Unknown Hazards Research Articles

Assessing Unknown Hazards for SOTIF Based on Twin Scenarios Empowered Autonomous Driving

Assessing Unknown Hazards for SOTIF Based on Twin Scenarios Empowered Autonomous Driving

Ecological Robustness-Oriented Grid Network Design for Resilience Against Multiple Hazards

Power systems are critical infrastructure for reliable and secure electric energy delivery. Incidents are increasing, as unexpected multiple hazards ranging from natural disasters to cyberattacks threaten the security and functionality of society. Inspired by resilient ecosystems, this paper presents a resilient network design approach with an ecological robustness (R <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ECO</sub> )-oriented optimization to improve power systems' ability to maintain a secure operating state throughout unknown hazards. The approach uses R <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ECO</sub> , a <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">surprisal</i> -based metric that captures key features of an ecosystem's resilient structure, as an objective to strategically design the electrical network. The approach enables solvability and practicality by introducing a stochastic-based candidate branch creation algorithm and a Taylor series expansion for relaxation of the R <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ECO</sub> formulation. Finally, studies are conducted on the R <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ECO</sub> -oriented approach using the IEEE 24 Bus RTS and the ACTIVSg200 systems. Results demonstrate improvement of the system's reliability under multiple hazards, network properties of robust structure and equally distributed power flows, and survivability against cascading failures. From the analysis, we observe that a more redundant network structure with equally distributed power flows benefits its resilience.

Semiparametric transformation model in presence of cure fraction: a hierarchical Bayesian approach assuming the unknown hazards as latent factors

Semiparametric transformation model in presence of cure fraction: a hierarchical Bayesian approach assuming the unknown hazards as latent factors

The application of the precautionary principle in the decision of releasing Fukushima radioactive contaminated water into the sea

The “precautionary principle” is an important and forward-looking principle. Its advancement lies in surmount any time lag in scientific knowledge. As the importance of protecting against unknown hazards has increased, the precautionary principle has been widely accepted by international and domestic legal instruments. By examining international legal documents and judicial practices, it can be found that the legal effect and legal connotation of the precautionary principle have been constantly improved in international law. At the same time, the Precautionary principle in international judicial practice has also changed from initial hesitation and caution to acceptance, even promotion. Japan's decision to release radioactive contaminated water clearly violates the precautionary principle. However, due to normative deficiencies in the precautionary principle itself, it remains unclear which acts should be performed byobligatory parties to be regarded as fulfilling their precautionary obligation. These deficiencies may cause the precautionary principle cannot be truly implemented in international judicial practice. Despite some vagueness, it is still possible to extract the two most basic responsibilities from international judicial practice, and their legal connotations in fulfillment of the precautionary principle: first, to consult with other stakeholders and second, to stop potentially dangerous behaviors that may cause serious and irreversible damage to the environment. At a legal level, to address Japan’s decision, the precautionary principle can regulate pollution discharge in two forms: customary international law and the general principle of international law. From the perspective of people’s survival, safety, and development sustainability, it is imperative to apply the precautionary principle to this incident. The decision of the Japanese government to discharge nuclear-polluted water into the Pacific Ocean is a serious breach of international law, because it was only considered in terms of technical feasibility and not in terms of international legal implications.

Electrical Shock During Phone Assisted Troubleshooting of Laboratory Equipment

Researchers have the potential to be exposed to a wide variety of hazards inherent to the equipment they use and maintain. When equipment does not function as expected, researchers sometimes reach out to their vendors for assistance. Early diagnostic or troubleshooting interactions between researcher and vendor are often conducted over the telephone and can lead to researchers performing work outside of their area of expertise and exposure to unknown hazards. This type of interaction significantly contributed to an incident where during diagnostic activities a researcher accidentally contacted, and discharged, a capacitor in an X-ray diffraction instrument. While this incident did not produce a serious injury, if the capacitor discharge path had occurred hand-to-hand across the heart, a serious injury may have been possible.

Synthetic Fault Mode Generation for Resilience Analysis and Failure Mechanism Discovery

Abstract Traditional risk-based design processes seek to mitigate operational hazards by manually identifying possible faults and devising corresponding mitigation strategies—a tedious process which critically relies on the designer’s limited knowledge. In contrast, resilience-based design seeks to embody generic hazard-mitigating properties in the system to mitigate unknown hazards, often by modelling the system’s response to potential randomly generated hazardous events. This work creates a framework to adapt these scenario generation approaches to the traditional risk-based design process to synthetically generate fault modes by representing them as a unique combination of internal component fault states, which can then be injected and simulated in a model of system failure dynamics. Based on these simulations, the designer may then better understand the underlying failure mechanisms and mitigate them by design. The performance of this approach is evaluated in a model of an autonomous rover, where cluster analysis shows that elaborating the faulty state-space in the drive system uncovers a wider range of possible hazardous trajectories and failure consequences within each trajectory than would be uncovered from manual mode identification. However, this increase in hazard information gained from exhaustive mode sampling comes at a high computational expense, highlighting the need for advanced, efficient methods to search and sample the faulty state-space.

Hybrid Machine Learning–Statistical Method for Anomaly Detection in Flight Data

This paper investigates the use of an unsupervised hybrid statistical–local outlier factor algorithm to detect anomalies in time-series flight data. Flight data analysis is an activity carried out by airlines primarily as a means of improving the safety and operation of their fleet. Traditionally, this is performed by checking exceedances in pre-set limits to the flight data parameters. However, this method highlights single events during a flight, making this analysis laborious. The process also fails to establish trends or reflect potential unknown hazards. This research took advantage of machine learning techniques to recognize patterns in large datasets by implementing the local outlier factor (LOF). In order to minimize human input, a statistical approach was adopted to establish the threshold value above which the flights are considered to be anomalous and interpret the scores. This paper shows that LOF quantifies the degree of outlier-ness of an outlier rather than binary categorizing a point into inlier or outlier, as in the case of clustering algorithms. Thus, with LOF, for the first time, we demonstrated that in the aviation industry, anomalous flights could not only be identified but also be given an anomaly score to compare two anomalous flights in an unsupervised manner. Furthermore, LOF helps to track anomalous behavior in time during the flight. This is insightful when a flight is abnormal, only for some seconds or short duration. For the first time, we attempted to detect flight parameters responsible for anomalous behavior or at least give direction to human experts looking for the cause of abnormal behavior. This was all analyzed with real-life flight data in an unsupervised manner in contrast to simulated data.

Managing Neurosurgery in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: COVID-19 quickly spread around the world as an epidemic with potentially unknown hazards. Like its impacts on various occupations, neurosurgery has undergone changes due to the virus, including changes in surgical planning, inpatient and outpatient clinics, emergency management, and even academic activities. Objectives: The present study was performed to determine neurosurgery challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran. Methods: The present study was conducted as a mixed qualitative and quantitative study in 2021. In the qualitative section using the targeted sampling method, 11 members of the target community were selected using the available sampling method and completed a questionnaire. The qualitative part was conducted in two stages of reviewing texts and interviewing experts and in the quantitative part we evaluated the validity of the structure and the reliability of the questionnaire. Results: This study examined in detail all aspects of the effects of COVID-19 on neurosurgery. 9 dimensions and 61 items were identified as the challenges of neurosurgery during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order of importance, the aspects were: treatment outcome, manpower, management psychological and physical diseases, education and research, tools and physical space, ethics, financial implications and information technology. Conclusion: The outbreak of epidemics has different risks for specialties, among them neurosurgery. Accordingly, to observe patien

Design and Analysis of System to Detect Anomaly from Network Traffic to Improve the Security and Improve Performance

As network infrastructure maintenance becomes more complex, network traffic monitoring becomes an increasingly vital part of the process. Many specialized solutions for online network traffic monitoring are available to fight against common (and well-known) assaults by quickly limiting portions of the traffic. It is possible, however, that there are unknown hazards in network traffic with slow-in-time changing characteristics. On–line tools are unlikely to pick up on non–rapidly changing variable values. Using data mining, it is still possible to discover these shifts. An approach for anomaly identification in network traffic monitoring, the Red-Blue State Merging Algorithm and the RTI Algorithm with process, are discussed in the study. The results of this study are based on genuine data from github, which is used in the paper.

Limitations of currently available in vitro oestrogenicity bioassays for effect-based testing of whole foods as the basis for decision making

ABSTRACT The idea that previously unknown hazards can be readily revealed in complex mixtures such as foods is a seductive one, giving rise to the hope that data from effect-based assays of food products collected in market surveys is of suitable quality to be the basis for data-driven decision-making. To study this, we undertook a comparative study of the oestrogenicity of blinded cereal samples, both in a number of external testing laboratories and in our own facility. The results clearly showed little variance in the activities of 9 samples when using a single method, but great differences between the activities from each method. Further exploration of these findings suggest that the oestrogenic activity is likely an inherent part of the natural food matrix which the varying sample preparation methods are able to release and extract to differing degrees. These issues indicate the current poor suitability of these types of datasets to be used as the basis for consumer advice or food decision-making. Data quality must be improved before such testing is used in practice.

Advances in Synthetic Biology and Biosafety Governance.

Tremendous advances in the field of synthetic biology have been witnessed in multiple areas including life sciences, industrial development, and environmental bio-remediation. However, due to the limitations of human understanding in the code of life, any possible intended or unintended uses of synthetic biology, and other unknown reasons, the development and application of this technology has raised concerns over biosafety, biosecurity, and even cyberbiosecurity that they may expose public health and the environment to unknown hazards. Over the past decades, some countries in Europe, America, and Asia have enacted laws and regulations to control the application of synthetic biology techniques in basic and applied research and this has resulted in some benefits. The outbreak of the COVID-19 caused by novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and various speculations about the origin of this virus have attracted more attention on bio-risk concerns of synthetic biology because of its potential power and uncertainty in the synthesis and engineering of living organisms. Therefore, it is crucial to scrutinize the control measures put in place to ensure appropriate use, promote the development of synthetic biology, and strengthen the governance of pathogen-related research, although the true origin of coronavirus remains hotly debated and unresolved. This article reviews the recent progress made in the field of synthetic biology and combs laws and regulations in governing bio-risk issues. We emphasize the urgent need for legislative and regulatory constraints and oversight to address the biological risks of synthetic biology.

Are Regulations Safe? Reflections From Developing a Digital Cancer Decision-Support Tool.

PURPOSEInformatics solutions to early diagnosis of cancer in primary care are increasingly prevalent, but it is not clear whether existing and planned standards and regulations sufficiently address patients' safety nor whether these standards are fit for purpose. We use a patient safety perspective to reflect on the development of a computerized cancer risk assessment tool embedded within a UK primary care electronic health record system.METHODSWe developed a computerized version of the CAncer Prevention in ExetER studies risk assessment tool, in compliance with the European Union's Medical Device Regulations. The process of building this tool afforded an opportunity to reflect on clinical concerns and whether current regulations for medical devices are fit for purpose. We identified concerns for patient safety and developed nine practical recommendations to mitigate these concerns.RESULTSWe noted that medical device regulations (1) were initially created for hardware devices rather than software, (2) offer one-shot approval rather than supporting iterative innovation and learning, (3) are biased toward loss-transfer approaches that attempt to manage the fallout of harm instead of mitigating hazards becoming harmful, and (4) are biased toward known hazards, despite unknown hazards being an expected consequence of health care as a complex adaptive system. Our nine recommendations focus on embedding less-reductionist and stronger system perspectives into regulations and standards.CONCLUSIONOur intention is to share our experience to support research-led collaborative development of health informatics solutions in cancer. We argue that regulations in the European Union do not sufficiently address the complexity of healthcare information systems with consequences for patient safety. Future standards and regulations should continue to follow a system-based approach to risk, safety, and accident avoidance.

Staring at the Sun during Wildfire Season: Knowledge, Uncertainty, and Front-Line Resistance in Disaster Preparation.

As climate change increases the frequency and severity of disasters, and population and social changes raise the public’s vulnerability to disaster events, societies face additional risk of multiple disaster events or other hazards occurring simultaneously. Such hazards involve significant uncertainty, which must be translated into concrete plans able to be implemented by disaster workers. Little research has explored how disaster managers incorporate different forms of knowledge and uncertainty into preparations for simultaneous hazards or disaster events, or how front-line disaster workers respond to and implement these plans. In this paper I draw on ethnographic research working as a wildland firefighter, interviews with firefighters and fire managers, and state and agency planning documents to examine preparations for two events occurring in Central Oregon in August 2017: (1) the height of wildfire season and (2) hundreds of thousands of anticipated visitors for a total solar eclipse. I find that different qualities of risk, hazard, and uncertainty across these two events were central to the development and implementation of disaster plans. Agency leaders devised worst-case scenario plans for the eclipse based on uncertain predictions regarding hazards from the eclipse and the occurrence of severe wildfires, aiming to eliminate the potential for unknown hazards. These plans were generally met with skepticism by front-line disaster workers. Despite the uncertainties that dominated eclipse-planning rhetoric, firefighters largely identified risks from the eclipse that were risks they dealt with in their daily work as firefighters. I conclude by discussing implications of these findings for conceptual understandings of disaster planning as well as contemporary concerns about skepticism and conspiracy theories directed at government planning and response to disaster events.

Further Development of a New Concept in Small Scale Forestry: “Forest-Management-Service-Contracts” in Bavaria

The forests in Bavaria cover about one third of its land area or 2.56 Mio hectares (ha) and the major part of this forest is held by private forest owners. Around 700 000 landlords manage approximately 1.4 Mio ha. In Bavaria, about 130 Forest Owner Associations (FOAs) play a key role in managing the small scale forests. In the last years, a new concept in small scale forest management arose, “Forest-Management-Service-Contract” (FMSC). The statutory corporations needed a proper management for their forests accordingly the German forest laws and the FOA took the chance to adopt a new business concept. In Bavaria exist about 3000 forest-management-service-contracts, covering over 40.000 hectares. In a current project “Further development of the successful concept – Forest-Management-Service-Contracts – through economic analysis” will be elaborated a data base for the better understanding of the crucial to success factors of FMSC. The economic analysis of the FMSC will base on business process analysis related to the administration of FMSC, on economic operating figures deviated from a single contract analysis and performance data. This information base aims to optimize the contracting process and to reduce the risks related to unknown hazards of the single FMSC.

Assessment of source and treated water quality in seven drinking water treatment plants by in vitro bioassays – Oxidative stress and antiandrogenic effects after artificial infiltration

Drinking water quality and treatment efficacy was investigated in seven drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs), using water from the river Göta Älv, which also is a recipient of treated sewage water. A panel of cell-based bioassays was used, including measurements of receptor activity of aryl hydrocarbon (AhR), estrogen (ER), androgen (AR), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARα) as well as induction of oxidative stress (Nrf2) and micronuclei formation. Grab water samples were concentrated by solid phase extraction (SPE) and water samples were analyzed at a relative enrichment factor of 50. High activities of AhR, ER and AR antagonism were present in WWTP outlets along the river. Inlet water from the river exhibited AhR and AR antagonistic activities. AhR activity was removed by DWTPs using granulated activated carbon (GAC) and artificial infiltration. AR antagonistic activity was removed by the treatment plants, except the artificial infiltration plant, which actually increased the activity. Furthermore, treated drinking water from the DWTP using artificial infiltration exhibited high Nrf2 activity, which was not found in any of the other water samples. Nrf2 activity was found in water from eight of the 13 abstraction wells, collecting water from the artificial infiltration. No genotoxic activity was detected at non-cytotoxic concentrations. No Nrf2 or AR antagonistic activities were detected in the inlet or outlet water after the DWTP had been replaced by a new plant, using membrane ultrafiltration and GAC. Neither target chemical analysis, nor chemical analysis according to the drinking water regulation, detected any presence of chemicals, which could be responsible of the prominent effects on oxidative stress and AR antagonistic activity in the drinking water samples. Thus, bioanalysis is a useful tool for detection of unknown hazards in drinking water and for assessment of drinking water treatments.

Preface

Dear Readers,The IX symposium of applied chemistry and the first international conference of Nanochemistry, Nanophysics and Nanomedicine were held at the Metropolitan Cultural Convention Center in Armenia, Colombia between august 21-23 (2019). Both were organized by Universidad del Quindio in collaboration with the Colombian Society of Chemical Sciences (SCCQ) and the Colombian Society of Engineering Physics (SCIF). The interdisciplinary meeting aimed to generate collaborations and connect different professionals framed in the chemical sciences intersected with physics, material science, agricultural sciences, maths, biology, medicine, engineering among others. 80 students and professionals registered to 5 pre-congress courses and 450 participants from 6 countries attended 3 days of multidisciplinary discussions with 10 plenary talks, 90 oral presentations and 200 posters.In the 9th version of the symposium, researchers focused of Chemistry as a discipline that studies matter, what it consists of (atoms, molecules, ions), what its properties are, and how it changes or it could be transformed that conducted at the nanoscale intersects with nanotechnology. The design of devices, sensors, processes and products can be designed, functionalized and implemented from building blocks either atoms or nanomaterials. In the conference projects, ideas and results were discussed around green chemical and physical synthesis (Microwave assisted synthesis) of Nanoparticles, how nanomaterial´s ligand coatings could be modified for improved detection, modification of Surface charge distributions, to improve Nanomaterials (NMs) characteristics such as stability, and selectivity; the studies of metal-ligand cooperation phenomena that can occur in organometallic complexes and impact the election of ligands for selective and efficient catalysis. In addition to the design of shells to form interface layers that combined all the possibilities from inorganic to organic, to the embedding of NMs into polymer networks and their integration with large of Networks and Nanostructures for the design of functional materials. Scientist highlighted experimental evidence for the different materials Nms can be made of and sizes and shapes there could be produced at and the need to understand the potential hazards and risk in all the activities that involved the creation, use and disposing of Nms and residues. A debate kept the questions of the regional production of these nanomaterials to supply the needs of the current industry in Colombia and the human protection for the unknown hazards. Researchers also include discussion around the Nms fusion with living matter for applications on cancer detection and other Terminal illnesses.

Building operational readiness for responding to emergencies in the WHO South-East Asia Region

The World Health Organization (WHO) has an essential role to play in supporting Member States to prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies with public health consequences. Operational readiness for known and unknown hazards and emergencies requires a risk-informed and structured approach to building capacities within organizations such as WHO offices and national ministries of health. Under the flagship priority programme on emergency risk management of the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia, a readiness training programme consisting of four modules was implemented during 2017-2018, involving staff from WHO country offices as well as from the regional office. The experience of and lessons learnt from designing, developing and delivering this phased training programme have fed into improvements in the curriculum and training methodology. The training programme has also facilitated the development of business continuity plans and contingency plans in some of the 11 Member States of the region and has increased the readiness of WHO staff for swift deployment in recent emergencies. It is recommended that the strengthening of operational readiness for responding to emergencies in the region be sustained and accelerated through the development of a regional training consortium that can scale the training programme up at national level, taking into account country contexts, national health systems and the needs of populations. The resilience of the populations and health systems in the region will be increased if disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness and response activities are supported by operational readiness.

Assessment of ecotoxicity and total volatile organic compound (TVOC) emissions from food and children's toy products

The development of new methods for identifying a broad spectrum of analytes, as well as highly selective tools to provide the most accurate information regarding the processes and relationships in the world, has been an area of interest for researchers for many years. The information obtained with these tools provides valuable data to complement existing knowledge but, above all, to identify and determine previously unknown hazards. Recently, attention has been paid to the migration of xenobiotics from the surfaces of various everyday objects and the resulting impacts on human health. Since children are among those most vulnerable to health consequences, one of the main subjects of interest is the migration of low-molecular-weight compounds from toys and products intended for children. This migration has become a stimulus for research aimed at determining the degree of release of compounds from popular commercially available chocolate/toy sets. One of main objectives of this research was to determine the impact of time on the ecotoxicity (with Vibrio fischeri bioluminescent bacteria) of extracts of products intended for children and to assess the correlation with total volatile organic compound emissions using basic chemometric methods. The studies on endocrine potential (with XenoScreen YES/YAS) of the extracts and showed that compounds released from the studied objects (including packaging foils, plastic capsules storing toys, most of toys studied and all chocolate samples) exhibit mostly androgenic antagonistic behavior while using artificial saliva as extraction medium increased the impact observed. The impact of time in most cases was positive one and increased with prolonging extraction time.The small-scale stationary environmental test chambers – μ-CTE™ 250 system was employed to perform the studies aimed at determining the profile of total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) emissions. Due to this it was possible to state that objects from which the greatest amounts of contaminants are released are plastic containers (with emission rate falling down from 3273 to 2280 ng/g of material at 6 h of conditioning in elevated temperature).

Risks and safety level of composite cylinders

The increasing amount of composite transport systems for hydrogen leads to new and therefore unknown potential hazards for general public. Due to lack of experience, risks of new technologies tend to be rated higher than existing familiar applications. An approach for probabilistic safety assessment of technologies or products requires the definition of minimal acceptable reliability levels. This ensures that the probability of a critical failure with a certain consequence is limited to an acceptable risk. But what is the acceptable risk and which risk results from specific probabilities of occurrence and consequences? This is always a very complex question. The following example is based on a probabilistic approach for safety assessment of composite cylinders developed at the BAM (Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing).

Safety-informed design: Using subgraph analysis to elicit hazardous emergent failure behavior in complex systems

AbstractIdentifying failure paths and potentially hazardous scenarios resulting from component faults and interactions is a challenge in the early design process. The inherent complexity present in large engineered systems leads to nonobvious emergent behavior, which may result in unforeseen hazards. Current hazard analysis techniques focus on single hazards (fault trees), single faults (event trees), or lists of known hazards in the domain (hazard identification). Early in the design of a complex system, engineers may represent their system as a functional model. A function failure reasoning tool can then exhaustively simulate qualitative failure scenarios. Some scenarios can be identified as hazardous by hazard rules specified by the engineer, but the goal is to identify scenarios representing unknown hazards. The incidences of specific subgraphs in graph representations of known hazardous scenarios are used to train a classifier to distinguish hazard from nonhazard. The algorithm identifies the scenario most likely to be hazardous, and presents it to the engineer. After viewing the scenario and judging its safety, the engineer may have insight to produce additional hazard rules. The collaborative process of strategic presentation of scenarios by the computer and human judgment will identify previously unknown hazards. The feasibility of this methodology has been tested on a relatively simple functional model of an electrical power system with positive results. Related work applying function failure reasoning to a team of robotic rovers will provide data from a more complex system.