Sustainability and OHS Global Reporting in Petrochemical Industries: The GRI Reporting Standard and Corporate Social Responsibility

Sustainability reporting, an aspect of corporate social responsibility (i.e., CSR), is the practice of measuring, disclosing, and being accountable to internal and external stakeholders for organizational performance and the goal of sustainable development. Sustainability reporting is a broad term used to describe reporting on a firm economic, environmental, and social impacts. A sustainability report should provide a balanced and reasonable representation of the sustainability performance of a reporting organization, which includes both positive and negative contributions. (Global Reporting Initiative, 2011, p. 3). This paper describes the level of occupational health and safety reporting for the Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) top 50 global chemical companies. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standard GRI: 403 Occupational Health and Safety 2018 was used as the basis for investigation. This paper explains how the growing interest in corporate social responsibility can contribute to improving the implementation of adequate systems of prevention and protection. Occupational health and safety in the petrochemical sector has become a great public interest and is associated with exposure risks to a variety of toxic chemicals and other agents which fuels questions surrounding the necessary strategies required for safer petrochemical industries. The increasing pressure from challenges impeding the improvement of performance requires the need for establishing strategic roles aimed at restoring safety design systems while improving the roles of national health safety standards and corporate staff. This paper focuses on a set of three strategies aimed at improving occupational health and safety in the petrochemical sector including: (1) national/international standards and regulating agencies, (2) the role of health staff, and (3) strategic safety culture management. This is accomplished using a qualitative research design based on secondary data sources. Descriptive methods were used to analyze the qualitative data and the results presented through frequency tables, graphs, correlation matrices, and mean scores across study populations. The findings from this study reveal that a company's safety culture is a function of national OHS policies, safety rules and procedures, incentives, training, communication, worker involvement, safety manager commitment, and employee safety behavior. Safety culture is additionally observed as a reflection of the safety performance of firms in the petrochemical industry. Health staff can contribute towards health and safety training, the development of positive safety attitudes, and safety compliance. These statistics and evaluations are important because their role in establishing occupational health practices have been found to be effective in promoting, protecting, and rehabilitating the health and well-being of people. The study concludes that it is essential to establish the roles of health staff, national OHS standards, and safety culture management, and the means of achieving them

Does the alternative dispute resolution have a role to play in the construction industry in the State of Kuwait (Look into the most appropriate methodology that may be taken in Kuwait in comparison with what are available in the English legal system)

Spending almost two decades of experience with one of the largest oil and gas production company in the Middle East namely “Kuwait Oil Company” as a Team Leader and Senior Counsel for the Projects and Claims Team under Legal Affairs Department has undoubtedly inspired me the notion the essence of this thesis alongside with that sort of eagerness to research in quest for the knowledge which man has always and still run after but the least nevertheless only acquired! Before I join the company in late eighties, and on my graduation I found myself in cross roads, become a lecturer and embark on the academic career and satisfy my desire for research or fight my way in the legal profession as practitioner? I walked the second route in the hope of gaining the legal experience with the thought of grapping the research route in a later stage in which I now do enjoy and live. Working with KOC, I have been involved up to teeth in different areas of law since a project documents is governed and regulated not only by contract law but commercial law, companies law, patent law, labour law, construction law and tax law are also incorporated. The dispute resolution methods are addressed as well since local litigation is the main method and international adjudication, mediation and arbitration are exceptional but used and applied in particular on LSTK, EPC, EPF and Technical Service Agreements TSAs. Negotiation rounds which were entered with international oil companies on new projects and contracts gained me skills and exceptional knowledge in applying law and practice as well as sharing expertise not only in law function but in commercial and technical angles of the project bearing in mind the diversified expertise representing all aspects of business and the approaches followed to successfully accomplish a project. In the thesis, I’ve opted to deal with the elements of dispute resolution in the construction industry on the international scale and on the local or national level choosing State of Kuwait’s legal system and enhancing the research with the practical work experience in the Kuwait Oil Company extending seven chapters for this aim. I fully hope with my humble efforts exerted in this thesis that something valuable is added to the endless and depthless ocean of legal knowledge. In addition to the introductory section, the analysis of the thesis subject will be split into and developed through seven parts. Chapter one will define the construction contract, the field of the study subject, which will be followed by the mechanism of formation of the contract subject matter in chapter two. Then, the next four chapters, the means of the most common alternative dispute resolution; namely arbitration, adjudication, expert determination and mediation will be examined respectively. Chapter seven will mainly focus on the evaluation of the Kuwaiti national oil producer (Kuwait Oil Company “KOC”) as a case study and eventually will come up with the recommendations. Then, the mission of the thesis would reach the Conclusion being the final destination of its journey

An Active Seat Controller with Vehicle Suspension Feedforward and Feedback States: An Experimental Study

Active seat suspensions can be used to reduce the harmful vertical vibration of a vehicle’s seat by applying an external force using a closed loop controller. Many of the controllers found in the literature are difficult to implement practically, because they are based on using unavailable or difficult and costly measurements. This paper presents both simulation and experimental studies of five novel, simple, and cost-effective control strategies to be used for an active seat suspension in order to improve ride comfort at low frequencies below 20 Hz. These strategies use available and measurable feedforward (preview) information states from the vehicle secondary suspension, as well as feedback states from the seat suspension, together with gains optimised to minimise the occupant vibration. The gains were optimised using a genetic algorithm (GA), with a fitness function based on the seat effective amplitude transmissibility (SEAT) factor. Constraints on the control force and the seat suspension stroke were also included in the optimisation algorithm. Simulation and laboratory experimental tests were carried out to assess the performance of the proposed controllers according to the ISO 2631-1 standard, in both the frequency and time domains with a range of different road profiles. The experimental tests were performed using a multi-axis simulation table (MAST) and a physical active seat suspension configured as a hardware-in-loop (HIL) simulation with a virtual linear quarter vehicle model (QvM). The results demonstrate that the proposed controllers substantially attenuate the vertical vibration at the driver’s seat compared with both a passive and a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) active seat suspension and thus improve ride comfort together with reducing vibration-linked health risks. Moreover, experimental results show that employing both feedforward information and feedback vehicle body and seat acceleration signals in the controller provides isolation performance gains of up to 19.5 dB over the human body sensitivity frequency range and improves the ride comfort in terms of the SEAT factor and the weighted root mean square (RMS) seat acceleration by at least 25% when compared with a passive system, irrespective of vehicle forward speed

An Active Seat Controller with Vehicle Suspension Feedforward and Feedback States: An Experimental Study

Active seat suspensions can be used to reduce the harmful vertical vibration of a vehicle’s seat by applying an external force using a closed loop controller. Many of the controllers found in the literature are difficult to implement practically, because they are based on using unavailable or difficult and costly measurements. This paper presents both simulation and experimental studies of five novel, simple, and cost-effective control strategies to be used for an active seat suspension in order to improve ride comfort at low frequencies below 20 Hz. These strategies use available and measurable feedforward (preview) information states from the vehicle secondary suspension, as well as feedback states from the seat suspension, together with gains optimised to minimise the occupant vibration. The gains were optimised using a genetic algorithm (GA), with a fitness function based on the seat effective amplitude transmissibility (SEAT) factor. Constraints on the control force and the seat suspension stroke were also included in the optimisation algorithm. Simulation and laboratory experimental tests were carried out to assess the performance of the proposed controllers according to the ISO 2631-1 standard, in both the frequency and time domains with a range of different road profiles. The experimental tests were performed using a multi-axis simulation table (MAST) and a physical active seat suspension configured as a hardware-in-loop (HIL) simulation with a virtual linear quarter vehicle model (QvM). The results demonstrate that the proposed controllers substantially attenuate the vertical vibration at the driver’s seat compared with both a passive and a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) active seat suspension and thus improve ride comfort together with reducing vibration-linked health risks. Moreover, experimental results show that employing both feedforward information and feedback vehicle body and seat acceleration signals in the controller provides isolation performance gains of up to 19.5 dB over the human body sensitivity frequency range and improves the ride comfort in terms of the SEAT factor and the weighted root mean square (RMS) seat acceleration by at least 25% when compared with a passive system, irrespective of vehicle forward speed

Sustainability and OHS Global Reporting in Petrochemical Industries: The GRI Reporting Standard and Corporate Social Responsibility

Sustainability reporting , an aspect of corporate social responsibility (i.e. , CSR) , is the practice of measuring , disclosing , and being accountable to internal and external stakeholders for organizational performance and the goal of sustainable development. Sustainability reporting is a broad term used to describe reporting on a firm economic , environmental , and social impacts. A sustainability report should provide a balanced and reasonable representation of the sustainability performance of a reporting organization , which includes both positive and negative contributions. (Global Reporting Initiative , 2011 , p. 3). This paper describes the level of occupational health and safety reporting for the Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) top 50 global chemical companies. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standard GRI: 403 Occupational Health and Safety 2018 was used as the basis for investigation. This paper explains how the growing interest in corporate social responsibility can contribute to improving the implementation of adequate systems of prevention and protection. Occupational health and safety in the petrochemical sector has become a great public interest and is associated with exposure risks to a variety of toxic chemicals and other agents which fuels questions surrounding the necessary strategies required for safer petrochemical industries. The increasing pressure from challenges impeding the improvement of performance requires the need for establishing strategic roles aimed at restoring safety design systems while improving the roles of national health safety standards and corporate staff. This paper focuses on a set of three strategies aimed at improving occupational health and safety in the petrochemical sector including: (1) national/international standards and regulating agencies , (2) the role of health staff , and (3) strategic safety culture management. This is accomplished using a qualitative research design based on secondary data sources. Descriptive methods were used to analyze the qualitative data and the results presented through frequency tables , graphs , correlation matrices , and mean scores across study populations. The findings from this study reveal that a company's safety culture is a function of national OHS policies , safety rules and procedures , incentives , training , communication , worker involvement , safety manager commitment , and employee safety behavior. Safety culture is additionally observed as a reflection of the safety performance of firms in the petrochemical industry. Health staff can contribute towards health and safety training , the development of positive safety attitudes , and safety compliance. These statistics and evaluations are important because their role in establishing occupational health practices have been found to be effective in promoting , protecting , and rehabilitating the health and well-being of people. The study concludes that it is essential to establish the roles of health staff , national OHS standards , and safety culture management , and the means of achieving them

Health-related factors and dysregulation of epigenetic related genes in metabolic syndrome trigger finger patients and smoker trigger finger patients: preliminary analysis of patient-derived sample

Abstract Purpose To investigate the health-related factors and analyze the expression of epigenetic related genes and inflammatory genes in metabolic syndrome Trigger Finger (TF) and smoker TF. Methods Samples from patients’ fingers with symptomatic TF were collected. There were seven groups: healthy control group, carpal tunnel syndrome (as a control for gene expression analysis), TF, diabetic TF, hypertensive TF, dyslipidemic TF and smoker TF. The expression levels of epigenetic related genes and inflammatory genes in metabolic syndrome TF and smoker TF were evaluated by the reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaires, disability of the arm, shoulder and hand (DASH) and numeric pain rating scale were given to the participants to fill out. Results There was a significant increase in hand dysfunction in the metabolic TF groups and smoker group compared to the TF group (p < 0.0001). The stress levels of the smoker TF group and TF with hypertension group were significantly increased compared with those in the TF group (p < 0.03) and (p < 0.021), respectively. On the other hand, there was a significant increase in the COL-I, COL-II and TNF-α gene expression of the metabolic TF groups and smoker group (p < 0.0001). Conclusions Health-related factors in the TF tendons was highly associated with the level of inflammation and genetic alteration in TF metabolic syndromes and smoker TF patients. Therefore, further investigation is required to examine the combination of occupational therapy, gene expression, and health-related factors as a promising method of managing TF

Enhancing Intrusion Detection Systems for IoT and Cloud Environments Using a Growth Optimizer Algorithm and Conventional Neural Networks

Intrusion detection systems (IDS) play a crucial role in securing networks and identifying malicious activity. This is a critical problem in cyber security. In recent years, metaheuristic optimization algorithms and deep learning techniques have been applied to IDS to improve their accuracy and efficiency. Generally, optimization algorithms can be used to boost the performance of IDS models. Deep learning methods, such as convolutional neural networks, have also been used to improve the ability of IDS to detect and classify intrusions. In this paper, we propose a new IDS model based on the combination of deep learning and optimization methods. First, a feature extraction method based on CNNs is developed. Then, a new feature selection method is used based on a modified version of Growth Optimizer (GO), called MGO. We use the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) to boost the search process of the GO. Extensive evaluation and comparisons have been conducted to assess the quality of the suggested method using public datasets of cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) environments. The applied techniques have shown promising results in identifying previously unknown attacks with high accuracy rates. The MGO performed better than several previous methods in all experimental comparisons