Seismic Vulnerability Assessment Mobile Application for Rapid Visual Screening

Eastern Europe is experiencing an epidemic of deaths from cardiovascular diseases with an increase since the early 1990s approaching 50%. The ability to survey the risk factors associated with this striking rise is severely hampered by the current disarray of the area's public health system. We used a rapid survey method to describe the epidemiology of cardiovascular risk in the capital of the Republic of Georgia, Tbilisi. A two-stage cluster design, 'rapid survey method' developed by the Chronic Disease Center was used to estimate the frequency of hypertension, a major cardiovascular risk factor. Local personnel were trained and certified in blood pressure measurement and rapid survey techniques. The training and survey were conducted over a period of 14 days at which time a preliminary report of the survey was presented to the Ministry of Health. A total of 321 subjects were surveyed. The frequency of high blood pressure (>140/>90 mm Hg) at the time of the examination was 58% in men and 56% in women. The major correlates for blood pressure were gender and age. In addition we found that 31% of the population had a total cholesterol > or =220 mg% and a similar number had a low high density lipoprotein < or =35 mg%. Smoking was present in 60% of men and none were taking aspirin daily to prevent premature coronary artery disease. The rapid survey method is feasible in the former Soviet Union and can quickly provide estimates of the risk factors associated with the epidemic of cardiovascular disease in this area.

Eastern Europe is experiencing an epidemic of deaths from cardiovascular diseases with an increase since the early 1990s approaching 50%. The ability to survey the risk factors associated with this striking rise is severely hampered by the current disarray of the area's public health system. We used a rapid survey method to describe the epidemiology of cardiovascular risk in the capital of the Republic of Georgia, Tbilisi.A two-stage cluster design, 'rapid survey method' developed by the Chronic Disease Center was used to estimate the frequency of hypertension, a major cardiovascular risk factor. Local personnel were trained and certified in blood pressure measurement and rapid survey techniques. The training and survey were conducted over a period of 14 days at which time a preliminary report of the survey was presented to the Ministry of Health.A total of 321 subjects were surveyed. The frequency of high blood pressure (>140/>90 mm Hg) at the time of the examination was 58% in men and 56% in women. The major correlates for blood pressure were gender and age. In addition we found that 31% of the population had a total cholesterol > or =220 mg% and a similar number had a low high density lipoprotein < or =35 mg%. Smoking was present in 60% of men and none were taking aspirin daily to prevent premature coronary artery disease.The rapid survey method is feasible in the former Soviet Union and can quickly provide estimates of the risk factors associated with the epidemic of cardiovascular disease in this area.

Rapid seismic visual screen method for masonry infilled reinforced concrete framed buildings: Application to typical Sri Lankan school buildings

Abstract. In Japan, the political system was changed greatly and new Meiji government under Meiji Emperor was born in 1868. Meiji government made great efforts to modernize Japan to hold its independence, hiring many professionals from the western advanced countries, sending many students to the western advanced countries, establishing obligatory education system, and so on.It invited French military mission to modernize its army. The mission arrived in Japan in 1872 and stayed until 1880 changing its members. It included engineer officers as follows: Engineer captain Albert Jourdan (1872–1878), Engineer captain Ernest Vieillard (1873–1876), Engineer lieutenant captain Lucian Kreitmann (1876-1888) and two other engineer officers succeed until 1880. They worked fundamentally as the teachers of engineering including survey and mapping. Jourdan had additional works as Coast Defense plan and military construction such as Military School. Jourdan participated in the Japan Coast Defense Planning Mission headed by French mission chief and ordered by the Army Minister,Yamagata. Coast Defense Plan maps were drawn for Kagosima Bay, Hakodate Bay, Tsuruga Bay, etc. Japanese officers of the General Staff Bureau engaged in making base maps for planning and supported the Mission in the field. The mapping technology would be transferred to the Japanese officers on the job.The French Mission members began various military educations in 1872. TIZU SAISIKI (Map Color Rule) was published in 1873, which was translated book by Tomohiro Kosuge (later, the founder and the first director of Japan Land Survey) and others from a French map book brought by Jourdan. Jourdan and Vieillard taught military engineering, based on the textbooks 1855 for French engineer regimental schools, which were translated by T. Kosuge and others and published as KOUHEI SOUTEN (Manual for Military Engineers) including Survey Division in 1873–1875.In 1875, Grand Military Field Exercise was held in Narashinohara near Tokyo, when the field was surveyed at 1/10,000 scale with six plane table teams including T. Kosuge directed by E. Vieillard and a map was compiled and published next year.In 1876, the first three textbooks on mapping of the Military School were printed ; SOKUTI KOUHON (Land Survey Textbook), TIRIZUGAKU KOUHON (Topography Textbook) and SOKUTI KANHOU (Rapid Survey Method in the Military School. The former two were Kreitmann’s lecture records and the last one was translated book of a textbook of French Artillery and Engineering Application School Military Field Exercise was held in Narashinohara, when the field was surveyed with plane table method at 1/20,000 scale by the Military School pupils directed by L. Kreitmann. The compiled map was printed next year in the Military School.In 1877, Seinan Civil War occurred in Kyushu Islan. Rapid survey maps were drawn by the members of the Survey Division of the Army Ministry. After the war, military field exercise was held in Shimoshidzu, when the field was surveyed with plane table method at 1/20,000 scale by the Military School pupils directed by L. Kreitmann. The compiled map was printed next year in the Military School.In 1879, T. Kosuge was nominated to the head of the Survey Division, General Staff Office. He presented his second opinion, “Rapid Survey Plan of the Whole County “ without triangulation which remained as the object of study to the head of the General Staff Office and this plan was accepted.In 1880 following the “Rapid Survey Plan”, the rapid survey began with plane table method at 1/20,000 scale in Kanto metropolitan area on a large scale.In 1881, according the comparison of the results of the normal triangulation and the graphical triangulation on the plane table, it was concluded that the former should be adopted for the whole country control point survey and that the survey system and organization should be changed.In 1889, Army Land Survey was founded by T. Kosuge following the model of Prussian Land Survey, Germany and the first director was T. Kosuge. However, KOUHEI SOUTEN (Manual for Military Engineers) Second Edition, Survey Division was published, translated from the textbook 1883 for the French Engineer Regimental School.

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Seismic safety assessment of existing buildings is very important because their design and construction are made according to lower standards. The buildings designed with lower standards and without standards are susceptible to earthquake-induced damage. The vulnerability of existing buildings to seismic events has been vividly highlighted by recent earthquakes, such as the T&amp;#252;rkiye&amp;#8211;Syria earthquake on February 6, 2023, the Herat Afghanistan earthquake on October 11, 2023, and the Marrakesh-Safi Morocco earthquake on September 9, 2023. In the Turkey-Syria earthquake alone, over 50,000 people lost their lives [1], over 100,000 sustained injuries [2], and the economic toll amounted to approximately 110 million dollars [3]. Building damage from seismic events poses risks to lives and causes substantial financial losses, necessitating the determination of each building's fragility and the implementation of appropriate precautions before an impending devastating earthquake. Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) methods are employed for assessing building inventory, given the computational and cost constraints of in-depth vulnerability assessment methods. While conventional RVS methods are widely used and high efforts are given to enhance them, their reliability is limited for accurately assessing a building inventory [4&amp;#8211;6]. Therefore, this study leverages post-earthquake building inspection data from the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake to develop a RVS method using artificial intelligence algorithms, encompassing fuzzy logic, machine learning, and neural networks. The integration of advanced feature engineering techniques introduces sophisticated parameters like fundamental structural period, spectral acceleration, and distance to the earthquake source, enhancing the RVS method's assessment capabilities across diverse seismically vulnerable areas. The developed RVS method demonstrates a correlation between observed building post-earthquake damage states and the predicted ones. When compared to conventional RVS methods, a noteworthy test accuracy of 44% is achieved, surpassing conventional methods in accurately classifying building damage states. Notably, in contrast to RVS methods solely developed using machine learning and neural networks, the developed method exhibits transparency and the capability to be adapted to different regions. Keywords: Seismic vulnerability assessment; Earthquake-induced damage; Rapid Visual Screening (RVS); Artificial intelligence algorithms; Fuzzy logic; Machine learning; Neural networks &amp;#160;

In order to prevent possible loss of life and property, existing building stocks need to be assessed before an impending earthquake. Beyond the examination of large building stocks, rapid evaluation methods are required because the evaluation of even one building utilizing detailed vulnerability assessment methods is computationally expensive. Rapid visual screening (RVS) methods are used to screen and classify existing buildings in large building stocks in earthquake-prone zones prior to or after a catastrophic earthquake. Buildings are assessed using RVS procedures that take into consideration the distinctive features (such as irregularity, construction year, construction quality, and soil type) of each building, which each need to be considered separately. Substantially, studies have been presented to enhance conventional RVS methods in terms of truly identifying building safety levels by using computer algorithms (such as machine learning, fuzzy logic, and neural networks). This study outlines the background research that was conducted in order to establish the parameters for the development of a fuzzy logic-based soft rapid visual screening (S-RVS) method as an alternative to conventional RVS methods. In this investigation, rules, membership functions, transformation values, and defuzzification procedures were established by examining the data of 40 unreinforced masonries (URM) buildings acquired as a consequence of the 2019 Albania earthquake in order to construct a fuzzy logic-based S-RVS method.

The rapid village survey in tuberculosis control

Efficient quality control is essential to ensure high sensitivity of Papanicolaou (Pap) smears. For this purpose, rescreening of 10% random negative smears is increasingly felt to be ineffective. Rapid rescreening (RR) of all negative Pap smears is more practical and has received widespread acceptance, especially in Europe, although its sensitivity is difficult to monitor and its retrospective nature may influence the vigilance of the screeners. The method of rapid prescreening (RPS) overcomes these drawbacks because rapid review of Pap smears precedes full screening. All routine conventional Pap smears (n = 8364) over 2 months underwent RPS by 12 cytotechnologists, followed by full screening. Data were analyzed to determine correlation between the RPS sensitivity of individual cytotechnologists and both their sensitivity in full screening and their years of experience as cytotechnologists. There was a striking variability in sensitivity (15.4%-72.7%) among the 12 screeners with an atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) threshold. There was no correlation between RPS sensitivity of individual cytotechnologists with either their sensitivity in full screening or their years of experience as cytotechnologists. The skills required of a cytotechnologist for achieving a high sensitivity in RPS are apparently different from those of full screening and are independent of the sensitivity of the screeners at full screening or of the years of experience as cytotechnologists.

Enhancing seismic assessment and risk management of buildings: A neural network-based rapid visual screening method development

Many conventional rapid visual screening (RVS) methods for the seismic assessment of existing structures have been designed over the past three decades, tailored to site-specific building features. The objective of implementing RVS is to identify the buildings most susceptible to earthquake-induced damage. RVS methods are utilized to classify buildings according to their risk level to prioritize the buildings at high seismic risk. The conventional RVS methods are employed to determine the damage after an earthquake or to make safety assessments in order to predict the damage that may occur in a building before an impending earthquake. Due to the subjectivity of the screener based on visual examination, previous research has shown that these conventional methods can lead to vagueness and uncertainty. Additionally, because RVS methods were found to be conservative and to be partially accurate, as well as the fact that some expert opinion based developed RVS techniques do not have the capability of further enhancement, it was recommended that RVS methods be developed. Therefore, this paper discusses a fuzzy logic based RVS method development to produce an accurate building features responsive examination method for unreinforced masonry (URM) structures, as well as a way of revising existing RVS methods. In this context, RVS parameters are used in a fuzzy-inference system hierarchical computational pattern to develop the RVS method. The fuzzy inference system based RVS method was developed considering post-earthquake building screening data of 40 URM structures located in Albania following the earthquake in 2019 as a case study. In addition, FEMA P-154, a conventional RVS method, was employed to screen considered buildings to comparatively demonstrate the efficiency of the developed RVS method in this study. The findings of the study revealed that the proposed method with an accuracy of 67.5% strongly outperformed the conventional RVS method by 42.5%.

Each existing building is required to be assessed before an impending severe earthquake utilizing Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) methods for its seismic safety since many buildings were constructed before seismic standards, without taking into account current regulations, and because they have a limited lifetime and safety based on how they were designed and maintained. Building damage brought on by earthquakes puts lives in danger and causes significant financial losses. Therefore, the fragility of each building needs to be determined and appropriate precautions need to be taken. RVS methods are used when assessing a large building stock since further in-depth vulnerability assessment methods are computationally expensive and costly to examine even one structure in a large building stock. RVS methods could be implemented in existing buildings in order to determine the damage potential that may occur during an impending earthquake and take necessary measures for decreasing the potential hazard. However, the reliability of conventional RVS methods is limited for accurately assessing large building stock. In this study, building inspection data acquired after the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake is used to train nine different machine learning algorithms (Decision Tree Classifier, Logistic Regression, Light Gradient Boosting Machine Classifier, eXtreme Gradient Boosting Classifier, Gradient Boosting Classifier, Random Forest Classifier, Support Vector Machines, K-Neighbors Classifier, and Cat Boost Classifier), which ultimately led to the development of a reliable RVS method. The post-earthquake building screening data was used to train, validate, and ultimately test the developed model. By incorporating advanced feature engineering techniques, highly sophisticated parameters were introduced into the developed RVS method. These parameters, including the distance to the earthquake source, fundamental structural period, and spectral acceleration, were integrated to enhance the assessment capabilities. This integration enabled the assessment of existing buildings in diverse seismically vulnerable areas. This study demonstrated a strong correlation between determining building damage states using the established RVS method and those observed after the earthquake. When comparing the developed method with the limited accuracy of conventional RVS methods reported in the literature, a test accuracy of 73% was achieved, surpassing conventional RVS methods by over 40% in accurately classifying building damage states. This emphasizes the importance of detailed data collection after an earthquake for the effective development of RVS methods.

The objective of this study is to provide the assessment of the seismic vulnerability of R.C.C. and Load bearing structures by the Rapid Visual Screening Method. As Rapid Visual Screening is a preliminary stage to conducting a Simplified Vulnerability Assessment of the building.The rapid visual screening procedure requires only a visual evaluation and a few additional details. These procedures are recommended for all buildings. Rapid Visual Screening score has been evaluated for the various building which suggests further assessment for Seismic Vulnerability. India is expected to be the most populous country in the world by 2025. India has a huge volume of building stocks at present, and most of them are significantly vulnerable to earthquake hazards. In order to overcome this issue, firstly it is required to conduct the seismic vulnerability assessment at a massive scale of building stocks and buildings with a high probability of damage further evaluated with the simplified vulnerability assessment method procedures. After a detailed evaluation, it recommends a suitable retrofitting strategy. In this paper, we have studied various parameters of the Rapid Visual Screening method and the procedure to conduct it. Keywords: Seismic vulnerability, Existing Building, Simplified Vulnerability Assessment, Method, Rapid Visual Screening, Detailed vulnerability assessment.

Pakistan has experienced several devastating earthquakes, including the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, which resulted in significant loss of life and damage. Mingora City, located in Seismic Zone 3, is particularly vulnerable and requires seismic evaluations and retrofitting of buildings to prevent future casualties and building collapses. Due to the high costs and complexity of seismic assessments, it is impractical to assess all buildings. This study used the FEMA P-154 Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) method to assess 210 buildings. The study also examined local residents’ risk perceptions through interviews. Findings revealed that most buildings had plan and vertical irregularities, such as short columns or soft storeys, and over 90% of buildings fall within damage grades 4 and 5, highlighting the urgent need for retrofitting. Poor construction quality and lack of maintenance were also noted, with 37% of buildings showing damage. Public awareness of earthquake safety was low, and 89.5% of residents agreed on the need for better education. The study highlights the need for public awareness campaigns on earthquake risks and safety.

Asian mammal species are facing unprecedented pressures from hunting and habitat conversion. Efforts to mitigate these threats often focus on charismatic large-bodied species, while many other species or even guilds receive less attention, particularly Asian wild pigs. To address this we developed a rapid questionnaire survey and administered it to relevant experts to identify the presence, population trends and conservation needs of Asia's 11 threatened wild pig species. The results highlighted geographical differences within species (e.g. the near collapse of bearded pig populations in Peninsular Malaysia yet their widespread presence on Borneo), and knowledge gaps for many endemic species of the Philippines, notably the Critically Endangered Visayan warty pig Sus cebifrons. To support field-based conservation projects, we identified 66 medium-to-large zoos in Asia, Europe and the USA that house Asian wild pigs and have applicable conservation funding schemes. Our rapid survey method, which yielded 170 wild pig records from across Asia, proved effective in filling many of the existing knowledge gaps, and may be widely applicable in assessing the status and needs of other non-flagship threatened species.