scholarly journals Estimating The Distribution of Livestock In Space And Time: A Time-Series Contribution To Livestock Density Mapping

Author(s):  
Julianne Meisner ◽  
Agapitus Kato ◽  
Marshall Lemerani ◽  
Erick Mwamba Miaka ◽  
Acaga Ismail Taban ◽  
...  

Abstract More than one billion people rely on livestock for income, nutrition, and social cohesion, however livestock keeping can facilitate disease transmission and contribute to climate change. While data on the distribution of livestock thus have broad utility across a range of applications, efforts to map the distribution of livestock on a large scale are limited to the Gridded Livestock of the World (GLW) project. We present a complimentary effort to map the distribution of cattle and pigs in Malawi, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and South Sudan. In contrast to GLW, which uses dasymmetric modeling applied to census data to produce time-stratified estimates of livestock counts and spatial density, our work uses complex survey data and distinct modeling methods to generate a time-series of livestock distribution, defining livestock density as the ratio of animals to humans. In addition to favorable cross-validation results and general agreement with national density estimates derived from external data on national human and livestock populations, our results demonstrate extremely good agreement with GLW-3 estimates, supporting the validity of both efforts. Our results furthermore offer a high-resolution time series result and employ a definition of density which is particularly well-suited to the study of livestock-origin zoonoses.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 3603
Author(s):  
Joaquín Salas ◽  
Pablo Vera ◽  
Marivel Zea-Ortiz ◽  
Elio-Atenogenes Villaseñor ◽  
Dagoberto Pulido ◽  
...  

One of the challenges in the fight against poverty is the precise localization and assessment of vulnerable communities’ sprawl. The characterization of vulnerability is traditionally accomplished using nationwide census exercises, a burdensome process that requires field visits by trained personnel. Unfortunately, most countrywide censuses exercises are conducted only sporadically, making it difficult to track the short-term effect of policies to reduce poverty. This paper introduces a definition of vulnerability following UN-Habitat criteria, assesses different CNN machine learning architectures, and establishes a mapping between satellite images and survey data. Starting with the information corresponding to the 2,178,508 residential blocks recorded in the 2010 Mexican census and multispectral Landsat-7 images, multiple CNN architectures are explored. The best performance is obtained with EfficientNet-B3 achieving an area under the ROC and Precision-Recall curves of 0.9421 and 0.9457, respectively. This article shows that publicly available information, in the form of census data and satellite images, along with standard CNN architectures, may be employed as a stepping stone for the countrywide characterization of vulnerability at the residential block level.


Author(s):  
Andrew D. Haddow ◽  
Sarah C. Clarke

Google health-based Knowledge Panels were designed to provide users with high-quality basic medical information on a specific condition. However, any errors contained within Knowledge Panels could result in the widespread distribution of inaccurate health information. We explored the potential for inaccuracies to exist within Google’s health-based Knowledge Panels by focusing on a single well-studied pathogen, Ebola virus (EBOV). We then evaluated the accuracy of those transmission modes listed within the Google Ebola Knowledge Panel and investigated the pervasiveness of any misconceptions associated with inaccurate transmission modes among persons living in Africa. We found that the Google Ebola Knowledge Panel inaccurately listed insect bites or stings as modes of EBOV transmission. Our scoping review found 27 articles and reports that revealed that 9 of 11 countries where misconceptions regarding insect transmission of EBOV have been reported are locations of current (i.e., Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea) or previous EBOV outbreaks. We found reports that up to 26.6% (155/582) of study respondents in Democratic Republic of Congo believed mosquito bite avoidance would prevent EBOV; in other locations of previous large-scale EBOV outbreaks (e.g., Guinea), up to 61.0% (304/498) of respondents believed insects were involved in EBOV transmission. Our findings highlight the potential for errors to exist within the health information contained in Google’s health-based Knowledge Panels. Such errors could perpetuate misconceptions or misinformation, leading to mistrust of health workers and aid agencies and in turn undermining public health education or outbreak response efforts.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Krasteva ◽  
Manuel Jara ◽  
Alba Frias-De-Diego ◽  
Gustavo Machado

AbstractNairobi Sheep Disease virus (NSDv) is a zoonotic and tick-borne disease that can cause over 90% mortality in small ruminants. NSDv has historically circulated in East Africa and has recently emerged in the Asian continent. Despite efforts to control the disease, some regions, mostly in warmer climates, persistently report disease outbreaks. Consequently, it is necessary to understand how environmental tolerances and factors that influence transmission may shed light on its possible emergence in other regions. In this study, we quantified the available literature of NSDv from which occurrence data was extracted. In total, 308 locations from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia, India, Sri Lanka and China were coupled with landscape conditions to reconstruct the ecological conditions for NSDv circulation and identify areas of potential disease transmission risk. Our results identified areas suitable for NSDv in Ethiopia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Southeastern China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Unsuitable areas included Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Southern Somalia. In summary, soil moisture, livestock density, and precipitation predispose certain areas to NSDv circulation. It is critical to investigate the epidemiology of NSDv in order to promote better allocation of resources to control its spread in regions that are more at risk. This will help reduce disease impact worldwide as climate change will favor emergence of such vector-borne diseases in areas with dense small ruminant populations.


Author(s):  
С. Л. Подвальный ◽  
О. А. Сотникова ◽  
Я. А. Золотухина

Постановка задачи. В настоящее время формирование современной комфортной городской среды приобретает особое социально-экономическое значение и выдвигается в число приоритетных государственных масштабных программ. В связи с этим необходимо разработать концепцию благоустройства ключевого общественного пространства, а именно: определить основные и сопутствующие функции данной территории, создать эскизное предложение проекта благоустройства с учетом всех необходимых норм и стандартов, внедрить современные технологии. Результаты. Выполнен эскизный дизайн-проект «Аллеи архитекторов» по ул. Орджоникидзе г. Воронеж, включающий в себя основные элементы по зонированию территории, проектированию акцентных объектов и внедрению инновационных технологий «умного города», позволяющих повысить уровень комфорта горожан. Выводы. Благоустройство населенных мест приобретает особое значение в условиях дискомфорта среды. С выполнением комплекса мероприятий, направленных на благоустройство, и с внедрением современных технологий значительно улучшается экологическое состояние, внешний облик города. Оздоровление и модернизация среды, которая окружает человека в городе, благотворно влияет на психофизическое состояние, что особенно важно в период интенсивного роста городов. Statement of the problem. Currently the formation of the modern comfortable urban environment is gaining a special social and economic value and moving forward in the priorities of state large-scale programs. The purpose of development of the concept of improvement of public space is definition of the main and accompanying functions of this territory, design of the outline offer of the project of improvement considering all necessary norms and standards and implementation of modern technologies. Results. The conceptual project of “Alley of Architects” includes the basic elements of territory zoning, design of accent objects and implementation of technologies of a “smart-city”. These elements allow one to increase the level of comfort of inhabitants. Conclusions. Improvement of the inhabited places is of particular importance in the conditions of discomfort of the environment. Carrying out a complex of the actions directed to gardening and improvement, introducing modern technologies, the ecological condition, the physical appearance of the city considerably improves. Improvement and modernization of the environment which surrounds the person in the city influences a psychophysical state well that especially important during intensive growth of the cities.


1990 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 291-298
Author(s):  
Frits A. Fastenau ◽  
Jaap H. J. M. van der Graaf ◽  
Gerard Martijnse

More than 95 % of the total housing stock in the Netherlands is connected to central sewerage systems and in most cases the wastewater is treated biologically. As connection to central sewerage systems has reached its economic limits, interest in on-site treatment of the domestic wastewater of the remaining premises is increasing. A large scale research programme into on-site wastewater treatment up to population equivalents of 200 persons has therefore been initiated by the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment. Intensive field-research work did establish that the technological features of most on-site biological treatment systems were satisfactory. A large scale implementation of these systems is however obstructed in different extents by problems of an organisational, financial and/or juridical nature and management difficulties. At present research is carried out to identify these bottlenecks and to analyse possible solutions. Some preliminary results are given which involve the following ‘bottlenecks':-legislation: absence of co-ordination and absence of a definition of ‘surface water';-absence of subsidies;-ownership: divisions in task-setting of Municipalities and Waterboards; divisions involved with cost-sharing;-inspection; operational control and maintenance; organisation of management;-discharge permits;-pollution levy;-sludge disposal. Final decisions and practical elaboration of policies towards on-site treatment will have to be formulated in a broad discussion with all the authorities and interest groups involved.


Author(s):  
Mark Newman

An introduction to the mathematics of the Poisson random graph, the simplest model of a random network. The chapter starts with a definition of the model, followed by derivations of basic properties like the mean degree, degree distribution, and clustering coefficient. This is followed with a detailed derivation of the large-scale structural properties of random graphs, including the position of the phase transition at which a giant component appears, the size of the giant component, the average size of the small components, and the expected diameter of the network. The chapter ends with a discussion of some of the shortcomings of the random graph model.


2014 ◽  
Vol 488-489 ◽  
pp. 1439-1443
Author(s):  
Jin Hai Li ◽  
Jian Feng Liu

Hyperpaths enumeration is one of the basic procedures in many traffic planning issues. As a result of its distinctive structure, hyperpaths in Urban Rail Transit Network (URTN) are different from those in road network. Typically, one may never visit a station more than once and would never transfer from one line to another that has been visited in a loopless URTN, meaning that stations a hyperpath traversed cannot be repeated, neither do lines in loopless networks. This paper studies the relationships between feasible path and the shortest path in terms of travel costs. In this paper, a new definition of hyperpath in URTN is proposed and a new algorithm based on the breadth first searching (BFS) method is presented to enumerate the hyperpaths. The algorithm can safely avoid hyperpath omission and can even be applied in networks containing loops as well. The influence of parameters on hyperpaths is studied by experimentally finding hyperpaths in the subway network in Beijing. A group of suggested parameter pairs are then given. Finally, a numerical experiment is used to illustrate the validity of the proposed algorithm. The results imply the significance of the convergence of the BFS algorithm which can be used to search hyperpaths in large scale URTN even with loop.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4772
Author(s):  
Hanna Klikocka ◽  
Aneta Zakrzewska ◽  
Piotr Chojnacki

The article describes and sets the definition of different farm models under the categories of being family, small, and large-scale commercial farms. The distinction was based on the structure of the workforce and the relationship between agricultural income and the minimum wage. Family farms were dominated by the farming family providing the labour and their income per capita exceeded the net minimum wage in the country. The larger commercial farms feature a predominance of hired labour. Based on surveys, it was found that in 2016 in the EU-28 there were 10,467,000 farms (EU-13—57.3%, EU-15—42.7%). They carried out agricultural activities on an area of 173,338,000 ha (EU-13—28.5%, EU-15—71.5%). Countries of the EU-28 generated a standard output (SO) amounting to EUR 364,118,827,100 (EU-13—17.2% and EU-15—82.8%). After the delimitation, it was shown that small farming (70.8%) was the predominant form of management in the European Union (EU-13—88.2% and EU-15—79.8%) compared to family farming (18.4%) (EU-13—10.5% and EU-15—29%). In most EU countries the largest share of land resources pertains to small farms (35.6%) and family farms (38.6%) (UAA—utilised agricultural area of farms).


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruaridh A. Clark ◽  
Malcolm Macdonald

AbstractContact networks provide insights on disease spread due to the duration of close proximity interactions. For systems governed by consensus dynamics, network structure is key to optimising the spread of information. For disease spread over contact networks, the structure would be expected to be similarly influential. However, metrics that are essentially agnostic to the network’s structure, such as weighted degree (strength) centrality and its variants, perform near-optimally in selecting effective spreaders. These degree-based metrics outperform eigenvector centrality, despite disease spread over a network being a random walk process. This paper improves eigenvector-based spreader selection by introducing the non-linear relationship between contact time and the probability of disease transmission into the assessment of network dynamics. This approximation of disease spread dynamics is achieved by altering the Laplacian matrix, which in turn highlights why nodes with a high degree are such influential disease spreaders. From this approach, a trichotomy emerges on the definition of an effective spreader where, for susceptible-infected simulations, eigenvector-based selections can either optimise the initial rate of infection, the average rate of infection, or produce the fastest time to full infection of the network. Simulated and real-world human contact networks are examined, with insights also drawn on the effective adaptation of ant colony contact networks to reduce pathogen spread and protect the queen ant.


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