Seismic screening and structural investigation of heritage buildings for adaptive reuse: a survey study at Iloilo City, Philippines

Building adaptive reuse has been a popular strategy for cultural heritage conservation of structures for it serves two basic objectives of preserving heritage structures and promoting cultural heritage and tourism. Adaptive reuse is the adaptation of an old structure to allow the introduction of a modern function into the old structure. Old buildings are not demolished but recycled into modern uses. This strategy, however, needs a careful and thorough assessment of these existing heritage buildings to assure their resilience and sustainability to future hazards. Heritage buildings for adaptive reuse due to age and structural deterioration are highly vulnerable to hazards like earthquakes. Moreover, these buildings when used for commercial purposes may be subjected to additional loads due to changes in function. Considering the age of the structure, conformity to new design codes, additional loads imposed by unit modification, and the new function brought about by adaptive reuse of these structures, there is a need to assess these buildings to assure their safety and continuous use. Promoting adaptive reuse of heritage buildings and tourism is most appropriate in heritage zones like Calle Real in Iloilo City, the site for the case study. This paper presents a rapid seismic screening of buildings to prioritize a population of heritage buildings in a heritage zone for further detailed inspection. A site survey of the buildings was conducted at the heritage zone of Calle Real, Iloilo City in terms of their current use, and current condition to determine potential structural, maintenance, and functional issues related to resilience and to recommend future improvements in the implementation of adaptive reuse of heritage structures in cities and towns to assure their sustainability

MaDCrow, a Citizen Science Infrastructure to Monitor Water Quality in the Gulf of Trieste (North Adriatic Sea)

Within the United Nations Sustainable Development 2030 agenda, sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sector needs sea water quality monitoring. This is a very demanding and expensive task which results in the sea being largely undersampled. MaDCrow is a research and development project supported by the European Regional Development Fund, that involves citizens as data collectors while aiming to improve public environmental awareness and participation in scientific research. Its goal is to create an innovative technological infrastructure for real-time acquisition, integration and access of data, thus generating knowledge on sea water quality and marine ecosystem of the Gulf of Trieste. Data acquisition is based on an autonomous and removable device, developed within the project, that can be deployed on any small size sailing boat, recreational vessel, or fishing boat. The device holds low-cost sensors to measure pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen and salinity and the hardware and software to acquire, georeference and transmit the environmental data without interfering with the activities of the boats. In this work we analyze the use, capabilities and advantages of low-cost sensors but also their limitations, comparing, with a special focus on pH, their performances with those of the traditional ones. Applying the paradigm in a highly anthropized area such as the Gulf of Trieste, which is characterized also by a very high spatial and temporal variability of environments, we point out that this new approach allows to monitor sea water quality and highlight local anomalies with a resolution and spatial and temporal coverage that was not achievable with previous procedures, but yet at very low costs. Once received, data are then processed and submitted to a mediation flow that contextualizes and disseminates them for public use on a website. The final products have been customized to reach stakeholders such as tourists, fishermen and policy makers. The availability of information understandable to everyone, while fostering environmental awareness, stimulates, at the same time, involvement and participation of citizen scientists in the initiative. In the future, while committing to enlarge the number of participants, we will extend the analysis also toward other types of sensors

A multi-hazard risk prioritisation framework for cultural heritage assets

Multi-hazard risk assessment of building portfolios is of primary importance in natural-hazard-prone regions, particularly for the prioritisation of disaster risk reduction and resilience-enhancing strategies. In this context, cultural heritage assets require special consideration because of their high vulnerability to natural hazards – due to ageing and types of construction – and their strong links with communities from both an economic and a historical–sociocultural perspective. This paper introduces a multi-hazard risk prioritisation framework specifically developed for cultural heritage assets. The proposed framework relies on a multilevel rapid-visual-survey (RVS) form for the multi-hazard exposure data collection and risk prioritisation of case-study assets. Because of the multilevel architecture of the proposed RVS form, based on three levels of refinement and information, an increasing degree of accuracy can be achieved in the estimation of structural vulnerability and, ultimately, structural risk of the considered assets. At the lowest level of refinement, the collected data are used for the computation of seismic-risk and wind-risk prioritisation indices, specifically calibrated in this study for cultural heritage assets with various structural and non-structural features. The resulting indices are then combined into a unique multi-hazard risk prioritisation index in which the intangible value of cultural heritage assets is also considered. This is achieved by defining a score expressing the cultural significance of the asset. The analytic hierarchy process is extensively used throughout the study to reduce the subjectivity involved in the framework, thus obtaining a simplified yet robust approach which can be adapted to different building typologies. The proposed framework is applied to 25 heritage buildings in Iloilo City, Philippines, for which innovative, non-invasive techniques and tools for improved surveying have also been tested. Thermal and omnidirectional cameras have helped in the collection of structural data, together with drones for the inspection of roofs. Results of the study are presented and critically discussed, highlighting advantages and drawbacks of the use of new technologies in this field

Sexually transmitted diseases and pelvic inflammatory disease

AIM: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence in the Turin area of the pathogens most implicated in pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), with particular regard to which risk factors the population taken into consideration is exposed to. METHODS: From January 1st 1997 to December 31(st) 2001, 13809 women, aged between 14-54, all subjects being fertile and sexually active, were examined for the first time at St. Anna Hospital in Turin for the diagnosis of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). A total of 5559 unselected patients were divided into 2 groups according to the presence (1721) or absence (3838) of subjective symptoms related to PID. Both groups underwent a cervico-vaginal bacteriological test for common pathogens, Candida spp., T. vaginalis, bacterial vaginosis, C. trachomatis, Mycoplasma spp., N. gonorrhoeae. The prevalence of each micro-organism was coupled with the anamnestic data collected from a pre-determined questionnaire submitted to all patients. The questionnaire collected personal data: age at the time of first sexual intercourse; the number of partners in the last 6 months; the type of contraceptives used. Statistical analysis was performed using a chi squared test. RESULTS: In our analysis 2 factors proved to be decisive for a correct PID diagnosis: a subjective symptomatology and an anamnesis mainly focused on risk factor evaluation. This result is in accordance with what has been emphasized many times in the literature, i.e. many of these infections have only a few or no symptoms at all. CONCLUSION: Greater attention to the anamnestic data collection would therefore be the key to focusing the clinical investigations on those who are at a major risk to contracting STDs

Chlamydia trachomatis infection among sexually active young women in Italy

Methods: In our study 3314 sexually active women between the ages of 14 and 25 were screened for C trachomatis by ligase chain reaction (LCR) using cervical swabs during the period 1997–2000 at the Turin School of Medicine. All the patients answered a specific questionnaire. Results: In our analysis the prevalence of C trachomatis infection was found to be 3.5%, and the average age among the infected patients was 22.12 years. Statistical analysis was performed using the χ(2) test. A p value <0.05 was considered significant. A correlation was found between a positive result and: membership of east European and central northern Africa populations (p<0.001), low levels of education (p<0.001), age at the first intercourse (p=0.006), the presence of symptoms in the women (p<0.001), and the number of sexual partners in the preceding 6 months (p<0.001). No statistically significant difference was found among the contraceptive methods used whether hormonal or a barrier type and with the subjective symptoms of the partner. Conclusion: Frequent microbiological examinations are desirable for patients whose anamnesis shows an increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections in order to avoid long term complications from misdiagnosed or asymptomatic pathologies; this often happens with C trachomatis infection