The joint effect of changes in climate and land use on the future availability of water resources was assessed under the SRES A1B and A2 climate scenarios as well as five land use scenarios for the ...2080–2100 time-frame in an Italian coastal watershed. The study area is a small coastal polder (100 km²) characterized by irrigated agriculture, urban expansion, drainage, quarrying and sensitivity to salt-water intrusion. The hydroclimatic budget and the GALDIT index have been computed for assessing water resources availability and groundwater vulnerability to salinization, respectively. The methodology developed is integrated into a tool based on Excel™, which supported the development of scenarios in participatory processes. The conclusions emerged from the analysis are the following: (1) climate change is more effective than land use change in controlling future freshwater availability and amplifies the imbalance between winter surplus and summer deficits, (2) freshwater availability in the summer will likely be affected by an increase in evaporation from open water surfaces due to increased temperature, whereas winter surplus would increase, (3) the vulnerability of the coastal aquifer to salinization will probably moderately increase but an inherent limitation of the GALDIT index to land use change parameters prevents a sound assessment. Strategies that may be proposed to administrators and stakeholders are based on increasing storage of seasonal water surplus.
Contrary to the popular belief cited in the literature, the proposed data analytics technique shows that multiple linear regression (MLR) can achieve as high a predictive power as some of the black ...box models when the necessary interventions are implemented pertaining to the regression diagnostic. Such an MLR model can be utilised to design an optimal concrete mix, as it provides the explicit and accurate relationships between the HPC components and the expected compressive strength. Moreover, the proposed study offers a decision support tool incorporating the Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) model to bridge the gap between black-box models and practitioners. The tool can be used to make faster, more data-driven, and accurate managerial decisions without having any expertise in the required fields, which would reduce a substantial amount of time, cost, and effort spent on measurement procedures of the compressive strength of HPC.
In the last decades, a growing attention on energy saving associated with water resources usage and leakages reduction has been recorded at both national and international level. Scientific research ...has focused on implementation of several methodologies aimed at the understanding of energy transformation processes occurring in the integrated water system.
The main concern is then identifying energy impacts associated to each macro-area of integrated water system, such as collection, treatment and distribution, and analysing the potential interactions between them. Unfortunately, only overall energy consumptions are usually available at national level. The main objective of the paper is to present a decision support tool, developed in the framework of the ALADIN project, able to analysing the water and energy balance in the integrated water service. In order to achieve a sustainable use of water resources, the tool allows an assessment of the energy impact of different macro - areas of integrated water system. Moreover, each macro - area can be treated as an element able to share energy with other elements, aiming to obtain an energy saving on the whole integrated water system. In this way, the decision support tool could suggest efficient solutions, according to the operator objectives,with regard to energy and water losses management. Therefore, the tool could provide guidelines for choosing the best management solutions, depending on the particular analysed system, and allow, at the same time, the energy and water resources saving. The proposed tool was applied to a complex water supply system, the Favara di Burgiosystem (Sicily, Italy) in order to show its reliability.
차세대 통신링크를 활용한 항공로 교통 관리를 위해 궤적 기반의 관제 지원 스케줄링 시스템을 제안하였다. 차세대 ATS (air traffic services) 데이터링크인 Baseline 2를 사용하는 4DTRAD (4-dimensional trajectory data link) 서비스 내용을 기반으로 항공로상을 비행 중인 항공기를 대상으로 하는 ...궤적기반운용 수행 절차를 수립하고 기술하였다. 이러한 절차를 바탕으로, 다양하고 복잡한 데이터 활용으로 인한 관제사의 업무 부담을 완화하기 위해 지상 시스템이 수신한 항공기 데이터를 처리하여 궤적을 예측하고 관제 조언 정보를 제공하는 스케줄링 시스템의 프로토타입을 개발하였다. 또한, 궤적 기반 항행을 위한 시뮬레이션 환경을 구성하여 개발 시스템에 대한 스케줄링 기능을 확인하였다.
A trajectory-based scheduling system is proposed for air traffic management using next generation aviation data communication link. Based on the service concept of 4-dimensional trajectory data link (4DTRAD) using air traffic serveices (ATS) datalink Baseline 2, a procedure for trajectory-based operation of an en-route flight is established and described in detail. To mitigate air traffic controllers’ workload which might be caused by various and complicated data utilization, a prototype of the scheduling system, which predicts the aircraft trajectory based on the flight intents received by air traffic service system and provides advisory information for air traffic control, was developed. The simulation environment for trajectory based operation was built to validate the scheduling functionality of the prototype.
Background
Pregnant women are active users of mobile apps for health purposes. These apps may improve self-management of health-related conditions. Up to 70% of pregnant women experience nausea and ...vomiting (NVP). Even mild NVP can significantly reduce quality of life (QoL), and it can become an economic burden for both the woman and society. NVP often occurs before the first maternal care visit; therefore, apps can potentially play an important role in empowering pregnant women to recognize, manage, and seek appropriate treatment for NVP, when required.
Objective
This study investigated whether the MinSafeStart (MSS) mobile app could impact NVP-related symptoms, QoL, and decisional conflict regarding NVP treatment.
Methods
This randomized controlled trial enrolled 268 pregnant women with NVP in Norway from 2019 to 2020. The intervention group had access to the MSS app, which could be used to track NVP symptoms and access tailored advice. NVP severity was rated with the Pregnancy Unique Quantification of Emesis (PUQE) score. The control group followed standard maternal care. We collected data on maternal baseline characteristics, NVP severity, QoL, and decisional conflict using 2 sets of online questionnaires. One set of questionnaires was completed at enrollment, and the other was completed after 2 weeks. We performed linear regression analyses to explore whether the use of the MSS app was associated with NVP severity, QoL, or decisional conflict.
Results
Among the 268 women enrolled in the study, 192 (86.5%) completed the baseline questionnaires and were randomized to either the intervention (n=89) or control group (n=103). In the intervention group, 88 women downloaded the app, and 468 logs were recorded. In both groups, women were enrolled at a median of 8 gestational weeks. At baseline, the average PUQE scores were 4.9 and 4.7; the average QoL scores were 146 and 149; and the average DCS scores were 40 and 43 in the intervention and control groups, respectively. The app had no impact on NVP severity (aβ 0.6, 95% Cl −0.1 to 1.2), QoL (aβ −5.3, 95% Cl −12.5 to 1.9), or decisional conflict regarding NVP treatment (aβ −1.1, 95% Cl −6.2 to 4.2), compared with standard care.
Conclusions
Tracking NVP symptoms with the MSS app was not associated with improvements in NVP symptoms, QoL, or decisional conflict after 2 weeks, compared with standard care. Future studies should include a process evaluation to improve our understanding of how pregnant women use the app and how to optimize its utility within maternity care. Specifically, studies should focus on how digital tools might facilitate counseling and communication between pregnant women and health care providers regarding NVP management during pregnancy.
Trial Registration
ClinicalTrails.gov (NCT04719286): https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04719286
Sites contaminated by hexavalent chromium raise concerns relating to the toxicity of the pollutant, as well as for the increased solubility of its compounds, which helps it to seep into aquifers. ...Chemical and biological in situ treatment technologies, with good potential in terms of environmental sustainability, have recently been designed and implemented on a wide scale. A useful support tool is shown in the manuscript in the preliminary phase of assessing possible technologies applicable according to the site-specific characteristics of sites. The actual efficacy of the technologies identified should nevertheless be verified in laboratory trials and pilot tests.
•City level health adaptation to climate change/variability has been inadequate.•Coping strategies by residents contribute significantly to their resilience.•Economic evaluation of coping/adaptation ...serves as a decision tool for planning adaptation.•Framework using health production function (HPF) is proposed for economic evaluation.•Empirical decision tool for health adaptation using HPF has been developed.
Adaptation to health risk due to climate variability and change at the city level is inadequate, particularly in developing economies. Here, coping strategies with short-term benefits, adopted by the residents contribute significantly to their resilience. Decision on effective adaptation, therefore, requires economic evaluation of the coping and adaptation strategies in practise. In the present paper a novel framework using household health production function (HPF) approach has been developed for evaluation of coping and adaptation strategies to serve as a decision tool for planners. The outcome informs decision makers about the benefits and effectiveness of coping, and shortcomings in the existing adaptation strategies, thus, contributing to stocktaking. The approach has been validated using a case of vector-borne disease of dengue, an important climate-sensitive health impact of climate change. A five step cyclical framework has been proposed which addresses uncertainty by avoiding the need for future projection of health outcomes and scenario building as it can be applied at any point of time in future and considers the current risk only. The strengths and weaknesses of the proposed tool are compared with other similar tools. The decision support tool has applicability for all climate-sensitive health outcomes at the city level.
From results obtained over the last 20 years on energy and amino acid utilisation in reproductive sows, it has become possible to improve the determination of nutrient requirements (factorial ...approach) and the prediction of an animal's response to nutrient supplies (modelling). The objective of this project was to integrate the current state of knowledge in a nutritional model for growing pigs and for sows and make it available as a software tool to end-users, mainly nutritionists involved in the pig industry and students in animal nutrition. The aim of this paper is to describe the basis of the sow model. The sow is represented as different compartments that change over the reproductive cycle. Nutrient flows considered are those of energy and digestible amino acids. Nutrients are used with the highest priority for maintenance and uterine growth or milk production. Subsequently, deposition and/or mobilisation of body proteins and lipids are determined and used for estimating the changes in body weight and backfat thickness of the sow. A decision support tool was built from the set of equations given, with additional modules to describe animal's characteristics and adjust some model parameters to account for variations in genotypes and performance. This tool can be used to determine energy and amino acids requirements of sows according to production objectives, or to predict body composition changes according to a given feeding strategy. The use of the decision support tool is illustrated through some examples.
Contaminated oil and gas well sites, disposal of chemical substances, and polluted landfills all result in environmentally hazardous conditions that plague our society today. Contaminated site ...remediation and reclamation are critical for sustainable resource development and management of cumulative environmental effects. However, it is challenging to improve remediation efficiency and reduce costs of remediation due to complex site environmental conditions. The objective of this paper is to develop an integrated approach of remediation assessment and total cost analysis on a single platform using SQL, Microsoft Azure, and PowerBI. The decision support tool aggregates data of contaminants, materials, and remediation alternatives at remediation sites and stores the information in a SQL database. The tool then compares alternative treatment options and their associated costs through cost breakdown of materials, labour, equipment, and energy. The results show that the tool is capable of life cycle cost analysis for the ex situ remediation technology, including biological, thermal, and chemical treatments. The built-in cost analysis fosters real-time availability of different treatment options which is geared towards providing an effective and efficient way to conduct a cost analysis for decision-makers with scalable, reliable, and robust analytical capabilities in a single system.
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