American Society of Safety EngineersMiddle East Chapter

11th

Call for Paper11th Professional Development Conference and ExhibitionInnovative Approaches toward Emerging SHE ChallengesMarch 15-19, 2014, Kingdom of Bahrain

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ASSE-MECs President MessageThe American Society of Safety Engineers-Middle East Chapter (ASSE-MEC) is organizing its 11th Professional Development Conference and Exhibition in the Kingdom of Bahrain from March 15 to19, 2014. This event is the most comprehensive forum on issues within the safety, health and environment (SHE) segment of the regions industries. Delegates, each a stakeholder in the fields of SHE, representing a diverse group of managers, engineers, and scientists are expected to participate in this conference and exhibition. The ASSE-MEC encourages you as an SHE professional to take part of this conference and participate as a speaker.The Organizing Committee members and the Conference delegates look forward to your participation.

Tariq S. Al Ghamdi President, ASSE-MEC

5Conference Director MessageOn behalf of the Organizing Committee, I invite you to participate as speakers during the American Society of Safety Engineers - Middle East Chapter (ASSE-MEC) 11th Professional Development Conference and Exhibition, which will be held from March 15 to 19, 2014, in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The theme of the conference is Innovative Approaches toward Emerging SHE Challenges. It will focus on how to deal with the emerging challenges in safety, health and the environment, around the world and in the Middle East. The conference theme covers all aspects of SHE related to the process industries (i.e., oil, gas, chemical and petrochemical industries) and their impact on the public.

The last ASSE-MEC conference, held in 2012, attracted more than 1,000 participants from the process industries, academic institutions and government organizations. More participants are expected during the 11th Conference & Exhibition in 2014.

Your participation in the conference is an outstanding opportunity to share your knowledge and network with other experienced professionals. It will also present an opportunity to promote SHE awareness in this region.

Our technical committee and I will be more than happy to receive your paper and discuss your participation at your convenience.

Ahmed Y. Al-Dossary Conference Director

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The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) is an independent nonprofit professional organization with more than 34,000 professional members worldwide. The ASSEs mission is to foster the technical, scientific, managerial and ethical knowledge, skills and competency of safety, health and environment (SHE) professionals for the protection of people, property and the environment.

The Middle East Chapter (ASSE-MEC) was established in 1982 and has held several conferences and technical meetings in the Gulf region since then. These events have attracted many international speakers, a variety of exhibitors and a large number of attendees. The broad range of subjects addressed, the sharing and dissemination of knowledge, and the resulting discussions made previous conferences a recognized success. This encouraged ASSE-MEC to organize its 11th conference, from March 15 to 19, 2014, in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The conference theme is Innovative Approaches toward Emerging SHE Challenges.The industry and the public in this region and around the world are currently facing an increasing number of emerging challenges to maintaining SHE standards. The objective of this conference is to present the latest innovative approaches being developed to deal with these challenges, and share solutions that enable the industry to continue its essential operations while maintaining the highest level of SHE standards. Recent events highlight some of the challenges facing the industry such as: the growing concern of the public and governments about the impact of major incidents on safety and the environment; the high costs and financial liabilities associated with incidents; tighter regulations and stronger environmental requirements; the ever-increasing number of road accidents and high fatality rates; the growing concern over security issues in industrial facilities; cyber security and information protection; and aging infrastructure and its impact on safety.

Introduction and Background

Conference Theme and Topics

74- Safety Leadership, this includes top-ics such as:

Safety economics. Safety culture and effective leadership. Legislative advancement, compliance and

best practices. Sustainable safety performance.

5- Environment and Health:

Pollution and hazardous waste management in highly industrialized areas.

Workplace safety and health: ergonomics, proper ventilation, A/C arrangement, extreme temperatures in the workplace, deficiency of essential vitamins (e.g., B12 and D), open space office challenges, etc.

Environmental challenges of new economic activities in the region (e.g., plans to invest more in downstream/petrochemical indus-tries, comparison between the environmental situation and international standards, etc.)

Responsible care. Carcinogen control.

6- Special Topics:

Transportation and traffic safety. Aviation safety. Nuclear facility, safety and security. Fire prevention and enforcement of building

codes. Fire protection. Emerging trends in safety, security and the

environment. CO2 process safety and economies in the Gulf

region. Best practices for sharing lessons learned

from incidents.

The theme for the conference covers all aspects of SHE related to the process industries (i.e., oil, gas, chemical and petrochemical industries) as well as the public. The following are examples of issues that will be covered during the conference:

1- Risk Management:

Growing reliance on risk assessments as a decision-making tool.

Public perception of safety and cultural im-pacts on risk assessments.

Operational safety and real-time monitor-ing/measurement of risk.

Growing use of Computational Fluid Dynam-ics analysis in risk and safety assessments

Enterprise risk.

2- Process Safety:

Process and plant safety. Aging infrastructure and its impact on

safety. Post-accident management and emergency

response plan (ERP) activation challenges. Emergency response and disaster manage-

ment. Pipeline safety and risk management in

highly populated areas. Land planning and management of public

encroachment on industrial facilities.

3- Security:

IT security and information protections from cyber-attacks; its impact on safety/security.

Security of chemical storage facilities. Facility security and protection from third-

party impacts.

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The 11th ASSE-MEC Professional Development Conference & Exhibition aims to achieve the following objectives:

1. Highlight the emerging SHE challenges facing the industry and society worldwide and in the Middle East.

2. Share the innovative solutions and approaches adopted to deal with these challenges among attendees and learn from each others experience.

3. Present an opportunity to network with other experienced professionals working in fields relevant to the participants area of practice.

4. Show and demonstrate the latest industry SHE products, services and activities in the region.

All of this is done through a robust

conference program that provides the attendees with state-of the-art technical papers, presentations and posters, as well as roundtable discussions and workshops.

Invitation to Submit Papers/Abstracts

The Technical Committee invite researchers, scholars and presenters from research institutions and universities, industrial companies, consulting firms, public organizations and government agencies in the Middle East and the rest of the world to participate in this conference. All levels of professionals with different backgrounds (i.e., from managers and senior professionals/researchers to consultants, and from young professionals to university students) are encouraged to submit their work.

Conference Objectives

9All submissions are subject to a peer review process to determine if the work is acceptable for this conference, and in which format will it be presented. Proposals/abstracts are invited for:

Paper/Presentation Sessions

Each paper accepted for individual presentation will be allocated about 30 minutes for presentation. The presentation should mainly cover a completed original work directly related to the different topics covered in this conference (preferably not presented at other conferences; but excellent work presented at other conferences will still be considered for this conference).

Posters Sessions

Presenters are invited to submit posters from both academia and industry, describing ongoing research, exciting new research projects, encouraging preliminary results, novel approaches toward emerging problems, new technologies, case studies and innovative consulting methodologies dealing with emerging SHE challenges. Posters should describe novel or interesting topics.

Based on previous experience with the ASSE-MEC conferences and due to high submission rates, some papers that will not be included in the presentation sessions will be considered for the poster sessions. Authors will be notified to secure their approval if that is the case.

Preconference Workshops

Preconference workshops will be held as part of the conference. These workshops should be related to the theme of the conference or SHE in general. If you are interested in conducting a workshop at this conference, please submit a proposal to describe the workshop and provide information about the benefits of attending this workshop. Proposals should be concise and short (one page). More details will be requested once workshop proposals are finalized.

Roundtables and Discussion Sessions

Similar subjects, linked contributions and works-in-progress might be considered for roundtable sessions, which provide a platform for the discussion of interesting subjects with other experts working on related topics. If topics are identified for a roundtable discussion session, the authors/presenters will be contacted to confirm that they are interested and the session chairs will be identified and communicated to participants.

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Requirements

The papers should describe original/authentic work in-line with the conference theme. The papers/presentations should contain completed work. The posters can contain ongoing work/research that is under development, but indicate clearly the state of the reported results. Under certain circumstances, roundtable topics can deal with emerging challenges that have not yet been addressed by research. This is done to encourage participants to think about a problem and try to find a solution or at least initiate studies to explore possible solutions.

Submissions will be judged on technical strength, significance and relevance to the conference theme, and interest to the attendees. The submission should indicate if the work has been previously presented in ASSE-MECs previous conferences, or other conferences.

The technical review of the papers is anonymous and will be conducted by experts from different parts of the world as needed. The final decisions on the technical program will be made by the technical committee in collaboration with members of other conference committees.

Authors interested in presenting a paper or a poster (or conducting a workshop) at the conference can submit their written abstract/proposals and required authors information electronically at the following website: http://asse-mec.org/2014

Review Process

Submission Information

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Please consult the submission webpage for details of the submission procedure. In case of difficulties accessing the website or if you have questions regarding the submission procedure, please contact the Technical Committee Chairman at:

Arafat M. Aloqaily, PhD. ASSE-MEC 11th PDC&E Program Chairman Phone: +966-3-872-7443Cell (Mobile): +966-565-26-9870 Fax: +966-3-872-9751 Email: program@asse-mec.org

Abstract

The abstract should be limited to 300 words summarizing the paper, presentation or poster, and highlighting its importance/relevance to the theme of the conference. If submission is done through direct email, then the abstract should also indicate the category of topics to which the paper, presentation or poster belongs (refer to conference topics described earlier in this document). If the submission is done online through the submission website, please follow the procedure shown at the website. Please note that online submission is preferred.

The conference will be conducted in English, but some Arabic papers may be considered if proven to be very relevant to the conference theme. The abstract should not include the authors names and affiliations. Such information should be submitted separately.

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If submitting the paper through the website, please follow the guidelines on the website for authors information. If submitting the paper by direct email to the program chairman, provide the following information on a separate sheet of paper:

Authors full name. Authors affiliation. Authors passport-size photo (if sent

electronically, photo must be of 250-300 dpi). This is needed to be included in the proceedings of the conference.

Employer and job title. A summary of the authors academic

qualifications and work experience (maximum of 100 words). This will be used for introducing the author to the audience during the presentation.

Title of the paper. A summary of the abstract (less than

80 words) to appear in the conference program brochure.

Authors postal address. Authors contact (office phone, mobile

phone, fax and email address.)

We reserve the right to reject submissions that do not conform to these guidelines including size limitations, form of submissions and availability of required information.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

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DEADLINESAbstracts due by April 15, 2013.Abstract acceptance notification on or before June 1, 2013.Detailed paper/poster due by August 1, 2013.Paper/poster final acceptance on or before September 1, 2013.

Conference VenueThe conference will be held at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Conference Center, in the Kingdom of Bahrain. For more details on the venue, please visit the website:

http://www.bahrainexhibitions.comorhttp://wwww.beca.bh

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Images FromThe 10th ASSE-MECConference & Exhibition 2012

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American Society of Safety EngineersMiddle East Chapter

11th

Conference & Exhibition

www.asse-mec.org