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1 – 10 of 87Yewei Ouyang, Guoqing Huang and Shiyi He
There are many safety hazards in construction workplaces, and inattention to the hazards is the main reason why construction workers failed to identify the hazards. Reasonably…
Abstract
Purpose
There are many safety hazards in construction workplaces, and inattention to the hazards is the main reason why construction workers failed to identify the hazards. Reasonably allocating attention during hazard identification is critical for construction workers’ safety. However, adverse working environments in job sites may undermine workers’ attention. Previous studies failed to investigate the impacts of environmental factors on attention allocation, which hinders taking appropriate measures to eliminate safety incidents when encountering adverse working environments. This study aims to examine the effects of workplace noise and heat exposure on workers’ attention allocation during construction hazard identification to fill the research gap.
Design/methodology/approach
This study applied an experimental study where a within-subject experiment was designed. Fifteen construction workers were invited to perform hazard identification tasks in panoramic virtual reality. They were exposed to three noise levels (60, 85 and 100 dBA) in four thermal conditions (26°C, 50% RH; 33°C, 50% RH; 30°C, 70% RH; 33°C, 70% RH). Their eye movements were recorded to indicate their attention allocation under each condition.
Findings
The results show that noise exposure reduced workers’ attention to hazardous areas and the impacts increased with the noise level. Heat exposure also reduced the attention, but it did not increase with the heat stress but with subjects’ thermal discomfort. The attention was impacted more by noise than heat exposure. Noise exposure in the hot climate should be more noteworthy because lower levels of noise would lead to significant changes. These visual characteristics led to poorer identification accuracy.
Originality/value
This study could extend the understanding of the relationship between adverse environmental factors and construction safety. Understanding the intrinsic reasons for workers' failed identification may also provide insights for the industry to enhance construction safety under adverse environments.
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Dohyeong Kim, Jaehun Yang, Doyeop Lee, Dongmin Lee, Farzad Rahimian and Chansik Park
Computer vision (CV) offers a promising approach to transforming the conventional in-person inspection practices prevalent within the construction industry. However, the reliance…
Abstract
Purpose
Computer vision (CV) offers a promising approach to transforming the conventional in-person inspection practices prevalent within the construction industry. However, the reliance on centralized systems in current CV-based inspections introduces a vulnerability to potential data manipulation. Unreliable inspection records make it challenging for safety managers to make timely decisions to ensure safety compliance. To address this issue, this paper proposes a blockchain (BC) and CV-based framework to enhance safety inspections at construction sites.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a BC-enhanced CV approach. By leveraging CV and BC, safety conditions are automatically identified from site images and can be reliably recorded as safety inspection data through the BC network. Additionally, by using this data, smart contracts coordinate inspection tasks, assign responsibilities and verify safety performance, managing the entire safety inspection process remotely.
Findings
A case study confirms the framework’s applicability and efficacy in facilitating remote and reliable safety inspections. The proposed framework is envisaged to greatly improve current safety inspection practices and, in doing so, contribute to reduced accidents and injuries in the construction industry.
Originality/value
This study provides novel and practical guidance for integrating CV and BC in construction safety inspection. It fulfills an identified need to study how to leverage CV-based inspection results for remotely managing the safety inspection process using BC. This work not only takes a significant step towards data-driven decision-making in the safety inspection process, but also paves the way for future studies aiming to develop tamper-proof data management systems for industrial inspections and audits.
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Carlee Purdum, Benika Dixon and Amite Dominick
The impact of extreme heat on prisons and carceral facilities is becoming increasingly visible, yet remains overlooked by scholars, practitioners and policymakers. Prisons are a…
Abstract
Purpose
The impact of extreme heat on prisons and carceral facilities is becoming increasingly visible, yet remains overlooked by scholars, practitioners and policymakers. Prisons are a unique type of infrastructure designed to severely limit and control the movement of hundreds and even thousands of individuals as a form of punishment. This leads to many significant challenges to mitigating the risk of heat-related illness in prisons and other carceral spaces that have remained overlooked across many disciplines including emergency management, disasters, corrections and public health.
Design/methodology/approach
For this study, we analyzed 192 surveys from incarcerated persons in state prisons throughout Texas to understand how incarceration and the punitive prison environment create challenges to managing extreme heat in prisons.
Findings
We found that characteristics of modern incarceration, including communal distribution of resources, crowded conditions and a lack of agency for incarcerated people, create barriers to accessing resources during periods of extreme heat. Furthermore, the punitive nature of the prison environment as manifested in the relationship between staff and incarcerated persons and certain prison policies also create barriers to incarcerated persons accessing resources to reduce their risk of heat-related illness and death.
Social implications
These issues are particularly relevant to the health and safety of incarcerated persons during periods of extreme temperatures but also speak broadly to the implications of incarceration, disaster risk, and the advancement of human rights for incarcerated people.
Originality/value
This article addresses a gap in the literature by including the perspectives of persons incarcerated in Texas prisons experiencing extreme heat and implicates the characteristics of incarceration and punishment in the production of disaster risk.
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Stephanie Q. Liu, Khadija Ali Vakeel, Nicholas A. Smith, Roya Sadat Alavipour, Chunhao(Victor) Wei and Jochen Wirtz
An AI concierge is a technologically advanced, intelligent and personalized assistant that is designated to an individual customer, proactively taking care of that customer’s…
Abstract
Purpose
An AI concierge is a technologically advanced, intelligent and personalized assistant that is designated to an individual customer, proactively taking care of that customer’s needs throughout the service journey. This article envisions the idea of AI concierges and discusses how to leverage AI concierges in the customer journey.
Design/methodology/approach
This article takes a conceptual approach and draws insights from literature in service management, marketing, psychology, human-computer interaction and ethics.
Findings
This article delineates the fundamental forms of AI concierges: dialog interface (no embodiment), virtual avatar (embodiment in the virtual world), holographic projection (projection in the physical world) and tangible service robot (embodiment in the physical world). Key attributes of AI concierges are the ability to exhibit semantic understanding of auditory and visual inputs, maintain an emotional connection with the customer, demonstrate proactivity in refining the customer’s experience and ensure omnipresence through continuous availability in various forms to attend to service throughout the customer journey. Furthermore, the article explores the multifaceted roles that AI concierges can play across the pre-encounter, encounter and post-encounter stages of the customer journey and explores the opportunities and challenges associated with AI concierges.
Practical implications
This paper provides insights for professionals in hospitality, retail, travel, and healthcare on leveraging AI concierges to enhance the customer experience. By broadening AI concierge services, organizations can deliver personalized assistance and refined services across the entire customer journey.
Originality/value
This article is the first to introduce the concept of the AI concierge. It offers a novel perspective by defining AI concierges’ fundamental forms, key attributes and exploring their diverse roles in the customer journey. Additionally, it lays out a research agenda aimed at further advancing this domain.
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Nzita Alain Lelo, P. Stephan Heyns and Johann Wannenburg
Steam explosions are a major safety concern in many modern furnaces. The explosions are sometimes caused by water ingress into the furnace from leaks in its high-pressure (HP…
Abstract
Purpose
Steam explosions are a major safety concern in many modern furnaces. The explosions are sometimes caused by water ingress into the furnace from leaks in its high-pressure (HP) cooling water system, coming into contact with molten matte. To address such safety issues related to steam explosions, risk based inspection (RBI) is suggested in this paper. RBI is presently one of the best-practice methodologies to provide an inspection schedule and ensure the mechanical integrity of pressure vessels. The application of RBIs on furnace HP cooling systems in this work is performed by incorporating the proportional hazards model (PHM) with the RBI approach; the PHM uses real-time condition data to allow dynamic decision-making on inspection and maintenance planning.
Design/methodology/approach
To accomplish this, a case study is presented that applies an HP cooling system data with moisture and cumulated feed rate as covariates or condition indicators to compute the probability of failure and the consequence of failure (CoF), which is modelled based on the boiling liquid-expanding vapour explosion (BLEVE) theory.
Findings
The benefit of this approach is that the risk assessment introduces real-time condition data in addition to time-based failure information to allow improved dynamic decision-making for inspection and maintenance planning of the HP cooling system. The work presented here comprises the application of the newly proposed methodology in the context of pressure vessels, considering the important challenge of possible explosion accidents due to BLEVE as the CoF calculations.
Research limitations/implications
This paper however aims to optimise the inspection schedule on the HP cooling system, by incorporating PHM into the RBI methodology, as was recently proposed in the literature by Lelo et al. (2022). Moisture and cumulated feed rate are used as covariate. At the end, risk mitigation policy is suggested.
Originality/value
In this paper, the proposed methodology yields a dynamically calculated quantified risk, which emphasised the imperative for mitigating the risk, as well as presents a number of mitigation options, to quantifiably affect such mitigation.
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Michael Joseph Hosken and Sharon L. O'Sullivan
The a priori identification and development of army personnel competencies are necessary to enable effective and efficient responses to rapidly changing climate conditions…
Abstract
Purpose
The a priori identification and development of army personnel competencies are necessary to enable effective and efficient responses to rapidly changing climate conditions. Accordingly, this study aims to identify the performance requirements of a military flood responder and the competencies (knowledge, skills and abilities) required to perform it.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an abductive approach, the authors conducted both secondary and primary research to generate a validated framework of performance criteria and competencies for army personnel responding to floods. This literature review integrated both the peer-reviewed academic literature and public sector grey literature. Using the critical incident technique, the authors then conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) who had previously been tasked with flood response operations. Participants were asked about the tasks required while conducting flood response operations. Interview transcripts were then content analysed to identify themes regarding those tasks, and the competencies needed to perform those tasks were then extracted and contrasted with the literature review findings. Inter-rater reliability for the analysis was established via iterative discussion between the two co-authors.
Findings
The primary data reinforced and expanded the list of performance expectations that the authors deductively identified from the integrated literature review, adding granularity to each. It also identified competencies (including both hard and soft skills) and highlighted previously neglected contextual antecedents of military flood response effectiveness.
Research limitations/implications
though knowledge saturation was achieved from the 15 interviews conducted, further research with larger samples could more deeply ground the evidence discovered in this study. Nevertheless, the competencies identified in this paper could serve as a starting guide to staffing and/or training interventions targeted at improving these competencies for personnel responding to flood scenarios.
Practical implications
The theoretical findings also have immediate practical relevance to training for flood response operations. In particular, the subtle challenges in competency crossover from military operations to flood response operations may facilitate not only more efficient, targeted training (that could improve the effectiveness of army personnel involved in humanitarian roles), but could be applied to the selection of army personnel as well. This study may also help provincial/municipal operators and emergency planners by better communicating the strengths and limitations of army personnel in addressing civilian military cooperation for humanitarian operations. Thus, the findings of this research study represent an important first step in prompting attention to the strategic human resource planning studies required to make all responders more efficient and effective in their respective division of labour within the humanitarian domain.
Social implications
Peering a little beyond these research findings, human-induced climate change is expected to continue increasing the frequency of such events (IPCC, 2021), and a timely, national force is likely to be increasingly required for Canadians impacted by major disasters stemming from natural hazards when local resources become overwhelmed. Yet, there is some concern from the CAF that increasing responsiveness to disaster operations will affect their military readiness (Leuprecht and Kasurak, 2020). One can indeed envision a paradox whereby the CAF is both a “force of last resort” while increasingly becoming a “first choice for domestic disaster and emergency assistance”. The practical implications from this research also suggest that military personnel, while fully capable of successfully conducting flood response operations, may become overburdened and less able to adopt yet greater capacity and training for other additional humanitarian work. Nevertheless, the competencies highlighted by participants can help inform the next flood response operation in Canada.
Originality/value
Most literature in the field of emergency response focuses on cooperation between civilian and military resources and other strategic-level themes. The findings address critical granularity missing at the operational and tactical levels of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief research. The authors also draw implications beyond the military context, including for local/regional governmental players (operators and emergency planners) as well as for volunteers in flood response roles.
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Paul Chipangura, Dewald van Niekerk, Fortune Mangara and Annegrace Zembe
This study aimed to address the underexplored domain of organisational vulnerability, with a specific focus on understanding how vulnerability is understood in organisations and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aimed to address the underexplored domain of organisational vulnerability, with a specific focus on understanding how vulnerability is understood in organisations and the underlying pathways leading to vulnerability.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilised a narrative literature review methodology, using Google Scholar as the primary source, to analyse the concepts of organisational vulnerability in the context of disaster risk studies. The review focused on relevant documents published between the years 2000 and 2022.
Findings
The analysis highlights the multifaceted nature of organisational vulnerability, which arises from both inherent weaknesses within the organisation and external risks that expose it to potential hazards. The inherent weaknesses are rooted in internal vulnerability pathways such as organisational culture, managerial ignorance, human resources, and communication weaknesses that compromise the organisation’s resilience. The external dimension of vulnerability is found in cascading vulnerability pathways, e.g. critical infrastructure, supply chains, and customer relationships.
Originality/value
As the frequency and severity of disasters continue to increase, organisations of all sizes face heightened vulnerability to unforeseen disruptions and potential destruction. Acknowledging and comprehending organisational vulnerability is a crucial initial step towards enhancing risk management effectiveness, fostering resilience, and promoting sustainable success in an interconnected global environment and an evolving disaster landscape.
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Cameron McCordic, Ines Raimundo, Matthew Judyn and Duncan Willis
Climate hazards in the form of cyclones are projected to become more intense under the pressures of future climate change. These changes represent a growing hazard to low lying…
Abstract
Purpose
Climate hazards in the form of cyclones are projected to become more intense under the pressures of future climate change. These changes represent a growing hazard to low lying coastal cities like Beira, Mozambique. In 2019, Beira experienced the devastating impact of Cyclone Idai. One of the many impacts resulting from this Cyclone was disrupted drinking water access. This investigation explores the distribution of Cyclone Idai’s impact on drinking water access via an environmental justice lens, exploring how preexisting water access characteristics may have predisposed households to the impacts of Cyclone Idai in Beria.
Design/methodology/approach
Relying on household survey data collected in Beira, the investigation applied a decision tree algorithm to investigate how drinking water disruption was distributed across the household survey sample using these preexisting vulnerabilities.
Findings
The investigation found that households that mainly relied upon piped water sources and experienced inconsistent access to water in the year prior to Cyclone Idai were more likely to experience disrupted drinking water access immediately after Cyclone Idai. The results indicate that residents in formal areas of Beira, largely reliant upon piped water supply, experienced higher rates of disrupted drinking water access following Cyclone Idai.
Originality/value
These findings question a commonly held assumption that informal areas are more vulnerable to climate hazards, like cyclones, than formal areas of a city. The findings support the inclusion of informal settlements in the design of climate change adaptation strategies.
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Jame Monren T. Mercado, Avi Ben P. Andalecio and Gezzez Giezi G. Granado
Sustainable tourism development is currently a practice for most destinations in the world. It is associated with conceptualizing, implementing, and monitoring policies and…
Abstract
Sustainable tourism development is currently a practice for most destinations in the world. It is associated with conceptualizing, implementing, and monitoring policies and programs with balanced economic, sociocultural, environmental, and politico-administrative implications. It is manifested through understanding and integrating the significance of tourism resources, specifically sites and attractions, and the perspectives of primary and secondary stakeholders. This book chapter explicated the significance and implementation of value and rights-based approaches to tourism development through the case of the Samar Island Natural Park (SINP) in the Philippines. It highlighted the value of SINP based on its natural and cultural heritage significance and the perspectives of People's Organizations as tourism front liners of SINP. In the end, a Sustainable Tourism and Strategic Development Framework was explained as the by-product of interconnecting the value and rights-based approaches. The discourse recognizes the interaction between preserving the park's natural integrity and maximizing its tourism potential for the benefit of the local communities and also examines the different aspects of SINP – its vibrant ecosystems and rich cultural legacy, that set it apart as a unique destination.
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Nurhastuti Kesumo Wardhani, Robert Faff, Lewis Liu and Zairihan Abdul Halim
This research aims to investigate the disciplinary functions of depositors and subordinated debt holders within Indonesia's dual banking system, examining the impact of regulatory…
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to investigate the disciplinary functions of depositors and subordinated debt holders within Indonesia's dual banking system, examining the impact of regulatory changes on market discipline.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employs a comprehensive analysis of the dual banking system in Indonesia over 15 years. Utilizing a non-public dataset from the Financial Services Authority and the Indonesia Deposit Insurance Corporation, the study employs propensity score matching and difference-in-differences analysis.
Findings
The findings reveal distinct patterns in the exercise of market discipline by depositors over different regulatory regimes. During the blanket guarantee regime (2002–2005), depositors lacked the incentive to monitor banks but resumed their disciplinary role under the limited guarantee regime (2005–2017). Islamic banks faced simultaneous market and regulatory discipline, with market discipline prevailing.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature by providing novel insights into the interplay between regulatory changes, market discipline and depositor behavior within Indonesia's dual banking system. The utilization of a comprehensive non-public dataset from regulatory authorities adds to the originality of the research.
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