History Database Research Articles

Aural Speed-Reading: Some Historical Bookmarks

Together they are writing a book entitled “Tuning Time: Histories of Sound and Speed.” The authors would like to thank the Epistemes of Modern Acoustics group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Jason Camlot, Iben Have, Burç Kostem, and Shafeka Hashash.We write the history of aural speed-reading and time-stretching technology in two tracks, taking a cue from Annemarie Mol's The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice, with its “upper text” and “subtext” that invite readers “to invent a way of reading that works for them from scratch” (ix). In the spirit of the story that opens track 1, on the left, we decided to jimmy the format of the PMLA page. To differing degrees, each track provides context, describes events, raises questions, and applies analytic frames. Track 1 is our narration of a series of events recalled by Harvey Lauer to Mara Mills; the insights derive from his professional expertise and personal reading experiences. Track 2, on the right, does not benefit from the kind of omniscient sight known as hindsight; it reads alongside. Think of these tracks as an animated and mostly asynchronous conversation among people who care about instruments of sound and reading in distinct but similarly fanatical ways. For a cluster of historical recordings associated with this essay, tune in to the Sound and Science: Digital Histories database: acoustics.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/sets/clusters/aural-speed-reading.

Epilepsy and Neurodevelopmental Comorbidities in Tuberous Sclerosis Complex: A Natural History Study

BackgroundWe studied the natural history, genotype influence, and inter-relationship of epilepsy and neuropsychiatric disorders in tuberous sclerosis complex. MethodsPatients were identified using the TSC Natural History Database, the largest repository of longitudinally studied patients enrolled by the TSC Clinics Consortium. ResultsA cohort of 1657 TSC Natural History Database patients was analyzed. Eighty-eight percent patients (91% TSC2 vs 82% TSC1; P = 0.002) had epilepsy; TSC2 was more frequent with epilepsy onset at age less than two years (TSC2 82% vs TSC1 54%; P < 0.001) and infantile spasms (TSC2 56% vs TSC1 27%; P < 0.001). Frequency of intellectual disability (intelligence quotient less than 70) was higher when epilepsy coexisted (P < 0.001), but was not impacted by genotype (P = 0.08). Severe intellectual disability (intelligence quotient less than 50) was associated with epilepsy onset at age less than two years (P = 0.007), but not with the epilepsy duration (P = 0.45). Autism was diagnosed in 23% and was associated with epilepsy (P < 0.001), particularly with epilepsy onset at age less than two years (P = 0.02) but not with genotype (P = 0.06). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (age greater than four years) was diagnosed in 18% and was associated with epilepsy (P < 0.001), but genotype made no difference. Nine percent had anxiety (age greater than seven years) and 6% had depression (age greater than nine years), but neither showed association with epilepsy or genotype. ConclusionsEpilepsy is associated with intellectual disability, and when epilepsy begins before age two years the frequency and severity of intellectual disability is much higher. Epilepsy is also associated with autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder but not with anxiety and depression. Additional trials, blinded, prospective, and adequately powered, will help clarify if early and effective treatment of epilepsy may also mitigate intellectual disability, autism, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

An approach for the application of energy-based liquefaction procedure using field case history data

This paper presents an overview to the applicability of the “energy-based liquefaction approach” with regards to the new developments in the subject. The method involves comparing the strain energy for the soil liquefaction (capacity) with the strain energy imparted to the soil layer during an earthquake (demand). The performance of the method was evaluated by using a large database of SPT-based liquefaction case history. The energy-based method and the more commonly used stressbased method were compared in their capability to assess liquefaction potential under the same damaging historic earthquakes and geotechnical site conditions. In the procedure, the predictive strain energy equations were used to estimate the capacity energy values. These empirical equations have been developed based on the initial effective soil parameters. As for the energy of any given strong ground motion, it was computed from a velocity-time history of the ground motion and the unit mass of soil through utilization of kinetic energy concepts. The proposed energy-based method has effective way in evaluating the liquefaction potential based on the seismological parameters, contrary to the stress-based approach, where only peak ground acceleration (PGA) is considered.

A novel classification and algorithmic-based management of craniovertebral junction osteoarthrosis.

Introduction:The objective of this study is to propose a novel classification and algorithmic-based management plan for craniovertebral junction osteoarthrosis (CVJOA).Materials and Methods:A retrospective study was done based on prospective database of radiological studies and clinical history. Twenty symptomatic patients (12 females and 8 males) with a mean age of 54.8 years were identified with CVJOA. These patients underwent either nonsurgical treatment only or surgical intervention and had follow-up of at least 14 months. Classification of CVJOA is based on coronal deformity, rigidity, stability, and two modifiers. The main surgical procedures done in the surgical arm of these patients included C1–C2 fusion, C1–C2 facet distraction and fusion, and unilateral subaxial facet distraction, and posterior column osteotomy.Results:All the twenty patients included in this study complained of either sub-occipital or upper neck pain and had radiological evidence of CVJOA. Seven patients improved with nonsurgical management and 13 underwent surgical intervention. Surgical recommendations for each type of CVJOA have been described with case examples, and algorithm for the management of CVJOA has been developed based on this study. Interobserver agreement on CVJOA classification was measured using kappa value statistics which showed moderate strength of agreement (0.467).Conclusion:This study describes a novel classification and management of CVJOA based on algorithm and current surgical recommendations for each type of CVJOA.

A Study of Management Information Systems and Its Effect on Health Management Organizations

The primary focus of a healthcare organization is the promotion of health and the avoidance of disease, sickness, injury, and other impairments of human physical and mental functioning. The health care industry is a service sector. In terms of both income and employment, healthcare has grown to become one of India's greatest industries. Medical case history, resource planning, and hospital server databases are all severely lacking. As a consequence, medical facilities are now more productive and efficient. A lack of proper planning in hospitals has led to subpar decision making in areas like manpower and personnel management, payroll and employee-related applications, hospital billing and recovery, inventory control procurement, planning, and control, expiration date management, resource utilization and analysis, financial accounting, capital budgeting and expense control, and maintenance of service facilities.

Analysis of ARMPS2010 database with LaModel and an updated abutment angle equation

The Analysis of Retreat Mining Pillar Stability (ARMPS) program was developed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to help the United States coal mining industry to design safe retreat room-and-pillar panels. ARMPS calculates the magnitude of the in-situ and mining-induced loads by using geometrical computations and empirical rules. In particular, the program uses the “abutment angle” concept in calculating the magnitude of the abutment load on pillars adjacent to a gob. In this paper, stress measurements from United States and Australian mines with different overburden geologies with varying hard rock percentages were back analyzed. The results of the analyses indicated that for depths less than 200 m, the ARMPS empirical derivation of a 21° abutment angle was supported by the case histories; however, at depths greater than 200 m, the abutment angle was found to be significantly less than 21°. In this paper, a new equation employing the panel width to overburden depth ratio is constructed for the calculation of accurate abutment angles for deeper mining cases. The new abutment angle equation was tested using both ARMPS2010 and LaModel for the entire case history database of ARMPS2010. The new abutment angle equation to estimate the magnitude of the mining-induced loads used together with the LaModel program was found to give good classification accuracies compared to ARMPS2010 for deep cover cases.

The Correlation of Comorbidities on the Mortality in Patients with COVID-19: an Observational Study Based on the Korean National Health Insurance Big Data.

BackgroundMortality of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a major concern for quarantine departments in all countries. This is because the mortality of infectious diseases determines the basic policy stance of measures to prevent infectious diseases. Early screening of high-risk groups and taking action are the basics of disease management. This study examined the correlation of comorbidities on the mortality of patients with COVID-19.MethodsWe constructed epidemiologic characteristics and medical history database based on the Korean National Health Insurance Service Big Data and linked COVID-19 registry data of Korea Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (KCDC) for this emergent observational cohort study. A total of 9,148 patients with confirmed COVID-19 were included. Mortalities by sex, age, district, income level and all range of comorbidities classified by International Classification of Diseases-10 based 298 categories were estimated.ResultsThere were 3,556 male confirmed cases, 67 deaths, and crude death rate (CDR) of 1.88%. There were 5,592 females, 63 deaths, and CDR of 1.13%. The most confirmed cases were 1,352 patients between the ages of 20 to 24, followed by 25 to 29. As a result of multivariate logistic regression analysis that adjusted epidemiologic factors to view the risk of death, the odds ratio of death would be hemorrhagic conditions and other diseases of blood and blood-forming organs 3.88-fold (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.52–9.88), heart failure 3.17-fold (95% CI, 1.88–5.34), renal failure 3.07-fold (95% CI, 1.43–6.61), prostate malignant neoplasm 2.88-fold (95% CI, 1.01–8.22), acute myocardial infarction 2.38-fold (95% CI, 1.03–5.49), diabetes was 1.82-fold (95% CI, 1.25–2.67), and other ischemic heart disease 1.71-fold (95% CI, 1.09–2.66).ConclusionWe hope that this study could provide information on high risk groups for preemptive interventions. In the future, if a vaccine for COVID-19 is developed, it is expected that this study will be the basic data for recommending immunization by selecting those with chronic disease that had high risk of death, as recommended target diseases for vaccination.

Body composition, sarcopenia, and quality of life in patients with oesophageal cancer before resection surgery and at follow‐up: a cohort study

AbstractAimsOesophageal cancer is associated with dysphagia and reduced caloric intake. Body composition and prevalence of sarcopenia in patients with oesophageal cancer before and after surgery are not well known. The aims were to (i) describe body composition and sarcopenia, physical performance, and quality of life (QoL) in a cohort of patients with oesophageal cancer before surgery with curative intent; (ii) investigate alterations in body composition as a consequence of the surgery at 1 and 3 months post‐operatively; and (iii) investigate if pre‐operative measures are correlated to morbidity, length of stay, QoL, or mortality.Methods and resultsAn observational study was performed in 76 consecutive patients with oesophageal cancer planned for open surgery with curative intent. Data were collected from the patient history database. QoL data were derived from the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer QLQ‐OES18 questionnaire. Pre‐operatively, the patients displayed normal body mass index despite that almost 20% were sarcopenic, 86% had a lowered physical performance level, and 37% of the patients were severely malnourished. All body composition variables except fat mass declined up to 3 months after surgery. No pre‐operative biometric measure or QoL item correlated with risk for complications. High physical performance, female sex, and high global QoL score positively predicted overall survival.ConclusionsSevere malnourishment was common in patients judged suitable for surgery in spite of normal body mass index. Neither pre‐operative malnutrition nor sarcopenia was independent risk factor for morbidity or overall mortality. Oesophageal surgery causes long‐lasting catabolic effects, highlighting the importance of optimal peri‐operative and post‐operative nutrition.

Analysis of fire frequency on the Talladega National Forest, USA, 1998-2018

Fire is an essential ecological process and management tool for many forested landscapes, particularly the pine (Pinus spp.) forests of the southern USA. Within the Talladega National Forest in Alabama, where restoration and maintenance of pine ecosystems is a priority, fire frequency (both wild and prescribed) was assessed using a geographical process applied to a fire history database. Two methods for assessing fire frequency were employed: (1) a simple method that utilised the entire range of years acknowledged in the database and (2) a conservative method that was applied only the date of the first and last fires recorded at each location. Analyses were further separated by (a) method of mean fire return interval calculation (weighted by area or Weibull) and (b) fire season interval with analyses conducted on growing season and dormant season fires. Analyses of fire frequency for national forest planning purposes may help determine whether a prescribed fire program mimics ecological and historical fire frequencies and meets intended objectives. The estimated fire return interval was between ~5 and 6.5 years using common, straightforward (simple) methods. About one-third of the forest receives no fire management and about half of the balance has sufficiently managed fuels.

Business investment in education in emerging markets since the 1960s

This article examines non-profit investments by business in education in emerging markets between the 1960s and the present day. Using a sample of 110 interviews with business leaders from a recently developed oral history database, the study shows that more than three-quarters of such leaders invested in education as a non-profit activity. The article explores three different types of motivations behind such high levels of engagement with education: values driven, context focussed, and firm focussed. The article identifies significant regional variations in terms of investment execution, structure, and impact. In South and Southeast Asia, there was a preference for long-term investment in primary and secondary education. In Africa and Latin America, some initiatives sometimes had a shorter-term connotation, but with high-profile projects in partnerships with international organisations and foreign universities. In Turkey, there was heavy focus on training and the creation of universities. The article concludes by examining the impact of this investment, comparing Chile and India especially. It discusses issues such as the paucity of financial data and the challenges of comparing different types of educational spending, which make robust conclusions hard, but does suggest that although such spending did not resolve major educational roadblocks across the emerging world, it represented a positive overall social gain.

P.202A composite prognostic score for time to loss of walking ability in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD)

Prediction of loss of ambulation (LoA), a critical milestone in DMD, is important for clinical practice and clinical trials. We assessed the extent to which combinations of patient characteristics help predict time to LoA among 500 ambulatory boys (mean age=9.2) with DMD drawn from two natural history databases (UZ Leuven and PRO-DMD-01 data provided by CureDuchenne) and three trial placebo arms (phase 2b and phase 3 trials of ataluren, phase 3 trial of tadalafil). Time to LoA, approximated as inability to complete the six-minute walk test, was analyzed using Cox proportional hazards models. Eighty-five boys (17%) experienced LoA over 915 patient-years. A model including three timed function tests (rise from supine, 4-stair climb and 10-meter walk/run), 6MWD, age, height, weight, steroid use and data source gave better predictions of time to LoA than a model based only on age > 7 years, walk distance < 350 m and data source (pseudo-R2: 37% vs. 21%). Better TFT performance, deflazacort use (compared to prednisone), greater weight, lower height and lower BMI were significant predictors of longer time to LoA. Data source differences in time to LoA were present when adjusting only for age and baseline 6MWD (p<0.05), but were not significant after adjustment for the additional factors (p=0.18). Ad-hoc stratification of boys based on risk score percentiles produced good separation, with the highest risk groups having 1-year LoA risks of 64%, 28% and 3% and 2-year risks of 94%, 63% and 28%, corresponding to median times to LoA of approximately 1, 1.6 and 2.5 years, respectively. The median was not reached for lower-risk groups. A composite prognostic score, incorporating multiple measures of ambulatory function, can substantially improve prediction of time to LoA. Once validated, such a score can inform clinical practice and trial designs, and enable adjusted comparisons between patients receiving newer therapies (e.g., in extension trials) and natural history controls.

Epidemiology of multiple myeloma in city Moscow

To study the epidemiology of multiple myeloma in the city of Moscow and compare the results obtained with data from similar studies in other countries. The study is based on information from a database of case histories of 3942 patients suffering from symptomatic MM, residents of the city of Moscow, which is maintained at the Hematologic Moscow City Center of S.P. Botkin Municipal Clinical Hospital. The control of the completeness of inclusion was carried out by cross - comparison with the data of the Moscow Cancer Register and the Register of Program 7 (beginning in 2019 - 12) of Highly Expensive Nosologies. The assessment was made according to data as of January 1, 2019. The calculations were carried out taking into account the data of Rosstat at the beginning of 2019 on the population of Moscow in different gender and age categories. Among the 3942 patients with active MM 1707 men - 43% and 2241 women - 57%, the median of the current age was 68 (28-94) years. The median time of observation of patients since the diagnosis of the disease 34 (1-423) months. The peak incidence was in the age range of more than 60 years. There were no significant differences in gender ratio in different age strata with a breakdown of 10 years. The number of cases of newly diagnosed MM per year for the period from 2009 (n=219) to 2018 (n=385) increased by 75.8%. At the same time, the demonstrated increase in the incidence rate for the described period turned out to be fair only for groups of patients over 50 years old, with the maximum increase in this indicator over the described period in the age range of 60-69 years. This is mainly due to the increase in life expectancy in Moscow in recent years. The study demonstrated that over the past 10 years, the average annual mortality rate from MM has decreased in Moscow, and as a result, its prevalence has increased. The rate of 2-year overall survival of patients with MM was 76%, 5-year - old - 49%, 10-year - old - 27%. The median overall survival of patients under the age of 65 when diagnosing the disease was 79 months, and 48 months. The distribution of patients within international classifications was consistent with international data. The study revealed a significant dynamic of the epidemiological situation concerning MM in Moscow. Over the past 10 years there has been an increase in the incidence of MM, as a result of an increase in the life expectancy of the population. The use of modern diagnostics and therapy of MM in real clinical practice has led to a significant reduction in mortality. Due to these factors, an increase in the prevalence of MM in Moscow has taken place, and this process will no doubt progress in the future.

SEINet: A Centralized Specimen Resource Managed by a Distributed Network of Researchers

The SEINet Portal Network has a complex social and development history spanning nearly two decades. Initially established as a basic online search engine for a select handful of biological collections curated within the southwestern United States, SEINet has since matured into a biodiversity data network incorporating more than 330 institutions and 1,900 individual data contributors. Participating institutions manage and publish over 14 million specimen records, 215,000 observations, and 8 million images. Approximately 70% of the collections make use of the data portal as their primary "live" specimen management platform. The SEINet interface now supports 13 regional data portals distributed across the United States and northern Mexico (http://symbiota.org/docs/seinet/). Through many collaborative efforts, it has matured into a tool for biodiversity data exploration, which includes species inventories, interactive identification keys, specimen and field images, taxonomic information, species distribution maps, and taxonomic descriptions. SEINet’s initial developmental goals were to construct a read-only interface that integrated specimen records harvested from a handful of distributed natural history databases. Intermittent network conductivity and inconsistent data exchange protocols frequently restricted data persistence. National funding opportunities supported a complete redesign towards the development of a centralized data cache model with periodic "snapshot" updates from original data sources. A service-based management infrastructure was integrated into the interface to mobilize small- to medium-sized collections (&amp;lt;1 million specimen records) that commonly lack consistent infrastructure and technical expertise to maintain a standard compliant specimen database. These developments were the precursors to the Symbiota software project (Gries et al. 2014). Through further development of Symbiota, SEINet transformed into a robust specimen management system specifically geared toward specimen digitization with features including data entry from label images, harvesting data from specimen duplicates, batch georeferencing, data validation and cleaning, generating progress reports, and additional tools to improve the efficiency of the digitization process. The central developmental paradigm focused on data mobilization through the production of: a versatile import module capable of ingesting a diverse range of data structures, a robust toolkit to assist in digitizing and managing specimen data and images, and a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) compliant data publishing and export toolkit to facilitate data distribution to global aggregators such as Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and iDigBio. a versatile import module capable of ingesting a diverse range of data structures, a robust toolkit to assist in digitizing and managing specimen data and images, and a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) compliant data publishing and export toolkit to facilitate data distribution to global aggregators such as Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and iDigBio. User interfaces consist of a decentralized network of regional data portals, all connecting to a centralized shared data source. Each of the 13 data portals are configured to present a regional perspective specifically tailored to represent the needs of the local research community. This infrastructure has supported the formation of regional consortia, who provide network support to aid local institutions in digitizing and publishing their collections within the network. The community-based infrastructure creates a sense of ownership – perhaps even good-natured competition – by the data providers and provides extra incentive to improve data quality and expand the network. Certain areas of development remain challenging in spite of the project's overall success. For instance, data managers continuously struggle to maintain a current local taxonomic thesaurus used for name validation, data cleaning, and to resolve taxonomic discrepancies commonly encountered when integrating collection datasets. We will discuss the successes and challenges associated with the long-term sustainability model and explore potential future paths for SEINet that support the long-term goal of maintaining a data provider that is in full compliance with the FAIR use principles of making the datasets findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (Wilkinson et al. 2016).

Migration Histories, National Memory, and Regional Collections

Migration Histories, National Memory, and Regional Collections

A Study on usage of Mobile Banking Apps with Respect to People in North Bangalore

Digitalisation is the driving force universally in all the fields. Developments in Information Technology has improved quality services of all types of industries worldwide. In the field of Banking, there is a paradigm shift by banks from traditional brick and motor banks to branchless banks. Internet Banking and Mobile banking has attracted more customers as there are more number of people who use smart phones, computers or laptops. Banks are offering various mobile and online banking services to enable the customers to transact easily at lesser cost. Compared to computers and laptops, people prefer to use smart phones and tablets owing to its convenience and longer battery duration. Mobile Banking means the financial and banking services offered by banks through telecommunication services. It is the emerging technology opted by the customers around the world where there is less chance for the customers to visit banks and personally communication with bankers. This gap is filled by the softwares developed by the bankers which helps customers to gain updated knowledge about banking services. The bankers in turn, are able to tap relevant information about the customers from their transaction history database. This study aims to find out whether demographic factors influence the people to perform financial transactions using Mobile Banking Apps and to know whether people are ready to accept the change in the recent banking system due to digitalisaiton. Quantitative data was collected using self administered questionnaire from 150 respondents residing in North Bangalore.

Slope stability prediction for circular mode failure using gradient boosting machine approach based on an updated database of case histories

Prediction of slope stability is one of the most crucial tasks in mining and geotechnical engineering projects. The accuracy of the prediction is very important for mitigating the risk of slope instability and enhancing mine safety in preliminary design. However, existing methods such as traditional statistical learning models are unable to provide accurate results for slope instability due to the complexity and uncertainties of multiple related factors with small unbalanced data samples thus requiring complex data processing algorithms. To address this limitation, this paper presents a novel prediction method that utilizes the gradient boosting machine (GBM) method to analyze slope stability. The GBM-based model is developed by the freely available R Environment software, trained and tested with the parameters obtained from the detailed investigation of 221 different actual slope cases between 1994 and 2011 with circular mode failure available in the literature. The stability of the circular slope accounts for the unit weight (γ), cohesion (c), angle of internal friction (φ), slope angle (β), slope height (H) and pore water pressure coefficient (ru). A fivefold cross-validation procedure is implemented to determine the optimal parameter values during the GBM modeling and an external testing set is employed to validate the prediction performance of models. Area under the curve (AUC), classification accuracy rate and Cohen’s Kappa coefficient have been employed for measuring the performance of the proposed model. The analysis of AUC, accuracy together with kappa for the dataset demonstrate that the GBM model has high credibility as it achieves a comparable AUC, classification accuracy rate and Cohen’s kappa values of 0.900, 0.8654 and 0.7324, respectively for the prediction of slope stability. Also, variable importance and partial dependence plots are used to interpret the complex relationships between the GBM predictive results and predictor variables.

Wage Cost-Reducing Policies and Employment Stability for People With Disabilities in the Spanish Labor Market

The strategies for integrating people with disabilities into the labor market have evolved toward a social approach, in which the objective is the integration with stable and decent jobs. This article analyzes how persons with disabilities enter the ordinary labor market by studying the factors that strengthen stability in that process. In particular, it analyzes the incentives to hire workers by means of Social Security contribution deductions, a wage cost-reducing measure, and studies whether or not reduced contributions affects the hiring of people with disabilities in stable positions, thus promoting the possibility of decent and stable jobs. We focus on people with disabilities entering the job market for the first time during the period 2004 to 2011, using the Continuous Sample of Working Histories Database for Spain and using as a control group people without disabilities. The results obtained show that reduced social security contributions constitute an incentive that effectively encourages the entry of workers with a disability into the labor market by means of stable employment.

A physics-informed semi-empirical probabilistic model for the settlement of shallow-founded structures on liquefiable ground

This paper presents a predictive model for the settlement of shallow-founded structures on liquefiable ground during earthquakes. The model is based on the results of an extensive fully coupled, three-dimensional numerical parametric study of soil–structure systems, validated with centrifuge experiments as well as a database of case history observations. The results of the numerical study provided insight into the relative importance and influence of each input parameter and the functional form of the predictive model for a structure's permanent settlement. The case history database helped validate and refine the predictive model, accounting for complexities of the ground motion and site conditions in the field. Non-linear regression and latent variable analysis were used to develop model coefficients. The uncertainty around model estimates was modelled by a lognormal distribution. An additional logistic model was provided to estimate the probability of insignificant settlement (defined as less than 1 cm). The proposed probabilistic procedure considers variations in site conditions as well as the presence and properties of a building in three dimensions. By including the case history database in its validation and adjustment, the model captures all mechanisms of settlement below the foundation, including volumetric and deviatoric strains as well as ejecta. The total uncertainty around its predictions is rigorously characterised, which is a necessary step before the benefits of performance-based seismic design can be realised in the evaluation and mitigation of the liquefaction hazard.

OSHDB: a framework for spatio-temporal analysis of OpenStreetMap history data

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project collecting geographical data of the entire world. The level of detail of OSM data and its data quality vary much across different regions and domains. In order to analyse such variations it is often necessary to research the history and evolution of the OSM data.The OpenStreetMap History Database (OSHDB) is a new data analysis tool for spatio-temporal geographical vector data. It is specifically optimized for working with OSM history data on a global scale and allows one to investigate the data evolution and user contributions in a flexible way. Benefits of the OSHDB are for example: to facilitate accessing OSM history data as a research subject and to assess the quality of OSM data by using intrinsic measures.This article describes the requirements of such a system and the resulting technical implementation of the OSHDB: the OSHDB data model and its application programming interface.

Representation of fire, land-use change and vegetation dynamics in the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator vn4.9 (JULES)

Abstract. Disturbance of vegetation is a critical component of land cover, but is generally poorly constrained in land surface and carbon cycle models. In particular, land-use change and fire can be treated as large-scale disturbances without full representation of their underlying complexities and interactions. Here we describe developments to the land surface model JULES (Joint UK Land Environment Simulator) to represent land-use change and fire as distinct processes which interact with simulated vegetation dynamics. We couple the fire model INFERNO (INteractive Fire and Emission algoRithm for Natural envirOnments) to dynamic vegetation within JULES and use the HYDE (History Database of the Global Environment) land cover dataset to analyse the impact of land-use change on the simulation of present day vegetation. We evaluate the inclusion of land use and fire disturbance against standard benchmarks. Using the Manhattan metric, results show improved simulation of vegetation cover across all observed datasets. Overall, disturbance improves the simulation of vegetation cover by 35 % compared to vegetation continuous field (VCF) observations from MODIS and 13 % compared to the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) from the ESA. Biases in grass extent are reduced from −66 % to 13 %. Total woody cover improves by 55 % compared to VCF and 20 % compared to CCI from a reduction in forest extent in the tropics, although simulated tree cover is now too sparse in some areas. Explicitly modelling fire and land use generally decreases tree and shrub cover and increases grasses. The results show that the disturbances provide important contributions to the realistic modelling of vegetation on a global scale, although in some areas fire and land use together result in too much disturbance. This work provides a substantial contribution towards representing the full complexity and interactions between land-use change and fire that could be used in Earth system models.