Search results

This paper aims to report upon the further development of a hybrid application programming interface (API) plug-in to building information modelling (BIM) entitled confined spaces safety monitoring system “CoSMoS”. Originally designed to engineer-out environmental hazards associated with working in a building’s confined spaces (during the construction phase of a building’s life-cycle), this second generation version is expanded upon to use archival records to proactively learn from data generated within a sensor network during the building’s operations and maintenance (O&M) phase of asset management (AM).

An applied research methodological approach adopted used a two-phase process. In phase one, a conceptual model was created to provide a “blueprint map” to integrate BIM, sensor-based networks and data analytics (DA) into one integral system. A literature review provided the basis for the conceptual model’s further development. In phase two, the conceptual model was transposed into the prototype’s development environment as a proof of concept using primary data accrued from a large educational building.

An amalgamation of BIM, historical sensor data accrued and the application of DA demonstrate that CoSMoS provides an opportunity for the facilities management (FM) team to monitor pertinent environmental conditions and human behaviour within buildings that may impact upon occupant/worker safety. Although working in confined spaces is used to demonstrate the inherent potential of CoSMoS, the system could readily be expanded to analyse sensor-based network’s historical data of other areas of building performance, maintenance and safety.

This novel prototype has automated safety applications for FM during the asset lifecycle and maintenance phase of a building’s O&M phase of AM. Future work is proposed in several key areas, namely, develop instantaneous indicators of current safety performance within a building; and develop lead indicators of future safety performance of buildings.

The term “Mental health literacy” is defined as knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid their recognition, management or prevention. The importance of health literacy for physical health is widely studied; however, the area of mental health literacy in Pakistan has been comparatively neglected. The purpose of this paper is to address the knowledge about mental health in people living in Pakistan.

Relevant literature relating to mental health literacy was identified through various database searches. The databases searched included: PubMed, Cochrane database of Systemic Reviews, PsycINFO using the terms mental health, mental health literacy, mental health education, Pakistan.

Literature suggests that there is dearth of knowledge about mental illnesses and their treatment among public. This review also highlights the importance of mental health literacy among professionals working in the field of health care. In Pakistan, due to low literacy rate, a high percentage of poverty and dearth of trained professionals warrants an emendation in approaches established for attaining the goal of public health and psychiatric care.

Findings have implications for practitioners in the field of mental health care as well as designing targeted interventions for enhancing mental health literacy and help-seeking behavior in the future.

A limited understanding and lack of improvement in mental health literacy may interfere with society’s acceptance of evidence-based mental health care which may hamper the delivery of adequate mental health services to the needy.

Annually, hundreds of drilling crew suffer from major injuries during performing oil and gas drilling operation because of the deficiency of an adequate hazard safety management system for real-time decision-making in hazardous conditions. According to previous studies, there is a sheer industrial need for an effective industrial safety management decision support system for accident prevention at oil and gas drilling sites at both drilling domains. Therefore, this paper aims to focus on the design and development of knowledge base decision support system (KBDSS) for the prevention of hazardous activities at Middle Eastern and South Asian origins’ onshore and offshore oil and gas industries during drilling operations.

In this study, data were gathered from safety and health professionals from targeted oil and gas industries in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan through quantitative and qualitative approaches. Based on identified data, KBDSSs (HAZFO Expert 1.0) were systematically developed and designed by adopting Database Development Life Cycle and Waterfall Software Development Life Cycle models. MySQL and Visual Studio 2015 software were used for developing and designing knowledge base and graphical user interface of the system.

KBDSS (HAZFO Expert 1.0) for accident prevention at onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling industries based on identified potential hazards and their suitable controlling measures aligned with international safety standards and regulations. HAZFO Expert 1.0 is a novel KBDSS that covers all onshore and offshore drilling operations with three and nine outputs, respectively, to achieve the current trend of Industry Revolution 4.0 and Industrial IoTs for workforce safety.

This industrial safety management system (HAZFO Expert 1.0) will be efficiently used for the identification and elimination of potential hazards associated with drilling activities at onshore and offshore drilling sites with an appropriate hazard controlling strategy.

Moreover, the developed KBDS system is unique in terms of its architecture and is dynamic in nature because it provides HAZFO Expert 1.0 data management and insertion application for authorized users. This is the first KBDSS which covers both drilling domains in Malaysian, Saudi Arabian and Pakistani industries.

Every year, hundreds of people have died and thousands have been injured because of insufficient management of well control at oil and gas drilling and production sites. Major causes which have been reported in previous studies included uncontrollable blowouts and failure of blowout preventers because of insufficient safety practices. These onshore and offshore blowout disasters not only harm the work force but also critically affect the environment and marine life. In this research paper, a detailed quantitative survey and qualitative risk assessments (RA) have been carried out for assessing the potentially hazardous activities associated with well control along with their appropriate controls and risk reduction factors and mitigating measures in Middle East and south East Asian countries.

The sequential explanatory research design has been adopted in this study. Whereas, descriptive statistical approach has been used for the quantitative data analysis of this study. While, in-depth interview approach has been used for qualitative data collection. Similarly, what-if analysis method has been adopted in this study for the identification of effective safety and health risk mitigating factors because it provides in-depth information from health and safety environment experts.

The cumulative quantitative results based on the response from Saudi Arabian drilling industry have indicated that the well control operation is highly hazardous then Malaysian and Pakistani oil and gas industries. Likewise, findings from what-if analysis approach demonstrate that the drilling crewmembers have repetitively faced life threatening hazards which occur (safety and chemical) during well control onshore and offshore operation because of oil base mud, confined space at site, pinch points and falling during working on blow out preventers. According to the overall result, respondents have highly recommended engineering and administrative hazard controlling factors as most suitable for the elimination of safety and chemical hazards during well control activities.

Besides, the developed methodological framework for the identification of suitable hazard controls can also be effectively used for potential hazards reorganization and identification of suitable hazard controls for other drilling and production industries and regions for accident prevention and safety and health management.

This is a first comparative research study which has been carried out in Malaysian, Saudi Arabian and Pakistani onshore and offshore oil and gas industries for well control health and safety management and reorganization of most effective hazards mitigating factors at drilling sites.

This study aims to explore the firm's specific, opacity and economy-specific variables to explain the variation in South Asian market returns and indicate that how the difference in adoption of accounting standards refers to the effect of the movement in stock returns.

Following the scope of the study, factor analysis, fixed effect, Driscoll and Kraay standard errors (DKSE) and Panel Corrected standard error (PCSE) models have been inducted to determine the influence of firm-specific, opacity and economy-specific variables on stock returns. The sample of study comprises 1,885 firms from five countries located in the South Asia region with the period 2005–2018. To ensure the reliability of data, firm-specific data have been collected from DataStream International, while an international country risk guide was used to compile the data for economy-specific variables.

This study concluded that firm-specific variables showed a consistent and significant association with stock return except for beta, accrual and momentum while earning aggressiveness was the only factor in opacity measure to capture the variation in stock return. The implementation of international accounting standards seemed to be significant and proves to be helpful to enhance the quality of accounting information.

The limitations of this study comprised the estimation error by avoiding the firm's observations with negative equity in case of earning opacity and majority (more than 50%) of the observation belongs to a single market as India out of final sample which leads to having biasedness in findings.

This study helps the investors to consider the firms with smaller market capitalization and lower book to market ratio and avoid the momentum strategy under firm specific factors. Moreover, earning aggressiveness under opacity domain capture the variation in stock return and must be considered while investing funds.

The influence of adoption of international accounting standards along with firm and economy specific variable in South Asian Equity Markets return was the major contribution. Moreover, the inclusion of DKSE and PCSE models to examine the relevance of the financial and economic informational environment was also considered as a part of major contribution of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into xylophagia, its treatment, intervention options, etiological causes and possible relationship with other diseases.

A systematic search was performed across four scientific databases (i.e. Ovid Medline, Embase via Ovid, PubMed and ProQuest). All of the qualitative studies reporting on xylophagia from the inception of databases until August 2019 have been included. The quality of included studies was assessed through a ten-item checklist given by Kmet et al. (2004).

A total of 18 studies were included, and five primary themes emerged after analysis: precipitation/onset of xylophagia, co-morbid psychiatric or medical illnesses, assessment and investigation modes to confirm diagnosis, outcomes of xylophagia and treatment options comprising medical care, psychological care, counseling and duration of recovery. There were 16 females and 9 males in included studies. The mean ages and standard deviations of males and females were 29.25(12.17) years and 32.81(11.92), respectively. The mean duration and standard deviation of paper pica were 4.80(4.27) years.

Despite the limitation that this meta-synthesis is based upon findings from case studies, results show that standardized medication regimens for treating xylophagia are still not available or are unknown. There is a dire need for further research in order to better understand the disorder. The healthcare professionals need to use reciprocal, mutually constituent influence of biological and sociocultural factors in order to screen, diagnose and manage complex psychological problems like xylophagia.

The findings advance our understanding of the positive effects of patients and family members undergoing counseling or cognitive behavior therapy in reducing stress and enhancing coping skills thus, avoiding self-damaging behaviors.

Employees are driven and motivated to exercise knowledge-based resources as a result of leadership. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of authentic leadership on organizational commitment and tacit and explicit knowledge-sharing behaviors in Saudi non-profit organizations (NPOs). The study also aims to explore authentic leadership’s direct and indirect impact on tacit and explicit knowledge-sharing behaviors via organizational commitment.

The study used a quantitative research design by distributing a survey questionnaire among 415 employees. A total of 300 responses were collected during the survey questionnaire data collection.

The results showed that authentic leadership significantly and positively influenced organizational commitment and tacit and explicit knowledge sharing. Additionally, organizational commitment significantly and positively mediated the relationship between authentic leadership and tacit knowledge sharing, and there was partial mediation. However, organizational commitment failed to mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and explicit knowledge sharing.

The management of Saudi NPOs should focus on developing knowledge capital resources for employees who work in an organization to get a competitive advantage.

The study made a novel contribution that the Saudi NPOs should promote tacit and explicit knowledge-sharing but focus more on explicit knowledge sharing.

The present study aims to advance a new framework to spur creativity at individual and team levels in the construction industry by studying a leader's sense of humor. The authors develop and test a multi-level model to investigate the direct and indirect effects of leader's humor on creativity within teams working on construction projects. The authors draw on the benign violation theory to hypothesize that a leader's sense of humor influences the acceptability of norm violations in teams, which helps to improve their creativity. The authors also integrate the benign violation theory with the social information processing theory to examine the indirect effects of project leader's sense of humor on individual- and team-level creativity via team psychological safety.

The authors collected data from 165 members nested in 45 teams working on construction projects in China. The construct's factor structure and discriminant validity were established through confirmatory factor analysis. The authors used multi-level modeling via Mplus to test team-level to the individual-level direct and indirect hypotheses, while team-level direct and indirect hypotheses were tested using ordinary least squares regression.

The results show that the leader's humor has a dual positive direct effect on individual and team creativity. Furthermore, these effects are partially mediated by team psychological safety. The implications of these findings to improve the construction management theory and practice are discussed in the manuscript.

The current study contributes to the literature by understanding the significance of leader humor in predicting individual-level and team-level creativity within the construction sector. It expands the literature by examining team psychological safety as the underlying mechanism in the relationship between leader humor and creativity.

Drawing on new insights from the perspectives and experiences of board members, the purpose of this study is to determine the board attributes that influence board roles in improving the integration of corporate social responsibility (CSR) into corporate governance structures. In total, 10 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with directors of listed Jordanian companies to explore their perceptions of the effect of board of directors' composition on CSR and CSR disclosure (CSRD). The key findings show that boards with a diverse range of directors is essential independent/nonexecutive members, directors with business and/or accounting backgrounds, and foreign members to determine if they aim to better manage their CSR. To take CSR to the next level in the Arab region, we need to strengthen corporate governance mechanisms, and put more pressures on companies to make changes in board composition. For example, we suggest that companies that appoint business-educated and foreign members to their boards tend to engage in more impactful social and environmental-related activities and reflect their sustainable development more effectively. The study responds to calls for further research adopting qualitative methods, such as case studies and interviews in order to obtain a complete and in-depth understanding of the influence of board composition on CSR/CSRD. The findings provide useful insights for practice, policymakers, and future research.

Changes in climate may have both beneficial and harmful effects on crop yields. However, the effects will be more in countries whose economy depends on agriculture. This study aims to measure the economic impacts of climate change on crop farming in Bangladesh.

A Ricardian model was used to estimate the relationship between net crop income and climate variables. Historical climate data and farm household level data from all climatic zones of Bangladesh were collected for this purpose. A regression model was then developed of net crop income per hectare against long-term climate, household and farm variables. Marginal impacts of climate change and potential future impacts of projected climate scenarios on net crop incomes were also estimated.

The results revealed that net crop income in Bangladesh is sensitive to climate, particularly to seasonal temperature. A positive effect of temperature rise on net crop income was observed for the farms located in the areas having sufficient irrigation facilities. Estimated marginal impact suggests that 1 mm/month increase in rainfall and 10°C increase in temperature will lead to about US$4-15 increase in net crop income per hectare in Bangladesh. However, there will be significant seasonal and spatial variations in the impacts. The assessment of future impacts under climate change scenarios projected by Global Circulation Models indicated an increase in net crop income from US$25-84 per hectare in the country.

The findings of this study indicate the need for development practitioners and policy planners to consider both the beneficial and harmful effects of climate change across different climatic zones while designing and implementing the adaptation policies in the country.

Literature survey of the Web of Science, Science Direct and Google Scholar indicates that this study is the first attempt to measure the economic impacts of climate change on overall crop farming sector in Bangladesh using an econometric model.