Flash Flood Susceptibility Mapping in Sinai, Egypt Using Hydromorphic Data, Principal Component Analysis and Logistic Regression

Flash floods in the Sinai often cause significant damage to infrastructure and even loss of life. In this study, the susceptibility to flash flooding is determined using hydro-morphometric characteristics of the catchments. Basins and their hydro-morphometric features are derived from a digital elevation model from NASA Earthdata. Principal component analysis is used to identify principal components with a clear physical meaning that explains most of the variation in the data. The probability of flash flooding is estimated by logistic regression using the principal components as predictors and by fitting the model to flash flood observations. The model prediction results are cross validated. The logistic model is used to classify Sinai basins into four classes: low, moderate, high and very high susceptibility to flash flooding. The map indicating the susceptibility to flash flooding in Sinai shows that the large basins in the mountain ranges of the southern Sinai have a very high susceptibility for flash flooding, several basins in the southwest Sinai have a high or moderate susceptibility to flash flooding, some sub-basins of wadi El-Arish in the center have a high susceptibility to flash flooding, while smaller to medium-sized basins in flatter areas in the center and north usually have a moderate or low susceptibility to flash flooding. These results are consistent with observations of flash floods that occurred in different regions of the Sinai and with the findings or predictions of other studies

Flash Flood Susceptibility Mapping in Sinai, Egypt Using Hydromorphic Data, Principal Component Analysis and Logistic Regression

Flash floods in the Sinai often cause significant damage to infrastructure and even loss of life. In this study, the susceptibility to flash flooding is determined using hydro-morphometric characteristics of the catchments. Basins and their hydro-morphometric features are derived from a digital elevation model from NASA Earthdata. Principal component analysis is used to identify principal components with a clear physical meaning that explains most of the variation in the data. The probability of flash flooding is estimated by logistic regression using the principal components as predictors and by fitting the model to flash flood observations. The model prediction results are cross validated. The logistic model is used to classify Sinai basins into four classes: low, moderate, high and very high susceptibility to flash flooding. The map indicating the susceptibility to flash flooding in Sinai shows that the large basins in the mountain ranges of the southern Sinai have a very high susceptibility for flash flooding, several basins in the southwest Sinai have a high or moderate susceptibility to flash flooding, some sub-basins of wadi El-Arish in the center have a high susceptibility to flash flooding, while smaller to medium-sized basins in flatter areas in the center and north usually have a moderate or low susceptibility to flash flooding. These results are consistent with observations of flash floods that occurred in different regions of the Sinai and with the findings or predictions of other studies

Study the level of sputum matrix metalloproteinase-9 and tissue inhibitor metaloprotienase-1 in patients with interstitial lung diseases

Background: Pulmonary fibrosis, the final result of a large variety of interstitial lung diseases, is characterized by an aberrant remodeling of extracellular matrix (ECM) with a profound disturbance of the normal lung architecture. This remodeling includes the exaggerated accumulation of ECM components in the interstitial and alveolar spaces and the disruption of the basement membranes. It has long been accepted that MMPs play an important role in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis, but the exact mechanisms are not well characterized. There are several interrelated processes—such as ECM remodeling, basement-membrane disruption, epithelial-cell apoptosis, cell migration, and angiogenesis—in which MMPs may play a central role, either by ECM direct cleavage or by generating bioactive mediators. TIMPs can modulate cellular processes such as cell growth, apoptosis and migration, and can be both anti- and pro-tumorigenic. This study aimed to examine the changes in induced sputum as regards MMP-9, TIMP-1 and levels of inflammatory cells in ILD patients compared with sputum of healthy non smokers. Subjects and methods: Thirty subjects were included in this study and were classified into the following two groups: Group I included twenty patients diagnosed clinically, radiologically and physiologically as interstitial lung diseases. Group II included ten healthy non smoker subjects. Sputum induction was done and processed to assess matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9), tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1(TIMP-1) and cytological examination with cellular count. Results: In this study, we have demonstrated that levels of sputum MMP-9 and TIMP-1 were significantly increased in patients with interstitial lung diseases than normal persons with highly significant statistical differences (p = 0.001). MMP-9 was positively correlated with number of neutrophils in the airway with highly significant statistical difference (p = 0.001)

Analysis of the performance of bank filtration for water supply in arid climates: Case study in Egypt

Bank filtration (BF) is acknowledged as a sustainable and effective technique to provide drinking water of adequate quality; it has been known for a long time in Europe. However, this technique is site-specific and therefore its application in developing countries with different hydrologic and environment conditions remains limited. In this research, a 3-discipline study was performed to evaluate the feasibility of the application of this technique in Aswan City (Egypt). Firstly, a hydrological model was developed to identify key environmental factors that influence the effectiveness of BF, and to formulate plans for the design and management of the BF system. Secondly, water samples were collected for one year (January 2017 to December 2017) from the water sources and monitoring wells to characterize the bank-filtrate quality. Lastly, an economic study was conducted to compare the capital and operating costs of BF and the existing treatment techniques. The results demonstrated that there is high potential for application of BF under such hydrological and environmental conditions. However, there are some aspects that could restrict the BF efficacy and must therefore be considered during the design process. These include the following: (i) Over-pumping practices can reduce travel time, and thus decrease the efficiency of treatment; (ii) Locating the wells near the surface water systems (<50 m) decreases the travel time to the limit (<10 days), and thus could restrict the treatment capacity. In such case, a low pumping rate must be applied; (iii) the consequences of lowering the surface water level can be regulated through the continuous operation of the wells. Furthermore, laboratory analysis indicated that BF is capable of producing high quality drinking water. However, an increase in organic matter (i.e., humics) concentration was observed in the pumped water, which increases the risk of trihalomethanes being produced if post-chlorination is implemented. The economic study ultimately demonstrated that BF is an economic and sustainable technique for implementation in Aswan City to address the demand for potable water

Effect of Day-lighting Strategies on Thermal Performance in HistoricalBuildings

The city of Cairo in Egypt, as it was inscribed on the world heritage list in 1997 under the title of “Islamic Cairo” , recognizing its absolutely unquestionable historical, archaeological and urbanistic importance, on the recommendation of the International Council for Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). Historical Cairo proved overtime to be one of the distinctive cities that contains a group of spatial relations, environmental and climatic solutions, which made its urban fabric and architectural compositions able to interact efficiently with climate and local environment. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the day lighting design strategies that made “Islamic Cairo” a distinctive sustainable environmental city, one day lighting strategy evaluated simultaneously in terms of indoor environmental quality; to reach the design criteria used by architects at that era. The erformance of ahistorical building evaluated using computer simulation. This research process led to deriving a mathematical relation that link permitted day lighting with its accompanied thermal impact. The research findings led also to performative design guidelines, introducing a contemporary interpretation for using historical elements.Building Simulation Cairo 2013 Conference - Towards Sustainable & Green Built Environmen

Scrutinizing the performance of GIS-based analytical Hierarchical process approach and frequency ratio model in flood prediction – Case study of Kakegawa, Japan

Floods are one of the most common catastrophes in the world. This study generates the flood susceptibility maps (FSM) using AHP and FR in Kakegawa, Japan. A set of 100 flood points were presented in an ArcGIS environment where 70 points were chosen at random as a training dataset while 30 ones were used for validation. Eleven flood causative factors were calculated and utilized to generate the flood vulnerability maps. For the validation 30% data sub-sample set, FSM was completed by creating the receiver operating characteristic curve and the area under the curve (AUC). The results indicate that the two methods show sensible accuracy since the AUC for FR and AHP are 67% and 85.5% respectively. AHP showed higher accuracy due to the expert opinion that being shared while FR achieved lower precision because of its simple arithmetic procedures. The results help decision-makers in determining the locations vulnerable to flooding

Comparative analysis of root growth modules in HYDRUS for SWC of rice under deficit drip irrigation

Root distribution during rice cultivation is a governing factor that considerably affects soil water content (SWC) and root water uptake (RWU). In this study, the effects of activating root growth (using growth function) and assigning a constant average root depth (no growth during simulation) on SWC and RWU for rice cultivation under four deficit drip irrigation treatments (T90, T80, T70, and T60) were compared in the HYDRUS-2D/3D model version 3.03. A secondary objective was to investigate the effect of applied deficit irrigation treatments on grain yield, irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE), and growth traits of rice. The simulated DI system was designed to reflect a representative field experiment implemented in El-Fayoum Governorate, Egypt, during two successive seasons during 2017 and 2018. The deficit treatments (T90, T80, T70, and T60) used in the current study represent scenarios at which the first irrigation event was applied when the pre-irrigation average SWC within the upper 60 cm of soil depth was equal to 90%, 80%, 70%, and 60% of plant-available water, respectively. Simulation results showed that as water deficiency increased, SWC in the simulation domain decreased, and thereby, RWU decreased. The average SWC within the root zone during rice-growing season under different deficit treatments was slightly higher when activating root growth function than when considering constant average root depth. Cumulative RWU fluxes for the case of no growth were slightly higher than for the case of root growth function for T90, T80, and T70 accounting for 1289.50, 1179.30, and 1073.10 cm2, respectively. Average SWC during the growth season (24 h after the first irrigation event, mid-season, and 24 h after the last irrigation event) between the two cases of root growth was strongly correlated for T90, T80, T70, and T60, where r2 equaled 0.918, 0.902, 0.892, and 0.876, respectively. ANOVA test showed that there was no significant difference for SWC between treatments for the case of assigning root growth function while the difference in SWC among treatments was significant for the case of the constant average root depth, where p-values equaled 0.0893 and 0.0433, respectively. Experimental results showed that as water deficiency decreased, IWUE increased. IWUE equaled 1.65, 1.58, 1.31, and 1.21 kg m-3 for T90, T80, T70, and T60, respectively. Moreover, higher grain yield and growth traits of rice (plant height, tillers number plant-1, panicles length, panicle weight, and grain number panicles-1) were obtained corresponding to T90 as compared with other treatments. Activating the root growth module in HYDRUS simulations can lead to more precise simulation results for specific dates within different growth stages. Therefore, the root growth module is a powerful tool for accurately investigating the change in SWC during simulation. Users of older versions of HYDRUS-2D/3D (version 2.05 and earlier) should consider the limitations of these versions for irrigation scheduling

Study of the level of sputum matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) and tissue inhibitor metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1) in COPD patients

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of respiratory morbidity and mortality worldwide. One of the main hypotheses concerning the pathogenesis of emphysema, a key cause of morbidity and mortality in COPD, is the protease antiprotease imbalance. Irreversible airflow obstruction in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is thought to result from airway remodeling associated with aberrant inflammation. This study examined changes in sputum as regards MMP-9, TIMP-1 and levels of inflammatory cells in COPD patients compared with sputum of healthy smokers and non smokers. Methods: Forty patients were included in this study. FEV1 before and after salbutamol inhalation, MMP-9, TIMP-1 and inflammatory cell count in the sputum of COPD patients, healthy smokers and non- smokers were investigated. Results: MMP-9 was significantly increased in both COPD patients (194.4 ± 100.6), and healthy smokers (104.5 ± 42.1) compared with healthy non smokers (34.5 ± 36.1). TIMP-1 was increased more in healthy non-smokers (192.7 ± 37.7) than COPD patients (115 ± 55.5) and healthy smokers (145.3 ± 35.1). MMP-9/TIMP-1 was high in COPD patients (1.7 ± 0.9) and healthy smokers (0.7 ± 0.3) compared with healthy non smokers (0.2 ± 0.2). Mean sputum total leucocytic count (TLC) was highly statistically significantly different between the three groups. COPD group showed the highest means value while non smokers group showed the lowest one. Conclusions: COPD is characterized by an imbalance between MMP-9 and TIMP-1 which may play an important role in the pathogenesis of tissue remodeling and airway obstruction

Evaluation of groundwater potential using ANN-based mountain gazelle optimization: A framework to achieve SDGs in East El Oweinat, Egypt

Study region: A pilot case study in East El Oweinat (PCSEO), Egypt. Study focus: An artificial neural network (ANN)-based mountain gazelle optimization (MGO) model was applied to map groundwater potential zones (GWPZs). For this purpose, ten layers affecting groundwater occurrence were prepared and normalized against the groundwater drawdown (DD) map. All data was divided into 70:30 for training and testing. After that, sensitivity analysis was adopted to verify the relative importance (RI) of layers. The accuracy of GWPZs was checked using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and other statistical indicators. The model was finally applied to propose a sustainable strategy for groundwater exploration by implementing the integrated MODFLOW-USG and MGO framework. New hydrological insights for the region: Over 40% of the PCSEO revealed high to very high groundwater potential degrees and was situated mostly on the southwestern side. Sensitivity analysis revealed that GWPZs were significantly affected by groundwater table (GWT), well density (WD), and land use (LU). The results also indicated that the ANN-based MGO model performed well with an area under curve (AUC) of ∼ 90% compared to other conventional models. Additionally, the MODFLOW-USG-based MGO model gave a spatial distribution of optimal discharge and well-depth zones. This finding could significantly match SDGs relevant to ending poverty, affordable groundwater, and life on land