Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is a crime preventive approach used for the physical environment to reduce criminal activity. CPTED consists of six principles: Territoriality, Surveillance, Target hardening, Image and Management/Maintenance, Access control and Activity support. The aim of this study was to evaluate an area in the center of a medium sized town in Sweden according to the CPTED principles. The area was divided into three zones, field inspections and analyses of the area were conducted five times using a checklist based on the CPTED principles. Photographs were taken for documentation. Key findings were that Territoriality, Image and Management/Maintenance and Access control need improvements. From the findings a risk assessment on the impact of criminality was made on each principle in each zone and was also summed up to a total. The total indicated that there was a medium risk on impact of criminality on two of the three zones and low on the third zone. / <p>2017-06-01</p>

M.Com. (Business Management) / All valuations of mineral assets in South Africa are guided by the South African Mineral Resources Committee (SAMREC) and South African Mineral Valuation (SAMVAL) codes. They have also been adopted by the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE) in order to protect shareholders. Different capital budgeting methods are used for mineral assets valuation in South Africa. These are the net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), payback period, cost, market and real options methods. It is not known which capital budgeting method is most often used for mining property valuations, as South African mining companies and associations are not required to share their capital budgeting processes with the public. In addition, the SAMVAL code does not recommend the use of the real options method and no reasons are provided. The study was aimed at establishing the capital budgeting method most often used for mining property valuations in South Africa, as well as the reasons why the real options method is not recommended by the SAMVAL code. A judgement sample of expert valuators was utilised in the study and interviews were carried out using open ended questions. The research revealed that NPV is the capital budgeting method most often used for mining property valuations followed by the IRR method. Outside South Africa, Bhappu & Guzman (1995) found that these preferences were reversed. Since the IRR method represents a notional rather than an actual return on investment, South African valuators were found to be more rational than their overseas counterparts in the application of these discounted cash flow (DCF) methods. The findings also revealed that the cost, market and payback methods were less preferred to the NPV and IRR methods. The reasons given were all consistent with the theory. The cost method was avoided because it uses historical cost data which is not usually applicable, the market method was limited due to the lack of available information on truly comparable projects and the payback method was shunned for undervaluing mining properties by ignoring cash flows that arrive after the payback period. The respondents also indicated that the real options method is the least used. The method (which includes the value of embedded optionality) was regarded as complex and not widely understood and this was also thought to explain why it is not recommended by the SAMVAL code. This finding indicated that in South Africa the embedded optionality in mining projects may not be taken into account and as a result, opportunities for the exploitation of its mineral assets could be missed.

M.Ing. / Risk is an integral part of engineering projects, and it is necessary to manage the risks in order to ensure that the project achieves its objectives. A key part of the risk management effort is the risk identification aspect. This dissertation discusses risk identification and how it forms part of risk and project management. The dissertation builds from a macroscopic view of project management, which includes the phases in the project life cycle, the project structure and project control processes. This is followed by a focus on risk management within the project management framework, exploring how identifying, quantifying and controlling risks form part of the risk management structure. Next is an investigation into a risk identification framework, expanding on how aspects like hazard and peril identification, planning, staffing and resource allocation form part of the risk identification framework. A case study is then used to further explore risk identification and demonstrate it in practical engineering project management. Finally, recommendations to improve risk identification in project risk management are made.

Read the abstract in the section 00front of this document. / Dissertation (MEng (Environmental Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Chemical Engineering / unrestricted

A probabilistic risk assessment model using GOLDSIM software was developed to evaluate the uncertainty of selected hydrological and soil parameters on mercury releases from a mercury containment system, which will be constructed within the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility in the Bear Creek Valley at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. The main objective was to determine the concentrations and risk of exceeding the drinking water standard of mercury in a selected receptor well. A series of simulations were then conducted for various design periods, with emphasis on 10,000 years to determine those concentrations and risks. Experimental data for selected parameters such as dry bulk density, partition coefficient, and porosity and infiltration rate were represented by Probability Density Functions in support of Monte Carlo analyses. A sensitivity analysis showed that concentrations and risk are, for instance, most sensitive to porosity in the unsaturated zone. The simulations suggest that all herein estimates of concentrations and risks of mercury in drinking water should be well below established limits.

Osteoporotic fractures are a major and increasing clinical and public health concern internationally. Identification of individuals at high risk for fragility fractures may enable us to target preventive interventions more effectively. In this thesis, I aimed to evaluate novel risk factors for osteoporosis and develop a fracture risk assessment model among the middle-aged and older people. I used data from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC)-Norfolk study, which is a large population-based prospective study started in 1993. About 25,000 men and women were assessed at baseline and about 15,000 of them returned for a second examination 4 years later. All participants are followed up to the present for clinical events including fractures. My work is in two parts. For the first part, I examined the risk of fracture associated with some novel or less well studied risk factors. These risk factors included change in height over time, respiratory function, physical activity and body fat mass. We found that men and women with annual height loss &gt;0.5 cm are at increased risk of hip and any fracture (relative risk=1.9 (95% CI 1.3-2.7) per cm/year height loss). One litre lower forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) was associated with a 2-fold risk of hip fracture in men and women. We also observed a non-linear association, independent of body mass index, between increasing body fat mass and lower fracture risk in women but not in men. I performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies evaluating the association between physical activity and hip fractures. Using a new validated questionnaire in EPIC-Norfolk, we observed varying relationships between physical activity in different domains of life and fracture risk in men and women. For the second part of the thesis, I developed a biostatistical model to calculate 10-year risk of developing a fracture among EPIC-Norfolk study participants. This model incorporates clinical and radiological assessments known to be associated with fractures and can be extended to other risk factors assessed in other prospective cohorts. This helps clinicians to achieve a better estimate of the prospective risk of fracture in their patients. I applied this model to compare the predictive value of two different clinical assessment methods for osteoporosis, namely dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and quantitative ultrasound (QUS). We found that that the predictive power of QUS is comparable to, and independent of, predictive power of DXA. In summary, my studies have added to our knowledge about some novel and easy-to-use risk factors of osteoporosis and proposed a practical method to merge and utilise data from different risk factors for estimation of fracture risk in individuals.

The aim of this study was to compare online child pornography offenders and contact offenders along the predictive items of the Static-2002 actuarial risk assessment tool, as well as, several other items and scales predictive of recidivism. In addition, the study wished to determine if the Static-2002 was a well-equipped to assess online offenders. 120 subjects were assessed in this study, 53 online child pornography offenders, 53 child molesters, and 7 offenders who committed both a contact and online offense. The research identified a number of similarities between the two groups of offenders, including a finding that the two groups did not significantly differ in age. The most pronounced differences were found on the several measures of criminality used in the study where contact offenders scored significantly higher. The Static-2002 was found to not be well suited for use with online offenders as the tool had difficulty assessing their sexual deviancy.

The main goal of this thesis was to develop new methods and knowledge that will explain and predict species differences in sensitivity to dioxin-like compounds (DLCs) in birds. The important achievements and results obtained from the four experimental chapters of this thesis are summarized as follow: (1) an efficient luciferase reporter gene (LRG) assay was developed for use with 96-well cell culture plates; (2) the results obtained from LRG assay were shown to be highly correlated to available in ovo toxicity data; (3) amino acids at positions 324 and 380 within the aryl hydrocarbon receptor 1 ligand binding domain (AHR1 LBD) were shown to be responsible for reduced Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) AHR1 activity to induce a dioxin-responsive reporter gene in comparison to chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), and ring-necked pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) AHR1 in response to different DLCs; (4) AHR1 LBD sequences of 86 avian species were studied and differences at amino acid sites 256, 257, 297, 324, 337 and 380 were identified. It was discovered that only positions 324 and 380 play a role in AHR1 activity to induce a dioxin-responsive gene; (5) in COS-7 cells expressing chicken AHR1, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and 2,3,4,7,8-pentachlorodibenzofuran (PeCDF) are equipotent inducers of the reporter gene and bind with similar affinity to chicken AHR1, however, in the cells expressing pheasant, Japanese quail and common tern (Sterna hirundo) AHR1, PeCDF is a stronger inducer than TCDD. PeCDF also binds with higher affinity to pheasant and quail AHR1 than TCDD. The results of this thesis show that embryo lethal effect of DLCs in avian species can be predicted by use of two new non-lethal methods: (1) the LRG assay and (2) determination of the identity of the amino acids at positions 324 and 380. The findings and methods described in this thesis will be of use for environmental risk assessments of DLCs.

In Canada, bail supervision programs were developed, in partnership with community-based organizations, to promote bail compliance and provide supervision to accused persons who would otherwise have been detained in remand custody. While many of these programs use traditional risk assessment tools to guide supervision, limited research has been conducted on their effectiveness in the bail supervision context. Adopting a quantitative as well as qualitative methodology, this study uses a representative sample of 100 supervision clients from one Ontario bail program to examine the validity of its risk tool – Service Planning Instrument™ (SPIn) Pre-Screen – as well as demographic and criminal justice factors, in predicting bail supervision outcomes. Analyses suggest that SPIn lacks predictive validity in the bail supervision setting. These findings are discussed within the broader context of net widening, as well as the greater bail/remand crisis and the culture of risk aversion that pervades the Canadian criminal justice system.

Human exposures to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) occur as components of complex mixtures. Evaluations of health risks posed by complex mixtures containing PAHs rely on the toxicological knowledge of prioritized PAH mixture components, assuming that these PAHs share a common mode of action and that the sum of the contributions of these PAHs equals the toxic potency of the mixture (i.e., additivity). Traditional toxicity testing methods emphasizing apical endpoints have had limited success at evaluating the validity of these assumptions. Toxicogenomic tools that are able to rapidly generate toxicologically-relevant and mechanistic information have gained acceptance in the regulatory arena for individual chemicals; however, the applicability of these tools for chemical mixtures has been inadequately addressed. This thesis used toxicogenomic tools to (1) improve the understanding of mechanisms underlying the adverse, toxicological responses induced by individual PAHs and (2) evaluate the contention that transcriptional profiles and pathway information can be used to critically examine interactions between individual PAHs in PAH-containing mixtures, and the assumption of additivity. Microarrays were used to profile gene expression changes (transcriptomes) in forestomach, liver, and lung tissues (targets of PAH exposure) from mice orally exposed to three doses of eight individual PAHs, two defined PAH mixtures, and one complex PAH-containing mixture (coal tar). The results revealed that each PAH induced transcriptional changes that were significantly associated with several pathways implicated in carcinogenesis. However, despite a uniform ability to induce DNA damage (i.e., DNA adducts), mutations, and increases in enzyme activity, the pathways differ across PAHs and tissues. A novel strategy that employs single-PAH transcriptome data to models of additivity revealed that the assumption of additivity in PAH mixtures is valid at the pathway level; however, the independent action model of additivity yielded better estimates compared to concentration addition (used in human health risk assessment of PAH mixtures) or generalized concentration addition. Additionally, predicted and observed coal tar-induced transcriptional benchmark doses were comparable to those derived from previously published coal tar-induced murine lung tumour incidence data. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the utility of toxicogenomic data to expand the current understanding regarding the toxic potential of individual PAHs and PAH-containing complex mixtures.