scholarly journals Best practices in the field of specific risk evaluation of pyrotechnic entertainment articles subject to legal and illegal market surveillance

2022 ◽  
Vol 354 ◽  
pp. 00031
Author(s):  
Bogdan Garaliu-Busoi ◽  
Daniela Carmen Rus ◽  
Claudia Miron ◽  
Olga Miclea ◽  
Dan Pintilie

The field of pyrotechnic articles is very popular and developed, and as a result, the influx of pyrotechnic articles on the market is abundant. However, it should be noted that in addition to compliant products, which meet the applicable essential safety requirements covered by Directive no. 2013/29 / EU, there are also products on the market that can present a significant level of danger when used, handled, transported or stored. Market surveillance authorities frequently find non-compliant products such as pyrotechnic articles offered to the public, some on the legal market, others traded illegally. The establishment of presumptive risks related to pyrotechnic articles can be achieved by applying documented and accredited procedures at national and European level by specialized laboratories, one of these being found within INSEMEX. Technical-scientific expertise activity aims to verify the level of security for products considered suspicious. We have an international collaboration with European authorities, and at the national level, requests for products such as pyrotechnic articles are sent for expertise by the police, the prosecutor’s office or the courts. It was found that most products considered “suspicious” had serious deficiencies that could lead to major risks, and those traded illegally lead to considerable economic losses.

Author(s):  
H. McGrath ◽  
E. Stefanakis ◽  
M. Nastev

Conventional knowledge of the flood hazard alone (extent and frequency) is not sufficient for informed decision-making. The public safety community needs tools and guidance to adequately undertake flood hazard risk assessment in order to estimate respective damages and social and economic losses. While many complex computer models have been developed for flood risk assessment, they require highly trained personnel to prepare the necessary input (hazard, inventory of the built environment, and vulnerabilities) and analyze model outputs. As such, tools which utilize open-source software or are built within popular desktop software programs are appealing alternatives. The recently developed Rapid Risk Evaluation (ER<sup>2</sup>) application runs scenario based loss assessment analyses in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. User input is limited to a handful of intuitive drop-down menus utilized to describe the building type, age, occupancy and the expected water level. In anticipation of local depth damage curves and other needed vulnerability parameters, those from the U.S. FEMA’s Hazus-Flood software have been imported and temporarily accessed in conjunction with user input to display exposure and estimated economic losses related to the structure and the content of the building. Building types and occupancies representative of those most exposed to flooding in Fredericton (New Brunswick) were introduced and test flood scenarios were run. The algorithm was successfully validated against results from the Hazus-Flood model for the same building types and flood depths.


Author(s):  
Hans Hofmann

AbstractThis chapter discusses how public administration in Germany is influenced by the making and implementation of law by the organs of the European Union (EU). Although the public administrations of the EU Member States are, in principle, responsible for enforcing the laws made by the EU, the EU’s influence on the public administration of Germany as EU Member State is constantly growing. This is true, not only of those areas in which the Member States have transferred to the EU the authority to make laws, but increasingly also of those areas in which the Member States have retained such authority. At the same time, however, there is no systematic codification of the law on administrative procedures at European level and no system of legal remedy for Union citizens equivalent to those at national level.


Author(s):  
H. McGrath ◽  
E. Stefanakis ◽  
M. Nastev

Conventional knowledge of the flood hazard alone (extent and frequency) is not sufficient for informed decision-making. The public safety community needs tools and guidance to adequately undertake flood hazard risk assessment in order to estimate respective damages and social and economic losses. While many complex computer models have been developed for flood risk assessment, they require highly trained personnel to prepare the necessary input (hazard, inventory of the built environment, and vulnerabilities) and analyze model outputs. As such, tools which utilize open-source software or are built within popular desktop software programs are appealing alternatives. The recently developed Rapid Risk Evaluation (ER&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;) application runs scenario based loss assessment analyses in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. User input is limited to a handful of intuitive drop-down menus utilized to describe the building type, age, occupancy and the expected water level. In anticipation of local depth damage curves and other needed vulnerability parameters, those from the U.S. FEMA’s Hazus-Flood software have been imported and temporarily accessed in conjunction with user input to display exposure and estimated economic losses related to the structure and the content of the building. Building types and occupancies representative of those most exposed to flooding in Fredericton (New Brunswick) were introduced and test flood scenarios were run. The algorithm was successfully validated against results from the Hazus-Flood model for the same building types and flood depths.


Author(s):  
Sona N. Golder ◽  
Ignacio Lago ◽  
André Blais ◽  
Elisabeth Gidengil ◽  
Thomas Gschwend

Voters face different incentives to turn out to vote in one electoral arena versus another. Although turnout is lowest in European elections, it is found that the turnout is only slightly lower in regional than in national elections. Standard accounts suggest that the importance of an election, in terms of the policy-making power of the body to be elected, drives variation in turnout across elections at different levels. This chapter argues that this is only part of the story, and that voter attachment to a particular level also matters. Not all voters feel connected to each electoral arena in the same way. Although for some, their identity and the issues they most care about are linked to politics at the national level, for others, the regional or European level may offer the political community and political issues that most resonate with them.


Author(s):  
Max Z. Li ◽  
Megan S. Ryerson

Community outreach and engagement efforts are critical to an airport’s role as an ever-evolving transportation infrastructure and regional economic driver. As online social media platforms continue to grow in both popularity and influence, a new engagement channel between airports and the public is emerging. However, the motivations behind and effectiveness of these social media channels remain unclear. In this work, we address this knowledge gap by better understanding the advantages, impact, and best practices of this newly emerging engagement channel available to airports. Focusing specifically on airport YouTube channels, we first document quantitative viewership metrics, and examine common content characteristics within airport YouTube videos. We then conduct interviews and site visits with relevant airport stakeholders to identify the motivations and workflow behind these videos. Finally, we facilitate sample focus groups designed to survey public perceptions of the effectiveness and value of these videos. From our four project phases, to maximize content effectiveness and community engagement potential, we synthesize the following framework of action items, recommendations, and best practices: (C) Consistency and community; (O) Organizational structure; (M) Momentum; (B) Branding and buy-in; (A) Activity; (T) Two-way engagement; (E) Enthusiasm; and (D) Depth, or as a convenient initialism, our COMBATED framework.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Coman ◽  
O Oltean ◽  
M Palianopoulou ◽  
D Plancikova ◽  
C Zedini ◽  
...  

Abstract Over the past years, Tunisia has experienced important reforms in the field of public health. The Tunisian medical faculties (Universities of Sfax, Tunis el Manar, Sousse and Monastir) play a key role in this endeavor by training public health professionals who can contribute to the modernization of the health system. Funded by the EC through Erasmus+ programme, the CONFIDE project (coordinated by Babes-Bolyai University, having as EU partners the Universities of Southern Denmark and Trnava, and the above mentioned Tunisian universities) has established the Research into Policy training programme by strengthening their capacity to provide public health training. The Research into Policy training programme has been delivered by the Centres for Evidence into Health Policy (C4EHPs) established within the Tunisian partner universities for the needs of CONFIDE. The training programme was implemented in four steps: (1) train the trainer sessions - the European experts trained 18 Tunisian trainers; (2) shadowing sessions - the trainers participated in shadowing sessions in the European partner institutions; (3) training delivery - the CONFIDE trainers, assisted by the European experts, delivered the training to an interdisciplinary group of 25 students and professionals; (4) internships - the students participated in internships in local health institutions. Three modules have been built within the Research into Policy training programme: Public health research, Health promotion policies and Evidence based public health policy. They contributed to increasing the public health knowledge and skills of the professionals trained. The training programme was well received by the Tunisian universities and the material developed so far during the project was adapted to the Tunisian context in the third step of implementation. On the long term, the project is expected to have an impact at the national level and produce updates at curricula level in the Tunisian medical faculties. Key messages Research into Policy training programme developed by the EC partners and culturally adapted by the Tunisian partners to the Tunisian public health context. Research into Policy training is a well-received tool for the high quality learning process in the public health field in Tunisian medical faculties.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002218562110128
Author(s):  
Michele O’Neil

COVID-19 caused sudden and serious damage to the Australian economy. The effects have been spread unevenly, and highlighted the shortcomings of over-reliance on insecure forms of work. The lack of any form of paid leave for casual and other insecure workers undermined the public health response, and was emblematic of the broader consequences of insecurity. Despite its limitations, Australia’s industrial relations system responded to the challenges of the pandemic in a way that less regulated and ‘decentralised’ systems would not have been able to. This article argues that the union movement was critical to Australia’s successful response, and that the award system proved to be an adaptable mechanism to deliver change at a national level while ensuring that the representative voice of workers was heard, and basic industrial protections were not jettisoned. Industry bargaining would have also been a beneficial tool to deal with economy-wide issues of this kind. The article urges that the lessons of the pandemic be learned as we move to a recovery phase and that we ensure there are more secure jobs, better bargaining rights and improvements to basic protections to ensure that workers’ rights are not eroded.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 283
Author(s):  
Félix Lobo ◽  
Isabel Río-Álvarez

Incentives contribute to the proper functioning of the broader contracts that regulate the relationships between health systems and professionals. Likewise, incentives are an important element of clinical governance understood as health services’ management at the micro-level, aimed at achieving better health outcomes for patients. In Spain, monetary and non-monetary incentives are sometimes used in the health services, but not as frequently as in other countries. There are already several examples in European countries of initiatives searching the promotion of biosimilars through different sorts of incentives, but not in Spain. Hence, this paper is aimed at identifying the barriers that incentives to prescribe biosimilars might encounter in Spain, with particular interest in incentives in the framework of clinical governance. Both questions are intertwined. Barriers are presented from two perspectives. Firstly, based on the nature of the barrier: (i) the payment system for health professionals, (ii) budget rigidity and excessive bureaucracy, (iii) little autonomy in the management of human resources (iv) lack of clinical integration, (v) absence of a legal framework for clinical governance, and (vi) other governance-related barriers. The second perspective is based on the stakeholders involved: (i) gaps in knowledge among physicians, (ii) misinformation and distrust among patients, (iii) trade unions opposition to productivity-related payments, (iv) lack of a clear position by professional associations, and (v) misalignment of the goals pursued by some healthcare professionals and the goals of the public system. Finally, the authors advance several recommendations to overcome these barriers at the national level.


Author(s):  
David G. Burton

In the 1580s, Cervantes turned to writing for the stage in pursuit of a career as a professional playwright, capitalizing on the popularity of the public theatres and the lucrative trade it produced. However, after a modicum of success his career was soon thwarted by the comedia nueva and the advent of Lope de Vega in the late-1580s would take that obsession to a national level. This chapter explores the first stage of Cervantes’s writing career prior to this new type of play establishing a monopoly on the tastes of the paying public.


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