Incident databases provide an excellent opportunity to study the repeated situations of incidents in the process industry. The databases give an insight into the situation which led to an incident, and if studied properly can help monitor the process, equipment and chemical involved more closely, and reduce the number of incidents in the future. This study examined a subset of incidents from National Response Center’s Incident database, focusing mainly on fixed facility incidents in Harris County, Texas from 1990 to 2002. Data mining has been used in the financial and marketing arena for many decades to analyze and find patterns in large amounts of data. Realizing the limited capabilities of traditional methods of statistics, more robust techniques of data mining were applied to the subset of data and interesting patterns of chemical involved, equipment failed, component involved, etc. were found. Further, patterns obtained by data mining on the subset of data were used in modifying probabilities of failure of equipment and developing a decision support system.

This is the final report of ANSDA – An analytic assessment of its processes written as a bachelor thesis in the fall of 2013 by students at Linköpings Universitet. It is an analysis of the incident evaluation process used by LFV: ANS-DA. The thesis aimed to find areas where the process could be optimized in regards to time-consumption and efficency in dealing with errors in Air Traffic Control procedure, which are observed when an anomaly in the system occurs.

The sustainability and continued development of the chemical industry is to a large extent dependent on learning from past incidents. The failure to learn from past mistakes is rather not deliberate but due to unawareness of the situation. Incident databases are excellent resources to learn from past mistakes; however, in order to be effective, incident databases need to be functional in disseminating the lessons learned to users. Therefore, this research is dedicated to improving user accessibility of incident databases. The objective of this research is twofold. The first objective is improving accessibility of the database system by allowing the option of word search as well as folder search for the users. This will satisfy research needs of users who are aware of the hazards at hand and need to access the relevant information. The second objective is to activate the database via integration of the database with an operational software. This will benefit research needs of users who are unaware of the existing hazards. Literature review and text mining of Major Accident Reporting System (MARS) database short reports are employed to develop an initial taxonomy, which is then refined and modified by expert review. The incident reports in MARS database is classified to the right folders in the taxonomy and implemented in a database system based on Microsoft Excel, where the users can retrieve information using folder search as well as word search option via a user friendly interface. A program coded in JAVA is prepared for integrating the incident database with a Management of Change (MOC) software prototype. A collection of keywords on hazardous substances and equipment is prepared. If the keywords exist in the MOC interface, they will be highlighted, and with the click of a button, will return up to ten relevant incident reports. Using an active and knowledge-based system, people can learn from incidents and near-misses and will be more active to reduce the frequency of recurring incidents.

The purpose of this study is focused on The Study of the Relationship Among the Crisis Incident of the Enterprise and News Coverage. The Content report analysis and semi-structured interviews were adopted in the study. In the Content report analysis,the samples were come from HANSHIN Department Store¡BGRAND HI-LAI Hotel and Kaohsinug Pacific SOGO Department Store. This study was used Semi-structured interviews for further investigation from 3 business¡¦s PR related personnel and 4 different planes media reporter. Therefore,7 persons were interviewed for this study. The following results were derived: Business owner and the media rechallenges the ordinary familiar outside person, the matter, the thing, the environment, the variable which the increase crisis links up.otherwises, The benefit sponsor's role possibly turns the key which the danger thing sends, The crisis cause existence is indefinite, cause troubles the status to form the migration -like trend, also changes the crisis already to have condition, presents the mobilized development. Reporter and the news originate the interaction relates into the parallel pattern, the strengthening "the scene principle" report.And the picture has become various media competition new stage, Gradually substitutes for the frame news fact another tool. The news originates the multiplication, the information czar's phenomenon gradually blurs. Eventually, this study was concluded the valuable analyzed results and also provide the references for business¡BPR and the future investigation. Keywords¡GCrisis Incident¡ANews Coverage

Many incidents have occurred because industries have ignored past incidents or failed to learn lessons from the past. Incident databases provide an effective option for managing large amounts of information about the past incidents. Analysis of data stored in existing databases can lead to useful conclusions and reduction of chemical incidents and consequences of incidents. An incident database is a knowledge based system that can give an insight to the situation which led to an incident. Effective analysis of data from a database can help in development of information that can help reduce future incidents: cause of an incident, critical equipment, the type of chemical released, and the type of injury and victim. In this research, Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance (HSEES) database has been analyzed focusing on manufacturing events in Texas from 1993-2004. Between thirteen to sixteen states have participated in the HSEES incident reporting system and it does not include all the near miss incidents. Petroleum related incidents are also excluded from the HSEES system. Studies show that HSEES covers only 37% of all incidents in the US. This scaling ratio was used to estimate the total universe size.

Thesis (M.A.)--Guo li Taiwan da xue. / Reproduced from typescript. Xerox ed. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-210).

Thesis (M.A.)--Guo li Taiwan da xue. / Reproduced from typescript. Xerox ed. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-210).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2005. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-129).

Traffic incidents are non-recurring events that can cause a temporary reduction in roadway capacity. They have been recognized as a major contributor to traffic congestion on our national highway systems. To alleviate their impacts on capacity, automatic incident detection (AID) has been applied as an incident management strategy to reduce the total incident duration. AID relies on an algorithm to identify the occurrence of incidents by analyzing real-time traffic data collected from surveillance detectors. Significant research has been performed to develop AID algorithms for incident detection on freeways; however, similar research on major arterial streets remains largely at the initial stage of development and testing. This dissertation research aims to identify design strategies for the deployment of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based AID algorithm for major arterial streets. A section of the US-1 corridor in Miami-Dade County, Florida was coded in the CORSIM microscopic simulation model to generate data for both model calibration and validation. To better capture the relationship between the traffic data and the corresponding incident status, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and data normalization were applied to the simulated data. Multiple ANN models were then developed for different detector configurations, historical data usage, and the selection of traffic flow parameters. To assess the performance of different design alternatives, the model outputs were compared based on both detection rate (DR) and false alarm rate (FAR). The results show that the best models were able to achieve a high DR of between 90% and 95%, a mean time to detect (MTTD) of 55-85 seconds, and a FAR below 4%. The results also show that a detector configuration including only the mid-block and upstream detectors performs almost as well as one that also includes a downstream detector. In addition, DWT was found to be able to improve model performance, and the use of historical data from previous time cycles improved the detection rate. Speed was found to have the most significant impact on the detection rate, while volume was found to contribute the least. The results from this research provide useful insights on the design of AID for arterial street applications.

Patient safety has been on the research agenda since 2000, when unnecessary harm to patients in providers’ care came to light. In 2005, the improvements in patient safety fell short of expectations, and the patient safety research community recognized that the issues are more difficult to resolve than first thought. One of the tools to address this vexing problem has been voluntary incident reporting systems, although the literature has given incident reporting systems mixed reviews. This qualitative comparative case study comprises 85 semi-structured interviews in two separate divisions of a tertiary care hospital, General Internal Medicine (GIM) and Obstetrics and Neonatology (OBS/NEO). The main line of questioning concerned incident reporting; general views of patient safety were also sought. This is a thesis by publication. The thesis consists of a general introduction to patient safety, a literature review, a description of the methods and cases, followed by the manuscripts. The thesis concludes with a summarization of the findings, and implications of the study. Manuscript one focuses on the reporter end of incident reporting systems. It asks what frames underlie GIM nurse and physician self reporting and peer reporting practices. The findings showed that frames that inhibit reporting are shared by physicians and nurses, such as the fear of blame frame regarding self reporting, and the tattletale frame regarding peer reporting. These frames are underpinned by a focus on the individual, despite the organisational message of reporting for learning. A learning frame is an enabler to incident reporting. Viewing the objective of voluntary incident reporting as learning allows practitioners to depersonalize incident reporting. The focus becomes preventing recurrence and not the individual reporting or reported on. Manuscript two again focuses on the reporter end, and on one type of reportable incident – a problem that healthcare practitioners can fix themselves. The study asks: when faced with such a problem, do practitioners fix it in the moment and forget about it, or do they fix it in the moment and report it? We found that “fixing and forgetting” was the main choice that most GIM practitioners made in situations where they faced problems that they themselves could resolve. These situations included a) handling near misses, which were seen as unworthy of reporting since they did not result in actual harm to the patient, b) prioritizing solving individual patients’ safety problems, which were viewed as unique or one-time events, and c) encountering re-occurring safety problems, which were framed as inevitable, routine events. The paper argues that fixing and forgetting patient safety problems encountered may not serve patient safety as well as fixing and reporting. The latter approach aligns with a preventive view of patient safety. Manuscript three focuses on the practice of double checking, drawing from interviews conducted in both GIM and OBS/NEO. It asks what weaknesses are in the double checking process and what alternative views can help the double checking process enhance patient safety. The findings showed weaknesses in the double checking process, such as: a) double checking trusted as an independent process, b) double (or more) checking as a costly and time consuming procedure, and c) double checking as preventing reporting of near misses. It is proposed that there are alternative ways of viewing and practising double checking in order to enhance patient safety. These include: a) recognizing that double checking requires training, b) introducing automated double checking, and c) expanding double checking beyond error detection. The paper argues that practitioners need to be more aware of the caveats of double checking, and to view the double checking process through alternate lenses to help enhance its effectiveness. Manuscript four focuses on the reporting system more comprehensively, and attends to the reporting process in GIM and OBS/NEO. This is a comparative case study of the two divisions, and considers the different stages in the process and the factors that help shape the process. The findings showed that there were major differences between the two divisions in terms of: a) what comprised a typical report (outcome based vs communication and near-miss based); b) how the reports were investigated (individual manager vs interdisciplinary team); c) learning from reporting (interventions having ambiguous linkages to the reporting system vs interventions having clear linkages to reported incidents); and d) feedback (limited feedback vs multiple feedback). The differences between the two divisions can be explained in terms of: a) the influence of litigation on practice, b) the availability or lack of interprofessional training, and c) the introduction of the reporting system (top-down vs bottom-up approach). A model based on the findings portraying the influences on incident reporting and learning is provided. This thesis contributes to an in-depth understanding of front line perspectives on incident reporting systems and safety, and aims to provide insights into improving patient safety. Implications for practice and research will be addressed.