi Sense & Respond menetelmään pohjautuvaa lomaketta. Kyselytutkimuksessa oli mukana kolme kuudesta Seinäjoen kaupungin hierarkiatasosta. Julkisen sektorin esimies löytää kriittiset tekijät suorituskyvylle parhaiten NSCFI-mallilla. Analyysin perusteella ennen ja jälkeen kriisiä, ennakoivan yksikön vahvimmin vaikuttava strateginen tyyppi on Prospector eli edelläkävijä. Operatiivisen johtamisen näkökulmasta lähiesimiehillä kriittisimmät tekijät ovat tiedon ja teknologian mahdollistamat edellytykset. Kokemukset eivät kohdanneet odotuksia. Saavuttaakseen ylläpitopalvelut yksikön tavoitteet kriittisinä tekijöinä työntekijätasolla ovat tuotteiden, toimintojen ja prosessien laadunhallinta. Tutkimus on tärkeä. Löydökset sekä haastattelut vahvistavat kehittämistoimet. Muuntavan johtamisen tulokset antavat vahvan viitteen varautumiseen ja jatkotutkimuksesta liittyen: operatiivinen kestävä kilpailuetu (OSCA).fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Building a Digital Transformation Maturity Evaluation Model for Construction Enterprises Based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory Method

With digital transformation underway in various Chinese construction enterprises, each enterprise has progressed differently, and a clear direction for future digital transformation and upgrading is lacking. As such, the importance of measuring the level of digitization among Chinese construction enterprises is increasing. This paper presents a model for evaluating digital transformation maturity within construction enterprises. The model considers six aspects: digital strategy, digital business applications, digital technology capabilities, and so on. The digital maturity of enterprises is determined using the Analysis of Hierarchy (AHP)-Decision Making Experiment and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method. Technical abbreviations are explained when first used. This study demonstrates that digital business applications are the most significant primary indicator, with a weight of 29.53%. The success of digital transformation in the construction industry is strongly influenced by the interconnection between digital technology and construction sites, as well as other factors such as new technical personnel, digital infrastructure, digital innovation, and innovation iteration ability. It is crucial to understand how digital technology and the construction industry can effectively connect in order to achieve success in this realm. This paper aims to enhance the digital transformation capabilities and efficiency of construction companies and boost their core competitiveness through targeted measures

Urban Coastal Systems and Coastal Flooding. A GIS-based tool for planning climate-sensitive cities

In 2013, the "EU Strategy in adaptation to climate change" adopted by the European Commission stated the need of adaptation to climate impacts of European territories, including coastal areas. In fact, these areas are characterized by a higher concentration of buildings and people in comparison to inland areas. Furthermore, economic assets within 500 meters from the coastline have a value between €500 and €1,000 billion (EEA, 2016). Due to their several resources and the high degree of accessibility, these areas are very attractive for people and, hence, their population growth is expected to increase in the future (Neumann et al., 2015). Therefore, these characteristics make coastal cities particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. One of the forecasted impacts of climate change in these areas is the increase of coastal floods due to rising sea level and storm surges. In this context, urban planning plays a key role in urban adaptation. However, even though the interest in this topic is increasing, operative support and tools for planning urban adaptation for cities are in short supply, especially for coastal cities. To date, urban adaptation has been mainly based on the concept of vulnerability and several vulnerability indices have been developed for supporting decision makers in the adaptation process of coastal areas, especially on the territorial level, grounding on a sectoral perspective. As a consequence, the adoption of this approach does not allow to take into account the complexity of the coastal urban system and, thus, all the features and their relationships that can affect the effectiveness of the urban measures to implement in the process of urban adaptation. Based on these observations, the purpose of this research was the development of a new decision support tool that allows the most suitable urban actions to be identified for increasing the capacity of cities to deal with coastal flooding events due to future rising sea level and storm surges. Besides the use of the most innovative GIS-based technologies, one of the novelties introduced with this work was the adoption of the holistic-system approach for the tool development, such as in the case of the definition of the new composite index based on the more holistic concept of urban resilience. For what concerns the development of the GIS-based tool, a four-phase methodology was defined. The first step was the definition and development of a novel composite index for a quantitative evaluation of the “urban coastal resilience” on the local level, named Coastal Resilience Index (or CoRI), by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) (Saaty, 1980), supported by the Delphi Method. In particular, the CoRI index allows the identification of four resilience levels (high, medium-high, medium-low and low). In the second step, since the urban adaptation measures should be defined in relation to physical and functional characteristics of the urban context, a classification of urban coastal areas was introduced, by specifying Urban Coastal Units (UCUs) depending on their urban density and land use. Considering the CoRI levels and the UCU classification and according to the coastal adaptation approaches defined by the IPCC (Nicholls et al., 2007), in the third phase, four classes of Urban Adaptation Actions were defined. In detail, a matrix that puts in relation the Urban Adaptation Actions classes with UCUs and CoRI levels has been developed. In relation to these three main phases and considering the potentialities of GIS applications in urban planning, in the last phase, a design workflow for developing the GIS-based tool was defined. Thanks to this workflow, the GIS-based tool was implemented and applied to a study area in the city of Naples. In particular, the identification of the potential coastal floodplains of Naples was useful for selecting the study area that includes five neighbourhoods - Barra, Mercato, Industrial Zone, Pendino and San Giovanni a Teduccio - localized in the eastern part of the city. Hence, the input data of the area chosen for the tool's implementation were collected. According to the methodology aforementioned, the GIS-based tool was realized considering three toolboxes: the “Coastal Resilience Index Tools” toolbox, the “Urban Coastal Units Tools” toolbox and, finally, the “Urban Adaptation Actions Tools” toolbox. From the application of the GIS-based tool to the study area, the main findings were the following ones. About the CoRI, the study area is characterized by a high presence of urban areas with medium-low resilience levels (61% of the study area) and by the absence of urban areas with high resilience levels. Concerning the UCU, the urban area is characterized by a high physical and functional complexity of the urban area. Therefore, the majority of the study area is classified as UCU 1 (i.e. high-density and mix-used developments) and UCU 2 (i.e. mono-functional zones, transport infrastructure, public facilities), while the absence of natural areas is noted. Regarding the identification of the Urban Adaptation Actions, all the UCUs need to enhance their resilience level through the implementation of fitting urban measures due to the absence of urban areas characterized by high resilience levels and the high urbanization degree of the study area. In particular, in the majority of the area (about 61%), it is necessary to implement a mix of “hardware” and “software” measures. Therefore, urban transformations should be addressed towards the realization or improvement of protection infrastructure systems, the use of resilient design standards at building scale and the reduction of land-use intensity through the delocalization of critical facilities from the coastline. From an urban planning perspective, the application of the GIS-based tool to the study area in Naples highlights how the urban layout and spatial organization can affect the urban capacity to deal with coastal flooding. Indicators that compose the CoRI enable the in-depth study of urban contexts, and identify areas where there are major shortcomings in terms of urban resilience. Whereas the Urban Coastal Units classification enables the categorization of coastal areas in relation to their land use and land-use intensity in order to better identify the most appropriate “palette” of urban adaptation actions to implement. The identification of a set of urban actions for different urban typologies can be useful for not only defining and programming new urban transformations but also for allowing decision-makers to monetize possible interventions to carry out. In conclusion, urban transformations will be more and more necessary in order to adapt urban areas to future impacts due to climate change. Therefore, in order to better deal with the forthcoming climate change impacts on cities, the novel methodology provided in this study sets the framework for the development of new urban planning tools capable to cope with other climate impacts and, eventually, for their integration in order to develop a comprehensive tool for urban adaptation to different possible impacts of climate change (Wardekker et al., 2010)