Intensifying rehabilitation of combined sewer systems using trenchless technology in combination with Low impact development and green infrastructure

Throughout Europe, there is a considerable need for investment in the upgrade of sewer systems – due to three main factors: ageing infrastructure, climate change and urban population growth. The need for investments is expected to grow significantly in the years ahead. Trenchless rehabilitation (no-dig) of sewer pipelines is a cost-efficient and environmental friendly method for upgrading existing pipelines with sufficient capacity. This study examines the possibility of applying no-dig to combined sewer systems (CS) with insufficient capacity. In this study an concept assessment methodology that combines the analytical approaches from stormwater and sewer system assessments is presented. The methodology was tested on a case area that was part of an environmental project in Oslo, Norway. Three alternative concepts were examined; A0: no-dig and low impact development (LID), A1: no-dig, LID and green infrastructure (GI), and A2: CS up-sizing using open-cut methods. The study concludes that CS with insufficient capacity can be rehabilitated using no-dig if LID and GI. The combination of no-dig and LID reduces costs considerably but does involve the risk of damages from uncontrolled surface runoff. The main risk-reduction measure is the development of GI as an integrated stormwater management system that requires cross-sector collaboration within municipalities.

Low-cost assessment of a stove improvement program in Peru

Background: Approximately 3 billion people worldwide, including more than 20 million people in Peru alone, depend on biomass fuels (BMF) for heating and boiling water, cooking, and lighting their homes. Burning BMF on poorly ventilated stoves results in household air pollution (HAP), which includes carbon monoxide (CO). Stove improvement programs aim to reduce indoor air pollution and are included in various organizations’ education visits to Peru. The programs do not allow sufficient time, or provide equipment or skills training to determine if the stove improvements have been successful.Objective: To develop and implement a rapid, low-cost method to measure CO concentrations in rural Peruvian households in order to assess the success of stove improvements. Methods: CO concentrations were measured 159 times in 14 households (with 7 clean, 6 traditional, and 1 gas stove) near Cusco, Peru. CO concentrations were measured in one-minute intervals with MSA Altair 4X multigas monitors. The likelihood of the 95th percentile exceeding the NIOSH CO ceiling limit of 200 ppm for each stove type was calculated.Results: The probability of overexposure was almost three times lower with “clean” stoves than with traditional stoves, i.e., 24% vs 9%.Conclusion: A promising and pragmatic method to evaluate the increased effectiveness of clean stoves over traditional ones was developed and tested. This method supports the implementation of clean stoves as a risk reduction measure.

Role of Vitamin D in Risk Reduction of COVID-19: A Narrative Review

The world is in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to quarantine, public health interventions which can reduce the risk of infection and death are urgently required. This article discusses the roles of vitamin D in reducing the risk of COVID-19, and how vitamin D supplementation may be a useful risk reduction measure. Vitamin D can reduce the risk of infections through a variety of mechanisms: induction of cathelicidins and defensins that can lower the rate of viral replication and decrease the concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which are responsible for induction of inflammation, injuring lining of lungs and contributing to developing pneumonia. Evidence supporting the role of vitamin D in reducing the incidence of COVID-19 includes a) winter outbreak; b) a timeframe when concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) are lowest; c) a small number of cases in the southern hemisphere toward the end of summer; d) a vitamin D deficiency found to lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS); e) and a rise in case-fatality rates with increasing age and comorbid chronic diseases, both of which are associated with lower concentrations of 25(OH)D. It is recommended that people at risk of COVID-19 consider taking 10,000 IU/d of vitamin D3 for a few weeks to rapidly increase 25(OH)D concentrations, followed by 5,000 IU/d to reduce the risk of infection. Higher doses of vitamin D3 may be useful for treating people who are infected with COVID-19. To test these guidelines, randomized controlled trials and comprehensive population studies should be performed.

Fighting cancer in coronavirus disease era: organization of work in medical oncology departments in Emilia Romagna region of Italy

Aim: To assess the measures applied to reduce the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and the timing of their application in medical oncology departments. Materials & methods: We surveyed all medical oncology departments from the Italian Emilia Romagna region via a multidomain questionnaire. The questions covered items on patients, healthcare workers, risk reduction measure and clinical trials. Results: A total of 12 centers involving 861 healthcare members joined the survey. The measures applied to patients and health workers partially converged in all the departments while major divergences were found in the clinical trials domain. High rate of COVID-19 infection occurred among medical doctors (21/208, 10.1%) and social care workers (13/110, 11.8%). Rate of infection among nurses was 5.7% (24/418). Conclusion: All measures able to reduce risk of COVID-19 infection must be applied in medical oncology departments. Early introduction of risk reduction measures may be a critical issue.

The Implementation of Importance Measure Approaches for Criticality Analysis in Fault Tree Analysis: A Review

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF IMPORTANCE MEASURE APPROACHES FOR CRITICALITY ANALYSIS IN FAULT TREE ANALYSIS: A REVIEW.Fault tree analysis (FTA) has been widely applied in nuclear power plant (NPP) probabilistic safety assessment to evaluate the reliability of a safety system. In FTA, criticality analysis is performed to identify the weakest paths in the system designs and components. For this purpose, an importance measure approach can be applied. Risk managers can apply information obtained from this analysis to improve safety by implementing risk reduction measure into the new design or build a more innovative design. Various importance measure approaches have been developed and proposed for criticality analysis in FTA. Each important measure approach offers specific purposes and advantages but has limitations. Therefore, it is necessary to understand characteristics of each approach in order to select the most appropriate approach to reach the purpose of the study. The objective of this study is to review the current implementations of importance measure approaches to rank individual basic events and/or minimal cut sets regarding their contributions to the unreliability or unavailability of NPP safety systems. This study classified importance measure approaches into two groups, i.e. probability–based importance measure approaches and fuzzy–based importance measure approaches. This study concluded that clear understanding of the purpose of the study, the type of reliability data at hands, and the uncertainty in the calculation need to be considered prior to the selection of the appropriate importance measure approach to the study of interest.

Assessing the interaction between mountain forests and snow avalanches at Nevados de Chillán, Chile and its implications for ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction

Gravitational natural hazards such as snow avalanches, rockfalls, shallow landslides and volcanic activity represent a risk to mountain communities around the world. In particular, where documentary records about these processes are rare, decisions on risk management and land-use planning have to be based on a variety of other sources including vegetation, tree-ring data and natural hazard process models. We used a combination of these methods in order to evaluate dynamics of natural hazards with a focus on snow avalanches at Valle Las Trancas, in the Biobío region in Chile. Along this valley, natural hazards threaten not only the local human population, but also the numerous tourists attracted by outdoor recreational activities. Given the regional scarcity of documentary records, tree-ring methods were applied in order to reconstruct the local history of snow avalanches and debris flow events, which are the most important weather-related processes at respective tracks. A recent version of the model Rapid Mass MovementS (RAMMS), which includes influences of forest structure, was used to calculate different avalanche parameters such as runout distances and maximum pressures, taking into consideration the presence or absence of forest along the tracks as well as different modeled return periods. Our results show that local Nothofagus broadleaf forests contribute to a reduction of avalanche runout distances as well as impact pressure on present infrastructure, thus constituting a valuable ecosystem disaster risk reduction measure that can substitute or complement other traditional measures such as snow sheds.

Assessing the interaction between mountain forests and natural hazards at Nevados de Chillán, Chile, and its implications for Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction

Gravitational natural hazards such as snow avalanches, rockfalls, shallow landslides and volcanic activity represent a risk factor for mountain communities around the world. In particular where documentary records about these processes are rare, decisions on risk management and land-use planning have to be based on a variety of other sources including vegetation and tree-ring data and natural hazard process models. We used a combination of these methods in order to evaluate dynamics of snow avalanches and other natural hazards at Valle de las Trancas, in the Biobío Region in Chile. Along this valley, natural hazards threaten not only the local human population, but also the numerous tourists attracted by outdoor recreational activities. Given the regional scarcity of documentary records, tree-ring methods were applied in order to reconstruct the local history of snow avalanches and debris flow events, which are the more important weather-related processes at respective tracks. A recent version of the model Rapid Mass MovementS (RAMMS), that includes influences of forest structure, was used to calculate different avalanche parameters such as runout distances and maximum pressures, taking into consideration the presence/absence of forest along the tracks as well as different modelled return periods. Our results show that local Nothofagus broadleaved forests contribute to a reduction of avalanche runout distances as well as impact pressures on present infrastructure, thus constituting a valuable ecosystem disaster risk reduction measure that can substitute or complement other traditional measures such as sheds.