Public Installations Research Articles

Becoming against the construct of normative motherhood

In this article, I reflect on how my positioning along axes of disability, race, and class shapes my interaction with dominant discourses of motherhood and on how these tensions are explored in The Mother, a public installation of my artwork shown in 2023. Situating myself in the liminal space between participation in and resistance to normative motherhood ideology, I invite other disabled mothers—especially other cisgendered, heterosexual white women—to consider how they practice disabled mothering in the context of racial capitalism. Through both the installation and these reflections, I assert that visible disabled mothering can be a powerful act of community care and crip resistance.

Hardware implementation of WPT Charging System for EV Vehicles

Transportation in urban areas is being transformed by various vehicles, with e-scooters being among the fastest growing. Despite their popularity, e-scooters face issues like incompatible chargers, especially problematic for rental services. Wireless charging emerges as a solution by enabling battery charging without user intervention. This paper focuses on the design and development of a magnetic-resonance charger for e-scooters. This research has detailed the coil topology, gap definition, and optimized control for a constant current-constant voltage (CC-CV) charge. This present key contribution is the integrated consideration of these factors, alongside the vehicle’s materials and structure, for precise design and implementation. The vehicle’s dimensions significantly constrain the coil design. Thus, in the past, a detailed analysis using Ansys Maxwell to determine the optimal locations for primary and secondary coils in an actual e-scooter was carried out. This analysis led to an optimal design for coil geometries, minimizing costs. The proposed system was validated with a real prototype, incorporating CC-CV control to ensure safe charging for various battery states, and is adaptable to a wide range of e-scooters, enhancing the usability of such chargers in public installations.

Beyond presentism: Memory studies, deep history and the challenges of transmission

We take up the challenge to extend the ‘archive of mnemonic practices’ beyond recent histories of violence by facilitating a dialogue between scholarship on deep history and the fourth wave of memory studies, both emerging under the sign of the Anthropocene. In so doing, we engage with the problem of transmission as it has emerged in both fields. Works in cultural memory studies provide us with compelling ways of thinking through mediated practices of transmission, but they are limited by their focus on the recent past and on encultured technologies of memory that primarily reflect the European origins of the field. Studies of deep history, which engage transmission among Indigenous communities, by contrast, tend to rely on an account of transmission as precise replication, oftentimes over hundreds of generations. To reconsider and theorize mediated practices of transmission, we draw on the concept of the deep present as formulated within ethnomusicology. This term describes a present in which Aboriginal culture-work and performance both transmits memory of the deep past and evokes that deep past itself, activating it today. We consider two public installations as examples of remembrance of the deep past in urban Warrane/Sydney – bara by Judy Watson and Virtual Warrane by Brett Leavy – each of which is of Country in a way that connects memory over time and activates a deep present. We argue that these instances of memory in the deep present might offer ways of reconsidering the possibilities of a decolonizing future.

Installation Art in Public Spaces as Socio-Spatial Framing of Place: Case Study Loominous River Installation Art (2022)

As a means to revitalise sluggish cities, public and private investment agencies have taken a keen interest in public installation art. As place-making initiatives endeavour to attract valuable trained human talent to their cities, local governments and city councils have deemed art in public spaces indispensable. Installation art in public spaces is crucial for revitalising run-down areas of a city. By placing the individual's perception at the centre of the aesthetic experience, installation art has the potential to help people perceive the city in a different way. Through novel corporeal experiences, it is possible to introduce new narratives of the city. Moreover, such experiences are essential for creating memories and fostering a sense of belonging among the city's residents. The commissioning of installation art is a complex creative process involving multiple stakeholders and public funds. This exploratory essay seeks to examine the public commissioning of installation art as a means to instigate socio-spatial relationships framing a specific location. The primary case study is Loominous River (2022), one of the commission beneficiaries of Thinkcity and Cendana's Project Light in 2021. Through empirical observations of the production process from conception to completion, the author attempts to establish the relationship between installation art and place-making.

Mapping Rectangles to Cylinders: Waste-Conscious Constructions of Curved Structural Surfaces

This research explores the generation of a novel syntax for architecture driven by the preserved proportions of 4 ft. x 8 ft. rectangular sheets of flexible material. The primary goal is to develop strategies that reduce or eliminate material waste in small-scale public installations by leveraging the full dimensions of standard stock material as a building block. Following a brief survey on how geometric definition and construction sequences informed tectonic assemblies of the past, this paper introduces a subset of curved crease folding that uses planar reflections (sectional mirror operations) to create unique spatial and structural vocabularies by avoiding material offcuts entirely. Finally, the research illustrates a full-scale prototype that tests the effectiveness of the process in the form of a shade structure in a local neighborhood park.

Optimized Design of a Wireless Charger Prototype for an e-Scooter

Individual mobility vehicles are revolutionizing transportation in the urban environment. Among them, e-scooters are one of the fastest growing vehicles. However, these vehicles have some drawbacks such as incompatibility among different chargers or reduced autonomy, which especially affects e-scooters rental. Wireless charging is presented as a solution to these drawbacks since it allows the batteries to be charged without user intervention. This paper addresses the design process and implementation details related to a magnetic-resonance charger for an e-scooter. In contrast to the previous works, we present a comprehensive approach that addresses the design of the coil topology, the dimensions of the ferrite tiles, the definition of the gap and the optimised control for a CC-CV charge. The main contribution of the work is the consideration of all these issues jointly while we also take into account the vehicle’s materials and structure for an accurate design and implementation. The dimensions of the vehicle impose a strong restriction on the coil design. Therefore, a detailed analysis about the location of the secondary and primary coils in a real e-scooter is executed with Ansys Maxwell. The study about the geometries of ferrite tiles is also performed considering the particularities of this type of vehicle. This study led to an optimal solution for the coil geometries and ferrite placement that minimizes the costs. The proposed system has been validated with the implementation of a real prototype of 100 W, to which a CC-CV control has been incorporated to achieve a safe charge for different battery states. The control can be easily adapted for a wide range of e-scooters. In this way, the use of this type of chargers on public installations can be maximized.

Seismic roulette: Hazards and risks

AbstractThe Neo Deterministic Seismic Hazard Assessment (NDSHA) is the innovative multi‐disciplinary scenario‐physics‐based approach for the evaluation of seismic hazard and risks. When an earthquake occurs, the ground shaking does not depend on its likelihood according to the widespread Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA), which estimates are too often wrong. An “unlikely” earthquake can occur at any time and, sooner or later, with 100% probability. Therefore, from a perspective of safety, it is essential that infrastructure and public installations are designed so as to resist future strong earthquakes. NDSHA has proven to both reliably and realistically simulate comprehensive sets of hazardous ground motions in many regions worldwide. Today NDSHA is gaining momentum in spreading worldwide an innovative Paradigm of Reliable Seismic Hazard Assessment (RSHA) that should ultimately change mind‐sets of scientific and engineering communities from disbelief in probabilistic forecasting to optimistic challenging issues of neo‐deterministic predictability of Natural Hazards and Risks.

Cabinet Stories: Curators in the Community

Cabinet Stories was a touring exhibition and research project aimed at audiences with restricted access to the arts, with a singular cabinet housing a series of small, interchangeable, displays devised, in turn, by seven curators. This traveling show enabled an intimate space for conversation between audiences and fashion curators, who stepped outside of the museum context to lead workshops, as an extension of their displays, within complex environments which are closed to the public namely: a women’s prison; a medical center for patients with borderline personality disorder; a home for older people. The final venue was public-facing with the displays presented within a charity shop in east London. This article presents the research outcomes of this year-long outreach project and reflects upon museological theory and exhibition-making practice to contextualize the contribution fashion displays can make to wellbeing. Documentation of the curators’ authorship of their displays, and the audience interpretation is recorded, alongside the work of the participants as curator through the Our Cabinet Story display. This article culminates with the public installation within a charity shop and highlights the on-going legacy of this work and the contribution fashion curation can make to care.

The Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped: Measuring Public Installation Art Engagement and Popularity through Social Media Data Analysis

Social media is the most popular canvas to engage with art. In this study, we provide a different angle, on how an artistic installation on a world-renowned monument—such as Paris’ Arc de Triomphe—can emotionally affect viewers and potentially increase the popularity of the artwork. We collected N = 7078 Instagram and N = 3776 Twitter posts of the Arc de Triomphe as wrapped (installation) and unwrapped using APIs. As engagement indicators for several supervised machine learning experiments, we chose the total number of likes, comments, shares, text sentiment, and so on. Our findings revealed that people were captivated by the poetic installation. Based on the results, we discovered that the sentiments of triumph and surprise prevailed in datasets of the Arc de Triomphe as unwrapped. The same sentiments of triumph and surprise were most prevalent in datasets as wrapped, as well, but with higher scores. Furthermore, we have provided evidence of public art experience and engagement in the social media era. This research, we believe, will be useful in future studies of social media through the lens of public art and popularity. We hope that our findings will stimulate future research in the fields of art curatorship, cultural heritage management, marketing and communication, aesthetics, and culture analytics.

Interrogating the limits of humanitarian art: the uncomfortable invitations of Ai Weiwei

ABSTRACT Ai Weiwei is one of the most prominent contemporary artists to engage the so-called ‘migrant’ or ‘refugee crisis’ since 2015. His work spans several mediums, from feature-length documentary films to gallery exhibits, public installations, and social media content. Ai has garnered both admiration and criticism for his representations of migrants and refugees, with some critics alleging Ai’s works are tone-deaf and self-serving publicity stunts that disregard the uneven power dynamics between the artist and his subjects. These critiques, however, often overlook Ai’s postcolonial positionality and the ways in which his own experiences with exile shape his approach to representing mass displacement. In this essay, I offer a reappraisal of Ai Weiwei’s work by considering how his documentary practices productively discomfit viewers and invite audiences to interrogate the limitations of humanitarian art. Through close readings of his documentary film Human Flow (2017), gallery installation Laundromat (2016), and the notorious India Today portrait of Ai Weiwei as Alan Kurdi, I show how Ai destabilizes humanitarian documentary tropes typically used to represent refugees. In doing so, Ai calls attention to the constructed nature of his own work and invites viewers to re-examine their practices of looking.

_____ With Letters: A Conversation with Kameelah Janan Rasheed

_____ With Letters: A Conversation with Kameelah Janan Rasheed Paul Benzon (bio) and Kameelah Janan Rasheed (bio) Kameelah janan rasheed’s work grapples with the poetics, politics, and pleasures of the unfinished. Engaging primarily with text, rasheed works on the page, within digital interfaces, on walls, and in public spaces. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the Brooklyn Museum; the New Museum; MASS MoCA; the Queens Museum; the Bronx Museum; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; the Brooklyn Public Library; and the Brooklyn Historical Society, among others. Her work has been exhibited internationally at NOME; Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; Kunsthalle Wien; Bétonsalon Centre d’art et de recherche, Paris; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Artspace Peterborough, ON; the 57th Venice Biennial; and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, among others. Her public installations have appeared at Ballroom Marfa; the Brooklyn Museum; For Freedoms x Times Square Art, New York; Public Art Fund, New York; Moody Center for the Arts, Houston; the California Air Resources Board; and several others. When I reached out to her to arrange this conversation, I had studied her work online but never seen it live in person—pandemic conditions kept me in upstate New York, away from her 2020 and 2021 shows in Brooklyn. Scratch that. No need to explain, because in some sense, nobody has seen a work by Kameelah Janan Rasheed—not really seen it. This is true at every level [End Page 241] of scale. In macroscopic terms, each piece within Rasheed’s prolific œuvre is itself constantly changing, perpetually subject to what she describes as “the right to revision”—the right to reconceptualize a text, image, object, or idea over time; to rethink and rewrite; literally to see, and to know, again and again in ongoing cycles of reformulation. Her 2019 artist’s book, No New Theories, signals this from the outset, opening with an epigraph from Jorge Luis Borges’s The Book of Imaginary Beings: “A book of this nature is necessarily incomplete. . . . Our wish would be that the curious dip into it from time to time in much the way one visits the changing forms revealed by a kaleidoscope.”1 And indeed, as she discusses in our conversation below, this project is currently in its third iteration, continually incomplete, reshaped through error, annotation, and accumulation. As with No New Theories, much of Rasheed’s work continually turns the kaleidoscope, iterating words, phrases, and marks across a range of surfaces. At a microscopic level, these works are designed to frustrate legibility: their dense textual spaces simultaneously invite us to read and place a check on the impulse toward reading as an impulse toward stability, blocking it with opacity, iteration, and schematic fragmentation. Her 2020 installation, Are We Reading Closely?, adorned the façade of the Brooklyn Museum with black and white banners, each one covered with reproduced texts and images: annotated excerpts from book indexes, photographs, an x-ray of a hand touching words. The answer these architectural text-objects pose to the show’s titular question seems to be at once both yes and no. For Rasheed, this destabilization of legibility is deeply political, a resistance against the surveillance of Black bodies, texts, and communities across history; indeed, the conceptions of reading and revision she imagines in her work insist on constant mobility as a means of escape from legibility and transparency as colonialized states of being. Across Rasheed’s projects, words serve as moving sculptures. Deeply collagic and archival, her work invokes print objects ranging from the book (the Bible, the Qur’ān, the notepad, the catalog) to the telephone poll handbill to the chalkboard alongside scraps of digital and televisual culture. Over the pages of No New Theories, handwritten chapter-and-verse citations and low-res images of Rasheed taken by U.S. Customs and Border Protection resonate against cryptic textual collages (“drinking her milk: respective scriptures,” reads one snippet) and photos of Steve Urkel. One representative page holds black computer-set [End Page 242] text on a white background, clearly cut from a printed document (perhaps more than one) and ever so...

Post Sonica: a speculative design project that cultivates community and sense of place within the city soundscape

There is a strong history of soundscape reverence and reflection in Utah. From Messiaen to Ussachevsky, scholars and composers alike have been inspired by the state’s sonic environment. Using these individuals’ reflective works as a muse while simultaneously incorporating R. Murray Schafer’s insights on soundscapes, I performed a sound sample study across Salt Lake City. Analyzing my samples led me to design a public installation that explores the ways in which our sonic environments affect daily life at the intersection of time, sound, and place. The concept for post sonica is a granite cylinder (4 ft. wide × 3 ft. high). Three arms rotate from the center at variable speeds in response to the strength and pitch of the sounds around them. Pads at the arms’ ends wear away separate paths in the granite base with each pass, creating the sonic “fingerprint” of a place over time. User engagement is necessarily bidirectional; as passersby are moved to interact with the device, their moment of reflection is captured and physicalized by the spinning arms. In this way, post sonica is a reminder of an urban community’s fundamental interconnectedness and the ever-present soundscape that functions as a part of it all.

When the Sky Is Low and Heavy: David Lamelas and Transnational Heritage in Flanders

In 1992, artist David Lamelas installed Quand le ciel bas et lourd at the temporary exhibition America: Bride of the Sun—500 Years of Latin-America and the Low Countries at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), a show that explored the cultural, economic, and political exploitation of indigenous America by European forces, and its project of colonization and erasure. Lamelas’ work remained a public installation in KMSKA’s garden until March 2021 when it was dismantled as a result of the museum’s years-long renovation. This article examines the work in the context in which it was exhibited and later destroyed as a lens to examine two aspects of contemporary art and history in Flanders. Firstly, it foregrounds the complex, transnational heritage that Lamelas’ work presents and considers its implications upon the local, cultural scene in which it resided from the 1960s to 70s, in the 1990s and in the present. Secondly, the text frames Quand le ciel bas et lourd and America: Bride of the Sun as reverberating with the emergence of nationalism in Flanders and a global, postcolonial discourse in the art world. This article considers how aspects of Lamelas’ work and its elusive meanings over space and time might challenge monolithic understandings of Flemish art.

A Place for All People: Louise Nevelson’s Chapel of the Good Shepherd

In 1973, a church and a bank joined forces to reimagine an entire block of Midtown Manhattan. The church was St. Peter’s, and the bank was First National City Corporation, or Citicorp. The Citicorp Center, now owned jointly by St. Peter’s and the developer Boston Properties, remains an important nexus in Midtown. The following case study considers both the limitations of the site’s privately owned public spaces and how the Nevelson Chapel, a permanent public art installation located within St. Peter’s Church, operates as a counter-hegemonic form of privately owned public space—the sacred public space.

Stickers: design tools of the dynamic visual communication

The purpose of the article. In the work, we showed design tools of visual communications designing with the stickers using. The problem of informing increase of message and level of its perception closely relates to forming of a dynamic image. Research methodology is founded on the basis of the system design approach, and also some methods such as structural and compositional, functional, artistic, and imaginative design-analysis. The scientific novelty of the work. We found out that people can use stickers as an integral part of the design system for dynamic information creation which is the most effective for perception. We focus on the fact that design tools can solve the problems of interaction of visual communications with material objects, persons, and the environment by dynamic means. Conclusions. We emphasize attention on analyzing the visualization processes that happen by stickers repetition with minor transformations on the moving constructions. By using the animation effect, designers manage to create the continuous process illusion. During the work, we analyze the using of template stickers. Their artistic and graphic language is formed on the person’s involvement in communication by the combining of some elements within a defined structure. We proved that using smell and steam. With the development of innovative technologies, stickers-indicators, which become visual markers of dynamic changes in the chemical and biological composition of products, become relevant. We described the close relationship between hidden dynamic signs and visual color changes of stickers. We studied that the design of dynamic visual communications relates to the using of stickers as relevant tools of structuring space. The participation of stickers in the process of visual arrangement of public installations appears over time and is carried out on the basis of a constant flow of people. As result all of the described visual transformations relate to the use of stickers and require the rethinking of traditional semantic and visual-plastic constructions that belong to the openness and intelligibility of the message. Keywords: sticker, visual communication, dynamic visualization, template sticker, design system.

Adjustment of Lighting Parameters from Photopic to Mesopic Values in Outdoor Lighting Installations Strategy and Associated Evaluation of Variation in Energy Needs

The sensitivity of the human eye varies with the different lighting conditions to which it is exposed. The cone photoreceptors perceive the color and work for illuminance conditions greater than 3.00 cd/m² (photopic vision). Below 0.01 cd/m², the rods are the cells that assume this function (scotopic vision). Both types of photoreceptors work coordinately in the interval between these values (mesopic vision). Each mechanism generates a different spectral sensibility. In this work, the emission spectra of common sources in present public lighting installations are analyzed and their normative photopic values translated to the corresponding mesopic condition, which more faithfully represents the vision mechanism of our eyes in these conditions. Based on a common street urban configuration (ME6), we generated a large set of simulations to determine the ideal light point setup configuration (luminance and light point height vs. poles distance ratio) for each case of spectrum source. Finally, we analyze the derived energy variation from each design possibility. The results obtained may contribute to improving the criterion of light source selection and adapting the required regulatory values to the human eye vision process under normalized artificial street lighting condition, reaching an average energy saving of 15% and a reduction of 8% in terms of points of light required. They also offer a statistical range of energy requirements for lighting installation that can be used to generate accurate electrical designs or estimations without the necessity of defining the exact lighting configuration, which is 77.5% lower than conventional design criteria.

Public installations or how to reclaim our rights as citizens

This article focuses on the importance of reclaiming our rights as citizens and our public spaces by documenting two different public installations/performances that took place in Beirut. The first took place in Spring 2018 and was organized by BePublic Lab at the American University of Beirut, and the second was the Architectural Association Visiting School that took place in Beirut in Summer 2019. Both installations led to a series of interventions on the stretch between Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael, an area that has been witnessing gentrification in recent years. Both projects aim to trigger political engagement and raise public awareness in the face of the lack of public space, especially for the youth, in a city that is gradually moving towards a near total privatization of its public places. They emerged as a response to the sociopolitical strategies of depriving the citizens of their basic needs by privatizing what was once everyone’s. This article argues that urban interventions are an opportunity to address sociopolitical issues through spatial and temporal public installations. These installations, tailored to a human scale and anchored in the city as both art and architecture, reflect on the power of public interventions as urban catalytic tactics that engage with the people and challenge the blasé attitude of the citizens, pushing them to claim their rights to the city.

Associations of Mental Health and Personal Preventive Measure Compliance With Exposure to COVID-19 Information During Work Resumption Following the COVID-19 Outbreak in China: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.

BackgroundRisk and crisis communication plays an essential role in public health emergency responses. The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered spontaneous and intensive media attention, which has affected people’s adoption of personal preventive measures and their mental health.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate the associations between exposure to COVID-19–specific information and mental health (depression and sleep quality) and self-reported compliance with personal preventive measures (face mask wearing and hand sanitizing). We also tested whether these associations were moderated by thoughtful consideration of the veracity of the information to which people were exposed.MethodsA cross-sectional, closed web-based survey was conducted among a sample of 3035 factory workers at the beginning of work resumption following the COVID-19 outbreak in Shenzhen, China. A stratified two-stage cluster sampling design was used for recruitment. Multivariate linear and logistic regression models were used for the analyses.ResultsThe prevalence of probable moderate-to-severe depression was 170/3035 (5.6%), while that of good or excellent sleep quality was 2110/3035 (69.5%). The prevalence of self-reported consistent face mask wearing in public places was 2903/3035 (95.7%), while that of sanitizing hands every time after returning from public spaces or touching public installations was 2151/3035 (70.9%). Of the 3035 respondents, 1013 to 1638 (33.3% to 54.0%) reported >1 hour of daily exposure to COVID-19–specific information through web-based media and television. After controlling for significant background variables, higher information exposure via television and via newspapers and magazines was associated with better sleep quality and higher compliance with hand sanitizing. Higher exposure via unofficial web-based media was associated with higher compliance with hand sanitizing but was also associated with higher depressive symptoms. In contrast, higher exposure through face-to-face communication was associated with higher depressive symptoms, worse sleep quality, and lower compliance with hand sanitizing. Exposure to information about positive outcomes for patients with COVID-19, development of vaccines and effective treatments, and heroic stories about frontline health care workers were associated with both better mental health and higher compliance with preventive measures. Higher overall information exposure was associated with higher depressive symptoms among participants who were less likely to carefully consider the veracity of the information to which they were exposed; it was also associated with better sleep quality among people who reported more thoughtful consideration of information veracity.ConclusionsThis study provides empirical evidence of how the amount, sources, and contents of information to which people were exposed influenced their mental health and compliance with personal preventive measures at the initial phase of work resumption in China. Thoughtful consideration of information quality was found to play an important moderating role. Our findings may inform strategic risk communication by government and public health authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Self-Reported Compliance With Personal Preventive Measures Among Chinese Factory Workers at the Beginning of Work Resumption Following the COVID-19 Outbreak: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.

BackgroundMaintaining compliance with personal preventive measures is important to achieve a balance of COVID-19 pandemic control and work resumption.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate self-reported compliance with four personal measures to prevent COVID-19 among a sample of factory workers in Shenzhen, China, at the beginning of work resumption in China following the COVID-19 outbreak. These preventive measures included consistent wearing of face masks in public spaces (the workplace and other public settings); sanitizing hands using soap, liquid soap, or alcohol-based hand sanitizer after returning from public spaces or touching public installations and equipment; avoiding social and meal gatherings; and avoiding crowded places.MethodsThe participants were adult factory workers who had resumed work in Shenzhen, China. A stratified two-stage cluster sampling design was used. We randomly selected 14 factories that had resumed work. All full-time employees aged ≥18 years who had resumed work in these factories were invited to complete a web-based survey. Out of 4158 workers who had resumed work in these factories, 3035 (73.0%) completed the web-based survey from March 1 to 14, 2020. Multilevel logistic regression models were fitted.ResultsAmong the 3035 participants, 2938 (96.8%) and 2996 (98.7%) reported always wearing a face mask in the workplace and in other public settings, respectively, in the past month. However, frequencies of self-reported sanitizing hands (2152/3035, 70.9%), avoiding social and meal gatherings (2225/3035, 73.3%), and avoiding crowded places (1997/3035, 65.8%) were relatively low. At the individual level, knowledge about COVID-19 (adjusted odds ratios [AORs] from 1.16, CI 1.10-1.24, to 1.29, CI 1.21-1.37), perceived risk (AORs from 0.58, CI 0.50-0.68, to 0.85, CI 0.72-0.99) and severity (AOR 1.05, CI 1.01-1.09, and AOR 1.07, CI 1.03-1.11) of COVID-19, perceived effectiveness of preventive measures by the individual (AORs from 1.05, CI 1.00-1.10, to 1.09, CI 1.04-1.13), organization (AOR 1.30, CI 1.20-1.41), and government (AORs from 1.14, CI 1.04-1.25, to 1.21, CI 1.02-1.42), perceived preparedness for a potential outbreak after work resumption (AORs from 1.10, CI 1.00-1.21, to 1.50, CI 1.36-1.64), and depressive symptoms (AORs from 0.93, CI 0.91-0.94, to 0.96, CI 0.92-0.99) were associated with self-reported compliance with at least one personal preventive measure. At the interpersonal level, exposure to COVID-19–specific information through official media channels (AOR 1.08, CI 1.04-1.11) and face-to-face communication (AOR 0.90, CI 0.83-0.98) were associated with self-reported sanitizing of hands. The number of preventive measures implemented in the workplace was positively associated with self-reported compliance with all four preventive measures (AORs from 1.30, CI 1.08-1.57, to 1.63, CI 1.45-1.84).ConclusionsMeasures are needed to strengthen hand hygiene and physical distancing among factory workers to reduce transmission following work resumption. Future programs in workplaces should address these factors at multiple levels.

An Analysis of Urban Land Use/Land Cover Changes in Blantyre City, Southern Malawi (1994–2018)

Rapid and unplanned urban growth has adverse environmental and social consequences. This is prominent in sub-Saharan Africa where the urbanisation rate is high and characterised by the proliferation of informal settlements. It is, therefore, crucial that urban land use/land cover (LULC) changes be investigated in order to enhance effective planning and sustainable growth. In this paper, the spatial and temporal LULC changes in Blantyre city were studied using the integration of remotely sensed Landsat imageries of 1994, 2007 and 2018, and a geographic information system (GIS). The supervised classification method using the support vector machine algorithm was applied to generate the LULC maps. The study also analysed the transition matrices derived from the classified map to identify prominent processes of changes for planning prioritisation. The results showed that the built-up class, which included urban structures such as residential, industrial, commercial and public installations, increased in the 24-year study period. On the contrary, bare land, which included vacant lands, open spaces with little or no vegetation, hilly clear-cut areas and other fallow land, declined over the study period. This was also the case with the vegetation class (i.e., forests, parks, permanent tree-covered areas and shrubs). The post-classification results revealed that the LULC changes during the second period (2007–2018) were faster compared to the first period (1994–2007). Furthermore, the results revealed that the increase in built-up areas systematically targeted the bare land and avoided the vegetated areas, and that the vegetated areas were systematically cleared to bare land during the study period (1994–2018). The findings of this study have revealed the pressure of human activities on the land and natural environment in Blantyre and provided the basis for sustainable urban planning and development in Blantyre city.