Comparison of Crane Safety Standards: A Human Factors Perspective

IISE Transactions on Occupational Ergonomics and Human Factors · 2026-01-02

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONSWe compared offshore crane safety standards in the United States, United Kingdom, and Norway, focusing on human factors contributing to incidents. High similarity was found in maintenance procedures, hand signals, and communication, reflecting shared priorities like adhering to manufacturer recommendations and enforcing substance abuse policies. Moderate alignment was observed in inspection intervals, personal protective equipment requirements, and personnel roles, with some variation in specific practices. Notable gaps were identified in training, lift categorization, and personnel qualifications, with the United States emphasizing certification timelines, while the United Kingdom and Norway focus on ongoing competence. These findings highlight strengths in each standard and offer a roadmap for harmonizing global practices. Practitioners can use these results to benchmark current practices, address gaps, and reduce human error. By aligning international standards, practitioners can develop more effective training, improve communication protocols, and implement consistent safety measures, ultimately enhancing the reliability and safety of offshore lifting operations.

Enhancing Subsea ROV Operations: A Survey of Operator Challenges, Essential Skills, and Novel Teleoperation Technologies

Marine Technology Society Journal · 2025-01-23

Abstract The utilization of remote operated vehicles (ROVs) has become essential across various subsea industries, such as oil and gas exploration and offshore wind energy, yet significant challenges remain in achieving effective human-ROV interaction. Despite advancements, ROV operations are hindered by complex control systems, high physical and cognitive demands on pilots, and a lack of sensory feedback mechanisms that fully convey the underwater environment's dynamics. This study addresses these gaps by surveying ROV pilots and industry stakeholders to identify prevalent operational challenges, essential skills, and perspectives on integrating novel teleoperation technologies, including mixed reality and haptic feedback. Findings reveal a strong industry interest in technologies that enhance situational awareness and ease control demands, although concerns remain regarding practical integration and operator fatigue. By highlighting the critical skills required and potential benefits of human-centered augmentation systems, this study provides insights to inform future ergonomic designs, training frameworks, and technology development aimed at advancing safe and effective ROV teleoperation.

Soil carbon stocks and nutrient stratification in a volcanically active coffee-dominated landscape in south-central Guatemala

Geoderma Regional · 2024-09-06 · 1 citations

Identifying Safety Leading Indicators for the Offshore Industry

2023-03-08 · 1 citations

Offshore safety includes process safety and personal safety. Safety leading indicators (LIs), or potential safety precursors, are parameters defined in the safety program pointing to potential areas for improvement, that if corrected can improve safety performance. For example, timely completion of equipment inspections can reduce the likelihood of equipment failure with associated hazards. They identify which safety metrics are more strongly associated with safety performance in a particular organization. This information can be used to improve future safety performance. This paper describes the research efforts to identify potential safety LIs that may help predict or prevent safety issues for the offshore oil and gas industry. Three relevant case studies of LIs for the offshore industry from the literature are discussed. The focus of this paper is on personal and process safety LIs in the offshore sector. Based on the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) safety culture factors, this paper collects and categorizes a list of potential offshore safety leading indicators.

Development of a comprehensive multi-component toolkit for offshore safety culture assessment

Process Safety and Environmental Protection · 2023-05-12 · 7 citations

Digital Mapping of Agricultural Soil Organic Carbon Using Soil Forming Factors: A Review of Current Efforts at the Regional and National Scales

Frontiers in Soil Science · 2022-07-11 · 17 citations

To explore how well large spatial scale digital soil mapping can contribute to efforts to monitor soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and changes, we reviewed regional and national studies quantifying SOC within lands dominated by agriculture using SCORPAN approaches that rely on soil ( S ), climate ( C ), organisms ( O ), relief ( R ), parent material ( P ), age ( A ), and space ( N ) covariates representing soil forming factors. After identifying 79 regional (> 10,000 km 2 ) and national studies that attempted to estimate SOC, we evaluated model performances with reference to soil sampling depth, number of predictors, grid-distance, and spatial extent. SCORPAN covariates were then investigated in terms of their frequency of use and data sources. Lastly, we used 67 studies encompassing a variety of spatial scales to determine which covariates most influenced SOC in agricultural lands using a subjective ranking system. Topography (used in 94% of the cases), climate (87%), and organisms (86%) covariates that were the most frequently used SCORPAN predictors, aligned with the factors (precipitation, temperature, elevation, slope, vegetation indices, and land use) currently identified to be most influential for model estimate at the large spatial extent. Models generally succeeded in estimating SOC with fits represented by R 2 with a median value of 0.47 but, performance varied widely (R 2 between 0.02 and 0.86) among studies. Predictive success declined significantly with increased soil sampling depth (p < 0.001) and spatial extent (p < 0.001) due to increased variability. While studies have extensively drawn on large-scale surveys and remote sensing databases to estimate environmental covariates, the absence of soils data needed to understand the influence of management or temporal change limits our ability to make useful inferences about changes in SOC stocks at this scale. This review suggests digital soil mapping efforts can be improved through greater use of data representing soil type and parent material and consideration of spatio-temporal dynamics of SOC occurring within different depths and land use or management systems.

Virtual Telepresence for the Future of ROV Teleoperations: Opportunities and Challenges

Day 2 Tue, February 22, 2022 · 2022 · 24 citations

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science

Underwater robots, including Remote Operating Vehicles (ROV) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), are currently used to support underwater missions that are either impossible or too risky to be performed by manned systems. In recent years the academia and robotic industry have paved paths for tackling technical challenges for ROV/AUV operations. The level of intelligence of ROV/AUV has increased dramatically because of the recent advances in low-power-consumption embedded computing devices and machine intelligence (e.g., AI). Nonetheless, operating precisely underwater is still extremely challenging to minimize human intervention due to the inherent challenges and uncertainties associated with the underwater environments. Proximity operations, especially those requiring precise manipulation, are still carried out by ROV systems that are fully controlled by a human pilot. A workplace-ready and worker-friendly ROV interface that properly simplifies operator control and increases remote operation confidence is the central challenge for the wide adaptation of ROVs. This paper examines the recent advances of virtual telepresence technologies as a solution for lowering the barriers to the human-in-the-loop ROV teleoperation. Virtual telepresence refers to Virtual Reality (VR) related technologies that help a user to feel that they were in a hazardous situation without being present at the actual location. We present a pilot system of using a VR-based sensory simulator to convert ROV sensor data into human-perceivable sensations (e.g., haptics). Building on a cloud server for real-time rendering in VR, a less trained operator could possibly operate a remote ROV thousand miles away without losing the minimum situational awareness. The system is expected to enable an intensive human engagement on ROV teleoperation, augmenting abilities for maneuvering and navigating ROV in unknown and less explored subsea regions and works. This paper also discusses the opportunities and challenges of this technology for ad hoc training, workforce preparation, and safety in the future maritime industry. We expect that lessons learned from our work can help democratize human presence in future subsea engineering works, by accommodating human needs and limitations to lower the entrance barrier.

Featured Front Cover

Land Degradation and Development · 2022-04-15 · 1 citations

The cover image is based on the Research Article Restoring subsided coal mined land to farmland using optimized placement of Yellow River sediment in constructed soil by Zhenqi Hu et al., https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.4209 . image

Restoring subsided coal mined land to farmland using optimized placement of Yellow River sediment to amend soil

Land Degradation and Development · 2022 · 22 citations

• Environmental science
• Soil science
• Geology

Abstract Underground coal mining causes land subsidence and large areas of cultivated land are destroyed. The Yellow River interlayer filling reclamation technology is a powerful way to restore cultivated land. Understanding the mechanism of action of interlayers in reconstructed soil filled with Yellow River sediment is essential to achieving sustainable land management in the Yellow River regions. Column experiments and field experiments were conducted to explore optimum interlayer placement in reconstructed soil with Yellow River sediment for restoring subsided land. Our findings show that the inclusion of interlayers in the sediment reduced water leakage and moisture evaporation and improved the water‐holding capacity of the material in comparison to a conventional reconstructed soil profile (CK2). The optimal profile with the highest water‐holding capacity was constructed using two 30 cm thick interlayers (T6). In comparison to CK2, the migration rate of the wetting front decreases by 32.16%, the cumulative evaporation decreases by 16.29%, the volumetric water content of the filling layer ( θ fl ) increases by 121.56%, and the water‐holding coefficient ( C WR ) increases by 59.47%. The same trend is also demonstrated by field experiments. The wheat and maize yields of T6 improved 45.85% and 60.69%, respectively, as compared with CK2, that more closely resembles undisturbed farmland (CK1). This study provides a valuable framework for subsided land reclamation regarding the method of placing interlayers into Yellow River sediment for enhancing water retention and productivity.

Optimum of interlayers in reconstructed soil with Yellow River sediment for restoring subsided coal mined land to farmland

2021-04-28

Underground coal mining causes land subsidence, a large area of cultivated land is destroyed. The Yellow River interlayer filling reclamation technology is the powerful way to restore cultivated land. Understanding the mechanism of action of interlayers in reconstructed soil filled with Yellow River sediments is essential to achieving sustainable land management in the Yellow River regions. Column experiments and Field experiments were conducted to optimum of interlayers in reconstructed soil with Yellow River sediment for restoring subsided coal mined land. Our findings show that the inclusion of interlayers in the sediment reduced water leakage and moisture evaporation, and improved the water-holding capacity of the material in comparison to conventional reconstructed soil profile (Ck2). When the 30 cm thickness of interlayer, putting 2 interlayers in sediment (T6) was the optimal profile with the highest water-holding capacity. In comparison to CK2, the migration rate of wet front decreases by 32.16%, the cumulative evaporation decreases by 16.29%, the volumetric water content of filling layer (θ_fl) increases by 121.56%, and the water-holding coefficient (CWR) increases by 59.47%. It is also proved by field experiments. The wheat and maize yields of T6 improved 51.84% and 54.80%, respectively, as compared with CK2, that closer to undisturbed farmland (CK1). This study provides a valuable framework for subsided land reclamation regarding the method of placing interlayers into Yellow River sediment for enhancing water retention and productivity.