Improving construction site safety through leader-based verbal safety communication

Background

The construction industry is one of the most injury-prone industries, in which production is usually prioritized over safety in daily on-site communication. Workers have an informal and oral culture of risk, in which safety is rarely openly expressed. This paper tests the effect of increasing leader-based on-site verbal safety communication on the level of safety and safety climate at construction sites. Method: A pre-post intervention-control design with five construction work gangs is carried out. Foremen in two intervention groups are coached and given bi-weekly feedback about their daily verbal safety communications with their workers. Foremen-worker verbal safety exchanges (experience sampling method, n = 1,693 interviews), construction site safety level (correct vs. incorrect, n = 22,077 single observations), and safety climate (seven dimensions, n = 105 questionnaires) are measured over a period of up to 42 weeks. Results: Baseline measurements in the two intervention and three control groups reveal that foremen speak with their workers several times a day. Workers perceive safety as part of their verbal communication with their foremen in only 6-16% of exchanges, and the levels of safety at the sites range from 70-87% (correct observations). Measurements from baseline to follow-up in the two intervention groups reveal that safety communication between foremen and workers increases significantly in one of the groups (factor 7.1 increase), and a significant yet smaller increase is found when the two intervention groups are combined (factor 4.6). Significant increases in the level of safety are seen in both intervention groups (7% and 12% increases, respectively), particularly in regards to 'access ways' and 'railings and coverings' (39% and 84% increases, respectively). Increases in safety climate are seen in only one of the intervention groups with respect to their 'attention to safety.' No significant trend changes are seen in the three control groups on any of the three measures. Conclusions: Coaching construction site foremen to include safety in their daily verbal exchanges with workers has a significantly positive and lasting effect on the level of safety, which is a proximal estimate for work-related accidents. It is recommended that future studies include coaching and feedback at all organizational levels and for all involved parties in the construction process. Building client regulations could assign the task of coaching to the client appointed safety coordinators or a manager/supervisor, and studies should measure longitudinal effects of coaching by following foremen and their work gangs from site to site.     

Climate pioneership and leadership in structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities

ABSTRACT

Innovative climate governance in small-to-medium-sized structurally disadvantaged cities (SDCs) are assessed. Considering their deeply ingrained severe economic and social problems it would be reasonable to assume that SDCs act primarily as climate laggards or at best as followers. However, novel empirical findings show that SDCs are capable of acting as climate pioneers. Different types and styles of climate leadership and pioneership and how they operate within multi-level and polycentric governance structures are identified and assessed. SDCs seem relatively readily willing to adopt transformational climate pioneership styles to create ‘green’ jobs, for example, in the offshore wind energy sector and with the aim of improving their poor external image. However, in order to sustain transformational climate pioneership they often have to rely on support from ‘higher’ levels of governance. For SDCs, there is a tension between learning from each other’s best practice and fierce economic competition in climate innovation.     

长江中游荆南三口断流时间演变特征及其影响机制

研究河道断流演变特征对认识区域水文过程及人类活动具有重要作用。论文依据1951—2014年水文气候实测数据,运用Mann-Kendall检验法,以及蒸散发-断流天数和降水-径流双累积曲线统计模型等方法分析了长江中游荆南三口断流时间演变特征及其影响机制,结果表明：1）对各时期荆南三口平均断流天数而言,1951—2014年呈逐期増加趋势,且趋势性变化显著,而在2003—2014年间,断流天数虽也增加,但趋势性变化不显著,即增加趋势逐渐减缓;2）影响荆南三口断流天数增减変化的是径流变化过程,而导致径流变化的又是以降水和蒸散发为代表的气候因素和以水利工程、各行业（农业）用水为标志的人类活动;3）影响荆南三口断流天数持续增加的主要驱动因素是人类活动,以各自时段前一时段为基准期,1959—1966、1967—1972、1973—1980、1981—2002、2003—2014年的5个变异期中,气候波动对荆南三口断流天数增加的贡献率依次为24.93%、19.05%、6.36%、10.38%、7.56%;人类活动影响的贡献率分别为75.07%、80.95%、93.64%、89.62%、92.44%。     

Cities as leaders in EU multilevel climate governance: embedded upscaling of local experiments in Europe

ABSTRACT

The success of local climate governance in Europe depends not only on leading cities but also on the dynamics between leaders, followers, and laggards. Upscaling local experiments helps to close the gap between these actors. This process is driven by the increasing embeddedness of cities and their networks in EU multilevel governance. Embedded upscaling combines horizontal upscaling between leading cities with vertical upscaling between leaders and followers that is mediated by higher levels of government, and hierarchical upscaling that even reaches the laggards. Various types of upscaling, their combinations, and their impacts are analyzed. Networks have become denser and networking has intensified. City networks and their member cities have become embedded in national and EU governance, lost authority and depend more and more on regional, national, and European authorities.     

Considering climate change and regional differences: An efficiency assessment of coal mine use and land restoration

China is the country with the largest coal mining production and consumption in the world, but due to a large amount of coal burning, air pollution and climate change are exasperating related problems. The previous literature mainly has discussed coal mine production and environmental pollution, but failed to take into account external factors such as climate change and seldom discussed the relationship between coal mine land use and land restoration. Therefore, this study uses the meta-Epsilon-Based Measure two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis under the exogenous model and incorporates coal mine land use and land restoration use into the model to explore the relationship between the two under climate change. The research results are as follows. (1) If the external climate factors are not considered, then the phenomenon of overestimation or underestimation of the technology gap arises. (2) The efficiency value of the coal mining stage in most provinces is generally higher than the land restoration efficiency value.     

基于ICEEMDAN和MC-CNN的矿山声发射信号识别分类方法

为精准识别地下矿山声发射事件,采用基于改进的完全集合经验模态分解模型(ICEEMDAN)和多通道卷积神经网络(MC-CNN)模型对声发射信号进行处理后得到分量图,根据各通道输入分量峭度值赋予不同权重,并利用卷积神经网络对输入数据进行训练,最终采用五折交叉实验方法验证该分类识别方法的可行性及有效性.结果表明:基于ICEE...     

Identifying robust strategies for assisted migration in a competitive stochastic metacommunity

Assisted migration (AM) is the translocation of species beyond their historical range to locations that are expected to be more suitable under future climate change. However, a relocated population may fail to establish in its donor community if there is high uncertainty in decision-making, climate, and interactions with the recipient ecological community. To quantify the benefit to persistence and risk of establishment failure of AM under different management scenarios (e.g., choosing target species, proportion of population to relocate, and optimal location to relocate), we built a stochastic metacommunity model to simulate several species reproducing, dispersing, and competing on a temperature gradient as temperature increases over time. Without AM, the species were vulnerable to climate change when they had low population sizes, short dispersal, and strong poleward competition. When relocating species that exemplified these traits, AM increased the long-term persistence of the species most when relocating a fraction of the donor population, even if the remaining population was very small or rapidly declining. This suggests that leaving behind a fraction of the population could be a robust approach, allowing managers to repeat AM in case they move the species to the wrong place and at the wrong time, especially when it is difficult to identify a species’ optimal climate. We found that AM most benefitted species with low dispersal ability and least benefited species with narrow thermal tolerances, for which AM increased extinction risk on average. Although relocation did not affect the persistence of nontarget species in our simple competitive model, researchers will need to consider a more complete set of community interactions to comprehensively understand invasion potential.     

呼伦湖水面动态变化遥感监测及气候因素驱动分析

利用长时间序列的MODIS数据,采用水体指数动态分析的方法,对2000~2013年呼伦湖的水体面积进行了动态变化分析,并结合区域气候数据进行了驱动力分析.结果表明:2000~2012年期间,呼伦湖流域水体面积从2286km²减少至1773km²,减少22.4%,主要减少部分分布在湖体东北部和南部;2013年水体面积尤其是南部水域水体面积略有所恢复.呼伦湖主体湖区面积的变化与年均温呈现不显著的负相关关系.     

亚热带水库沉积物钻孔中有机质的历史记录及其环境意义

氢指数(HI)是重要的有机质评价参数,能够反映沉积有机质中脂肪大分子物质的相对含量,并用于反演水生生态系统的历史初级生产力,有助于研究藻类生产力对污染物的富集作用。为了探讨氢指数的环境指示作用,选择了亚热带的3座水库作为研究对象,采用Rock-Eval热解与生物标志物-中性糖方法相结合的研究技术,研究了沉积钻孔有机质的来源与特征;并结合210Pb和137Cs定年技术,综合运用氢指数和总糖含量对水库的初级生产力进行了重建。结果表明:中富营养的增塘和联安水库沉积有机质主要来源于浮游藻类,且受降解的程度较小,而贫营养的新丰江水库钻孔下层有机质主要是受降解作用或陆源高等植物等的影响。近年来,3个水库的HI值都有显著性的增加,且与其对应的总糖含量以及近50年来的滑动平均温度都高度的相关,说明这些水库都经历了气候变暖所引起的初级生产力增长。同时,升高的水库生产力扩大了沉积物剖面中重金属和多环芳烃的累积。     

中国地区人为热分布特征研究

利用中国统计年鉴中全国各省份的非再生能源消费资料和2.5min×2.5min分辨率的人口格点数据,对中国地区人为热排放的时空分布进行研究,讨论了其分布特征和影响因素.结果表明,中国地区人为热通量随时间持续增长,特别是在2000年后增长加速,1985年到2000年从0.09W/m2增长到0.16W/m2,而到2013年已经增长到0.38W/m2.中国地区的人为热排放具有显著的地域特征,在华北、华东和华南,由于人口密度大、经济发达,人为热的污染很严重;在华中地区,人为热污染较严重的区域主要分布在以武汉为中心的经济圈;在东北地区,以大连、沈阳、长春和哈尔滨为中心的城市区域人为热污染也较为严重;而在西北和西南的大部分地区,人为热排放量很小,仅在以成都、重庆为中心的区域较大.历年来全国年均人为热的最大值都出现在上海,其中2010年最大,为113.5W/m2,上海人为热排放的年均值增长明显,可达到0.6W/m2/a.随着城市化进程的加快,人为热的排放愈来愈强,热污染对城市和区域的气候以及空气污染的影响也会越来越重要.