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BackgroundDespite the recent efforts to prevent industrial accidents in the Republic of Korea, the industrial accident rate has not improved much. Industrial safety policies and safety management are also known to be inefficient. This study focused on dynamic characteristics of industrial safety systems and their effects on safety performance in the Republic of Korea. Such dynamic characteristics are particularly important for restructuring of the industrial safety system.MethodsThe effects of damping and elastic characteristics of the industrial safety system model on safety performance were examined and feedback control performance was explained in view of cost and benefit. The implications on safety policies of restructuring the industrial safety system were also explored.ResultsA strong correlation between the safety budget and the industrial accident rate enabled modeling of an industrial safety system with these variables as the input and the output, respectively. A more effective and efficient industrial safety system could be realized by having weaker elastic characteristics and stronger damping characteristics in it. A substantial decrease in total social cost is expected as the industrial safety system is restructured accordingly.ConclusionA simple feedback control with proportional–integral action is effective in prevention of industrial accidents. Securing a lower level of elastic industrial accident-driving energy appears to have dominant effects on the control performance compared with the damping effort to dissipate such energy. More attention needs to be directed towards physical and social feedbacks that have prolonged cumulative effects. Suggestions for further improvement of the safety system including physical and social feedbacks are also made.

Requirements for Distributed Monitoring and Control Networks (DMCN) differ greatly from those of typical data networks. Specifically, any DMCN technology which employs a fieldbus protocol is different from IP network protocol TCP/IP. In general, one needs to integrate fieldbus protocol and TCP/IP to realize DMCN over IP network or internet, which can be viewed as Virtual Device Network (VDN). Interoperability between devices and equipments is essential to enhance the quality and the performance of predictive maintenance (PM). This paper suggests a basic framework for VDN using DMCN over IP network and a method to guarantee interoperability between devices and equipments.