The impact of a standard enforcement safety belt law on fatalities and hospital charges in Ohio

Introduction

The purpose of this study was to analyze linked crash and hospital data to determine the effect that enactment of a standard enforcement safety belt law in Ohio would have on hospital charges and direct medical costs due to motor-vehicle crashes, focusing on the impact to the state's Medicaid system.

Method

The linkage and analysis was conducted as part of the Ohio Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System (CODES) program. Current safety belt usage in Ohio stands at 82% with its secondary enforcement safety belt law.

Results

Assuming an increase in usage to 92% through standard enforcement, over $15.3 million in medical costs to Medicaid for injuries that occur in a single year could be prevented over a 10-year period. Cumulative savings could reach more than $91.2 million during the 10-year period. In addition, 161 fatalities could have been prevented in one year had all unbelted occupants who sustained a fatal injury instead chosen to wear their safety belt.

Summary and Impact on Industry

Clearly, substantial progress can be made in reducing the number of deaths and injuries, as well as medical costs associated with motor-vehicle crashes, by strengthening safety belt laws and increasing safety belt usage in Ohio.     

半导体企业的EHSMS评价体系研究

为了给员工提供安全、环保、健康的工作环境,半导体制造企业必须建立环境管理和职业健康安全管理体系(EHSMS).为此,评价EHSMS运行的有效性、完整性以及合法性就显得十分重要.本文在分析半导体企业污染物影响环境和健康基础上,建立了EHSMS评估体系.为了实施EHSM评估系统,方便半导体企业用户使用,提出了一套EHSM评价系统的计算机软件解决方案.     

Is there a material Kuznets curve for aluminium? evidence from rich countries

The paper tests the material Kuznets Curve (MKC) hypothesis with regard to aluminium consumption for 20 high-income countries over the period 1970 to 2009. The test is based on the suggestion of Narayan and Narayan (2010). Various unit root and cointegration tests are applied. The aluminium and GDP series are found to be integrated of order one and cointegrated. Additionally, the Blundell–Bond system generalized methods-of-moments (GMM) is employed to conduct a panel causality test in a vector error-correction mechanism (VECM) setting. Unidirectional causality running from real per capita GDP to the aluminium intensity is uncovered in both the short-run and long-run. While controlling for structural shocks, the MKC hypothesis is found to hold at individual levels for Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Japan, and United Kingdom as well as for the whole panel. A 1% increase in GDP generates an increase of 0.87% in metal intensity in the short-run and a fall of 0.82% in the long-run for the panel.     

通才式安全工程专业课程设置的探讨

根据安全工程专业所处的学科结构体系,讨论了通才式安全工程专业高等教育课程设置所考虑的因素.提出了通才式安全工程专业高等教育课程的设置思想、专业基础课和主干课的学时比以及实践与理论相结合的实习方法.     

火灾扑救模拟演练DIS系统框架的研究

论述了分布式交互仿真(Distributed Interactive Simulation,简称DIS)技术在火灾扑救模拟演练中的应用,给出其系统框架;详细描述了该DIS系统中的白方系统、蓝方系统和红方系统的具体组成功能部分;提出了实现这些功能的软件平台.最后给出了研究DIS在火灾扑救演练应用中的结论;指出未来的发展方向,强调了实际应用中可能出现的技术难点.     

基于HFACS的空中相撞事故分析及建议

空中相撞事故往往是由诸多人为差错相互叠加、耦合和作用而导致的,要找出事故的真正诱因,防止类似事故再次发生,难度非常大。为了有效地分析和定位人为差错,以更好地服务于防相撞的管理与决策,提出一种基于人为因素分析分类系统（HFACS）的空中相撞事故分析方法,它按照从显性差错到隐性差错的思路来分析事故的诱因,最终找出组织因素对事故的影响。并利用HFACS对巴西卡欣布上空发生的一起空中相撞事故进行了系统分析。案例分析结果表明,该方法不仅能够找出导致空中相撞事故的人为差错,解释事故发生的原因和过程,而且能够据此提供防止相撞事故发生的安全建议。     

Risk reduction concept to provide design criteria for Emergency Systems for onshore LNG plants

The functional safety requirement is widely applied in the process plant industry in accordance with the international standards, such as IEC and ISA. The requirement is defined as safety integrity level (SIL) based on the risk reduction concept for protection layers, from original process risk to tolerable risk level. Although the standards specify both, the Prevention System and the Emergency System, as level of protection layers, the standards specify in detail only the use of the Prevention System (i.e., Safety Instrumented System (SIS)). The safety integrity level is not commonly allocated to the Emergency System (e.g., Fire and Gas System, Emergency Shutdown System and Emergency Depressuring System). This is because the required risk reduction can be normally achieved by only the Prevention System (i.e., SIS and Pressure Safety Valve (PSV)). Further, the risk reduction level for the Emergency System is very difficult to be quantified by the actual SIL application (i.e., evaluated based on the single accident scenario, such as an accident from process control deviation), since the escalation scenarios after Loss of Containment (LOC) greatly vary depending on the plant design and equipment. Consequently, there are no clear criteria for evaluating the Emergency System design. This paper aims to provide the functional safety requirement (i.e., required risk reduction level based on IEC 61508 and 61511) as design criteria for the Emergency System.In order to provide clear criteria for the Emergency System evaluation, a risk reduction concept integrated with public’s perception of acceptable risk criteria is proposed and is applied to identify the required safety integrity level for the Emergency System design. Further, to verify the safety integrity levels for the Emergency Systems, the probabilistic model of the Emergency Systems was established considering each Emergency System (e.g., Fire and Gas System, Emergency Shutdown System and Emergency Depressuring System) relation as the Overall Emergency System. This is because the Overall Emergency System can achieve its goal by the combined action of each individual system, including inherent safe design, such as separation distance.The proposed approach applicability was verified by conducting a case study using actual onshore Liquefied Natural Gas Plant data. Further, the design criteria for Emergency Systems for LNG plants are also evaluated by sensitivity analysis.