Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen

An investigation into the validity and reliability of the AcciMap approach

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the validity and reliability of the AcciMap approach, a systems-based technique for analysing the causes of organisational accidents. This approach has been used to analyse accidents in a number of complex systems and to identify areas in which safety interventions should be directed. However, while the technique is implicitly assumed to be valid and reliable, the questions of whether or not it does, in fact, allow analysts to identify the causes of accidents correctly and whether or not the results obtained are consistent and replicable, have not been addressed. These questions are of critical importance when the findings of AcciMap analyses are used to determine the corrective actions to be taken after an accident, since the safety of the system may be jeopardised if problems are not correctly identified and remedied. In the investigation into the validity and reliability of this technique, a study was performed in which several participants independently analysed an accident, using AcciMap guidelines developed during this research. The aim of the study was to enable the validity of the participants’ results (assessed against results produced by AcciMap experts), the reliability of their results (assessed by comparing participants' findings with those of one another) and the nature and significance of any observed variations in these results, to be examined. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results obtained in this study revealed that, although similarities existed between their findings, each participant’s results differed from those of the experts and the other participants. Examination of the nature and significance of these differences indicated that some were insignificant with respect to the meaning portrayed or the potential outcomes of analyses, while others were significant in these terms but could feasibly be eliminated if changes were made to the analysis process. Several observed variations, however, were both significant in these respects and arguably unavoidable, stemming from parts of the analysis requiring subjective analyst judgement and areas in which human error or differences in interpretation were possible. The existence of such variations demonstrates that AcciMap analyses do not always produce entirely valid and reliable results

Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses

Compiles peer-reviewed research and literature reviews on issues regarding patient safety and quality of care, ranging from evidence-based practice, patient-centered care, and nurses' working conditions to critical opportunities and tools for improvement

Risk in the aviation context : investigating risk perception and risk communication from a behaviour based approach

Safety is an essential part of aviation. Risk assessment is considered subjective, while the operational context necessitates conformity and a unilateral approach. Eventually, the results assess individual risk perception and risk communication and are not being planned proactively. Additionally, due to the diversity of organisations and cultures, there is further fragmentation of what is recognised as risk behaviour, what should be communicated, and what is hazardous. Considering risk perception and communication within the daily practice is seen as essential to explain the behaviours during an adverse event. Safety analysis and investigation methods (SAIMs) have the goal to suggest ways to achieve acceptable system outcomes and avoid unfavourable consequences on humans, equipment, facilities, and the environment. However, there is no widely common and accepted framework engulfing safety recommendations and proactive safety management such as a behavioural intervention to enhance risk perception and risk communication and minimise danger. Risk perception and communication have been underrepresented in studies regarding their complexity in aviation practice. They have not been explicitly addressed for their role in incidents/accidents, resulting in ambiguous proactive safety suggestions and planning. Based on the premise that risk behaviour results from inappropriate risk perception and risk communication, this thesis supports that a behaviour-based intervention can enhance risk perception and communication. This thesis aimed to generate a holistic intervention plan to modify risk behaviour on the assumption that risk perception and communication are the basic factors. The hypotheses included that specific factors can be associated with risk perception and communication leading to risk behaviour, which may be influenced to enhance the latter. Also, a complete integrated intervention model can be generated and fused with a Strategic Communications approach, which makes it usable by most aviation air-carrier organisations. The objectives are to determine two sets of risk perception and communication factors, which lead to risk behaviour and then generate an integrated model applicable in the aviation context. This thesis followed the pragmatism paradigm and adopted a fixed multiphase mixed methods approach, investigating SAIMs, safety events reports, two groups of Subject-Matter-Experts, and the wider aviation workforce. The resulting behaviour based model consolidates the role of risk perception and communication factors as moderators of antecedent behaviour while holistically envisaging the aviation work environment. Contribution to theory and practice within the aviation safety context is provided, as well as future research for additional applications of the mode

Background Examples of Literature Searches on Topics of Interest

A zip file of various literature searches & some resources related to our work related to exposure after the Chernobyl accident and as we began looking at helping in Semey Kazakhstan----a collection of literature reviews on various topics we were interested in... eg. establishing a registry of those exposed for longterm follow-up, what we knew about certain areas like genetics and some resources like A Guide to Environmental Resources on the Internet by Carol Briggs-Erickson and Toni Murphy which could be found on the Internet and was written to be used by researchers, environmentalists, teachers and any person who is interested in knowing and doing something about the health of our planet. See more at https://archives.library.tmc.edu/dm-ms211-012-0060

Street Furniture and the Nation State: A Global Process

In the popular imagination, street furniture has traditionally been understood as evoking a sense of national or local identity. From Paris’ metro entrances, DDR lampposts in Berlin, and London’s york stone pavements, the designed environment has been able to contribute to the unique qualities of a place. In some instances this was deliberate. In postwar Britain for instance, the Council of Industrial Design – a state-funded design organization - often appeared to measure the quality of street furniture on the basis of its national characteristics. On other occasions, the relationship between such objects and identity emerged accidentally. In Britain during the 1980s, for example, the replacement of Gilbert Scott's red telephone box with an alternative BT model provoked considerable debate. For many people, this act was not just a Conservative attack on nationalization and state-ownership, but also on the very fabric of British identity. This understanding of street furniture has retained its currency for many years, and cities across the world have used street furniture to provide a sense of visual coherency for neighbourhoods in need of new identities, strengthening their character and improving the public's relationship to them. In this way, street furniture has been employed as a cipher for the narrative of regeneration, in which - as a means of altering the identity of a space - street furniture can project a new face upon the street. Increasingly however, advertising companies are able to lever themselves into the street furniture market by offering to provide the service to the local authorities for free in return for advertising space. In offering this service, global companies like JC Decaux, Wall and Clear Channel command a huge amount of commercial power within the city. The excessive homogenization of street furniture coupled with the overwhelming presence of advertising which is increasingly sanctioned by local authorities keen to reduce costs, has resulted in the perception of poorer quality streets. Thus, the irony of regeneration is that by seeking to promote the unique identity of a city, many places often end up looking more and more alike. This paper will examine recent developments in the process by which the street is furnished and the agents responsible. It will specifically look at how these changes have affected the relationship between street furniture and identity, and equally the effect this process has had on understandings of national design histories. Clearly, evaluating contemporary street furniture through the lens of the nation-state is of very little value, since the international differences between street furniture are considerably less marked than they used to be. This extraordinary aesthetic convergence is partly linked to economies of scale - after all, just how many different kinds of bus stop can Europe afford to have? Yet it also reflects some of the challenges posed by globalization and privatization of public space. This paper will reflect upon that process, and how these bigger narratives increasingly affect the landscape of the street