Emergent Incidents Research Articles

Risk assessment of Arsenic in surface water of China water systems based on a time-dependent species sensitivity distribution (SSD) method

Arsenic (As) is a naturally occurring metalloid element widespread in the environment. Assessing the ecological risk of As in surface water, especially the acute risk caused by emergent pollution incidents, is of great significance. However, acute toxicity data including median lethal concentration (LC50) and median effective concentration (EC50) of As derived by toxicology experiment may vary according to the exposure time, which is referred as time dependence effect. Time dependence not only affects toxicity data but also influences the characterization of acute risk in the ecosystem. However, previous research on the time dependence effect of As, especially the quantitative influence on the risk assessment is still limited. In this research, acute toxicity data of As(III) and As(V) was collected. Time dependence of toxicology data of inorganic As was studied. Time-dependent species sensitivity distributions of freshwater species were established. The hazardous concentration for 5% of species (HC5) values in different exposure time were further derived. Finally, the dynamic ecological risk of As in major Chinese water basins was evaluated. The results suggested that the toxicity data of inorganic As had a significant linear relationship (p < 0.01) with time. The HC5 values of As (III) and As (V) at an exposure time of four days were reduced by 15.5% and 77.5%, respectively, as compared to the HC5 value of one day. According to the ecological risk characterized by the probability density overlapping area method, the ecological risk of As(III) and As(V) increases with the exposure duration. The Yangtze River had the highest risk, with risk values ranging from 19.9% to 22.6%. According to the results, the time dependence of toxicity data should be fully considered in the formulation of water quality criteria or ecological risk assessment so as to provide better protection for the water ecosystem security.

Research on Evaluation Indicators for Maritime Firefighting Capabilities

As a prominent maritime and shipping power, our nation is actively engaged in the development of a formidable maritime and transportation infrastructure. The enactment of the “Maritime Silk Road” strategy, coupled with the growing expansion of maritime transport, necessitates the urgent formation of a commensurate maritime firefighting force to elevate readiness against significant emergent incidents at sea. The construction of evaluative indicators for maritime firefighting capabilities is crucial in advancing these capabilities further. This advancement is pivotal for enhancing service to national strategies, preserving national sovereignty and maritime security, and for engaging deeply in the governance of global maritime affairs.

Risk Assessment of Sudden Water Pollution Accidents Associated with Dangerous Goods Transportation on the Cross-Tributary Bridges of Baiyangdian Lake

The issue of sudden water pollution resulting from accidents is a challenging environmental problem to address. The frequency of transport accidents involving hazardous materials over tributary bridges is steadily rising due to rapid industrialization and urbanization processes. This trend poses a significant threat to both the water’s ecological environment and human well-being. To effectively mitigate the risks associated with water pollution caused by accidents during the transportation of dangerous goods, this research focused on Baiyangdian Lake, the largest freshwater lake in North China. Thid study employed the expert judgment fuzzy language method and Bayesian network model as analytical tools to assess and analyze the potential risks associated with sudden water pollution accidents caused by the transportation of hazardous materials on bridges spanning tributaries. Through an examination of the various risk factors involved, the research identified four primary indicators and ten secondary indicators. Additionally, an oil leakage accident scenario was simulated, and recommendations for risk prevention and control measures were provided. The findings of the study indicated that: (1) The likelihood of risk associated with driver factors, vehicle emergency factors, fuel tank emergency factors, road factors, and lighting factors is elevated. (2) The probability of a dangerous goods transportation accident occurring on the Baiyangdian cross-tributary bridge is substantial, thereby presenting a potential hazard to both the water environment and human health. (3) Vehicle emergency factors, vehicle wear factors, and weather factors exert a significant influence on the incidence of accidents. (4) The highest likelihood of accidents is associated with a combination of factors, including driver fatigue, vehicle and fuel tank deterioration, and adverse weather conditions. (5) In instances where the vehicle and fuel tank are well-maintained, the probability of accidents is greatest on the cross tributary bridge, particularly when the driver is fatigued, weather conditions are unfavorable, and there is a lack of street lighting during nighttime. Implementing emergency prevention and control measures proved to be an effective approach in mitigating the risk of sudden water pollution accidents. This study offers valuable insights into risk mitigation and management strategies for emergent water pollution incidents, and the framework presented herein can be readily applied to other rivers worldwide confronting comparable risk challenges.

After-Action Reviews and the Big Black Hole of Improvement Processes

Abstract University and campus public safety departments deal with a wide range of planned events and incidents from felonious crimes, chemical spills, and other emergent incidents to routine activities that require consistent reviews like commencement ceremonies. After-Action reviews (AARs) are a standard process in several industries including public safety, yet there is little empirical research when it comes to how AARs are applied to campus public safety entities and their outcomes. The Indiana University Public Safety Department (IUPS) reviewed 153 AAR reports, from 2017 through 2020, across seven Indiana University campuses and two academic centres. We highlight the key empirical findings from that review and how they influenced policy and practice at IUPS. We also highlight the role of the researcher–practitioner partnership in the process. We present lessons learned from the project along with suggestions for agencies interested in implementing a robust AAR process.

Family attendance during critical illness episodes: Reflection on practices in Arabic and Muslim contexts.

It is common practice in healthcare systems in the Arabic region to exclude relatives when patients receive treatment for critical emergent incidents or illnesses. This exclusion is despite family members' wishes for proximity and cultural and religious values that mean being with unwell people is considered a form of worship or religious act. The marked lack of implementation of relatives' wishes in this regard is coupled with a paucity of relevant policies, guidelines, and research, despite patient populations in these countries being traditional in nature, religious, and having strong connections within their families and extended social units. The present authors reflected on this concern and advocated for increased attention to the needs and rights of critically ill patients and their families to support better quality, holistic care, especially during critical illness incidents. Healthcare professionals should consider allowing families to be present with their patients in such circumstances and appreciate the importance of family presence, despite the acknowledged challenges. The recommendations presented in this reflection may support the implementation of effective, holistic healthcare services in these countries. This reflection is also relevant to any context where care for Arabic or Muslim patients is provided.

Prediction of College Students’ Psychological Crisis Based on Data Mining

The development of a college students’ psychological management system has become an essential indicator to monitor and prevent the psychological crisis. University student management databases accumulate massive data, but the conventional data processing tasks are restricted to simple statistical analysis, storage, and query management. This paper discusses the application of big data technology for the current psychological management system by investigating psychological crisis screening indicators. Data mining techniques are used to realize the dynamic management of psychological early warning data, real-time monitoring of high-risk groups’ psychology, and improvement of the accuracy and effectiveness of early identification and warning of students’ psychological crisis. Based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, we conduct a series of studies on three typical types of network public opinions, i.e., Internet rumors, online public opinions of college students, and emergent public health incidents in terms of the transmission mechanism, early warning, and decision-making mechanism, as well as the evolution mechanism of the network public opinion.

Advances in Low-Resource and Endangered Languages

This paper reports on the approaches and results for the collection, analysis, and processing of low-resource and endangered languages carried out under the Low-Resource Languages for Emergent Incidents (LORELEI) Program1. LORELEI was a multi-year research and development program designed to discover new methods of quickly ramping up human language technology capabilities for low-resource languages, grounded in situations such as humanitarian and disaster relief use cases. The goal was to advance human language technology methods to better enable rapid, low-cost development of capabilities, with a focus on developing methods that apply to languages of any type from any language family, thus eliminating the need to tailor specific technologies to a narrow set of input languages with specific typological characteristics. We report in detail on evaluation scenarios developed for the program.

Exploring Evolution of Public Opinions on Tianya Club Using Dynamic Topic Models

AbstractOnline media have brought tremendous changes to civic life, public opinions, and government administration. Compared with traditional media, online media not only allow individuals to browse news and express their views more freely, but also accelerate the transmission of opinions and expand influence. As public opinions may arouse societal unrest, it is worth detecting the primary topics and uncovering the evolution trends of public opinions for societal administration. Various algorithms are developed to deal with the huge volume of unstructured online media data. In this study, dynamic topic model is employed to explore topic content evolution and prevalence evolution using the original posts published from 2013 to 2017 on the Tianya Zatan Board of Tianya Club, which is one of the most popular BBS in China. Based on semantic similarities, topics are grouped into three themes: Family life, societal affairs, and government administration. The evolution of topic prevalence and content are affected by emergent incidents. Topics on family life become popular, while themes “societal affairs” and “government administration” with bigger standard deviations are more likely to be influenced by emergent hot events. Content evolution represented by monthly pairwise distance matrix is very easy to find change points of topic content.

Mobile Virology Research and Diagnostic Laboratory (MVRDL: BSL-3) for COVID-19 Screening, Virus Culturing and Vaccine Development.

In order to prevent spread of COVID-19, World Health Organization (WHO) has specified that measures such as cleaning hands regularly with alcohol-based hand sanitizer or washing with soap and water, avoiding touching nose, eyes, mouth and social distancing should be followed by people. Another important measure for containing spread is by Testing–Testing and Testing. By testing, patients affected by COVID-19 can be isolated and further spread from them can be prevented. For testing, clinical specimen inactivation should be performed in a bio-safety level-3 (BSL-3) laboratory and after this step, routine testing can be performed in a bio-safety level-2 laboratory. Based on the infection and death rates in the current pandemic situation, few high-level bio-safety facilities are required to handle this deadly virus associated with potential exposure risks. It would take a long time, a large staff and many resources to construct a new fixed bio-safety facility, thus delaying the prevention and control of the pandemic. Therefore, a mobile BSL-3 laboratory with both bio-safety and flexibility is urgently needed to manage the pandemic and emergent public health incidents. To meet this requirement, the author has designed a mobile virology research and diagnostic laboratory with inputs from ESIC Medical College, Hyderabad, identified two companies which specialize in fabrication of shelters and containment facilities, realized and installed it within 15 days of time. This state-of-the-art, one of its kind laboratory was inaugurated by Hon’ble Raksha Mantri on 23 April, 2020. The MVRDL developed as per WHO and ICMR bio-safety standard (BSL-3) can be used:To conduct real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) test for diagnosing COVID-19. Possibility to test up to 2000 samples per day.For virus culturing for drug screening, convalescent plasma-derived therapy.To aid in the development of vaccine and development of diagnostic kits.

Botanic Garden Profile Inverewe: gardening on the edge

Set in the heart of the Scottish Highlands, Inverewe is one of the most spectacular garden locations in the UK. Situated beside the A382 on the North Coast 500 tourist route, the property receives over 100,000 visitors each year, drawn to see a diversity of plants and to enjoy the breathtaking backdrop of mountains and seascape it affords. Since its first plantings in 1864, the property has been a centre for experimental approaches to establishing and growing tender woody and herbaceous perennials, while a diaspora of alumni have gone on to fulfil prominent roles in the horticultural industry over the years. The garden today covers approximately 22 ha of mainly woodland gardens, renowned for the diversity of their designed elements and whose conservation management is based on a thorough understanding, appreciation and analysis of the garden’s historical development and its significance in local, regional and national contexts.In recent years, Inverewe has faced a number of challenges related to the growing impact of global change, with increased occurrences of extreme weather events, and emergent pest and disease incidents associated with climate change and the movement of plants and their vectors, which include human-aided transport of problems between sites. In this context, this article provides a lens on the drivers of change that the plant collection is facing in the early decades of the 21st century. After an introduction to the garden, its evolved collections and management approach, three case studies are highlighted as examples of emerging threats to Inverewe as a garden and work of art. Inverewe is presented as a landscape that endures through adaptation to social, economic and, increasingly, environmental challenges that shape the direction it takes as a garden and plant collection growing on the edge.

3D Aircraft Path Planning for Hostage Rescue by Artificial Immunity Algorithm

The goal of aviation route planning for hostage rescue is to quickly design a safe and concealed path for aircraft hijacking under complex and unfamiliar circumstance. In this article, basic Artificial Immunity Algorithm (AIA) is improved by consideration of helicopter flyability and time restriction. And a threat model has been proposed through an appropriate simplification operation in in-time environment. Threat models are varied with different complicate environments designed. AIA can successfully plan safe paths by the models, which verify the method’s validity. Under more complex environment, the method can calculate a new path by performing the operation of local flight segment adjustment or re-planning the whole flight path. When the threat models being in dynamically updating state, AIA should be run with negotiation between safe degree and time remained, which allows it to play an active rather a passive role. This would help to enhance the ability of response ability to emergent incidents integrated plan time, aircraft safety, flyability and manoeuvrability in rescue.

Distribution and Bioaccumulation Characteristics of Cadmium in Fish Species from the Longjiang River in the Guangxi Autonomous Region

Emergent cadmium pollution can cause water quality deterioration in rivers, which destroys the aquatic eco-environment and poses threats to human health. Fish species in these aquatic systems are prone to such pollution incidents and act as important indicators of the pollution level. Because cadmium enters the systematic circulation of fish and is non-biodegradable, the investigation of cadmium accumulation in fish bodies provides insights into the detrimental effects of cadmium pollution on the aquatic biological system. This research aims to validate the eco-environmental risks associated with emergent cadmium pollution incidents based on the investigation of the different tissues and organs of diverse fish species. The investigation was conducted six times along the Longjiang River using sampling methods during which all fish species were also classified and analyzed based on the water layer they reside in and their feeding habits. The results show that the cadmium concentration in the fish tissues is significantly higher in the former three investigations compared with that of the latter three analyses. For herbivorous, carnivorous, and omnivorous fish species, the cadmium concentration of their different tissues and organs follows the order:kidney > liver > gut > gill > egg > scale ≈ muscle. The cadmium concentration in the kidney is significantly higher (P<0.05) than that in any other organs of the fish species. This agrees with the fact that the kidney intensively metabolizes and accumulates heavy metals. The cadmium concentration in the same tissues or organs of the fish species living in different water layers follows the trend:demersal fish species > middle lower-layer species > middle upper-layer species. The sequence of the cadmium bioaccumulation factors in the muscles of different fish species is omnivore > carnivorous > herbivorous, that is, 8.32, 6.33, and 5.15, respectively, while the bioaccumulation factors in the muscles of the fish species in different water layers decrease in the following sequence:demersal fish species (8.18) > middle bottom-layer fish species (7.70) > middle upper-layer fish species (4.99). These experimental results indicate the biomagnification effects in heavy metal-polluted aquatic environments, where the bioaccumulation of heavy metals by fish is related to both the overall pollution level and local residential environment.

Overview of the DARPA LORELEI Program

The initial impetus for the establishment of the Low Resource Human Language Technology (LoReHLT) evaluation was for LoReHLT to serve as a program evaluation for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Low Resource Languages for Emergent Incidents (LORELEI) research program. As evaluation planning developed, however, NIST and DARPA decided to open the program evaluation to the rest of the national and international research communities, in order to encourage research progress in the LORELEI-related problem space. This article describes the motivation, concept of operations, and structure of the LORELEI Program to provide some background for the design decisions made within the LoReHLT evaluation.

Overview of the NIST 2016 LoReHLT evaluation

Initiated in conjunction with DARPA’s low resource languages for emergent incidents (LORELEI) Program, the NIST LoReHLT (Low Resource Human Language Technology) evaluation series seeks to incubate research on fundamental natural language processing tasks in under-resourced languages. While part of the LORELEI program, LoReHLT is an open evaluation workshop that anyone may participate in, with its first evaluation taking place in July 2016. Eight teams, out of the 21 teams that registered, participated in the evaluation over three tasks—machine translation, named entity recognition, and situation frame—in the surprise language Uyghur.

The ELISA Situation Frame extraction for low resource languages pipeline for LoReHLT’2016

This paper describes the Situation Frame extraction pipeline developed by team ELISA as a part of the DARPA Low Resource Languages for Emergent Incidents program. Situation Frames are structures describing humanitarian needs, including the type of need and the location affected by it. Situation Frames need to be extracted from text or speech audio in a low resource scenario where little data, including no annotated data, are available for the target language. Our Situation Frame pipeline is the final step of the overall ELISA processing pipeline and accepts as inputs the outputs of the ELISA machine translation and named entity recognition components. The inputs are processed by a combination of neural networks to detect the types of needs mentioned in each document and a second post-processing step connects needs to locations. The resulting Situation Frame system was used during the first yearly evaluation on extracting Situation Frames from text, producing encouraging results and was later successfully adapted to the speech audio version of the same task.

Alternative metrics to measure EMS system performance

abstractIn the development of strategy for the response to emergent incidents, emergency medical services (EMS) organizations must properly manage their resources while also adhering to response time mandates established by contractual agreements. Performance of an EMS system is typically measured by focusing on the response time of its first responders. However, given that some incidents require the response of multiple emergency vehicles, investigating only the initial response to incidents is inadequate. In this research, we propose two new metrics, in addition to the first response metric, to evaluate the performance of EMS operations: total response time and last responder response time. We develop three mixed integer programming formulations, each one focused on minimizing one of the three metrics, to model the assignment of emergency vehicles to incidents. We also propose a fourth model that combines the metrics via a weighted objective function. This model allows for the simultaneous consideration of the response metrics when evaluating the effectiveness of an emergency response dispatch policy. Experimental results, from comparisons of the models against a greedy dispatch policy, suggest the consideration of multiple response metrics leads to a more robust and effective dispatch policy. Finally, analysis using the models has potential to shape improved strategic and operational policies of EMS organizations. Journal of the Operational Research Society advance online publication, 29 June 2016; doi:10.1057/jors.2016.39

Railway Timetable Rescheduling Based on Priority and Train Order Entropy

AbstractHow to reschedule the railway timetable is an important problem in real train operations and management. The main purpose of dispatchers is to minimize the total delay time in the network, which is the sum of time difference between the original timetable and the rescheduling one. This difference is called the disorder. In the railway network, the disorder of trains caused by the timetable rescheduling can be expressed by train order entropy. In this paper, a binary mixed-integer programming model is proposed to reschedule the timetable in the emergent incidents based on priority and train order entropy. In addition, a heuristic algorithm based on the depth-first search method is designed to solve the proposed programming starting at the root and exploring as far as possible along each branch before backtracking. Finally, the total delay time and the train order entropy for the reschedule scheme are discussed. Different emergency incidents are analyzed showing that the duration time of the inciden...

Stochastic Dynamic Traffic Assignment Model under Emergent Incidents

Urban emergent incidents affect transportation operation and result in the rapid spread of traffic congestion in network, so it's necessary to analyze the dynamic changes of traffic flow distribution under emergent incidents. Therefore, model and algorithm for the dynamic traffic assignment problem under emergent incidents have been highly concerned by government and scholars. This paper proposes a stochastic dynamic traffic assignment (SDTA) model based user optimum considering the loss of node capacity and change of network structure under traffic and environment emergencies. The Nested Logit model is used to describe the departure time and path choice. Then, the variational inequality formulation is proposed and discrete dynamic network loading algorithm is designed and validated by a numerical example. The results show that the model and algorithm can be used to express the development trend of actual dynamic network under emergency.

Risk Grading of Water Pollution Event with Applying Pollutant Transportation Simulation

The traffic emergent incidents bring great potential dangers to the water quality of open channel or river along highroads. In this paper, the discrimination model of risk grade was established to predict the degree of traffic emergent incidents with the transportation of pollutants in open channel. The numerical results show that the proposed method provides a technical support to predict and react on the environmental risks.

Simulation of Pollutant Transportation in Yinluan Open Channel under the Effects of Wind

The water diversion project from Luanhe River to Tianjin is a large-scale project eliminating the water shortage of Tianjin city. Because the long water supply open channel along highroads, the traffic emergent incidents bring great potential dangers to the water supply of Tianjin. In this paper, the prediction model of traffic emergent incidents was built and the transportation of pollutants in Yinluan open channel with the effects of wind was simulated by EFDC model. The evolution and affective area of pollutant in Yinluan open channel was obtained. The results showed that the effects of wind on the transportation of pollutant in Yinluan open channel are strong when the wind direction is along the channel.