Portuguese strengths and fragilities on safety and health practices

Despite improvements over the years, accidents continue to be a scourge in the construction sector, leading to an increase in the number of journal articles addressing the issue, in an attempt to help construction industry to increase safety performance [1]. This paper aims to, helping construction industry and particulary tunneling community, describe the Portuguese approach to most typical health and safety problems in underground excavations performed with the Sequential Excavation Method (SEM). The article will address various topics, from safety management and organizational practices, to collective and personal protection equipment, to emergency planning. nt problems in safety and health matters are similar to several other countries, the paper will expose a compilation of Portuguese best practices used to solve that problems. This enunciation of best practices describes experience from most important and recognized Project Owners and Contractors in Portugal. In a second phase it will be analysed Portuguese weaknesses, identifying preventive measures, and their comparative importance, that should be adopted in Portugal in order to reduce accidents and health diseases.

Modern optimization in earthwork construction

Earthworks tasks are often regarded in transportation projects as some of the most demanding processes. In fact, sequential tasks such as excavation, transportation, spreading and compaction are strongly based on heavy mechanical equipment and repetitive processes, thus becoming as economically demanding as they are time-consuming. Moreover, actual construction requirements originate higher demands for productivity and safety in earthwork constructions. Given the percentual weight of costs and duration of earthworks in infrastructure construction, the optimal usage of every resource in these tasks is paramount. Considering the characteristics of an earthwork construction, it can be looked at as a production line based on resources (mechanical equipment) and dependency relations between sequential tasks, hence being susceptible to optimization. Up to the present, the steady development of Information Technology areas, such as databases, artificial intelligence and operations research, has resulted in the emergence of several technologies with potential application bearing that purpose in mind. Among these, modern optimization methods (also known as metaheuristics), such as evolutionary computation, have the potential to find high quality optimal solutions with a reasonable use of computational resources. In this context, this work describes an optimization algorithm for earthworks equipment allocation based on a modern optimization approach, which takes advantage of the concept that an earthwork construction can be regarded as a production line.

Construction of an innocuous Salmonella phage

Dissertação de mestrado em Bioengenharia

Iowa Department of Public Safety Annual Report, 2002

Annual report for Iowa Department of Public Safety

Annual Report 2003, Iowa Department of Public Safety, 2003

Annual report for Iowa Department of Public Safety

Construction Code, November 25, 2008

Construction codes establish minimum standards for structural integrity, life safety, accessibility and energy conservation in construction of buildings and facilities intended for human occupancy. These requirements affect all of the major systems of buildings and facilities.

An evolutionary model explaining the Neolithic transition from egalitarianism to leadership and despotism.

The Neolithic was marked by a transition from small and relatively egalitarian groups to much larger groups with increased stratification. But, the dynamics of this remain poorly understood. It is hard to see how despotism can arise without coercion, yet coercion could not easily have occurred in an egalitarian setting. Using a quantitative model of evolution in a patch-structured population, we demonstrate that the interaction between demographic and ecological factors can overcome this conundrum. We model the coevolution of individual preferences for hierarchy alongside the degree of despotism of leaders, and the dispersal preferences of followers. We show that voluntary leadership without coercion can evolve in small groups, when leaders help to solve coordination problems related to resource production. An example is coordinating construction of an irrigation system. Our model predicts that the transition to larger despotic groups will then occur when: (i) surplus resources lead to demographic expansion of groups, removing the viability of an acephalous niche in the same area and so locking individuals into hierarchy; (ii) high dispersal costs limit followers' ability to escape a despot. Empirical evidence suggests that these conditions were probably met, for the first time, during the subsistence intensification of the Neolithic.

Safer Construction and Maintenance Safer Construction and Maintenance Practices to Minimize Potential Liability by Counties from Accidents, September 1979

Tort claims resulting from alleged highway defects have introduced an additional element in the planning, design, construction, and maintenance of highways. A survey of county governments in Iowa was undertaken in order to quantify the magnitude and determine the nature of this problem. This survey included the use of mailed questionnaires and personal interviews with County Engineers. Highway-related claims filed against counties in Iowa amounted to about $52,000,000 during the period 1973 through 1978. Over $30,000,000 in claims was pending at the end of 1978. Settlements of judgments were made at a cost of 12.2% of the amount claimed for those claims that had been disposed of, not including costs for handling claims, attorney fees, or court costs. There was no clear time trend in the amount of claims for the six-year period surveyed, although the amount claimed in 1978 was about double the average for the preceding five years. Problems that resulted in claims for damages from counties have generally related to alleged omissions in the use of traffic control devices or defects, often temporary, resulting from alleged inadequacies in highway maintenance. The absence of stop signs or warning signs often has been the central issue in a highway-related tort claim. Maintenance problems most frequently alleged have included inadequate shoulders, surface roughness, ice o? snow conditions, and loose gravel. The variation in the occurrence of tort claims among 85 counties in Iowa could not be related to any of the explanatory variables that were tested. Claims appeared to have occurred randomly. However, using data from a sub sample of 11 counties, a significant relationship was shown probably to exist between the amount of tort claims and the extensiveness of use of warning signs on the respective county road systems. Although there was no indication in any county that their use of warning signs did not conform with provisions of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (Federal Highway Administration, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1978), many more warning signs were used in some counties than would be required to satisfy this minimum requirement. Sign vandalism reportedly is a problem in all counties. The threat of vandalism and the added costs incurred thereby have tended to inhibit more extensive use of traffic control devices. It also should be noted that there is no indication from this research of a correlation between the intensiveness of sign usage and highway safety. All highway maintenance activities introduce some extraordinary hazard for motorists. Generally effective methodologies have evolved for use on county road systems for routine maintenance activities, procedures that tend to reduce the hazard to practical and reasonably acceptable levels. Blading of loose-surfaced roads is an example of such a routine maintenance activity. Alternative patterns for blading that were investigated as part of this research offered no improvements in safety when compared with the method in current use and introduced a significant additional cost that was unacceptable, given the existing limitations in resources available for county roads.

Safety and Mobility Impacts of Winter Weather – Phase I, August 2011

Highway agencies spend millions of dollars to ensure safe and efficient winter travel. However, the effectiveness of winter weather maintenance practices on safety and mobility are somewhat difficult to quantify. Phase I of this project investigated opportunities for improving traffic safety on state-maintained roads in Iowa during winter weather conditions. The primary objective was to develop several preliminary means for the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) to identify locations of possible interest systematically with respect to winter weather-related safety performance based on crash history. Specifically, metrics were developed to assist in identifying possible habitual, winter weather-related crash sites on state-maintained rural highways in Iowa. In addition, the current state of practice, for both domestic and international highway agency practices, regarding integration of traffic safety- and mobility-related data in winter maintenance activities and performance measures were investigated. This investigation also included previous research efforts. Finally, a preliminary work plan, focusing on systematic use of safety-related data in support of winter maintenance activities and site evaluation, was prepared.

Application of Visualization and Simulation Program to Improve Work Zone Safety and Mobility, January 2010

A previous study sponsored by the Smart Work Zone Deployment Initiative, “Feasibility of Visualization and Simulation Applications to Improve Work Zone Safety and Mobility,” demonstrated the feasibility of combining readily available, inexpensive software programs, such as SketchUp and Google Earth, with standard two-dimensional civil engineering design programs, such as MicroStation, to create animations of construction work zones. The animations reflect changes in work zone configurations as the project progresses, representing an opportunity to visually present complex information to drivers, construction workers, agency personnel, and the general public. The purpose of this study is to continue the work from the previous study to determine the added value and resource demands created by including more complex data, specifically traffic volume, movement, and vehicle type. This report describes the changes that were made to the simulation, including incorporating additional data and converting the simulation from a desktop application to a web application.

Roadway Lighting and Safety: Phase II – Monitoring Quality, Durability and Efficiency, November 2011

This Phase II project follows a previous project titled Strategies to Address Nighttime Crashes at Rural, Unsignalized Intersections. Based on the results of the previous study, the Iowa Highway Research Board (IHRB) indicated interest in pursuing further research to address the quality of lighting, rather than just the presence of light, with respect to safety. The research team supplemented the literature review from the previous study, specifically addressing lighting level in terms of measurement, the relationship between light levels and safety, and lamp durability and efficiency. The Center for Transportation Research and Education (CTRE) teamed with a national research leader in roadway lighting, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) to collect the data. An integral instrument to the data collection efforts was the creation of the Roadway Monitoring System (RMS). The RMS allowed the research team to collect lighting data and approach information for each rural intersection identified in the previous phase. After data cleanup, the final data set contained illuminance data for 101 lighted intersections (of 137 lighted intersections in the first study). Data analysis included a robust statistical analysis based on Bayesian techniques. Average illuminance, average glare, and average uniformity ratio values were used to classify quality of lighting at the intersections.

From Empirical Bayes to Full Bayes: Methods for Analysing Traffice Safety Data, October 25, 2004

Traffic safety engineers are among the early adopters of Bayesian statistical tools for analyzing crash data. As in many other areas of application, empirical Bayes methods were their first choice, perhaps because they represent an intuitively appealing, yet relatively easy to implement alternative to purely classical approaches. With the enormous progress in numerical methods made in recent years and with the availability of free, easy to use software that permits implementing a fully Bayesian approach, however, there is now ample justification to progress towards fully Bayesian analyses of crash data. The fully Bayesian approach, in particular as implemented via multi-level hierarchical models, has many advantages over the empirical Bayes approach. In a full Bayesian analysis, prior information and all available data are seamlessly integrated into posterior distributions on which practitioners can base their inferences. All uncertainties are thus accounted for in the analyses and there is no need to pre-process data to obtain Safety Performance Functions and other such prior estimates of the effect of covariates on the outcome of interest. In this slight, fully Bayesian methods may well be less costly to implement and may result in safety estimates with more realistic standard errors. In this manuscript, we present the full Bayesian approach to analyzing traffic safety data and focus on highlighting the differences between the empirical Bayes and the full Bayes approaches. We use an illustrative example to discuss a step-by-step Bayesian analysis of the data and to show some of the types of inferences that are possible within the full Bayesian framework.

Evaluation of Safety Treatments for Roadside Culverts: TR-517, April 24, 2009

Roadside cross-drainage culverts have been found to impact vehicle accident injury levels. Designers have commonly used three safety treatments to protect errant drivers from culvert accidents. These treatments have included: culvert extension, guardrail installation and grating. In order to define which safety treatment is the most appropriate, benefit-cost analysis has used accident cost reduction to estimate societal gains earned by using any safety treatment. The purpose of this study was to estimate accident costs for a wide range of roadway and roadside characteristics so that designers can calculate benefit/cost ratios for culvert safety treatment options under any particular scenario. This study began with conducting a parametric study in order to find variables which have significant impact on accident cost changes. The study proceeded with highway scenario modeling which included scenarios with different values for combinations of roadway and roadside variables. These variables were chosen based upon findings from the parametric study and their values were assigned based upon highway classification. This study shows that the use of different culvert safety treatments should be flexible to roadway and roadside characteristics. It also shows that culvert extension and grating were the safety treatments found to produce the lowest accident costs for all highway scenarios modeled. Therefore, it is believed that the expanded adoption of culvert extension and culvert grates can improve overall highway safety.

Roadway Lighting and Safety: Phase II – Monitoring Quality, Durability and Efficiency, November 2011

This Phase II project follows a previous project titled Strategies to Address Nighttime Crashes at Rural, Unsignalized Intersections. Based on the results of the previous study, the Iowa Highway Research Board (IHRB) indicated interest in pursuing further research to address the quality of lighting, rather than just the presence of light, with respect to safety. The research team supplemented the literature review from the previous study, specifically addressing lighting level in terms of measurement, the relationship between light levels and safety, and lamp durability and efficiency. The Center for Transportation Research and Education (CTRE) teamed with a national research leader in roadway lighting, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) to collect the data. An integral instrument to the data collection efforts was the creation of the Roadway Monitoring System (RMS). The RMS allowed the research team to collect lighting data and approach information for each rural intersection identified in the previous phase. After data cleanup, the final data set contained illuminance data for 101 lighted intersections (of 137 lighted intersections in the first study). Data analysis included a robust statistical analysis based on Bayesian techniques. Average illuminance, average glare, and average uniformity ratio values were used to classify quality of lighting at the intersections.

Public Employees Leadership Institute Final Report, August 2011

Public agencies in Iowa are continually challenged with reduced staff levels, reduced budgets, and increased expectations for services provided. Responding to these demands requires a well-informed and coordinated team that includes professionals, supervisors, technicians, lead workers, and workers. Becoming a coordinated team requires the training and interaction to produce a common foundation to build upon. In 2007, a training program did not exist in the state to provide this level of training for existing or upcoming managers and leaders of public agencies. The Iowa Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP), in conjunction with Iowa public agency representatives, set out to provide that foundation by developing the Iowa Public Employees Leadership Academy, which was renamed the Public Employees Leadership Institute in July 2011. The Institute is an on-demand, online training program designed to create better (or new) leaders and supervisors for Iowa’s public agencies. The Institute provides a curriculum to train the next generation of leaders, who will replace existing leaders when retirements occur. Through the Institute, Iowa LTAP will provide a coordinated, structured, non-credit educational program available for a modest fee. The techniques and skills offered through the Institute can apply to all who wish to develop or sharpen their leadership and management abilities. This will be true whether the participants are employed in the public or private sector. The 14 courses that were developed and are being offered are as follows: Supervisory Techniques and Skills, Team Development, Communications Skills, Leadership Skills, Community Service/Customer Orientation, Legal Understanding, Fundamentals of Government, Finance, Resource Management, Operations and Maintenance, Basic Management, Emergency Management, Project Management, and Winter Maintenance Management.