duminică, 19 iunie 2016

Tuition system for the management of biological hazards


Dr.C.N.Zaharia—The Romanian National Research Virusology Institute
Ph.D.Stefan Kovacs-The Romanian National Research Institute for Occupational Safety

Risk prevention is one of the main objectives connected with the assurance of proper work conditions at the workplace and also with the health and safety preservation.
Risk action determines occupational accidents and professional diseases- with thousands of causalities across Europe, each year.
In this respect, risk prevention is one of the main duties of every manager, regardless of the type of enterprise or personnel number.
Biological hazards, due to their specific action, are one of the main problems in safety assurance. Action of biological hazards, if not contained properly, could cause major damage to human life and safety and also to the environment.
Their specificity implies special prevention activities-allocation of big amounts of money and other resources in order to prevent the spreading of biological agents into environment.
„To prevent means to know” says an old proverb. In order to prevent such risks, especially biological ones, all the involved specialists must have the necessary knowledge. At this moment, the main form of transmitting this knowledge is due „classic” teaching process. The randament of this process is relatively low. It implies also the physical presence of the students in class and is presuming serious costs. In the case of already trained specialists, the problem of presence could be cumbersome, implying the necessity to be replaced during the classes with all the negative traits implied.
A more efficient and optimal approach would be the usage of an expert based tuition system. Developed around the most modern IT and AI techniques, such a system will eficientize the tutorial process through the usage of multi-media techniques, simulation and scenarios, eliminating the necessity of physical presence and being cost efficient.
Such a system is under development, inside a research program financed by the INFOSOC first competition. The system was built as an expert based tutorial system for risk management, having in mind specific risks that could act at work place.
A distinctive component of this system will be a peculiar module, developed especially for biological risks.
The presented system assures in a modern and innovative way, the minimal necessary knowledge for biological hazards management.
The final system would include multi-media facilities, scenario simulation, tests and questions for knowledge enhancement .It could be used also as a decision assistant expert system.
The paper will show aspects from the conception, design and development of the prototype of the tuition system, emphasizing the new revolutionary aspects of the developed prototype and also the desired effects of the system-considering the importance of the studied problem.
The economic aspects of IT tutoring will be especially emphasized-cost reduction could reach 45% of the classic training costs using this system.
Also, the expert features will be underlined. The expert approach is of primary importance, considering the assistant feature of the final system. Experts will be able to submit their knowledge to the system-so that this knowledge will be available to the users.
A special importance will be shown to the future development possibilities of these systems. The continuous improvement of the PDA devices, together with their improvement of software for these devices will transform, in a few years, these PDA devices in real computers. In this respect, the system will have a PDA version, so that specialists will be able to use it at their workplace, without the existence of a computer.
The next figure is a general schema of the system







Fig.1.General schema of the system




Applications of finite element methods into risk assessment




The paper presents a new approach in risk analysis, using the finite element concepts in order to improve and optimise this analysis.
The focus of risk analysis on a finite element of the work place( where all the risk elements could be found) will allow a quantitative representation of risk action, taking into account all the four elements of the man-machine system (human operator, task, machine and work environment) and will contribute to a better understanding of specific risk actions.It will also lead towards a global risk image  at the enterprise level, in order to have the optimum data to develop efficient prevention plans.Formalisation equations are shown in the paper.
An orientative Finite Risk Element schema is shown in the figure 1.


Figure 1-Finite Risk Element

The risk interactions between the elements of man machine system could be expressed considering an observer in a specific observation point (human operator, task, machine, work environment) and following the other elements interactions with this point .For example, Ri_task=(Ri_task-human operator,Ri_task-machine,Ri_task-work environment) = (4,2,3.5) .

The paper presents also some aspects regarding the practical possibilities offered by this approach. The development of this method would be extremely usefull in order to be able to quantify specific risks action, especially in the process industry where the risks implying human operator and task are not well formalised.