Search results for: flood disaster fragility

Authors: A. A. Purohit, A. Basu, K. A. Chavan, M. D. Kudale

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Many estuarine harbours in the world are facing the problem of siltation in docks, channel entrances, etc. The harbours in India are not an exception and require maintenance dredging to achieve navigable depths for keeping them operable. Hence, dredging is inevitable and is a costly affair. The heavy siltation in docks in well mixed tide dominated estuaries is mainly due to settlement of cohesive sediments in suspension. As such there is a need to have a permanent solution for minimising the siltation in such docks to alter the hydrodynamic flow field responsible for siltation by constructing structures outside the dock. One of such docks on the west coast of India, wherein siltation of about 2.5-3 m/annum prevails, was considered to understand the hydrodynamic flow field responsible for siltation. The dock is situated in such a region where macro type of semi-diurnal tide (range of about 5m) prevails. In order to change the flow field responsible for siltation inside the dock, suitability of Current Deflecting Wall (CDW) outside the dock was studied, which will minimise the sediment exchange rate and siltation in the dock. The well calibrated physical tidal model was used to understand the flow field during various phases of tide for the existing dock in Mumbai harbour. At the harbour entrance where the tidal flux exchanges in/out of the dock, measurements on water level and current were made to estimate the sediment transport capacity. The distorted scaled model (1:400 (H) & 1:80 (V)) of Mumbai area was used to study the tidal flow phenomenon, wherein tides are generated by automatic tide generator. Hydraulic model studies carried out under the existing condition (without CDW) reveal that, during initial hours of flood tide, flow hugs the docks breakwater and part of flow which enters the dock forms number of eddies of varying sizes inside the basin, while remaining part of flow bypasses the entrance of dock. During ebb, flow direction reverses, and part of the flow re-enters the dock from outside and creates eddies at its entrance. These eddies do not allow water/sediment-mass to come out and result in settlement of sediments in dock both due to eddies and more retention of sediment. At latter hours, current strength outside the dock entrance reduces and allows the water-mass of dock to come out. In order to improve flow field inside the dockyard, two CDWs of length 300 m and 40 m were proposed outside the dock breakwater and inline to Pier-wall at dock entrance. Model studies reveal that, during flood, major flow gets deflected away from the entrance and no eddies are formed inside the dock, while during ebb flow does not re-enter the dock, and sediment flux immediately starts emptying it during initial hours of ebb. This reduces not only the entry of sediment in dock by about 40% but also the deposition by about 42% due to less retention. Thus, CDW is a promising solution to significantly reduce siltation in dock.

Keywords: current deflecting wall, eddies, hydraulic model, macro tide, siltation

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Authors: Zouhour Neji Ben Salem

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Microscopic evacuation focuses on the evacuee behavior and way of search of safety place in an egress situation. In recent years, several models handled microscopic evacuation problem. Among them, we have proposed Artificial Neural Network (ANN) as an alternative to mathematical models that can deal with such problem. In this paper, we present two ANN models: SOM map and Hopfield Network used to predict the evacuee behavior in a disaster situation. These models are tested in a real case, the second floor of Tunisian children hospital evacuation in case of fire. The two models are studied and compared in order to evaluate their performance.

Keywords: artificial neural networks, self-organization map, hopfield network, microscopic evacuation, fire building evacuation

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Authors: Kunthida Kulprateepunya, Napat Boontiam, Bunthita Phuasa, Chatsuda Kankayant, Bantoeng Polsawat, Sumran Poontong

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Frailty is the thin line between good health and illness. The syndrome is more common in the elderly who transition from strong to weak. (Vulnerability). Fragility can prevent and promote healthy recovery before it goes into disability. This research and development aim to analyze the situation analysis of frailty of the elderly, develop a program, and evaluate the effect of a health promotion program to prevent and solve the problem of frailty among the elderly. The research consisted of 3 phases: 1) analysis of the frailty situation, 2) development of a model, 3) evaluation of the effectiveness of the model. Samples were 328, 122 elderlies using the multi-stage random sampling method. The research instrument was a frailty questionnaire use of the five symptoms, the main characteristics were muscle weakness, slow walking, low physical activity. Fatigue and unintentional weight loss, criteria frailty use more than or equal to three or more symptoms are frailty. Data were analyzed by descriptive and t-test dependent test statistics. The findings showed three parts. First, frailty in the elderly was 23.05 percentage and 56.70% pre-frailty. Second, it was development of a health promotion program to prevent and solve the problem of frailty the elderly with a combination of Nine-Square Exercise, Elastic Band Exercise, Elastic Coconut Shell. Third, evaluation of the effectiveness of the model by comparison of the elderly's get up and go test, the average time before using the program was 14.42 and after using the program was 8.57. It was statistically significant at the .05 level. In conclusion, the findings can used to develop guidelines to promote the health of the frailty elderly.

Keywords: elderly, fragile, nine-square exercise, elastic coconut shell

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Authors: Halima Kilungu, Munishi P. K. T., Happiness Jackson Nko

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Wetlands contribute significantly to the national economy. Nevertheless, urban wetlands in Tanzania have been taken for granted; many have been converted into waste disposal areas and settlements despite their substantial role in climate-change flood attenuation and livelihood. This is due to the lacking informing assessments from a socio-economic perspective. This study assesses the contribution of urban wetlands to the livelihood of marginalised communities in Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. Specifically, the study assesses the an extent and nature of change in wetlands in Dar es Salaam City for the past 30 years using the land-use land-cover change approach and the contribution of wetlands to livelihood using questionnaires. The results show that the loss of wetlands in Dar es Salaam is high to extent that will likely jeopardise their future contributions to livelihood. The results inform decision-makers on the importance of wise use of Urban Wetlands and conservation to improving livelihood for urban dwellers.

Keywords: wetlands, tanzania, dar es salaam, climate-change, and wetlands, livelihood

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Authors: Suzana Ramli, Wardah Tahir

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Estimation of surface runoff depth is a vital part in any rainfall-runoff modeling. It leads to stream flow calculation and later predicts flood occurrences. GIS (Geographic Information System) is an advanced and opposite tool used in simulating hydrological model due to its realistic application on topography. The paper discusses on calculation of surface runoff depth for two selected events by using GIS with Curve Number method for Upper Klang River basin. GIS enables maps intersection between soil type and land use that later produces curve number map. The results show good correlation between simulated and observed values with more than 0.7 of R2. Acceptable performance of statistical measurements namely mean error, absolute mean error, RMSE, and bias are also deduced in the paper.

Keywords: surface runoff, geographic information system, curve number method, environment

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Authors: Soroush Mokallaei

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Since ancient times, urbanization engineers have always thought of creating green spaces along with urbanization. Athens and Rome have attempted to construct public gardens around streets and palaces. Since then developing green space has become a part of urban civilization. In medieval ages, all Western cities had palaces and houses with internal gardens. In different sources green belt is defined as a green band of trees and bushes around the cities which has multiple functions. It is said that green belts are not only around the mountains, cities, and rivers but also around houses, subways, and highways. Constructing green belt around cities has different advantages such as: protecting cities against pollution, purifying air, screening dust, being a place for recreation, buffer zone of city internal lands, confronting the phenomenon of heat island, increasing agricultural products, helping to prevent illegal city development, confronting deforestation, preventing flood and increasing subterranean water resources.

Keywords: environment, garden cities, green belt, metropolises

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Authors: Dian Zhang, Brendan Heery, Maria O’Neill, Ciprian Briciu-Burghina, Noel E. O’Connor, Fiona Regan

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Recent developments in sensors, wireless data communication and the cloud computing have brought the sensor web to a whole new generation. The introduction of the concept of ‘Internet of Thing (IoT)’ has brought the sensor research into a new level, which involves the developing of long lasting, low cost, environment friendly and smart sensors; new wireless data communication technologies; big data analytics algorithms and cloud based solutions that are tailored to large scale smart sensor network. The next generation of smart sensor network consists of several layers: physical layer, where all the smart sensors resident and data pre-processes occur, either on the sensor itself or field gateway; data transmission layer, where data and instructions exchanges happen; the data process layer, where meaningful information is extracted and organized from the pre-process data stream. There are many definitions of smart sensor, however, to summarize all these definitions, a smart sensor must be Intelligent and Adaptable. In future large scale sensor network, collected data are far too large for traditional applications to send, store or process. The sensor unit must be intelligent that pre-processes collected data locally on board (this process may occur on field gateway depends on the sensor network structure). In this case study, three smart sensing methods, corresponding to simple thresholding, statistical model and machine learning based MoPBAS method, are introduced and their strength and weakness are discussed as an introduction to the smart sensing concept. Data fusion, the integration of data and knowledge from multiple sources, are key components of the next generation smart sensor network. For example, in the water level monitoring system, weather forecast can be extracted from external sources and if a heavy rainfall is expected, the server can send instructions to the sensor notes to, for instance, increase the sampling rate or switch on the sleeping mode vice versa. In this paper, we describe the deployment of 11 affordable water level sensors in the Dublin catchment. The objective of this paper is to use the deployed river level sensor network at the Dodder catchment in Dublin, Ireland as a case study to give a vision of the next generation of a smart sensor network for flood monitoring to assist agencies in making decisions about deploying resources in the case of a severe flood event. Some of the deployed sensors are located alongside traditional water level sensors for validation purposes. Using the 11 deployed river level sensors in a network as a case study, a vision of the next generation of smart sensor network is proposed. Each key component of the smart sensor network is discussed, which hopefully inspires the researchers who are working in the sensor research domain.

Keywords: smart sensing, internet of things, water level sensor, flooding

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Authors: Elham Sharifineyestani, Mohammad Farshchin

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Tropical cyclones are one of the most expensive and deadliest natural disasters. They cause heavy rainfall and serious flash flooding that result in billions of dollars of damage and considerable mortality each year in the United States. Prediction of the frequency of tropical cyclone-induced rainfall events can be helpful in emergency planning and flood risk management. In this study, we have developed a machine-learning model to predict the exceedance frequencies of tropical cyclone-induced rainfall events in the United States. Model results show a satisfactory agreement with available observations. To examine the effectiveness of our approach, we also have compared the result of our predictions with the exceedance frequencies predicted using a physics-based rainfall model by Feldmann.

Keywords: flash flooding, tropical cyclones, frequencies, machine learning, risk management

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Authors: Nina Dasari, Satvik Dasari

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Smart city solutions are being developed across the globe to transform urban areas. However, the infrastructure enablement for alerting natural disasters such as floods and wildfires is deficient. This paper discusses an innovative device that could be used as part of the smart city initiative to detect and provide alerts in case of floods at road crossings and wildfires. An Internet of Things (IoT) smart city node was designed, tested, and deployed with collaboration from the City of Austin. The end to end solution includes a 3G enabled IoT device, flood and fire sensors, cloud, a mobile app, and IoT analytics. The real-time data was collected and analyzed using IoT analytics to refine the solution for the past year. The results demonstrate that the proposed solution is reliable and provides accurate results. This low-cost solution is viable, and it can replace the current solution which costs tens of thousands of dollars.

Keywords: analytics, internet of things, natural disasters, smart city

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Authors: Jerald Ruta, Ricardo Villar, Jojemar Bantugan, Nycel Barbadillo, Jigg Pelayo

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Streams are important in providing water supply for industrial, agricultural and human consumption, In short when there are streams there are lives. Identifying streams are essential since many developed cities are situated in the vicinity of these bodies of water and in flood management, it serves as basin for surface runoff within the area. This study aims to process and generate features from high-resolution digital terrain model (DTM) with 1-meter resolution using Hydrology Tools of ArcGIS. The raster was then filled, processed flow direction and accumulation, then raster calculate and provide stream order, converted to vector, and clearing undesirable features using the ancillary or google earth. In field validation streams were classified whether perennial, intermittent or ephemeral. Results show more than 90% of the extracted feature were accurate in assessment through field validation.

Keywords: digital terrain models, hydrology tools, strahler method, stream classification

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Authors: Ibrahim Can, Fatih Tosunoğlu

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The flow duration curve (FDC) is an informative method that represents the flow regime’s properties for a river basin. Therefore, the FDC is widely used for water resource projects such as hydropower, water supply, irrigation and water quality management. The primary purpose of this study is to obtain synthetic daily flow duration curves for Çoruh Basin, Turkey. For this aim, we firstly developed univariate auto-regressive moving average (ARMA) models for daily flows of 9 stations located in Çoruh basin and then these models were used to generate 100 synthetic flow series each having same size as historical series. Secondly, flow duration curves of each synthetic series were drawn and the flow values exceeded 10, 50 and 95 % of the time and 95% confidence limit of these flows were calculated. As a result, flood, mean and low flows potential of Çoruh basin will comprehensively be represented.

Keywords: ARMA models, Çoruh basin, flow duration curve, Turkey

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Authors: Ya-Fen Lee, Yun-Yao Chi

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The study aims to explore the relationship between risk perceptions of rockfall and revisit intention using a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis. A total of 573 valid questionnaires are collected from travelers to Taroko National Park, Taiwan. The findings show the majority of travellers have the medium perception of rockfall risk, and are willing to revisit the Taroko National Park. The revisit intention to Taroko National Park is influenced by hazardous preferences, willingness-to-pay, obstruction and attraction. The risk perception has an indirect effect on revisit intention through influencing willingness-to-pay. The study results can be a reference for mitigation the rockfall disaster.

Keywords: risk perception, rockfall, revisit intention, structural equation modelling

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Authors: Ronald Blough

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Hospitals, clinics, and medical facilities are the core of the Health Services sector providing 24/7 medical care to those in need. Any disruption of these important medical services highlights the vulnerabilities in the medical system. An internal or external event can create a catastrophic incident paralyzing the medical services causing the facility to shift into emergency operations with the possibility of evacuation. The hospital administrator and government officials must decide in a very short amount of time whether to shelter in place or evacuate. This presentation will identify best practice recommendations regarding the hospital evacuation decision and response analyzing previous hospital evacuations to encourage hospitals in the region to review or develop their own emergency evacuation plans.

Keywords: disaster preparedness, hospital evacuation, shelter-in-place, incident containment, health services vulnerability, hospital resources

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Authors: Mohamed Jaditager, Julie Lovisa, Nagaratnam Sivakugan

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The Port of Townsville conducts regular annual maintenance dredging to maintain depths of its harbor basin and approach channels for the navigational safety of the vessels against the natural accumulation of marine sediments. In addition to the regular maintenance dredging, the port undertakes emergency dredging in cases where large quantities of sediments are mobilized and deposited in port waters by cyclone or major flood events. The maintenance dredging material derived from the port may be disposed at sea or on land in accordance with relevant state and commonwealth regulations. For the land disposal, the dredged mud slurry is hydraulically placed into containment ponds and left to undergo sedimentation and self-weight consolidation to form fill material for land reclamation. This paper provides an overview of the maintenance dredging at the Port of Townsville and emphasis on maintenance dredging requirements, sediment quality, bathymetry, dredging methods used, and dredged material disposal options.

Keywords: consolidation, dredged material, maintenance dredging, marine sediments, sedimentation

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Authors: Anwar H. Radwan, Jan Mrlina, El-Sayed A. Issawy, Ali Rayan, Salah M. Mahmoud

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Geodynamic investigations in the Aswan Lake region were started after the M=5.5 earthquake in 1981, triggered by the lake water fluctuations. Besides establishing the seismological networks, also the geodetic observations focused on the Kalabsha and Sayal fault zones were started. It was found that the Kalabsha fault is an active dextral strike-slip with normal component indicating uplift on its southern side. However, the annual velocity rates in both components do not exceed 2 mm/y, and do not therefore represent extremely active faulting. We also launched gravity monitoring in 1997, and performed another two campaigns in 2000 and 2002. The observed non- tidal temporal gravity changes indicate rather the flood water infiltration into the porous Nubian sandstone, than tectonic stress effect. The station nearest to the lake exhibited about 60 μGal positive gravity change within the 1997-2002 period.

Keywords: gravity monitoring, surface movements, Lake Aswan, groundwater change

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Authors: Shilpa K. Nandwani, Mousumi Chakraborty, Smita Gupta

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When selecting surfactants for surfactant flooding during enhanced oil recovery, the most important criteria is that the surfactant system should reduce the interfacial tension between water and oil to ultralow values. In the present study, a mixture of ionic liquid surfactant and commercially available binding agent sodium tosylate has been used as a surfactant mixture. Presence of wormlike micelles indicates the possibility of achieving ultralow interfacial tension. Surface tension measurements of the mixed surfactant system have been studied. The emulsion size distribution of the mixed surfactant system at varying salinities has been studied. It has been found that at high salinities the viscoelastic surfactant system loses their efficacy and degenerate. Hence the given system may find application in low salinity reservoirs, providing good mobility to the flood during tertiary oil recovery process.

Keywords: ionic liquis, interfacial tension, Na-tosylate, viscoelastic surfactants

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Authors: Jialin Wu, Zhiwei Lian, Jieyu Tang, Jingyun Shen

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Tornado is a serious and unpredictable natural disaster, which has an important impact on people's production and life. The probability of being hit by tornadoes in China was analyzed considering the principles of tornado formation. Then some suggestions on layout and shapes for newly-built buildings were provided combined with the characteristics of tornado wind fields. Fuzzy clustering and inverse closeness methods were used to evaluate the probability levels of tornado risks in various provinces based on classification and ranking. GIS was adopted to display the results. Finally, wind field single-vortex tornado was studied to discuss the optimized design of rural low-rise houses in Yancheng, Jiangsu as an example. This paper may provide enough data to support building and urban design in some specific regions.

Keywords: tornado probability, computational fluid dynamics, fuzzy mathematics, optimal design

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Authors: Naci Büyükkaracığan

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Today, the need for water sources is swiftly increasing due to population growth. At the same time, it is known that some regions will face with shortage of water and drought because of the global warming and climate change. In this context, evaluation and analysis of hydrological data such as the observed trends, drought and flood prediction of short term flow has great deal of importance. The most accurate selection probability distribution is important to describe the low flow statistics for the studies related to drought analysis. As in many basins In Turkey, Gediz River basin will be affected enough by the drought and will decrease the amount of used water. The aim of this study is to derive appropriate probability distributions for frequency analysis of annual minimum flows at 6 gauging stations of the Gediz Basin. After applying 10 different probability distributions, six different parameter estimation methods and 3 fitness test, the Pearson 3 distribution and general extreme values distributions were found to give optimal results.

Keywords: Gediz Basin, goodness-of-fit tests, minimum flows, probability distribution

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Authors: Nabilah Filzah Mohd Radzuan, Andi Putra, Zalinda Othman, Azuraliza Abu Bakar, Abdul Razak Hamdan

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Precipitation forecast is important to avoid natural disaster incident which can cause losses in the involved area. This paper reviews three techniques logistic regression, decision tree, and random forest which are used in making precipitation forecast. These combination techniques through the vector auto-regression (VAR) model help in finding the advantages and strengths of each technique in the forecast process. The data-set contains variables of the rain’s domain. Adaptation of artificial intelligence techniques involved in rain domain enables the forecast process to be easier and systematic for precipitation forecast.

Keywords: logistic regression, decisions tree, random forest, VAR model

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Authors: Chiang Wei, Hui-Chung Yeh, Yen-Chang Chen

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The objective of this study is to estimate the rainfall using the new generation Himawari-8 meteorological satellite with multi-band, high-bit format, and high spatiotemporal resolution, ground rainfall data at the Chen-Yu-Lan watershed of Joushuei River Basin (443.6 square kilometers) in Central Taiwan. Accurate and fine-scale rainfall information is essential for rugged terrain with high local variation for early warning of flood, landslide, and debris flow disasters. 10-minute and 2 km pixel-based rainfall of Typhoon Megi of 2016 and meiyu on June 1-4 of 2017 were tested to demonstrate the new generation Himawari-8 meteorological satellite can capture rainfall variation in the rugged mountainous area both at fine-scale and watershed scale. The results provide the valuable rainfall information for early warning of future disasters.

Keywords: estimation, Himawari-8, rainfall, satellite imagery

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Authors: Rajni Singh, Rakesh Mishra, Mukunda Upadhyay

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India is among the nations born out of partition that led to one of the greatest forced migrations that marked the past century. The Indian subcontinent got partitioned into two nation-states, namely India and Pakistan. This led to an unexampled mass displacement of people accounting for about 20 million in the subcontinent as a whole. This exemplifies the socio-political version of displacement, but there are other identified reasons leading to human displacement viz., natural calamities, development projects and people-trafficking and smuggling. Although forced migrations are rare in incidence, they are mostly region-specific and a very less percentage of population appears to be affected by it. However, when this percentage is transcripted in terms of volume, the real impact created by such migration can be realized. Forced migration is thus an issue related to the lives of many people and requires to be addressed with proper intervention. Forced or involuntary migration decimates peoples' assets while taking from them their most basic resources and makes them migrate without planning and intention. This in most cases proves to be a burden on the destination resources. Thus, the question related to their security concerns arise profoundly with regard to the protection and safeguards to these migrants who need help at the place of destination. This brings the human security dimension of forced migration into picture. The present study is an analysis of a sample of 1501 persons by NSSO in India (National Sample Survey Organisation), which identifies three reasons for forced migration- natural disaster, social/political problem and displacement by development projects. It was observed that, of the total forced migrants, about 4/5th comprised of the internally displaced persons. However, there was a huge inflow of such migrants to the country from across the borders also, the major contributing countries being Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Gulf countries and Nepal. Among the three reasons for involuntary migration, social and political problem is the most prominent in displacing huge masses of population; it is also the reason where the share of international migrants to that of internally displaced is higher compared to the other two factors /reasons. Second to political and social problems, natural calamities displaced a high portion of the involuntary migrants. The present paper examines the factors which increase people's vulnerability to forced migration. On perusing the background characteristics of the migrants it was seen that those who were economically weak and socially fragile are more susceptible to migration. Therefore, getting an insight about this fragile group of society is required so that government policies can benefit these in the most efficient and targeted manner.

Keywords: involuntary migration, displacement, natural disaster, social and political problem

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Authors: İsmail Şimşekoğlu, Serkan Yılmaz

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There have been great improvements in technology that caused epoch-making changes in aviation. Thus, we can control air vehicles from ground without pilots in them: The UAVs. Due to UAV’s lack of need of pilots and their small size make them have crucial importance for us. UAVs have variety of usage area, especially in military. However, as soldiers we believe that we can use UAVs for better purposes. In this essay we indicate the usage of UAVs for the sake of saving nature from destruction of disasters by expressing what happened in the past and what can possibly happen in the future, especially in firefighting, preventing avalanches and decreasing the effects of floods. These three disasters cause hazardous consequences to the nature. Wildfires endanger so many lives by burning and destroying what comes in their paths. The numbers of avalanches are increased with the global warming. The changes of seasons triggered floods all over the world that threaten the city life. Besides all of these people may lose their lives in order to intrude these disasters. Drones will do the job without involving people lives. Thus it will diminish the risks so drones will be used for the sake of nature and people.

Keywords: unmanned air vehicles, nature, firefighting, avalanche, flood

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Authors: Santhani M. Selveindran

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Background: Natural disasters are traumatic global events that are becoming increasing more common, with significant psychosocial impact on survivors. This impact results not only in psychosocial distress but, for many, can lead to psychosocial disorders and chronic psychopathology. While there are currently available interventions that seek to prevent and treat these psychosocial sequelae, their effectiveness is uncertain. The evidence-base is emerging with more primary studies evaluating the effectiveness of various psychosocial interventions for survivors of natural disasters, which remains to be synthesized. Aim of Review: To identify, critically appraise and synthesize the current evidence-base on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in preventing or treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and/or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) in adults and children who are survivors of natural disasters. Methods: A protocol was developed as a guide to carry out this review. A systematic search was conducted in eight international electronic databases, three grey literature databases, one dissertation and thesis repository, websites of six humanitarian and non-governmental organizations renowned for their work on natural disasters, as well as bibliographic and citation searching for eligible articles. Papers meeting the specific inclusion criteria underwent quality assessment using the Downs and Black checklist. Data were extracted from the included papers and analysed by way of narrative synthesis. Results: Database and website searching returned 3777 papers where 31 met the criteria for inclusion. Additional 2 papers were obtained through bibliographic and citation searching. Methodological quality of most papers was fair. Twenty-five studies evaluated psychological interventions, five, social interventions whereas three studies evaluated ‘mixed’ psychological and social interventions. All studies, irrespective of methodological quality, reported post-intervention reductions in symptom scores for PTSD, depression and/or anxiety and where assessed, reduced diagnosis of PTSD and MDD, and produced improvements in self-efficacy and quality of life. Statistically significant results were seen in 27 studies. However, three studies demonstrated that the evaluated interventions may not have been very beneficial. Conclusions: The overall positive results suggest that any psychosocial interventions are favourable and should be delivered to all natural disaster survivors, irrespective of age, country, and phase of disaster. Yet, heterogeneity and methodological shortcomings of the current evidence-base makes it difficult to draw definite conclusions needed to formulate categorical guidance or frameworks. Further, rigorously conducted research is needed in this area, although the feasibility of such, given the context and nature of the problem, is also recognized.

Keywords: psychosocial interventions, natural disasters, survivors, effectiveness

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Authors: Louis Denis Kevin Catherine, Raja Aziz Raja Ma’arof, Azrina Arshad, Sangeeth Suresh

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Machining parameters are very important in determining the surface quality of any material. In the past decade, some new engineering materials were developed for the manufacturing industry which created a need to conduct an investigation on the impact of the said parameters on their surface roughness. The polyurethane (PU) block is widely used in the automotive industry to manufacture parts such as checking fixtures that are used to verify the dimensional accuracy of automotive parts. In this paper, the design of experiment (DOE) was used to investigate the effect of the milling parameters on the PU block. Furthermore, an analysis of the machined surface chemical composition was done using scanning electron microscope (SEM). It was found that the surface roughness of the PU block is severely affected when PU undergoes a flood machining process instead of a dry condition. In addition, the step over and the silicon content were found to be the most significant parameters that influence the surface quality of the PU block.

Keywords: polyurethane (PU), design of experiment (DOE), scanning electron microscope (SEM), surface roughness

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Authors: Adavbiele Airewe Stephen

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Sustainable energy use is exploiting energy resources within acceptable levels of global resource depletion without destroying the ecological balance of an area. In the context of sustainability, the rush to quell the energy crisis of the fossil fuels of the 1970's by embarking on nuclear energy technology has now been seen as a disaster. In the circumstance, action (policy) suggested in this study to avoid future occurrence is exergy maximization/entropy generation minimization and the use is renewable energy technologies that are hybrid based. Thirty-two (32) selected hybrid renewable energy technologies were assessed with respect to their energetic efficiencies and entropy generation. The results indicated that determining which of the hybrid technologies is the most efficient process and sustainable is a matter of defining efficiency and knowing which of them possesses the minimum entropy generation.

Keywords: entropy, exergy, hybrid renewable energy technologies, sustainability

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Authors: Muazzam A. Khan

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In order to avoid dangerous environmental disasters, robots are being recognized as good entrants to step in as human rescuers. Robots has been gaining interest of many researchers in rescue matters especially which are furnished with advanced sensors. In distributed wireless robot system main objective for a rescue system is to track the location of the object continuously. This paper provides a novel idea to track and locate human in disaster area using stereo vision system and ZigBee technology. This system recursively predict and updates 3D coordinates in a robot coordinate camera system of a human which makes the system cost effective. This system is comprised of ZigBee network which has many advantages such as low power consumption, self-healing low data rates and low cost.

Keywords: stereo vision, segmentation, classification, human tracking, ZigBee module

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Authors: Pariya Sheykhmaleki, Debajyoti Pati

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Rural areas in the United States face numerous challenges in providing quality and assessable primary healthcare services, especially during emergencies such as natural disasters or pandemics. This study showcases a cutting-edge flexible module that aims to overcome these challenges by offering adaptable healthcare facilities capable of providing comprehensive health services in remote and disaster-prone regions. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), approximately 62 million Americans, or 1 in 5 individuals, live in areas designated as Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) for primary care. These areas are characterized by limited access to healthcare facilities, shortage of healthcare professionals, transportation barriers, inadequate healthcare infrastructure, higher rates of chronic diseases, mental health disparities, and limited availability of specialized care, including urgent circumstances like pandemics that can exacerbate this issue. To address these challenges, the literature study began by examining primary health solutions in very remote areas, e.g., spaceships, to identify the state-of-the-art technologies and the methods used to facilitate primary care needs. The literature study on flexibility in architecture and interior design was also adapted to develop a conceptual design for rural areas. The designed flexible module provides an innovative solution. This module can be prefabricated as all parts are standardized. The flexibility of the module allows the structure to be modified based on local and geographical requirements as well as the ability to expand as required. It has been designed to stand either by itself or work in tandem with public buildings. By utilizing sustainable approaches and flexible spatial configurations, the module optimizes the utilization of limited resources while ensuring efficient and effective healthcare delivery. Furthermore, the poster highlights the key features of this flexible module, including its ability to support telemedicine and telehealth services for all five levels of urgent care conditions, i.e., from facilitating fast tracks to supporting emergency room services, in two divided zones. The module's versatility enables its deployment in rural areas located far from urban centers and disaster-stricken regions, ensuring access to critical healthcare services in times of need. This module is also capable of responding in urban areas when the need for primary health becomes vastly urgent, e.g., during a pandemic. It emphasizes the module's potential to bridge the healthcare gap between rural and urban areas and mitigate the impact of rural health challenges.

Keywords: rural health, healthcare challenges, flexible modular design, telemedicine, telehealth

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Authors: Juhi Sah

Abstract:

Habitat is characterized by the inter-dependency of environmental elements. Anthropocentric development approach is increasing our vulnerability towards natural hazards. Hence, manmade interventions should have a higher level of sensitivity towards the natural settings. Sensitivity towards the environment can be assessed by the behavior of the stakeholders involved. This led to the establishment of a hypothesis: there exists a legitimate relationship between the behavioral sciences, land use evolution and environment conservation, in the planning process. An attempt has been made to establish this relationship by reviewing the existing set of knowledge and case examples pertaining to the three disciplines under inquiry. Understanding the scarce & deteriorating nature of fresh-water reserves of earth and experimenting the above concept, a case study of a growing urban center's river flood plain is selected, in a developing economy, India. Cases of urban flooding in Chennai, Delhi and other mega cities of India, imposes a high risk on the unauthorized settlement, on the floodplains of the rivers. The issue addressed here is the encroachment of floodplains, through psychological enlightenment and modification through knowledge building. The reaction of an individual or society can be compared to a cognitive process. This study documents all the stakeholders' behavior and perception for their immediate natural environment (water body), and produce various land uses suitable along a river in an urban settlement as per different stakeholder's perceptions. To assess and induce morally responsible behavior in a community (small scale or large scale), tools of psychological inquiry is used for qualitative analysis. The analysis will deal with varied data sets from two sectors namely: River and its geology, Land use planning and regulation. Identification of a distinctive pattern in the built up growth, river ecology degradation, and human behavior, by handling large quantum of data from the diverse sector and comments on the availability of relevant data and its implications, has been done. Along the whole river stretch, condition and usage of its bank vary, hence stakeholder specific survey questionnaires have been prepared to accurately map the responses and habits of the rational inhabitants. A conceptual framework has been designed to move forward with the empirical analysis. The classical principle of virtues says "virtue of a human depends on its character" but another concept defines that the behavior or response is a derivative of situations and to bring about a behavioral change one needs to introduce a disruption in the situation/environment. Owing to the present trends, blindly following the results of data analytics and using it to construct policy, is not proving to be in favor of planned development and natural resource conservation. Thus behavioral assessment of the rational inhabitants of the planet is also required, as their activities and interests have a large impact on the earth's pre-set systems and its sustenance.

Keywords: behavioral assessment, flood plain encroachment, land use planning, river sustenance

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Authors: Hye Kyung Kim, Myung-Gyou Kim, Kang-Hyun Leem

Abstract:

Postmenopausal osteoporosis is characterized by low bone density which leads to increased bone fragility and greater susceptibility to fracture. Current treatments for osteoporosis are dominated by drugs that inhibit bone resorption although they also suppress bone formation that may contribute to pathogenesis of osteonecrosis. To restore the extensive bone loss, there is a great need for anabolic treatments that induce osteoblasts to build new bone. Pre-osteoblastic cells produce proteins of the extra-cellular matrix, including type I collagen at first, and then to successively produce alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and osteocalcin during differentiation to osteoblasts. Finally, osteoblasts deposit calcium. Present study investigated the effects of egg yolk peptide (EYP) on osteogenic activities and bone matrix gene expressions in human osteoblastic MG-63 cells. The effects of EYP on cell proliferation, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, collagen synthesis, and mineralization were measured. The expression of osteogenic genes including COL1A1 (collagen, type I, alpha 1), ALP, BGLAP (osteocalcin), and SPP1 (secreted phosphoprotein 1, osteopontin) were measured by quantitative realtime PCR. EYP dose-dependently increased MG-63 cell proliferation, ALP activity, collagen synthesis, and calcium deposition. Furthermore, COL1A1, ALP, and SPP1 gene expressions were increased by EYP treatment. Present study suggested that EYP treatment enhanced osteogenic activities and increased bone matrix osteogenicgenes. These results could provide a mechanistic explanation for the bone-strengthening effects of EYP.

Keywords: egg yolk peptide, osteoblastic MG-63 cells, alkaline phosphatase, collagen synthesis, osteogenic genes, COL1A1, osteocalcin, osteopontin

Procedia PDF Downloads 388

Authors: Gabriel Malgaresi, Sara Borazjani, Hadi Madani, Pavel Bedrikovetsky

Abstract:

Suspension-Colloidal flow in porous media occurs in numerous engineering fields, such as industrial water treatment, the disposal of industrial wastes into aquifers with the propagation of contaminants and low salinity water injection into petroleum reservoirs. The main effects are particle mobilization and captured by the porous rock, which can cause pore plugging and permeability reduction which is known as formation damage. Various factors such as fluid salinity, pH, temperature, and rock properties affect particle detachment. Formation damage is unfavorable specifically near injection and production wells. One way to control formation damage is pre-treatment of the rock with nanoparticles. Adsorption of nanoparticles on fines and rock surfaces alters zeta-potential of the surfaces and enhances the attachment force between the rock and fine particles. The main objective of this study is to develop a two-stage mathematical model for (1) flow and adsorption of nanoparticles on the rock in the pre-treatment stage and (2) fines migration and permeability reduction during the water production after the pre-treatment. The model accounts for adsorption and desorption of nanoparticles, fines migration, and kinetics of particle capture. The system of equations allows for the exact solution. The non-self-similar wave-interaction problem was solved by the Method of Characteristics. The analytical model is new in two ways: First, it accounts for the specific boundary and initial condition describing the injection of nanoparticle and production from the pre-treated porous media; second, it contains the effect of nanoparticle sorption hysteresis. The derived analytical model contains explicit formulae for the concentration fronts along with pressure drop. The solution is used to determine the optimal injection concentration of nanoparticle to avoid formation damage. The mathematical model was validated via an innovative laboratory program. The laboratory study includes two sets of core-flood experiments: (1) production of water without nanoparticle pre-treatment; (2) pre-treatment of a similar core with nanoparticles followed by water production. Positively-charged Alumina nanoparticles with the average particle size of 100 nm were used for the rock pre-treatment. The core was saturated with the nanoparticles and then flushed with low salinity water; pressure drop across the core and the outlet fine concentration was monitored and used for model validation. The results of the analytical modeling showed a significant reduction in the fine outlet concentration and formation damage. This observation was in great agreement with the results of core-flood data. The exact solution accurately describes fines particle breakthroughs and evaluates the positive effect of nanoparticles in formation damage. We show that the adsorbed concentration of nanoparticle highly affects the permeability of the porous media. For the laboratory case presented, the reduction of permeability after 1 PVI production in the pre-treated scenario is 50% lower than the reference case. The main outcome of this study is to provide a validated mathematical model to evaluate the effect of nanoparticles on formation damage.

Keywords: nano-particles, formation damage, permeability, fines migration

Procedia PDF Downloads 623