Technological Hazards Research Articles

Indicators of air transport sustainable development

World leaders gathered at the United Nations (UN) and adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is a plan of action aimed at achieving global sustainable development in economic, social and environmental areas, which ensures that no UN member state is left behind. The 17 sustainable development goals on the 2030 Agenda can be used as benchmarks for the coordinated development of UN member states. Aviation safety is an important component of the concept of general national security, the system of personal security, ecological and public safety and transport safety from external and internal threats. Maintaining an acceptable level of national aviation safety is a priority for the industry. The aviation transport is a part of the transport complex of Ukraine, which is an important component in the structure of the national economy and a link between all components of economic security to ensure the basic conditions of life and development of the state and society. The assessment of economic, technological, safety, social and ecological hazards is an integral part of all the logical blocks of the structural and functional scheme of strategic management of aviation safety in terms of sustainable development of the national economy. The task of the article is to determine and substantiate the main indicators of economic and technological development, safety, social and environmental components of air transport and assess their level. In the article the authors propose and present the dynamics in the period from 2010 to 2020 of 29 indicators of sustainable development of air transport of Ukraine, such us share of aviation transport in the gross value added (transport and communications); level of investment in aviation transport; level of export services of air transport; level of import services of aviation transport; level of shadowing of aviation transport; coefficient of manufacturability of aviation transport; capital utilization coefficient; level of shadow capital load; level of use of passenger capacity of aircraft and helicopters; level of renewal of fixed assets; cargo transport capacity of GDP by aviation transport; passenger transport capacity of GDP by aviation transport; average distance of cargo aviation transportation; average distance of passenger aviation transportation; ratio of domestic and international aviation transportation; catastrophes, accidents, serious coefficients for regular commercial/irregular commercial/non-commercial flights and execution of aviation works/training flights; level of wages in the production of aviation transport; level of employment in air transport; coefficient of population mobility; level of official GVA created by shadow wages; level of shadow employment; level of CO2 emissions of aviation transport of Ukraine to GDP; level of emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere; level of environmental costs of aviation transport. Authors determine their threshold and optimal values. Indicators are given in groups in the above areas. Indicators are divided into stimulants (indicators that contribute to the sustainable development of air transport and the national economy) and disincentives (indicators that hinder the sustainable development of air transport and the national economy). The solution of this problem will make it possible to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the current state of air transport in Ukraine on the basis of a systematic approach

Enhancing the environmental programmes of secondary education by using web-tools concerning precaution measures in civil protection: The case of Western Attica (Greece)

The environmental education programmes in secondary education are the primary tool for sensitizing and training the school population in dealing with environmental, biological and technological hazards. Despite their importance in the longterms civil protection, especially in areas with stressed environmental conditions like Western Attica (Greece), a decreasing interest on behalf of pupils is observed, as recorded in the last thirteen school-years (2006–19), regarding the issues of learning and taking precaution measures against natural disasters and environmental risks. With the purpose of making this particular topic of environmental education programmes more attractive to pupils, the usage of relevant web-tools has been inquired into and evaluated, according to certain standards of hazards’ classification. The results are presented in this paper, indicating that there is a necessity for modernizing the educational process and for upgrading the web-content, in order to become adequate.

Unravelling the magic of latent safety threats

Sterile processing errors in medical and dental offices are ranked the third highest hazard according to the annual ECRI ‘Top 10 Health Technology Hazards’ 2020 report. Other experts have raised similar concerns with sterilisation processes. For example, the WHO and the Clinical Engineering Division of International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) have partnered to provide a series of webinars with international experts exchanging knowledge on COVID-19 related critical topics. A recent webinar addressed the critical challenge of decontamination and disinfection of COVID-19 medical equipment in low-income and middle-income countries. During the webinar, participants asked about methodologies to assess whether the transmission of infection is borne by technological tools used to fight the disease. How can critical lifesaving breathing equipment be safely and quickly sterilised and moved from one patient to the next? The WHO/IFMBE webinar2 stated that ‘engineers and infection control professionals seem to be working in different silos’. Such silos must be dismantled because medical technology is indispensable in the provisioning of healthcare services. Disinfection and sterilisation of medical equipment are key concerns for healthcare organisations, and they require serious consideration of sociotechnical system interactions. The annual ‘top 10 Health Technology Hazards report’ is based on retrospective studies, yet management of COVID-19 safety requires capacity to process real- time data and the input of experts to predict where risks may occur and how to deploy plans to maintain a safe healthcare environment.

Collaborative planning principles for disaster preparedness

Natural and technological hazards can have consequences of a scale and severity far exceeding most human experience. Massive earthquakes predicted as imminent for some regions of the world, fires engulfing large tracts of land and the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 illustrate several key preparedness challenges. The hazards literature stresses the importance of involving communities in decisions before, during and after calamitous events occur. Currently, community planning and hazard risk management planning are largely carried out in separate tracks that seldom intersect. We propose that hazard risk managers may benefit from integrating in their approaches collaborative planning principles, especially at the pre-disaster stage. We further propose that community planners deliberately consider hazards and integrate the potential consequences of a disaster into routine plan-making, boosting communities’ resilience. Finally, since citizen involvement is necessary but burdensome in both planning and hazards management, we suggest a set of criteria for considering who—from among the many community and public stakeholders—should be involved, when, and how.

Re-designing the Built Environment as a Strategic Tool for Anticipating Emergency Situations: The Greek Strategy for Dealing with COVID-19 Crisis

In recent years, there has been an exponential increase of hazards that may threat humanity in a global basis – depicting the correlation of climate crisis with the frequency and intensity of large-scale natural disasters recorded worldwide, like mega-fires, floods and hurricanes, with social, economic and environmental devastating consequences. However, apart from the aforementioned natural disasters and any possible technological hazards, humanity was recently threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic, facing the most challenging sanitary crisis of the latest years. Cities on a global scale need to adapt directly to the new extraordinary conditions, in order to meet the various challenges and minimize losses. The sudden and severe crisis of COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for rapid adaptive measures in order to increase societies’ coping capacity and strengthen urban resilience. In this paper, planning and re-designing of the existing built environment is proposed as a tool for anticipating a number of emergency situations that may arise in urban areas, including epidemic crises, whereby the case study presented concerns on Athens Metropolitan Area (AMA), in Greece. In this context, a number of pilot interventions have been proposed for the built environment in order to combat COVID-19 spreading, such as pop-up bike lanes, or pedestrian movement pathways, under the perspective of using less mass transportation means, supporting the “green transportation” of citizens, fostering well-being, securing undisrupted mobility of the supply chain, etc. All the above interventions could be seen as proposed good practices for cities’ adaption to extreme conditions, tailor-made to their specific needs. However, the challenge that remains is how to easily apply measures that could be proven useful in any type of emergencies in ensuring sustainable urban resilience, e.g. use a pop-up bike lane initially designed to anticipate a lockdown, as an emergency lane for ambulances in case that a mass casualty earthquake strikes, among others.

Technological Hazard Vulnerability: A GIS-Based Approach for Supporting Environmental Zoning.

Technological hazard assessments are extremely rare in Brazil, despite their importance for planning. Aquatic systems are of particular concern, since they are the endpoint of every process occurring in the watershed, including technological disasters. Thus, our goal is to map the technological hazard vulnerability in lagoon systems though a geographic information systems (GIS) model. The technological hazard vulnerability model consists of the spatial overlapping of technological pressure and fragility, having environmental systems as spatial units. The methodology was applied to the lagoon systems of the Rio Grande do Sul State, Southern Brazil, as a case study. The very high vulnerability of the Northern Guaíba Lake is due to the high concentration of technological infrastructures combined with high fragilities of wetland systems. In the Patos Lagoon Estuary, highly vulnerable systems consist mostly in shallow waters. The Mirim Lagoon was less vulnerable compared to other systems, due to a much smaller occurrence of elements of technological pressure. The proposed methodology allowed for the identification of environmental systems particularly vulnerable to technological hazards, where management efforts must be more intense. The results were used for the Ecological-Economic Zoning of the Rio Grande do Sul, as well as to revise the water quality framework of the Patos Lagoon estuary, currently underway. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2021;17:445-454. © 2020 SETAC.

Development of risk acceptance criteria in the Indian context

There is a vital need for India to adopt risk acceptance criteria (RAC) relating to major hazard industries as it attempts to transform into a major global economy over the coming decades. The present work develops a generalized methodology for establishing RAC, and demonstrates its application in the Indian context. Risk levels from a wide range of natural and technological hazards faced by Indian people is analysed vis-à-vis those of select developed and other emerging economies. It is argued that despite the divergence of key risk metrics and socio-economic parameters – per capita GDP, average wage, value of statistical life, and the degree of risk aversion – between India and representative developed economies, it is viable to align the prospective RACs for India with best global guidelines. Based on the ALARP principle, for employees and the public, the intolerable individual risk levels are projected to be 10−3 and 10-4/year respectively, while the broadly acceptable level for both is proposed to be 10-6/year. For the societal RAC, the slope of the benchmark F–N curve is fixed at -1.0, while for a maximum of 10 human fatalities the anchor intolerable and acceptable frequency points are suggested to be 10−3/year and 10-5/year, respectively. It is hoped that these benchmarks would help regulatory intensification, and a strategic mitigation of both technological and natural hazards encountered in India.

Do intentions indicate actual behaviour? A comparison between scenario‐based experiments and real‐time observations of warning response

AbstractThe sharp increase in the use of smartphones and rapid advances in mobile communication offer new ways to warn the public about developing natural or technological hazards. So far, the effectiveness of different warning types, namely standard and impact‐based warnings (SW and IBW), were mainly tested in scenario‐based experiments and not in real life. However, it can be questioned whether scenario‐based experiments are the appropriate methodology to test different warnings, for instance due to the absence of feelings catalysed by real events. Therefore, we collected information about warning responses in real time via the smartphone application ‘Wetter‐Alarm’ of a Swiss weather provider. In the first phase of the study, we conducted a field experiment to investigate actual responses for SW and IBW. In the second phase, we compared these results with behavioural intentions collected via a scenario‐based experiment with an almost identical set‐up. The comparison shows that warning messages were perceived and understood very similar in both experiments. Also, we did not observe any significant interactions between warning type (SW vs. IBW) and study (field vs. scenario‐based experiment). These findings indicate that the effects of warning type on behaviour can be studied on the basis of experimental (i.e. scenario‐based) research designs. The paper ends with some reflections on the potential of big data in the social sciences and on a research agenda for real‐time data collection to improve warning effectiveness and, ultimately, climate risk management.

Study on the Combination of Low-Pressure Hydrogen Cylinder and Non-sintered Ceramic Wall to Solve Water Permeability

Global green energy development by many technological breakthroughs, so that the new composite materials modified and designed, so that new energy has a new look, this study to improve people’s high-pressure hydrogen storage of hydrogen energy technology hazards and hidden worries, so design and improve the local low-pressure hydrogen storage combined with secondary building wall design, and sustainable environmental thinking, The use of waste ceramic reuse technology, combined with low-pressure hydrogen bottle design to form a new composite material structure, and the best parameters to solve waterproof non-sintered ceramic clad metal material research, and OM, salt spray, perspective X-RAY observation with metal now ceramic anti-corrosion permeability, the future use of geotechnical engineering, building diversification. More so that hydrogen in non-high pressure, more in people’s life circle and local hydrogen storage and PC use. Thank partially support by the MOST 108-2221-E-343-001.

Russian low carbon development strategy

The article presents the key results of scenario projections that underpinned the Strategy for long-term low carbon economic development of the Russian Federation to 2050, including analysis of potential Russia’s GHG emission mitigation commitments to 2050 and assessment of relevant costs, benefits, and implications for Russia’s GDP. Low carbon transformation of the Russian economy is presented as a potential driver for economic growth that offers trillions-of-dollars-worth market niches for low carbon products by mid-21st century. Transition to low carbon economic growth is irreversible. Lagging behind in this technological race entails a security risk and technological backwardness hazards.

Considering Cumulative Social Effects of Technological Hazards and Disasters

This article describes research designs utilized to study cumulative sociocultural and psychosocial effects of technological hazards and disasters. We apply these designs to two cases: (a) the Exxon Valdez disaster with a focus on Cordova, Alaska, and (b) the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project with a focus on the Gitga’at First Nation in Hartley Bay, British Columbia, Canada. The Exxon Valdez oil spill began in 1989 with the grounding of the supertanker on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Fisheries collapsed, key species failed to recover, and litigation languished for 19 years, creating an accumulation of impacts from the initial event. The Gitga’at First Nation serves as a case for examining cumulative effects of energy development, specifically the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project proposed in 2010. Hartley Bay’s sociocultural and psychosocial well-being are under threat from these and other ongoing development activities; they have also endured centuries of government-led subjugation. In studying each of these communities, we used mixed methods approaches that combined document review, observations, interviews, and surveys. Based on our experiences, we contend that the most effective way to examine cumulative social impacts is to employ concepts and theories drawn from existing research to support guidelines, frameworks, and methods.

How risky is the introduction of fuel cell electric vehicles in a Mediterranean town?

The incorporation of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) in public transport is a fundamental step towards the minimization of the emissions due to transportation globally. In-depth studies are required regarding the potential risk from the storage of hydrogen, the transportation of hydrogen to refuelling stations and the refuelling procedure. Thus, it is a prerequisite to establish a holistic baseline which is related to FCEV safety during operation/maintenance, especially to a country in which the sales of these types of vehicles are significantly low. This paper suggests the employment of operational risk management methodology. Relevant experts and stakeholders requested to fill out an ‘‘Event-Probability Matrix’’ per scenario of likely hazards. This research estimates the interest of the local society about technological hazards and the conviction that hydrogen vehicles could be as safe as conventional vehicles. Additional critical scenarios related to the hydrogen storage are analyzed.

Alarm Strategies and Surveillance for Mechanical Ventilation.

Clinical alarms, including those for mechanical ventilation, have been one of the leading causes of health technology hazards. It has been reported that < 15% of alarms studied rose to the level of being clinically relevant or actionable. Most alarms in health care, whether by default or intention, are set to a hypothetical average patient, which is essentially a one size fits most approach. A method of tuning to individual patient characteristics is possible, similar to the treatment philosophy of precision medicine. The excessive amount of alarms in a clinical environment is thought to be the largest contributing factor to alarm-related adverse events. All these factors come to bear on human perception and response to mechanical ventilation and clinical alarms. Observations of human response to stimuli suggest that response to alarms is closely matched to the perceived reliability and value of the alarm system. This paper provides a review examining vulnerabilities in the current management of mechanical ventilation alarms and summarizes best practices identified to help prevent patient injury. This review examines the factors that affect alarm utility and provides recommendations for applying research findings to improve safety for patients, clinician efficiency, and clinician well-being.

Features and legal problems of territorial planning in the power industry

In the article system of territorial planning in the power industry are examined, territorial planning within the system of strategic planning of the power industry is situated. It’s shown that the main objective of territorial planning in the power industry is the long‑term reservation areas necessary for the next location of energy facilities planned for construction and renovation. The author considers main problems of territorial planning in the power industry are the high level of technological and environmental hazards of the majority of planned energy facilities, the necessity to establish areas with special circumstances, when the use of land and plots of land is restricted, the lack of legal mechanism ensuring compliance with environmental requirements when the location of energy facilities are determined.

Analysis of an improved workflow of endoscope reprocessing for bedside endoscopic diagnosis and treatment on COVID-19 patients.

Severe cases infected with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), named by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Feb. 11, 2020, tend to present a hypercatabolic state because of severe systemic consumption, and are susceptible to stress ulcers and even life-threatening gastrointestinal bleeding. Endoscopic diagnosis and treatment constitute an irreplaceable part in the handling of severe COVID-19 cases. Endoscopes, as reusable precision instruments with complicated structures, require more techniques than other medical devices in cleaning, disinfection, sterilization, and other reprocessing procedures. From 2016 to 2019, health care-acquired infection caused by improper endoscope reprocessing has always been among the top 5 on the list of top 10 health technology hazards issued by the Emergency Care Research Institute. Considering the highly infective nature of COVID-19 and the potential aerosol contamination therefrom, it is of pivotal significance to ensure that endoscopes are strictly reprocessed between uses. In accordance with the national standard “Regulation for Cleaning and Disinfection Technique of Flexible Endoscope (WS507-2016),” we improved the workflow of endoscope reprocessing including the selection of chemicals in an effort to ensure quality control throughout the clinical management towards COVID-19 patients. Based on the experience we attained from the 12 severe COVID-19 cases in our hospital who underwent endoscopy 23 times in total, the article provides an improved version of endoscopic reprocessing guidelines for bedside endoscopic diagnosis and treatment on COVID-19 patients for reference.

Natech or natural? An analysis of hazard perceptions, institutional trust, and future storm worry following Hurricane Harvey

Researchers have traditionally conceptualized hazards that give rise to disasters as “natural” or “technological.” An extensive literature has documented differential social consequences based on this distinction, including the emergence of corrosive community dynamics in the context of technological disasters. There is also growing recognition that many disasters can be conceptualized as “natech”—processes characterized by a combination of natural and technological hazards. On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the central Texas Gulf Coast, causing catastrophic flooding and extensive releases of industrial toxins. We examined variation in institutional trust and future storm worry in the aftermath of Harvey, paying special attention to differences between those who viewed the disaster as being primarily natech and natural. Drawing on the Survey of Trauma, Resilience, and Opportunity in Neighborhoods in the Gulf, we analyzed two waves of cohort panel data collected from households on the Texas Gulf Coast in 2016 and 2018 (before and after Hurricane Harvey). Our findings showed that those who perceived Harvey as natech (compared to natural) were significantly more likely distrust major institutional actors and be worried about the impacts of future storms, even after accounting for pre-hurricane characteristics. Implications for community dynamics and future research are then discussed.

Man-Made Hazards Environmental Management in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia)

It is shown that the technological safety ensuring is in demand in the modern world, the person and society interests protection is impossible without the environment preservation. The safety problem of socio-natural-technogenic systems is relevant in the territory of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The technological hazards specificity of the region’s territory is determined by the extreme climate characteristics. Probable man-made hazards on the republic territory are shown and the main indicators of water pollution are given. Common technogenic dangerous objects on the Republic territory are established: production associated with the extraction, transportation, oil and petroleum products storage and tailing dumps. Social components determined by the traditional environmental management violation and the way of indigenous peoples’ life are not sufficiently taken into account in the damages assessment. The basic principles of environmental policy are given.

Impact of Technology Hazards and Regulatory Methods on Commercial Fusion Development

The past ten years has seen a significant investment in private companies pursuing commercialization of fusion technology. The successful near-term development and deployment of fusion technology will partially depend on the ability of designers to meet regulatory requirements for safety standards. Since no clear regulations or a regulatory body exists for commercial fusion technology, the designers have an opportunity to propose an efficient pathway for licensing and regulation that protects the public health and addresses technology hazards. While fusion has widely been regarded as an inherently safe technology, current approaches to commercial fusion—specifically fuel cycles requiring radioactive tritium—have inherent hazards that must be controlled, mitigated, or eliminated. Various regulatory evaluation methods, design strategies, and analysis tools can be used to demonstrate and ensure safety but each approach will impact the technical, economic, or social feasibility of the technology. This article first discusses different regulatory evaluation methods that could be used to support the licensing of fusion technology and the potential impact of these methods on the subsequent level of regulatory oversight for commercial fusion. Second, techniques for the reduction of calculated hazard consequences by design or analysis are presented. Third, the impact of these different regulatory evaluation methods and hazard reduction techniques on design and analysis of fusion technology is reviewed. Finally, offsite hazards associated with a commercial-scale fusion facility are discussed to illustrate the need for a more detailed investigation of the hazards of commercial fusion and hazard-reducing design and analysis methodologies.

Prevalence of internet gaming disorder in India: a technological hazard among adolescents

Background: Internet gaming disorder (IGD) refers to the problematic use of on-line or off-line video games. Presently the prevalence of IGD among the adolescent group was between 1.3% to 19.9% and males reported more prevalence than females. Aims of this study was to know the prevalence and the various factors associated with the development IGD among adolescents.Methods: Settings and Design was to a cross sectional study was conducted among students of High schools for a period of 3 months from July 2018 - September 2018. Four hundred adolescent students were included in the study. English version of the DSM–5 short (9-item) dichotomous scale with cut-off point of five or more criteria was used for diagnosing the IGD.Statistical analysis used descriptive statistics were represented with frequencies and percentages. Chi-square and Fisher Exact tests were applied to find significance difference. P&lt;0.05 was considered as statistically significant.Results: An overall prevalence estimate of IGD was 3.50% among the school children and it is higher among male students (8.8%) than female students (0.8%) and it was found statistically significant with a p value of &lt;0.001.Conclusions: The prevalence differences between Age groups, gender, class of the student and availability of smart phone with internet facility act as an important risk factors for the occurrence of IGD among adolescents.

Application of a multi-hazard risk assessment for local planning

Multi-hazard assessments are increasingly vital to communities as exposures continue to change. Their data can provide a nuanced understanding of hazard interactions and their contribution to risk reduction. In previous work, the Patterns of Risk using an Integrated Spatial Multi-Hazard (PRISM) approach produces composite measures of vulnerability and risk at the county level for this purpose. The approach has the flexibility to be applied at a local level to benefit hazard vulnerability assessments and community sustainability planning activities. In this article, we use U.S. census tracts as proxy for neighbourhoods for a localized PRISM approach. The goal is to demonstrate the applicability of the PRISM approach at the community level and identify vulnerabilities in social, cultural, economic, and built systems for use in comparative analyses and mitigation planning. Exposure estimates are created using spatial extents and modelled data from 12 natural and 4 technological hazards. Land area, population counts, and property values are used to estimate vulnerability. National patterns of exposure, vulnerability, and risk reveal distinct regional trends that point to the importance of how impacts are defined. Eight case study examples demonstrate how the data can be analyzed to compare drivers of community vulnerability and risk.