Safety Approach Research Articles

Development of a Thermal-Hydraulic Model for the EU-DEMO Tokamak Building and LOCA Simulation

The EU-DEMO must demonstrate the possibility of generating electricity through nuclear fusion reactions. Moreover, it must denote the necessary technologies to control a powerful plasma with adequate availability and to meet the safety requirements for plant licensing. However, the extensive radioactive materials inventory, the complexity of the plant, and the presence of massive energy sources require a rigorous safety approach to fully realize fusion power’s environmental advantages. The Tokamak building barrier design must address two main issues: radioactive mass transport hazards and energy-related or pressure/vacuum hazards. Safety studies are performed in the frame of the EUROfusion Safety And Environment (SAE) work package to support design improvement and evaluate the thermal-hydraulic behavior of confinement building environments during accident conditions in addition to source term mobilization. This paper focuses on developing a thermal-hydraulic model of the EU-DEMO Tokamak building. A preliminary model of the heat ventilation and air conditioning system and vent detritiation system is developed. A loss-of-coolant accident is studied by investigating the Tokamak building pressurization, source term mobilization, and release. Different nodalizations were compared, highlighting their effects on source term estimation. Results suggest that the building design should be improved to maintain the pressure below safety limits; some mitigative systems are preliminarily investigated for this purpose.

Hierarchical integrated spatial risk assessment model of fire hazard for the core city areas in India

Proliferating fire accidents in the era of rapid Indian urbanisation causes heavy loss of life and property. It is a man-made disaster and has greater scope towards reduction of its risk, hazard and vulnerability. India's core city exhibits the typical character of haphazard development and intricacies of the built-environment having concentration of on-street activities with combustible substances such as flammable goods and commodities that magnifies the existing threat of fire hazard. Such complex spatial identification and its simplification has been demonstrated in this paper for a study area in India. A hierarchical integrated spatial risk assessment is carried out at three levels, i.e., area, unit and substance of fire hazard, to understand the chain of events that transforms a fire accident into catastrophe as spatial risk. Hazard mapping of physical (PVS) and social (SVS) parameters were looped towards spatial integration aided with Geographical Information System (GIS) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) of fire risk assessment. Further, the paper conceptually applies the equation of risk, threat, exposure, vulnerability and coping capacity to visualise the risk of fire hazard. Thus, coping mechanisms such as building safety clearance, approach and accessibility of rescue services, facilities and infrastructure have been featured in this paper. Further, it guides the designing of a Fire Information System (FIS) through a hierarchical integrated spatial risk assessment model of fire hazard.

Informing Streetscape Design with Citizen Perceptions of Safety and Place: An Immersive Virtual Environment E-Participation Method.

As our cities grow, it is important to develop policies and streetscape designs that provide pedestrians with safe comfortable walking conditions and acknowledge the challenges involved in making urban places feel liveable and safe while understanding the critical role of streets around busy destinations. To understand these challenges at a nuanced, human level, new methods of citizen engagement are needed. This paper outlines the development and application of a new citizen perception collection method, using immersive virtual environments (IVE), coupled with an interactive emoji affective activation-pleasure grid and digital slider elements, embedded within an online e-participation survey to quantify, and rank the impact of individual (single-variable) urban design elements and safe system treatments on pedestrians' perceptions of safety and place. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method for providing detailed, interrogable, scalable citizen perception data of a variety of urban street design elements and safe system treatments, which allows a statistical analysis of responses and prioritization of the most effective pedestrian-oriented interventions for maintaining or enhancing street vibrancy and liveability. Our IVE e-participation approach is an important contribution to forming a better understanding of streetscapes and provides a valuable method for urban designers and transport planners to prioritise different streetscape place and safety approaches.

Predictive Factors for Stroke and TIA Following Carotid Artery Stenting

Purpose: Carotid artery stenting (CAS) is an effective and minimally invasive method for the treatment of extracranial carotid artery stenosis. The aim of the present study was to explore independent risk factors to predict cerebrovascular events following CAS to identify high-risk patients and improve the safety of CAS in this population. Materials and Methods: HISPANIAS is a national prospective multicenter study that included 14 hospitals that collected data from patients who underwent CAS. We analyzed morbidity and mortality within 30 days after CAS, looking for factors that might be associated with cerebrovascular events (stroke and transient ischemic attack [TIA]). Results: The HISPANIAS cohort included 757 patients: 80.32% were men, the mean age was 70.73 years, and 82.96% underwent symptomatic CAS. Cerebrovascular complications occurred in 42 patients (5.6%), including TIA in 24 patients (70.8% ipsilateral; mean 2.79 days after CAS) and stroke in 18 patients (72.2% ipsilateral; mean 6.72 days after CAS). The main independent clinical predictors of stroke/TIA identified by logistic regression were female sex (odds ratio [OR] 2.29, 95% CI 1.15–4.54) and diabetes (OR 3.29, 95% CI 1.71–6.40). Survival analysis showed that diabetic women, compared with the rest of the patients, had a higher number of events concentrated mainly in the first days after the intervention (p=0.003). Conclusion: Cerebrovascular ischemic complications after CAS continue to be a challenge for the management of these patients. Although there are other factors, female sex and the presence of diabetes are emerging as strong risk factors for the development of complications after symptomatic CAS. Clinical Impact Carotid artery stenting (CAS) is an effective and minimally invasive method for the treatment of extracranial carotid artery stenosis. Although CAS has been regarded as a reliable and safety approach, some studies reported that CAS was associated with a higher risk of procedure-related stroke. Cerebrovascular complications after CAS continue to be a main problem and a challenge for the management of these patients. Therefore, it is essential to identify the factors involved in the development of these complications. Our study shows that the combination of female sex and diabetes is associated with a clearly worse outcome, with a greater number of events concentrated mainly in the first days. This is different from other studies that have explored each factor separately. It would be interesting to perform separate interventions for this group given the increased risk of complications.

Small Tool Image Database and Object Detection Approach for Indoor Construction Site Safety

Object detection refers to computer vision technology that identifies the class and location of objects in an image. With the development of deep-learning techniques, object detection has been widely studied in the construction industry and has mainly focused on detecting heavy equipment and workers at outdoor sites. Therefore, an object detection model for small tools in indoor sites, where various accidents frequently occur owing to them, is required to enhance safety. In particular, many high-quality image databases are important for developing object detection approaches for small tools. In this study, 12 small tools commonly used in indoor construction were selected, and a database of 34,738 images of the selected tools was created and used to train the object detection models. YOLOv5x and YOLOv5s are selected as object detection models, for which the mean average precision with the 0.5 intersection-over-union value were 69.1% and 64.4%, respectively, and their frame rates were 58.82 and 142.86 frame per second, respectively. The results demonstrate that the established database is appropriate for the development of object detection for small tools and that object detection can be used for real-time safety management of construction indoor sites.

Towards Resilience and Autonomy-Based Approaches for Adolescents Online Safety

Towards Resilience and Autonomy-Based Approaches for Adolescents Online Safety

A Sensing, Communication and Computing Approach for Vulnerable Road Users Safety

Most fatal road accidents in urban areas involve vulnerable road users. New solutions for fighting against these accidents can be considered by leveraging connected, intelligent vehicles and smart cities connecting all parts of an urban environment. This work proposes a multi-sensing and communication approach to prevent potential accidents between vehicles and VRUs, by predicting and notifying both about potential collisions before they happen. This approach leverages and aggregates information from smart city sensors, dispersed in the vehicles (and aggregated by the On-Board Units, OBUs), in the VRUs (e.g., smartphones and smartwatches), and on the road itself (e.g. video cameras, radars, lidars). These elements communicate through several message standards and wireless access technologies (e.g. ITS-G5, C-V2X, LTE, 5G and, in the future, 6G). Using both sensing and communication, fusion and collision detection algorithms, this system predicts and notifies potential hazardous situations involving Vulnerable Road User (VRU)s and vehicles. The results in a real scenario with sensors, VRUs and vehicles on the road show that the system predicts potential collisions with high accuracy and low delay. Results also point to some vital deployment decisions that must be made to ensure proper notification timings, such as the usage of multi-homing, 5G and edge computing.

Update of the list of qualified presumption of safety (QPS) recommended microbiological agents intentionally added to food or feed as notified to EFSA 17: suitability of taxonomic units notified to EFSA until September 2022.

The qualified presumption of safety (QPS) approach was developed to provide a regularly updated generic pre-evaluation of the safety of microorganisms, intended for use in the food or feed chains, to support the work of EFSA's Scientific Panels. The QPS approach is based on an assessment of published data for each agent, with respect to its taxonomic identity, the body of relevant knowledge and safety concerns. Safety concerns identified for a taxonomic unit (TU) are, where possible, confirmed at the species/strain or product level and reflected by 'qualifications'. In the period covered by this Statement, new information was found leading to the withdrawal of the qualification 'absence of aminoglycoside production ability' for Bacillus velezensis. The qualification for Bacillus paralicheniformis was changed to 'absence of bacitracin production ability'. For the other TUs, no new information was found that would change the status of previously recommended QPS TUs. Of 52 microorganisms notified to EFSA between April and September 2022 (inclusive), 48 were not evaluated because: 7 were filamentous fungi, 3 were Enterococcus faecium, 2 were Escherichia coli, 1 was Streptomyces spp., and 35 were taxonomic units (TUs) that already have a QPS status. The other four TUs notified within this period, and one notified previously as a different species, which was recently reclassified, were evaluated for the first time for a possible QPS status: Xanthobacter spp. could not be assessed because it was not identified to the species level; Geobacillus thermodenitrificans is recommended for QPS status with the qualification 'absence of toxigenic activity'. Streptoccus oralis is not recommended for QPS status. Ogataea polymorpha is proposed for QPS status with the qualification 'for production purposes only'. Lactiplantibacillus argentoratensis (new species) is included in the QPS list.

Reflecting on choices and responsibility in palliative care in the context of social disadvantage.

There is a need to understand how to improve palliative care provision for people impacted by social inequity. Social inequity, such as that related to socioeconomic circumstances, has profound impacts on experiences of death and dying, posing personal and professional challenges for frontline professionals tasked to ensure that everyone receives the best standard of care at the end of their lives. Recent research has highlighted an urgent need to find ways of supporting healthcare professionals to acknowledge and unpack some of the challenges experienced when trying to deliver equitable palliative care. For example, those involved in patient or person-centred activities within health settings often feel comfortable focusing on individual choice and responsibility. This can become ethically problematic when considering that inequities experienced towards the end of life are produced and constrained by socio-structural forces beyond one individual's control. Ideas and theories originating outside palliative care, including work on structural injustice, cultural safety and capabilities approach, offer an alternative lens through which to consider roles and responsibilities for attending to inequities experienced at the end of life. This paper draws upon these ideas to offer a new way of framing individual responsibility, agency and collective action that may help palliative care professionals to support patients nearing their end of life, and their families, in the context of socioeconomic disadvantage. In this paper, we argue that, ultimately, for action on inequity in palliative care to be effective, it must be coherent with how people understand the production of, and responsibility for, those inequities, something that there is limited understanding of within palliative care.

Managing Major Foodborne Mycotoxins: A Therapeutic Approach for Safety and Health

Managing Major Foodborne Mycotoxins: A Therapeutic Approach for Safety and Health

Safety evaluation of the food enzyme β-galactosidase from the non-genetically modified Kluyveromyces lactis strain GD-YNL.

The food enzyme β-galactosidase (β-D-galactoside galactohydrolase, EC 3.2.1.23) is produced with the non-genetically modified Kluyveromyces lactis strain GD-YNL by Godo Shusei Co., Ltd. The food enzyme is intended to be used for the hydrolysis of lactose in milk processing, production of fermented milk products and whey processing. The food enzyme is also intended for lactose hydrolysis in milk products at home. Dietary exposure to the food enzyme-total organic solids (TOS) was estimated to be up to 54mg TOS/kg body weight per day in European populations. As the production strain qualifies for the qualified presumption of safety approach of safety assessment and as no issue of concern raised from the production process, no toxicological studies other than assessment of allergenicity were necessary. A search for the similarity of the amino acid sequence of the food enzyme to known allergens was made and no match was found. The Panelconsidered that, under the intended conditions of use, the risk of allergic reactions by dietary exposure cannot be excluded, but the likelihood is low. Based on the data provided, the Panelconcluded that this food enzyme does not give rise to safety concerns under the intended conditions of use.

Uloga i značaj bezbednosnog menadžmenta u civilnom vazduhoplovstvu

Civil aviation safety management is imposed as an imperative in modern circumstances characterized by increasing safety risks, challenges and threats. Ability to manage it is reflected in anticipating potential sources of threats, timely creation of adequate responses and ensuring that these responses are implemented in the system by means of recommendations, rules and procedures. This paper provides a systematic insight into the vital importance of a safety mindset in civil aviation through theoretical considerations of safety management and by describing the role and importance of safety risk management as its integral part. Special focus was placed on noticing the differences between traditional and modern approaches to safety management. The traditional approach focused on the consequences of events, the actions of operational staff involved in an incident, on prosecuting and punishing culpable individuals, while the modern safety approach focuses on active prevention in order to keep risks at an acceptable level. Thus, modern safety management practices have shifted from a reactive to a proactive and predictable approach.

AI Safety Approach for Minimizing Collisions in Autonomous Navigation

AI Safety Approach for Minimizing Collisions in Autonomous Navigation

Human-Computer Interaction: Lights, Shadows, and Spotlights

In the last decades, Information and Computer Technology (ICT) has become part and parcel of our lives, bringing undeniable advantages, especially in the workplace, both to individuals and organizations. Nonetheless, the increasingly massive use of ICT also contributed to a higher risk for maladaptive effects on quality of life, thus jeopardizing workers’ well-being. From the perspective of the organizational safety approach, the study of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is crucial. Despite this, so far, much attention has been paid to ergonomics and to technostress, but mostly from a sectorial perspective and disregarding several additional phenomena. In this conceptual paper, a multidimensional model able to go beyond the ergonomic features necessary to set a functional physical environment and facilitate the isomorphism mind-ICT is advocated. We point out a modern approach aimed at exploring additional dimensions underpinning HCI in the workplace, with a dual purpose: to highlight possible risk factors for maladjustment and to pave the way for intervention strategies to facilitate a healthy HCI.

Legal security and legal certainty of the individual: constitutional and legal aspect

In this article doctrinal approaches to the concept of legal safety are analyzed. In domestic jurisprudence legal safety, as a rule, is considered, first, as safety is right (a legal system, positive law) and, secondly, as legal security (security the right) from the most various threats. Meanwhile, in the first case the subject approach to a problem is almost completely ignored, and legal safety is presented in the form of set of certain requirements to quality of the law. In the second - the concept of legal safety excessively extends as practically all spheres of public life are to a degree covered by legal regulation. From this point of view the subnotion of legal safety gets, for example, ensuring labor protection or criminal protection of interests of society and the person. At the same time both approaches don’t consider “a human factor”: the person in this case is considered only as subject to protection. In this regard legal safety is considered as “part” or “component” of national security. At the same time, there is also an alternative point of view which was developed mainly in the foreign doctrine. According to her legal safety is considered as security of the personality from legal risks. From this point of view legal safety assumes lack of retroactive effect of the law, maintenance of legitimate trust, etc. In this sense legal safety approaches a concept of legal definiteness. On the basis of the analysis of the scientific points of view and legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation the authors come to a conclusion that legal safety represents the requirement of the actual or material legal definiteness. The fundamental principle of such material definiteness - maintenance of trust to the law and actions of public authorities that assumes not only formal aspect of lack of retroactive effect of the law, but also verification of the positive legislation of the rights which are rather affirmed by the constitution and freedoms of the person and citizen.

산업제어시스템 통합에 따른 안전계장 시스템 사이버 보안 취약점 평가 및 대응방안 연구

Although the Safety Instrumented System has been operated independently among industrial control systems for a long time, recently the industrial control system has been released as an integrated Distributed Control System based on an open platform because it is more cost-effective simplified and enhanced approach for advanced functional safety however it could be vulnerable to cybersecurity sector. Without considering of cybersecurity, the SIS has no guarantee its secured from cyberattacks. The discovery of the TRITON melware, which is targeting the SIS in 2017, is emphasized in the connection between the SIS and the DCS. Considering these issues the IEC Standard 61511 Second Edition which guarantees the functional safety of industrial processes updated new explicit requirement to conduct a security risk assessment. This study aims to investigate whether the Safety Instrumentation System (SIS), which has long been independently classified in the industrial control system considered irrelevant to cybersecurity problems, has become an appropriate cybersecurity design due to connection with the DCS, and to present vulnerability measures. For this study four domestic oil refineries and six petrochemical NCC plants were selected to analyze security design and weaknesses. As a result of all of plants were vulnerable to cybersecurity vulnerability therefore, the SIS is needed to be included appropriate design and assessment as part of the enhancement process.

ANALYSIS OF OCCUPATIONAL RISK MANAGEMENT MODELS ACCORDING TO INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS

An analysis of professional risk management models according to international standards is proposed, taking into account the interpretation of the main terms (danger, risk, incident risk assessment), to build a uniform approach in occupational safety and health management systems in organizations. To solve the problem, the method of morphological analysis was used, which is based on the selection of possible solutions for assessing the technological feasibility of occupational risk management models and making a rational decision regarding the features of documenting the assessment of occupational risks using integrated approaches, which made it possible to specify the elements that form local, topological and metric spaces A comparison of the interpretation of the main terms that form models of occupational risk management was carried out, based on the requirements of the EU-OSHA Workplace Risk Assessment Guide, Guidelines for Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems ILO-BHP 2001, ISO 45001: 2018 Occupational health and safety management systems. Requirements and guidelines for application". Built in accordance with the requirements of the specified international standards, professional risk management models that take into account differences in the interpretation of terminology. The concepts of acceptability (permissibility) and non-acceptability (non-permissibility) of professional risks for their assessment are defined. It has been established that the main difference between ISO 45001:2018 and the existing international standards regarding the requirements for occupational risk management is the consideration of all hazardous occupational factors that can significantly affect both the probability of the occurrence of a hazardous event and the severity of the consequences, which requires a review of the matrix approach to assessment professional risks. Forms for documenting the assessment of occupational risk are proposed, in accordance with the requirements of the specified standards, which reflect their differences formed in the considered models. The scientific novelty consists in substantiating the impact of professional risk management models on their documentation procedure. Forms for documenting the assessment of occupational risk are proposed, in accordance with the requirements of the specified standards, which reflect their differences formed in the considered models. Recommendations have been developed regarding the relationship between dangerous factors of the organization's environment and their impact on the level of professional risks.

Numerical Investigation and Prediction of Side-By-Side Tunneling Effects on Buried Pipelines

With the fast development of underground space engineering, it is inevitable for buried pipelines to be crossed by twin tunnels. Previous studies mainly focused on the single-tunneling effects on pipelines. To emphasize the twin-tunneling effects on buried pipelines, we first examined the effectiveness of the ground settlement prediction method under twin-tunneling conditions. Then, the estimated ground settlement boundary condition was applied to the beam-on-spring finite element model. The numerical results show that with the decrease in tunnel depth and twin tunnel space, the values and positions of the maximum ground settlement and longitudinal pipe bending behavior both changed significantly. The biased distance of the maximum settlement position and the distance to the inflection point of the final ground settlement curve can be obtained by curve fitting. Based on that, a semi-empirical prediction method for the longitudinal pipe bending strain was proposed. The predicted values matched quite well with the numerical results, which can thus provide a quick and effective structural safety and integrity assessment approach for buried pipelines subjected to twin-tunneling conditions.

SAFETY AND SECURITY ASSESSMENT OF TOURIST DESTINATIONS: A FIELD STUDY IN A NIGERIAN GEOPARK

In the travel industry, safety and security are imperative and any attraction sites which ignore these tasks stand to lose out on the intense competition for tourists. One way to ensure that safety and security are satisfactorily provided is to regularly assess and seek the perceptions of stakeholders. Studies that make such an attempt, particularly in a Nigerian Geopark are relatively underrepresented in the literature. This study therefore evaluates safety and security situations at a large geopark and one of the most visited tourist destinations in Nigeria. Through direct observation, an on-site assessment of safety and security measures was undertaken by experts. The assessment instrument was designed using an empirical adaptation of standards which have been suggested in the literature. In addition, members of the site management were interviewed on various outcomes of the field study. Generally, the safety and security architecture in the study area appeared to be insufficient as the management seemed restrained to be too proactive for fear of scaring wildlife and visitors. Besides, the management did not consider the site to be under any serious threat as no major accident and/or crime has been recorded in the last decade. The study concludes that safety and security approaches in the study area do not reflect standard measures but rather cautious approach and an overly dependence on a supposed good past record. The result of this study can facilitate standard practice for safety and security in tourist destinations. This study fills the knowledge gap by providing information on the Nigerian experience regarding safety and security of Geopark in the Global South.

FEASIBILITY OF AN EXERGAMING-BASED DANCE TRAINING PARADIGM IN THE HOME SETTING AMONG PEOPLE WITH CHRONIC STROKE

Abstract Background Dance-based exergaming (DBExG) from laboratory (phase 1 -p1) to a safe and feasible home-based exercise program (HEP- phase 2-p2) could enhance physical activity (PA) behavior, and can be used as a maintenance therapy in PwCS. However, traditionally structured HEP are interfaced with impediments for employing best practice for fall prevention safety approach at home settings in PwCS, thus, making it essential to evaluate training strategies that foster safety. Aim: To evaluate the feasibility, compliance, and safety of a safety harness augmented rehabilitation using DBExG training paradigm (SHARP). Methods Community-dwelling PwCS (n=7) participated in the study and received DBExG training using the commercially available Kinect dance gaming “Just Dance 3”. The first 6 weeks training (20 sessions) was provided in the laboratory setting (health coach stand by assistance – SBA). Followed with 4 more weeks (12 sessions) of SHARP in the participant’s house with health coach SBA. Results The primary focus was feasibility, addressed by acceptability, and retention. All the seven participants completed the laboratory, and home-based DBExG. All participants reported enjoying the sessions and felt they were beneficial. Study retention and session adherence was 90% and 98%, at p1, and p2 respectively. There were no falls, and adverse safety events reported in either phase of the study. The intervention was safe with no falls, and major adverse events. Conclusion SHARP appears feasible and safe, thus promising for home-based PA rehabilitation for PwCS. A larger randomized controlled trial is recommended to further investigate efficacy.