Gap analysis on open data interconnectivity for disaster risk research

Open data strategies are being adopted in disaster-related data particularly because of the need to provide information on global targets and indicators for implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030.In all phases of disaster risk management including forecasting,emergency response and post-disaster reconstruction,the need for interconnected multidisciplinary open data for collaborative reporting as well as study and analysis are apparent,in order to determine disaster impact data in timely and reportable manner.The extraordinary progress in computing and information technology in the past decade,such as broad local and wide-area network connectivity(e.g.Internet),highperformance computing,service and cloud computing,big data methods and mobile devices,provides the technical foundation for connecting open data to support disaster risk research.A new generation of disaster data infrastructure based on interconnected open data is evolving rapidly.There are two levels in the conceptual model of Linked Open Data for Global Disaster Risk Research(LODGD)Working Group of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology(CODATA),which is the Committee on Data of the International Council for Science(ICSU):data characterization and data connection.In data characterization,the knowledge about disaster taxonomy and data dependency on disaster events requires specific scientific study as it aims to understand and present the correlation between specific disaster events and scientific data through the integration of literature analysis and semantic knowledge discovery.Data connection concepts deal with technical methods to connect distributed data resources identified by data characterization of disaster type.In the science community,interconnected open data for disaster risk impact assessment are beginning to influence how disaster data are shared,and this will need to extend data coverage and provide better ways of utilizing data across domains where innovation and integration are now necessarily needed.

Biosecurity risk mapping and gap analysis in South East Asia

Introduction:In today’s globalized world where travel is commonplace,a threat in one region can easily spread throughout the whole world.It is,therefore,essential for multi-disciplinary risk assessment,risk mitigation,and collaborative strategies to take place among various stakeholders to mitigate this.Any strategic plan to deal with biosecurity,therefore,needs to be a complete loop,top to bottom and bottom to top.This paper describes the results of Project 62,which involved mapping and biosecurity risk assessment in South East Asia.Materials and methods:The mapping and biosecurity risk assessment activities for the participating partner countries was carried out in two phases.The first phase involved risk assessment by six partnercountry bio-experts for their own countries and the second phase involved conducting a joint Strengths,Weaknesses,Opportunities,and Threats(SWOT)analysis and risk assessment for the South East Asian region as whole,together with international bio-experts at a workshop.Results and discussion:The following key recommendations of the project show that biosecurity needs to be addressed through stakeholder engagement at multiple levels starting from the top echelons of the government to the worker who needs to recognize and understand the threats they might face:1.Systematic analysis of existing information from BWC ISU Article 10,IHR capacities,JEE,UN Security Council Resolution 1540 Action Plan,EU CBRN NAP,and other relevant sources to develop a common understanding of the definition of biosecurity for all stakeholders in the region.2.Creation of programs for awareness building in biosecurity,not limiting them to laboratory biosecurity but using an all-inclusive approach to include border biosecurity,pandemic response,etc.3.Creation of a country-specific list of high-risk biological materials.4.Compulsory standardized biosecurity training,including responsible conduct in biosecurity research.5.Framework for one-health and security interface addressing biosecurity threats.6.Framework for ensuring information security in relation to biosecurity.7.Involvement of local/regional experts in the implementation of EU-CBRN CoE projects.

Gap analysis in decision support systems for real-estate in the era of the digital earth

Searching for a property is inherently a multicriteria spatial decision.The decision is primarily based on three high-level criteria composed of household needs,building facilities,and location characteristics.Location choice is driven by diverse characteristics;including but not limited to environmental factors,access,services,and the socioeconomic status of a neighbourhood.This article aims to identify the gap between theory and practice in presenting information on location choice by using a gap analysis methodology through the development of a sevenfactor classification tool and an assessment of international property websites.Despite the availability of digital earth data,the results suggest that real-estate websites are poor at providing sufficient location information to support efficient spatial decision making.Based on a case study in Dublin,Ireland,we find that although neighbourhood digital earth data may be readily available to support decision making,the gap persists.We hypothesise that the reason is two-fold.Firstly,there is a technical challenge to transform location data into usable information.Secondly,the market may not wish to provide location information which can be perceived as negative.We conclude this article with a discussion of critical issues necessary for designing a spatial decision support system for real-estate decision making.

An Analysis of Structural-Acoustic Coupling Band Gaps in a Fluid-Filled Periodic Pipe

A periodic pipe system composed of steel pipes and rubber hoses with the same inner radius is designed based on the theory of phononic crystals. Using the transfer matrix method, the band structure of the periodic pipe is calculated considering the structural-acoustic coupling. The results show that longitudinal vibration band gaps and acoustic band gaps can coexist in the fluid-filled periodic pipe. The formation of the band gap mechanism is further analyzed. The band gaps are validated by the sound transmission loss and vibration-frequency response functions calculated using the finite element method. The effect of the damp on the band gap is analyzed by calculating the complex band structure. The periodic pipe system can be used not only in the field of vibration reduction but also for noise elimination.

A Study on Aligning Nursing Curriculum with Hospital Clinical Competency Requirements

The purpose of this study is to coordinate the alignment between the nursing curriculum and hospital clinical competencies,identify the reasons for the gaps,evaluate the impact of these gaps on the nursing profession,and propose strategies to bridge these gaps.This study will help strengthen nursing education,improve nursing students’skills,and help students adapt to complex clinical environments.

Brain-inspired dual-pathway neural network architecture and its generalization analysis

In this study, we explored the neural mechanism of global topological perception in the human visual system. We showed strong evidence that the retinotectal pathway in the archicortex of the human brain is responsible for global topological perception, and for modulating the local feature processing in the classical ventral visual pathway. Inspired by this recent cognitive discovery,we developed a novel CogNet architecture to emulate the global-local dichotomy of human visual cognitive mechanisms. The thorough experimental results indicate that the proposed CogNet not only significantly improves image classification accuracies but also effectively addresses the texture bias problem observed in baseline CNN models. We have also conducted mathematical analysis for the generalization gap for general neural networks. Our theoretical derivations suggest that the Hurst parameter, a measure of the curvature of the loss landscape, can closely bind the generalization gap. A larger Hurst parameter corresponds to a better generalization ability. We found that our proposed CogNet achieves a lower test error and attains a larger Hurst parameter,strengthening its superiority over the baseline CNN models further.

Building African Ecosystem Research Network for Sustaining Local Ecosystem Goods and Services

A new form of producing and sharing knowledge has emerged as an international(United States of America,Asia,and Europe) research collaboration,known as the Long-Term Ecological Research(LTER) Network.Although Africa boasts rich biodiversity,including endemic species,it lacks the long-term initiatives to underpin sustainable biodiversity managements.At present,climate change may exacerbate hunger and poverty concerns in addition to resulting in ecosystem degradation,land use change,and other threats in Africa.Therefore,ecosystem monitoring was suggested to understanding the effects of climate change and setting strategies to mitigate these changes.This paper aimed to investigate ecosystem monitoring ground sites and address their coverage gaps in Africa to provide a foundation for optimizing the African Ecosystem Research Network(AERN) ground sites.The geographic coordinates and characteristics of ground sites-based ecosystem monitoring were collected from various networks aligned with the LTER implementation in Africa.Additionally,climatic data and biodiversity distribution maps were retrieved from various sources.These data were used to assess the size of existing ground sites and the gaps in description,ecosystems and biomes.The results reveal that there were 1089 sites established by various networks.Among these sites,30.5%,27.5%,and 28.8% had no information of area,year of establishment,current status,respectively.However,68.0% of them had an area equal to or greater than 1 km2.Sites were created progressively over the course of the years,with 68.9% being created from 2000 to 2005.To date,only 41.5% of the sites were operational.The sites were scattered across Africa,but they were concentrated in Eastern and Southern Africa.The unbalanced distribution pattern of the sites left Central and Northern Africa hardly covered,and many unique ecosystems in Central Africa were not included.To sustain these sites,the AERN should be based on operational sites,seeking secure funding by establishing multiple partnerships.

Assigning conservation value and identifying hotspots of endemic rattan diversity in the Western Ghats, India

Rattans, or canes, are one of the most important non-timber forest products supporting the livelihood of many forest-dwelling communities in South and North-eastern India. Due to increased demand for rattan products, rattans have been extracted indiscriminately from the Western Ghats, a 1600-km mountain chain running parallel to the west coast of India. Extensive harvesting, loss of habitat and poor regeneration has resulted in dwindling rattan populations, necessitating an urgent attempt to conserve existing rattan resources. In this study, using niche-modelling tools, an attempt has been made to identify areas of high species richness of rattans in the Western Ghats, one of the mega-diversity regions of the world. We have also developed conservation values for 21 economically important and endemic rattans of the Western Ghats. We identified at least two to three sites of extremely high species richness outside the existing protected area network that should be prioritized for in situ conservation.This study emphasizes the need to develop strategies for the long-term conservation of rattans in the Western Ghats, India.

Band gap structure analysis of phononic crystal rods with hybrid shunted piezoelectric patches

The band gap structures by arranging hybrid shunted piezoelectric materialswith resistance inductive （RL） circuit and negative impedance converter （NIC） closely and at in- tervals are presented. The theoretical model is built using transfer matrix method. Then the MATLAB computing language is utilized to simulate the band gap structures. Meanwhile, the effects of the resistance, inductance and capacitance on the local resonant gap are studied. By comparing different combinations of resistance, inductance and capacitance as well as different arrangement of circuits, a 13 kHz band gap is reached under the effect of arranging hybrid pe- riodic shunted piezoelectric patches at intervals and the stability of the system is also analyzed. It is proved that utilizing hybrid shunted piezoelectric patches would have a clear impact on the band gap structure of phononic crystal rods. Moreover, the band gap would be clearly enlarged by arranging hybrid piezoelectric patches at intervals.

Empirical Analysis of Wealth Distribution Disparity of Chinese Residents and Its Changes

This article describes and analyses the disparity in wealth distribution of Chinese residents, on the basis of results of sample surveys from 1995 to 2002. It finds an obvious worsening trend, mainly due to the rapid widening of the urban-rural gap. The process of privatisation of urban housing has led to a narrowing of the wealth gap between urban residents, and has also led to a widening of the wealth gap between urban and rural residents, as well as the national wealth gap. As incomes from land decline, the relative weight of land value in rural residents＇ overall wealth possession has been decreasing and the role of land in narrowing the nation＇s urban-rural gap has been weakened. In addition, this article also holds that the financial assets of residents wiU play a greater role in enlarging the overall wealth distribution disparity.

Pedestrian risk analysis at uncontrolled midblock and unsignalised intersections

Transportation is defined as port to port transfer of person or goods by a medium which can be a vehicle or a person. Pedestrians being the most neglected mode of transportation in terms of safety and facility, face difficult situations while crossing near intersections and midblock crossings. It becomes more of a risk when the place of crossing is uncontrolled.But if behaviour of pedestrians while crossing is analysed in such conditions, it might be possible to create suitable solution to lessen the risk and ensure safety. In most of the cities, accepting suitable gaps between vehicles in uncontrolled midblock and intersection crossings pose threat to pedestrians＇ safety. The present study examines the safety of pedestrian crossing behaviour at midblock and unsignalised intersection crossings.Crossing time, speed, stages of crossing, number of interruptions while crossing, and the type of vehicles for which pedestrians accept the gap were extracted from the video. The tendency to show rolling gap behavior was observed and examined for different age and gender groups to analyse the risk involved in such type of crossings. The risks analysed from the study in correlation with the pedestrian demand in such uncontrolled crossings will help in design of safer pedestrian facilities. It was observed that the size of the vehicle has a significant influence on gap acceptance and crossing behaviour of pedestrians. Male pedestrians take more risks than female pedestrians in crossing unsignalized intersections. Middle aged pedestrian category poses 60.1% more chances of interrupted crossing than the other elder and young age categories of pedestrians. Male pedestrian category and the middle aged pedestrian category are more tended to accept the smallest gap between the vehicles showing a risky nature of crossing.

Earth observations for sustainable development goals monitoring based on essential variables and driver-pressure-state-impactresponse indicators

In recent years,researchers of different communities have increased their efforts in formalizing a set of measurements regularly collected for analysing changes in Drivers,States,Impacts and Responses of a given discipline.In some cases,different actors have converged in a minimum set of Essential Variables(EVs),such as for Climate,Biodiversity or Oceans.The definition of such EVs is an ongoing evolution and in extension(e.g.EVs for water)although some communities have not even started(e.g.agriculture and energy).This paper characterizes the Earth Observation(EO)networks and creates a graph representation of their relations.Secondly,this graph is enriched with the EVs produced by each network creating a knowledge base.Finally,an effort has been done to identify links between EVs and Sustainable Development Goals(SDG)indicators in a way that they indirectly connect the EO.An analysis to detect gaps in EO variables due to a lack of observational networks is performed.Several suggestions for improving SDG indicators framework by considering EVs are exposed,as well as proposing new necessary EVs and suggesting new EO based indicators.The complete graph is available in the ENEON website(http://www.eneon.net/graphev-sdg/).