Construction is a hazardous industry with a high number of injuries. Prior research found that many industry injuries can be prevented by implementing an effective safety plan if prepared and maintained by qualified safety personnel. However, there are no specific guidelines on how to select qualified construction safety personnel and what criteria should be used to select an individual for a safety position in the United States (US) construction industry. To fill this gap in knowledge, the study goal was to identify the desired qualifications of safety personnel in the US construction industry. To achieve the study goal, the Delphi technique was used as the main methodology for determining the desired qualifications for construction safety personnel. As a result, a panel of 15 subject-matter experts was selected, and 4 rounds of surveys were carried out. The findings of the study led to the identification of the desired qualifications for three construction safety positions (safety entry, safety professional, and safety manager). The present study contributes to the body of theoretical knowledge on construction safety and presents practical guidelines to assist industry stakeholders select qualified safety personnel for their projects. The selection of qualified safety personnel is expected to improve workplace safety performance and positively reflect on other project outcomes. Construction stakeholders should pay attention to three key aspects (namely, education, experience, and certification) when determining the qualifications for a safety leadership position and take into consideration the type of position intended to be filled. This study fills the gap in knowledge by identifying the desired qualifications and criteria on how to select safety personnel in the US construction industry.
The main targets for using the edge detection techniques in image processing are to reduce the number of features and find the edge of image based-contents. In this paper, comparisons have been demonstrated between classical methods (Canny, Sobel, Roberts, and Prewitt) and Fuzzy Logic Technique to detect the edges of different samples of image's contents and patterns. These methods are tested to detect edges of images that are corrupted with different types of noise such as (Gaussian, and Salt and pepper). The performance indices are mean square error and peak signal to noise ratio (MSE and PSNR). Finally, experimental results show that the proposed Fuzzy rules and membership function provide better results for both noisy and noise-free
... Show MoreComputer systems and networks are increasingly used for many types of applications; as a result the security threats to computers and networks have also increased significantly. Traditionally, password user authentication is widely used to authenticate legitimate user, but this method has many loopholes such as password sharing, brute force attack, dictionary attack and more. The aim of this paper is to improve the password authentication method using Probabilistic Neural Networks (PNNs) with three types of distance include Euclidean Distance, Manhattan Distance and Euclidean Squared Distance and four features of keystroke dynamics including Dwell Time (DT), Flight Time (FT), mixture of (DT) and (FT), and finally Up-Up Time (UUT). The resul
... Show MoreThe process of converting coordinates is, still, considered an important and difficult issue due to the way of conversion from geographic ellipsoidal system to the projected flat system. The most common method uses contiguous UTM system as one of the most accurate systems in the conversion process, but the users of the
system face problems related to contiguity, especially at the large areas that lie within more than one zone. The aim of the present research is to solve the problem related to the multiple zones coverage found in the Iraqi territory using a mathematical model based on the use of Taylor series. The most accurate conversion equation used in this paper was based on the 4th order polynomial of two variables. The calculatio
Face Detection by skin color in the field of computer vision is a difficult challenge. Detection of human skin focuses on the identification of pixels and skin-colored areas of a given picture. Since skin colors are invariant in orientation and size and rapid to process, they are used in the identification of human skin. In addition features like ethnicity, sensor, optics and lighting conditions that are different are sensitive factors for the relationship between surface colors and lighting (an issue that is strongly related to color stability). This paper presents a new technique for face detection based on human skin. Three methods of Probability Density Function (PDF) were applied to detect the face by skin color; these ar
... Show MoreIn this work, we employ a new normalization Bernstein basis for solving linear Freadholm of fractional integro-differential equations nonhomogeneous of the second type (LFFIDEs). We adopt Petrov-Galerkian method (PGM) to approximate solution of the (LFFIDEs) via normalization Bernstein basis that yields linear system. Some examples are given and their results are shown in tables and figures, the Petrov-Galerkian method (PGM) is very effective and convenient and overcome the difficulty of traditional methods. We solve this problem (LFFIDEs) by the assistance of Matlab10.
The present paper concern with minimax shrinkage estimator technique in order to estimate Burr X distribution shape parameter, when prior information about the real shape obtainable as original estimate while known scale parameter.
Derivation for Bias Ratio, Mean squared error and the Relative Efficiency equations.
Numerical results and conclusions for the expressions mentioned above were displayed. Comparisons for proposed estimator with most recent works were made.
The process of controlling a Flexible Joint Robot Manipulator (FJRM) requires additional sensors for measuring the state variables of flexible joints. Therefore, taking the elasticity into account adds a lot of complexity as all the additional sensors must be taken into account during the control process. This paper proposes a nonlinear observer that controls FJRM, without requiring equipment sensors for measuring the states. The nonlinear state equations are derived in detail for the FJRM where nonlinearity, of order three, is considered. The Takagi–Sugeno Fuzzy Model (T-SFM) technique is applied to linearize the FJRM system. The Luenberger observer is designed to estimate the unmeasured states using error correction. The develop
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