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Based on the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO's) evolution into the realm of safety regulation, which is unforeseen by the Chicago Convention, this thesis analyzes the legitimacy of the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) and ICAO's authority to regulate the sovereign states that enable its existence as an international organization. It concludes that ICAO's creation and operation of the USOAP is legitimate and sustainable based on: (1) an examination of international organizations generally; (2) the history and evolution of aviation safety audits; and (3) the relevant provisions of the Chicago Convention. Possible amendments to the Chicago Convention with the purpose of enhancing the USOAP are also considered and recommended.

The environment in which we live relentlessly threatens to decay or destroy our built cultural heritage through climatic and man-made means. Fire presents the most severe threat to the fabric and content of historic buildings. The destruction, when it occurs is extremely swift, the loss caused is often complete and the indirect damage from smoke and water can also be significant. The incidences of fires in churches is currently exceeding those in all other historic building types. This trend is destroying irreplaceable national treasures as arguably, England and Wales contains the greatest collection, in terms of number and antiquity, of ancient parish churches in the world. This thesis presents an investigation into the fundamental principles underlying fire safety in parish churches. It identifies that the danger to life from fire is not high, due to the fact that the natural layout of churches facilitates good evacuation routes and travel distances. The threat to church property, however, is considerable as churches generally possess very limited fire safety measures. In addition, problems of building isolation, restricted access and limited water supply means that early intervention is unlikely. Such evidence prompted the need for a decision making tool to aid the custodians of churches in the management of fire safety and in the allocation of scarce resources. The aims of this thesis were to develop a prototype fire safety evaluation procedure for the property protection of parish churches and to examine, using a sample of churches, the effectiveness of the methodology. This has been achieved by developing a 'points scheme' technique to enable the judgement on the adequacy of fire safety to be undertaken. The work involved assigning numerical values to qualitative descriptions of events, techniques and processes by a group of experts representing the interests of those involved in the use, management, and preservation of churches as well as fire safety engineering. The opinions gathered were brought to a consensus in a series of Delphi group meetings, through discussion and matrix manipulation. A 'collated norm' was established, from a collection of fire safety guidance documents for places of worship, against which technical value judgements are made and the acceptable level of fire safety is adjudicated. The procedure is unique in its evaluation configuration, in that it balances the level of fire safety against the vulnerability of property fabric and content. The assessment is undertaken through an 'observational survey'. This is conducted by an expert, knowledgeable in ecclesiastical building construction and fire safety, observing all parts of the building and making judgements on the adequacy of eighteen identified fire safety components. Features of the building which are highlighted through the assessment as being a high fire risk can receive a more in-depth survey, beyond the scope of this evaluation procedure. The practical operation of the evaluation procedure has been tested on ten churches. The outcome shows a broad spread of results. An independent qualitative observational assessment by experts support the outcome of the evaluation procedure in nine out of ten cases. Preliminary repeatability application trials have also been conducted. They showed an encouraging level of consistency, illustrating further that the developed procedure is of positive value and utility. The versatility of the evaluation procedure enables a direct link to be made between potential improvements in the assessment score and the actual cost of making fire safety improvements. This facility enables decision makers to evaluate fire safety upgrade options.

This research investigated various factors considered to influence safety attitudes of construction workers, and management, towards safety performance in the UK Construction Industry. The factors examined are listed in the research model and consist of historical, economic, psychological, technical, procedural, organisational, environmental, and safety performance variables (factors). The study based upon the above factors was conducted under the key assumption that: "Safety Performance is a function of operatives' and management attitudes in respect of behavioural and environmental factors in the Construction Industry". This key assumption lead to further sub-hypotheses, namely: a) Safety performance is a function of operative attitudes towards the above listed factors; b) Safety performance is a function of management attitudes towards the above listed factors; c) Operative attitudes towards the above factors differ from those of site managers; d) Site managers' attitudes towards the above factors differ from those of contract managers, and safety advisors, etc.; The research methodology centred upon literature reviews, interviews and questionnaires administered to operatives, site managers, contract managers and safety advisors, in ten construction companies in the UK, covering a sample population of 325 subjects. Analysis of the 325 questionnaires suggests that the key research assumptions, and attendant sub hypothesis are found to be valid as far as the research data examined are concerned. Ultimately, the results of multivariate analysis determined that organisational factor, and industry norms, are the primary and most dominant influence upon safety performance in the UK Construction Industry.

Infrastructure such as transportation networks improves the condition of everyday lives by facilitating public services and systems necessary for economic activity and growth. However, constructing and maintaining transportation infrastructure poses safety hazards and risks to those working at the sharp end, leading to serious injuries and fatalities. Therefore, the identification of hazards and managing the risks they create is integral towards continually improving safety levels in Infrastructure Management. This work seeks to fully understand this problem and highlight past, present and future issues concerning safety in a comprehensive literature review. A decision support tool is proposed to improve the safety of transportation workers by facilitating hazard identification and management of associated control measures. This Tool facilitates the extraction of safety knowledge from real paper-based safety documents, capturing existing worker’s knowledge and experiences from industrial ‘corporate memory’. The Tool suggests the most appropriate control measures for new scenarios based on existing knowledge from previous work tasks. This is achieved by classifying work tasks using a new method based on unilateral UK legislation (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences (1995) Regulations) and the innovative use of Artificial Intelligence method Case Based Reasoning. Case Based Reasoning (CBR) allows transparency in the Tool processes and has many benefits over other safety tools which may suffer from ‘black box’ stigmatism. The Tool is populated with knowledge extracted from a real transportation project and is hosted via the internet (www. Total-Safety.com). The end product of the Tool is the generation of bespoke method statements detailing appropriate control measures. These generated paper documents are shown to have financial and quality control benefits over traditional method statements. The Tool has undergone testing and analysis and is shown to be robust. Finally, the overall conclusions and opportunities for further research are presented and progress of the work against each of the five research objectives is assessed.

While the literature surrounding the negative effects of stress on health and well-being is plentiful, there is a distinct lack of research applying stress frameworks to an organisational safety context. This study investigated the impact of stressors and strains on safety in the workplace, using the Job Demand-Control model as a research framework. In order to maintain a proactive approach to safety management, safety climate, safety compliance and safety participation were used as study variables as they have been established as antecedents to accidents and injuries in the workplace. From questionnaire data from employees with regular safety issues it was found that a positive relationship exists between safety climate and safety behaviours. Satisfaction was found to mediate the relationship between safety climate and one dimension of the safety compliance measure used. Providing support for the buffer hypothesis of the Job Demand-Control model, safety control moderated the relationship between safety climate and safety participation. Control over work scheduling, and decision latitude moderated the relationship between safety climate and safety participation but were indicative of an enhancing effect, rather than a buffering effect. The results suggest that control is an important variable to consider in terms of safety.

Assessment of employee’s or job applicant’s occupational safety is typically limited to the use of self-report safety scales, and/or examining their accident history. The present study investigated whether a series of spot the difference puzzles could be used as a valid measure of an employee’s safety orientation. The validation of the spot the difference puzzle tool was conducted on a working sample from a construction company. The first task-required employees to complete a series of ten spot the difference puzzles containing five neutral and five safety differences. Measures of a number of safety constructs, and accident history ratings were then taken from both employees and their supervisors. Supervisors were to rate each of their employee’s on a series of the safety constructs and past accident frequencies, while employees completed these same measures using a self-report scale. Results from employee and supervisor safety measures were then correlated with scores from the spot the difference puzzles. The primary aim of the research was to validate the use of the spot the difference puzzles in measuring a job applicant’s safety orientation during recruitment. Forty employees, and four supervisors holding a range of construction based jobs participated in the study. Results confirmed that a subset of five of the puzzles produced significant relationships with measures of an employee’s safety knowledge, motivation and co-worker caring. In addition, results found that safety knowledge and motivation produced significant relationships with measures of employee accident history. With many current measures of safety being effected by biases, such as social desirability, memory recall and impression management, this subset of puzzles may provide organisations with an objective and unbiased tool to measure safety orientation during recruitment.

The use of lightweight building systems is very controversial as existing knowledge about their performance is limited. Not enough research has been conducted to determine the suitability of these modern construction technologies and there is an ongoing controversy as to whether they are an appropriate replacement to traditional construction techniques. The prime objective of this study is to present a number of methodologies to assess lightweight external walling systems focusing on thermal efficiency, structure and fire performance, which are currently the main driving forces for this industry. Traditionally, these areas have been studied separately but there is a need to integrate them in order to get comprehensive solutions to the way these systems are designed. The drive to achieve improvements in one of these specific areas could potentially result in reduced effectiveness in the others. That is the reason why an integrative approach is recommended. These techniques are meant to be applied in the design phase of building projects so as to provide early quantitative information about the systems analyzed. The methodologies described herein are then applied to real life light steel building solutions. Within this context, two different wall constructions are examined and conclusions made on their relative performance. The study highlights the importance of having analytical and experimental solutions as a framework for further development. Two different approaches have been considered to assess thermal efficiency, structure and fire performance. On the one hand, a prescriptive approach has been employed to establish regulation compliance. On the other hand, a performance based approach is taken to actually understand and explain how these systems work in real life conditions. The outcome is a comprehensive set of tools to assure both industry and other stake holders.

<p> Health and wellness is essential to each individual's quality of life. The importance of health and wellness is not only of an individual concern but also a population-based societal concern. Currently there is growing epidemic or obesity as 65% of American adults are either overweight or obese. The work setting is an ideal location to foster healthy behaviors as most adults spend the majority of their day there. The need for health-related activities is supported in many different types of workplaces, especially in higher education settings. This study aimed to explore the relationship of a health promotion program using pedometers on the health-related indicators of the SF-36v2 and vital functioning of the participants in a college setting. The association of participant's health promotion level to changes in health-related indicators and vital functioning was also explored.</p><p> A pre-test post-test experimental design was conducted with a convenience sample of 29 participants. All 29 participants completed the pre-test, the 6 week health promotion program using pedometers, and the first post-test (post-test 1). Only 15 individuals completed the second post-test (post-test 2) which was administered six months after the completion of the health promotion program. Paired sample t tests analyzed the difference in scores of each participant from pre-test (baseline) to post-test 1. The paired sample t tests reported a significant improvement in the component summary and subtests of the SF 36v2 such as the mental health component summary (<i>p</i> = .013), physical functioning (<i>p</i> = .015), vitality (<i>p</i> = .033), and mental health (<i>p</i> = .005). The linear regression analysis revealed mental health component summary scores were a highly significant predictor of vitality (&beta; = 1.075, <i>p</i> = .001), accounting for 50.5% of the variance in vitality. Vitality is unique to each individual. This construct can affects one's ability to activity engage in their roles and occupations.</p><p> Health and wellness support role performance. The roles of most adults consist of worker, friend, and family member. Fulfillment of roles and meaningful activities supports balance and quality of life. Having the physical and mental capability to perform one's roles in a variety of contexts leads to engagement and satisfaction. Sustenance of a healthy lifestyle via physical activity is also an integral component of wellness. Utilizing technology and support within the social, virtual, and physical environments have all been shown by this study to improve quality of life indicators. Improvements were noted to statistically support the use of pedometers, points of decision prompts, and email correspondence to increase physical activity levels as well as stages of health promotion.</p>