Increasing groundwater contamination across the globe triggered the concept of “aquifer vulnerability”, which has been extensively used worldwide during past three to four decades by researchers and ...policy makers for protecting groundwater from pollution. However, only a few recent studies have focused on the performance evaluation of two or more vulnerability assessment methods. Some of these studies have resulted in contrasting findings. Given this fact and considering growing threat of groundwater contamination due to increasing human activities across the globe, it is necessary to critically review existing methods, understand current research trends, and identify major challenges associated with the assessment of aquifer vulnerability. Hence, the aim of this study is to present a comprehensive review of the methods and approaches used for the evaluation of aquifer vulnerability for ‘resource’ and ‘source’ protection. First, the concept and types of aquifer vulnerability along with the definitions evolved over the years are presented, and then the methods for assessing aquifer vulnerability are suitably classified and briefly discussed. Second, the concept of vulnerability assessment for ‘source’ protection is highlighted, and the evolution of groundwater vulnerability evaluation methods is presented with an enlightening block diagram. Third, current research trends and critiques on past studies are discussed. Fourth, the major challenges of vulnerability assessment are highlighted and a way forward is suggested. It is concluded that the progress of vulnerability evaluation methods has not kept pace with the advancement of knowledge and tools/techniques. There is an urgent need for developing a scientifically robust and somewhat versatile methodology for the evaluation of ‘intrinsic’ and ‘specific’ groundwater vulnerability for ‘resource’ and ‘source’ protection under varying hydrogeologic and hydro-climatic conditions. It is emphasized that more studies should be devoted to vulnerability assessment for ‘source’ protection using ‘Source-Pathway-Receptor/Target’ approach. Also, spatial decision support systems should be developed using modern tools/techniques including artificial intelligence to improve decision-making process for protecting vital groundwater resources.
•This study presents a review of methods used for mapping of groundwater vulnerability to pollution.•Methods widely used for assessing aquifer vulnerability are classified into suitable groups and their overview is provided.•We illustrated evolution of groundwater vulnerability methods by an enlightening block diagram, and methods are critiqued.•Future challenges are identified and a way forward is suggested.•This study emphasizes need of a robust and versatile method using modern tools for groundwater vulnerability evaluation.
Automated detection of software vulnerabilities is a fundamental problem in software security. Existing program analysis techniques either suffer from high false positives or false negatives. Recent ...progress in Deep Learning (DL) has resulted in a surge of interest in applying DL for automated vulnerability detection. Several recent studies have demonstrated promising results achieving an accuracy of up to 95 percent at detecting vulnerabilities. In this paper, we ask, "how well do the state-of-the-art DL-based techniques perform in a real-world vulnerability prediction scenario?" To our surprise, we find that their performance drops by more than 50 percent. A systematic investigation of what causes such precipitous performance drop reveals that existing DL-based vulnerability prediction approaches suffer from challenges with the training data (e.g., data duplication, unrealistic distribution of vulnerable classes, etc.) and with the model choices (e.g., simple token-based models). As a result, these approaches often do not learn features related to the actual cause of the vulnerabilities. Instead, they learn unrelated artifacts from the dataset (e.g., specific variable/function names, etc.). Leveraging these empirical findings, we demonstrate how a more principled approach to data collection and model design, based on realistic settings of vulnerability prediction, can lead to better solutions. The resulting tools perform significantly better than the studied baseline-up to 33.57 percent boost in precision and 128.38 percent boost in recall compared to the best performing model in the literature. Overall, this paper elucidates existing DL-based vulnerability prediction systems' potential issues and draws a roadmap for future DL-based vulnerability prediction research.
As a consequence of climate change, coastal communities worldwide are subject to increased risk from sea-level rise and more intense storms. Therefore, it is important for coastal managers to have ...focused site specific data on present and predicted climate change impacts in order to determine shoreline vulnerability. There are few UK studies that characterise coastal vulnerability, while nearly all global work has concentrated on geomorphological and to a lesser extent, socio-economic aspects. In response, the present study developed a new Physical Coastal Vulnerability Index (PCVI) and applied it to eleven UK sites, seven in England, three in Wales and one in Scotland. PCVI results were then compared and contrasted with a new Fiscal Coastal Vulnerability Index (FCVI), which enabled coastal areas to be visually classified in one of four categories to inform relative risk. Both indices were subsequently integrated into a Combined Coastal Vulnerability Index (CCVI). Results showed that Great Yarmouth and Aberystwyth were highly vulnerable, while Llanelli and Lynmouth were least vulnerable, and the importance of integrating both indices is demonstrated by modified overall vulnerability assessments. Therefore, CCVI provides a simple to use shoreline monitoring tool which is particularly suitable for assessment of risk. The indices support coastal planning, including intervention or no active intervention policies, and thereby benefitting a range of stakeholders. CCVI works at local, regional and international scales, and identifies vulnerable locations. Consequently, these indices will inform management strategies to improve coastal resilience under various sea level rise and climate change scenarios.
•A modified Physical Coastal Vulnerability Index (PCVI) was developed and applied to eleven UK sites.•A new Fiscal Coastal Vulnerability Index (FCVI) was used to compare and contrast PCVI results.•PCVI and FCVI results were subsequently integrated into a new Combined Coastal Vulnerability Index (CCVI).•Indices were used to construct GIS based coastal vulnerability maps.
Abstract / Das Wichtigste in Kürze Unter dem Begriff der ‚vulnerablen Familie‘ werden Familien zusammengefasst, deren Lebenslagen bzw. Lebensweisen als problematisch betrachtet werden. Mit der ...Verwendung dieser Bezeichnung wird unterstellt, dass manche Familien besondere Unterstützung benötigen, insofern verweist der Begriff auf die gesellschaftliche Verantwortung für den Schutz der Familie. Zugleich birgt er die Gefahr in sich, dass er Familienbilder befördert, durch die Familien nur unter dem als relevant erachteten Problemaspekt betrachtet und beurteilt werden. Der Beitrag verdeutlicht mit Hilfe eines Fallbeispiels, wie über eine solche problembezogene Reduktion der Perspektive auf Familie wiederum die Vulnerabilität der Familie erhöht wird. Insofern werden exemplarisch Fallstricke der diskursiven Kategorisierung von Familien als vulnerable Familie für die Soziale Arbeit diskutiert.
Vulnerability analysis has long been used to evaluate the security posture of a system. Different approaches, including vulnerability graphs and various vulnerability metrics, have been used to study ...the vulnerability landscape and provide security analysts with cyber situational awareness. However, most current solutions still lack a principled approach to quantifying various dimensions of known vulnerabilities in a way that can easily adapt to different applicative domains and operating conditions. To address this limitation, we introduce a vulnerability metrics framework that extends and generalizes our previous metrics for evaluating the exploitation likelihood of a vulnerability and the exposure factor of system components to vulnerability exploits. We argue that the factors influencing these metrics and their relative weights depend on the specific applicative domain, defender’s priorities, and attacker’s knowledge. Thus, instead of providing a static set of equations, we establish a framework for instantiating the equations that best model the scenario being considered. We combine likelihood and exposure factor metrics into a severity score that allows us to rank vulnerabilities. In our evaluation, we demonstrate that ranking vulnerabilities solely based on their CVSS scores is not sufficient for effective prioritization, due to the limited number of possible distinct severity values compared to the sheer number of existing vulnerabilities. We define a ranking quality score and show that considering additional information about vulnerabilities helps refine their ranking, providing more actionable intelligence to security analysts.
In the past decades, the research and development of methodologies have received considerable attention which quantified earthquake-related damages to structures. Among these, indices of seismic risk ...and vulnerability assessment have indeed been developed to quantify the level of damages to structural elements or the whole structural system. In this paper, a detailed investigation has been done on the developed methodologies in the field, and the findings from other works are summarized. The authors have tried to present the most common empirical and analytical methodologies in a concise manner, which would motivate researchers and practicing engineers to use it as a comprehensive guide and reference for their future works.
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