Status of occupational safety and health in GCC construction

The construction projects in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-member countries are peaking as the region is in the stage of improving its infrastructures. This briefing presents the current status of occupational safety and health in the region by providing a brief comparison with some of the advanced countries where improved safety performance is guaranteed and maintained. The comparison of the available data shows that, in general, GCC countries display a poor occupational safety and health performance. The briefing suggests the key areas for research which could help the GCC construction industry to improve its performance. These areas include the awareness and importance of safety, cost of accidents, environmental and climatic factors which affect the workers, occupational safety and health regulations and their implementation, workers’ well-being, safety culture and safety climate

Developing a Sustainable Concrete using Ceramic Waste Powder

The change from a traditional utilization based society to a sustainable society is urgently needed because of the contamination of the natural environment, the depletion of the natural resources and the reduced capacity of the final waste disposal arrangements. Concrete is regarded as an advanced and major construction material which needs continuous innovation and improvement to reduce environmental impact. In the future, the demand for concrete will be increasing with the increase in population. This article presents an experimental study of using ceramic waste as a limited replacement with cement in structural concrete. Ceramic waste deposit, on one side, poses a number of environmental challenges, ranging from air, water and soil contaminations but on another side, it has cementitious properties. Concrete mixtures with different percentage of ceramic waste powder were produced, tested and compared in terms of compressive strength. As a result, the maximum compressive strength achieved with a 30% ceramic waste. The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of cement concrete with different percentage of ceramic waste powder, it needs to be noted that such performance may be varied when the grade of cement or chemical composition of ceramic waste powder will be changed. The long-run performance (after 28 days) of such concrete and especially when used with reinforcement need to be investigated further

Challenges towards renewable energy: an exploratory study from the Arabian Gulf region

Considering the importance of energy for social and economic development, access to clean, affordable and reliable energy has been adopted as one of the United Nations sustainable development goals that all countries aim to achieve by 2030. However, much of the world's energy is still produced from fossil fuels and thus the progress towards clean and renewable energy is slow. This paper explores the key challenges towards renewable energy in Gulf Cooperation Council countries blessed with plenty of oil and gas reserves. The key challenges identified through literature review were ranked using a quantitative approach through the data collected from a selective sample across the six countries. These challenges in order of importance were found to be policies and regulations, manpower experience and competencies, renewable energy education, public awareness, costs and incentives for renewable energy and government commitment. The findings could be helpful to decision makers and government organisations in the region to develop strategies to overcome these identified challenges

Exploring safety climate factors in construction

This paper aims to explore and to make explicit of the existing safety climate assessment tools and dimensions. The concept of safety climate is firstly discussed with a review of different safety climate factors from the published literature. A qualitative research method was employed to explore the safety climate factors through a systematic review using four databases and specific keywords. A total of 68 papers were selected for the screening process. The screening process allowed to select the final 18 safety climate assessment tools and papers consisting of 98 safety climate factors spanning over a period of 39 years (1980-2019). Construction organisations may consider these factors to assess the current maturity level of their safety climate and to develop plans to achieve the required level. It is recommended that the factors discussed in this paper may be validated first before they are incorporated in the assessment of safety climate

An assessment of health profile and body pain among construction workers

Construction is one of the most hazardous and complex industries worldwide, which may result in the most fatal accidents and occupational illnesses. It is also regarded as a major industry not only in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries but also worldwide and it is rapidly growing. This study reports an assessment of different body parameters, including physiological factors and body pain of construction workers from GCC countries. Demographic data were collected by way of face-to-face interview followed by the measurement of body mass index, blood pressure and heartbeat. Data for musculoskeletal pain were collected through a structured questionnaire. The results reveal that a majority of workers were overweight or obese. The blood pressure of 43·3% of the participants was more than the threshold and shows hypertensive values. An estimate of 46·6% of the workers experienced body pain in the last three months, while the most frequently reported areas for pain were neck, shoulders, low back, legs and knees. Sleep patterns were one of the causative factors that led to experience of pain among workers. This research study would be helpful to develop strategies to improve the well-being of construction workers in GCC countries

High fatalities risk found in gulf construction

It is predicted that the construction industry will be growing in the future, and that could lead to an increase in risks in work safety and accidents. This paper presents the current status of occupational safety and health in the Gulf region by providing a comparison with those of some of the most advanced countries in the world. According to our data, the Gulf countries have a poor record of work safety and health. Therefore, this research aimed to identify the main factors and provide some solutions for key areas, so that the construction industry could improve its safety performance. Our findings from the literature and from the semi-structured interviews held with the selected professionals suggest that the major areas are: lack of awareness of the importance of safety and costs resulting from accidents; environmental and climatic factors; implementation of rules for developing a culture of harmless working conditions

Supporting Data Collection in Complex Scenarios with Dynamic Data Collection Processes

Nowadays, companies have to report a large number of data sets (e.g., sustainability data) regarding their products to different legal authorities. However, in today's complex supply chains products are the outcome of the collaboration of many companies. To gather the needed data sets, companies have to employ cross-organizational and long-running data collection processes that imply great variability. To support such scenarios, we have designed a lightweight, automated approach for contextual process configuration. That approach can capture the contextual properties of the respective situations and, based on them, automatically configure a process instance accordingly, even without human involvement. Finally, we implemented our approach and started an industrial evaluation

Effect of climate on the epidemiology of bovine hypodermosis in algeria

In order to explore the effect of climate on cattle warble fly infestation, a total of 1.635 animals from 4 departments of Northern Algeria were examined visually and by manual palpation for the presence of warbles. Cattle were examined from March to June 2014, coinciding with the peak of emergence of warbles, and both the prevalence and intensity of infestation were recorded. The departments included in this study were located in the two different climatic areas in Northern Algeria: humid (Bejaia and Tizi Ouzou) and semi-arid (Tissemssilt and Ain Defla). The overall prevalence was 28.75%; the intensity of infestation ranged from 1 to 98 warbles per animal (mean 18.93±11.05). The prevalence and intensity of infestation within the departments with semi-arid climate (38.23%; 21.57±11.98) was significantly higher than in those with humid climate (20.74%; 14.84±7.86). The CHAID algorithm showed the climate as the most influencing factor for warble fly prevalence, followed by the husbandry system and breed. Logistic regression and multivariate ANOVA indicate that in addition to climate, other intrinsic (age, breed) and extrinsic factors (husbandry system, treatment) included in the study also were associated with both, prevalence and intensity of infestation. Our results indicate that in semiarid areas of Northern Algeria environmental conditions are more favorable for the development of free stages (pupae and adult flies) of Hypoderma spp life-cycle than in humid areas