Mitigating risk through R&D+Innovation: Chile’s national strategy for disaster resilience

With an annual average expense of more than 2,800 million USD, Chile leads the OECD countries with the largest percentage of the GDP spent in disaster losses per year (almost 1.2% GDP). This was the motivation of the Chilean President in 2015 to ask a group of experts to prepare a national Research, Development, and Innovation (R&D+i) strategy for disaster resilience. The strategy was developed by a group, called by the acronym CREDEN, and involved more than 80 experts representing different national stakeholders from the academia, public and private sectors, NGOs, and the armed forces. The work of CREDEN finished December 2016 and produced an R&D+i roadmap composed of five enabling conditions and 14 tasks. The implementation of this strategy demands a total investment of 914 million USD in 20 years, which is expected to have a benefit-cost ratio of 2.32, and annual savings of about $106 million USD. The first stage in this process is the design of a National Institute of R&D+i for Disaster Resilience (ITReND), which will oversee the implementation of the strategy. ITReND’s design was completed in 2017 and its implementation is expected to begin in 2018. This strategy can be considered as an example of how to position R&D+i in the basis of public policy for disaster resilience. Both, the contents of this strategy and its implementation process, have unique aspects and may help guide other disaster-prone countries in their pursuit of larger resilience to the increasing occurrence rate of extreme natural events

Healthcare network operation in Iquique after the 2014, Pisagua earthquake

On April 1st, 2014, the 8.2 Mw Pisagua earthquake affected the population in the north of Chile and generated disruption of services in the region. The largest effects of the earthquake were observed in the city of Iquique, capital of the Tarapaca Region, where more than 80% of the population of the region lives. This research describes the response of the public healthcare network of Iquique after the earthquake, and aims to identify the principal factors contributing to the network resilience during the early response and recovery phase after the earthquake. Despite the large magnitude of the earthquake, the observed structural damage was minor in the five healthcare centers considered (i.e., the regional hospital and 4 Primary Healthcare Attention Centers, PHACs). However, disruption of services in the healthcare network was large and due mainly to the collapse of non-structural components. Overall, the proper response of the healthcare network of Iquique was heavily supported by the PHACs, which largely provided first-aid, containment, and low-complexity attention to the population, allowing the hospital to focus on more complex procedures. The findings of this study suggest that the resilience of the healthcare network system, besides the robustness of the network’s facilities and their critical units, is also highly dependent on the interrelations and interactions between them in early post-earthquake recovery phases

Impact on Chilean hospitals following the 2015 Illapel earthquake

In a post-disaster environment, hospitals play a critical role in healthcare services continuities to the population while effectively coping with eventual losses of functionality. These losses come from physical damage to the facility, loss of utility lifelines, failure in supply chains, and reduction of personnel. However, data describing the detailed performance of hospitals during past earthquakes are scarce. Consequently, following the 2015 Mw 8.3 Illapel earthquake in central Chile, an exhaustive field campaign was carried out in the Coquimbo region to collect substantial perishable data to describe physical damage to hospitals and functionality losses. This study presents first the baseline information obtained in nine surveyed government hospitals, including size, location and type of infrastructure. Then, the seismic impact was analyzed and classified to show the main physical structural and non-structural damage, lifeline interruptions, losses in hospital units, and variations in flow of patients and staff. Transfers, discharges and evacuations of patients that occurred after the event were also reported. We found that the earthquake did not affect strongly the healthcare service despite the fact that most of the structural and non-structural damage was localized in the largest regional hospital. The archival nature of the data collected may deepen our understanding of the post-earthquake healthcare system performance, which is very useful in improving disaster preparation and overall resilience

Reconnaissance observations by CIGIDEN after the 2015 Illapel, Chile earthquake and tsunami

This paper describes the reconnaissance work conducted by researchers from the National Research Center for Integrated Natural Disaster Management (CIGIDEN) between September 23rd and October 2nd in the area affected by the Mw 8.3 Illapel megathrust earthquake, which struck offshore the coast of the Coquimbo Region in central Chile on September 16th , 2015. A first team focused on the seismic performance and effects of the tsunami on public hospitals and on reinforced concrete (RC) buildings. A second team focused on the road network infrastructure. Field work included: (i) a survey on the physical and functional damages of the public hospitals in the Region; (ii) a visual inspection and preliminary damage assessment of 20 RC buildings in the largest cities of the region and an aftershock instrumentation of the Coquimbo hospital; and (iii) the inspection of bridges, pedestrian bridges, and rockfall along overstepped cut slopes of the road network. The overall limited impact of this megathrust earthquake may be explained in part by the long-term efforts made by the country to prepare for such events. Learnings from the 2010 Maule earthquake were evidenced in the successful evacuation along the coast of the country, and the overall good performance of engineered masonry structures, and of RC buildings designed after 2010

Receptor Complementation and Mutagenesis Reveal SR-BI as an Essential HCV Entry Factor and Functionally Imply Its Intra- and Extra-Cellular Domains

HCV entry into cells is a multi-step and slow process. It is believed that the initial capture of HCV particles by glycosaminoglycans and/or lipoprotein receptors is followed by coordinated interactions with the scavenger receptor class B type I (SR-BI), a major receptor of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the CD81 tetraspanin, and the tight junction protein Claudin-1, ultimately leading to uptake and cellular penetration of HCV via low-pH endosomes. Several reports have indicated that HDL promotes HCV entry through interaction with SR-BI. This pathway remains largely elusive, although it was shown that HDL neither associates with HCV particles nor modulates HCV binding to SR-BI. In contrast to CD81 and Claudin-1, the importance of SR-BI has only been addressed indirectly because of lack of cells in which functional complementation assays with mutant receptors could be performed. Here we identified for the first time two cell types that supported HCVpp and HCVcc entry upon ectopic SR-BI expression. Remarkably, the undetectable expression of SR-BI in rat hepatoma cells allowed unambiguous investigation of human SR-BI functions during HCV entry. By expressing different SR-BI mutants in either cell line, our results revealed features of SR-BI intracellular domains that influence HCV infectivity without affecting receptor binding and stimulation of HCV entry induced by HDL/SR-BI interaction. Conversely, we identified positions of SR-BI ectodomain that, by altering HCV binding, inhibit entry. Finally, we characterized alternative ectodomain determinants that, by reducing SR-BI cholesterol uptake and efflux functions, abolish HDL-mediated infection-enhancement. Altogether, we demonstrate that SR-BI is an essential HCV entry factor. Moreover, our results highlight specific SR-BI determinants required during HCV entry and physiological lipid transfer functions hijacked by HCV to favor infection

The Effects of Apolipoprotein F Deficiency on High Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Metabolism in Mice

Apolipoprotein F (apoF) is 29 kilodalton secreted sialoglycoprotein that resides on the HDL and LDL fractions of human plasma. Human ApoF is also known as Lipid Transfer Inhibitor protein (LTIP) based on its ability to inhibit cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP)-mediated transfer events between lipoproteins. In contrast to other apolipoproteins, ApoF is predicted to lack strong amphipathic alpha helices and its true physiological function remains unknown. We previously showed that overexpression of Apolipoprotein F in mice reduced HDL cholesterol levels by 20–25% by accelerating clearance from the circulation. In order to investigate the effect of physiological levels of ApoF expression on HDL cholesterol metabolism, we generated ApoF deficient mice. Unexpectedly, deletion of ApoF had no substantial impact on plasma lipid concentrations, HDL size, lipid or protein composition. Sex-specific differences were observed in hepatic cholesterol content as well as serum cholesterol efflux capacity. Female ApoF KO mice had increased liver cholesteryl ester content relative to wild type controls on a chow diet (KO: 3.4+/−0.9 mg/dl vs. WT: 1.2+/−0.3 mg/dl, p<0.05). No differences were observed in ABCG1-mediated cholesterol efflux capacity in either sex. Interestingly, ApoB-depleted serum from male KO mice was less effective at promoting ABCA1-mediated cholesterol efflux from J774 macrophages relative to WT controls

Modelamiento de la evacuación de un colegio en Iquique

Evacuating people from potential tsunami inundation zones as a result of large earthquakes in cities and towns along the shoreline is a critical and complex social activity that needs to be executed in very short time by people while coordinated by emergency offices. This research focuses in the evacuation process inside the buildings that are located in inundation zones, developing an agent-based model to simulate building evacuations. The methodology that was used integrates the physical effects of agent motion with different social behaviors that have been observed in real evacuations. The model was applied to a real evacuation drill of a school in the city of Iquique, in northern Chile. The flow rates and evacuation times that were measured in the drill were used to quantify the predictive capacity of the proposed model, obtaining differences of 13.6% and 5.9%, respectively. This ability to model human evacuations in a realistic way can be used in the future to wide variety of applications, including the prediction of concerns in the evacuation process of a building, and assess the positive effects of possible mitigation actions that communities and people can undergo to improve their emergency evacuation response