Previous research regarding the relationship between speeding behavior and crashes suggests that drivers who engage in frequent and extreme speeding behavior are over-involved in crashes. However, many of these earlier studies relied on estimates of prevailing and pre-crash speeds, and as a result, their conclusions have been questioned. Over the last several years automotive manufacturers have begun installing airbag systems that collect and maintain accurate pre-crash speeds. Though, patterns of driver speeding behavior are also necessary to discern whether drivers who regularly participate in speeding have increased risk of crash involvement. This dissertation presents a framework and methods for quantifying and analyzing individual driver behavior using instrumented vehicles. The goals of the research were threefold: 1) Develop processing methods and observational coding systems for quantifying driver speeding using instrumented vehicle data; 2) Develop a framework for analyzing aggregate and individual driver speeding behavior; and 3) Explore the potential application of behavioral safety concepts to transportation safety problems. Quantitative assessments of driver speeding behavior could be used in combination with event data recorder data to analyze crash risk. Additionally, speed behavior models could aid in the early identification of problem behavior as well as in the development of targeted countermeasure programs. For this research, 172 instrumented vehicles from the Commute Atlanta program were utilized to collect individual driver speeding behavior. Continuous monitoring capabilities allowed the capture of speed and location for every second of vehicle operation. Driver speeds were then matched to road networks and subsequently to posted speed limits using a geographic information system. This allowed differences between the drivers speed and the posted speed. Several processes were developed to assess the accuracy and the completeness of the data prior to analysis. Finally, metrics and analysis frameworks were tested for their potential usefulness in future behavioral risk analysis. The results of the research were both positive and staggering. On average, nearly 40% of all driving activity by the sample population was above the posted speed limit. The amount and extent of speeding was highest for young drivers. Trends indicate that speeding behavior decreases in amount and extent as age increases.

Transportation cost is an important item in total operating cost of an open pit mining operations. In some projects, the transportation cost may reach to 60 % of total operating cost. Turkish Coal Enterprises (TKi) delivers the demanded coal to all cities of Turkey within the context of Prime Ministry Social Solidarity and Aid Fund. The project duration, demanded coal amount whether the coal is needed as packed or unpacked form are determined by local governors. In this study, a model is developed through software, called NAKMAL for the estimation of TKi&rsquo / s coal transportation cost. Transportation cost model is coded using Visual Studio.NET 2005. This model is designed in modular structure and composed of 19 modules. Excavation and transportation in a mine is an important part of the model. Model considers all the highway, railway and transportation by ship alternatives, as well as the packing operation. This model is being used in evaluation of bids by the decision of TKi&rsquo / s board of executive committee.

The purpose of this thesis is to quantify the economic costs associated with traffic crashes for 83 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States and compare those costs to that of congestion. This was done by collecting injury and fatality data for each area and multiplying those by economic cost estimates for each developed by the FHWA. The findings of this analysis show that the economic cost of traffic crashes exceeds the economic costs of congestion in every metropolitan area studied. These results indicate that transportation safety deserves similar consideration to that of traffic congestion when allocation transportation funds.

Work zones are visually and physically complex environments, requiring that drivers maintain control of their vehicle and comprehend atypical and often discontinuous traffic control devices to safely navigate appropriate paths. Freeway diverges represent particularly difficult work zones areas. This thesis investigates current methods of delineating diverges in freeway work zones to determine important characteristics of these methods for future research. A virtual environment was constructed with two ramp geometries: a freeway continuing straight and one curving left. Still images of work zones on these geometries were created using drums spaced 10 ft apart, drums spaced 40 ft apart, drums spaced 40 ± 2 ft apart, and portable concrete barriers. These alternatives were used to construct temporary ramps that were either open or closed. 39 participants were asked to identify whether the ramp was open or closed and their responses were recorded to evaluate the performance of each alternative. Results indicate the importance of the Gestalt principles of closure, proximity, and continuity in perception of temporary exit ramps in work zones. These results will be used to guide future research into methods of delineating diverges in freeway work zones.

The thesis starts by defining technological change, productivity and safety. Different definitions are discussed and their merits compared. A brief history of coal mining, together with a description of the state of the mining industry at present is given. Technological innovations recently adopted by the industry are discussed. The concept of productivity in relation to the coal industry of the U.K., and the deficiencies of the present measurement technique, are fully explained. Safety in the coal mining industry of the U.K. is investigated. A brief history is given, together with a full discussion of the consequences and costs of accidents. The concept of technical productivity is introduced and its relation to total productivity explained. The total productivity concept is then applied to longwall coal faces. A multi-variable non-linear model is devised which represents mean total productivity of all longwall faces to an accuracy of about J7G. The model is tested and a forecasting method suggested. Total productivity components are analysed and values for the productivity of various inputs during the period 1958-1980 given. Similarly, a model for representing safety, based on costs, is introduced, tested for accuracy and its components analysed. By applying marginal analysis to the total productivity and safety models, the influence of technological change on productivity and safety are quantified. It is concluded that a new method for measuring productivity should be adopted, in which case total productivity would be the most realistic and comprehensive choice. The models introduced can serve as useful tools in planning and forecasting, as well as being used to measure productivity and safety. Since this work has been in progress, work at the NCB has also led to consideration of improved measures of productivity.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

This study is to investigate the property management services towards safety condition of buildings in Hong Kong. Those property management services were found under a larger framework on property management industry brought by the housing managers including Building Repair & Maintenance, Management of Environment, Property Management Services for Owners / Tenants / Community, Facility Management, Law in Practice, Finance Management, Human Resources Management and other attributes of property management services. The results of the survey implied that the housing managers or practitioners of the property management industry realized those services would brought to the safety condition of the building in Hong Kong with significant impacts, but most of them would only put their focuses on the facility management or Building Repair & Maintenance. From the study, we could see there was raising concern on Finance Management and Law in Practice which was conformed to the past literature on safety condition of the buildings. This study also showed how the socio-demographic characteristics would affect the perceptions of the housing managers and the practitioners of the property management industry on the property management services. Much more of this study is to explain the importance of considering the point of views of the different property management services in affecting the safety condition of the buildings. To illustrated the relationship between the property management services and the safety condition of the buildings in order to understand how important of the property management services is in maintaining the safety condition of the buildings. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

In the past few decades, the number of motorcycles has grown rapidly in developing countries; therefore, motorcycle safety has increasingly become a critical issue, particularly for nations in which motorcycle-related casualties comprise a major proportion of all traffic injuries and deaths. However, few systematic studies have been conducted on enhancing the understanding of the vulnerability of motorcyclists in developing countries. While motorcycle safety has advanced greatly in developed countries, a direct transfer of the experience to motorcycle safety in developing countries may not be appropriate. The objectives of this thesis are to investigate the safety of motorcyclists from four aspects: people, motorcycles, the physical environment, and social environment, and subsequently develop a deeper understanding of motorcycle safety in developing countries. Methodologically, both questionnaire and observational surveys were employed, mainly from June to October 2012, to evaluate the attitudes of motorcyclists towards road safety and their behaviors on roads, respectively. Data from these two surveys are analyzed through different statistical methods (e.g. chi-square test, Binary Logistic Regression, and the Empirical Bayes approach) to provide a more comprehensive view of the various issues related to motorcycle safety. In addition, Maoming, a major city in Western Guangdong Province of Southern China, was chosen as a case study in this thesis, mainly because it shares many motorcycle-related characteristics with other cities in developing countries. This thesis presents four in-depth studies within a coherent framework to explore motorcycle safety in developing countries. The first study is a detailed investigation of motorcycle taxi drivers who transport passengers by motorcycles as an occupation. The results of this study reveal that compared to non-occupational motorcyclists, motorcycle taxi drivers are more likely to undertake unsafe behaviors (e.g., running a red-light or speeding) when in a hurry, driving late at night or early in the morning, although they hold more positive attitudes towards road safety. The second study focuses on another common behavior: not displaying motorcycle license plates. The results suggest that this behavior is significantly associated with not possessing a driving or vehicle license for the motorcycle, thus placing motorcyclists and other road users at risks. The third study elucidates the effects of helmet law enforcement on helmet use. The results indicate that helmet law enforcement exerts a positive but short-lived effect on helmet use, and also suggest that the Naïve Before-and-After approach should not be dismissed, and can be used as a preliminary method in similar research. The last study investigates the effects of vehicular countdown devices (VCDs) as a traffic facility on motorcycle safety. The results show that they exert negative effects on motorcycle safety and may increase the risk of rear-end collisions at intersections. By adopting a coherent theoretical framework, this study is expected to enrich the knowledge of how people, vehicles, the physical environment, social environment and their interactions affect motorcycle safety and to provide suggestions to improve motorcycle safety in developing countries. / published_or_final_version / Geography / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Building Information Modeling (BIM) with other associated Information Technologies(IT) is reshaping the construction industry worldwide, and is viewed as a systematic solution targeting at the industry’s nature as traditional, fragmented, document-centric and dangerous. In general, the industry is receptive to the change and becoming more Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) conscious, but the adoption of such implementation lags far behind. There have been a number of technology oriented studies aimed at inventing some BIM software functional modules to facilitate the construction safety management, but the philosophy behind that type of studies remains questionable –the applicability of those inventions for the safety management practice, the acceptability of those functional modules by the industrial practitioners, the non-holistic view on the construction safety management, as well as the equivalence of obeying the safety regulations and the safety performance on site. Essentially, the implementation of BIM is a certain Information System (IS) implementation in an industrial discipline, but BIM implementation is always treated as a static, objective and mechanical phenomenon, and the industrial practitioner’s participation during the implementation course have been subsequently not attained enough attention. Therefore, it is justifiable to take a view of management and/or process change on BIM adoption and implementation issues. In this perspective, how to integrate BIM into the construction safety management technologically, organizationally and institutionally becomes the problem for the Hong Kong construction industry, in which context the research is conducted. Driven by the aim of this study – to understand the mechanism for the adoption and implementation of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and other associated Information Technologies (IT) for the construction safety management in Hong Kong–the qualitative method approach is adopted. More specifically, the narrative approach as the strategy of inquiry is formulated given the consideration of the available time and resource for the study. In so doing, the researcher, himself as the most important research instrument, conducts ten open-ended face-to-face interviews with the industrial practitioners as the first-hand data, and a number of in-depth literature studies on the construction safety management in Hong Kong as the second-hand data. To characterize the qualitative study paradigm, all the procedures from drafting the interview questions to validating the research findings occur in an iterative and inductive manner, and a Computer Assisted Qualitative Data AnalysiS(CAQDAS) program, the QSR NVivo 10 is also employed to smooth the data analysis process. Assisted by the program –the Word Frequency Query and the detailed coding analysis –the comparison of the results between the partial and the whole interview texts is made to confirm the sample size of the ten interviews has reached the theoretical saturation. Based on this point, all the sub-categories and child-codes under three top parent categories –Attitudes towards BIM in Hong Kong, BIM Acceptance by the Industry, and BIM and Construction Safety –are grouped into visual models for illustration. By comparing and contrasting with the existing knowledge, the research findings are further validated in terms of how to promote BIM implementation for construction safety management in Hong Kong. Beyond those in line with the previous literatures, the machine readable data format for the construction safety management needs to be further explored on its content and the quantification method. Whereas, how BIM implementation will promote the frank auditing as well as the relational contracting approaches are also worth further studied. By examining the current contextual situations and through narrative inquiry on BIM implementation for construction safety management in Hong Kong, this study provides understandings, which are elaborated in a trajectory of the sociology of technology, on the implementation of a specific information technology BIM for construction safety management in the Hong Kong construction industry. The research also comes to an open conclusion ready to integrate any continuous emerging evidence, for both the expectation of the qualitative research and the nature of the issue to be addressed –BIM implementation as an emerging phenomenon. The thesis finally presents its recommendations for BIM implementation for the construction safety management in Hong Kong for administrators, policy makers and other decision makers. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Master / Master of Philosophy

M.Tech. Business Administration. Business School. / This study investigates the extent to which levels of awareness of lead poisoning among mine workers at the Exxaro lead and zinc mine in Namibia correlate to their levels of compliance. Specifically, the study investigates the extent to which mine workers are aware of lead poisoning and whether this knowledge influences their attitudes towards compliance to regulations on handling hazardous materials.