Slip and Fall Incidents at Work: A Visual Analytics Analysis of the Research Domain

Visual Analysis of International Environmental Security Management Research (1997-2021) Based on VOSviewer and CiteSpace

To investigate the international development status and hot trends in the field of environmental security management in recent years, the published the environmental security management literature from 1997 to 2021, which was retrieved from Web of Science, with VOSviewer as the main and CiteSpace as the auxiliary, through the cooperation network of authors, scientific research institutions, and countries. The keywords were visualized by clustering, time zone analysis, and burst analysis. A total of 7596 articles were retrieved, forming six main clustering labels, including 28,144 authors. The research hotspots are from the fields of personal health, society, agriculture, ecological environment, energy, and sustainable development, as well as the development of internet environmental safety management, such as big data, Bayesian networks, and conceptual frameworks. Through cluster analysis, the cooperation of major research teams and scientific research institutions and the cooperation and development between countries were analyzed. The cooperation between scientific research institutions in various countries is relatively close. The United States currently occupies a dominant and authoritative position in this field. China has cooperated more closely with the United States, Britain, Australia, and India.

Housing and health in vulnerable social groups: an overview and bibliometric analysis

Previous studies have confirmed that poor living conditions can lead to a wide range of health problems. However, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable groups in unstable housing are more susceptible to disease. This study aims to systematically examine the housing and health problems of vulnerable groups using a bibliometric approach to explore how housing causes health problems, types of health illnesses, and coping strategies. It is found that the poor housing mechanism, persistent inequalities, and poor housing environments have a significant impact on the health of vulnerable groups. Therefore, the government must make concerted efforts across all sectors to ensure that the housing and health care needs of vulnerable groups are improved, and that housing security standards and related policies are improved; targeted safety plans are formulated with community as the carrier, taking into account the characteristics of vulnerable groups; and new information technology is widely used to provide medical convenience for vulnerable groups. It is hoped that the research in this paper can arouse social attention to the health of vulnerable groups and improve their health from the perspective of housing, so as to point out the direction for solving the housing health problems of vulnerable groups in the future.

Relationship between Friction Coefficient and Surface Roughness of Stone and Ceramic Floors

Slips and falls are common occupational incidents worldwide. The friction on a floor surface is one of the critical environmental factors affecting the risk of a slip. In this research, we conducted friction measurements on stone and ceramic floor tiles under dry, wet, and water–detergent (WD) solution covered conditions using a horizontal pull slip meter (HPS). Our purposes were to quantify the slip resistance of commonly used stone and ceramic floors under different surface conditions and to validate the curvilinear relationship between the coefficient of friction (COF) and surface roughness of the floors proposed in the literature. The COF data were analyzed together with a surface profile parameter (Ra) of the floor samples. The results showed that the COFs of the stone floors were significantly (p < 0.0001) higher than those of the ceramic floors. All the floors under the dry conditions were slip resistant when adopting the ANSI 1264.2 criterion. Two and five ceramic floors were not slip resistant under the wet and WD solution covered conditions, respectively. Three polynomial regression equations were established to describe the relationship between the COF and Ra. The curvilinear functions of these models indicate that the three-zone (initial growth, steady-growth, and plateau) concept concerning the COF–Ra relationship in the literature was valid when static COF values measured using an HPS were adopted. In addition, the three-zone concept was valid not only on WD solution covered surfaces but also on dry and wet surfaces.

Finding Pluto: An Analytics-Based Approach to Safety Data Ecosystems

This review article addresses the role of safety professionals in the diffusion strategies for predictive analytics for safety performance. The article explores the models, definitions, roles, and relationships of safety professionals in knowledge application, access, management, and leadership in safety analytics. The article addresses challenges safety professionals face when integrating safety analytics in organizational settings in four operations areas: application, technology, management, and strategy. A review of existing conventional safety data sources (safety data, internal data, external data, and context data) is briefly summarized as a baseline. For each of these data sources, the article points out how emerging analytic data sources (such as Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things) broaden and challenge the scope of work and operational roles throughout an organization. In doing so, the article defines four perspectives on the integration of predictive analytics into organizational safety practice: the programmatic perspective, the technological perspective, the sociocultural perspective, and knowledge-organization perspective. The article posits a four-level, organizational knowledge-skills-abilities matrix for analytics integration, indicating key organizational capacities needed for each area. The work shows the benefits of organizational alignment, clear stakeholder categorization, and the ability to predict future safety performance.

An alternative method for analyzing the slip potential of workers on sloped surfaces

Slips and falls on sloped roof surfaces remain an important safety issue among construction workers. The slip potential has been conventionally analyzed and assessed primarily based on ground reaction forces, which cannot differentiate the specific roles of each of the force factors (e.g., workers' motions-induced dynamic forces and slope-induced static forces) contributing to the slip potential. Their differentiation may enhance the understanding of the slip mechanisms on the sloped roof surfaces and help develop effective walking and working strategies/tactics to minimize the dangerous slips on the elevated roofs. Hence, the objective of this study is to develop a biodynamic method as an additional tool for analyzing the slip potential of a worker walking or working on sloped roof surfaces. A whole-body biodynamic model is proposed and used to develop the alternative method, in which the slip potential is expressed as an analytical function of its major controlling factors including coefficient of friction, slope angle, and biodynamic forces. Some experimental data available in the literature are used to demonstrate the application of the proposed method. The results suggest that the slope may not change the basic trends of the biodynamic forces, but the slope may affect their magnitudes, which can be explained using the system's energy equation also derived from the whole-body biodynamic model. The analytical results suggest that reducing the body acceleration in uphill direction or the deceleration in downhill direction can reduce the slip potential. 'Zigging' and 'zagging' walking on a sloped surface may also reduce the slip potential, as it reduces the effective slope angle. The proposed biodynamic theory can be used to enhance the safety guidelines not only for roofers but also for people walking on ramps, inclined walkways, and mountain terrains.

The Landscape of Risk Communication Research: A Scientometric Analysis

Risk communication is a significant research domain with practical importance in supporting societal risk governance and informed private decision making. In this article, a high-level analysis of the risk communication research domain is performed using scientometrics methods and visualization tools. Output trends and geographical patterns are identified, and patterns in scientific categories determined. A journal distribution analysis provides insights into dominant journals and the domain’s intellectual base. Thematic clusters and temporal evolution of focus topics are obtained using a terms analysis, and a co-citation analysis provides insights into the evolution of research fronts and key documents. The results indicate that the research volume grows exponentially, with by far most contributions originating from Western countries. The domain is highly interdisciplinary, rooted in psychology and social sciences, and branching mainly into medicine and environmental sciences. Narrative themes focus on risk communication in medical and societal risk governance contexts. The domain originated from public health and environmental concerns, with subsequent research fronts addressing risk communication concepts and models. Applied research fronts are associated with environmental hazards, public health, medical risks, nuclear power, and emergency response to various natural hazards. Based on the results, various avenues for future research are described.

An exploration of the knowledge structure in studies on old people physical activities in Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation: by semantic network analysis

Physical activity, a key component of maintaining health, is becoming an essential alternative in reducing medical expenses for the old people. This research was intended to analyze 51 research papers published in the Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation (JER) through semantic network analysis. The subjects of the study were the keywords that the authors of each paper used in journal search sites from 2013 to 2019. The present researcher analyzed the frequency, density, and centrality of the keywords of the indicators through semantic network analysis and then visualized them on the basis of findings using UCINET6 and the NetDraw program. Also, the researcher classified the hidden clusters by CONCOR (Convergence of iterated Correlations) analysis, which is a kind of cluster analysis. As a result, it was found that the keyword with the highest frequency was “exercise,” followed by “cognition, “physicalactivity,” “old-women,” “Korean,” “fall,” and “training.” It was also found that most of the high-frequency keywords, such as “exercise,” “cognition,” “old-women,” “program” and “depression” had high centrality. These keywords were classified into four clusters: (a) mental health research, (b) physical health research, (c) social behavior research, and (d) leisure efficacy research. This suggests that the old people-related research papers published in the JER have derived effective methods of maintaining physical and mental health using scientific exercise programs, and especially address the effects of exercise intervention for old women.