Development of a downstream emergency response service for disaster hazard management based on Earth observation data

The number of hydrological (flood, mass movement), meteorological (tropical storm, extratropical storm, convective storm, local storm), climatological (extreme temperature, drought, wildfire) and geophysical (earthquake, tsunami, volcanic activity) events continue to increases in the last decades at global level. According to different research, statistics and databases (UNISDR, EM-DAT) floods are the most frequent in the last decades worldwide and especially in Romania. On the other hand, the probabilistic hazard results for Romania indicate that, in the future, the highest damages will be produced by floods and earthquakes. In this context, it has become necessary to develop an emergency response service. The emergency service, named GEODIM, integrates the GIS geodatabases: roads, rivers, administrative units, land cover/land use, satellite data (optical and synthetic aperture radar), in-situ measurements, in order to support the disaster management. The Earth Observations data offers the capabilities to monitor the disasters at a large scale, being able to identify areas where the events are not in-situ observed or to monitor large vulnerable areas potentially affected by disasters. The paper presents the downstream emergency response service for disaster hazard in Romania, based on Earth Observation data and other geo-information information

Particularities of Forest Dynamics Using Higuchi Dimension. Parâng Mountains as a Case Study

The legal or illegal losses and the natural disturbance regime of forest areas in Romania generate major imbalances in territorial systems. The main purpose of the current research was to examine the dynamics of the complexity of forests under the influence of forest loss but also to compare the applicability of Higuchi dimension. In this study, two fractal algorithms, Higuchi 1D (H1D) and Higuchi 2D (H2D), were used to determine qualitative and quantitative aspects based on images obtained from a Geographic Information System (GIS) database. The H1D analysis showed that the impact of forest loss has led to increased fragmentation of the forests, generating a continuous increase in the complexity of forest areas. The H2D analysis identified the complexity of forest morphology by the relationship between each pixel and the neighboring pixels from analyzed images, which allowed us to highlight the local characteristics of the forest loss. The H1D and H2D methods showed that they have the speed and simplicity required for forest loss analysis. Using this methodology complementary to GIS analyses, a relevant status of how forest loss occurred and their impact on tree-cover dynamics was obtained

The Impact of Tocilizumab on Radiological Changes Assessed by Quantitative Chest CT in Severe COVID-19 Patients

(1) Background: We aimed to analyze the characteristics associated with the in-hospital mortality, describe the early CT changes expressed quantitatively after tocilizumab (TOC), and assess TOC timing according to the oxygen demands. (2) Methods: We retrospectively studied 101 adult patients with severe COVID-19, who received TOC and dexamethasone. The lung involvement was assessed quantitatively using native CT examination before and 7–10 days after TOC administration. (3) Results: The in-hospital mortality was 17.8%. Logistic regression analysis found that interstitial lesions above 50% were associated with death (p = 0.01). The other variables assessed were age (p = 0.1), the presence of comorbidities (p = 0.9), the oxygen flow rate at TOC administration (p = 0.2), FiO2 (p = 0.4), lymphocyte count (p = 0.3), and D-dimers level (p = 0.2). Survivors had a statistically significant improvement at 7–10 days after TOC of interstitial (39.5 vs. 31.6%, p p = 0.001) and consolidating (1.7 vs. 1.1%, p = 0.001) lesions. When TOC was administered at a FiO2 ≤ 57.5% (oxygen flow rate ≤ 13 L/min), the associated mortality was significantly lower (4.3% vs. 29.1%, p 2 could be used as a clinical predictor