537,785 research outputs found

    Negotiating the 'trading zone'. Creating a shared information infrastructure in the Dutch public safety sector

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    Our main concern in this article is whether nation-wide information technology (IT) infrastructures or systems in emergency response and disaster management are the solution to the communication problems the safety sector suffers from. It has been argued that implementing nation-wide IT systems will help to create shared cognition and situational awareness among relief workers. We put this claim to the test by presenting a case study on the introduction of ‘netcentric work’, an IT system-based platform aiming at the creation of situational awareness for professionals in the safety sector in the Netherlands. The outcome of our research is that the negotiation with relevant stakeholders by the Dutch government has lead to the emergence of several fragmented IT systems. It becomes clear that a top-down implementation strategy for a single nation-wide information system will fail because of the fragmentation of the Dutch safety sector it is supposed to be a solution to. As the US safety sector is at least as fragmented as its Dutch counterpart, this may serve as a caveat for the introduction of similar IT systems in the US

    Introducing Simulation and Model Animation in the MDE Topcased Toolkit

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    International audienceThe Topcased project aims at developing a modular and generic CASE environment for model driven development of safety critical systems. Model validation is a key feature in this project and model simulation is a major way for validation. The purpose of this paper is to present the current Topcased process for building model simulators and animators. After introducing the functional requirements for model simulation and animation, it is explained how simulation is currently being integrated in the Topcased environment, presenting the main components of a simulator: a model animator, a scenario builder and a simulation engine. The approach is illustrated by the presentation of the first simulation experiment conducted in the project: the UML 2 StateMachines case study

    Building Process Safety Culture at Texas A&M University at Qatar: A Case Study on Experimental Research

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    PresentationOver the last few years, the importance of establishing and maintaining a positive safety culture in the process industry and its impact on the safety performances of a company have strongly been emphasized by regulatory institutions, academia and very importantly by the process industry itself. A strong safety culture, when everyone in a company feels responsible for safety and acts accordingly, is not achieved overnight as it requires changing behaviors and instilling safety values to individuals. The challenge is there for existing employees of a company but also for new recruits. In the particular case of freshly graduated engineers, it is often only when joining a company that the individual discovers the concept of safety culture and has to buy into it. Academia could play a much better role in training engineers who, not only understand the process safety challenges faced by the industry, but genuinely join the industry with a pre- established positive safety culture developed during the years of their education. Instilling a process safety culture to future engineers is an area that still requires major efforts from academia. Experimental research at university or college often involves the handling of hazardous substances and processes, with an associated level of risk that need to be minimized. Incidents (major and minor) do happen in university laboratories. It is very common that only major incidents are reported and investigated. Operational deviations, minor incidents, near misses almost never see the light of discussion, although they are opportunities to instill a process safety culture to students, as they are in the process industry. The objective of this paper is to provide a case study on building process safety culture in a research environment by applying different key aspects of process safety principles. In this study, a series of experiments were analyzed to show how process safety principles starting from inherently safer design and management program can be learnt while performing experimental research. The authors have found that investigating the root causes of near misses have multiple benefits. During the actual experiments no injuries have occurred and even the potential of having injuries was relatively low. However, in the context of this study, selected issues were investigated as accidents, which referred to not being able to successfully perform the experiments or near miss referred to delay of a planned / scheduled experiment. As the matter of fact, all these issues may be treated as time and financial losses. Different aspects of failures such as human factor, process design or inherently safer design and standard operating procedures were discussed via case studies. It was found that having students discussing and presenting the investigation results to other students has greatly improved not only the safety aspects of research but also the productivity and safety culture of the involved researchers

    Cooking Healthy, Eating Smart (CHES): Evaluating the Feasibility of Using Volunteers to Deliver Nutrition and Food Safety Education To Rural Older Adults

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    Due to their limited resources, rural, older adults in the United States are at risk for poor diet-related health outcomes. Nutrition education is a key component in improving health outcomes in older adults. Cooking Healthy, Eating Smart (CHES) is a nine-lesson curriculum designed to teach rural, older adults culturally appropriate nutrition and food safety information. Funding to hire health professionals to deliver such a curriculum is limited, presenting the need to explore a less expensive mode of dissemination. In this community-based, participatory research study, a formative evaluation and feasibility study were conducted to examine the use of volunteers to deliver a nutrition and food safety curriculum to rural, older adults in South Carolina. Seven focus groups were conducted with members of the South Carolina Family and Community Leaders (SCFCL) and members of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) in the four regions of South Carolina to explore barriers and facilitators of volunteers delivering CHES (N=65 participants). The focus group findings informed the development of the volunteer training manual. A comparative case study method was used to examine the feasibility of a volunteer-based approach by observing and describing the delivery of CHES by two groups of volunteers in SC. The case study findings, including volunteer knowledge change, self-efficacy change, curriculum experience, program experience, and project team observations of volunteers indicated that using volunteers to deliver CHES is a plausible approach with the assistance of paid staff or project team members

    Case study of failure of long prestressed precast concrete girder during lifting

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    Improvements in concrete technology, reinforcing systems and manufacturing enable the use of longer reinforced precast concrete girders, contributing to the competitiveness of this solution for bridge decks. The weight of the girders should be limited in order to achieve an optimum between span length, transportation costs and lifting costs. The current tendency in design is to minimize the width of the flanges of the girder. This makes the element more flexible to lateral deformation and increases the risk of lateral instability in temporary situations without lateral supports. This is reflected in an increment of the number of accidents and damages associated with such phenomenon. The main objective of this study is to describe a real case study of lateral instability of a 46Âżm long prestressed concrete girder during lifting operations as well as to perform a parametric study to understand the limits of the problem observed. In addition to presenting the case study, simplified formulations and numerical simulations are used to assess the safety margins against lateral instability. Special attention is paid to the evaluation of the provisions gathered in codes and guidelines regarding the lateral stability since they might not cover extreme cases.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

    Reuse of safety certification artefacts across standards and domains: A systematic approach

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    Reuse of systems and subsystem is a common practice in safety-critical systems engineering. Reuse can improve system development and assurance, and there are recommendations on reuse for some domains. Cross-domain reuse, in which a previously certified product typically needs to be assessed against different safety standards, has however received little attention. No guidance exists for this reuse scenario despite its relevance in industry, thus practitioners need new means to tackle it. This paper aims to fill this gap by presenting a systematic approach for reuse of safety certification artefacts across standards and domains. The approach is based on the analysis of the similarities and on the specification of maps between standards. These maps are used to determine the safety certification artefacts that can be reused from one domain to another and reuse consequences. The approach has been validated with practitioners in a case study on the reuse of an execution platform from railway to avionics. The results show that the approach can be effectively applied and that it can reduce the cost of safety certification across standards and domains. Therefore, the approach is a promising way of making cross-domain reuse more cost-effective in industry.European Commission's FP7 programm

    Case study of failure of long prestressed precast concrete girder during lifting

    Get PDF
    Improvements in concrete technology, reinforcing systems and manufacturing enable the use of longer reinforced precast concrete girders, contributing to the competitiveness of this solution for bridge decks. The weight of the girders should be limited in order to achieve an optimum between span length, transportation costs and lifting costs. The current tendency in design is to minimize the width of the flanges of the girder. This makes the element more flexible to lateral deformation and increases the risk of lateral instability in temporary situations without lateral supports. This is reflected in an increment of the number of accidents and damages associated with such phenomenon. The main objective of this study is to describe a real case study of lateral instability of a 46 m long prestressed concrete girder during lifting operations as well as to perform a parametric study to understand the limits of the problem observed. In addition to presenting the case study, simplified formulations and numerical simulations are used to assess the safety margins against lateral instability. Special attention is paid to the evaluation of the provisions gathered in codes and guidelines regarding the lateral stability since they might not cover extreme cases

    Using Bayesian Networks for Risk Assessment in Healthcare System

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    To ensure patient safety, the healthcare service must be of a high quality, safe and effective. This work aims to propose integrated approaches to risk management for a hospital system. To improve patient’s safety, we should develop methods where different aspects of risk and type of information are taken into consideration. The first approach is designed for a context where data about risk events are available. It uses Bayesian networks for quantitative risk analysis in the hospital. Bayesian networks provide a framework for presenting causal relationships and enable probabilistic inference among a set of variables. The methodology is used to analyze the patient’s safety risk in the operating room, which is a high risk area for adverse event. The second approach uses the fuzzy Bayesian network to model and analyze risk. Fuzzy logic allows using the expert’s opinions when quantitative data are lacking and only qualitative or vague statements can be made. This approach provides an actionable model that accurately supports human cognition using linguistic variables. A case study of the patient’s safety risk in the operating room is used to illustrate the application of the proposed method

    Chatbot for training and assisting operators in inspecting containers in seaports

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    The paper presents the chatbot applicability for the health and safety of workers in the container transportation context. Starting from a literature review of risks and hazardous activities in sea container terminals, the paper underlines the need of innovative systems to ensure the lowest level of risks for labours. An analysis of the 4.0 technologies solutions in sea container terminals shows the lack of empirical application of chatbots in such a context. Focus is given to the current chatbot applications, and on the conceptual methodology for the chatbot design, defining five models and presenting a taxonomy for the chatbot feature definition. A case study shows the possible application of the conceptual methodology and the taxonomy, introducing the Popeye chatbot, consisting of a voice service, spoken language understanding component and an image processing app, to cope with the hazards in the process of examining freight and containers in dock areas. The main application of Popeye is the training of new employees involved in container safety-critical quality inspection and controls operations
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