Search Results (509)

Driven by Vision 2030, the construction industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has expanded rapidly. This expansion has raised concerns about safety performance and created a need to identify the factors that most strongly influence safety outcomes. This study is an exploratory, perception-based investigation into the perceived importance of factors affecting construction safety performance and into the perceived value of emerging Industry 4.0 technologies in improving it. Data were collected from 68 construction engineering professionals using a structured questionnaire covering 50 safety-related factors across five domains: management, worker, equipment and environmental, organisational and policy, and technology integration. The Importance Index (I) method was used to analyse the responses, and the domain-level results are reported as descriptive prioritisations rather than as statistically validated constructs. The three highest-rated items were lack of management commitment to safety programmes (I = 91.2%), inadequate and infrequent safety training (I = 89.7%), and absence of safety awareness among top management (I = 88.5%), followed closely by weak enforcement of safety regulations (I = 87.4%). At the domain level, management-related factors recorded the highest mean (I = 81.7%), ahead of worker-related factors (I = 79.5%) and technology integration (I = 75.0%). Although respondents identified artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), building information modelling (BIM), and drones as valuable safety enablers, they rated organisational and human factors as more important than the technologies themselves. Extreme heat and adverse weather conditions (I = 81.7%) emerged as a leading environmental risk, underlining the need for climate-specific safety interventions in the KSA context. Heat stress could be considered a notable concern in this context, as construction work in KSA is often performed outdoors during extended periods of high summer temperatures, which can elevate the risk of heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and fatigue-related incidents. This contrasts with the more temperate conditions of many international comparator studies and helps to explain why respondents treat heat as a leading environmental concern. To the authors’ knowledge, this is among the few exploratory studies to bring management, workforce, policy, environmental, and Industry 4.0 technology determinants together within a single KSA-specific framework. The findings contribute to both theory and practice in construction safety by identifying priority areas for intervention and by providing a basis for future large-scale confirmatory studies. Full article

Cruise tourism is one of the fastest-growing segments of the global tourism industry, generating significant economic benefits while also creating challenges related to overtourism, congestion, environmental pressure, and residents’ quality of life. Understanding residents’ attitudes towards tourism is therefore essential for sustainable destination management. Although previous studies have examined the roles of place attachment and quality of life in shaping tourism attitudes, evidence from cruise destinations remains limited. This study investigates the influence of place attachment and quality of life on residents’ attitudes towards tourism in two contrasting European cruise destinations: Kotor (Montenegro) and Athens/Piraeus (Greece). Additionally, it aims to explore the link between place attachment and quality of life, which remains understudied in this context. The study also investigates whether destination moderates the effect between explored variables. To address this objective, Kotor and Athens/Piraeus were purposively selected as a maximum-variation pair. A quantitative survey was conducted among 319 local residents (157 from Kotor and 162 from Athens/Piraeus). The findings indicate that both place attachment and quality of life significantly influence residents’ attitudes towards tourism. Stronger place attachment was associated with more positive perceptions of social interaction with tourists and beneficial cultural impacts, but it also influenced residents’ attitudes indirectly through perceived quality of life. Moreover, place attachment was identified as a significant determinant across all five dimensions of residents’ quality of life. Furthermore, quality-of-life dimensions, particularly heritage and commercial development, socialisation and economic opportunities, and environmental conditions, emerged as significant predictors of tourism attitudes. Destination comparisons revealed overall consistency between both cruise tourism destinations, except for the link between place attachment and health and safety benefits, which was stronger among residents of Athens. The findings provide practical implications for sustainable tourism planning by highlighting the importance of incorporating residents’ perceptions into destination management. Full article

Background: To date, there are no known published studies in Portugal that link the perceived neighborhood walkability of a specific geographical area to the functional capacity and social participation of older adults living in the community. Thus, the main objective of this study, conducted in Portugal, is to examine whether the perceived neighborhood walkability is associated with functional capacity, walking confidence, social participation, and exercise self-efficacy among community-dwelling older adults, thereby contributing to the national evidence base on the influence of contextual factors on human functioning, with particular relevance to active and healthy aging. Methods: An exploratory, cross-sectional study was conducted using data from older adults (aged 50 and over) living in the community, in Portugal. A member of the research team assessed physical function using objective measures of upper and lower body function, balance and mobility. To assess the perceived neighborhood walkability, a validated questionnaire for Portuguese adults living in the community with good internal consistency (α = 0.848) was used. The walkability dimensions assessed were safety, facilities/surroundings, comfort/esthetics and accessibility/connectivity. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to analyze the relationships between continuous variables. Differences between groups were analyzed using independent sample Student’s t-tests or analysis of variance (ANOVA) as appropriate. Results: Perceived neighborhood walkability was associated with several sociodemographic, health, and psychosocial variables. Higher educational levels and better self-perceived health were associated with more positive perceptions of walkability. Participants without urinary incontinence and osteoarthritis reported significantly higher walkability scores, particularly in the safety, facilities/surroundings, and comfort/esthetics dimensions. Older age was associated with higher scores in the facilities/surroundings dimension, whereas slower gait speed and higher anxiety levels were associated with lower perceptions in this dimension. Few significant associations were found between perceived neighborhood walkability and objective physical function measures, and these associations were generally weak. Conclusions: Overall, the findings suggest that neighborhood walkability is a multidimensional construct influenced not only by environmental characteristics but also by health status, psychological factors, and individual perceptions. These results reinforce the importance of considering contextual and environmental factors when promoting mobility, participation, and healthy aging among community-dwelling older adults. Full article

Tourism is carbon-intensive, with transport and mobility driving much of its greenhouse-gas emissions, yet destination-level evidence on carbon hotspots and decarbonization from a supply-chain perspective remains scarce, especially in developing regions. This study examines low-carbon tourism supply chain management in seven purposively selected provinces of Northeastern Thailand (Isan) using a qualitative-dominant convergent mixed-methods design that integrates demand- and supply-side evidence. A visitor survey yielded 74 open-ended responses (60 complete questionnaires), alongside seven semi-structured key-informant interviews with tourism supply chain operators across the seven provinces. Quantitative data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, and qualitative data with thematic analysis using qualitative data analysis software, drawing on code-frequency and co-occurrence analysis; the two strands were triangulated in joint displays. Visitors reported moderate satisfaction (grand mean 3.91 on a five-point scale) but rated environmental management and safety lowest, engaging with sustainability through visible service cues rather than emissions. Key informants identified perceived carbon hotspots, carrying capacity, and seasonality as dominant concerns, attributing the destination’s footprint chiefly to transport dependence (informant-reported estimates ranging from approximately 80% to nearly 100% private-car arrivals, amid limited public transport) and accommodation energy; these hotspots reflect stakeholder perceptions rather than measured emissions, as no carbon accounting, environmentally extended input–output analysis, or life-cycle assessment was conducted. Integration revealed a demand–supply perception gap and five proposed, interdependent low-carbon pathways: coordinated mobility, accommodation energy efficiency, strengthened local procurement, carrying-capacity and waste management, and multi-stakeholder governance. The findings offer a developing-region, supply-chain-oriented basis for future tourism decarbonization research and practice. Full article

Hilly orchards are characterized by undulating terrain, canopy occlusion, irregular tree-row structures, and marked variations in ground adhesion conditions, which challenge the autonomous navigation of agricultural machinery by degrading perception and localization, increasing reference path uncertainty, and reducing closed-loop robustness. Perception and localization errors can propagate progressively along the chain of “sensor observation–vehicle pose estimation/environmental-structure perception–reference path generation–path-tracking controller inputs–vehicle closed-loop response,” ultimately affecting path-tracking accuracy, control smoothness, and operational safety. This review examines perception and localization error propagation and robust path-tracking control for agricultural machinery in hilly orchards. The review first summarizes the navigation roles and error characteristics of key observation sources and then analyzes how perception, localization, and reference path generation provide state variables, reference variables, and safety constraints to controllers. It subsequently compares typical path-tracking methods under multi-source disturbances and actuator constraints and discusses key challenges and an integrated robust design direction coupling perception and localization, reference path generation, and path-tracking control. The proposed integrated framework represents a synthesis-derived design direction rather than a complete architecture that has already been experimentally validated in hilly orchard field environments. Full article

Visual clutter can affect attention, cognitive load, and environmental evaluation, yet streetscape studies often treat visual complexity as a broad construct without distinguishing visual richness from competition among visual features. Shanghai was selected because its dense, heterogeneous urban fabric and central–peripheral variation make it well suited to city-scale analysis. Using 69,244 street-view images, this study combined computer vision, deep learning, and modeling to quantify edge, color, semantic, and depth clutter and estimate beauty, wealth, liveliness, safety, boredom, and depressiveness. After controlling for built-environment characteristics, 23 of 24 linear associations were significant, although their directions differed. Edge and color clutter were associated with higher positive perceptions and lower negative perceptions. Semantic clutter was positively associated with wealth, liveliness, and safety but negatively associated with beauty; depth clutter was negatively associated with beauty, wealth, and liveliness and positively associated with boredom and depressiveness. Stable inverted U-shaped patterns occurred in only four relationships. Streetscape management in Shanghai should avoid uniformly increasing or reducing visual information. Planning and design may retain architectural detail, vegetation edges, coordinated color variation, and semantic richness while better coordinating facades, signage, street furniture, vehicles, and foreground elements, improving sightline continuity, and reducing obstruction and abrupt spatial discontinuity. Full article

Maritime autonomous surface ships (MASSs) are reshaping the organization of navigation, ship operation, remote control and maritime supervision. However, the transition from crewed navigation to autonomy also changes the structure of safety risk. Traditional ship risk assessment approaches rely heavily on historical accident records and crew-centered operational assumptions, whereas MASS operations involve coupled risks arising from perception systems, autonomous decision-making, communication links, cybersecurity, remote control centers, environmental uncertainty and management readiness. To address the scarcity of operational accident data and the need for a structured safety evaluation method, this paper develops a Formal Safety Assessment (FSA)-based risk evaluation framework for MASS operations. A hierarchical indicator system is established from five dimensions: ship machinery, human factors, environmental factors, information technology and management. A frequency-severity risk criterion is then constructed by defining the Frequency Index (FI), Severity Index (SI) and Risk Index (RI), and by introducing the ALARP principle to classify unacceptable, tolerable and broadly acceptable risk regions. On this basis, an integrated fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is proposed to determine factor weights, transform expert judgements into membership degrees, and calculate comprehensive risk scores. A case study using 50 expert questionnaires shows that the overall risk score of MASS operation is 5.64, located in the ALARP region. Among the first-level indicators, environmental factors, information technology factors and ship machinery factors present relatively high risk levels, with scores of 6.82, 6.60 and 6.25, respectively. At the secondary-indicator level, intelligent navigation system, weather conditions, hydrometeorological conditions, communication capability, equipment and systems, navigation decision-making, and environmental perception are identified as high-intensity risk indicators. Further contribution decomposition reveals that environmental perception, routine ship management, navigation decision-making, and communication capability contribute most substantially to the overall risk profile due to their higher systemic importance. The proposed framework provides an interpretable approach for MASS safety assessment and risk-control prioritization under limited operational data availability. Full article

Modern power grids require safer and more reliable field operations, yet conventional robots often face limitations in unstructured environments because of rigid pre-programming and weak perception–action coupling. This review examines Embodied Intelligence (EI) as an emerging direction for enhancing power-system field operations. We first evaluate the environmental adaptability of morphological carriers, including quadrupeds, humanoids, and unmanned aerial vehicles, and then define the perception–cognition–execution closed-loop architecture used in this review. Three application domains are then examined. Intelligent inspection focuses on active perception and potential open-vocabulary object detection. Live-line maintenance emphasizes Sim-to-Real methods and shared autonomy, while disaster-response applications involve heterogeneous air–ground robotic coordination. The review also discusses the potential for EI to reduce human exposure to hazardous tasks and influence labor structures, while a regional text-based proxy illustrates differences in policy attention to digital infrastructure. Finally, we analyze major constraints, including hardware endurance under extreme climates, edge-computing latency, foundation-model uncertainty and hallucination, cybersecurity, and safety certification. Overall, EI should not be interpreted as a mature replacement for current utility practice; it is a developing technological direction whose safe deployment will require field validation, standardized evaluation, cybersecurity assurance, and continued human supervisory authority. Full article

High-altitude regions are known as corridors assisting exchange among communities, and the implementation of economic corridors in these regions provides connections and networks based on two geographical territories. For example, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), established as an infrastructural development project with wide-reaching socioeconomic and environmental implications, is regarded as a significant driver of regional transformation, with the potential to generate several businesses, build institutional resilience, reduce poverty, foster a circular economy, and create job opportunities. The current study explores the perceptions and attitudes of educated adult residents in selected mountain districts regarding CPEC, which is vital to ensure wide-ranging and sustainable infrastructure development in alignment with the SDG goals, explicitly SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), and SDG 15 (Environmental Protection). Grounded in Social Exchange Theory, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to assess local perceptions concerning the costs and benefits linked with infrastructural development projects and concentrating on its socioeconomic and environmental outcomes in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. The questionnaire was self-administered by respondents, who documented their own responses to all items. The researcher remained present throughout data collection to distribute the questionnaires, provide verbal explanations or translations into the local language for specific terms upon request, and collect completed forms; in total, 384 respondents completed the survey. Findings revealed that surveyed educated adult respondents perceived sustainable infrastructural development favorably, particularly regarding anticipated improvements in quality of life, job creation, alleviating poverty, and the current education system, with 59.9%, 53.1%, 53.1% and 41.7% agreement, respectively. Respondents also expressed concerns about environmental protection, such as health and safety, environmental risks, and construction/transportation-related pollution at 39.8%, 37.5% and 36.7%, respectively. Backed up by SEM direct path analysis, which showed significant positive relationships between infrastructural development and educational development (H1: β = 0.439), quality of life (H2: β = 0.638), job opportunities (H3: β = 0.603), poverty alleviation (H4: β = 0.534), and environmental protection (H5: β = 0.267). Thus, all hypotheses H1-H5 were supported. This study recommends that officials and policymakers promote stakeholder investment for regional sustainability transitions, formulate regional environmental policies and governance for sustainable development to enhance the benefits of CPEC. Full article

Age-related microaggressions are short, everyday comments, actions, or environmental cues that, whether intentional or not, send messages of hostility or exclusion. These remarks or behaviors often target people who do not fit dominant social norms. Although each incident may seem minor on its own, together they can cause serious harm to individuals and organizations. Using cross-sectional data from 1702 Italian in-office employees working for the public administration in the Emilia–Romagna region of Italy (Mage = 50.6, SD = 9.35), we explored the prevalence of age-related microaggressions across different public organizations’ employees in Italy and examined how perceptions differ among demographic groups. Findings reveal that younger employees (ages 23–39) reported significantly higher levels of perceived age-related microaggressions. The perception of age-inclusive HR practices was negatively correlated with microaggressions and positively correlated with job satisfaction, psychological safety, and intrinsic motivation. Additionally, the strength of this association was not uniform; it was strongest for the youngest and oldest employees. These results underscore the importance of attending to demographic differences in the strategic management of human resources. As demographic change transforms workforces globally, age-inclusive HR practices emerge as strategic tools that organizations can use to mitigate subtle discrimination and support employees of all ages. Full article

In the healthcare and clinical domain, artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving from earlier models that primarily predicted outcomes or generated content toward agentic AI systems that demonstrate the capability to make decisions and complete tasks autonomously. Previous research on AI has contributed significantly to disease identification, deep learning applications, large language models (LLMs), and generative AI. These systems primarily function as assistive tools, as they generate text or predictions without directly interacting with clinical infrastructures. Therefore, recent research trends are increasingly oriented toward agentic AI systems that extend beyond traditional predictive and generative model performance. This manuscript provides a detailed review of the current state of agentic AI, starting with the evolution of AI and the concept of a medical agent. A medical agent refers to an intelligent AI system designed to assist in clinical or administrative tasks by analyzing data, supporting decision making, and interacting with healthcare environments. Its underlying agentic AI architecture integrates planning, memory, reasoning, and environmental interaction to enable autonomous tool use, multi-agent collaboration, and continuous perception decision action loops across diverse healthcare applications and clinical workflows. The review further examines safety mechanisms, including human-in-the-loop oversight, self-verification strategies, and regulatory alignment frameworks, which are designed to ensure reliability, accountability, compliance, and safe deployment in regulated healthcare environments. Our findings indicate that a large number of AI agents have been introduced in various manuscripts for healthcare applications; however, fully autonomous systems remain challenging to achieve, as AI still faces several limitations related to reliability, interpretability, data dependency, and integration within complex clinical workflows. In response to these challenges, this survey shifts the focus from task-specific model performance to system-level autonomy and workflow orchestration, providing a structured foundation for understanding the design, deployment, governance, and limitations of agentic AI systems in modern healthcare ecosystems. Full article

Understanding the built environment is essential for explaining road safety outcomes, particularly through individuals’ perceptions of their surroundings, which are linked to perceived travel risk and play an important role in pedestrian decision-making. However, the heterogeneous effects of the built environment across contexts remain insufficiently understood and require further investigation. Thus, this study aims to investigate how perceived built environment attributes are associated with perceived travel risk and whether these associations differ across urban contexts, with specific variation in land-use contexts. Data were collected using questionnaires administered at pedestrian crossings in Bangkok, and ordinal regression was employed for the analysis. The results indicate that some factors are consistently significant across contexts, while others show significance in specific contexts. In particular, land use mix as diversity and traffic speed are among the variables that are consistently significant across multiple contexts. Overall, the findings suggest variation in the patterns of association between built environment attributes and perceived travel risk across contexts. These results provide useful insights for urban and transport planners regarding the role of environmental design and allocation in promoting safer pedestrian environments, thereby contributing to the development of a sustainable transport system by enhancing pedestrian safety and prioritizing pedestrians in planning. Full article

This paper presents an explainable defense framework against perception-layer and Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks in Internet of Things (IoT)-based environmental hazard warning systems. These systems rely on heterogeneous sensors (gas, light, sound, temperature, and humidity) whose integrity is crucial for reliable environmental alerts. Perception-layer attacks such as spoofing, jamming, and data injection can compromise sensor readings, while MitM attacks threaten communication reliability. The proposed approach integrates incremental Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) for time-series anomaly detection with a tree- based ensemble classifier (XGBoost), in addition to Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) for interpretability. A comparative evaluation framework jointly considers detection performance and explanation quality through metrics including pre-registering a Casual Ground Truth based on network protocol localized Precision@ K feature overlap metrics (Q), instead of relying on subjective human-expert or global rank correlations to quantitively evaluate the explanation transparency. Experimental simulations using an authentic EdgeIIoT-2022 dataset under 3-fold forward–chaining cross-validation demonstrated high detection accuracy and moderated explainability scores. The results prove the framework’s ability to detect and explain adversarial behaviors in sensor networks, strengthening trust, transparency, and resilience in safety-critical IoT infrastructures. Full article

The search for sustainable and ethical alternatives to conventional protein production has become increasingly important due to climate change, population growth, and the need to reduce the environmental impact of food systems. This work explores the development of animal-free proteins produced in laboratory settings using innovative technologies such as precision fermentation, submerged fermentation, plant cell culture, and molecular engineering. These methods enable the production of high-quality proteins without relying on animal farming or large-scale traditional agriculture. In addition to reviewing traditional plant-based protein sources and their nutritional limitations, the study highlights novel protein sources derived from fungi, algae, and bacteria, focusing on their nutritional profiles, production methods, and challenges related to digestibility, safety, and consumer perception. Special attention is given to downstream processing techniques that preserve protein functionality and enhance key food attributes such as texture, flavor, and stability. The use of agro-industrial residues is also discussed as a strategy to improve sustainability and economic viability. Key barriers to large-scale implementation, including production costs, regulatory approval, and consumer acceptance, are addressed, alongside emerging applications beyond food, such as cosmetics, animal nutrition, and biodegradable materials. Overall, animal-free proteins represent a promising path toward a more sustainable, resilient, and ethical global food system. Full article

In the campus planning of severe cold regions, indoor pedestrian corridors have emerged as an important strategy for mitigating harsh weather and maintaining pedestrian network continuity. These enclosed systems provide thermal comfort and physical convenience for faculty and students. However, reduced visual contact with outdoor natural environments may be associated with less favorable affective experiences. Existing research primarily emphasizes functional connectivity and spatial efficiency, with limited quantitative evidence on the visual characteristics of indoor corridors and their relationship with emotional perception. Drawing upon environmental psychology, this study examines the associations between corridor visual characteristics and five AI-predicted affective perception dimensions. Using deep-learning-based computer vision, semantic segmentation, and statistical analysis, environmental features and predicted perception scores were analyzed. A local human validation showed moderate overall agreement between human consensus ratings and AI-predicted scores, supporting their use as exploratory perception proxies. The findings indicate that indoor-corridor-related visual features were negatively associated with predicted beauty scores and positively associated with predicted depression scores, while predicted boringness was positively associated with wall enclosure. Predicted safety and liveliness showed weaker associations with individual visual features. These results provide exploratory evidence for balancing thermal protection, circulation efficiency, and psychological comfort in future campus corridor design. Full article