title: Applying resilient rating systems for predicting continued operability of hospitals after earthquakes

authors: Boston, Megan

abstract: Immediately after a major earthquake, critical facilities need to remain operational, continuously providing healthcare services. Continued operability is dependent on the physical performance of healthcare facilities during the earthquake. Several earthquake resilience-rating systems provide a translation of technical building evaluation data into quick summaries of expected building performance and resilience. These ratings provide an approximation of the intended building performance in relation to safety, repair time, and repair cost. However, the translations between engineering assessments and rating systems is inconsistent, with the same technical inputs producing different resilience estimations. The lack of standardization across rating systems can cause confusion for accurately predicted building outcomes. Further, the level of recovery detail is broad with timeframes measured in weeks, months, or even years. While this may be sufficient for many facilities, it is insufficient for others. For example, critical facilities require estimates of building functionality within minutes, hours, and days of the event to support emergency operations. However, current rating systems and engineering evaluation methods lack the proper resolution to provide this level of detail, making the current rating systems inadequate for emergency planners and may provide communities with a false sense of general preparedness. This paper examines the effectiveness of various resilience-rating systems to predict the overall functionality in a hospital after an earthquake and the issues in converting building performance evaluations into resilience ratings. Further, it presents an additional methodology for addressing resolution gaps in estimating building functionality immediately after the event.

text: Applying resilient rating systems for predicting continued operability of hospitals after earthquakes Immediately after a major earthquake, critical facilities need to remain operational, continuously providing healthcare services. Continued operability is dependent on the physical performance of healthcare facilities during the earthquake. Several earthquake resilience-rating systems provide a translation of technical building evaluation data into quick summaries of expected building performance and resilience. These ratings provide an approximation of the intended building performance in relation to safety, repair time, and repair cost. However, the translations between engineering assessments and rating systems is inconsistent, with the same technical inputs producing different resilience estimations. The lack of standardization across rating systems can cause confusion for accurately predicted building outcomes. Further, the level of recovery detail is broad with timeframes measured in weeks, months, or even years. While this may be sufficient for many facilities, it is insufficient for others. For example, critical facilities require estimates of building functionality within minutes, hours, and days of the event to support emergency operations. However, current rating systems and engineering evaluation methods lack the proper resolution to provide this level of detail, making the current rating systems inadequate for emergency planners and may provide communities with a false sense of general preparedness. This paper examines the effectiveness of various resilience-rating systems to predict the overall functionality in a hospital after an earthquake and the issues in converting building performance evaluations into resilience ratings. Further, it presents an additional methodology for addressing resolution gaps in estimating building functionality immediately after the event.

year: 2018

title: Fake webs, real results: Artificial spiderwebs for eDNA collection

authors: McGaughran, Angela

subjects: artificial spiderwebs

abstract: Environmental DNA (eDNA)-based detection is a valuable biomonitoring tool that is well-developed for water, soil, and scat substrates. Emergent research is focusing on air as a new substrate, including opportunistically collected natural spiderwebs which may have negative impacts on local spider diversity. Here, we design novel artificial spiderwebs and compare their effectiveness with natural spiderwebs and aquatic eDNA approaches for biomonitoring of terrestrial taxa. A total of 33 eDNA samples (18 water, 6 natural spiderwebs, 9 artificial spiderwebs) were collected from a rural property in Palmerston North (Aotearoa New Zealand). Three amplicons (COI, 16S, and ITS) were sequenced for each sample to evaluate the performance of each collection method for detecting invertebrates, vertebrates, and plant/algal taxa. The 16S amplicon performed best in terms of sequencing output and consistency, as well as species accumulation curves, with the COI dataset performing worst for all eDNA collection methods. Alpha diversity varied by amplicon and collection method in both value and consistency among samples, with 16S and ITS retrieving higher diversity for water samples and both artificial and natural webs outperforming water in fungal COI diversity recovery. Ordination plots showed clear differences in sample similarity across biomes, with all three amplicons showing differentiation between water and either web type. However, specialist species were recovered by each of the two web types, with artificial webs consistently recovering more unique diversity than natural webs. Our results suggest that artificial spiderwebs could be a promising new method in the eDNA biomonitoring toolbox, providing biodiversity data that complements water-based collections and, depending on the research question, may serve as a sufficient proxy for natural spiderweb studies.

text: Fake webs, real results: Artificial spiderwebs for eDNA collection Environmental DNA (eDNA)-based detection is a valuable biomonitoring tool that is well-developed for water, soil, and scat substrates. Emergent research is focusing on air as a new substrate, including opportunistically collected natural spiderwebs which may have negative impacts on local spider diversity. Here, we design novel artificial spiderwebs and compare their effectiveness with natural spiderwebs and aquatic eDNA approaches for biomonitoring of terrestrial taxa. A total of 33 eDNA samples (18 water, 6 natural spiderwebs, 9 artificial spiderwebs) were collected from a rural property in Palmerston North (Aotearoa New Zealand). Three amplicons (COI, 16S, and ITS) were sequenced for each sample to evaluate the performance of each collection method for detecting invertebrates, vertebrates, and plant/algal taxa. The 16S amplicon performed best in terms of sequencing output and consistency, as well as species accumulation curves, with the COI dataset performing worst for all eDNA collection methods. Alpha diversity varied by amplicon and collection method in both value and consistency among samples, with 16S and ITS retrieving higher diversity for water samples and both artificial and natural webs outperforming water in fungal COI diversity recovery. Ordination plots showed clear differences in sample similarity across biomes, with all three amplicons showing differentiation between water and either web type. However, specialist species were recovered by each of the two web types, with artificial webs consistently recovering more unique diversity than natural webs. Our results suggest that artificial spiderwebs could be a promising new method in the eDNA biomonitoring toolbox, providing biodiversity data that complements water-based collections and, depending on the research question, may serve as a sufficient proxy for natural spiderweb studies.

year: 2025-11

title: Prevalence of sociodemographic factors in a cohort of diabetes mellitus: A retrospective study

authors: Erandathi, Madurapperumage A.

subjects: complications of diabetes

abstract: Exploring the sociodemographic factors of a cohort is a vital phase in revealing significant aspects of the societal health status. The health care sector utilises the results of exploratory analysis of the sociodemographic nature to fulfil various purposes such as constructing health care policies, allocating adequate resources, imposing necessary medications and many more. A large and growing body of evidence shows that understanding the pervasiveness of sociodemographic factors: age, ethnicity, gender, reveal crucial information. Therefore, this study aims to disclose the knowledge through analysing the sociodemographic details of a New Zealand diabetes cohort. Diabetes mellitus is a chronic fatal disease that occurs due to the inability to control proper blood sugar levels, which causes multitudinous acute and chronic complications. Diabetes became a high prevalence disease in the region of Waikato. Analysing the cohort of diabetes patients associated with complications of diabetes illustrate the prevalence of complications of diabetes among the patients. The dataset of the study has been collected from the Waikato district health board. This study intends to report the initial scanning of the dataset profile with visualising the resulting patterns of sociodemographic details from the samples and their association with complications of diabetes. The Sankey diagrams use to visualise the results of exploratory data analysis. The resulted graphs of the data screening descriptively illustrate the characteristics of the cohort associated with demographic factors. Maori population shows higher percentage (0.68) of diabetes patients than the other ethnicities, while having narrower age expansion (13-95) with early onset age, compared to others (20-103). Males (0.61%) are more vulnerable to diabetes than females (0.55%). Additionally, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases are common among the diabetes patients’ in the Waikato region. Maori male population is highly vulnerable to diabetes. This study will be beneficial in constructing and analysing the demographical categories of the cohort to comparatively study the pervasiveness of the diseases among resulting classes.

text: Prevalence of sociodemographic factors in a cohort of diabetes mellitus: A retrospective study Exploring the sociodemographic factors of a cohort is a vital phase in revealing significant aspects of the societal health status. The health care sector utilises the results of exploratory analysis of the sociodemographic nature to fulfil various purposes such as constructing health care policies, allocating adequate resources, imposing necessary medications and many more. A large and growing body of evidence shows that understanding the pervasiveness of sociodemographic factors: age, ethnicity, gender, reveal crucial information. Therefore, this study aims to disclose the knowledge through analysing the sociodemographic details of a New Zealand diabetes cohort. Diabetes mellitus is a chronic fatal disease that occurs due to the inability to control proper blood sugar levels, which causes multitudinous acute and chronic complications. Diabetes became a high prevalence disease in the region of Waikato. Analysing the cohort of diabetes patients associated with complications of diabetes illustrate the prevalence of complications of diabetes among the patients. The dataset of the study has been collected from the Waikato district health board. This study intends to report the initial scanning of the dataset profile with visualising the resulting patterns of sociodemographic details from the samples and their association with complications of diabetes. The Sankey diagrams use to visualise the results of exploratory data analysis. The resulted graphs of the data screening descriptively illustrate the characteristics of the cohort associated with demographic factors. Maori population shows higher percentage (0.68) of diabetes patients than the other ethnicities, while having narrower age expansion (13-95) with early onset age, compared to others (20-103). Males (0.61%) are more vulnerable to diabetes than females (0.55%). Additionally, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases are common among the diabetes patients’ in the Waikato region. Maori male population is highly vulnerable to diabetes. This study will be beneficial in constructing and analysing the demographical categories of the cohort to comparatively study the pervasiveness of the diseases among resulting classes.

year: 2022