Assessing variations of extreme indices inducing weather-hazards on critical infrastructures over Europe?the INTACT framework

Extreme weather events are projected to be more frequent and severe across the globe because of global warming. This poses challenging problems for critical infrastructures, which could be dramatically affected (or disrupted), and may require adaptation plans to the changing climate conditions. The INTACT FP7-European project evaluated the resilience and vulnerability of critical infrastructures to extreme weather events in a climate change scenario. To identify changes in the hazard induced by climate change, appropriate extreme weather indicators (EWIs), as proxies of the main atmospheric features triggering events with high impact on the infrastructures, were defined for a number of case studies and different approaches were analyzed to obtain local climate projections. We considered the influence of weighting and bias correction schemes on the delta approach followed to obtain the resulting projections, considering data from the Euro-CORDEX ensemble of regional future climate scenarios over Europe. The aim is to provide practitioners, decision-makers, and administrators with appropriate methods to obtain actionable and plausible results on local/regional future climate scenarios. Our results show a small sensitivity to the weighting approach and a large sensitivity to bias correcting the future projections.This work has been carried out within the activities of INTACT project, receiving funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° FP7-SEC-2013-1-606799. The information and views set out in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Regional Climate, and the Working Group on Coupled Modelling, former coordinating body of CORDEX and responsible panel for CMIP5

Oncoplastic Breast Surgery versus Conservative Mastectomy in the Management of Large Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS): Surgical, Oncological, and Patient-Reported Outcomes

Oncoplastic level II breast-conserving surgery (OPS2) allows for wider excisions than standard breast-conserving surgery, but the literature on this technique in the treatment of DCIS is scarce. This study compares OPS2 to conservative mastectomy (CM) in patients undergoing surgery for large DCIS. The clinical, radiological, surgical, and post-operative data of 147 patients who underwent either CM or OPS2 for large DCIS between 2007 and 2021 were retrospectively reviewed. The surgical, oncological, and patient-reported outcomes (PRO) were analyzed and compared between the two groups. The surgical outcomes were similar, in terms of margin involvement (p = 0.211), complication rate (p = 0.827), and re-excision rate (p = 1). The rate of additional surgery for cosmetic optimization was significantly lower in the OPS2 group: only 1 (1.8%) patient required surgical adjustments versus 24 (26.4%) patients in the CM group (p < 0.001). The mean hospital stay was lower in the OPS2 group (p < 0.001). The oncological outcomes did not differ between the two groups (p = 0.662). The PRO analysis showed better outcomes in the OPS2 group, which achieved statistical significance in the sexual well-being module (p = 0.015). Skin sensitivity loss was also significantly lower in the OPS2 group (p < 0.001). When feasible, OPS2 should be considered in the treatment of large DCIS, as it is safe and shows high levels of patient satisfaction

Slow Roll Reconstruction: Constraints on Inflation from the 3 Year WMAP Dataset

We study the constraints on the inflationary parameter space derived from the 3 year WMAP dataset using ``slow roll reconstruction'', using the SDSS galaxy power spectrum to gain further leverage where appropriate. This approach inserts the inflationary slow roll parameters directly into a Monte Carlo Markov chain estimate of the cosmological parameters, and uses the inflationary flow hierarchy to compute the parameters' scale-dependence. We work with the first three parameters (epsilon, eta and xi) and pay close attention to the possibility that the 3 year WMAP dataset contains evidence for a ``running'' spectral index, which is dominated by the xi term. Mirroring the WMAP team's analysis we find that the permitted distribution of xi is broad, and centered away from zero. However, when we require that inflationary parameters yield at least 30 additional e-folds of inflation after the largest observable scales leave the horizon, the bounds on xi tighten dramatically. We make use of the absence of an explicit pivot scale in the slow roll reconstruction formalism to determine the dependence of the computed parameter distributions on the pivot. We show that the choice of pivot has a significant effect on the inferred constraints on the inflationary variables, and the spectral index and running derived from them. Finally, we argue that the next round of cosmological data can be expected to place very stringent constraints on the region of parameter space open to single field models of slow roll inflation.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures, JHEP format. v2: version accepted by JCAP: minor clarifications and references added, 1 figure added, v3: 1 reference adde

Estimating actual and potential bare soil evaporation from silty pyroclastic soils: Towards improved landslide prediction

The estimation of evaporative fluxes and their effects on soil suction is assuming a prominent role in the field of interpretation and early-warning prediction of rainfall-induced landslides. Evaporation models refer essentially to sands or plastic (silty and clayey) soils. Models validated specifically for non-plastic silty pyroclastic soils, usually characterized by very high porosity, are instead unavailable. This deficit arises although silty pyroclastic covers are widely spread across the world, increasingly involved in rainfall-induced landslides and recognized showing particular hydrological behaviour. A number of questions may be raised about the issue: (i) may any evaporative models be reliably extended to silty pyroclastic soils?; (ii) what atmospheric variables need to be monitored at least to reliably predict evaporation fluxes in these soils?; and (iii) how accurate evaporation estimations are if they are referred to silty pyroclastic covers for early warning purposes? This study addresses these questions by assessing the capabilities of several simplified models in estimating evaporative (potential and actual) fluxes for silty pyroclastic soils. To this aim, a large-scale lysimeter, consisting in a silty pyroclastic layer exposed to the atmosphere and comprehensively monitored for both weather forcing and hydrological soil variables, is adopted. It provides a dataset of observations suitable to calibrate and validate the selected evaporation models. Moreover, the availability of weather observations makes it possible to define the minimum set of equipment required to attain reliable evaporation estimation. This study shows that: (i) the adoption of a literature-based calibration can produce misleading estimates of actual evaporation, whereas the model performances after a lysimeter-based recalibration are satisfactory; (ii) reducing the weather measurements can induce an overestimation of predicted fluxes up to 50%; and (iii) the investigated models quite accurately predict water out-coming fluxes while running in early warning predictions

A physical model to investigate the influence of atmospheric variables on soil suction in pyroclastic soils

This paper investigates the interaction between soil and atmosphere in pyroclastic soils with a view to understanding the influence of meteorological factors on soil variables (essentially water content and suction). Such factors are known to have a great effect upon slope stability. As our particular interest lies in the influence of evaporation, we set up a physical model to quantify evaporation fluxes and use the results to interpret fluctuations in soil water content and suction. The physical model consists of a 1 m3 tank filled in this case with pyroclastic soil and exposed to natural weather elements. The system is extensively monitored to record atmospheric and soil variables during the tests

Processi di infiltrazione ed evaporazione nei terreni piroclastici illustrati attraverso la selezione di alcuni eventi rappresentativi

Rainfall and potential evaporation represent maximum water fluxes across the ground surface. Actual fluxes instead depend also on crop characteristics and the state of the topsoil (water content and suction). To understand and characterize mechanisms that regulate the soil atmosphere interaction in pyroclastic soils a physical model has been arranged. It consists in a tank containing 1 m3 of pyroclastic soil exposed at elements and suitably instrumented to measure those variables describing atmosphere and soil states. The monitoring activity carried out over more than two years provides several meteorological events, either representative or singular, occurring during wet and dry periods. This activity also provides the wide experimental dataset needed to understand how the soil state affects seepage mechanisms associated with and regulating actual evaporation and infiltration

Effects of vegetation on hydrological response of silty volcanic covers

This work examines the hydrological behaviour of a silty volcanic layer exposed to the atmosphere for 3 years under vegetated conditions. The layer was extensively monitored to measure energy fluxes, water fluxes, and internal variables (suction, water content, water storage, and temperature). Measurements were used to build representations of the layer’s behaviour patterns depending on its surface covering, comparing the behaviour in vegetated conditions with behaviour observed under bare conditions over the previous 4 years. Results show that during cold–dry periods, differences in terms of fluxes and hydrological variables between the bare and vegetated conditions reduce to negligible levels, but increase significantly during hot–dry and transition periods. As the soil forming the layer was selected to have the same intrinsic and state properties as the layer in a specific rainfall-induced landslide case history that occurred in Nocera Inferiore (South Italy) in 2005, the experimental results are used to re-interpret such a landslide, considering the effects of vegetation and referring to a coupled thermohydraulic model. The experimental results are used to calibrate the model, and this is then used to interpret around 10 years of meteorological variables recorded at the landslide site, including the landslide time. Comparison with interpretations made previously as a bare soil hypothesis shows how neglecting the effects of vegetation might imply a loss in prediction accuracy of soil state variables (suction and water storage) related to the slope stabilit

Analisi del processo di infiltrazione in un deposito granulare indotto dagli eventi meteorici stagionali

La nota illustra alcuni risultati di una sperimentazione numerica finalizzata alla quantificazione dei flussi idraulici indotti dalle forzanti atmosferiche stagionali in un deposito di terreni piroclastici sciolti, il cui regime tensiometrico è monitorato in automatico con un’elevata risoluzione temporale