Characteristic tetanus infection in disaster-affected areas: case study of the Yogyakarta earthquakes in Indonesia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Tetanus is an infectious disease caused by the contamination of wounds from bacteria that live in soil. The tetanus mortality rate remains high in developing countries affected by natural disasters. Whether the socio-demography and geographical conditions may influence the tetanus treatment outcome on the earthquake situation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia has not been investigated.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>We present 26 tetanus patients who were admitted to eight hospitals following the earthquakes that occurred on May, 27, 2006, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The independent variables were age, gender, distance, admission, hospitalization, and type of hospital with the dependent variable surviving or perishing. Data were analyzed by logistic regression methods on SPSS 17.0. The distance from the patient's place of residence to the hospital were obtained and analyzed by using geospatial tools MapInfo 7.8 SCP and Global Mapper 7. Eight of the 26 patients were dead (30.8%) and statistical results showed that the distance (OR = 1.740, 95% CI = 1.068–2.835) and type of hospital (OR = 0.067, 95% CI = 0.001–3.520) were significant predictors of death.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our findings show that in order to reduce the mortality rates, performing triage systems based on the distance and type of hospital priority for internally displaced persons could be proposed as well as making provisions for the generally old population in order to prevent an outbreak of tetanus following earthquakes in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.</p

Evacuation Shelter Scheduling Problem

Evacuation shelters, which are urgently required during natural disasters, are designed to minimize the burden of evacuation on human survivors. However, the larger the scale of the disaster, the more costly it becomes to operate shelters. When the number of evacuees decreases, the operation costs can be reduced by moving the remaining evacuees to other shelters and closing shelters as quickly as possible. On the other hand, relocation between shelters imposes a huge emotional burden on evacuees. In this study, we formulate the ``Evacuation Shelter Scheduling Problem,'' which allocates evacuees to shelters in such a way to minimize the movement costs of the evacuees and the operation costs of the shelters. Since it is difficult to solve this quadratic programming problem directly, we show its transformation into a 0-1 integer programming problem. In addition, such a formulation struggles to calculate the burden of relocating them from historical data because no payments are actually made. To solve this issue, we propose a method that estimates movement costs based on the numbers of evacuees and shelters during an actual disaster. Simulation experiments with records from the Kobe earthquake (Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake) showed that our proposed method reduced operation costs by 33.7 million dollars: 32%

School Families: A New Formulation of School District Planning Problem

This paper makes a plan to introduce school families. School families refer to a hierarchical system where the junior high school district encompasses the elementary school district. School families have the advantage of promoting efficient cooperation between elementary and junior high schools. Therefore, we formulated a new school district planning problem to introduce school families and created an optimal plan under changing population situations. Our formulation achieves school families by exploiting the continuity constraints of the school district. We also compare two different methods of reorganizing school districts in the simulation experiments: changing school districts by transferring current students in a given year (school-year method) and switching new students' schools over a multi-year period (birth-year method). We examined the cost and computation time of plans obtained with both methods and showed that the method combining the two provides the most significant cost savings

Evaluation of VI index forecasting model by machine learning for Yahoo! stock BBS using volatility trading simulation

The risk avoidance is very crucial in investment and asset management. One commonly used index as a risk index is the VI index. Suwa et al. (2017) analyzed stock bulletin board messages and predicted it rise. In our study, we developed a simulation of trading Nikkei stock index options using intra-day data and verified the validity of the VI index prediction model proposed by Suwa et al. In a period from November 18, 2014, to June 29, 2016, we conducted a simulation using a long straddle strategy. The profit and loss from trading with the instructions of their model was +3,021 yen. The benchmark\u27s profit and loss was -3,590 yen. The improvement with their model was +6,611 yen. Therefore, we confirmed that Suwa et al.\u27s VI index prediction model might be effective

Characteristics and risk factors for typhoid fever after the tsunami, earthquake and under normal conditions in Indonesia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although typhoid transmitted by food and water is a common problem in daily life, its characteristics and risk factors may differ in disaster-affected areas, which reinforces the need for rapid public health intervention. Surveys were carried out post-tsunami in Banda Aceh, post-earthquake in Yogyakarta, and under normal conditions in Bandung, Indonesia. Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the risk factors with the dependent variable of typhoid fever, with or without complications.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Characteristic typhoid fever with complications was found in 5 patients (11.9%) affected by the tsunami in Aceh, 8 (20.5%) after the earthquake in Yogyakarta, and 13 (18.6%) in Bandung. After the tsunami in Aceh, clean water (OR = 0.05; 95%CI: 0.01-0.47) and drug availability (OR = 0.23; 95%CI: 0.02-2.43) are significant independent risk factors, while for the earthquake in Yogyakarta, contact with other typhoid patients (OR = 20.30; 95%CI: 1.93-213.02) and education (OR = 0.08; 95%CI: 0.01-0.98) were significant risk factors. Under normal conditions in Bandung, hand washing (OR = 0.07; 95%CI: 0.01-0.50) and education (OR = 0.08; 95%CI: 0.01-0.64) emerged as significant risk factors.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The change in risk factors for typhoid complication after the tsunami in Aceh and the earthquake in Yogyakarta emphasizes the need for rapid public health intervention in natural disasters in Indonesia.</p

Improving Project Management of Software Development: Actual Work Loads and Estimated Work Loads

To improve work loads among participants in projects, properties of software development projects will be discussed focusing on work loads. Project management of software development seems to be getting difficult for software development companies with respect to managing costs and work loads. Gaps between actual and estimated work loads may suffer managers, and result in project failure. Also leave of absence and resignation of employee are sometimes observed. Four software development projects are selected: i.e. three for unsuccessful projects, one for successful project. Their reviews and interviews illustrate the gaps between actual and estimated work loads. Among findings, in unsuccessful projects, (1) multiple peaks of work loads are observed, and (2) considerable gaps between actual and estimated work loads are observed. In conclusion, an early warning system to detect the gaps between actual and estimated work loads may contribute to improve the management of software development project