How far spatial accuracy governs land-use changes monitoring frequency: the urban sprawl monitoring example

International audienceIn this paper, we illustrate how far spatial accuracy of a land-use map governs land-use changes monitoring frequency on a urban sprawl monitoring case study. From a specific Monte Carlo approach propagating uncertainties, conf4idence curves for minimal monitoring frequency to detect significant changes in urban sprawl indicators were built. Results showed that frequency decreased when uspscaling indicators but it also showed very low monitoring frequency for indicators at the lower level. INTRODUCTION When setting up land-use monitoring systems, spatial uncertainties and their impact on the detection of indicator changes are usually ignored. To capture a significant change in land-use indicators is thus strongly related to its spatial resolution, the velocities of the process it represents and the accuracy of the used indicators. As a consequence, the required monitoring land-use change frequency, corresponding to the mimimum time step to ensure a significant change in indicators, also depends on these three factors: indicator spatial resolution, change process velocity and spatial indicator accuracy

Analyzing urban sprawl indicators under uncertainties

International audienceUrban sprawl causes the sealing of lands closest to the urban centers by transforming productive agricultural fields into impervious areas, with numerous economic, social and environmental impacts. Integrated monitoring is important to help urban policies and urban sprawl modelling, proposing urban sprawl indicators with combining spatial and social aspects of the phenomenon by spatial operators in GIS. For that, geographical information of sealing patches and territorial social data are used, but spatial uncertainties and their impact on the detection of indicator changes are usually ignored. The paper proposes (1) to evaluate uncertainties of indicator spatial and (2) to analyze the effect of upscaling on these uncertainties. The method used proposes to create impervious polygons according to their measured geometric and thematic uncertainties using a Monte Carlo simulation approach and to simulate social data according to census uncertainties. Impervious polygons are used in a closing operation, with different radius values, required to map morphological urban areas. The case study focused on three indicators (area, dispersion coefficient and population density) of the morphological urban areas for four administrative levels of administrative territorial units of Languedoc-Roussillon region, France. Results show that indicator uncertainties are generally higher for less densely populated areas than for the others at the finest territorial level, that the closing radius had a slightly influence on indicator uncertainties, and that uncertainties decreases with the upper territorial entities

Analyse de sensibilité globale d'un modèle d'évaluation économique du risque d'inondation

International audienceVariance-based Sobol' global sensitivity analysis (GSA) was initially designed for the study of models with scalar inputs and outputs, while many models in the environmental eld are spatially explicit. As a result, GSA is not a common practise in environmental modelling. In this paper we describe a detailed case study where GSA is performed on a spatially dependent model for flood risk economic assessment on the Orb valley (southeast France). The realisations of random input maps can be generated by any method including geostatistical simulation techniques, allowing for spatial structure and auto-correlation to be taken into account. The estimation of sensitivity indices on ACB-DE spatial outputs makes it possible to produce maps of sensitivity indices. These maps describe the spatial variability of Sobol' indices. Sensitivity maps of di fferent resolutions are then compared to discuss the relative influence of uncertain input factors at diff erent scales

Latin Hypercube Sampling of Gaussian random field for Sobol' global sensitivity analysis of models with spatial inputs and scalar output

4 pagesInternational audienceThe variance-based Sobol' approach is one of the few global sensitivity analysis methods that is suitable for complex models with spatially distributed inputs. Yet it needs a large number of model runs to compute sensitivity indices: in the case of models where some inputs are 2D Gaussian random fields, it is of great importance to generate a relatively small set of map realizations capturing most of the variability of the spatial inputs. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) of geostatistical simulations to reach better efficiency in the computation of Sobol' sensitivity indices on spatial models. Sensitivity indices are estimated on a simple analytical model with a spatial input, for increasing sample size, using either Simple Random Sampling (SRS) or LHS to generate input map realizations. Results show that using LHS rather than SRS yields sensitivity indices estimates which are slightly more precise (smaller variance), with no significant improvement of bias

Sensitivity analysis of spatial models using geostatistical simulation

International audienceGeostatistical simulations are used to perform a global sensitivity analysis on a model Y = f(X1 ... Xk) where one of the model inputs Xi is a continuous 2D-field. Geostatistics allow specifying uncertainty on Xi with a spatial covariance model and generating random realizations of Xi. These random realizations are used to propagate uncertainty through model f and estimate global sensitivity indices. Focusing on variance-based global sensitivity analysis (GSA), we assess in this paper how sensitivity indices vary with covariance parameters (range, sill, nugget). Results give a better understanding on how and when to use geostatistical simulations for sensitivity analysis of spatially distributed models

Ranking sources of uncertainty in flood damage modelling: a case study on the cost-benefit analysis of a flood mitigation project in the Orb Delta, France

International audienceCost-benefit analyses (CBA) of flood management plans usually require estimating expected annual flood damages on a study area, and rely on a complex modelling chain including hydrological, hydraulic and economic modelling as well as GIS-based spatial analysis. As most model-based assessments, these CBA are fraught with uncertainty. In this paper, we consider as a case-study the CBA of a set of flood control structural measures on the Orb Delta, France. We demonstrate the use of variance-based global sensitivity analysis (VB-GSA) to i) propagate uncertainty sources through the modelling chain and assess their overall impact on the outcomes of the CBA, and ii) rank uncertainty sources according to their contribution to the variance of the CBA outcomes. All uncertainty sources prove to explain a significant share of the overall output variance. Results show that the ranking of uncertainty sources depends not only on the economic sector considered (private housing, agricultural land, other economic activities), but also on a number of averaging-out effects controlled by the number and surface area of the assets considered, the number of land use types or the number of damage functions

Sensibilité d'une analyse coût-bénéfice - Enseignements pour l'évaluation des projets d'atténuation des inondations

National audienceCost-Benefit Analysis based on the damage avoided approach gives rise to several synthetic indicators measuring either the flood exposure of an area (mean annual damage), or the interest to conduct a flood prevention policy (mean annual damage avoided, net present value). Those indicators are the outcome of a combination of hydrological, hydraulic, geographic and economic models. Although it is recommended to study the precision of these indicators, this is rarely done in practice, as the combined models which are needed are relatively complex. In this article, we present an approach which is based on Monte-Carlo analysis, and discuss the insights which can be drawn from it on the validity of the indicators.L'analyse coût-bénéfice basée sur la simulation des dommages évités permet d'obtenir des indicateurs synthétiques sur l'exposition d'un territoire aux inondations (les dommages moyens annualisés), ainsi que l'intérêt ou non de mener une politique de prévention des inondations (les dommages évités moyens annualisés, la valeur actuelle nette). Ces indicateurs sont issus de la combinaison de modélisations hydrologiques, hydrauliques, géographiques et économiques d'un territoire. Bien qu'il soir recommandé d'en étudier la précision et la sensibilité, cette étape n'est que très rarement effectuée en pratique, notamment du fait de la complexité de la combinaison des différents modèles mobilisés. Dans cet article, au travers d'un exemple, nous proposons une approche reposant sur la technique de Monte-Carlo et analysons les enseignements concernant la validité des indicateurs

NMR structure and ion channel activity of the p7 protein from hepatitis C virus

The small membrane protein p7 of hepatitis C virus forms oligomers and exhibits ion channel activity essential for virus infectivity. These viroporin features render p7 an attractive target for antiviral drug development. In this study, p7 from strain HCV-J (genotype 1b) was chemically synthesized and purified for ion channel activity measurements and structure analyses. p7 forms cation-selective ion channels in planar lipid bilayers and at the single-channel level by the patch clamp technique. Ion channel activity was shown to be inhibited by hexamethylene amiloride but not by amantadine. Circular dichroism analyses revealed that the structure of p7 is mainly α-helical, irrespective of the membrane mimetic medium (e.g. lysolipids, detergents, or organic solvent/water mixtures). The secondary structure elements of the monomeric form of p7 were determined by 1H and 13C NMR in trifluoroethanol/water mixtures. Molecular dynamics simulations in a model membrane were combined synergistically with structural data obtained from NMR experiments. This approach allowed us to determine the secondary structure elements of p7, which significantly differ from predictions, and to propose a three-dimensional model of the monomeric form of p7 associated with the phospholipid bilayer. These studies revealed the presence of a turn connecting an unexpected N-terminal α-helix to the first transmembrane helix, TM1, and a long cytosolic loop bearing the dibasic motif and connecting TM1 to TM2. These results provide the first detailed experimental structural framework for a better understanding of p7 processing, oligomerization, and ion channel gating mechanism.Instituto de Física La Plat

Global survival trends for brain tumors, by histology: analysis of individual records for 556,237 adults diagnosed in 59 countries during 2000-2014 (CONCORD-3)

Background Survival is a key metric of the effectiveness of a health system in managing cancer. We set out to provide a comprehensive examination of worldwide variation and trends in survival from brain tumors in adults, by histology. Methods We analyzed individual data for adults (15-99 years) diagnosed with a brain tumor (ICD-O-3 topography code C71) during 2000-2014, regardless of tumor behavior. Data underwent a 3-phase quality control as part of CONCORD-3. We estimated net survival for 11 histology groups, using the unbiased nonparametric Pohar Perme estimator. Results The study included 556,237 adults. In 2010-2014, the global range in age-standardized 5-year net survival for the most common sub-types was broad: in the range 20%-38% for diffuse and anaplastic astrocytoma, from 4% to 17% for glioblastoma, and between 32% and 69% for oligodendroglioma. For patients with glioblastoma, the largest gains in survival occurred between 2000-2004 and 2005-2009. These improvements were more noticeable among adults diagnosed aged 40-70 years than among younger adults. Conclusions To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the largest account to date of global trends in population-based survival for brain tumors by histology in adults. We have highlighted remarkable gains in 5-year survival from glioblastoma since 2005, providing large-scale empirical evidence on the uptake of chemoradiation at population level. Worldwide, survival improvements have been extensive, but some countries still lag behind. Our findings may help clinicians involved in national and international tumor pathway boards to promote initiatives aimed at more extensive implementation of clinical guidelines