Landslides Hazard Mapping in Rwanda Using Bivariate Statistical Index Method

Landslides hazard mapping (LHM) is essential in delineating hazard prone areas and optimizing low cost mitigation measures. This study applied the Geographic Information System and statistical index method in LHM in Rwanda. Field surveys identified 336 points that were employed to construct a landslides inventory map. Ten landslides predicting factors were analyzed: normalized difference vegetation index, elevation, slope, aspects, lithology, soil texture, distance to rivers, distance to roads, rainfall, and land use. The factor variables were converted into categorized variables according to the percentile divisions of seed cells. Then, values of each factor’s class weight were calculated and summed to create landslides hazard map. The estimated hazard map was split into five hazard classes (very low, low, moderate, high, and very high). The results indicated that the northern, western, and southern provinces are largely exposed to landslides hazard. The major landslides hazard influencing factors are elevation, slope, rainfall, and poor land management. Overall, this LHM would help policy makers to recognize each area’s hazard extent, key triggering factors, and the required hazard mitigation measures. These measures include planting trees to enhance vegetation cover and reduce the runoff, and construction of buildings on low steep slope areas to reduce people’s hazard exposure; while agroforestry and bench terraces would reduce sediments that take out the exposed soil (erosion) and pollute water quality

Psychosocial benefits of a mentoring program for youth-headed households in Rwanda

In Rwanda, the combined effects of the 1994 genocide and the AIDS pandemic have devastated the lives of children and families. More than 300,000 young people have been “left behind,” not only by parents and other caregivers who have died, but also by extended families and communities who stigmatize and fail to support them. The phenomenon of youth-headed households in the region is a relatively recent development. Despite the long history of fostering in sub-Saharan Africa, family and community safety nets are overstretched. Youth-headed households may be a legitimate coping strategy; however, children living in youth-headed households are less likely to attend school, have greater vulnerability to physical and mental health problems, and may demonstrate behavioral problems and hampered development. Although extended family members are a potential source of support, they are at times also the perpetrators of abuse, exploitation, and property grabbing following the parents’ death. The quasi-experimental study described in this brief tested a model of adult mentorship and support to improve psychosocial outcomes among youth-headed households. The study showed that mentoring can measurably mitigate adverse psychosocial outcomes among youth heads of households

Health Professional Training and Capacity Strengthening Through International Academic Partnerships: The First Five Years of the Human Resources for Health Program in Rwanda

Abstract Background: The Rwanda Human Resources for Health Program (HRH Program) is a 7-year (2012-2019) health professional training initiative led by the Government of Rwanda with the goals of training a large, diverse, and competent health workforce and strengthening the capacity of academic institutions in Rwanda. Methods: The data for this organizational case study was collected through official reports from the Rwanda Ministry of Health (MoH) and 22 participating US academic institutions, databases from the MoH and the College of Medicine and Health Sciences (CMHS) in Rwanda, and surveys completed by the co-authors. Results: In the first 5 years of the HRH Program, a consortium of US academic institutions has deployed an average of 99 visiting faculty per year to support 22 training programs, which are on track to graduate almost 4600 students by 2019. The HRH Program has also built capacity within the CMHS by promoting the recruitment of Rwandan faculty and the establishment of additional partnerships and collaborations with the US academic institutions. Conclusion: The milestones achieved by the HRH Program have been substantial although some challenges persist. These challenges include adequately supporting the visiting faculty; pairing them with Rwandan faculty (twinning); ensuring strong communication and coordination among stakeholders; addressing mismatches in priorities between donors and implementers; the execution of a sustainability strategy; and the decision by one of the donors not to renew funding beyond March 2017. Over the next 2 academic years, it is critical for the sustainability of the 22 training programs supported by the HRH Program that the health-related Schools at the CMHS significantly scale up recruitment of new Rwandan faculty. The HRH Program can serve as a model for other training initiatives implemented in countries affected by a severe shortage of health professionals

N-Dimensional Affine Weyl-Heisenberg Wavelets

: n-dimensional coherent states systems generated by translations, modulations, rotations and dilations are described. Starting from unitary irreducible representations of the n-dimen- sional affine Weyl-Heisenberg group, which are not square-integrable, one is led to consider systems of coherent states labeled by the elements of quotients of the original group. Such systems can yield a resolution of the identity, and then be used as alternatives to usual wavelet or windowed Fourier analysis. When the quotient space is the phase space of the representation, different embeddings of it into the group provide different descriptions of the phase space. R'esum'e: On d'ecrit des syst`emes d"etats coh'erents engendr'es par des translations, dilatations et rotations en n-dimensions. Partant de repr'esentations unitaires irr'eductibles du groupe de Weyl-Heisenberg affine en dimension n, qui ne sont pas de carr'e integrable, on est naturellement conduit `a consid'erer des syst`emes d"etats coh..

Euclidean coherent states I: geometric optic case

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). Biblioteca Centrale / CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle RichercheSIGLEITItal

Euclidean coherent states II: Helmohltz optics case

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). Biblioteca Centrale / CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle RichercheSIGLEITItal

Galilean wavelets: Coherent states of the affine Galilei group

We derive Galilean wavelets, by which we mean coherent states of the affine Galilei group, that is, the Galilei group extended by independent space and time dilations. The construction follows a general method based on square integrable group representations, possibly modulo a subgroup, i.e., on a homogeneous space of the underlying group. We also examine the restriction to the Schrodinger subgroup, which contains only dilations that leave invariant the Schrodinger and the heat equations. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0022-2488(99)01111-1]