scholarly journals Species composition and diversity of freshwater snails and land snails at the swampy areas and streams edges in the urban zone of Douala, Cameroon

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 1297-1324
Author(s):  
Edith Laure Kenne ◽  
Jeanne Agrippine Yetchom-Fondjo ◽  
Mohamed Basile Moumite ◽  
Sedrick Junior Tsekane ◽  
Babell Ngamaleu-Siewe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Abundance ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Land Snails ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Freshwater Snails ◽  
Intermediate Hosts ◽  
Important Species ◽  
Infected People ◽  
The City

Fascioliasis and bilharzia occur in the Littoral region of Cameroon. Recent reports indicate a high prevalence of bilharzia in school-age children in the locality of Njombé-Penja, close to the city of Douala. This infectious disease may spread in the near future to the city of Douala, especially if the localities at risk are visited by infected people, who defecate or urinate in streams or swamps as is the habit of populations in populous zones of the city and where environmental cleanliness is not respected. It is known that several molluscs are intermediate hosts of the infectious agents of this pathology but little is known about the snail’s community structure at the coastal zone of the country. The present study aimed to establish a baseline of information on the distribution of snails in the urban environments of the Douala coastal Littoral-zone, as a first step in evaluating the status and the occurrence level of snails known as intermediate hosts of schistosomiasis and distomatosis agents. Seventy-three sample units where inspected from July to November 2020 in eight quarters of the Douala city, using 49 non-contiguous transects 5x40 m² each along streams and 24 non-contiguous quadrates 10x10 m² each around swamps. A total of 4,068 snail’s shelter belonged to 9 families: 3(33.3%) and 6 (66.7%) families for land and freshwater snails respectively. Specimens belonged to 14 genera [6 (42.9%) and 8 (57.1%) genera for land and freshwater snails respectively], and 30 species [14 (46.7%) and 16 (53.3%) species for land and freshwater snails respectively]. Land snails were most diverse [E(Sn=151) = 14 ± 0 species] than freshwater snails [E(Sn=151) = 11 ± 1 species]. Economically important species were highly represented in land snails (30.3%) and lowly represented in freshwater snails (6.1%). Between land snails Achatina and Archachatina (invasive pests for agriculture) were highly recorded in Bépanda-Sic-Cacao, Makepé-Missoké and PK10-Plateau quarters while between freshwater snails known as obligate intermediate hosts for fascioliasis and bilharzia agents, Lymnaea was recorded in Bépanda-Sic-Cacao, Nkomba and Mbanga-Pongo quarters while Biomphalaria occurred exclusively in PK10-Plateau quarter. The community exhibited low evenness, low species richness, low species diversity and low dominance by a few species. The theoretical lognormal model fitted the species abundance distributions and species exhibited a positive association (Schluter’s ratio VR = 6.69, statistic W = 53.49, df = 8, p<0.001 for land snails; VR = 2.27, W = 18.18, df = 8, p = 0.020 for freshwater snails; VR = 4.17, W = 33.42, p<0.001 for the pooled data). Low dominance by a few species indicated that study sites were slightly influenced by interspecific competition and/or disturbance by human activities.

Minimetrò in Perugia as leverage for urban regeneration

TERRITORIO ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 148-163
Author(s):  
Luca Fondacci
Keyword(s):  
Urban Regeneration ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Field Surveys ◽  
Peripheral Area ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Considerable Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Historical Centre

In the 1970s, the fragile historical centre of the city of Perugia was a key area where the binomial of sustainable mobility and urban regeneration was developed and applied. At the turn of the xxi century, the low carbon automatic people-mover Minimetrò broadened that application from the city's historical centre to the outskirts, promoting the enhancement of several urban environments. This paper is the outcome of an investigation of original sources, field surveys and direct interviews, which addresses the Minimetrò as the backbone of a wide regeneration process which has had a considerable impact on the economic development of a peripheral area of the city which was previously devoid of any clear urban sense. The conclusion proposes some solutions to improve the nature of the Minimetrò as an experimental alternative means of transport.

scholarly journals Facilitating fine-grained intra-urban dengue forecasting by integrating urban environments measured from street-view images

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kang Liu ◽  
Ling Yin ◽  
Meng Zhang ◽  
Min Kang ◽  
Ai-Ping Deng ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Feature Vector ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Environmental Feature ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Environmental Features ◽  
Street View ◽  
The City ◽  
Dengue Epidemic

Abstract Background Dengue fever (DF) is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that has threatened tropical and subtropical regions in recent decades. An early and targeted warning of a dengue epidemic is important for vector control. Current studies have primarily determined weather conditions to be the main factor for dengue forecasting, thereby neglecting that environmental suitability for mosquito breeding is also an important factor, especially in fine-grained intra-urban settings. Considering that street-view images are promising for depicting physical environments, this study proposes a framework for facilitating fine-grained intra-urban dengue forecasting by integrating the urban environments measured from street-view images. Methods The dengue epidemic that occurred in 167 townships of Guangzhou City, China, between 2015 and 2019 was taken as a study case. First, feature vectors of street-view images acquired inside each township were extracted by a pre-trained convolutional neural network, and then aggregated as an environmental feature vector of the township. Thus, townships with similar physical settings would exhibit similar environmental features. Second, the environmental feature vector is combined with commonly used features (e.g., temperature, rainfall, and past case count) as inputs to machine-learning models for weekly dengue forecasting. Results The performance of machine-learning forecasting models (i.e., MLP and SVM) integrated with and without environmental features were compared. This indicates that models integrating environmental features can identify high-risk urban units across the city more precisely than those using common features alone. In addition, the top 30% of high-risk townships predicted by our proposed methods can capture approximately 50–60% of dengue cases across the city. Conclusions Incorporating local environments measured from street view images is effective in facilitating fine-grained intra-urban dengue forecasting, which is beneficial for conducting spatially precise dengue prevention and control.

scholarly journals Prediction limits of mobile phone activity modelling

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 160900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dániel Kondor ◽  
Sebastian Grauwin ◽  
Zsófia Kallus ◽  
István Gódor ◽  
Stanislav Sobolevsky ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Prediction Limits ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
City Structure ◽  
The City

Thanks to their widespread usage, mobile devices have become one of the main sensors of human behaviour and digital traces left behind can be used as a proxy to study urban environments. Exploring the nature of the spatio-temporal patterns of mobile phone activity could thus be a crucial step towards understanding the full spectrum of human activities. Using 10 months of mobile phone records from Greater London resolved in both space and time, we investigate the regularity of human telecommunication activity on urban scales. We evaluate several options for decomposing activity timelines into typical and residual patterns, accounting for the strong periodic and seasonal components. We carry out our analysis on various spatial scales, showing that regularity increases as we look at aggregated activity in larger spatial units with more activity in them. We examine the statistical properties of the residuals and show that it can be explained by noise and specific outliers. Also, we look at sources of deviations from the general trends, which we find to be explainable based on knowledge of the city structure and places of attractions. We show examples how some of the outliers can be related to external factors such as specific social events.

A case study of noise pollution levels during the restrictions period due to COVID-19.

2021 ◽  
Vol 263 (6) ◽  
pp. 206-214
Author(s):  
David Montes-González ◽  
Juan Miguel Barrigón-Morillas ◽  
Ana Cristina Bejarano-Quintas ◽  
Manuel Parejo-Pizarro ◽  
Guillermo Rey-Gozalo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Acoustic Measurements ◽  
Pollution Levels ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) led to the need for drastic control measures around the world to reduce the impact on the health of the population. The confinement of people in their homes resulted in a significant reduction in human activity at every level (economic, social, industrial, etc.), which was reflected in a decrease in environmental pollution levels. Studying the evolution of parameters, such as the level of environmental noise caused by vehicle traffic in urban environments, makes it possible to assess the impact of this type of measure. This paper presents a case study of the acoustic situation in Cáceres (Spain) during the restriction period by means of long-term acoustic measurements at various points of the city.

Walking through the city soundscape: an audio-visual analysis of sensory experience for people with psychosis

2022 ◽  
pp. 147035722110526
Author(s):  
Sara Merlino ◽  
Lorenza Mondada ◽  
Ola Söderström
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Noisy Environments ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

This article discusses how an aspect of urban environments – sound and noise – is experienced by people walking in the city; it particularly focuses on atypical populations such as people diagnosed with psychosis, who are reported to be particularly sensitive to noisy environments. Through an analysis of video-recordings of naturalistic activities in an urban context and of video-elicitations based on these recordings, the study details the way participants orient to sound and noise in naturalistic settings, and how sound and noise are reported and reexperienced during interviews. By bringing together urban context, psychosis and social interaction, this study shows that, thanks to video recordings and conversation analysis, it is possible to analyse in detail the multimodal organization of action (talk, gesture, gaze, walking bodies) and of the sensory experience(s) of aural factors, as well as the way this organization is affected by the ecology of the situation.

scholarly journals Spatial analysis of deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis in the city of São Luís, Brazil

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 543-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelino Santos-Neto ◽  
Mellina Yamamura ◽  
Maria Concebida da Cunha Garcia ◽  
Marcela Paschoal Popolin ◽  
Tatiane Ramos dos Santos Silveira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Pulmonary Tuberculosis ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Significant Positive Association ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Operational Characteristics ◽  
Operational Variables ◽  
The City ◽  
Selection Of

OBJECTIVE: To characterize deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis, according to sociodemographic and operational variables, in the city of São Luís, Brazil, and to describe their spatial distribution. METHODS: This was an exploratory ecological study based on secondary data from death certificates, obtained from the Brazilian Mortality Database, related to deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis. We included all deaths attributed to pulmonary tuberculosis that occurred in the urban area of São Luís between 2008 and 2012. We performed univariate and bivariate analyses of the sociodemographic and operational variables of the deaths investigated, as well as evaluating the spatial distribution of the events by kernel density estimation. RESULTS: During the study period, there were 193 deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis in São Luís. The median age of the affected individuals was 52 years. Of the 193 individuals who died, 142 (73.60%) were male, 133 (68.91%) were Mulatto, 102 (53.13%) were single, and 64 (33.16%) had completed middle school. There was a significant positive association between not having received medical care prior to death and an autopsy having been performed (p = 0.001). A thematic map by density of points showed that the spatial distribution of those deaths was heterogeneous and that the density was as high as 8.12 deaths/km2. CONCLUSIONS: The sociodemographic and operational characteristics of the deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis evaluated in this study, as well as the identification of priority areas for control and surveillance of the disease, could promote public health policies aimed at reducing health inequities, allowing the optimization of resources, as well as informing decisions regarding the selection of strategies and specific interventions targeting the most vulnerable populations.

scholarly journals Impacts of urbanisation level and distance from potential natural mosquito breeding habitats on the abundance of canine dirofilariosis

2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Attila Trájer ◽  
Antal Rengei ◽  
Kinga Farkas-Iványi ◽  
Ákos Bede-Fazekas
Keyword(s):  
Medical Problem ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Breeding Habitats ◽  
Mosquito Breeding ◽  
Fluvial Habitat ◽  
Occurrence Patterns ◽  
The City ◽  
Knott’S Test ◽  
Natural Water Bodies

Dirofilariosis is an emerging mosquito-borne veterinary and medical problem in the Northern hemisphere. The ecological investigation of 56 canine dirofilariosis cases in new endemic locations was performed in Szeged, Hungary. The aim was to analyse the influence of the spatial patterns of dog abundance and the potential mosquito breeding habitats on the spatial occurrence patterns of dirofilariosis in the city of Szeged. The limnoecological characterisation was based on the fluvial habitat classification of Amoros of natural water bodies; the built environment was evaluated using the UrbanisationScore urbanisation intensity measuring software. Dirofilaria immitis accounted for 51% and D. repens for 34.3% of the dirofilariosis cases, and in 20% of the cases only the Knott’s test was positive. It was concluded that most of the cases were related to locations with a medium to high urbanisation index, although the proximity of mosquito-bearing waters also played an important role in the observed spatial infection patterns. We found that the distance from potential mosquito habitats and the urbanisation intensity determine the abundance of dirofilariosis in urban environments.

scholarly journals Unsur Hijau pada Ruang Publik dan Sisa Halaman Rumah Kampung Cibunut RW 07 RT 05 Kota Bandung

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irfan Sabarilah Hasim
Keyword(s):  
Visual Quality ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Plant Canopy ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Open Land ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Health Support ◽  
The City ◽  
Descriptive Method

AbstrakTanaman sangat penting untuk menunjang kehidupan sebagai penunjang kesehatan, pengendali iklim mikro, menyerap polusi bahkan berguna meningkatkan kualitas visual. Kehadiran tanaman di lingkungan perkotaan semakin sulit, mengingat lahan-lahan perkotaan semakin sempit terutama di lingkungan permukiman kota yang umumnya padat dan menyisakan sedikit ruang untuk tanaman. Berbeda dengan permukiman-permukiman padat pada umumnya, Kampung Cibunut RW 07 khususnya RT 05 Kota Bandung terlihat lebih asri, banyak sekali tanaman di lingkungan ini, meskipun lahan terbuka sedikit, gang juga tidak terlalu besar dan teras-teras rumah sangat terbatas. Melihat perkembangan yang sangat baik di Kampung Cibunut, maka penelitian ini layak untuk dilakukan dengan tujuan untuk mengidentifikasi jumlah dan jenis tanaman, serta cara dan metoda penanaman di ruang sempit dan mengetahui luas diameter tajuk tanaman. Digunakan metoda deskriptif kualitatif, data dikumpulkan melalui survey dan studi pustaka. Data primer diperoleh melalui observasi lapangan, pengukuran dan pencatatan langsung di lapangan. Setiap tanaman diberi nomor, dan dicatat kemudian seluruh data akan dimasukan ke dalam matrik untuk memudahkan perhitungan. Pembahasan dilakukan untuk mendapatkan ragam jenis tanaman, sistem dan cara penanaman, dan luas total tajuk tanaman. Diharapkan hasil dari penelitian ini dapat ditiru dan diterapkan di permukiman padat sejenis di kota Bandung agar dapat meningkatkan keasrian kawasan dan penyerapan polusi.Kata kunci : Tanaman, Unsur Hijau, Lahan sempit, permukiman padat. AbstraCTPlants are very important to support life as health support, control the microclimate, absorb pollution, and even improve visual quality. The presence of plants in urban environments is increasingly difficult, given that urban lands are increasingly narrow, especially in urban residential areas which are generally dense and leave little room for plants. Unlike the dense settlements in general, Kampung Cibunut RW 07, especially RT 05 Kota Bandung, looks more beautiful, there are lots of plants in this environment, although there is little open land, the alleys are not too big and the terraces of the houses are very limited. Seeing the excellent development in Cibunut Village, this research is feasible to do the aim of identifying the number and types of plants, as well as methods and methods of planting in narrow spaces and knowing the diameter of the plant canopy. Qualitative descriptive method is used, data is collected through surveys and literature studies. Primary data obtained through field observations, measurements, and direct notes in the field. Each plant is numbered, recorded and then all data will be entered into a matrix to facilitate calculation. Discussions were conducted to obtain various types of plants, planting systems and methods, and the total area of the plant canopy. It is hoped that the results of this research can be replicated and applied in similar dense settlements in the city of Bandung to increase the beauty of the area and the absorption of pollution. Keywords: Plants, Green Element, Narrow land, dense settlement.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document