Estimation of the social costs of home injury: a comparison with estimates for road injury

Home injury is thought to constitute a major health burden in most developed countries. However, efforts to address this burden have been hampered by reluctance from outside agencies to interfere with the home environment of individuals, even if it benefits the occupant's safety. This paper outlines cost–benefit evaluation methods established in the transport safety domain applied to home safety to estimate the social cost of unintentional home injury in New Zealand. Estimates of costs imposed on society by home injury can provide an important motivator for initiating research and programmes to reduce home injury risk. Data sources used included mortality data, hospitalisation data and data on minor injuries that required medical treatment, but not hospital admission. We estimated that unintentional home injuries in New Zealand impose an annual social cost of about $NZ 13 billion (about $US 9 billion), which is about 3.5 times the annual social cost of road injury. These estimates provide a rational evidence base for decisions on housing-focused safety regulation or interventions that always carry some cost, and therefore need to be weighed against the benefits of injuries potentially prevented.     

Costs of occupational injuries in construction in the United States

This paper presents costs of fatal and nonfatal injuries for the construction industry using 2002 national incidence data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a comprehensive cost model that includes direct medical costs, indirect losses in wage and household productivity, as well as an estimate of the quality of life costs due to injury. Costs are presented at the three-digit industry level, by worker characteristics, and by detailed source and event of injury. The total costs of fatal and nonfatal injuries in the construction industry were estimated at $11.5 billion in 2002, 15% of the costs for all private industry. The average cost per case of fatal or nonfatal injury is $27,000 in construction, almost double the per-case cost of $15,000 for all industry in 2002. Five industries accounted for over half the industry's total fatal and nonfatal injury costs. They were miscellaneous special trade contractors (SIC 179), followed by plumbing, heating and air-conditioning (SIC 171), electrical work (SIC 173), heavy construction except highway (SIC 162), and residential building construction (SIC 152), each with over $1 billion in costs.     

The external costs of traffic injury: Definition, estimation, and possibilities for internalization

The external costs of traffic injury in Norway are estimated. External costs are all costs that are imposed on others and not borne by the person whose activity generates the costs. Three types of external cost are identified: system externalities, physical injury externalities, and traffic volume externalities. System externalities are costs that road users impose on the rest of society. Physical injury externalities are costs that one group of road users imposes upon another in crashes in which both groups are involved. Traffic volume externalities are the costs imposed on other road users when an additional road user joins traffic. System externalities are estimated to be about 30% of the total cost of traffic injury. Physical injury externalities are estimated to be about 10% of the total cost of traffic injury. No precise estimate can be given for traffic volume externalities. Possibilities for internalizing the external costs are discussed. In Norway, current taxes on ownership and use of motor vehicles cover the external costs of traffic injury, although the taxes were not designed with this purpose in mind.     

Refrigerators Enter a New Era of Health Preservation Frestech initiates the establishment of China's first standard for household sterilization refrigerators

On November 30, 2007, the China Association for Standardization (CAS) held a press conference at Beijing Diaoyutai State Guest House. Leaders from the China Household Electric Appliance Research Institute, the China Household Electric Appliance Association, and the China Consumers' Association attended and made speeches.……     

The role of publications in the new programme oriented funding of the Hermann von Helmholtz Association of National Research Centres (HGF)

Summary The year 2002 brought a successive funding change-over from until now institutional to programme oriented funding (POF) in the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (HGF). This way the 15 German research centres now have to generate their means successively from programmes of the research fields of the HGF (see: www.helmholtz.de) by competing with each other. This nucleus of the reform of the Association is being implemented based upon the opinion of international experts. In this context the evaluation of publications of individual research centres, resp. research groups will be playing an ever increasing part. This lecture will inform about the reformed, partially formalized system and first experiences therewith at the time of the first evaluations.     

Bibliometric analysis and private research funding

Summary The year 2002 brought a successive funding change-over from until now institutional to programme oriented funding (POF) in the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (HGF). This way the 15 German research centres now have to generate their means successively from programmes of the research fields of the HGF (see: www.helmholtz.de) by competing with each other. This nucleus of the reform of the Association is being implemented based upon the opinion of international experts. In this context the evaluation of publications of individual research centres, resp. research groups will be playing an ever increasing part. This lecture will inform about the reformed, partially formalized system and first experiences therewith at the time of the first evaluations.     

Crash costs in the United States by crash geometry

MAIN OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to estimate the costs per crash for three police-coded crash severity groupings within 16 selected crash geometry types and within two speed limit categories (or=50 mph). METHODS: We merged previously developed costs per victim by abbreviated injury scale (AIS) score into U.S. crash data files that scored injuries in both the AIS and police-coded severity scales to estimate injury costs, then aggregated the estimates into costs per crash by maximum injury severity. RESULTS: The most costly crashes were non-intersection fatal/disabling injury crashes on a road with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour or higher where multiple vehicles crashed head-on or a single vehicle struck a human (over 1.69 US dollars and 1.16 million US dollars per crash, respectively). The annual cost of police-reported run-off-road collisions, which include both rollovers and object impacts, represented 34% of total costs. CONCLUSIONS: This paper provides cost estimates useful for evaluating roadway countermeasures and for designing vehicles to minimize crash harm. It gives unit costs of crashes by type in the coding system used by the police. The costs are in an appropriate form for economic analysis of countermeasures addressing locally defined problems identified by analyzing police crash reports.     

Formulating a programme of repairs to structural home injury hazards in New Zealand

Home injuries are a substantial health burden worldwide, with the home setting being at least as important as the road for injury. Focusing on common injury hazards presented by the home environment, we sought to examine the justification for significant expenditure on safety-related repairs to the housing stock. Trained inspectors assessed 961 New Zealand houses for injury hazards. Using administrative data from the Accident Compensation Corporation (the national injury insurance agency), 1328 home injuries were identified amongst the 1612 occupants of these houses over the 2006–2009 period. Telephone interviews gathered data on the location and nature of these injuries, and the attitudes of those injured to potential injury hazards in their homes. Commonly occurring injury hazards that could be repaired at modest cost were identified based on their prevalence estimated by the housing inspection, and their location with respect to the areas of the home where the injuries occurred (identified during the telephone interviews). About 38% of the home injuries studied were potentially related to a structural aspect of the home environment. Common safety hazards included the lack of working smoke detectors (65% of the sample), inadequately fenced driveways (55%), hot water temperatures measured at over 60° (49%) and poorly lit access to the house (34%). A protocol for identifying and repairing important common hazards was designed. The actual safety effects of this protocol are in the process of being examined in a randomised controlled trial.     

Injury mortality and morbidity in New Zealand

An overview of the injury problem in New Zealand is presented. National mortality and morbidity data demonstrate that relative to other diseases injuries represent a significant community health problem. Injuries are the fourth leading cause of death and account for 32% of Potential Years of Life Lost between the ages of 1 and 70. Injuries are the second leading cause of hospital admission and account for nearly 12% of all admissions. Injury rates vary dramatically by age, sex, socioeconomic status, and race. In general, males, particularly those 20-24 years old, have higher death and hospitalisation rates than females. A notably exception is elderly females, who have a hospitalisation rate nearly twice as high as elderly males. Maori and those from low socioeconomic levels have the highest injury rates. The leading causes of injury death are motor vehicle crashes (37%) and self-inflicted injury (21%). This contrasts to some extent with the two leading causes of hospitalisation, namely falls (25%) and motor vehicle crashes (19%). The road, home, and places of recreation and sport are the most common places of occurrence of serious injury. Head injuries, in particular concussions, and fractures of the lower limbs, particularly the femur, account for 35% of all injury morbidity. Treatment and rehabilitation costs for injuries that resulted in hospitalisations, visits to accident and emergency centres, and a claim on the Accident Compensation Corporation cost an average of $133 (1983) per head of population.     

Resonant column experiments with fine-grained model material – evidence of particle surface forces

Resonant column experiments were conducted with an extremely fine-grained material, viz. an -aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃), which serves as a model material for cohesive soils with particle diameters in the range of m. With this particle size interparticle forces from van der Waals and Coulombic interaction have an influence on the behavior of the material in dynamic shear tests. By adjusting the surface charge, and hence the Coulombic repulsion, we obtain repulsive or attractive particles, which influences sample fabric and shear stiffness. From the increase of shear stiffness at small strain (10^–6) with effective pressure we have estimated the net interparticle pressure from surface forces in the range of some kPa for a mean particle diameter of 0.8 m. Our results show that the behavior of fine-grained granular materials at small shear strains cannot only be described by their density and stress state. Particle surface forces have to be taken into account. The study described in this paper was sponsored by the German Research Council (DFG), Research Group FOR 371-2. The support is gratefully appreciated.We would like to thank Professor Gudehus for his valuable advice and many stimulating discussions.The KSEM micrograph and the grain size distribution data have been provided by the Institute of Ceramics in Mechanical Engineering, University of Karlsruhe (Research Group FOR 371, German Research Council, DFG). We would like to thank for cooperation and support.We thank the Institute for Technical Chemistry, Research Center Karlsruhe for providing the ESEM micrograph.     

Commuting by bike in Belgium, the costs of minor accidents

Minor bicycle accidents are defined as “bicycle accidents not involving death or heavily injured persons, implying that possible hospital visits last less than 24 hours”. Statistics about these accidents and related injuries are very poor, because they are mostly not reported to police, hospitals or insurance companies. Yet, they form a major share of all bicycle accidents. Official registrations underestimate the number of minor accidents and do not provide cost data, nor the distance cycled. Therefore related policies are hampered by a lack of accurate data.This paper provides more insight into the importance of minor bicycle accidents and reports the frequency, risk and resulting costs of minor bicycle accidents. Direct costs, including the damage to bike and clothes as well as medical costs and indirect costs such as productivity loss and leisure time lost are calculated. We also estimate intangible costs of pain and psychological suffering and costs for other parties involved in the accident. Data were collected during the SHAPES project using several electronic surveys. The weekly prospective registration that lasted a year, covered 1187 persons that cycled 1,474,978 km. 219 minor bicycle accidents were reported. Resulting in a frequency of 148 minor bicycle accidents per million kilometres. We analyzed the economic costs related to 118 minor bicycle accidents in detail. The average total cost of these accidents is estimated at 841 euro (95% CI: 579–1205) per accident or 0.125 euro per kilometre cycled. Overall, productivity loss is the most important component accounting for 48% of the total cost. Intangible costs, which in past research were mostly neglected, are an important burden related to minor bicycle accidents (27% of the total cost). Even among minor accidents there are important differences in the total cost depending on the severity of the injury.     

结构抗爆防护措施经济决策模型

为给结构抗恐怖爆炸袭击防护提供经济决策支持,达到防护性能和经济性的最佳平衡,该文首先在分析土地费用及抗爆防护措施费用与安全距离之间关系的基础上,建立结构抗爆防护措施的经济决策模型。然后,基于实际工程抗爆防护措施的费用数据,采用信赖域优化算法确定了预测模型的关键参数。最后,以实际工程为例,对所建立的预测模型进行有效性验证,结果表明,所建立的预测模型可以简便、有效地进行结构抗爆防护措施的经济决策分析,从而为抗爆安全风险评估及管理决策提供依据。     

Quality management system and accreditation of the in vivo monitoring laboratory at Karslruhe Institute of Technology

The in vivo monitoring laboratory (IVM) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), with one whole body counter and three partial-body counters, is an approved lab for individual monitoring according to German regulation. These approved labs are required to prove their competencies by accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025:2005. In 2007 a quality management system (QMS), which was successfully audited and granted accreditation, was set up at the IVM. The system is based on the ISO 9001 certified QMS of the central safety department of the Research Centre Karlsruhe the IVM belonged to at that time. The system itself was set up to be flexible and could be adapted to the recent organisational changes (e.g. founding of KIT and an institute for radiation research) with only minor effort.     

Großflächige Plasmabeschichtungen: Niederdruck oder Atmosphärendruck?

Large area plasma coatings: low pressure or atmospheric pressure? Research in the field of atmospheric pressure plasma is often motivated by the expectation of cost‐saving compared to low pressure plasma processes. A cost analysis based on plasmachemical processes which can also be performed at atmospheric pressure, however, reveals a different picture: high gas flow rates that are required for atmospheric pressure plasmas were found to cause increased costs for large‐area plasma deposition.     

Analyzing the severity of accidents on the German Autobahn

We study the severity of accidents on the German Autobahn in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia using data for the years 2009 until 2011. We use a multinomial logit model to identify statistically relevant factors explaining the severity of the most severe injury, which is classified into the four classes fatal, severe injury, light injury and property damage. Furthermore, to account for unobserved heterogeneity we use a random parameter model. We study the effect of a number of factors including traffic information, road conditions, type of accidents, speed limits, presence of intelligent traffic control systems, age and gender of the driver and location of the accident. Our findings are in line with studies in different settings and indicate that accidents during daylight and at interchanges or construction sites are less severe in general. Accidents caused by the collision with roadside objects, involving pedestrians and motorcycles, or caused by bad sight conditions tend to be more severe. We discuss the measures of the 2011 German traffic safety programm in the light of our results.     

The history of medical physics and biophysics at the Humboldt University in Berlin]

The present Institute of Medical Physics and Biophysics (former Institute of Radiation Research) was established on September 1st in 1923 by Walter Friedrich (1883-1968). It was after the Institute in Frankfurt A.M. (founded by Friedrich Dessauer in 1921) - the second Institute of its kind in Germany. As a physicist who wrote his dissertation under Wilhelm Conrad R?ntgen, he did research together with a Gynecologist in Friedburg on problems of radiation therapy and the prevention of radiation injuries. Thus Friedrich became one of the first German Biomedical Physicists and was appointed to a professorship at the university of Berlin and its faculty of medicine. The paper gives a survey of the history of the Institute of Radiation Research in the twenties, in the time of Nazi-rule, the period after the World War II and in the era of GDR until 1990 and up to the present time. The succession of directorship of the Institute and the main research subjects in medical physics and biophysics have been sketched.     

Estimating the costs of occupational injury in the United States

This article estimates workplace injury costs in the U.S. These costs have been studied in less detail than most injury costs. Our methods, which mostly use regularly published data, produce order-of-magnitude estimates. Overall, workplace injuries cost the U.S. an estimated $140 billion annually. This estimate includes $17 billion in medical and emergency services, $60 billion in lost productivity, $5 billion in insurance costs, and $62 billion in lost quality of life. One sixth of the societal costs result from the 3% of workplace injuries in motor vehicle crashes. Motor vehicle costs per injury are almost 6 times the workplace injury average.     

Identifying Honeypots from ICS Devices Using Lightweight Fuzzy Testing

The security issues of industrial control systems (ICSs) have become increasingly prevalent. As an important part of ICS security, honeypots and antihoneypots have become the focus of offensive and defensive confrontation. However, research on ICS honeypots still lacks breakthroughs, and it is difficult to simulate real ICS devices perfectly. In this paper, we studied ICS honeypots to identify and address their weaknesses. First, an intelligent honeypot identification framework is proposed, based on which feature data type requirements and feature data acquisition for honeypot identification is studied. Inspired by vulnerability mining, we propose a feature acquisition approach based on lightweight fuzz testing, which utilizes the differences in error handling between the ICS device and the ICS honeypot. By combining the proposed method with common feature acquisition approaches, the integrated feature data can be obtained. The experimental results show that the feature data acquired is effective for honeypot identification.     

The application of scientometric indicators to the Spanish Scientific Research Council

The assessment of the research performance of the Spanish Scientific Research Council using scientometric indicators was done. Number of scientists and budget involved in research projects were used as input measures while articles published in foreign journals, patent applications and citations received provided output figures. The time period studied was 1984–1987. Target of the analysis were wide research areas and the research Institutes included in them. The obtained results point out that very often costs, productivity and impact do not go in the same direction. Most likely, other activities no measurable by scientometric indicators may have played an important role in some Institutes. Besides, the presence of highly cited articles at Institutes with low productivity scores indicates not correspondence of quantity with impact. It is suggested that the research group level would be a more reliable unit for analysis than the aggregated level of Institute or research area.     

Costs of large truck-involved crashes in the United States

This study provides the estimates of the costs of highway crashes involving large trucks by type of truck involved. These costs represent the present value of all costs over the victims' expected life span that result from a crash. They include medically related costs, emergency services costs, property damage costs, lost productivity, and the monetized value of the pain, suffering, and lost quality of life that a family experiences because of death or injury. Based on the latest data available, the estimated cost of police-reported crashes involving trucks with a gross weight rating of more than 10,000 pounds averaged US$ 59,153 (in 2000 dollars). Multiple combination trucks had the highest cost per crash (US$ 88,483). The crash costs per 1000 truck miles however, were US$ 157 for single unit trucks, US$ 131 for single combination trucks, and US$ 63 for multiple combinations.