地铁工程安全设计(DFS)知识库构建

针对目前地铁施工和运行过程中安全事故频发的现象,运用安全设计(DFS)概念,提出在地铁设计中应考虑施工和运行安全,构建DFS知识库,以提高设计人员的DFS能力。分析DFS知识库应具备的功能,提出通过知识的搜集、分析、存储和查询4大模块来实现相应的功能;依据模块的功能,详细设计DFS知识库的逻辑结构、系统结构和存储结构;4大模块与DFS不同的结构相结合,构成地铁工程DFS知识库系统。以乘客坠落站台事故为例,进行实证分析。研究结果表明,该案例的逻辑层次为"车站工程子知识库-车站站台子库-客运类事故";合理有效的知识库可根据标准化案例描述识别出危险源,并可运用知识管理的相关方法自动提取针对危险源的设计规范及设计建议。     

特警战训服面料开发技术研究

本文介绍了以芳纶纤维为主要材料的我国新一代特警战训服面料的技术研发及达到的主要性能指标。通过试验研究,开发了具有高强防撕裂、永久阻燃、耐高温、防静电、防油拒水、防酸碱等具有集成防护功能的特警战训服系列面料。     

而今迈步从头越——《安全生产法》征求意见稿学习体会和修改建议

首先分析了我国《安全生产法》的发展沿革,且认真学习了目前发布的《安全生产法》征求意见稿,归纳了征求意见稿还应实现四个重点突破:必须体现以人为本的执政理念;职业危害防治应列为《安全生产法》的重要条款之一;安全生产执法监察应与公共安全及行政管理分离;应对工伤保险预防机制作出明确要求。此外,建议通过《安全生产法》的进一步修订实现我国安全生产的制度化建设:建议逐步建立安全生产分级监察管理体制;推进风险管理制度,对企业实行风险分级与分级监管;逐步提出建立安全生产监察员专业化制度;建立与国际接轨的生产安全事故统计报告系统;强化城市建设土地使用规划的风险管理和安全许可;生产安全事故应急管理应强化应急准备工作;建立独立生产安全事故调查机构和公开公正调查程序;应在《安全生产法》中明确"安全生产委员会"的组织形式和功能;生产安全事故责任追究应与激励政策相结合。     

Exploration of relationships between safety performance and unsafe behavior in the Chinese oil industry

Safety performance is comprised of two components, safety compliance and safety participation. However, relationships between safety performance and unsafe behavior have not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, scales for safety compliance and safety participation were revised for use in the oil industry, and job burnout scale was developed on the basis of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS). A structural equation model was then employed to investigate the interactions of these factors for 238 front-line oil workers from the PetroChina Huabei Oilfield Company in China. From the results, it was determined that workers' unsafe behavior could not be reduced significantly solely from these two dimensions of safety performance. Compared with safety participation, safety compliance was found to have a greater influence on unsafe behavior. However, job burnout was found to be a significant moderator between these two components and unsafe behavior. Furthermore, it was determined that oil workers' occupational psychological health conditions must be taken into account to improve organizational safety management and reduce workers’ unsafe behavior.     

Trends in causes of offshore releases by severity classification

The Hydrocarbon Release Database (HCRD) contains data on loss of containment events in the UK sector of the North Sea. The data shows a decrease in the annual number of releases. A study was carried out to determine whether statistically significant trends are apparent when categorizing releases by severity and specific cause. It was investigated whether the relative contribution of some causes as compared to all releases, had changed over time.The main conclusion is that over the analysed period (1993–2014), the relative contribution of “Procedures” as a cause for release has decreased with statistical significance. “Design” improvements seem to lead to a reduction in releases too. Finally, “Equipment” was improving at the slowest rate, if at all, until 2005. Since then, it appears to improve as well. These findings are robust, at least for the total set of data, and the releases of Significant severity. For releases of Major severity, the number of incidents is too small to justify any conclusion on trends.The conclusions suggest that over the analysed period improvements in offshore safety have been mainly driven by improvements in management, covering elements like procedures, competence and compliance.     

Numerical simulation of small-scale pool fires of LNG

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been largely indicated as a promising alternative solution for the transportation and storage of natural gas. In the case of accidental release on the ground, a pool fire scenario may occur. Despite the relevance of this accident, due to its likelihood and potential to trigger domino effects, accurate analyses addressing the characterization of pool fires of LNG are still missing.In this work, the fire dynamic simulator (FDS) has been adopted for the evaluation of the effects of the released amount of fuel and its composition (methane, ethane, and propane), on the thermal and chemical properties of small-scale LNG pool fire. More specifically, the heat release rate, the burning rate, the flame height, and thermal radiation, at different initial conditions, have been evaluated for pool having diameter smaller than 10 m. Safety distances have been calculated for all the investigated conditions, as well.Results have also been compared with data and correlations retrieved from the current literature. The equation of Thomas seems to work properly for the definition of the height over diameter ratio of the LNG pool fire for all the mixture and the investigated diameters.The addition of ethane and propane significantly affects the obtained results, especially in terms of radiative thermal radiation peaks, thus indicating the inadequacy of the commonly adopted assumption of pure methane as single, surrogate species for the LNG mixture.     

Using environmental and geographic data to optimize ex situ collections and preserve evolutionary potential

Maintenance of biodiversity through seed banks and botanical gardens, where the wealth of species’ genetic variation may be preserved ex situ, is a major goal of conservation. However, challenges can persist in optimizing ex situ collections if trade-offs exist among cost, effort, and conserving species evolutionary potential, particularly when genetic data are not available. We evaluated the genetic consequences of population preservation informed by geographic (isolation by distance [IBD]) and environmental (isolation by environment [IBE]) distance for ex situ collections for which population provenance is available. We used 19 genetic and genomic data sets from 15 plant species to assess the proportion of population genetic differentiation explained by geographic and environmental factors and to simulate ex situ collections prioritizing source populations based on pairwise geographic distance, environmental distance, or both. Specifically, we tested the impact prioritizing sampling based on these distances may have on the capture of neutral, functional, or putatively adaptive genetic diversity and differentiation. Individually, IBD and IBE explained limited population genetic differences across all 3 genetic marker classes (IBD, 10–16%; IBE, 1–5.5%). Together, they explained a substantial proportion of population genetic differences for functional (45%) and adaptive (71%) variation. Simulated ex situ collections revealed that inclusion of IBD, IBE, or both increased allelic diversity and genetic differentiation captured among populations, particularly for loci that may be important for adaptation. Thus, prioritizing population collections based on environmental and geographic distance data can optimize genetic variation captured ex situ. For the vast majority of plant species for which there is no genetic information, these data are invaluable to conservation because they can guide preservation of genetic variation needed to maintain evolutionary potential within collections.     

Effects of release pressure on the transportation characteristics in pipeline and the diffusion behaviors in enclosure space of typical gas extinguishing agent

Reducing the release pressure of fire extinguishing systems can decrease potential safety hazards in large transport airplanes. To explore whether reducing the release pressure can achieve the release effect required by the airworthiness standards or not, the transportation characteristics in the pipeline and diffusion behaviors in the enclosure space of a typical fire extinguishing agent (Halon 1301) were investigated under five release pressures in the present study. The effects of the release pressure on the degree of superheat, injection duration, jet structure, and concentration distribution of Halon 1301 were analyzed. The results show that both of the degree of superheat and the injection duration decrease with an increase in the release pressure. The supplement of bubble expansion in the fire extinguishing agent can slow down the pressure decrease in the vessel. Both of the maximum and mean values of the pipeline differential pressure increase with an increase in release pressure. The maximum value of the jet angle decreases linearly with the increase in release pressure, and the jet deflects upward owing to the effects of buoyancy. The maximum concentration value decreases with an increase in the distance from the nozzle. The maximum concentration values in the near field from the nozzle increase with an increase in the release pressure. Under five release pressures, the concentration and holding time (duration above 6% volume concentration) of Halon 1301 on the centerline of the jet meet the requirements of airworthiness provisions.     

Quantifying progress toward a conservation assessment for all plants

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) set an ambitious target to achieve a conservation assessment for all known plant species by 2020. We consolidated digitally available plant conservation assessments and reconciled their scientific names and assessment status to predefined standards to provide a quantitative measure of progress toward this target. The 241,919 plant conservation assessments generated represent 111,824 accepted land plant species (vascular plants and bryophytes, not algae). At least 73,081 and up to 90,321 species have been assessed at the global scale, representing 21–26% of known plant species. Of these plant species, at least 27,148 and up to 32,542 are threatened. Eighty plant families, including some of the largest, such as Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, and Rubiaceae, are underassessed and should be the focus of assessment effort if the GSPC target is to be met by 2020. Our data set is accessible online (ThreatSearch) and is a baseline that can be used to directly support other GSPC targets and plant conservation action. Although around one‐quarter of a million plant assessments have been compiled, the majority of plants are still unassessed. The challenge now is to build on this progress and redouble efforts to document conservation status of unassessed plants to better inform conservation decisions and conserve the most threatened species.     

Safety I–II,resilience and antifragility engineering: a debate explained through an accident occurring on a mobile elevating work platform

Occupational health and safety (OHS) represents an important field of exploration for the research community: in spite of the growth of technological innovations, the increasing complexity of systems involves critical issues in terms of degradation of the safety levels. In such a situation, new safety management approaches are now mandatory in order to face the safety implications of the current technological evolutions. Along these lines, performing risk-based analysis alone seems not to be enough anymore. The evaluation of robustness, antifragility and resilience of a socio-technical system is now indispensable in order to face unforeseen events. This article will briefly introduce the topics of Safety I and Safety II, resilience engineering and antifragility engineering, explaining correlations, overlapping aspects and synergies. Secondly, the article will discuss the applications of those paradigms to a real accident, highlighting how they can challenge, stimulate and inspire research for improving OHS conditions.