Fatal weather-related carbon monoxide poisonings in the United States

Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless gas that can cause injury or death if inhaled. CO is a frequent secondary hazard induced by the aftereffects of natural hazards as individuals, families, and communities often seek alternative power sources for heating, cooking, lighting, and cleanup during the emergency and recovery phases of a disaster. These alternative power sources—such as portable generators, petroleum-based heaters, and vehicles—exhaust CO that can ultimately build to toxic levels in enclosed areas. Ever-increasing environmental and societal changes combined with an aging infrastructure are growing the odds of power failures during hazardous weather events, which, in turn, are increasing the likelihood of CO exposure, illness, and death. This study analyzed weather-related CO fatalities from 2000 to 2019 in the U.S. using death certificate data, providing one of the longest assessments of this mortality. Results reveal that over 8,300 CO fatalities occurred in the U.S. during the 20-year study period, with 17% of those deaths affiliated with weather perils. Cool-season perils such as ice storms, snowstorms, and extreme cold were the leading hazards that led to situations causing CO fatalities. States in the Southeast and Northeast had the highest CO fatality rates, with winter having the greatest seasonal mortality. In general, these preventable CO poisoning influxes are related to a deficiency of knowledge on generator safety and the absence of working detectors and alarms in the enclosed locations where poisonings occur. Education and prevention programs that target the most vulnerable populations will help prevent future weather-related CO fatalities.

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.

Impact of public water supply unreliability on residential property prices in Marion County, West Virginia

Water supply unreliability in many public water systems stems from aging infrastructure. We measure unreliability by the issuance of boil water notices (BWNs) within one year prior to single-family residential sale observations. Using a spatial quantile regression framework on transactions between 2012 and 2017, we find statistically significant, negative relationships between BWNs and residential properties. The estimated impacts of unreliability on residential housing prices, however, are not uniform across the distribution of prices. Specifically, we find that BWNs have a larger impact on medium- to low-priced houses (at or below the 60 percent quantile) compared with high-priced houses. An aggregate marginal willingness-to-pay value of $4.2 million was computed for a one-day reduction in annual BWN throughout Marion County.

Integrating Cluster Analysis into Multi-Criteria Decision Making for Maintenance Management of Aging Culverts

Negligence in relation to aging infrastructure systems could have unintended consequences and is therefore associated with a risk. The assessment of the risk of neglecting maintenance provides valuable information for decision making in maintenance management. However, infrastructure systems are interdependent and interconnected systems of systems characterized by hierarchical levels and a multiplicity of failure scenarios. Assessment methodologies are needed that can capture the multidimensional aspect of risk and simplify the risk assessment, while also improving the understanding and interpretation of the results. This paper proposes to integrate the multi-criteria decision analysis with data mining techniques to perform the risk assessment of aging infrastructures. The analysis is characterized by two phases. First, an intra failure scenario risk assessment is performed. Then, the results are aggregated to carry out an inter failure scenario risk assessment. A cluster analysis based on the k-medoids algorithm is applied to reduce the number of alternatives and identify those which dominate the decision problem. The proposed approach is applied to a system of aging culverts of the German waterways network. Results show that the procedure allows to simplify the analysis and improve communication with infrastructure stakeholders.

Distributed Fiber Optic Shape Sensing of Concrete Structures

Civil structural health monitoring (CSHM) has become significantly more important within the last decades due to rapidly growing construction volume worldwide as well as aging infrastructure and longer service lifetimes of the structures. The utilization of distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) allows the assessment of strain and temperature distributions continuously along the installed sensing fiber and is widely used for testing of concrete structures to detect and quantify local deficiencies like cracks. Relations to the curvature and bending behavior are however mostly excluded. This paper presents a comprehensive study of different approaches for distributed fiber optic shape sensing of concrete structures. Different DFOS sensors and installation techniques were tested within load tests of concrete beams as well as real-scale tunnel lining segments, where the installations were interrogated using fully-distributed sensing units as well as by fiber Bragg grating interrogators. The results point out significant deviations between the capabilities of the different sensing systems, but demonstrate that DFOS can enable highly reliable shape sensing of concrete structures, if the system is appropriately designed depending on the CSHM application.

Practitioner Perspective: Why Ratepayers Protections are Needed in the U.S. Water Utility Privatization Push

U.S. water and sewer services are still provided mostly by government service delivery models, but in some places including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, that is changing. Both Wall Street and investor-owned water and sewer corporations see aging infrastructure and stretched municipal finances as opportunities. The investor-owned utilities have successfully lobbied to overcome what they consider to be “regulatory hurdles.” Unfortunately, the policies being pushed and deals being made limit democracy and transparency. The higher cost of privatized service adds extra burdens to ratepayers, especially those with low incomes. Laws and regulations should be changed to reverse policies that are anti-consumer and undemocratic.

Evaluation of Pollutant Removal Efficiency by Small-Scale Nature-Based Solutions Focusing on Bio-Retention Cells, Vegetative Swale and Porous Pavement

Rapid urbanization, aging infrastructure, and changes in rainfall patterns linked to climate change have brought considerable challenges to water managers around the world. Impacts from such drivers are likely to increase even further unless the appropriate actions are put in place. Floods, landslides, droughts and water pollution are just a few examples of such impacts and their corresponding consequences are in many cases devastating. At the same time, it has become a well-accepted fact that traditional (i.e., grey infrastructure) measures are no longer effective in responding to such challenges. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have emerged as a new response towards hydro-meteorological risk reduction and the results obtained to date are encouraging. However, their application has been mainly in the area of water quantity management with few studies that report on their efficiency to deal with water quality aspects. These solutions are based on replicating natural phenomena and processes to solve such problems. The present paper addresses the question of three NBS systems, namely, bio-retention cells, vegetative swales and porous pavements, for the removal of total suspended solids (TSS), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) when applied in different configurations (single or networked). The results presented in this paper aim to advance the understanding of their performances during varying rainfall patterns and configurations and their potential application conditions.

Muon Tomography of the Interior of a Reinforced Concrete Block: First Experimental Proof of Concept

Quality assurance and condition assessment of concrete structures is an important topic world-wide due to the aging infrastructure and increasing traffic demands. Common topics include, but are not limited to, localisation of rebar or tendon ducts, geometrical irregularities, cracks, voids, honeycombing or other flaws. Non-destructive techniques such as ultrasound or radar have found regular, successful practical application but sometimes suffer from limited resolution and accuracy, imaging artefacts or restrictions in detecting certain features. Until the 1980s X-ray transmission was used in case of special demands and showed a much better resolution than other NDT techniques. However, due to safety concerns and cost issues, this method is almost never used anymore. Muon tomography has received much attention recently. Novel detectors for cosmic muons and tomographic imaging algorithms have opened up new fields of application, such as the investigation of freight containers. Muon imaging also has the potential to fill some of the gaps currently existing in concrete NDT. As a first step towards practical use and as a proof of concept we used an existing system to image the interior of a reference reinforced 600 kg concrete block. Even with a yet not optimized setup for this kind of investigation, the muon imaging results are at least of similar quality compared to ultrasonic and radar imaging, potentially even better. The data acquisition takes more time and signals contain more noise, but the images allowed to detect the same important features that are visible in conventional high energy X-ray tomography. In our experiment, we have shown that muon imaging has potential for concrete inspection. The next steps include the development of mobile detectors and optimising acquisition and imaging parameters.

Recurrent Home Flooding in Detroit, MI 2012–2020: Results of a Household Survey

Household flooding has wide ranging social, economic and public health impacts particularly for people in resource poor communities. The determinants and public health outcomes of recurrent home flooding in urban contexts, however, are not well understood. A household survey was used to assess neighborhood and household level determinants of recurrent home flooding in Detroit, MI. Survey activities were conducted from 2012 to 2020. Researchers collected information on past flooding, housing conditions and public health outcomes. Using the locations of homes, a “hot spot” analysis of flooding was performed to find areas of high and low risk. Survey data were linked to environmental and neighborhood data and associations were tested using regression methods. 4803 households participated in the survey. Flooding information was available for 3842 homes. Among these, 2085 (54.26%) reported experiencing pluvial flooding. Rental occupied units were more likely to report flooding than owner occupied homes (Odd ratio (OR) 1.72 [95% Confidence interval (CI) 1.49, 1.98]). Housing conditions such as poor roof quality and cracks in basement walls influenced home flooding risk. Homes located in census tracts with increased percentages of owner occupied units (vs. rentals) had a lower odds of flooding (OR 0.92 [95% (CI) 0.86, 0.98]). Household factors were found the be more predictive of flooding than neighborhood factors in both univariate and multivariate analyses. Flooding and housing conditions associated with home flooding were associated with asthma cases. Recurrent home flooding is far more prevalent than previously thought. Programs that support recovery and which focus on home improvement to prevent flooding, particularly by landlords, might benefit the public health. These results draw awareness and urgency to problems of urban flooding and public health in other areas of the country confronting the compounding challenges of aging infrastructure, disinvestment and climate change.