Air-borne introduction of exotic mosquitoes to Schiphol airport in the Netherlands has been considered plausible based upon findings of mosquitoes in aircraft cabins during 2008, 2010 and 2011. ...Beginning in 2013, surveillance efforts at Schiphol had focused on promptly detecting accidental introductions at the airport facilities in order to quickly react and avoid temporary proliferation or establishment of mosquito populations, identify the origin of the introductions, and avoid potential transmission of vector-borne diseases.
BG-Mosquitaire mosquito traps were set at the most likely locations for arrival of the invasive Aedes mosquitoes as part of the mosquito monitoring program at Schiphol airport. Samples were collected bi-weekly. Upon detection of exotic specimens, information about the origin of the flights arriving to the particular location at the airport where specimens were captured was requested from airport authorities. The GIS tool Intersect was then used to identify airports of origin common to positive trapping locations during the specific trapping period. Captured Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were subsequently genotyped at 12 highly polymorphic microsatellite markers and compared to a reference database of 79 populations around the world to further narrow down their location of origin.
In 2016, six adult yellow fever mosquitoes were captured indoors and outdoors at the airport of Schiphol in the Netherlands confirming, for the first time, air-borne transport of this mosquito vector species into Europe. Mosquitoes were captured during three time periods: June, September and October. Containers carried by aircrafts are considered the most likely pathway for this introduction. GIS analysis and genetic assignment tests on these mosquitoes point to North America or the Middle East as possible origins, but the small sample size prevents us from reliably identifying the geographic origin of this introduction.
The arrival of Ae. aegypti mosquitoes to Schiphol airport from flights arriving from overseas, demonstrates the potential risk of international flights to public health as carriers of arthropod vectors of disease. The results strongly suggest that disinsection of containers and their storage compartments inside the aircrafts could contribute to preventing future introductions of mosquito vectors. Invasive mosquito species introduced by aircrafts from overseas could become seasonally established during the warmer months in Europe, or permanently in certain climatically suitable areas for the species, with major consequences for human health.
This paper presents and discusses the fog occurrences before and after the construction of the Guarulhos International Airport, using data from 1951 to 2015. The analysis showed the following: (1) a ...total of 19,816 h of fog were registered. (2) The minimum average, mean and maximum average of the fog temperature had significantly increased after the airport was constructed from 1.2 to 6.9, 12.1 to 14.5 and 20.2 to 20.7 °C, respectively, due to the urban development around the airport during the study period. (3) The average fog hours per year decreased by approximately 73.1%, i.e., from 492 ± 84.45 to 132 ± 54.51 h per year. (4) Most of the fog events occurred due to longwave cooling on clear nights with relatively low wind speeds (characterizing radiation fog), with over 65% having duration of 2 h and occurring in the early hours of the day during March–September period. (5) The maximum probability of fog occurrence dropped about 10% from before to after the construction of the airport. Finally, two fog events are investigated using data collected during the fog evolution using atmospheric sounding profiles (from an acoustic sounder) and automatic meteorological stations and preliminary results showed that the values of cooling rate and turbulent kinetic energy play key roles in the onset and growth-dissipation phases of the fog, respectively.
Effective infection prevention and control (IPAC) practices within the New South Wales (NSW) Airport Operations and Hotel Quarantine Program (Quarantine Program) were required to mitigate the risk of ...COVID-19 being transmitted to staff, other guests, contractors, and the community.
The Quarantine Program relied on complex logistical arrangements and an end-to-end process that included all steps from the time travelers boarded the returning flight until completion of the quarantine period. This required compliance with relevant IPAC standards historically reserved for health care and the implementation of a quality assurance audit framework.
The Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC) as the NSW Health Pillar for quality and safety and the lead in IPAC provided training and resources coupled with an IPAC quality audit framework after program commencement.
This approach ensured a clear governance structure and a regular review process to minimize risk and support continuous improvement within the program.
Meteorological information at an arrival airport is one of the primary variables used to determine refueling of discretionary fuel. This study evaluated the economic value of terminal aerodrome ...forecasts (TAF), which has not been previously quantitatively analyzed in Korea. The analysis data included 374,716 international flights that arrived at Incheon airport during 2017–2019. A cost–loss model was used for the analysis, which is a methodology to evaluate forecast value by considering the cost and loss that users can expect, considering the decision-making result based on forecast utilization. The value was divided in terms of improving fuel efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions. The results of the analysis indicate that the annual average TAF value for Incheon Airport was approximately 2.2 M–20.1 M USD under two hypothetical rules of refueling of discretionary fuel. This value is up to 26.2% higher than the total budget of 16.3 M USD set for the production of aviation meteorological forecasts by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). Further, it is up to 10 times greater than the 2 M USD spent on aviation meteorological information fees collected by the KMA in 2018.
Air carriers shall not readily relinquish their held flight slots. In cases where the historical flight slot pool cannot be easily altered, a pressing need arises for an allocation method that can ...efficiently utilize the incremental resources of these time slots. This paper presents an integer planning model to address the efficient allocation of incremental airport time slot resources. The model considers the capacity of key resource nodes and flight waveforms as constraints to maximize the total incremental slots. Moreover, it considers the adaptation of strategic and tactical optimization. After conducting a case study using Beijing Capital International Airport for verification, the proposed model effectively reduces potential operational delays by 66.27% while adding 366 to 397-time slots. Notably, the model demonstrates remarkable delay reduction capabilities and can serve as a valuable decision-support tool for the incremental allocation of time slots.
In recent years, the high-speed urbanization process and human activities have led to the fragmentation and the connectivity reduction of natural landscape patches, resulting in the degradation of ...urban ecological services and biodiversity. The construction of ecological network and the optimization of landscape pattern are significantly important to improve the urban ecological environment and urban ecological security. In this paper, a case study of Haikou, an island city of China is performed, the selection of ecological source areas is optimized by granularity reverse method and principal component analysis. The minimum cumulative resistance model (MCRM) is used to construct the ecological resistance surface, and ecological corridors and ecological nodes are obtained, so as to optimize the urban ecological network and the connectivity of landscape patches. The results show that the 1400m granularity landscape component is the optimal landscape component structure for Haikou. There are 38 ecological source areas in Haikou, and 14 ecological landscape patches need to be added. The distribution of ecological source areas is mainly affected by topography and geomorphology. The northwest has huge and scattered ecological source areas, while the southeast has small and concentrated ecological source areas. In the areas around Meilan airport and Hongcheng lake, there is an ecological trap with significant difference between dominant and recessive ecological resistance separately. Haikou ecological network consists of 81 ecological corridors and 76 ecological nodes. Affected by the main urban area in the north, Haikou ecological network has the high density in the middle and southern areas. The construction of ecological network has significantly improved the overall connectivity of the ecosystem in the study region. This research provides a scientific basis for the future urban ecological environment planning of Haikou.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to systematically analyse how building information modelling (BIM) transforms complex infrastructure settings (i.e. airports) around digital technologies by ...enhancing connectivity and collaboration between major stakeholders and construction technology solutions. The objectives include understanding each project party's perspective for BIM implementation to align their motivations and connectivity along project's supply chain network and how BIM drives construction technology ecosystem uses for a more integrative and collaborative project delivery.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts qualitative data collection and analysis methods comprising semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis and an explanatory case study of a large-hub airport project.FindingsThe study findings show that enabling BIM implementation leads to streamlining construction technology ecosystem uses that increase connectivity within project parties' processes. Airports – as hosting high-value assets – can fast realize value of synergistic activities throughout project delivery by harnessing significant amount of siloed data created by each major party.Originality/valueThe study provides a structured analysis of how complex project settings leverage construction technology uses through their core BIM processes by highlighting multi-party approaches from an ecosystem perspective. This study also contributes to the body of knowledge and practice by presenting a transferrable and scalable approach for leveraging connected construction technology in a large-scale project involving fragmented processes managed by a large number of stakeholders.
Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems can employ a large amount of spectrum, and can consequently offer large data rates, e.g., multi-Gigabits-per-second. These systems employ directional ...antennas to enable acceptable link distances. Directional receiver antennas hence rotate in azimuth to capture the strongest received signal in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) regions. In this paper, we present our measurement results for the 90 GHz band for three different scenarios: indoor, outdoor, and an unusual environment: an airport maintenance hangar. We address line-of-sight (LOS), NLOS, mixed, and LOS-to-NLOS transitions. We used a 500 MHz bandwidth chirp signal and estimate parameters for the close-in free space reference distance path loss model using both simulated (ray-tracing software) and measured data. Path loss exponents are 1.6 for outdoor and 1.8 for indoors, smaller than for free space. We also estimate channel delay dispersion, and statistical stationarity distance for some channel transitions. We observed rapid path loss changes in the LOS to NLOS transition regions, 13 dB for indoor and 17 dB for outdoor. Abrupt changes of the strongest-component angle of arrival, up to 60 degrees over a few cm were observed. We also quantify path loss and root-mean square delay spread (RMS DS) for LOS, NLOS and mixed environments in an airport maintenance hangar. This hangar contains various aircraft, and multiple metallic objects whose positions changed over the measurement time. The maximum path loss exponent was 3.14 for these mixed environments. The RMS DS was a maximum of 16.23 ns in the NLOS region. Rotating the receiver antenna to capture the maximum-power signal from a reflecting object decreased the RMS DS by approximately 4 ns (25%). We observed a small minimum stationarity distance, i.e., six wavelengths in NLOS and a large minimum stationarity distance, approximately six hundred wavelengths in LOS.
Sustainability and resilience are important in social, economic and environmental aspects. However, inspections
show that in developing countries like Iran, sustainability and resilience strategies ...lose their significance when economic
problems and high workload come to matter. This research tries to determine what factors encourage managers to consider airport sustainability
in long-term and different situations. Such investigations are essential for a developing country
like Iran, which has 54 airports under a central management system, which can help deploying selected strategies. Results
of this study show that if passengers perceive the sustainability activities and ethical cores of an airport, they consider it
more prestigious and become willing to reuse airport services for their future travels. They also turn out as evangelists
and changes of the way people travel becomes visible on a wider scale. This can help managers to understand recent travel
behaviour of airport passengers and enhance the airports’ performance considering different aspects equally, which are
profitable for airport system, public and environment as a whole.
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