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.
In this paper, an efficient image segmentation scheme is proposed of boundary based & geometric region features as an alternative way of utilizing statistical base only. The test results vary according to partitioning control parameters values and image details or characteristics, with preserving the segmented image edges.
Based on a finite element analysis using Matlab coding, eigenvalue problem has been formulated and solved for the buckling analysis of non-prismatic columns. Different numbers of elements per column length have been used to assess the rate of convergence for the model. Then the proposed model has been used to determine the critical buckling load factor () for the idealized supported columns based on the comparison of their buckling loads with the corresponding hinge supported columns . Finally in this study the critical buckling factor () under end force (P) increases by about 3.71% with the tapered ratio increment of 10% for different end supported columns and the relationship between normalized critical load and slenderness ratio was g
... Show MoreIn this paper, an exact stiffness matrix and fixed-end load vector for nonprismatic beams having parabolic varying depth are derived. The principle of strain energy is used in the derivation of the stiffness matrix.
The effect of both shear deformation and the coupling between axial force and the bending moment are considered in the derivation of stiffness matrix. The fixed-end load vector for elements under uniformly distributed or concentrated loads is also derived. The correctness of the derived matrices is verified by numerical examples. It is found that the coupling effect between axial force and bending moment is significant for elements having axial end restraint. It was found that the decrease in bending moment was
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General Background: Deep image matting is a fundamental task in computer vision, enabling precise foreground extraction from complex backgrounds, with applications in augmented reality, computer graphics, and video processing. Specific Background: Despite advancements in deep learning-based methods, preserving fine details such as hair and transparency remains a challenge. Knowledge Gap: Existing approaches struggle with accuracy and efficiency, necessitating novel techniques to enhance matting precision. Aims: This study integrates deep learning with fusion techniques to improve alpha matte estimation, proposing a lightweight U-Net model incorporating color-space fusion and preprocessing. Results: Experiments using the AdobeComposition-1k
... Show MoreThe heterogeneity nature of carbonate reservoirs shows sever scattering of the data, therefore, one has to be cautious in using the permeability- porosity correlation for calculating permeability unless a good correlation coefficient is available. In addition, a permeability- porosity correlation technique is not enough by itself since simulation studies also require more accurate tools for reservoir description and diagnosis of flow and non-flow units. Evaluation of reservoir characterization was conducted by this paper for Mishrif Formation in south Iraqi oil field (heterogeneous carbonate reservoir), namely the permeability-porosity correlation, the hydraulic units (HU’s) and global hydraulic elements (GHE
... Show MoreIn this paper we used frequentist and Bayesian approaches for the linear regression model to predict future observations for unemployment rates in Iraq. Parameters are estimated using the ordinary least squares method and for the Bayesian approach using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. Calculations are done using the R program. The analysis showed that the linear regression model using the Bayesian approach is better and can be used as an alternative to the frequentist approach. Two criteria, the root mean square error (RMSE) and the median absolute deviation (MAD) were used to compare the performance of the estimates. The results obtained showed that the unemployment rates will continue to increase in the next two decade
... Show MoreThe physical behavior for the energy distribution function (EDF) of the reactant particles depending upon the gases (fuel) temperature are completely described by a physical model covering the global formulas controlling the EDF profile. Results about the energy distribution for the reactant system indicate a standard EDF, in which it’s arrive a steady state form shape and intern lead to fix the optimum selected temperature.
This work represents development and implementation a programmable model for evaluating pumping technique and spectroscopic properties of solid state laser, as well as designing and constructing a suitable software program to simulate this techniques . A study of a new approach for Diode Pumped Solid State Laser systems (DPSSL), to build the optimum path technology and to manufacture a new solid state laser gain medium. From this model the threshold input power, output power optimum transmission, slop efficiency and available power were predicted. different systems configuration of diode pumped solid state laser for side pumping, end pump method using different shape type (rod,slab,disk) three main parameters are (energy transfer efficie
... Show MoreHigh peak to average power ration (PAPR) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is an important problem, which increase the cost and complexity of high power amplifiers. One of the techniques used to reduce the PAPR in OFDM system is the tone reservation method (TR). In our work we propose a modified tone reservation method to decrease the PAPR with low complexity compared with the conventional TR method by process the high and low amplitudes at the same time. An image of size 128×128 is used as a source of data that transmitted using OFDM system. The proposed method decrease the PAPR by 2dB compared with conventional method with keeping the performance unchanged. The performance of the proposed method is tested with
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