Polyester round slings are widely utilized in various work environments due to their lightweight, flexible nature and smooth surface that minimizes the risk of cargo abrasion or damage. However, specific guidelines intended to protect round slings from the damage caused by the sharp edges of cargo, thus preventing accidents in case the cargo falls, are lacking in South Korea. In this study, a comparative analysis was conducted on the regulations and guidelines related to round slings in South Korea and the United States. Further, experiments were carried out to determine the relationship between round slings and lifting accessories. The research identified specific shortcomings in the user manuals provided by round-sling manufacturers. Accordingly, certain measures were proposed for enhancing the operational safety of round slings: 1) establish criteria for edge protection of polyester round slings and 2) recommend standardization of the information provided by manufacturers. As developing new standards is a time-consuming task, this study proposes a method for enhancing the operational safety of round slings in the short term by introducing established safety standards from the United States-where safety has been proven over a considerable period of time-into the domestic context. In addition, it is recommended that edge criteria be permanently printed on the labels of round slings.

This study examines the physical characteristics of self-regulating heating cables caused by increased temperature and fire risk due to local degradation. A thermo hygrostat system, a convection dryer, a digital multimeter (Agilent 34465 A), NI DAQ, and the LabVIEW program were used to assess the physical properties in response to temperature fluctuations. As the temperature increases, the resistance of the self-regulating heating cable increases; however, when the critical point is exceeded, the resistance sharply decreases. A problem arises when the resistance value cannot return to its original state even though the temperature is lowered to the initial state. Moreover, when the ambient temperature rises while power is applied, the resistance value initially increases, and the flowing current decreases, maintaining a constant state. However, when the critical temperature is exceeded, the flowing current increases because of a rapid decrease in the resistance value, progressing to ignition. When the resistance value decreases because of the deterioration of one local area, the total resistance value becomes less than the initial resistance value. Therefore, the flowing current increases and an ignition problem occurs at one location where deterioration occurs. Despite the sustained flames and arcs resulting from the changes in the overall physical properties of the self-regulating heating cable and resistance variations due to local decline, the fire continued as the flowing current was lower than the operating current of the circuit breaker, failing to cut the power. In the case of self-regulating heating cables and heating wires, which are the leading causes of fires in winter, efforts are needed to ensure the need for periodic maintenance and the use of KS-certified products.

Hydrogen is one of the most popular eco-friendly energy sources for reducing global warming. To use hydrogen as a conventional fuel, liquid hydrogen plants should introduce waste hydrogen treatment processes. A major safety issue of liquid hydrogen plants is choosing the most suitable purge gas to use in case of an accident. A purge gas prevents the formation of explosive mixed gases in the vent header. In general, nitrogen is the main purge gas used in chemical plants. Nitrogen has a freezing point of -210℃, which is higher than the boiling point of hydrogen. Helium, with a freezing point lower than hydrogen, is instead recommended as a purge gas of the vent header during hydrogen liquefaction. However, helium is roughly 100 times more expensive than nitrogen. To address this issue, this study uses simulations to investigate safe conditions for introducing nitrogen as the purge gas during hydrogen liquefaction. The temperature change from the safety valve to the vent header is evaluated when the external temperature of the safety valve discharge pipe is at 5℃, 10℃, and 20℃. Additionally, the most optimal length for a discharge pipe according to pipe diameter is investigated.

The Chemical Substances Control Act of South Korea mandates submission of transportation plans containing information on the transportation of hazardous chemicals, with over 600,000 submissions recorded annually. In this study, big data analysis was performed on 2,506,985 transportation plans to identify trends and assess their correlation with chemical transportation accidents. The analysis confirmed that despite NaOH accounting for 20.7% of transportation plans, HCl constitutes 40% of chemical transportation accidents, which indicates a correlation of these accidents with the chemical properties of hazardous substances rather than with the number of submitted transportation plans. Furthermore, chemical transportation accidents show a higher probability of occurrence in the 6-8 am and 6-8 pm windows, which is in agreement with higher incidence and fatality rates. The departure points of transportation plans are closely related to the characteristics of local chemical industrial complexes such as Ulsan, Yeosu, and Gunsan, whereas the arrival points are closely related to Pyeongtaek, Hwaseong, and Icheon, which are the locations of semiconductor industries. Ultimately, achievement of safety by consideration of characteristics of transported chemicals, enhancement of driver concentration during specific times, and implementation of preventive measures tailored to local government characteristics are strategies anticipated to contribute to a reduction in chemical transportation accidents.

There are ongoing debates on the effectiveness of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act (SAPA) on ensuring safety management and accident prevention, as the annual number of fatal injuries did not decrease even after its enforcement. However, for right appraisal of the effectiveness of SAPA, it must not only be rated based on direct outcomes such as the number of fatal injuries, but also on the indirect effects related to the improvement of the safety management of firms or organizations. A construction superintendent is one of crucial persons who ensure worker safety in construction sites. They must have a high safety consciousness for effective and appropriate safety management in construction sites. In this, the impact of the enforcement of SAPA on the safety consciousness of the construction superintendents is investigated to add a new dimension in the appraisal of the effectiveness of SAPA. DAGMAR-based safety consciousness assessment model is used to measure four safety consciousness components, i.e. awareness, comprehension, conviction, and action. Three hundred and five responses obtained from a survey conducted among construction superintendents are used to analyze the shift of the safety consciousness of the construction superintendents due to the enforcement of SAPA. The results reveal that awareness and comprehension components significantly improved after the SAPA enforcement. Conversely, conviction and action components slightly improved. They also reveal that the changes are more significant for construction superintendents affiliated to principal contractors, compared to those affiliated to subcontractors.

Article 79 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act mandates franchise headquarters with over 200 franchises to implement industrial accident prevention measures. Notably, the franchise business information provision system designates restaurants and wholesale/retail as the primary categories for information disclosure, with convenience stores classified as secondary. This study aims to identify law-regulated franchise headquarters and franchises and analyze industrial accidents within these sectors. Furthermore, it seeks to investigate adverse risk factors for individual processes across major industries. Pertinent franchise headquarters and franchises were discerned using the Fair Trade Commission's business information system. Data regarding the status of industrial accidents, as published by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, was leveraged in the analysis of industrial accidents. Additionally, a survey was conducted to derive detrimental factors for each process in major industries. The inquiry revealed a total of 7 wholesale and retail franchise headquarters subject to the law, along with 126 within the restaurant industry. Overall, there were 50,488 franchises in the wholesale and retail sector, and 71,283 in the restaurant business. Risk factors and improvement measures for industrial processes were determined for five industries: convenience stores, Korean food restaurants, coffee places, pizza eateries, and chicken vendors. Locating the currently developed safety and health program establishment guide proves to be challenging. Moreover, utilizing it can be difficult due to the industry-specific content, further complicated by the prevalence of franchise stores featuring numerous small businesses. Therefore, this study highlights the imperative need to develop guidelines that incorporate preventive measures tailored to each industry.

In recent years, building architecture has become increasingly complex and larger in scale to accommodate many people. In densely populated facilities, the interiors are becoming more intricate and high-rise, with narrow corridors, hallways, and stairs. This poses challenges for evacuating occupants in case of emergencies such as fires, making it crucial to assess the evacuation safety in advance. In evacuation safety research, there are significant limitations to theoretical studies owing to their association with crowd behavior and human evacuation characteristics, as well as the risks associated with experiments involving human participants. Consequently, evacuation experiments conducted using simulation-based methodologies are gaining recognition worldwide. However, crowd simulations face validation difficulties because of variations in crowd movement and evacuation characteristics across different cases and scenarios, as well as the challenge of accurately reflecting human characteristics during evacuations. In this study, we investigated validation methods for evacuation simulations using the SAFEGUARD validation data set (SGVDS) provided by the University of Greenwich, UK. The SGVDS collects data on crowd evacuations through actual evacuation tests conducted on ColorLine's large RO-PAX ferry and Royal Caribbean International's cruise ships. The accuracy of the crowd simulations can be validated by comparing SGVDS and crowd simulation results. This study will contribute to the development of highly accurate crowd simulations by verifying various crowd simulations.

This study aimed to identify challenges faced by occupational health and safety education institutions to derive and propose methods of improving occupational health and safety education. To achieve this, 13 personnel responsible for occupational health and safety education institutions were interviewed, resulting in the identification of 14 areas for improvement. Consequently, a survey was developed and conducted among 107 individuals from 195 occupational health and safety education institutions. The priorities of the 14 items were analyzed using methods such as the content validity ratio (CVR), paired t-test, locus for focus model, Borich's needs assessment, and effect size (Cohen's d). The research results highlighted significant challenges, including the importance of mitigating abnormal competition among occupational health and safety education institutions, improving awareness among employers and workers regarding the importance of occupational health and safety education, and developing programs that satisfy customer demands.

Despite the growing importance of safe railroad operation with the recent implementation of the Severe Accident Punishment Act, industrial accidents related to the shunting of railway vehicles persist. Therefore, the government and Korea Railroad Corporation are collaborating on an automated connection and disconnection system that enables remote control of shunting trains from a central control room, utilizing surveillance cameras. By eliminating the need for on-site workers during freight car operations at stations, it aims to reduce safety accidents inherent in manual receiving processes. A qualifying government-issued railway vehicle driver's license is necessary to handle this newly developed automatic connection and disconnection system. As a result, this study aims to establish an appropriate driver qualification system.

Accurately assessing and managing risks in any endeavor is crucial. Risk assessment in engineering translates the abstract concept of risk into actionable strategies for systematic risk management. However, risk validation is met with significant skepticism, particularly concerning the uncertainty of probability. This study aims to address the aforementioned uncertainty in a multitude of ways. Firstly, instead of relying on deterministic probability, it acknowledges uncertainty and presents a probabilistic interval. Secondly, considering the uncertainty interval highlighted in OREDA, it delineates the bounds of the probabilistic interval. Lastly, it investigates how much explanatory power deterministic probability has within the defined probabilistic interval. By utilizing fault tree analysis (FTA) and integrating confidence intervals, a probabilistic risk assessment was conducted to scrutinize the explanatory power of deterministic probability. In this context, explanatory power signifies the proportion of probability within the probabilistic risk assessment interval that lies below the deterministic probability. Research results reveal that at a 90% confidence interval, the explanatory power of deterministic probability decreases to 73%. Additionally, it was confirmed that explanatory power reached 100% only with a probability application 36.9 times higher.