• Title/Summary/Keyword: Accident and Incident

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Lessons Learned from Major Environmental Health Disasters in South Korea and the Role of Environmental Health Experts (국내 주요 환경보건 재난의 전개 과정과 그 교훈, 그리고 환경보건 전문가의 역할)

  • Ahn, Jong-Ju
    • Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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    • v.48 no.1
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    • pp.9-18
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    • 2022
  • In today's civilization, it can be impossible to prevent disasters that cause large-scale human and material harm, and the environmental industry is not excepted from this. Over the last 50 years, several large and small environmental health catastrophes have occurred in Korea. Notable instances include the phenol pollution accident in the Nakdong River, the Hebei Spirit oil spill in Taean, Chungcheongnam-do, and the humidifier disinfectant disaster. Looking at these instances, it is clear that the government failed to prevent similar incidents and accidents after the tragedies. The government created and executed different policies to prevent such incidents and accidents, but the majority of them were highly fragmented. It is understandable that depending on the political and social level of the society in which the environmental health hazard incident/accident happened, the investigation of the cause, countermeasures, and policy reaction may differ. To put it another way, the more authoritarian and non-democratic a political social system is, the more likely it is to cover up occurrences and accidents without a deep examination. This is in line with the members of society's level of political awareness and acknowledgment of the importance of life and safety. In 1985, when the Onsan pollution disease was discovered, and in 2011, when we recognized the realities of the humidifier disinfectant disaster, South Korea's political and social systems were entirely different.

An Off-site Screening Process for the Public in Radiation Emergencies and Disasters

  • Yoon, Seokwon;HA, Wi-Ho;Jin, Young-Woo
    • Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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    • v.41 no.3
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    • pp.301-309
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    • 2016
  • Background: A contamination screening process for the local population in radiation emergencies is discussed. Materials and Methods: We present an overview of the relevant Korean governmental regulations that underpin the development of an effective response system. Moreover, case studies of foreign countries responding to mass casualties are presented, and indicate that responses should be able to handle a large demand for contamination screening of the local public as well as screening of the immediate victims of the incident. Results and Discussion: We propose operating procedures for an off-site contamination screening post operated by the local government for members of the public who have not been directly harmed in the accident. In order to devise screening categories, sorting strategies assessing contamination and exposure are discussed, as well as a psychological response system. Conclusion: This study will lead to the effective operation of contamination screening clinics if an accident occurs. Furthermore, the role of contamination screening clinics in the overall context of the radiation emergency treatment system should be clearly established.

Theoretical Model for Accident Prevention Based on Root Cause Analysis With Graph Theory

  • Molan, Gregor;Molan, Marija
    • Safety and Health at Work
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.42-50
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    • 2021
  • Introduction: Despite huge investments in new technology and transportation infrastructure, terrible accidents still remain a reality of traffic. Methods: Severe traffic accidents were analyzed from four prevailing modes of today's transportations: sea, air, railway, and road. Main root causes of all four accidents were defined with implementation of the approach, based on Flanagan's critical incident technique. In accordance with Molan's Availability Humanization model (AH model), possible preventive or humanization interventions were defined with the focus on technology, environment, organization, and human factors. Results: According to our analyses, there are significant similarities between accidents. Root causes of accidents, human behavioral patterns, and possible humanization measures were presented with rooted graphs. It is possible to create a generalized model graph, which is similar to rooted graphs, for identification of possible humanization measures, intended to prevent similar accidents in the future. Majority of proposed humanization interventions are focused on organization. Organizational interventions are effective in assurance of adequate and safe behavior. Conclusions: Formalization of root cause analysis with rooted graphs in a model offers possibility for implementation of presented methods in analysis of particular events. Implementation of proposed humanization measures in a particular analyzed situation is the basis for creation of safety culture.

The Research on the Real-time Emergency Response Plan for the Company based on Consequence Analysis for Chemical Accidents (화학사고 발생 시 피해예측 모델과 연계된 사업장의 실시간 비상대응 체계에 관한 연구)

  • Jun Ho Ha;Chang Jun Lee
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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    • v.39 no.2
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    • pp.28-37
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    • 2024
  • The recent surge in the production and handling of hazardous materials in Korea necessitates developing and implementing robust emergency response plans. These plans are crucial in safeguarding the well-being of workers and residents in the event of an incident. The consequence analysis methodology outlined in the KOSHA guidelines provides a foundation for designing emergency response plans in the event of chemical accidents. However, the consequence analysis is evaluated based on assumed accident cases or worst-case scenarios. Consequently, the emergency response plan based on the consequence analysis may overestimate the damage area, complicating rescue efforts and unnecessarily increasing costs. More information and parameters become available after an accident, enabling more accurate consequence analysis. This implies that the results of consequence analysis based on this detailed information provide more realistic results than those based on assumed accidents. This study attempts to optimize the resource allocation and cost-effectiveness of emergency response plans for chemical accidents. Existing procedures and manuals are revised to elucidate the proposed model and conduct real-time consequence analysis. The existing emergency response plan is compared to verify the proposed model's efficacy. The obtained results indicate that the proposed model can exhibit better performance.

About troubleshooting plan of real estate transaction research (부동산거래의 분쟁해결 방안에 대한 연구)

  • Jung, Me-Ae;Min, Guy-Sik
    • The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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    • v.5 no.4
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    • pp.464-470
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    • 2010
  • Real estate transactions and real estate in harmony with the hospital and the relationship between the human being requested would improve the trade process, according to the fire, rather than deal with the accident occurred is often the relationship is deteriorating. The practice of real estate transactions in Korea in connection with real estate transactions, the system is very difficult to receive assistance, real estate and related transactions as well as the right to review the essential detail and accurate analysis is bound to be limits to. Therefore, a real estate transaction due to the damage prevention and compensation system to complement, brokerage transaction activity in the current real estate brokerage system problems to overcome real estate transactions incident root cause of one of the intellectual is the realtor system improve the quality and professionalism propose to raise.

A study on A Plan to Analyze Risk Factors and Secure Safety through Analysis of Escalator Safety Accidents (에스컬레이터 안전사고 분석을 통한 위험요인 분석 및 안전성 확보 방안에 관한 연구)

  • Kwon, Sun-Geol;Kim, Jin-Soo;Kim, Chang-Eun
    • Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.55-63
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    • 2012
  • As of Dec. 31, 2011, the number of nation's escalators accounts for 24,248 units, 5.4% of total elevators in our country, safety accidents take up as many 539 case, 55.2% of total elevators' safety accidents. Escalator safety accidents show high incident ratio of primary safety accidents breaking out by users' careless and abnormal use type, taking up multi-caused accident, which mainly take place from vulnerable age groups such as children under 13, and elders above 65. The Government will have to devote itself for policy and support for the establishment of safety management system fit for current state, the revitalization of preventive education for safety accident, the enhancement of safety awareness to escalators' users in order to secure escalator safety environment on an international level and support domestic industrial development.

An Approximation Method in Bayesian Prediction of Nuclear Power Plant Accidents (원자력 발전소 사고의 근사적인 베이지안 예측기법)

  • Yang, Hee-Joong
    • Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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    • v.16 no.2
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    • pp.135-147
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    • 1990
  • A nuclear power plant can be viewed as a large complex man-machine system where high system reliability is obtained by ensuring that sub-systems are designed to operate at a very high level of performance. The chance of severe accident involving at least partial core-melt is very low but once it happens the consequence is very catastrophic. The prediction of risk in low probability, high-risk incidents must be examined in the contest of general engineering knowledge and operational experience. Engineering knowledge forms part of the prior information that must be quantified and then updated by statistical evidence gathered from operational experience. Recently, Bayesian procedures have been used to estimate rate of accident and to predict future risks. The Bayesian procedure has advantages in that it efficiently incorporates experts opinions and, if properly applied, it adaptively updates the model parameters such as the rate or probability of accidents. But at the same time it has the disadvantages of computational complexity. The predictive distribution for the time to next incident can not always be expected to end up with a nice closed form even with conjugate priors. Thus we often encounter a numerical integration problem with high dimensions to obtain a predictive distribution, which is practically unsolvable for a model that involves many parameters. In order to circumvent this difficulty, we propose a method of approximation that essentially breaks down a problem involving many integrations into several repetitive steps so that each step involves only a small number of integrations.

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A study for investigation and analysis of accidents or hazzards on the turnout (분기기에서의 사고사례조사 및 사고원인분석 연구)

  • Yang, Dae-Kwon;Jang, Bong-Chun;Lee, Dae-Hyung;Shin, Soon-Ho;Kim, Man-Cheol
    • Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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    • 2006.11b
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    • pp.91-97
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    • 2006
  • Currently, approx. 10,532 turnouts were installed on the KR line, of which 3,644 turnouts were installed in the main line where high speed operation is performed. This shows that it is necessary to improve the performance of turnout as one of vulnerable areas for the safe operation of a train. Even though the number of railway accidents is decreasing every year due to the renewal of railway facilities, there are still many factors that cause the occurrence of an accident. In particular, an incident in turnout area does not only have a high risk of a serious accident but also affect the operation of a train on the adjacent track in most cases, and consequently a big social loss is expected due to the delay in train operation as well as the loss of life and property. The objective of this study is to examine the accidents occurred in turnout area that is one of typical vulnerable areas over the past ten years, on the basis of the results, and to take an appropriate measure by finding out the major cause of accidents in turnout area so that a systematic safety system can be established to prevent or reduce accidents in turnout area.

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Occupational Injury Statistics in Korea

  • Kang, Seong-Kyu;Kwon, Oh-Jun
    • Safety and Health at Work
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.52-56
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    • 2011
  • Objectives: The occupational accident rate was officially reported to be 0.77 per 100 workers in 2001 and 0.70 in 2009. The stagnant decrease in accident rate raises a question about the effectiveness of prevention activity because there have been active prevention efforts in the past 10 years. It is also necessary to know the exact status of occupational injuries to direct a prevention strategy. Methods: The author re-analyzed occupational injury statistics to find the reason for stagnant decreases in occupational injuries. Compensated occupational injuries cases were used to calculate fatal and non-fatal injury rates. Injuries from commuting accidents and sports activities were excluded as well as occupational diseases. The number of workers was adjusted to that of full time equivalent employees. Results: The fatal injury rate excluding injuries associated with commuting accidents, sports activities, and occupational diseases decreased from 12.59 in 2001 to 8.20 in 2009. In 2007, 67.5% of accidents that involved being caught in objects, which are mostly caused by machines and equipment, occurred in the manufacturing industry; this type of incident has decreased since 2001. The fatal and non-fatal injury rates in the manufacturing industry have continuously decreased while the rates in the service industry have not changed from 2001 to 2009. Non-fatal injuries might not be reported in many cases. The number of insured workers was underestimated as long working hours were not adjusted for in the reporting system. Conclusion: The occupational fatal injury rate has decreased and the non-fatal injury rate might have decreased during the last 10 years, although the statistics show stagnancy. The decrease of the injury rate was countervailed by various factors. Hence, the current accident rate does not reflect the actual situation of accidents in Korea. Korea needs to develop an improved system to more accurately calculate occupational fatal and non-fatal injury rates.

Improving Remedial Measures from Incident Investigations: A Study Across Ghanaian Mines

  • Theophilus Joe-Asare;Eric Stemn
    • Safety and Health at Work
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.24-32
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    • 2024
  • Background: Learning from incidents for accident prevention is a two-stage process, involving the investigation of past accidents to identify the causal factors, followed by the identification and implementation of remedial measures to address the identified causal factors. The focus of past research has been on the identification of causal factors, with limited focus on the identification and implementation of remedial measures. This research begins to contribute to this gap. The motivation for the research is twofold. First, previous analyses show the recurring nature of accidents within the Ghanaian mining industry, and the causal factors also remain the same. This raises questions on the nature and effectiveness of remedial measures identified to address the causes of past accidents. Secondly, without identifying and implementing remedial measures, the full benefits of accident investigations will not be achieved. Hence, this study aims to assess the nature of remedial measures proposed to address investigation causal factors. Method: The study adopted SMARTER from business studies with the addition of HMW (H - Hierarchical, M - Mapping, and W - Weighting of causal factors) to analyse the recommendations from 500 individual investigation reports across seven different mines in Ghana. Results: The individual and the work environment (79%) were mostly the focused during the search for causes, with limited focus on organisational factors (21%). Forty eight percentage of the recommendations were administrative, focussing on fixing the problem in the immediate affected area or department of the victim(s). Most recommendations (70.4%) were support activities that only enhance the effectiveness of control but do not prevent/mitigate the failure directly. Across all the mines, there was no focus on evaluating the performance of remedial measures after their implementation. Conclusion: Identifying sharp-end causes leads to proposing weak recommendations which fail to address latent organisational conditions. The study proposed a guide for effective planning and implementation of remedial actions.