Mitigating construction safety risks using prevention through design

Introduction

Research and practice have demonstrated that decisions made prior to work at construction sites can influence construction worker safety. However, it has also been argued that most architects and design engineers possess neither the knowledge of construction safety nor the knowledge of construction processes necessary to effectively perform Construction Hazards Prevention through Design (CHPtD).

Method

This paper introduces a quantitative methodology that supports designers by providing a way to evaluate the safety-related performance of residential construction designs using a risk analysis-based approach. The methodology compares the overall safety risk level of various construction designs and ranks the significance of the various safety risks of each of these designs. The methodology also compares the absolute importance of a particular safety risk in various construction designs.

Results

Because the methodology identifies the relevance of each safety risk at a particular site prior to the construction stage, significant risks are highlighted in advance. Thus, a range of measures for mitigating safety risks can then be implemented during on-site construction.

Impact on industry

The methodology is specially worthwhile for designers, who can compare construction techniques and systems during the design phase and determine the corresponding level of safety risk without their creative talents being restricted. By using this methodology, construction companies can improve their on-site safety performance.     

The effects of airbags and seatbelts on occupant injury in longitudinal barrier crashes

Introduction

Longitudinal barriers, such as guardrails, are designed to prevent a vehicle that leaves the roadway from impacting a more dangerous object while minimizing the risk of injury to the vehicle occupants. Current full-scale test procedures for these devices do not consider the effect of occupant restraints such as seatbelts and airbags. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which restraints are used or deployed in longitudinal barrier collisions and their subsequent effect on occupant injury.

Methods

Binary logistic regression models were generated to predict occupant injury risk using data from the National Automotive Sampling System / Crashworthiness Data System from 1997 through 2007.

Results

In tow-away longitudinal barrier crashes, airbag deployment rates were 70% for airbag-equipped vehicles. Compared with unbelted occupants without an airbag available, seat belt restrained occupants with an airbag available had a dramatically decreased risk of receiving a serious (MAIS 3+) injury (odds-ratio (OR) = 0.03; 95% CI: 0.004-0.24). A similar decrease was observed among those restrained by seat belts, but without an airbag available (OR = 0.03; 95% CI: 0.001- 0.79). No significant differences in risk of serious injuries were observed between unbelted occupants with an airbag available compared with unbelted occupants without an airbag available (OR = 0.53; 95% CI = 0.10-2.68).

Impact on Industry

This study refutes the perception in the roadside safety community that airbags rarely deploy in frontal barrier crashes, and suggests that current longitudinal barrier occupant risk criteria may over-estimate injury potential for restrained occupants involved in a longitudinal barrier crash.     

Explorative spatial analysis of traffic accident statistics and road mortality among the provinces of Turkey

Introduction

The aim of the study is to describe the inter-province differences in traffic accidents and mortality on roads of Turkey.

Method

Two different risk indicators were used to evaluate the road safety performance of the provinces in Turkey. These indicators are the ratios between the number of persons killed in road traffic accidents (1) and the number of accidents (2) (nominators) and their exposure to traffic risk (denominator). Population and the number of registered motor vehicles in the provinces were used as denominators individually. Spatial analyses were performed to the mean annual rate of deaths and to the number of fatal accidents that were calculated for the period of 2001-2006. Empirical Bayes smoothing was used to remove background noise from the raw death and accident rates because of the sparsely populated provinces and small number of accident and death rates of provinces. Global and local spatial autocorrelation analyses were performed to show whether the provinces with high rates of deaths-accidents show clustering or are located closer by chance. The spatial distribution of provinces with high rates of deaths and accidents was nonrandom and detected as clustered with significance of P < 0.05 with spatial autocorrelation analyses.

Results

Regions with high concentration of fatal accidents and deaths were located in the provinces that contain the roads connecting the Istanbul, Ankara, and Antalya provinces. Accident and death rates were also modeled with some independent variables such as number of motor vehicles, length of roads, and so forth using geographically weighted regression analysis with forward step-wise elimination. The level of statistical significance was taken as P < 0.05. Large differences were found between the rates of deaths and accidents according to denominators in the provinces. The geographically weighted regression analyses did significantly better predictions for both accident rates and death rates than did ordinary least regressions, as indicated by adjusted R² values. Geographically weighted regression provided values of 0.89-0.99 adjusted R² for death and accident rates, compared with 0.88-0.95, respectively, by ordinary least regressions.

Impact on industry

Geographically weighted regression has the potential to reveal local patterns in the spatial distribution of rates, which would be ignored by the ordinary least regression approach. The application of spatial analysis and modeling of accident statistics and death rates at provincial level in Turkey will help to identification of provinces with outstandingly high accident and death rates. This could help more efficient road safety management in Turkey.     

Differences in urban and rural accident characteristics and medical service utilization for traffic fatalities in less-motorized societies

Introduction

Fatalities from traffic accidents in less-motorized societies are an important global issue. We aimed to characterize the geographic differences of fatalities in such societies to facilitate the development of targeted interventions.

Method

This study linked police reports, hospital data, and vital registration data from Taiwan with special reference to accident factors in pre-hospital deaths and medical care in hospital deaths.

Results

A higher percentage of pre-hospital deaths were observed following rural as compared to urban traffic accidents. The deaths due to rural accidents can be attributed to lower use of restraints (i.e., helmets or seat belts), lower percentage of motorcyclists, and more highway accidents. A higher percentage of victims in rural accidents were transported to distant medical centers rather than to local hospitals.

Conclusion

Specific interventions, such as intelligent emergency medical systems, campaigns for helmets and seat belt usage, enforcement of helmets and seat belt use, and speed control measures should be targeted to rural areas.

Impact on industry

Cooperation between the vehicle industry and emergency medical providers in rural traffic accident rescue teams may decrease the numbers of deaths in these regions.     

城市生态系统能值分析（EMA）的原理与步骤

将城市自然－经济－社会复合生态系统作为研究对象，介绍能值分析方法在城市生态学动态研究和定量研究中的应用原理与步骤，为人们客观评价自然环境对城市发展的贡献提供科学依据。     

Development and analysis of design for environment oriented design parameters

Knowledge of customer requirements (CRs) allows manufacturers to effectively reduce the time-to-market for products and maintain a high-level of quality through customer satisfaction. Acquisition, definition, and decomposition of such requirements is therefore a first step in the product design process and key for successful product development. Of building importance in these requirements is for sustainable or green products. Thus has developed the method of Design for Environment (DFE) in product design process, which calls designers to not only understand CRs for product function, structure and economic attributes, but in social and environmental impacts. Thus, the need for elicit environmental customer requirements (ECRs) from various traditional CRs becomes apparent along with the need to meet those requirements in the design process.In the present paper, initial CRs are decomposed and categorized into functional customer requirements (FCRs), performance customer requirements (PCRs) and ECRs. Such an analysis is made based on the analysis of environmentally friendly products (EFPs), environmentally conscious customers, and the characteristics of their CRs, Furthermore, the decomposing method based on semantic analysis is given along with a developed quality function deployment for environment (QFDE) method. These methods create a shift from initial CRs to DFE oriented technical parameters (TPs). Finally, the acquisition and conversion of CRs of the automatic soybean milk maker in the DFE process is taken as an example to validate and analyze the above-mentioned method.     

EIA and green procurement: Opportunities for strengthening their coordination

EIA plays an important role in enhancing the environmental performance of the construction sector. In recent years, the construction sector has been developing green procurement practices. Green procurement is a process that involves the incorporation of environmental requirements during the procurement of services and products. However, discussion on green procurement is rarely seen during the EIA phase. This paper addresses possible opportunities for improving the coordination between EIA and green procurement within the construction sector. The linking of EIA and green procurement has been postulated in the paper as an aid to strengthen the coordination between project planning and implementation. The paper is based on a literature review and is an outcome of an on-going research project concerning EIA and green procurement. This study indicated that it would be appropriate to introduce green procurement during the pre-decision phase of an EIA. In the present study, the opportunities for integrating green procurement at the stage of EIA are associated with the integration of project planning and EIA. Future research should investigate the mechanism through which the link can be established.     

News: Dr. Samuel Cohen receives SOT Merit Award

正Dr.Samuel M.Cohen of the University of Nebraska Medical Center,who has recently published in the Journal of Environmental Sciences(Cohen et al.,2016),is the recipient of the Merit Award from the Society of Toxicology(USA)."The Merit Award is presented to a member of the Society of Toxicology in recognition of distinguished contributions to toxicology throughout an     

Increasing accuracy of dispersal kernels in grid-based population models

Dispersal kernels in grid-based population models specify the proportion, distance and direction of movements within the model landscape. Spatial errors in dispersal kernels can have large compounding effects on model accuracy. Circular Gaussian and Laplacian dispersal kernels at a range of spatial resolutions were investigated, and methods for minimizing errors caused by the discretizing process were explored. Kernels of progressively smaller sizes relative to the landscape grid size were calculated using cell-integration and cell-center methods. These kernels were convolved repeatedly, and the final distribution was compared with a reference analytical solution. For large Gaussian kernels (σ > 10 cells), the total kernel error was <10⁻¹¹ compared to analytical results. Using an invasion model that tracked the time a population took to reach a defined goal, the discrete model results were comparable to the analytical reference. With Gaussian kernels that had σ ≤ 0.12 using the cell integration method, or σ ≤ 0.22 using the cell center method, the kernel error was greater than 10%, which resulted in invasion times that were orders of magnitude different than theoretical results. A goal-seeking routine was developed to adjust the kernels to minimize overall error. With this, corrections for small kernels were found that decreased overall kernel error to <10⁻¹¹ and invasion time error to <5%.