Seafarers’ perceptions of competency in risk assessment and management: an empirical study

Past analysis of accident investigations suggest an absence of or inadequate practices of risk assessment and management on board vessels. Although the International Management Code for the Safe Operation of Ships and for Pollution Prevention (ISM Code) requires that the risk management process must not only be correctly formulated and implemented but also be periodically evaluated in order to verify that these objectives are attained, the correct and effective implementation and application of the process cannot be achieved without active involvement of competent seafarers on board. Due to the limited investigation of seafarers’ competencies in risk management, the reasons for the inadequacies in the process that are leading to accidents were not evident. Hence, using a survey, this paper conducted a pilot study investigating seafarers’ perceptions of competency in the various components of the risk management process conducted on board vessels. The findings of this paper suggest an overall satisfaction with the risk assessment process. However, there is certainly room for improvement as far as seafarers’ performance is concerned. The findings of this paper provided valuable insights into the current training regimes in the area of risk assessment and management paving the way towards enhanced safety procedures on board vessels.     

Authentic assessment in seafarer education: using literature review to investigate its validity and reliability through rubrics

With the Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping Convention 1995 (STCW’95) moving seafarer training towards outcome-based education (OBE), emphasis has shifted to assessment practices that will allow seafarer students to demonstrate their ability to perform workplace tasks at standards described in the STCW Code. This paper argues that authentic assessment comprising of performance-based tasks applied in real-world and meaningful contexts can provide a holistic approach to competence assessment for seafarers. But, authentic assessment can capture essential aspects of workplace tasks and result in consistency of student performance in different contexts only if they are valid and reliable. Rubrics as assessment tools are known to increase validity and reliability of assessments; however, it can do so only if different aspects of its own validity and reliability have been addressed. A literature review undertaken for this paper has uncovered an absence of academic investigation and empirical study on the different aspects of validity and reliability of authentic assessment through assessment rubrics. Moreover, there exists an even greater absence of global research on authentic assessment in the area of seafarer training. Through an investigation of authentic assessment, this research has uncovered the importance of using valid and reliable rubrics in order to improve not only the assessment process but also the tools and methods used to support the valid, reliable, and authentic assessment of outcomes achieved in the learning process. Future research aims to offer insights into improving the validity and reliability of rubrics and to empirically investigate how they can be used in authentic assessment within the confines of the STCW Code, in particular, to improve seafarer training practices, student engagement, resulting learning outcomes, and employer and regulator satisfaction with the attainment of the standards stipulated in the STCW Code to produce an evidence of competence.     

A novel approach for assessing the LOS for two‐lane intercity highways under heterogeneous traffic conditions

Performance of two‐lane intercity highways has been evaluated in terms of level of service (LOS) by different researchers. Different follower‐related performance measures, namely, the number of followers (NF), percent followers (PF), follower density (FD) and the number of followers as a proportion of capacity (NFPC) are examined in the present study to define LOS. Data are collected from five sites located in different parts of India. While almost all the past studies used 3‐s headway rule to identify followers suggested by US Highway Capacity Manual, a new methodology is proposed in the current study to identify the followers by analysing speed difference (SD) and the gap between two consecutive vehicles. It is observed that vehicles travel in non‐following condition after a critical gap threshold value of 10 s. By using a SD limit of ?4 km/h to +10 km/h and a gap value of 10 s, followers are identified across all the study sites. Thereafter, different critical gap values ranging from 1.9 s to 4.3 s are observed at the study sites beyond which the probability of not following would increase. Variation in two‐way traffic volume is found to be the main contributory factor which affects the critical gap values. Among all of the performance measures, NFPC shows a strong correlation with two‐way traffic volume followed by FD under heterogeneous traffic condition. Finally, different threshold values of LOS ranges for two‐lane intercity highways are provided by carrying out cluster analysis with the help of NFPC and FD. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Causality between performance and traffic: an investigation with Indian ports

This paper attempts to find out the causal relationship between port performance and port traffic by using Indian data. The use of cointegration analysis has come out with the result that performance precedes traffic in most of the ports of India. Hence, government policy towards performance augmenting facilities should be given priority so that higher efficiency induces higher traffic     

三层流体中被淹没球体的波浪散射研究（英文）

Using linear water wave theory, three-dimensional problems concerning the interaction of waves with spherical structures in a fluid which contains a three-layer fluid consisting of a layer of finite depth bounded above by freshwater of finite depth with free surface and below by an infinite layer of water of greater density are considered. In such a situation timeharmonic waves with a given frequency can propagate with three wavenumbers. The sphere is submerged in either of the three layers. Eac...     

Causality between performance and traffic: an investigation with Indian ports

This paper attempts to find out the causal relationship between port performance and port traffic by using Indian data. The use of cointegration analysis has come out with the result that performance precedes traffic in most of the ports of India. Hence, government policy towards performance augmenting facilities should be given priority so that higher efficiency induces higher traffic     

Examination of factors affecting freeway incident clearance times: a comparison of the generalized F model and several alternative nested models

Traffic incidents are a principal cause of congestion on urban freeways, reducing capacity and creating risks for both involved motorists and incident response personnel. As incident durations increase, the risk of secondary incidents or crashes also becomes problematic. In response to these issues, many road agencies in metropolitan areas have initiated incident management programs aimed at detecting, responding to, and clearing incidents to restore freeways to full capacity as quickly and safely as possible. This study examined those factors that impact the time required by the Michigan Department of Transportation Freeway Courtesy Patrol to clear incidents that occurred on the southeastern Michigan freeway network. These models were developed using traffic flow data, roadway geometry information, and an extensive incident inventory database. A series of parametric hazard duration models were developed, each assuming a different underlying probability distribution for the hazard function. Although each modeling framework provided results that were similar in terms of the direction of factor effects, there was significant variability in terms of the estimated magnitude of these impacts. The generalized F distribution was shown to provide the best fit to the incident clearance time data, and the use of poorer fitting distributions was shown to result in severe over‐estimation or under‐estimation of factor effects. Those factors that were found to impact incident clearance times included the time of day and month when the incident occurred, the geometric and traffic characteristics of the freeway segment, and the characteristics of each incident. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving the validity and reliability of authentic assessment in seafarer education and training: a conceptual and practical framework to enhance resulting assessment outcomes

Past literature on authentic assessment suggests that it provides a far more reliable and valid indicator of outcomes such as higher student engagement, ability to transfer skills to different contexts, multiple evidence of competence, and student performance. This has appeal in seafarer education and training where both students and employers increasingly perceive traditional assessment methods as failing to consistently generate these outcomes. However, this paper argues that improving different aspects of assessment validity and reliability is essentially required to enhance the outcomes identified above. The paper builds on and extends previous work to investigate and develop a conceptual and practical framework that promotes a holistic approach to authentic assessment that provides greater assurances of validity and reliability throughout all stages of assessment within seafarer programs. It also lays the path to future research directions by establishing the agenda to test the practicality of the framework in the authentic assessment of seafarer students and also investigate the impact of students’ perception of increasing authenticity on performance scores in assessment tasks.     

异构化生产高品质燃料

异构化是一种固定床工艺过程,用高活性氯化物催化剂来减少汽油中苯的含量从而减少有害物排放     

Customization of Automatic Incident Detection Algorithms for Signalized Urban Arterials

Non-recurrent congestion or incidents are detrimental to the operability and efficiency of busy urban transport networks. There exist multiple automatic incident detection algorithms (AIDAs) to remotely detect the occurrence of an incident in highway or freeway scenarios; however, very little research has been performed to automatically detect incidents in signalized urban arterials. This limited research attention has mostly been focused on developing new urban arterial specific algorithms, rather than identifying alternative methods to synthesize existing freeway-based algorithms for urban conditions. The main hindrance to such synthesis is that the traffic patterns on the signalized urban arterials are significantly different from the same on highways/freeways due to the presence of traffic intersections. This article introduces a new strategy of customizing the existing AIDAs (freeway based or otherwise) to significantly improve their adaptability to signalized urban arterial transport networks. The new strategy focuses on preprocessing the traffic information before being used as input to a freeway/highway-based AIDA to lessen the effect of traffic signals and to imitate the input patterns in highway/freeway-based incident conditions. The effectiveness of this new strategy has been established with the help of four existing AIDAs. The proposed strategy is a simple solution to implement existing algorithms to signalized urban networks without any further instrumentation or operational cost.