Occupational injuries among construction workers at the Chep Lap Kok Airport construction site, Hong Kong : analysis of accident rates, and the association between injuries, error types and their contributing factors : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Aviation at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Accidents on construction sites are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Hong Kong. This study investigated the likely causes of occupational injuries that were present among the construction workers during the construction of the new Chep Lap Kok (CLK) Airport in Hong Kong. In order to accumulate the requisite information, 1648 accident investigation reports in a four-year period (1993-1996) were reviewed. The first part of the study described the pattern and magnitude of occupational injuries among the CLK construction workers and compared the accident rates of the CLK workers with those of the construction industry as a whole in Hong Kong. The study examined the effects of the workplace infrastructure at CLK in order to explain why this site presented fewer work place injuries and accidents than other workplaces. The second part of the research used these injury and accident occurrences as the basis to construct the causes of accidents and injuries within an error causation classification system. The results showed that at CLK, the commonest workplace injury was contusion & crushing which appeared to be due to mistakes made through lapses in memory often caused by pressure of work being imposed on the employee. This section also indicated what types of errors were most closely associated with what kinds of injuries and what conditions were most likely to trigger these types of events. Among the major associations were links between contusion and crushing and violation error, perceptual error; between memory lapse and work pressure, equipment deficiencies, poor working environment, fatigue, and between violation error and work pressure. The research suggested that work pressure was an important contributing factor to construction injury and it increased the prevalence of a human error type namely, memory lapse many fold. The outcomes from this study provide important new information on the causes and types of errors which have led to occupational injuries among construction workers in Hong Kong. A better understanding of the human factors-based causes of accidents and injuries in the construction industry and an inculcation of a safety culture on construction sites are critically important in the reduction of the rate of construction accidents and improvement of workers' human performance. The results should assist the construction industry in the designing accident prevention training and education strategies, estimating human error probabilities, and the monitoring organizational safety performance

Building Cyberspace. Information, Place and Policy

Information and place have always been linked. From prehistoric forest and hydraulic expire to canal network and the networked knowledge economy, the space of flows gives rise to the way human beings perceive the world as well as to the objects they perceive. The historical relationship between information and place is important in understanding Cyberspace as a space of information that reshapes our engagement with the physical world

Identifying and enabling core management competencies and compliance factors in high reliability organisations : a study in organisational risk management psychology and training: A small n modified grounded theory qualitative analysis

High reliability entities governed by statutory regulations are required to comply with safety guidelines and specifications. When fatalities or serious injuries occur in otherwise preventable accidents these entities are routinely exonerated from any responsibility by claiming to have ‘systemic management problems’ and their managing coalitions have been able to hide behind the ‘corporate veil’. This thesis maintains that the core managerial competencies needed to prevent preventable accidents, can be acquired through training, particularly if their mastery is mandated by a strong regulatory and compliance regime. The cases chosen for analysis revealed ten core managerial and organisational competencies and compliance as issues of concern, in a small n study Commission of Inquiry and Coronial reports. Other than ‘acts of God’, most accidents resulting in fatalities and serious injury, occur in organisations where prior knowledge of a potential accident existed and this knowledge was not utilised. Most accidents in high reliability organisations might have been prevented if the cascade of events leading to the accidents could have been interrupted. The competencies, revealed by the research as necessary to intervene in the unfolding of preventable accidents, are generally not taught in orthodox management studies programs in higher education institutions. However, when these competencies are inadequate they not only result in accidents but also cause orthodox management problems such as production delays and losses, costly litigation, increasing indemnity insurance and erosion of an organisation’s credibility in the marketplace

Modernist and Postmodernist Arts of Noise, Part 1: From the European Avant-Garde to Contemporary Australian Sound Art

The broad aim of the paper that follows is to test the claim of critics such as Miriam Fraser and Steve Connor that the modernist deconstruction of the music/noise dichotomy has entered a distinctively postmodern phase. The article below therefore traces the history and poetics of this dichotomy from the modernist avant-garde to contemporary Australian postmodernist Sound Art, moving from a discussion of the ideas of Russolo, Cage, Boulez and Schaeffer, to a close reading of Ros Bandt’s “Stack” (2000- 01). These themes as expressed in contemporary Australian composition are then explored in Part Two belo

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes

This bibliography lists 138 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in Jun. 1980

Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) for part 91 and 135 operations

Every flight is characterized by constant change. It is the way each individual crew responds to that change that determines how effectively they will be able to manage their flight deck. The concepts of Flight Deck Management (FDM) is presented. The principles dealt with are applicable to every flight, and the occurrence of change in the conduct of every flight is given. Nothing remains as it is initially perceived. It is then shown how SimuFlite accomplishes training in these concepts. Finally the challenges which are faced as an industry to make FDM more effective are discussed

Data Collection for Traffic and Drivers’ Behaviour Studies: A Large-scale Survey

AbstractStudies of driving behaviour are of great help for different tasks in transportation engineering. These include data collection both for statistical analysis and for identification of driving models and estimation of modelling parameters (calibration). The data and models may be applied to different areas: i) road safety analysis; ii) microscopic models for traffic simulation, forecast and control; iii) control logics aimed at ADAS (Advanced Driving Assistance Systems). In this paper we present a large survey based on the naturalistic (on-the-road) observation of driving behaviour with a view to obtaining microscopic data for single vehicles on long road segments and for long time periods. Data are collected by means of an instrumented vehicle (IV), equipped with GPS, radar, cameras and other sensors. The behaviour of more than 100 drivers was observed by using the IV in active mode, that is by observing the kinematics imposed on the vehicle by the driver, as well as the kinematics with respect to neighbouring vehicles. Sensors were also mounted backwards on the IV, allowing the behaviour of the driver behind to be observed in passive mode. As the vehicle behind changes, the next is observed and within a short period of time the behaviour of several drivers can be examined, without the observed driver being aware. The paper presents the experiment by describing the road context, aims and experimental procedure. Statistics and initial insights are also presented based on the large amount of data collected (more than 8000km of observed trajectories and 120hours of driving in active mode). As an example of how to use the data directly, apart from calibration of driving behaviour models, indexes based on aggregate measures of safety are computed, presented and discussed