Design Considerations for High-Risk Offshore Safety Systems

1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Gruhn
1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Basil W. Balls ◽  
Paul Gruhn

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 584-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bunn

In this article I explore some of the aspects of shared doxic principles between outdoor fields and how these contribute to agents becoming interested in ‘high-consequence’ climbing styles. I argue that people who come to be high-risk climbers do not become involved for the purpose of participating in risky activities, but instead move into climbing through ‘overlapping fields’ that share practices and dispositions of climbing. Becoming a climber is a process that occurs gradually and imperceptibly, with much of the groundwork for an appreciation of climbing laid prior to actually taking part in climbing practice. In this paper, based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 35 interviews with climbers, I demonstrate that participants typically have been members of easier to access and less risky outdoor sports prior to their involvement. These activities share some of the skills required to become a climber, or at least are complementary. Once this initial engagement with the practice has occurred, individuals become involved in less risky forms of climbing practice. These allow climbers-to-be an opportunity to form an appreciation of the basic safety systems of climbing. With this understanding, it then becomes possible to navigate through the trajectories of climbing practice, often bringing with them greater acceptances of risk and danger.


As automation increasingly takes its place in industry, especially high risk industry, it is often blamed for causing harm and increasing the chance of human error when failures do occur. I propose that the problem is not the presence of automation, but rather its inappropriate design. The problem is that the operations under normal operating conditions are performed appropriately, but there is inadequate feedback and interaction with the humans who must control the overall conduct of the task. When the situations exceed the capabilities of the automatic equipment, then the inadequate feedback leads to difficulties for the human controllers. The problem, I suggest, is that the automation is at an intermediate level of intelligence, powerful enough to take over control that used to be done by people, but not powerful enough to handle all abnormalities. Moreover, its level of intelligence is insufficient to provide the continual, appropriate feedback that occurs naturally among human operators. This is the source of the current difficulties. To solve this problem, the automation should either be made less intelligent or more so, but the current level is quite inappropriate. The overall message is that it is possible to reduce error through appropriate design considerations. Appropriate design should assume the existence of error, it should continually provide feedback, it should continually interact with operators in an effective manner, and it should allow for the worst situations possible. What is needed is a soft, compliant technology, not a rigid, formal one.


Author(s):  
Alexandria D. Ward ◽  
Dan Nathan-Roberts

The commercial shipping industry continues to be responsible for a vast majority of the world’s trade, yet it remains behind similar transport industries in terms of safety and accident prevention. The regulation of safety systems and naval architecture have led to significantly fewer accidents, but human error remains a constant factor and has been identified as the most likely cause of a marine accident. A systematic review of the methods used to investigate latent factors regarding human error in marine accidents has been conducted in an effort to further examine casual factors which lead to human error. Widely accepted methods or modified methods from other high-risk industries such as Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) and Bayesian Networks have been utilized, but few have taken into account all of the sociotechnical macroergonomics of such a complex industry, leaving significant research and engineering potential.


Author(s):  
S.D. Smith ◽  
R.J. Spontak ◽  
D.H. Melik ◽  
S.M. Buehler ◽  
K.M. Kerr ◽  
...  

When blended together, homopolymers A and B will normally macrophase-separate into relatively large (≫1 μm) A-rich and B-rich phases, between which exists poor interfacial adhesion, due to a low entropy of mixing. The size scale of phase separation in such a blend can be reduced, and the extent of interfacial A-B contact and entanglement enhanced, via addition of an emulsifying agent such as an AB diblock copolymer. Diblock copolymers consist of a long sequence of A monomers covalently bonded to a long sequence of B monomers. These materials are surface-active and decrease interfacial tension between immiscible phases much in the same way as do small-molecule surfactants. Previous studies have clearly demonstrated the utility of block copolymers in compatibilizing homopolymer blends and enhancing blend properties such as fracture toughness. It is now recognized that optimization of emulsified ternary blends relies upon design considerations such as sufficient block penetration into a macrophase (to avoid block slip) and prevention of a copolymer multilayer at the A-B interface (to avoid intralayer failure).


Author(s):  
Y. Harada ◽  
K. Tsuno ◽  
Y. Arai

Magnetic objective lenses, from the point of view of pole piece geometry, can he roughly classified into two types, viz., symmetrical and asymmetrical. In the case of the former, the optical properties have been calculated by several authors1-3) and the results would appear to suggest that, in order to reduce the spherical and chromatic aberration coefficients, Cs and Cc, it is necessary to decrease the half-width value of the axial field distribution and to increase the peak flux density. The expressions for either minimum Cs or minimum Cc were presented in the form of ‘universal’ curves by Mulvey and Wallington4).


1982 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Fitch ◽  
Thomas F. Williams ◽  
Josephine E. Etienne

The critical need to identify children with hearing loss and provide treatment at the earliest possible age has become increasingly apparent in recent years (Northern & Downs, 1978). Reduction of the auditory signal during the critical language-learning period can severely limit the child's potential for developing a complete, effective communication system. Identification and treatment of children having handicapping conditions at an early age has gained impetus through the Handicapped Children's Early Education Program (HCEEP) projects funded by the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped (BEH).


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