A methodology for assessing underground coal mines for high safety-related risk

In 2008 the authors developed a methodology for assessing underground coal mines for high risk for major-hazard events. It focused on major hazard-related violations of safety standards associated with high-risk conditions. Later using the same stratified pilot sample of 31 mines, injury measures and MSHA citation data were combined into a Safe Performance Index (SPI). Using 2009 data, the database was expanded to 107 mines, which is a 30% sampling of all underground coal mines. The SPI was used to assess the relative safety-related risk of mines, including by mine-size category. The methodology can be used to assist companies, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or state agencies in targeting mines with high risk for serious injuries and elevated citations for remediation of their violation and/or injury experience.     

An improved methodology for assessing risk in aircraft operations at airports, applied to runway overruns

The paper addresses the need for models to assess risk at any particular airport, based on risk management principles used by the present risk management process, that use all available data on previous accidents. The case of runway overruns is taken as an example application, because new regulations require the provision of much longer Runway End Safety Areas than had previously been the norm. The paper presents models for overruns arising from both landings and aborted takeoffs. In each case models of overrun risk, of wreckage location and of the consequences are detailed. An example application of the models is then given in a hypothetical risk assessment.The models, though adding value to existing methods of assessing risk, are not as good as they could be, due to the lack of data on normal operations. It was therefore possible only to relate the rate of overruns to the rate of occurrence of the possible driving factors for a few factors where such comparable data on normal operations existed. It is recommended that effort be put into the collection of data to allow a more comprehensive analysis.     

A systemic methodology for risk management in healthcare sector

The recent biomedical, technological, and normative changes have led healthcare organizations to the implementation of clinical governance as a way to ensure the best quality of care in an increasingly complex environment. Risk management is one of the most relevant aspects of clinical governance and approaches put forward in literature highlight the necessity to perform comprehensive analyses intended to uncover root causes of adverse events.Contributing to this field, the present paper applies Reason’s theory of failures to work out a systemic methodology to study risks impacting not only directly but also indirectly on patients. Also, the steps of such approach are organized around Human Reliability Assessment phases, in order to take into account the human component of healthcare systems. This framework is able to foster effective decision making about reducing failures and waste and to improve healthcare organizations’ maturity towards risk management.The developed methodology is applied to the pharmacy department of a large Italian hospital. An extensive validation in different healthcare settings is required to fully prove benefits and limitations.     

A methodology for assessing blast protection in explosive ordnance disposal bomb suits.

To reduce human casualties associated with explosive ordnance disposal, a wide range of protective wear has been designed to shield against the blast effects of improvised explosive devices and munitions. In this study, 4 commercially available bomb suits, representing a range of materials and armor masses, were evaluated against 0.227 and 0.567 kg of spherical C-4 explosives to determine the level of protection offered to the head, neck, and thorax. A Hybrid III dummy, an instrumented human surrogate [1], was tested with and without protection from the 4 commercially available bomb suits. 20 tests with the dummy torso mounted to simulate a kneeling position were performed to confirm repeatability and robustness of the dummies, as well as to evaluate the 4 suits. Correlations between injury risk assessments based on past human or animal injury model data and various parameters such as bomb suit mass, projected area, and dummy coverage area were drawn.     

A semi-quantitative methodology for risk assessment of university chemical laboratory

University chemical laboratory is a high-risk place for teaching and scientific research due to the presence of various physical and chemical hazards. In recent years, university chemical laboratory accidents occur frequently. This urges the need to enhance university chemical lab safety. A semi-quantitative methodology comprising Matter-Element Extension Theory (MEET) implemented with Combination Ordered Weighted Averaging (C-OWA) operator is proposed to assess the risk of a university chemical laboratory. First, an index-based risk assessment system of university chemical laboratory is built by identifying various risk factors from a system perspective. Then, C-OWA operator is used to calculate the weight of assessment indices, whereas MEET is employed to determine the correlation degree of assessment indices. Finally, the comprehensive risk of university chemical laboratories is assessed, and some safety measures are proposed to reduce the risk of university chemical laboratories. The applicability of the proposed methodology is tested using a practical case. It is observed that the methodology can be a useful tool for risk assessment and management of university chemical laboratories.     

A fuzzy model for assessing risk of occupational safety in the processing industry

Managing occupational safety in any kind of industry, especially in processing, is very important and complex. This paper develops a new method for occupational risk assessment in the presence of uncertainties. Uncertain values of hazardous factors and consequence frequencies are described with linguistic expressions defined by a safety management team. They are modeled with fuzzy sets. Consequence severities depend on current hazardous factors, and their values are calculated with the proposed procedure. The proposed model is tested with real-life data from fruit processing firms in Central Serbia.     

I-Risk: development of an integrated technical and management risk methodology for chemical installations

This paper presents an integrated quantitative risk assessment method for hazardous installations, taking into account management as well as technical design and producing risk level measures. The key components of the I-Risk methodology are the technical model, the management model and their interface. The technical model consists of developing a master logic diagram (MLD) delineating the major immediate causes of loss of containment (LOC) and associated quantitative models for assessing their frequency. The management model consists of the tasks, which must be carried out systematically in the primary business functions (such as operations, emergency operations, maintenance and modifications). A management audit quantifies the quality of these management tasks. The management–technical interface modifies certain parameters of the technical model on the basis of the quality of the safety management system of the specific installation. The methodology is exemplified through its application to the risk assessment of an ammonia storage facility. A detailed technical model simulating the response of the system to various initiating events is developed along with a detailed management model simulating the influence of the plant-specific management and organisational practices. The overall effect is quantified through the frequency of release of ammonia as a result of a loss of containment in a storage tank and in a pipeline.     

A methodology for enhancing the reliability of expert system applications in probabilistic risk assessment

In highly complex industries, capturing and employing expert systems is significantly important to an organization's success considering the advantages of knowledge-based systems. The two most important issues within the expert system applications in risk and reliability analysis are the acquisition of domain experts' professional knowledge and the reasoning and representation of the knowledge that might be expressed. The first issue can be correctly handled by employing a heterogeneous group of experts during the expert knowledge acquisition processes. The members of an expert panel regularly represent different experiences and knowledge. Subsequently, this diversity produces various sorts of information which may be known or unknown, accurate or inaccurate, and complete or incomplete based on its cross-functional and multidisciplinary nature. The second issue, as a promising tool for knowledge reasoning, still suffers from lack of deficiencies such as weight and certainty factor, and are insufficient to accurately represent complex rule-based expert systems. The outputs in current expert system applications in probabilistic risk assessment could not accurately represent the increasingly complex knowledge-based systems. The reason is the lack of certainty and self-assurance of experts when they are expressing their opinions. In this paper, a novel methodology is presented based on the concept of Z-numbers to overcome this issue. A case study in a high-tech process industry is provided in detail to demonstrate the application and feasibility of the proposed methodology.     

Inherent risk assessment methodology in preliminary design stage: A case study for toxic release

At preliminary design stage, process designers normally lack of information on the risk level from process plant. An inherently safer process plant could be designed if the information of risk levels could be known earlier at the preliminary design stage. If the risk level could be determined, there is a possibility to eliminate or reduce the risk by applying the well-known concept: inherent safety principle. This paper presents a technique to determine the risk levels at preliminary process design stage using a 2-region risk matrix concept. A model to calculate the severity and likelihood of a toxic release accident was developed in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. This model is integrated with process design simulator, iCON to allow for data transfer during preliminary design stage. 2-region risk matrix is proposed and used to evaluate the acceptability of the inherent risk based on the severity and likelihood rating. If the inherent risk level is unacceptable, modification for improvement can be done using the inherent safety principles. A case study has been carried out to illustrate the benefit of applying this newly developed technique. It was successfully shown that an inherently safer plant could easily be designed by applying this technique.     

An algorithm for assessing the risk of traffic accident

INTRODUCTION: This study is aimed at developing an algorithm to estimate the number of traffic accidents and assess the risk of traffic accidents in a study area. METHOD: The algorithm involves a combination of mapping technique (Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques) and statistical methods (cluster analysis and regression analysis). Geographical Information System is used to locate accidents on a digital map and realize their distribution. Cluster analysis is used to group the homogeneous data together. Regression analysis is performed to realize the relation between the number of accident events and the potential causal factors. Negative binomial regression model is found to be an appropriate mathematical form to mimic this relation. Accident risk of the area, derived from historical accident records and causal factors, is also determined in the algorithm. The risk is computed using the Empirical Bayes (EB) approach. A case study of Hong Kong is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. RESULTS: The results show that the algorithm improves accident risk estimation when comparing to the estimated risk based on only the historical accident records. The algorithm is found to be more efficient, especially in the case of fatality and pedestrian-related accident analysis. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: The output of the proposed algorithm can help authorities effectively identify areas with high accident risk. In addition, it can serve as a reference for town planners considering road safety.     

A risk assessment methodology for high pressure CO2 pipelines using integral consequence modelling

This paper presents a risk assessment methodology for high pressure CO₂ pipelines developed at the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL) as part of the EU FP7 CO2Pipehaz project. Until recently, risk assessment of dense phase and supercritical CO₂ pipelines has been problematic because of the lack of suitable source term and integral consequence models that handle the complex behaviour of CO₂ appropriately. The risk assessment presented uses Phast, a commercially available source term and dispersion model that has been recently updated to handle the effects of solid CO₂. A test case pipeline was input to Phast and dispersion footprints to different levels of harm (dangerous toxic load and probit values) were obtained for a set of pipeline specific scenarios. HSL's risk assessment tool QuickRisk was then used to calculate the individual and societal risk surrounding the pipeline. Knowledge gaps that were encountered such as: harm criteria, failure rates and release scenarios were identified and are discussed.     

A new simple methodology for evaluation of explosion risk in underground coal mines

The key objective of this paper is the presentation of a new risk assessment tool for underground coal mines based on a simplified semi-quantitative estimation and assessment method.In order to determine the risk of explosion of any work process or activity in underground coal mines it is necessary to assess the risk. The proposed method is based on a Risk Index obtained as a product of three factors: frequency of each individual scenario P_ucm, associated severity consequences C_ucm and exposure time to explosive atmospheres E_ucm. The influence of exposure time is usually not taken into account up to now. Moreover, the exposure to explosive atmospheres may affect factors of hazardous event probability as much as its consequences. There are many definitions of exposure to explosive atmospheres but in the case of underground coal mines the exposure is defined as frequency risk of firedamp and coal dust. The risk estimation and risk assessment are based on the developed of a risk matrix.The proposed methodology allows not only the estimation of the explosion risk but also gives an approach to decide if the proposal investment is well-justified or not in order to improve safety.     

Confidence-based quantitative risk analysis for offshore accidental hydrocarbon release events

Quantitative risk analysis (QRA) has been widely used to conduct the assessment of offshore accidental risks. However, the accuracy and validity of QRA is significantly affected by uncertainties when subjective judgments are involved. Therefore, it is unrealistic to determine the probability of a hazardous event by using one single explicit value when safety experts have a relatively low confidence level in their judgments. This paper proposes a new methodology for incorporating uncertainties into conventional QRA using the concept of confidence level. Offshore hydrocarbon release hazards are focused on and a barrier and operational risk analysis (BORA-Release) method is selected as the basic model to illustrate the proposed methodology. A left–right (L–R) bell-shaped fuzzy number is employed and its membership curve is able to control its shape to represent different confidence levels. As to the complex geometry of the bell-shaped fuzzy number, an α-cut operation is introduced to conduct the arithmetic operations of the fuzzy number, and a defuzzification method with total integral value is chosen to match the α-cut operations and acquire complete information for the fuzzy numbers. In the meantime, an optimism index is used to describe the attitude of the decision-maker. One case study is provided in this paper to demonstrate the implementation of this method.     

A new methodology for the synthesis of an optimum flexible water networks

This paper presents a new optimization model for the synthesis of direct reuse/recycle water networks with data uncertainties. In this case, data uncertainties were originated from the varying parameters of the water sources and sinks, which fluctuate within a given range of values. The aim of the method is to design an optimum flexible water network (FWN) that ensures minimum fresh water consumption and yet fulfilling all process constraints and uncertain parameters. The resulting FWN also features the minimum number of pipelines, which will ease process operation and control. Due to the complexity of the problem, multistep solving method based on theorem of corner points has been developed. The FWN obtained using the proposed method also includes information on the maximum flow rate in the pipelines, which is essential for detailed network design stage. The resulting model is a mixed integer linear problem (MILP), which may be solved to obtain global optimum solution. Two case studies were used to elucidate the newly proposed method.     

Non-intrusive characterization of heat transfer fluid aerosol sprays released from an orifice

Organic heat transfer fluids (HTFs) are widely used because of their low vapor pressures and wide ranges of working temperatures. It is a common misconception that operations involving HTFs below their flash point temperatures do not represent a hazard, but aerosols of combustible liquids at temperatures below their flashpoints have been recognized for their potential to cause fires and explosions. The hazard is further exacerbated by the paucity of experimental information about the formation and behavior of aerosols from HTF releases. This article presents droplet sizes, spray development, and aerosol formation distances for an alkylated aromatic HTF aerosol generated mechanically by means of a leak from a pressurized container into ambient air as functions of HTF temperature, pressure, and orifice size. A Malvern Laser Diffraction Particle Analyzer was used to measure aerosol droplet sizes along the centerline of the liquid sprays, and high-speed photography was used for spray visualization and interpretation of stream atomization. Effects of pressure, temperature, and orifice diameter confirm critical Weber Number theory.     

太湖地区某地农田土壤及农产品中重金属污染及风险评价

对江苏省太湖地区某冶炼厂周围的稻田、菜地土壤及水稻等17种农产品中的Pb、Cd、Hg、As、Cu、Zn、Ni、Cr、Se等9种重金属元素进行采样分析,参照<国家土壤环境质量二级标准>和<食品中重金属限量卫生标准>进行评价,同时,依据美国联邦环境保护署推荐的RfD值和我国居民平均食物消费结构评估了农产品对当地人群的重金属暴露风险.结果显示,供试稻田土和菜地土中的重金属Cd、Pb污染严重;农产品样品中Cd、Pb含量全部超过国家食品中重金属限量卫生标准,且Cd、Pb、As对人群的暴露风险系数甚高.17种农产品中,对重金属富集能力最强的是茼蒿、空心菜、菠菜等茎叶类蔬菜,它们不适宜在该地种植.研究表明,在局部范围内,点源污染可能带来土壤环境的重金属污染及农产品重金属食物安全问题.     

船舶封闭舱室火灾烟气温度特性研究

封闭舱室火灾与开放空间火灾有很大的不同。通过在内尺寸为1m×1m×0.75m的舱室内的一系列不同油盘直径庚烷油池火试验,发现了烟气的循环卷吸现象,且发现舱内气体可以分为上部的密烟气层和下部的稀烟气层两层,此时传统的双区域模型对火灾的模拟不再适用。烟气温度的空间分布可以用一个分段函数来表示,密烟气层内部温度基本一致,温度与高度无关;稀烟气层内部温度随高度具有均匀的梯度,为高度的一次函数。同时,研究发现熄火时刻舱内的烟气温度分布符合波尔兹曼分布律,且与油盘直径无关,即与火源功率无关,满足统一的波尔兹曼方程,并就本实验参数条件下的温度数据给出了拟合曲线方程。     

化工园区区域定量风险评价及其应用研究

讨论了化工园区域定量风险评价的基本程序和评价指标,提出了定量风险计算的个人风险和社会风险计算模型.利用SAFETI软件对碳一分公司进行定量风险计算,得出碳一分公司区域的个人风险等值线图和社会风险曲线图.依据计算结果分析碳一分公司化工园区域的风险现状.