A victim risk identification model for nature-induced urban disaster emergency response.

In recent years, nature-induced urban disasters in high-density modern cities in China have raised great concerns. The delayed and imprecise understanding of the real-time post-disaster situation made it difficult for the decision-makers to find a suitable emergency rescue plan. To this end, this study aims to facilitate the real-time performance and accuracy of on-site victim risk identification. In this article, we propose a victim identification model based on the You Only Look Once v7-W6 (YOLOv7-W6) algorithm. This model defines the "fall-down" pose as a key feature in identifying urgent victims from the perspective of disaster medicine rescue. The results demonstrate that this model performs superior accuracy (mAP@0.5, 0.960) and inference speed (5.1 ms) on the established disaster victim database compared to other state-of-the-art object detection algorithms. Finally, a case study is illustrated to show the practical utilization of this model in a real disaster rescue scenario. This study proposes an intelligent on-site victim risk identification approach, contributing significantly to government emergency decision-making and response.

Probabilistic Analysis of Domino Effects by Using a Matrix-Based Simulation Approach.

Major industrial accidents occurring at so-called major hazard installations may cause domino accidents which are among the most destructive industrial accidents existing at present. As there may be many hazard installations in an area, a primary accident scenario may potentially propagate from one installation to another, and correlations exist in probability calculations of domino effects. In addition, during the propagation of a domino effect, accidents of diverse types may occur, some of them having a synergistic effect, while others do not. These characteristics make the analytical formulation of domino accidents very complex. In this work, a simple matrix-based modeling approach for domino effect analysis is proposed. Matrices can be used to represent the mutual influences of different escalation vectors between installations. On this basis, an analysis approach for accident propagation as well as a simulation-based algorithm for probability calculation of accidents and accident levels is provided. The applicability and flexibility of this approach is discussed while applying it to estimate domino probabilities in a case study.

On the application of the window of opportunity and complex network to risk analysis of process plants operations during a pandemic.

To quantify the pandemic specific impact with respect to the risk related to the chemical industry, a novel risk analysis method is proposed. The method includes three parts. Firstly, the two types of "window of opportunity" (WO) theory is proposed to divide an accident life cycle into two parts. Then, a qualitative risk analysis is conducted based on WO theory to determine possible risk factors, evolution paths and consequences. The third part is a quantitative risk analysis based on a complex network model, integrating two types of WO. The Fuzzy set theory is introduced to calculate the failure probabilities of risk factors and the concept of risk entropy is used to represent the uncertainty. Then the Dijkstra algorithm is used to calculate the shortest path and the corresponding probability of the accident. The proposed method is applied to the SCR denitrition liquid ammonia storage and transportation system. The results show that it is a comprehensive method of quantitative risk analysis and it is applicable to risk analysis during the pandemic.

DAMS: A Model to Assess Domino Effects by Using Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation.

Historical data analysis shows that escalation accidents, so-called domino effects, have an important role in disastrous accidents in the chemical and process industries. In this study, an agent-based modeling and simulation approach is proposed to study the propagation of domino effects in the chemical and process industries. Different from the analytical or Monte Carlo simulation approaches, which normally study the domino effect at probabilistic network levels, the agent-based modeling technique explains the domino effects from a bottom-up perspective. In this approach, the installations involved in a domino effect are modeled as agents whereas the interactions among the installations (e.g., by means of heat radiation) are modeled via the basic rules of the agents. Application of the developed model to several case studies demonstrates the ability of the model not only in modeling higher-level domino effects and synergistic effects but also in accounting for temporal dependencies. The model can readily be applied to large-scale complicated cases.

Quantitative assessment of wildfire risk in oil facilities.

Despite frequent occurrence of wildfires around the world, the role of wildfires has rarely been taken into account in risk assessment of process plants in wildlands, especially that large inventory of flammable petroleum products in contact with the heat of wildfire can lead to severe domino effects. We have developed a dynamic risk assessment framework by integrating available models of fire spread and domino effect analysis with online maps of wildfire characteristics such as ignition probability and heat intensity to investigate the impact of wildfires on oil facilities. The framework is modular, so one can readily enhance its accuracy by replacing the current techniques with more sophisticated ones. The application of the methodology is demonstrated on an oil terminal.

Application of Graph Theory to Cost-Effective Fire Protection of Chemical Plants During Domino Effects.

In the present study, we have introduced a methodology based on graph theory and multicriteria decision analysis for cost-effective fire protection of chemical plants subject to fire-induced domino effects. By modeling domino effects in chemical plants as a directed graph, the graph centrality measures such as out-closeness and betweenness scores can be used to identify the installations playing a key role in initiating and propagating potential domino effects. It is demonstrated that active fire protection of installations with the highest out-closeness score and passive fire protection of installations with the highest betweenness score are the most effective strategies for reducing the vulnerability of chemical plants to fire-induced domino effects. We have employed a dynamic graph analysis to investigate the impact of both the availability and the degradation of fire protection measures over time on the vulnerability of chemical plants. The results obtained from the graph analysis can further be prioritized using multicriteria decision analysis techniques such as the method of reference point to find the most cost-effective fire protection strategy.

A Game-Theoretical Model to Improve Process Plant Protection from Terrorist Attacks.

The New York City 9/11 terrorist attacks urged people from academia as well as from industry to pay more attention to operational security research. The required focus in this type of research is human intention. Unlike safety-related accidents, security-related accidents have a deliberate nature, and one has to face intelligent adversaries with characteristics that traditional probabilistic risk assessment techniques are not capable of dealing with. In recent years, the mathematical tool of game theory, being capable to handle intelligent players, has been used in a variety of ways in terrorism risk assessment. In this article, we analyze the general intrusion detection system in process plants, and propose a game-theoretical model for security management in such plants. Players in our model are assumed to be rational and they play the game with complete information. Both the pure strategy and the mixed strategy solutions are explored and explained. We illustrate our model by an illustrative case, and find that in our case, no pure strategy but, instead, a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium exists.

An approach for optimal allocation of safety resources: using the knapsack problem to take aggregated cost-efficient preventive measures.

On the basis of the combination of the well-known knapsack problem and a widely used risk management technique in organizations (that is, the risk matrix), an approach was developed to carry out a cost-benefits analysis to efficiently take prevention investment decisions. Using the knapsack problem as a model and combining it with a well-known technique to solve this problem, bundles of prevention measures are prioritized based on their costs and benefits within a predefined prevention budget. Those bundles showing the highest efficiencies, and within a given budget, are identified from a wide variety of possible alternatives. Hence, the approach allows for an optimal allocation of safety resources, does not require any highly specialized information, and can therefore easily be applied by any organization using the risk matrix as a risk ranking tool.

The "Transparency for Safety" Triangle: Developing a Smart Transparency Framework to Achieve a Safety Learning Community.

Transparency about health and safety risks is a complex societal, moral, ethical and political concept. Full transparency does not come natural for any of the key stakeholder groups: organizations, authorities and the people. If safety information is not sufficiently shared between them, people and the environment can be harmed. The authors explored the literature on transparency in sharing health and safety information. The findings show that such transparency as a subject is abundant in the literature but the exchange of information is far from complete in practice. Health and safety information is shared both via internal flows within each stakeholder group and via external flows between them. All three main stakeholders in pursuit of true safety for their own reasons, building trust via sharing of health and safety information, require improvement in transparency and a safety information broker between them. This constitutes a smart transparency and information exchange framework. The authors recommend developing a transparency standard, to study cyber-socio-technical systems safety and to include currently underutilized experiential knowledge available from the general public in the societal discourse. The authors propose a societal domain extension to a holistic safety culture model in support of a learning safety community.

Measuring Safety Culture Using an Integrative Approach: The Development of a Comprehensive Conceptual Framework and an Applied Safety Culture Assessment Instrument.

An exponential amount of academic research has been dedicated to the safety culture concept, but still, no consensus has been reached on its definition and content. In general, safety culture research lacks an interdisciplinary approach. Furthermore, although the concept of safety culture is characterised by complexity and multifacetedness, the safety culture concept has been characterised by reductionism, where models and theories simplify the concept in order to better grasp it, leading to confined approaches. In this article, the multifacetedness of safety culture is acknowledged, and the topic is addressed from a safety science perspective, combining insights from multiple academic disciplines. An integrative and comprehensive conceptual framework to assess safety culture in organisations is developed, taking into account the limitations of existing models, as well as the needs of the work field. This conceptual framework is called the 'Integrated Safety Culture Assessment' (ISCA), where the 'assessment' refers to its practical usability. The practical rendition of ISCA can be used to map the safety culture of an organisation and to formulate recommendations in this regard, with the ultimate goal of bringing about a change towards a positive safety culture. The comprehensiveness of ISCA lies in the inclusion of technological factors, organisational or contextual factors and human factors interacting and interrelating with each other, and in considering both observable or objective safety-related aspects in an organisation, and non-observable or subjective safety-related aspects. When using ISCA, organisational safety culture is assessed in an integrative way by using a variety of research methods involving the entire organisation, and by taking into account the specific context of the organisation.

Analysis of the Interaction Mechanism of the Risk Factors of Gas Explosions in Chinese Underground Coal Mines.

Gas explosion accidents easily cause severe casualties in Chinese underground coal mines. Systematic analysis of accident causation is crucial for the prevention of gas explosions. This study identifies the representative risk factors of gas explosions and determines the interrelationship among these risk factors to highlight weak links and develop countermeasures. A total of 21 representative risk factors of gas explosions were identified through 128 case studies and front-line investigations. On this basis, a five-level hierarchical structure model of gas explosions was established to explore the complex interrelationships among the representative risk factors based on a combination of the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) methods. Moreover, the Matrix of Cross Impact Multiplications Applied to Classification (MICMAC) method was applied to achieve risk factor classification into four clusters, namely, driving factors, linkage factors, dependent factors and autonomous factors. The results indicated that the interrelationships and emergence properties among the risk factors may cause gas explosions, which should give more attention to the interrelationships among multiple factors and multiple subsystems for coal enterprises. Meanwhile, the complex geological conditions, poor safety supervision, inadequate safety education and training, incomplete execution safety regulations and poor safety technology and input are the long-term focus of risk management for coal enterprises. Finally, 10 countermeasures were proposed to control these representative risk factors and interrelationships. The results are helpful to the development of gas explosion risk management policies and to the preferential allocation of limited resources to resolve these issues.

Conceptualizing the Contextual Dynamics of Safety Climate and Safety Culture Research: A Comparative Scientometric Analysis.

Safety climate and safety culture are important research domains in risk and safety science, and various industry and service sectors show significant interest in, and commitment to, applying its concepts, theories, and methods to enhance organizational safety performance. Despite the large body of literature on these topics, there are disagreements about the scope and focus of these concepts, and there is a lack of systematic understanding of their development patterns and the knowledge domains on which these are built. This article presents a comparative analysis of the literature focusing on safety climate and safety culture, using various scientometric analysis approaches and tools. General development patterns are identified, including the publication trends, in terms of temporal and geographical activity, the science domains in which safety culture and safety climate research occurs, and the scientific domains and articles that have primarily influenced their respective development. It is found that the safety culture and safety climate domains show strong similarities, e.g., in dominant application domains and frequently occurring terms. However, safety culture research attracts comparatively more attention from other scientific domains, and the research domains rely on partially different knowledge bases. In particular, while measurement plays a role in both domains, the results suggest that safety climate research focuses comparatively more on the development and validation of questionnaires and surveys in particular organizational contexts, whereas safety culture research appears to relate these measurements to wider organizational features and management mechanisms. Finally, various directions for future research are identified based on the obtained results.

Involving Moral and Ethical Principles in Safety Management Systems.

Some organisations, and some individual humans, violate moral and ethical rules, whether or not they are written down in laws or codes of conduct. Corporate transgressions, as this behaviour is called, occur because of the actions of those in charge, usually bright and dedicated people. Immoral and unethical conduct can adversely affect the safety of workers, the general public and the environment. A scoping review method for a literature search is used to explore morality and ethics in relation to health and safety management. Our findings show that controlling the risks associated with misconduct and corporate transgression is not usually seen as a responsibility allocated to safety systems but is left to general management and corporate governance. The moral and ethical principles, however, can be applied in safety management systems to prevent misconduct and transgression-related safety risks. Our results show that ethical leadership, ethical behaviour, sustaining an ethical climate and implementation of an ethical decision-making process emerge as key preventive measures. The discussion presents a proposed way to include these measures in safety management systems. Conclusion and recommendations underline that unwanted behaviour and transgression risks can be brought under control, starting from a set of best practices. Not only the managers themselves but also board members, independent external supervisors and government regulators need to embrace these practices.

COVID-19 outbreak: A data-driven optimization model for allocation of patients.

COVID-19 is an unprecedented pandemic that puts the entire world at stake and the healthcare systems across the globe have faced pressing challenges. The number of COVID-19 patients increases rapidly every day. The hospitals across many countries are starving to provide adequate service to the patients due to the shortage of resources and as a consequence, patients do not get admitted to hospitals on time, which in turn creates panic and might contribute to the spread of the pandemic. Under this resource constraint situation, this study proposes a data-driven optimization model for patient allocation in hospitals. First, a compartmental model is developed for characterizing the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Then, Pareto analysis is carried out to identify the most COVID-affected cities. An optimization model is then developed for optimal patient allocation in hospitals in different cities. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is also conducted to investigate the robustness of our decision model. Using published data for Indian cities, obtained from different websites, the proposed methodology has been validated. Experimental results reveal that the proposed model offers some efficient strategies for optimal allocation of patients. A total of ten cities are identified as the most affected. Besides, four factors, namely cooperation, distances between cities, number of patients, and bed capacity per city emerge as important determinants.

Operational safety economics: Foundations, current approaches and paths for future research.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the trade-off between economics and epidemic prevention (safety) has become painfully clear worldwide. This situation thus highlights the significance of balancing the economy with safety and health. Safety economics, considering the interdependencies between safety and micro-economics, is ideal for supporting this kind of decision-making. Although economic approaches such as cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis have been used in safety management, little attention has been paid to the fundamental issues and the primary methodologies in safety economics. Therefore, this paper presents a systematic study on safety economics to analyze the foundational issues and explore the possible approaches. Firstly, safety economics is defined as a transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of academic research focusing on the interdependencies and coevolution of micro-economies and safety. Then we explore the role of safety economics in safety management and production investment. Furthermore, to make decisions more profitable, economic approaches are summarized and analyzed for decision-making about prevention investments and/or safety strategies. Finally, we discuss some open issues in safety economics and possible pathways to improve this research field, such as security economics, risk perception, and multi-criteria analysis.

What about Using Photovoice for Health and Safety?

The positive reception of Wang and Burris' photovoice method, published in 1997, has led to a proliferation of ways in which professionals deploy photovoice in a widening range of application fields, e.g., public health, social development and phenomenological research of human experiences. A scoping review method is used to obtain an overview of current photovoice designs and of application examples in the health and safety domain. The results show a variety of method designs. Our findings indicate that all of the photovoice designs are composed from different combinations of eleven process steps. Five generic objectives cover the range of application examples found in our literature study. We therefore condensed the variety into five generic photovoice designs for: (a) communication, (b) education, (c) exploration, (d) awareness, and (e) empowerment purposes. We propose this for use in a classification system. The potential for application of these photovoice designs in safety management is illustrated by the existence of various safety related application examples. We argue that the five generic designs will facilitate the implementation and usage of photovoice as a tool. We recommend that both a theoretical framework and guidance are further developed. We conclude that photovoice holds potential for application in health and safety management.

A Bibliometric and Visualized Overview for the Evolution of Process Safety and Environmental Protection.

This paper presents a bibliometric overview of the publications in the principal international journal Process Safety and Environmental Protection (PSEP) from 1990 to 2020 retrieved in the Web of Science (WoS) database to explore the evolution in safety and environmental engineering design and practice, as well as experimental or theoretical innovative research. Therefore, based on the WoS database and the visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer software, the bibliometric analysis and scientometric mapping of the literature have been performed from the perspectives of document types, publication and citation distribution over time, leading authors, countries (regions), institutions, the corresponding collaboration networks, most cited publications and references, focused research fields and topics, research trend evolution over time, etc. The paper provides a comprehensive and quantitative overview and significant picture representation for the journal's leading and evolutionary trends by employing specific aforementioned bibliometric analysis factors. In addition, by reviewing the evolutionary trends of the journal and the proposed investigated factors, such as the influential works, main research topics, and the research frontiers, this paper reveals the scientific literature production's main research objectives and directions that could be addressed and explored in future studies.

Reflecting on the safety zoo: Developing an integrated pandemics barrier model using early lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our current predicament, the Covid-19 pandemic is first of all a health crisis. However, social disruption and economic damage are becoming visible some 7 months after the Wuhan City outbreak early December 2019. The authors wondered what could have been done better in prevention and repression of the Covid-19 pandemic from a safety management and risk control point of view. Within a case study framework, the authors gathered literature on pandemics, about country response effectiveness, and about human behaviour in the face of danger. The results consist of a safety management oriented narrative about the current pandemic, several critical observations about the current paradigms and shortcomings of preparation, and a number of opportunities for improvements of countermeasures. Many of the proverbial animals in the safety zoo, representing typical behaviours, were observed in action. Based on well proven risk analysis methods - risk management, event tree, scenarios, bowtie - the authors then analyse the generic sequence of events in a pandemic, starting from root causes, through prevention, via the outbreak of a pathogen, through mitigation to long term effects. Based on this analysis the authors propose an integrated pandemics barrier model. In this model the core is a generic pandemic scenario that is distinguishing five risk controllable sequential steps before an outbreak. The authors contend that the prevention of pandemics via safety management based biohazard risk control is both possible and of paramount importance since it can stop pandemic scenarios altogether even before an outbreak.

Introducing the Extended Safety Fractal: Reusing the Concept of Safety Management Systems to Organize Resilient Organizations.

Although mandatory in most high-risk industries, the safety management system (SMS) is often criticized as burdensome and complex. Through its requirement to formalize all main activities, the SMS is perceived as bureaucratic and a vehicle for pure compliance and Safety I (one). Furthermore, the SMS is often detached from an organization's core activities, goes against local practice and does not deliver the safe performance that was hoped for. By comparing the model behind SMS with specific requirements for process capability, this paper identifies a safety fractal that reflects the basic requirements that are needed to control safety related activities at all levels within an organization. It is further argued that the constituent elements of this safety fractal are particularly suitable to organize resilient performance, provided that resilience is explicitly identified as the safety strategy to follow and, as such, consequently implemented. This approach is then positioned against common safety management concepts as management system maturity, leadership and safety culture, leading to a systematic and a more comprehensive view on how to measure safety performance and resilience.

Risk Assessment of Processes and Products in Industrial Biotechnology.

Risk assessment has been used extensively as the main approach to prevent accidents in the chemical and process industry. Industrial biotechnology has many of the same hazards as chemical technology, but also encounters biological hazards related to biological agents. Employees in the biotechnology industry are susceptible to health risks because of different types of exposure to harmful agents. The external environment may also be affected by these agents in cases of accidental release. This chapter first presents several traditional risk assessment methods that may be used in industrial biotechnology after comparing differences between industrial biotechnology and chemical technology. Hazard identification in industrial biotechnology is then discussed, for biological as well as traditional hazards. Furthermore, risk assessment of occupational health and safety related to biological hazards is examined using exposure analysis and risk characterization. A two-stage risk assessment method is recommended to assess environmental and ecological risks in industrial biotechnology. Risk analysis of traditional accidents (fire, explosions, and toxic releases) in industrial biotechnology is also described. Graphical Abstract.