Knowledge capture to inform sustainable maritime operations

Knowledge capture to inform sustainable maritime operations Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to report an explicit taxonomy of maritime operations (MO) to guide Harbour Masters (HM)s of smaller ports in planning more sustainable operations. Design/methodology/approach - This research presents strategies for building theory to promote more sustainable port management in a two-stage research design. Starting from a base taxonomy in research stage one, ethnographic content analysis (ECA) of a sparse prior literature on MO generated a tentative taxonomy into a credible practitioner-informed final taxonomy. Findings - ECA offers researchers a powerful tool to analyse complex operational problems. In this paper MOs are represented in an explicit taxonomy. Practical implications - A final taxonomy of MOs guides sustainability strategy formulation by HMs and assists them to protect vital commercial revenues which serve supply chains and local communities. Originality/Value - An explicit final taxonomy of MO is derived using a novel methodology. The taxonomy guides sustainability strategy formulation and underpins subsequent planning of sustainable development policies

Life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost (LCC) studies of lightweight composite flooring systems

The growing need to save material and energy resources, together with the increasing concern over the material impact on the built environment economy has led the need for redesigning critical structural elements and systems. Flooring systems are the top amongst the list of the highest impact after the partition walls when comparing to other non-load bearing construction elements. This paper focuses on the advantages of lightweight flooring systems and contributes towards the development of a novel prefabricated ultra-shallow and lightweight flooring system. The used methodology comprises the environmental (by applying the TRACI method) and economic life cycle analysis (LCA). The environmental and economic impacts of three types of flooring systems are studied and compared. The first type is a prefabricated floor (Cofradal260), is a common solution in residential buildings in France, the second type is a hollow core precast floor with an in-situ concrete finishing layer, and the third type is the proposed system. The assessment showed that the embodied energy and embodied GHG emissions of the proposed flooring system are 28.89% and 37.67% lower than the one using Cofradal floor, and 20.18% and 35.09% lower than the one using hollow core precast floor units. LCA showed that the proposed flooring system reduced 13.08% of construction cost and 41.83% of end of life cost in comparison with Cofradal260 slab, and 1.87% of construction cost and 18.95% of end of life cost in comparison with the hollow composite precast slab

A structured judgement method to enhance mortality case note review: development and evaluation.

Background: Case note review remains a prime means of retrospectively assessing quality of care. This study examines a new implicit judgement method, combining structured reviewer comments with quality of care scores, to assess care of people who die in hospital. Methods: Using 1566 case notes from 20 English hospitals, 40 physicians each reviewed 30–40 case notes, writing structured judgement based comments on care provided within three phases of care, and on care overall, and scoring quality of care from 1 (unsatisfactory) to 6 (very best care). Quality of care comments on 119 people who died (7.6% of the cohort) were analysed independently by two researchers to investigate how well reviewers provided structured short judgement notes on quality of care, together with appropriate care scores. Consistency between explanatory textual data and related scores was explored, using overall care score to group cases. Results: Physician reviewers made informative, clinical judgement-based comments across all phases of care and usually provided a coherent quality of care score relating to each phase. The majority of comments (83%) were explicit judgements. About a fifth of patients were considered to have received less than satisfactory care, often experiencing a series of adverse events. Conclusions: A combination of implicit judgement, explicit explanatory comment and related quality of care scores can be used effectively to review the spectrum of care provided for people who die in hospital. The method can be used to quickly evaluate deaths so that lessons can be learned about both poor and high quality care

An international survey on the awareness, use, preference and health perception of Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS)

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Deligianni, E, Corkery, JM, Schifano, F, Lione, LA. An international survey on the awareness, use, preference, and health perception of novel psychoactive substances (NPS). Hum Psychopharmacol Clin Exp. 2017; 32:e2581, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/hup.2581. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.ObjectiveThis survey investigated the level of public awareness, preference and motivation of NPS use as well as knowledge of potential associated health risks.Methods A Bristol Online Survey was advertised through social media and a drug forum ‘’Bluelight’’ between 7 January and 7 February 2015. ResultsResponses were received from 17 countries, mainly from Europe. Most responses (83%) came from University educated students. Two-thirds (65%) of the 168 respondents were aware of NPS. Awareness was significantly increased in those with bisexual/homosexual orientation (p0.05). Nearly half of the NPS users perceived NPS to carry either a low risk to health (20%) or did not know whether or not they posed a health risk (29%).ConclusionsThese survey data indicate that awareness of NPS and, importantly, perception of the potential health risks associated with NPS use is lacking. NPS awareness and use is higher in those in employment but is unaffected by the level of education. This highlights the need for targeted drugs education intervention by policy-makers in schools and universities.Peer reviewe

Reflexive adaptation for resilient water services: lessons for theory and practice

‘Adaptive management’ concern attempts to manage complex social-ecological and socio-technical systems in nimble ways to enhance their resilience. In this paper, three forms of adaptive management are identified, ‘scientific’ forms focused on collation of scientific data in response to management experiments, but more recent developments adding processes of collaboration as well as emphasising the need for reflexivity, that is, conscious processes of opening up debates to different perspectives and values. While reflexive adaptive management has been increasingly discussed in theory, there is a lack of examples of what its application means in practice. As a response, this paper examines an ‘Adaptive Planning Process’ (APP), seeking to apply reflexive adaptive management as a means to improve climate resilience in the UK water sector. The APP’s three inter linked workshops – Aspiration, Scenario and Roadmapping – were co-developed and trialled in a water utility. By describing and justifying the choices made in the development of the APP, the paper aims to reveal some of the challenges that arise when trying to design processes that achieve reflexive adaptation. The paper concludes that, if applied to planning for climate change, reflexive adaptation has the potential to explore multiple value positions, highlight different potential futures and acknowledge (and hence, partly address) power differentials, and therefore to offer the possibility of real change. On the basis of the trial, we argue that through tapping the depth and breadth of internal knowledge the APP process created the potential for decision making to be joined up across different parts of the utility, and hence offering new strategies and routes for addressing uncertainties and delivering more resilient water services