• Title/Summary/Keyword: Risk assessments

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Critical Hazard Factors in the Risk Assessments of Industrial Robots: Causal Analysis and Case Studies

  • Lee, Kangdon;Shin, Jaeho;Lim, Jae-Yong
    • Safety and Health at Work
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    • v.12 no.4
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    • pp.496-504
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    • 2021
  • Background: With the increasing demand for industrial robots and the "noncontact" trend, it is an appropriate point in time to examine whether risk assessments conducted for robot operations are performed effectively to identify and eliminate the risks of injury or harm to operators. This study discusses why robot accidents resulting in harm to operators occur repetitively despite implementing control measures and proposes corrective actions for risk assessments. Methods: This study collected 369 operator-injured robot accidents in Korea over the last decade and reconstructed them into the mechanism of injury, work being undertaken, and bodily location of the injury. Then, through the techniques of Systematic Cause Analysis Technique (SCAT) and Root Cause Analysis (RCA), this study analyzed the root and direct causes of robot accidents that had occurred. Causes identified included physical hazards and complex combinations of hazards, such as psychological, organizational, and systematic errors. The requirements of risk assessments regarding robot operations were examined, and three case studies of robot-involved tasks were investigated. The three assessments presented were: camera module processing, electrical discharge machining, and a panel-flipping robot installation. Results: After conducting RCA and comparing the three assessments, it was found that two-thirds of injury-occurring from robot accidents, causative factors included psychological and personal traits of robot operators. However, there were no evaluations of the identifications of personal aspects in the three assessment cases. Conclusion: Therefore, it was concluded that personal factors of operators, which had been overlooked in risk assessments so far, need to be included in future risk assessments on robot operations.

A study on the safety management method based on the risk assessment of KORAIL's level-crossing accidents (선진 위험도 평가 기반의 건널목사고 안전관리 전략 연구)

  • Jung, Do-Won;Wang, Jong-Bae;Lhim, Jea-Eun
    • Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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    • 2010.06a
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    • pp.1732-1750
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    • 2010
  • Operation of KORAIL's level crossing is in charge of KORAIL. As taking over existing level crossing to KORAIL, they do not conduct risk assessments, so we do not know about any possibilities of inner risk. And present operation of safety of the level crossing is just regular checking of reaction and functions of safety equipments physically, we need to react to the changes of what's going on around of level crossing and incestigation of traffic flow and surrounding conditions more spontaneously. So, we have to prepare the strategies against accidents of level crossing cost-effectively based on regular risk assessments for sustainable safety improvements and overcome operational problems of present level crossing's safety. Here, we're going to investigate the level of safety level and present risk factors of the level crossing using risk assessments for accidents/error of the equipments to show operational strategies of level crossing based on risk assessments.

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Case Studies of Risk Assessment in Analyzing Risks Associated with MSDS

  • Kim, Woo Jin;Jeong, Byung Yong
    • Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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    • v.32 no.1
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    • pp.153-158
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    • 2013
  • Objective: This study aims to suggest different approaches in analyzing risks associated with musculoskeletal disorders (MSDS) for risk assessment. Background: Upon concluding that the changes in the industrial environments have made it hard to regulate diverse risk factors, the government has implemented a policy for risk assessment. Method: This study has proposed a method, creating programs using Excel that perform qualitative or quantitative analysis, for evaluating risk factors in risk assessments and has applied this in manufacture and service industries. Results: To verify the validity of the developed program, risk assessment has been performed on restaurant chefs as an example. For quantitative evaluation, the study has suggested approaches using the results for REBA evaluation and the analysis report on the work scenes of a fitting-shop in a shipbuilding industry. Application: Constructing and adapting a system using Excel in evaluating risk factors for risk assessments as this study suggests, is expected to contribute to revitalizing risk assessments.

An Examination of Variation in Risk Assessment Practices in Relation to Assessors' Goals: American and International Practices

  • Park, Lorenz R. mberg
    • Toxicological Research
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    • v.17
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    • pp.219-225
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    • 2001
  • The basic structure for assessment of potential health risks from environmental chemicals is widely agreed upon, but many of the details of risk assessment procedures differ among practitioners. Government regulatory agencies typically have guidelines or standard procedures for their risk assessments, established to ensure consistency and comparability, to set standards for adequacy, and to embody underlying tenets. In setting and updating such guidelines, each agency takes into account not only the prevailing thinking about appropriate procedures, but also its own goals and responsibilities and the precedents it has set for itself in past analyses. This results in variations in methods, and consequently in characterization of risks, among regulatory assessments, even when they are based on the same data. As a result, adopting existing assessments from a variety of regulatory bodies needs to be done with caution. This paper examines some of the variants in risk assessment approaches among American federal regulatory agencies and relates them to the variations in regulatory responsibilities of those groups. Comparisons to international practices are also drawn. The impact on development of world-wide risk standards is discussed.

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Principles of Chemical Risk Assessment: The ATSDR Perspective

  • Johnson Barry L.
    • 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 1994.02a
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    • pp.405-411
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    • 1994
  • Hazardous wastes released into the general environment are of concern to the public and to public health authorities. In response to this concern, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, as amended (commonly called Superfund), was enacted in 1980 to provide a framework for environmental, public health, and legal actions concerning uncontrolled releases of hazardous substances. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) was created by Superfund to address the public health issues of hazardous wastes in the community environment. Two key Agency programs, Public Health Assessments and Toxicological Profiles, are designed to assess the risk to human health of exposures to hazardous substances that migrate from waste sites or through emergency releases (e.g., chemical spills). The Agency's public health assessment is a structured process that permits ATSDR to identify which waste sites or other point sources require traditional public health actions (e.g.. human exposure studies, health studies, registries, health surveillance, health advisories). The ATSDR qualitative public health assessment complements the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's quantitative risk assessment. For Superfund purposes, both assessments are sitespecific. ATSDR's toxicological profiles are prepared for priority hazardous substances found most frequently at Superfund sites. Each profile presents the current toxicologic and human health effects information about the substance being profiled. Each profile also contains Minimal Risk Levels (MRLs), a type of risk assessment value. This paper covers ATSDR's experience in conducting public health assessments and developing MRLs, and it relates this experience to recommendations on how to improve chemical risk assessments.

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Cheese Microbial Risk Assessments - A Review

  • Choi, Kyoung-Hee;Lee, Heeyoung;Lee, Soomin;Kim, Sejeong;Yoon, Yohan
    • Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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    • v.29 no.3
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    • pp.307-314
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    • 2016
  • Cheese is generally considered a safe and nutritious food, but foodborne illnesses linked to cheese consumption have occurred in many countries. Several microbial risk assessments related to Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli infections, causing cheese-related foodborne illnesses, have been conducted. Although the assessments of microbial risk in soft and low moisture cheeses such as semi-hard and hard cheeses have been accomplished, it has been more focused on the correlations between pathogenic bacteria and soft cheese, because cheese-associated foodborne illnesses have been attributed to the consumption of soft cheeses. As a part of this microbial risk assessment, predictive models have been developed to describe the relationship between several factors (pH, Aw, starter culture, and time) and the fates of foodborne pathogens in cheese. Predictions from these studies have been used for microbial risk assessment as a part of exposure assessment. These microbial risk assessments have identified that risk increased in cheese with high moisture content, especially for raw milk cheese, but the risk can be reduced by preharvest and postharvest preventions. For accurate quantitative microbial risk assessment, more data including interventions such as curd cooking conditions (temperature and time) and ripening period should be available for predictive models developed with cheese, cheese consumption amounts and cheese intake frequency data as well as more dose-response models.

UNCERTAINTY IN DAM BREACH FLOOD ROUTING RESULTS FOR DAM SAFETY RISK ASSESSMENT

  • Lee, Jong-Seok
    • Water Engineering Research
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    • v.3 no.4
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    • pp.215-234
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    • 2002
  • Uncertainty in dam breach flood routing results was analyzed in order to provide the basis fer the investigation of their effects on the flood damage assessments and dam safety risk assessments. The Monte Carlo simulation based on Latin Hypercube Sampling technique was used to generate random values for two uncertain input parameters (i.e., dam breach parameters and Manning's n roughness coefficients) of a dam breach flood routing analysis model. The flood routing results without considering the uncertainty in two input parameters were compared with those with considering the uncertainty. This paper showed that dam breach flood routing results heavily depend on the two uncertain input parameters. This study indicated that the flood damage assessments in the downstream areas can be critical if uncertainty in dam breach flood routing results are considered in a reasonable manner.

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Cost-Benefit Analysis for Safety Management Cost using Quantitative Risk Analysis (정량적 위험성 평가에 의한 안전관리 투자의 비용-편익분석)

  • 장서일;조지훈;김태옥
    • Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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    • v.4 no.4
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    • pp.15-26
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    • 2002
  • The quantitative evaluation method of the safety management cost was suggested to prevent a gas accident as a major industrial accident. In a gas governor station, process risk assessments such as the fault tree analysis(FTA) and the consequence analysis were performed. Based on process risk assessments, potential accident costs were estimated and the cost-benefit analysis(CBA) was performed. From the cost-benefit analysis for five classification items of safety management cost, the order of the cost/benefit ratio was estimated.

A CYBER SECURITY RISK ASSESSMENT FOR THE DESIGN OF I&C SYSTEMS IN NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

  • Song, Jae-Gu;Lee, Jung-Woon;Lee, Cheol-Kwon;Kwon, Kee-Choon;Lee, Dong-Young
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.44 no.8
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    • pp.919-928
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    • 2012
  • The applications of computers and communication system and network technologies in nuclear power plants have expanded recently. This application of digital technologies to the instrumentation and control systems of nuclear power plants brings with it the cyber security concerns similar to other critical infrastructures. Cyber security risk assessments for digital instrumentation and control systems have become more crucial in the development of new systems and in the operation of existing systems. Although the instrumentation and control systems of nuclear power plants are similar to industrial control systems, the former have specifications that differ from the latter in terms of architecture and function, in order to satisfy nuclear safety requirements, which need different methods for the application of cyber security risk assessment. In this paper, the characteristics of nuclear power plant instrumentation and control systems are described, and the considerations needed when conducting cyber security risk assessments in accordance with the lifecycle process of instrumentation and control systems are discussed. For cyber security risk assessments of instrumentation and control systems, the activities and considerations necessary for assessments during the system design phase or component design and equipment supply phase are presented in the following 6 steps: 1) System Identification and Cyber Security Modeling, 2) Asset and Impact Analysis, 3) Threat Analysis, 4) Vulnerability Analysis, 5) Security Control Design, and 6) Penetration test. The results from an application of the method to a digital reactor protection system are described.

Aanalysis on the working environment and health·safety awareness of beauty workers (미용업 종사자의 작업환경과 보건·안전 의식 분석)

  • Joo, Myung-Won;Kim, Sung-Nam
    • Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.1725-1731
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    • 2015
  • The study surveyed the health risk factors and risk assessments status preventing accidents and incidents in beauty workplaces. In addition, the health safety awareness technicality was categorized. The research results were as follows. Beauty workers (about 60%) were exposed to health hazards regarding the skin, respiratory, muscle system during more than half of their working hours. On the other hand, they recognized the need for risk assessments in the workplace. The health safety awareness in the workplace differed according to the status of the risk assessment and the category of business. This provides the basic data that can be activated to manage health safety standards for workers and an unspecified number of people.