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This study uses data collected by Australia's vaccine safety surveillance system to examine the adverse event profile of the modified vaccinia Ankara–Bavarian Nordic vaccine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Resilience of safety management systems has a positive impact on safety performance in building R&M companies. • Resilience of safety management systems can be measured by people resilience, place resilience, and system resilience. • Safety performance is affected by the interactions between people resilience and place resilience. • Safety performance is affected by the interactions between place resilience and system resilience. Introduction : The complex and dynamic nature of building repair and maintenance (R&M) work tends to create safety risks for workers. Resilience engineering approach is identified as a complementary to conventional safety management techniques. Resilience of safety management systems is characterized by the capabilities to recover from, respond during, and prepare for unexpected situations. This research aims to conceptualize resilience of safety management systems in the building repair and maintenance context by introducing resilience engineering principles into the safety management system concept. Method: Data were collected from 145 professionals in building repair and maintenance companies in Australia. The structural equation modeling technique was utilized to analyze the collected data. Results: The results confirmed three dimensions (i.e., people resilience, place resilience, and system resilience) with 32 measurement items for assessing resilience of safety management systems. The results revealed that safety performance of building R&M companies was significantly affected by the interactions between people resilience and place resilience and the interactions between place resilience and system resilience. Conclusions: Theoretically, this study contributes to the safety management knowledge by theoretically and empirically supporting the development of concept, definition, and purpose of resilience for safety management systems. Practical Applications: Practically, this research proposes a framework for assessing the level of resilience of safety management systems that is characterized by employees' capabilities, supportiveness of workplace, and supportiveness of management to recover from safety incidents, react during unexpected situations, and prepare for preventative actions before occurrence of undesirable events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By its very nature, radiation oncology is a complex, multi-profession dynamic modality of cancer treatment. There are multiple steps with many handovers of work and many opportunities for patient safety to be compromised. Patient safety events can manifest as either actual incidents or near miss/close call events. Reporting and learning from these events is key to quality improvement and patient safety. In this paper, we aim to provide an overview of radiation oncology incident reporting and learning systems. We review the importance of the use of a standardized taxonomy and classification that is specific to radiation oncology workflow, the international systems in current use and the current reporting requirements in Australia and New Zealand. Equally important is the culture that exists alongside the incident learning system. A just culture, where support for reporting exists and there is an adaptive responsive environment to learn and improve patient safety. The incident learning and patient safety system requires constant effort to make it a success. We describe potential measures of safety culture and of relative patient safety and recommend their routine use. We offer this review to stimulate the effort towards a binational voluntary incident learning system, a key pillar for the improvement in patient safety in radiation oncology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian government is undertaking public consultations over possible improvements to the 2010 Australian Consumer Law (ACL) regime, including again the idea of adding a European-style general safety provision (GSP). To bolster the case for such reform, Part 2 of this paper analyses 2017–2019 data trends from the OECD Global Recalls Portal for Australia compared with several comparable economies, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where Australia now has most of its trade and investment links. The analysis finds a persistently high per capita recall rate for Australia, compared with several jurisdictions including Korea, Japan, and especially the USA. However, the analysis identifies various legal and other factors across the jurisdictions that impact on interpreting such data. Part 3 therefore begins by highlighting some more specific patterns uncovered from an ongoing joint research project comparing child product safety trends particularly in Australia and the USA. It highlights various concerns regarding recalls in Australia, as well as weaknesses in Australia's ACL regime (in addition to the lack of a GSP), in coordinating with sector-specific regulation, and in private law mechanisms that could more indirectly promote consumer product safety. Some estimated economic costs from current levels of reported injuries, as well as of many recalls, further reinforce the case for adding a GSP. Part 4 concludes that this improvement to the ACL could be combined with some of the other reform options outlined by the Australian government's Consultation Regulatory Impact Statement, as well as the introduction of a novel "product safety substantiation order" power. The conclusions and analysis should be helpful for other jurisdictions considering product safety law reforms in an increasingly globalized and digital economy, and draw already on comparisons with regulatory regimes and issues particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Alemtuzumab is a highly effective treatment for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) but requires ongoing pathology monitoring for autoimmune adverse effects. The Alemtuzumab in MS Safety Systems (AMS3) study evaluated the implementation of an automated pathology-monitoring system. Objectives: To develop an efficient automated clinical decision support system (CDSS) to electronically prompt and track pathology collection and to provide prescribers and patients with customised alerts of abnormal results for identified risks. Methods: A total of 10 patients with relapsing-remitting MS treated with alemtuzumab were enrolled to test the system. Standard care laboratory monitoring was performed and compared to the performance of the CDSS. Results: The automated CDSS, an integrated patient smartphone application and an additional pre-screening tool were all successfully developed. Compliance with pathology monitoring was 96.7%. The automated analysis of pathology results was significantly faster than standard care neurologist review (p < 0.001). The system correctly identified and alerted abnormalities, including one case of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) while the treating neurologist was on leave, enabling prompt treatment of serious adverse events. During the course of the study, the CDSS was deployed throughout Australia. Conclusion: We successfully developed automated pathology monitoring with a CDSS, demonstrating real-world benefits of high compliance and timely alerting of important results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Motorcycles and mopeds, often referred to as powered 2-wheelers (PTWs), play an important role in personal mobility worldwide. Despite their advantages, including low cost, space occupancy, and fuel efficiency, the risk of sustaining serious or fatal injuries is higher than that for occupants of passenger cars. The development of safety systems specific for PTWs represents a potential way to reduce casualties among riders. With the proliferation of new active and passive safety technologies, the question as to which might offer the most value is important. In this context, a prioritization process was applied to a set of PTW active safety systems to evaluate their applicability to crash scenarios alone and in combination. The systems included in the study were antilock braking (ABS), autonomous emergency braking (AEB), collision warning, curve warning, and curve assist. Methods: With the functional performance of the 5 safety systems established, the relevance of each system to specific crash configurations and vehicle movements defined by a standardized accident classification system used in Victoria, Australia, was rated by 2 independent reviewers, with a third reviewer acting as a moderator where disagreements occurred. Ratings ranged from 1 (definitely not applicable) to 4 (definitely applicable). Using population-based crash data, the number and percentage of crashes that each safety system could potentially influence, or be relevant for, was defined. Applying accepted injury costs permitted the derivation of the societal economic cost of PTW crashes and the potential reductions associated with each safety system given a theoretical crash avoidance effectiveness of 100%. Results: In the 12-year period 2000-2011, 23,955 PTW riders and 1292 pillion passengers were reported to have been involved in a road crash, with over 500 killed and more than 10,000 seriously injured; only 3.5% of riders/pillion passengers were uninjured. The total economic cost associated with these injured riders and pillion passengers was estimated to be AU$11.1 billion (US$7.70 billion; €6.67 billion). The 5 safety systems, as single solutions or in combination, were relevant to 57% of all crashes and to 74% of riders killed. Antilock braking was found to be relevant to the highest number of crashes, with incremental increases in coverage when combined with other safety systems. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that ABS, alone and in combination with other safety systems, has the potential to mitigate or possibly prevent a high percentage of PTW crashes in the considered setting. Other safety systems can influence different crash scenarios and are also recommended. Given the high cost of motorcycle crashes and the increasing number of PTW safety technologies, the proposed approach can be used to inform the process of selection of the most suitable interventions to improve PTW safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Rail accidents can be understood in terms of the systemic and individual contributions to their causation. The current study was undertaken to determine whether errors and violations are more often associated with different local and organisational factors that contribute to rail accidents. The Contributing Factors Framework (CFF), a tool developed for the collection and codification of data regarding rail accidents and incidents, was applied to a sample of investigation reports. In addition, a more detailed categorisation of errors was undertaken. Ninety-six investigation reports into Australian accidents and incidents occurring between 1999 and 2008 were analysed. Each report was coded independently by two experienced coders. Task demand factors were significantly more often associated with skill-based errors, knowledge and training deficiencies significantly associated with mistakes, and violations significantly linked to social environmental factors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This project aimed to provide a greater understanding of the systemic factors involved in mining accidents, and to examine those organisational and supervisory failures that are predictive of sub-standard performance at operator level. A sample of 263 significant mining incidents in Australia across 2007–2008 were analysed using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS). Two human factors specialists independently undertook the analysis. Incidents occurred more frequently in operations concerning the use of surface mobile equipment (38%) and working at heights (21%), however injury was more frequently associated with electrical operations and vehicles and machinery. Several HFACS categories appeared frequently: skill-based errors (64%) and violations (57%), issues with the physical environment (56%), and organisational processes (65%). Focussing on the overall system, several factors were found to predict the presence of failures in other parts of the system, including planned inappropriate operations and team resource management; inadequate supervision and team resource management; and organisational climate and inadequate supervision. It is recommended that these associations deserve greater attention in future attempts to develop accident countermeasures, although other significant associations should not be ignored. In accordance with findings from previous HFACS-based analyses of aviation and medical incidents, efforts to reduce the frequency of unsafe acts or operations should be directed to a few critical HFACS categories at the higher levels: organisational climate, planned inadequate operations, and inadequate supervision. While remedial strategies are proposed it is important that future efforts evaluate the utility of the measures proposed in studies of system safety. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• The first Australian Construction Control Structure and first application of STAMP in the domain. • The structure presents the first network of construction actors, controls and feedback mechanismsmodel presents the first network of construction actors, controls and feedback mechanisms. • Coronial inquest findings are analysed to demonstrate the benefit of the new structure for Coroners. • The structure provides opportunity for future predictive and retrospective analysis. • Construction safety is not the responsibility of one isolated person or entity. • Existing system effectiveness feedback mechanisms are progressively limited and less intuitive. • Many feedback mechanisms to higher system levels focus on financial and compliance performance. Limitations surrounding knowledge of the construction safety operating system have contributed to a failure to understand and prevent fatal incidents. The aim of this paper is to present a control structure model of construction in Australia to provide an improved understanding of the construction operating system. The model was developed by applying and extending the Systems Theoretic and Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) method to show the actors, organisations, controls, communication loops and relationships that are involved in managing safety throughout the Australian construction industry. The control structure was validated by subject matter experts from across all levels of the system. The analysis highlights a disconnect between the upper and lower levels of the system in terms of feedback mechanisms and relationships that limit the understanding and effectiveness of safety controls. To demonstrate the limitations of current approaches to understanding accident causation in the construction domain, the model is used to represent the findings from a recent Coronial investigation into a fatal construction incident. The benefits of applying systems thinking in accident analysis and countermeasure development by construction organisations, clients, regulators and law makers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate electrical load forecasting always plays a vital role in power system administration and energy dispatch, which are the foundation of the smooth operation of the national economy and people's daily life. Thinking from this vision, many scholars have made great efforts to seek suitable optimization algorithms to improve the performance of existing forecasting algorithm. However, most of the studies ignore the inherent disadvantages of single optimization algorithm, which leads to sub-optimal forecasting performance. Therefore, a novel electric load forecasting system was successfully proposed in this paper by the combination of data preprocessing, hybrid optimization algorithms, and several single classical forecasting methods, which successfully overcomes the defects of single traditional forecasting models and achieves higher forecasting accuracy than that of single model optimization. Besides, the 30 min interval data of Queensland, Australia from March to April is used as illustrative examples to evaluate the performance of the developed model. The results of tests demonstrate that the proposed hybrid model can better approximate the actual value, and it can also be employed as a useful tool for smart grids dispatching planning. • Develop a novel power load forecasting system for grid safety dispatch. • Extract important information effectively from the original load time series. • Creatively propose two hybrid optimization methods to optimize forecasting models. • Set up a comprehensive evaluation system to verify the effectiveness of the models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]