ABSTRACT
International trade connections with COVID-19 impeding the development of the logistics industry in express delivery, the world has become an inseparable part of daily life. To improve protection competency, there is a need for effective research on logistics warehouse fire accident alarms. The goal of this study is to create a novel fire risk evaluation method for fire safety managers in logistics warehouses. The Gustav method is used to convert a plane model to a stereoscopic model. Hazards to construction, hazards to life, and fire rescue competency are all taken into account. The empirical study used JingDong Gu'an logistics park as a case study, and the evaluation results revealed differences in fire risk levels between the two warehouses. The results show that the transmit warehouse had a higher fire risk level than the sorting warehouse. The method describes the total risk of a warehouse fire. It is appropriate for the various types and processes found in modern logistics warehouses. The results of the developed 3D-Dynamic method demonstrate the model's feasibility and practicability even to laypeople with limited professional knowledge.
ABSTRACT
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, fires occurred frequently in hospitals managing COVID-19, and caused over 279 deaths. Fire safety in hospitals should be identified clearly and taken seriously. Fire probability and fire service coverage for hospitals from a national perspective in China were analyzed in this study. Calculated with the generalized Barrois model, the annual fire frequency of hospital building exceeds 0.5, when its floor area reaches approximately 180,000 m2. Based on the number of hospital fires in Changsha and that of hospitals in China from 2014 to 2017, the average annual fire probability of a hospital in China was calculated to be 0.017. The total effective coverage rate (TECR) of fire service for hospitals in Changsha, China was esti-mated to be between 11.82 % and 25.74 %, based on real-time travel times extracted from the Baidu Map. The TECR of national fire service for hospitals was estimated to be between 14.18 % and 30.89 %, according to the ratio of the number of hospitals and the number of fire stations in China to that in Changsha. Currently, recruiting medical staff as fire volunteers can quickly improve fire safety in hospitals for a low cost.(c) 2022 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
ABSTRACT
This paper, after assessing and ranking power shortage causes in Cameroon's northern Interconnected Grid, summarises the impact of power shortage on poor households and district hospitals. The results showed a drop of 40% of the supplied energy and the fluctuations of demand continued across the COVID-19 period till July in 2021 after lockdown, thus a low influence of the pandemic. The results also revealed a low influence of temperature and precipitations in the energy crisis. Instead, it was found that the most important factor that led to power shortage is electricity production cost which is higher than market price. Out of seven hypotheses tested by the structural model developed, five were significantly supported and two were rejected. The hypothesis testing showed that electrical fire safety and patient care in hospitals are both positively significantly affected by load shedding, hospital management and user's safety commitment and knowledge. Also, the results showed that neither safety knowledge nor safety impact is affected by demographic and socioeconomic variables. Using these results, a series of recommendations were given to energy practitioners and grid managers.
ABSTRACT
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, fires occurred frequently in hospitals managing COVID-19, and caused over 279 deaths. Fire safety in hospitals should be identified clearly and taken seriously. Fire probability and fire service coverage for hospitals from a national perspective in China were analyzed in this study. Calculated with the generalized Barrois model, the annual fire frequency of hospital building exceeds 0.5, when its floor area reaches approximately 180,000 m2. Based on the number of hospital fires in Changsha and that of hospitals in China from 2014 to 2017, the average annual fire probability of a hospital in China was calculated to be 0.017. The total effective coverage rate (TECR) of fire service for hospitals in Changsha, China was estimated to be between 11.82 % and 25.74 %, based on real-time travel times extracted from the Baidu Map. The TECR of national fire service for hospitals was estimated to be between 14.18 % and 30.89 %, according to the ratio of the number of hospitals and the number of fire stations in China to that in Changsha. Currently, recruiting medical staff as fire volunteers can quickly improve fire safety in hospitals for a low cost.
ABSTRACT
Antibacterial surfaces in healthcare settings are an important tool for combating the increasing threat of antibacterial drug resistance, which the global Covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated. Herein, we report a new method to achieve dual antibacterial and flame retardant functionalities in flexible polyurethane foam (PUF) by synthesising a multifunctional coating using a layer-by-layer assembly technique. The coating consists of Ti3C2 nanosheets and chitosan as the flame retardant and metal particles (copper or silver) for the antibacterial property. Results show that the multilayer Ti3C2/CH/Ag coating possesses excellent antibacterial performance with reductions of 99.97% in gram-negative bacteria (P. aeruginosa) and 88.9% in gram-positive bacteria (S. aureus) compared with the unmodified counterpart. Compared with the pristine PUF, the multifunctional coating yielded 66.3% reductions in the PHRR, and demonstrated outstanding smoke suppression performance with a PSPR reduction of 51.6% and a TSR decline of 65.5%. Moreover, Raman spectroscopy revealed an increased graphitisation level in the residual char of the coated foam, indicating the coating's remarkable charring performance. This exceptional multifunctional performance endows the coating technology with a great potential for eradicating the fire risks of antibacterial surfaces in healthcare settings and providing furniture, interior walls and building panels with antibacterial properties.
ABSTRACT
On 24 April 2021, a disastrous fire in an Iraqi hospital took the lives of 82 people. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020, incidents of oxygen-related hospital fires in various countries around the world have caused over 200 deaths, the majority of whom were patients extremely ill with the novel Coronavirus. Fires involving medical oxygen are not a new phenomenon but are more common in the operating theatre where oxygen is routinely administered. In these settings, strict safety protocols are normally enforced and surgical staff are well trained in dealing with oxygen hazards. It appears that some hospitals may not have been fully prepared for the elevated risk of oxygen-related fire in intensive care units due to the high demand for oxygen therapy in severely ill Covid-19 patients. Indeed, gas producers and public health authorities were also slow to recognize and alert hospitals to the potential dangers. Oxygen is essential to life and generally makes up about 21 % of the gases in the air we breathe. Pure oxygen reacts with common materials such as oil and grease to cause fires, and even explosions, when released at high pressures. A leaking valve or hose, and openings at interfaces of masks and tubes, when in a confined space or where air circulation is low, can quickly increase the oxygen concentration to a dangerous level. Even a small increase in the oxygen level in the air to 24 % can create a fire hazard. In an oxygen-enriched environment, materials become easier to ignite and fires will burn hotter and more fiercely than in normal air. There is also a potentially heightened risk of using ethanol-based and organic solvents as cleaning agents in an oxygen rich atmospheres. This paper will provide an overview of oxygen accident scenarios that may be relevant for hospital intensive care units, with particular reference to recent events and similar accidents that have occurred in the past. The paper will recommend that hospitals recognize their chemical risks as part of their risk governance responsibility and assign chemical risk management a prominent role in their overall management. Investigation of dangerous events to extract causes and lessons learned should be utilized to highlight opportunities for prevention as well as emergency response. The industrial gas industry also needs to actively support hospitals in adoption of more rigorous risk management approaches, building on lessons learned in chemical process safety for managing flammable and explosive atmospheres.