scholarly journals Variable population exposure and distributed travel speeds in least-cost tsunami evacuation modelling

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 2975-2991 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. A. Fraser ◽  
N. J. Wood ◽  
D. M. Johnston ◽  
G. S. Leonard ◽  
P. D. Greening ◽  
...  

Abstract. Evacuation of the population from a tsunami hazard zone is vital to reduce life-loss due to inundation. Geospatial least-cost distance modelling provides one approach to assessing tsunami evacuation potential. Previous models have generally used two static exposure scenarios and fixed travel speeds to represent population movement. Some analyses have assumed immediate departure or a common evacuation departure time for all exposed population. Here, a method is proposed to incorporate time-variable exposure, distributed travel speeds, and uncertain evacuation departure time into an existing anisotropic least-cost path distance framework. The method is demonstrated for hypothetical local-source tsunami evacuation in Napier City, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. There is significant diurnal variation in pedestrian evacuation potential at the suburb level, although the total number of people unable to evacuate is stable across all scenarios. Whilst some fixed travel speeds approximate a distributed speed approach, others may overestimate evacuation potential. The impact of evacuation departure time is a significant contributor to total evacuation time. This method improves least-cost modelling of evacuation dynamics for evacuation planning, casualty modelling, and development of emergency response training scenarios. However, it requires detailed exposure data, which may preclude its use in many situations.

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 4163-4200
Author(s):  
S. A. Fraser ◽  
N. J. Wood ◽  
D. M. Johnston ◽  
G. S. Leonard ◽  
P. D. Greening ◽  
...  

Abstract. Evacuation of the population from a tsunami hazard zone is vital to reduce life-loss due to inundation. Geospatial least-cost distance modelling provides one approach to assessing tsunami evacuation potential. Previous models have generally used two static exposure scenarios and fixed travel speeds to represent population movement. Some analyses have assumed immediate evacuation departure time or assumed a common departure time for all exposed population. In this paper, a method is proposed to incorporate time-variable exposure, distributed travel speeds, and uncertain evacuation departure time into an existing anisotropic least-cost path distance framework. The model is demonstrated for a case study of local-source tsunami evacuation in Napier City, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. There is significant diurnal variation in pedestrian evacuation potential at the suburb-level, although the total number of people unable to evacuate is stable across all scenarios. Whilst some fixed travel speeds can approximate a distributed speed approach, others may overestimate evacuation potential. The impact of evacuation departure time is a significant contributor to total evacuation time. This method improves least-cost modelling of evacuation dynamics for evacuation planning, casualty modelling, and development of emergency response training scenarios.


Author(s):  
Paulo Roberto Arruda Zantut ◽  
Mariana Matera Veras ◽  
Sarah Gomes Menezes Benevenutto ◽  
Angélica Mendonça Vaz Safatle ◽  
Ricardo Augusto Pecora ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Prenatal exposure to Cannabis is a worldwide growing problem. Although retina is part of the central nervous system, the impact of maternal Cannabis use on the retinal development and its postnatal consequences remains unknown. As the prenatal period is potentially sensitive in the normal development of the retina, we hypothesized that recreational use of Cannabis during pregnancy may alter retina structure in the offspring. To test this, we developed a murine model that mimics human exposure in terms of dose and use. Methods Pregnant BalbC mice were exposed daily for 5 min to Cannabis smoke (0.2 g of Cannabis) or filtered air, from gestational day 5 to 18 (N = 10/group). After weaning period, pups were separated and examined weekly. On days 60, 120, 200, and 360 after birth, 10 pups from each group were randomly selected for Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography (SD-OCT) analysis of the retina. All retina layers were measured and inner, outer, and total retina thickness were calculated. Other 37 mice from both groups were sacrificed on days 20, 60, and 360 for retinal stereology (total volume of the retina and volume fraction of each retinal layer) and light microscopy. Means and standard deviations were calculated and MANOVA was performed. Results The retina of animals which mother was exposed to Cannabis during gestation was 17% thinner on day 120 (young adult) than controls (P = 0.003) due to 21% thinning of the outer retina (P = 0.001). The offspring of mice from the exposed group presented thickening of the IS/OS in comparison to controls on day 200 (P < 0.001). In the volumetric analyzes by retinal stereology, the exposed mice presented transitory increase of the IS/OS total volume and volume fraction on day 60 (young adult) compared to controls (P = 0.008 and P = 0.035, respectively). On light microscopy, exposed mice presented thickening of the IS/OS on day 360 (adult) compared to controls (P = 0.03). Conclusion Gestational exposure to Cannabis smoke may cause structural changes in the retina of the offspring that return to normal on mice adulthood. These experimental evidences suggest that children and young adults whose mothers smoked Cannabis during pregnancy may require earlier and more frequent clinical care than the non-exposed population.


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Diffey

In the early 1970s, environmental conservationists were becoming concerned that a reduction in the thickness of the atmospheric ozone layer would lead to increased levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation at ground level, resulting in higher population exposure to UV and subsequent harm, especially a rise in skin cancer. At the time, no measurements had been reported on the normal levels of solar UV radiation which populations received in their usual environment, so this lack of data, coupled with increasing concerns about the impact to human health, led to the development of simple devices that monitored personal UV exposure. The first and most widely used UV dosimeter was the polymer film, polysulphone, and this review describes its properties and some of the pioneering studies using the dosimeter that led to a quantitative understanding of human exposure to sunlight in a variety of behavioral, occupational, and geographical settings.


Author(s):  
Markus Friedrich ◽  
Matthias Schmaus ◽  
Jonas Sauer ◽  
Tobias Zündorf

This paper investigates existing departure time models for a schedule-based transit assignment and their parametrization. It analyzes the impact of the temporal resolution of travel demand and suggests functions for evaluating the adaptation time as part of the utility of a path. The adaptation time quantifies the time between the preferred and the scheduled departure times. The findings of the analysis suggested that travel demand should be discretized into intervals of 1 min, with interval borders right between the full minute, that is, ±0.5 min. It was shown that longer time intervals led to arbitrary run volumes, even for origin–destination pairs with just one transit line and a fixed headway. Although a linear relationship between adaptation time and adaptation disutility is a common assumption in several publications, it cannot represent certain types of passenger behavior. For some trip purposes, passengers may be insensitive to small adaptation times, but highly sensitive to large adaptations. This requires a nonlinear evaluation function.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junlan Feng ◽  
Yan Zhang ◽  
Shanshan Li ◽  
Jingbo Mao ◽  
Allison P. Patton ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and the megacity of Shanghai are host to one of the busiest port clusters in the world, the region also suffers from high levels of air pollution. The goal of this study was to estimate the contributions of shipping to emissions, air quality, and population exposure and characterize their dependence on the geographic spatiality of ship lanes from the regional scale to city scale for 2015. The WRF-CMAQ model was used to simulate the influence of coastal and inland-water shipping, in port emissions, shipping-related cargo transport on air quality and, population-weighted concentrations, a measure of human exposure. Our results showed that the impact of shipping on air quality in the YRD was attributable primarily to shipping emissions within 12 NM of shore, but emissions coming from the coastal area of 24 to 96 NM still contributed substantially to ship-related PM2.5 concentrations in YRD. The overall contribution of ships to PM2.5 concentration in YRD could reach to 4.62 μg/m3 in summer when monsoon winds transport shipping emissions onshore. In Shanghai city, inland-water going ships were major contributors (40–80 %) to the shipping impact on urban air quality. Given the proximity of inland-water ships to urban populations of Shanghai, the emissions of inland-water ships contributed more to population-weighted concentrations. These research results provide scientific evidence to inform policies for controlling future shipping emissions; in particular, stricter standards could be considered for the ships on inland rivers and other waterways close to residential regions.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1603
Author(s):  
Ana R. Gamarra ◽  
Yolanda Lechón ◽  
Marta G. Vivanco ◽  
Mark Richard Theobald ◽  
Carmen Lago ◽  
...  

This paper assesses the health impact, in terms of the reduction of premature deaths associated with changes in air pollutant exposure, resulting from double-aim strategies for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants from the transport sector for the year 2030 in Spain. The impact on air quality of selected measures for reducing emissions from the transport sector (increased penetration of biofuel and electric car use) was assessed by air quality modeling. The estimation of population exposure to NO2, particulate matter (PM) and O3 allows for estimation of associated mortality and external costs in comparison with the baseline scenario with no measures. The results show that the penetration of the electric vehicle provided the largest benefits, even when the emissions due to the additional electricity demand were considered.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 385-395
Author(s):  
Brigitte K. Flesch ◽  
Angelika Reil ◽  
Núria Nogués ◽  
Carme Canals ◽  
Peter Bugert ◽  
...  

Background: The human neutrophil antigen 2 (HNA-2), which is expressed on CD177, is undetectable in 3–5% of the normal population. Exposure of these HNA-2null individuals to HNA-2-positive cells can cause immunization and pro­duction of HNA-2 antibodies, which can induce immune neutropenia and transfusion-related acute lung injury. In HNA-2-positive individuals, neutrophils are divided into a CD177pos. and a CD177neg. subpopulation. The molecular background of HNA-2 deficiency and the bimodal expression pattern, however, are not completely decoded. Study Design: An international collaboration was conducted on the genetic analysis of HNA-2-phenotyped blood samples, including HNA-2-deficient individuals, mothers, and the respective children with neonatal immune neutropenia and regular blood donors. Results: From a total of 54 HNA-2null individuals, 43 were homozygous for the CD177*787A>T substitution. Six carried the CD177*c.1291G>A single nucleotide polymorphism. All HNA-2-positive samples with >40% CD177pos. neutrophils carried the *787A wild-type allele, whereas a lower rate of CD177pos. neutrophils was preferentially associated with *c.787AT heterozygosity. Interestingly, only the *c.787A allele sequence was detected in complementary DNA (cDNA) sequence analysis carried out on all *c.787AT heterozygous individuals. However, cDNA analysis after sorting of CD177pos. and CD177neg. neutrophil subsets from HNA-2-positive individuals showed identical sequences, which makes regulatory elements within the promoter unlikely to affect CD177 gene transcription in different CD177 neutrophil subsets. Conclusion: This comprehensive study clearly demonstrates the impact of single nucleotide polymorphisms on the expression of HNA-2 on the neutrophil surface but challenges the hypothesis of regulatory epigenetic effects being implicated in the bimodal CD177 expression pattern.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 3099
Author(s):  
Jean-François Léon ◽  
Nadège Martiny ◽  
Sébastien Merlet

Due to a limited number of monitoring stations in Western Africa, the impact of mineral dust on PM10 surface concentrations is still poorly known. We propose a new method to retrieve PM10 dust surface concentrations from sun photometer aerosol optical depth (AOD) and CALIPSO/CALIOP Level 2 aerosol layer products. The method is based on a multi linear regression model that is trained using co-located PM10, AERONET and CALIOP observations at 3 different locations in the Sahel. In addition to the sun photometer AOD, the regression model uses the CALIOP-derived base and top altitude of the lowermost dust layer, its AOD, the columnar total and columnar dust AOD. Due to the low revisit period of the CALIPSO satellite, the monthly mean annual cycles of the parameters are used as predictor variables rather than instantaneous observations. The regression model improves the correlation coefficient between monthly mean PM10 and AOD from 0.15 (AERONET AOD only) to 0.75 (AERONET AOD and CALIOP parameters). The respective high and low PM10 concentration during the winter dry season and summer season are well produced. Days with surface PM10 above 100 μg/m3 are better identified when using the CALIOP parameters in the multi linear regression model. The number of true positives (actual and predicted concentrations above the threshold) is increased and leads to an improvement in the classification sensitivity (recall) by a factor 1.8. Our methodology can be extrapolated to the whole Sahel area provided that satellite derived AOD maps are used in order to create a new dataset on population exposure to dust events in this area.


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