The rapid rise of Building Information Modelling (BIM) represents a major opportunity for Geological
Survey Organisations (GSO) to make their data and in particular three-dimensional geological models
accessible to the civil engineering and construction industry. The paper presents how GSOs and the
private sector are preparing themselves for a possible paradigm shift with the vision of a ‘live’ ground
model becoming a possibility, leading to real efficiency gains and risk reduction during construction and
throughout the life time of an asset.
Supported Wellbeing Centres have been set up in UK hospital trusts in an effort to mitigate the psychological impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers, although the extent to which these are utilised and the barriers and facilitators to access are not known. The aim of the study was to determine facility usage and gather insight into employee wellbeing and the views of employees towards this provision. The study included (i) 17-week service use monitoring, (ii) employee online survey with measures of wellbeing, job stressfulness, presenteeism, turnover intentions, job satisfaction, and work engagement, as well as barriers and facilitators to accessing the Wellbeing Centres. Over 17 weeks, 14,934 facility visits were recorded across two sites (peak attendance in single week n = 2605). Facilities were highly valued, but the service model was resource intensive with 134 wellbeing buddies supporting the centres in pairs. 819 hospital employees completed an online survey (88% female; 37.7% working in COVID-19 high risk areas; 52.4% frontline workers; 55.2% had accessed a wellbeing centre). There was moderate-to-high job stress (62.9%), low wellbeing (26.1%), presenteeism (68%), and intentions to leave (31.6%). Wellbeing was higher in those that accessed a wellbeing centre. Work engagement and job satisfaction were high. Healthcare organisations are urged to mobilise access to high-quality rest spaces and psychological first aid, but this should be localised and diversified. Strategies to address presenteeism and staff retention should be prioritised, and the high dedication of healthcare workers should be recognised.
Geological Survey Organisations (GSOs) were originally founded to produce an inventory of the earth’s resources to inform governments and support construction and primary industries. Therefore, their initial emphasis was on finding construction material, metalliferous minerals and hydrocarbons. Throughout the 20th century the focus shifted towards aggregates, water and more recently to environmental concerns such as waste, reuse of post-industrial contaminated land, climate change and biodiversity.
Although the external drivers for their existence have changed, the fundamental purpose has not, and this is unlikely to change in the future. Price (1992) summarises the mission of a GSO to “maintain the national geoscience knowledgebase” in order to “ensure the availability of the geoscience information and expertise to promote the wise use of the nation’s natural resources and the safety, health and well being of its people” However as many countries move towards knowledge and service driven economies faced with global environmental challenges ,GSOs of the 21st century will have to continue to evolve, adapt and in particular change the ways they operate. This is especially true against a background of rapidly advancing geospatial technology.
The GSO’s agenda must be to confirm themselves as the natural custodians of the subsurface, not focussed on one particular industry or science area, but assisting governments, industry and the general public to manage the subsurface in an integrated, holistic and sustainable manner. They must then engage with other organisation to link the understanding of the subsurface with the wider environment, to understand the interaction of the subsurface with the atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere (see Figure 1) Last but not least they have a duty to make their knowledge and information accessible and understandable to the people on behalf of whom the governments act and to whom they are accountable. Taking the British Geological Survey (BGS) as an example, this paper will outline the next stage in the evolution of a GSO, which will see the opening up of their information and the transdisciplinary integration of their geological, groundwater and other geoscience models within the wider “modelling” community including the social and economic disciplines. A main part of this mission is the development and deployment of an open Environmental Modelling Platform (EMP) providing ready access to data and knowledge as well as geospatial, conceptual and numerical models through a subsurface management system akin to Geographic Information Systems in use today.
The urgency of this task as well as the size of the cultural and technical challenges that need to be accomplished demand the close co-operation of GSOs amongst themselves as well as strong collaboration with partners in science, industry and government.
Synopsis Biostratigraphical evaluation of graptolites from more than 160 localities in the lower Caradoc of southern Scotland does not differentiate a discrete assemblage diagnostic of the Climacograptus bicornis peltifer Biozone. The lowermost Caradoc Nemagraptus gracilis Biozone is redefined by the partial-range of N. gracilis below the appearance of Climacograptus bicornis s.l. The succeeding C. bicornis Biozone is divisible into (1) a lower Subzone of Orthograptus apiculatus and Dicranograptus ziczac, identified also by the appearance of Amplexograptus leptotheca, Dicranograptus tardiusculus and several other taxa, and (2) an upper Subzone of Climacograptus wilsoni, marked by the first appearance of C. wilsoni. Nemagraptus gracilis and Didymograptus (s.l.) superstes range into the lower part of the apiculatus-ziczac Subzone, above which is a poorly characterized interval that is approximately equivalent of the ‘peltifer’ Biozone of former usage. The bicornis Biozone is the approximate equivalent to the C. bicornis Biozone of North America, and, at least in part, of the foliaceus, (or multidens) Biozone of southern Britain. It is succeeded in Scotland by the clingani Biozone.
Supported wellbeing centres were set up in UK hospital trusts as an early intervention aimed at mitigating the psychological impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers. These provided high quality rest spaces with peer-to-peer psychological support provided by National Health Service (NHS) staff volunteers called ‘wellbeing buddies’, trained in psychological first aid. The aim of the study was to explore the views of centre visitors and operational staff towards this COVID-19 workforce wellbeing provision. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were undertaken with twenty-four (20F, 4M) employees from an acute hospital trust in the UK. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed, data were handled and analysed using thematic analysis. Interviews generated 3 over-arching themes, and 13 sub-themes covering ‘exposure and job roles’, ‘emotional impacts of COVID-19 and ‘the wellbeing centres’. Supported wellbeing centres were viewed as critical for the wellbeing of hospital employees during the first surge of COVID-19 in the UK. Wellbeing initiatives require managerial advocacy and must be inclusive. Job-related barriers to work breaks and accessing staff wellbeing provisions should be addressed. High quality rest spaces and access to peer-to-peer support are seen to benefit individuals, teams, organisations and care quality. Training NHS staff in psychological first aid is a useful approach to supporting the wellbeing of the NHS workforce during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fire onboard passenger ships is a major hazard not only for the personnel, passengers, and the environment, but also for the vessel itself. Therefore, the response actions carried out by crewmembers after a fire has been detected onboard a passenger vessel are of outermost importance. SAFEMODE project aims to promote contemporary safety thinking through a collection of carefully selected Human Factors (HFs) Fact Sheets that includes the most-known HFs techniques for accident investigations, to help accident investigators and safety managers within maritime organisations. Therefore, this paper proposes to apply two of the above-mentioned Fact Sheets, namely Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) and Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART). Hence, this paper initially demonstrates how HTA can be applied to model the human response actions to a fire onboard a passenger vessel, and secondly, it utilises a systematic human error reduction and prediction approach, namely HEART, to predict and quantify which errors are likely to occur. Results from this paper reveal that six human response errors are most likely to occur, with a Human Error Probability of 0.16 according to the HEART analysis. Finally, this paper also suggests remedial measures to mitigate each error identified.
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