This thesis reports on the modification of the "Safecode" computer-program to monitor the safety of radio-isotope laboratories, and its application to 24 compliance audits in NSW during the period 1999 to 2006. Additionally, an attempt was made to predict the level of risk to persons working within those laboratories. Based on the current NSW radiation control legislation and the relevant Australian Standards a comprehensive audit checklist was developed for this project. Each safety requirement in those documents was used to develop a question, resulting in 187 questions in the checklist. The questions were grouped into the following seven Topic Elements: Licensing and Registration; Radiation Safety Administration; Personal and Area Monitoring; Dose Limit Compliance; Documentation/Records; RSO/RSC Qualifications and Duties; and Facilities. A novel feature was the allocation of "weighting factors" to individual questions and Elements. The computer program facilitated analysis of data and provided output in spreadsheet and graphical form. .The on-site physical audits were conducted using the project check-list, and were supplemented by discussions with the client's representative. The results showed significant variation between sites with overall compliance scores ranging from 37% to 94%. The reasons for this large variation stem from differences in local management regime; the appointment of an RSO at one site; variation in the extent of adoption of relevant codes of practice; and legislative weaknesses. Further analysis of the data presented legal, advisory and combined scores for each Element for each site; and variations over time. The graphic displays of the results were appreciated by client management. The formula developed to predict risk, based on the physical parameters alone, showed little relationship to the total audit scores. Statistical analysis of the two data groups by correlation coefficient confirmed this general finding. Development of the formula however served to indicate deficiencies in the Question Set, and the importance of human factors in achieving a high degree of safety.

This thesis reports on the modification of the "Safecode" computer-program to monitor the safety of radio-isotope laboratories, and its application to 24 compliance audits in NSW during the period 1999 to 2006. Additionally, an attempt was made to predict the level of risk to persons working within those laboratories. Based on the current NSW radiation control legislation and the relevant Australian Standards a comprehensive audit checklist was developed for this project. Each safety requirement in those documents was used to develop a question, resulting in 187 questions in the checklist. The questions were grouped into the following seven Topic Elements: Licensing and Registration; Radiation Safety Administration; Personal and Area Monitoring; Dose Limit Compliance; Documentation/Records; RSO/RSC Qualifications and Duties; and Facilities. A novel feature was the allocation of "weighting factors" to individual questions and Elements. The computer program facilitated analysis of data and provided output in spreadsheet and graphical form. .The on-site physical audits were conducted using the project check-list, and were supplemented by discussions with the client's representative. The results showed significant variation between sites with overall compliance scores ranging from 37% to 94%. The reasons for this large variation stem from differences in local management regime; the appointment of an RSO at one site; variation in the extent of adoption of relevant codes of practice; and legislative weaknesses. Further analysis of the data presented legal, advisory and combined scores for each Element for each site; and variations over time. The graphic displays of the results were appreciated by client management. The formula developed to predict risk, based on the physical parameters alone, showed little relationship to the total audit scores. Statistical analysis of the two data groups by correlation coefficient confirmed this general finding. Development of the formula however served to indicate deficiencies in the Question Set, and the importance of human factors in achieving a high degree of safety.

Multi-criteria decision aid has emerged from the operational research field as the answer given to a couple of important questions encountered in complex decisions problems. Firstly, as decision aiding tools, such methods do not replace the decision maker with a mathematical model, but support him to construct his solution by describing and evaluating his options. Secondly, instead of using a unique criterion capturing all aspects of the problem, in the multi-criteria decision aid methods one seeks to build multiple criteria, representing several points of view. <p>This work explores the application of multi-criteria decision aid methods for optimising food chain countermeasure strategies after a radioactive release to the environment. <p>The core of the thesis is dedicated to formulating general lines for the development of a multi-criteria decision aid model. This includes the definition of potential actions, construction of evaluation criteria and preference modelling and is essentially based on the results of a stakeholders’ process. The work is centred on the management of contaminated milk in order to provide a concrete focus and because of its importance as an ingestion pathway in short term after an accident.<p>Among other issues, the public acceptance of milk countermeasures as a key evaluation criterion is analysed in detail. A comparison of acceptance based on stochastic dominance is proposed and, based on that, a countermeasures’ acceptance ranking is deduced.<p>In order to assess “global preferences” taking into account all the evaluation criteria, an ordinal method is chosen. This method allows expressing the relative importance of criteria in a qualitative way instead of using, for instance, numerical weights. Some algorithms that can be used for robustness analysis are also proposed. This type of analysis is an alternative to sensitivity analysis in what concerns data uncertainty and imprecision and seeks to determine how and if a model result or conclusion obtained for a specific instance of a model’s parameters holds over the entire domain of acceptable values for these parameters.<p>The integrated multi-criteria decision aid approach proposed makes use of outranking and interactive methodologies and is implemented and tested through a number of case studies and prototype tools. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished