The predictive validity of safety climate

PROBLEM: Safety professionals have increasingly turned their attention to social science for insight into the causation of industrial accidents. One social construct, safety climate, has been examined by several researchers [Cooper, M. D., & Phillips, R. A. (2004). Exploratory analysis of the safety climate and safety behavior relationship. Journal of Safety Research, 35(5), 497-512; Gillen, M., Baltz, D., Gassel, M., Kirsch, L., & Vacarro, D. (2002). Perceived safety climate, job Demands, and coworker support among union and nonunion injured construction workers. Journal of Safety Research, 33(1), 33-51; Neal, A., & Griffin, M. A. (2002). Safety climate and safety behaviour. Australian Journal of Management, 27, 66-76; Zohar, D. (2000). A group-level model of safety climate: Testing the effect of group climate on microaccidents in manufacturing jobs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(4), 587-596; Zohar, D., & Luria, G. (2005). A multilevel model of safety climate: Cross-level relationships between organization and group-level climates. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 616-628] who have documented its importance as a factor explaining the variation of safety-related outcomes (e.g., behavior, accidents). Researchers have developed instruments for measuring safety climate and have established some degree of psychometric reliability and validity. The problem, however, is that predictive validity has not been firmly established, which reduces the credibility of safety climate as a meaningful social construct. The research described in this article addresses this problem and provides additional support for safety climate as a viable construct and as a predictive indicator of safety-related outcomes. METHODS: This study used 292 employees at three locations of a heavy manufacturing organization to complete the 16 item Zohar Safety Climate Questionnaire (ZSCQ) [Zohar, D., & Luria, G. (2005). A multilevel model of safety climate: Cross-level relationships between organization and group-level climates. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 616-628]. In addition, safety behavior and accident experience data were collected for 5 months following the survey and were statistically analyzed (structural equation modeling, confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, etc.) to identify correlations, associations, internal consistency, and factorial structures. RESULTS: Results revealed that the ZSCQ: (a) was psychometrically reliable and valid, (b) served as an effective predictor of safety-related outcomes (behavior and accident experience), and (c) could be trimmed to an 11 item survey with little loss of explanatory power. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: Practitioners and researchers can use the ZSCQ with reasonable certainty of the questionnaire's reliability and validity. This provides a solid foundation for the development of meaningful organizational interventions and/or continued research into social factors affecting industrial accident experience.     

A new approach to determine relieving temperature and thermodynamic behavior of trapped single and multi-phase fluid exposed to fire

Process safety plays a key role in modern industries. This is more significant specifically in off-shore oil and gas platforms where releasing hydrocarbons could cause irreversible damages to both environment and personnel. An important instrument device which can provide safety for process equipment in oil and gas fields is safety relief valve. Correct sizing procedure of such devices depends strongly on physical properties of fluid and relieving condition. The present study revolved around applying thermodynamic concepts and modeling to throw some light on the behavior of trapped fluid exposed to fire in order to evaluate precise temperature and fluid properties at relieving condition. Peng–Robinson equation of state together with a three phase flash has been utilized to handle the calculation. Effect of different design parameters has been evaluated for three distinct categories of fluids namely natural gas, gas-condensate mixture, and gas-oil mixtures. These parameters encompass of operating temperature, operating pressure, Difference of Operating and Design Pressure, gas and oil specific gravities, gas-oil ratio, and water cut. The study depicted that American Petroleum Institute practice number 521 which suggests an ideal gas assumption fails to provide reliable predictions as it significantly overestimate the relieving temperature. Moreover, black oil correlations were also used for the relief temperature estimation of gas-oil-water mixtures. Comparison with HYSYS results as a prominent engineering software proved that black oil models are reliable tools to predict relief temperature.     

关于安全投资效益目标函数的建立和优化

通过对安全投资与事故经济损失的规律性的分析研究，确立安全投资与经济效益的内在关系，进一步探索在我国现有财力和安全水平的基础上，找准安全投资的投向，优化安全投资的合理分配，从而实现最大限度地提高企业安全生产水平和安全投资效益。为政府部门或企业提供一套经过优化、科学合理、操作性又比较强的安全投资方案，供各级领导进行安全决策，实现本部门、本单位的安全投资计划时参考     

资源环境承载力在保税区规划环境影响评估中的应用研究

保税区建设是中国沿海地区经济发展的重要载体,其对资源环境的影响主要来源于产业结构和内部布局,资源环境承载力的分析有助于保税区建设时经济发展方式的优化。本文以珠海保税区规划环境影响评价为研究实例,根据保税区的自身特点提出了资源环境承载力的评价思路和指标,并通过承载力计算对保税区规划的合理性进行了分析,提出规划应考虑土地空间整理、提高土地利用效率,提高工业用水重复利用率等策略。     

浅议电动葫芦定期检验周期的调整

文章根据某大型企业电动葫芦的使用现状,从设备运行、安全操作、使用成本、安全检测及相关法律法规等角度分析,论证了延长电动葫芦检验周期的可行性和必要性,提出了节约检验机构检测资源、降低企业安全监管成本,提高企业安全管理绩效的新观点。     

现代生物力学在煤矿安全科技中的应用研究

笔者根据国内外现代生物力学的发展情况 ,结合我国煤矿安全的现状 ,探讨现代生物力学在煤矿安全方面的应用 ,并提出了现代生物力学在安全科技两个方面的应用 :①研究人体结构在冲击事故的破坏极限 ,对安全帽的防护性能做简略的生物力学分析 ;②骨力———电性质的研究对骨折愈合与康复的意义。笔者提出随着现代科学技术的迅猛发展 ,煤矿安全方面的研究能否从现代生物力学在人体安全保护、骨折治疗与康复、职业病防治机理等方面的应用去研究的新思想和新方法 ,使煤矿安全的研究达到一个新的水平。     

Microtargeting for conservation

Widespread human action and behavior change is needed to achieve many conservation goals. Doing so at the requisite scale and pace will require the efficient delivery of outreach campaigns. Conservation gains will be greatest when efforts are directed toward places of high conservation value (or need) and tailored to critical actors. Recent strategic conservation planning has relied primarily on spatial assessments of biophysical attributes, largely ignoring the human dimensions. Elsewhere, marketers, political campaigns, and others use microtargeting—predictive analytics of big data—to identify people most likely to respond positively to particular messages or interventions. Conservationists have not yet widely capitalized on these techniques. To investigate the effectiveness of microtargeting to improve conservation, we developed a propensity model to predict restoration behavior among 203,645 private landowners in a 5,200,000 ha study area in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (U.S.A.). To isolate the additional value microtargeting may offer beyond geospatial prioritization, we analyzed a new high-resolution land-cover data set and cadastral data to identify private owners of riparian areas needing restoration. Subsequently, we developed and evaluated a restoration propensity model based on a database of landowners who had conducted restoration in the past and those who had not (n = 4978). Model validation in a parallel database (n = 4989) showed owners with the highest scorers for propensity to conduct restoration (i.e., top decile) were over twice as likely as average landowners to have conducted restoration (135%). These results demonstrate that microtargeting techniques can dramatically increase the efficiency and efficacy of conservation programs, above and beyond the advances offered by biophysical prioritizations alone, as well as facilitate more robust research of many social–ecological systems.     

有意违章行为动因分析与控制对策探讨

对有意违章行为的含义进行了界定 ,并对有意违章行为产生的动因进行了详细分析 ,提出了有意违章行为的动因主要包含违章行为与遵章行为满足生理心理需要作用的差值ΔXW、违章行为会受到法规惩处的作用FW、违章行为可导致人身伤害的主观感觉的作用RW3个方面。同时对 3个方面的动因按弗鲁姆的激励理论进行了转化 ,给出了各自的含义说明。笔者按动因分析的结果 ,给出了控制有意违章行为的步骤和措施     

面向国土空间规划的“双评价”：挑战与应对

面向国土空间规划的科学性、可操作性、层级性等内涵,探讨了资源环境承载能力评价和国土空间开发适宜性评价（“双评价”）与国土空间规划之间的基本逻辑问题、应用挑战与应对方法。通过系统梳理“双评价”的理论发展和相关政策响应,剖析了“双评价”在应用探索、内涵扩充、系统支撑三个阶段的研究重点和服务目标,阐明了承载力评价与适宜性评价之间关联逻辑的演进历程。总结了当前“双评价”在应用上的几个关键挑战：一是“双评价”应用于“三区三线”划定的逻辑尚未明确;二是当前承载能力评价与未来规划决策之间存在逻辑悖论;三是“双评价”在不同层级国土空间规划中传导失灵;四是两个评价之间的关联逻辑仍存在争议。为此,提出了应对“双评价”挑战的四点建议：深化理论认知、拓展评价维度、建立传导机制、厘清内在关系,以提升“双评价”对国土空间规划决策的支撑能力。     

Effectiveness of conservation easements in agricultural regions

Conservation easements are a standard technique for preventing habitat loss, particularly in agricultural regions with extensive cropland cultivation, yet little is known about their effectiveness. I developed a spatial econometric approach to propensity‐score matching and used the approach to estimate the amount of habitat loss prevented by a grassland conservation easement program of the U.S. federal government. I used a spatial autoregressive probit model to predict tract enrollment in the easement program as of 2001 based on tract agricultural suitability, habitat quality, and spatial interactions among neighboring tracts. Using the predicted values from the model, I matched enrolled tracts with similar unenrolled tracts to form a treatment group and a control group. To measure the program's impact on subsequent grassland loss, I estimated cropland cultivation rates for both groups in 2014 with a second spatial probit model. Between 2001 and 2014, approximately 14.9% of control tracts were cultivated and 0.3% of treated tracts were cultivated. Therefore, approximately 14.6% of the protected land would have been cultivated in the absence of the program. My results demonstrate that conservation easements can significantly reduce habitat loss in agricultural regions; however, the enrollment of tracts with low cropland suitability may constrain the amount of habitat loss they prevent. My results also show that spatial econometric models can improve the validity of control groups and thereby strengthen causal inferences about program effectiveness in situations when spatial interactions influence conservation decisions.