Geotechnical Management of Isolated Sustainable Alpine Communities

The Albanian Alps are situated in a mountainous block in the Northern Albania region, in the counties of Shkodër (also known as Shkodra or Gegëria) and Kukës (Kukësi). The nature of the mountainous terrain formation has led to the creation of isolated communities. The need for integrating these scattered communities into a cohesive co-operating community for area sustainability is now possible by using the Internet to link them all onto an online system. To deal with natural catastrophes, disaster management cells will be created which will serve as hubs. These hubs will be located at geographically strategic positions that will enable a predetermined geofenced region for evaluation of different disasters viz. forest fires, landslide, flooding, avalanches, the burial of villages under heavy snowfalls, etc. These cells will connect the particular case with the most appropriate disaster relief, rescue service and EMR (Emergency Medical Responder), first aid services (e.g. Green Crescent/Red Cross) and EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) personnel. The cells shall be managed by locally trained human resources with the necessary equipment to provide the monitoring/analyses and first aid assistance in case of need. The technology needed for the monitoring and geotechnical management of the isolated Alpine communities will be described. The socio-economic impact of the deployment of these technologies aiding in the sustainability of these vulnerable communities will conclude the research.

Hypothetical Control of Fatal Quarrel Variability

Wars, terrorist attacks, as well as natural catastrophes typically result in a large number of casualties, whose distributions have been shown to belong to the class of Pareto’s inverse power laws (IPLs). The number of deaths resulting from terrorist attacks are herein fit by a double Pareto probability density function (PDF). We use the fractional probability calculus to frame our arguments and to parameterize a hypothetical control process to temper a Lévy process through a collective-induced potential. Thus, the PDF is shown to be a consequence of the complexity of the underlying social network. The analytic steady-state solution to the fractional Fokker-Planck equation (FFPE) is fit to a forty-year fatal quarrel (FQ) dataset.

Experimental Narrative Structure and the Advent of New Humanism in Cormac McCarthy's The Road

This paper attempts to study the experimental narrative structure to explore postmodern new humanism in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The study focuses on three inextricable narrative elements: the characters, narrative descriptions, and the novel's spatial setting. It will demonstrate how McCarthy's uses postmodern narrative experimentation to accentuate the necessity of halting the danger lurking behind the sustainable safety of the natural environment. Therefore, the study first examines the nameless characters of the novels as an exemplification of people who are devoid of their identity and sense of belonging due to natural catastrophes. Second, it identifies the narrative descriptions of the devastated environment ensuing gigantic disasters that obliterate the vast majority of the human civilisation. Third, it looks into the conditions of the remaining survivors as the embodiment of the remains of the human civilisation, and these survivors will be explored as the literary paradigm of new humanism living in a post-apocalyptic society leading a new primitive life from scratch. In this sense, the study gaps lie in exploring such new humanism as an archetype of postmodern civilisation surviving the destructive events and their related ethical dilemmas. As such, the study applies a qualitative methodology by following a textual analysis of the novel's characters, narrative descriptions, and spatial setting. Here, narratology will be applied as the theoretical background for interpreting these elements with regard to the post-apocalypse and its new humanistic insights. Thus, the study's main results are the exploration of the novel's apocalyptic events as narrative paradigms of new humanism and McCarthy's use of postmodern experimental narrative structure.

IoT-Fog-Cloud Centric Earthquake Monitoring and Prediction

Earthquakes are among the most inevitable natural catastrophes. The uncertainty about the severity of the earthquake has a profound effect on the burden of disaster and causes massive economic and societal losses. Although unpredictable, it can be expected to ameliorate damage and fatalities, such as monitoring and predicting earthquakes using the Internet of Things (IoT). With the resurgence of the IoT, an emerging innovative approach is to integrate IoT technology with Fog and Cloud Computing to augment the effectiveness and accuracy of earthquake monitoring and prediction. In this study, the integrated IoT-Fog-Cloud layered framework is proposed to predict earthquakes using seismic signal information. The proposed model is composed of three layers: (i) at sensor layer, seismic data are acquired, (ii) fog layer incorporates pre-processing, feature extraction using fast Walsh–Hadamard transform (FWHT), selection of relevant features by applying High Order Spectral Analysis (HOSA) to FWHT coefficients, and seismic event classification by K-means accompanied by real-time alert generation, (iii) at cloud layer, an artificial neural network (ANN) is employed to forecast the magnitude of an earthquake. For performance evaluation, K-means classification algorithm is collated with other well-known classification algorithms from the perspective of accuracy and execution duration. Implementation statistics indicate that with chosen HOS features, we have been able to attain high accuracy, precision, specificity, and sensitivity values of 93.30%, 96.65%, 90.54%, and 92.75%, respectively. In addition, the ANN provides an average correct magnitude prediction of 75%. The findings ensured that the proposed framework has the potency to classify seismic signals and predict earthquakes and could therefore further enhance the detection of seismic activities. Moreover, the generation of real-time alerts further amplifies the effectiveness of the proposed model and makes it more real-time compatible.

The Impact of Reinsurance

Reinsurance is perceived to have a stabilizing effect on the direct insurance industry and thereby on the economy overall. Yet, research into how exactly reinsurance impacts various areas is scarce. Traditionally, studying the impact of reinsurance used to be in the domain of actuaries; since the 1960s, they have tried to assess how different contract elements can provide what came to be called “optimal reinsurance.” In the 2010s, such research was intensified in developing countries with the aim to deploy reinsurance to support economic growth and security. Interest in reinsurance increased when the industry became more visible in the 1990s as the impact of natural catastrophes started being linked to a changing climate. Reinsurers emerged as spokespeople for climate-related issues, and the industry took a lead role in arguing in favor of implementing measures to reduce environmental deterioration. Reinsurers, it was argued, have a vested interest in managing the impact of natural catastrophes. This triggered discussions about the role of reinsurance overall and about how to assess its impact. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, interest in reinsurance again surged, this time due to perceived systemic impacts.

Going above and beyond: using nursing theories to explore volunteerism during the COVID-19 pandemic

Historically, nurses have volunteered to serve in wars and natural catastrophes. However, instead of a distant disaster, many nurses in the UK volunteered, working above and beyond, to assist their colleagues, local communities and health systems in the NHS during the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the motivations and benefits to the community or self of volunteerism have been discussed in the literature, there is a paucity of literature and theoretical understanding from the field of nursing. Using a reflective and personal account of volunteering, this article aims to provide a better understanding of the concept of volunteerism in nursing. By exploring associated nursing theories from Jean Watson and Kristen Swanson, this article aims to illuminate and expand the knowledge base about nursing volunteerism. These nursing theories can frame the act of volunteerism and nursing and illustrate the interrelations of nursing theory and the practice of nursing volunteerism.

Resilience in Water Infrastructures: A Review of Challenges and Adoption Strategies

An increase in the number and strength of natural catastrophes experienced over the past few decades has accelerated the damage sustained by infrastructures. Drinking water and wastewater infrastructure systems are critical aspects of a healthy environment, and their ability to withstand disasters is vital for effective disaster response and recovery. Although numerous studies have been conducted to determine the challenges that natural disasters render to water infrastructures, few extensive examinations of these challenges have been conducted. The goal of this study, therefore, was to identify and categorize the challenges related to the resilience of drinking water and wastewater infrastructures, and to determine the strategies that most effectively minimize their unintended consequences. A comprehensive evaluation of the existing literature was conducted, and 537 publications were collected. After extensive screening, 222 publications were selected for rigorous evaluation and analysis based on the data collection methods and other criteria. A total of fifty-one (51) challenges were determined and classified, within the following five categories: environmental, technical and infrastructure, social, organizational, and financial and economic. The challenges were then ranked within each category according to their frequency of occurrence in previous research. The results reveal that climate change, aging infrastructure, lack of infrastructure capital, population growth, improper maintenance of water infrastructure, and rapid urbanization are the most frequently cited challenges. Next, 30 strategies and approaches were identified and categorized into either preventive or corrective actions, according to their implementation time. The findings of this study will help decision- and policymakers properly allocate their limited funding to enhance the robustness of their water infrastructures before, during, and after natural hazards.

Hope and Hopelessness through the Lens of Myths. A Comparison Based on Short Texts by Kafka and Camus

Not only do myths stand at the beginning or represent the birth of literature, but they have been present all along ever since. In times of havoc caused by natural catastrophes, wars or pandemics, people look for answers to the uncertainties that surround them. While often presenting such chaotic states themselves, myths can give an answer or offer a solution to these problems. The aim of the present paper is to compare and analyse short texts mainly by Kafka and Camus that deal with ancient myths (e.g. that of Prometheus, Odysseus, or Sisyphus) focusing on the type of answer they bring to the questions raised amidst and after the two world wars. The paper mainly focuses on the connection between hope and hopelessness.

Landslide Susceptibility Assessment Using an AutoML Framework

The risks associated with landslides are increasing the personal losses and material damages in more and more areas of the world. These natural disasters are related to geological and extreme meteorological phenomena (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes) occurring in regions that have already suffered similar previous natural catastrophes. Therefore, to effectively mitigate the landslide risks, new methodologies must better identify and understand all these landslide hazards through proper management. Within these methodologies, those based on assessing the landslide susceptibility increase the predictability of the areas where one of these disasters is most likely to occur. In the last years, much research has used machine learning algorithms to assess susceptibility using different sources of information, such as remote sensing data, spatial databases, or geological catalogues. This study presents the first attempt to develop a methodology based on an automatic machine learning (AutoML) framework. These frameworks are intended to facilitate the development of machine learning models, with the aim to enable researchers focus on data analysis. The area to test/validate this study is the center and southern region of Guerrero (Mexico), where we compare the performance of 16 machine learning algorithms. The best result achieved is the extra trees with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.983. This methodology yields better results than other similar methods because using an AutoML framework allows to focus on the treatment of the data, to better understand input variables and to acquire greater knowledge about the processes involved in the landslides.

Smart materials in architecture for actuator and sensor applications: A review

Severe challenges such as depletion of natural resources, natural catastrophes, extreme weather conditions, or overpopulation require intelligent solutions especially in architecture. Built environments that are conceived from smart materials based on actuator and sensor functionality provide a promising approach in order to address this demand. The present paper reviews smart materials-based technologies which are currently applied or developed for application in civil structures, focusing on smart material applications for actuation or sensing. After giving a definition and categorization of smart materials, applications of the investigated materials (i.e. shape memory materials, electro- and magnetostrictive materials, piezoelectric materials, ionic polymer-metal composites, dielectrical elastomers, polyelectrolyte gels as well as magneto- and electrorheological fluids) are presented for the fields of architecture and civil engineering. While some materials are already highly advantageous in the application context, others still need further research in order to become applicable in real-world constructions. Nonetheless this review indicates their large innovation potential which should be consolidated by systematic research efforts in the near future.