Specific targeting of infectious foci with radioiodinated human recombinant interleukin-1 in an experimental model

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Planning support system for climate adaptation: Composing effective sets of blue-green measures to reduce urban vulnerability to extreme weather events

The risk of pluvial flooding, heat stress and drought is increasing due to climate change. To increase urban resilience to extreme weather events, it is essential to combine green and blue infrastructure and link enhanced storage capacity in periods of water surplus with moments of water shortage as well as water availability with heat stress. ‘Blue-green measures’ is a collective term for sustainable green and blue infrastructure that utilises underlying ecosystem functions to deliver multiple benefits: for example, cooling via evapotranspiration, water storage for heavy rainfall events, discharge peak attenuation, seasonal water storage, and groundwater recharge. Measures contribute most to climate adaptation when implemented in combinations. Such packages of blue-green measures capitalize upon the synergistic interactions between ecosystem functions and hence enhance multiple vulnerability reduction capacities. Moreover, combining blue-green measures enables using their unique potential at different spatial scales and establishing hydrologic connectivity. This paper proposes a framework for a planning support system and a tool to select adaptation measures to support urban planners in collaboratively finding site-specific sets of blue-green measures for a particular urban reconstruction project. With the proposed framework users can evaluate appropriateness of specific adaptation measures for a particular location and compose effective packages of blue-green measures to handle flooding, drought and heat stress. It is concluded that the framework: 1) enables incorporating knowledge on urban climate adaptation and ecosystem services in a communicative urban planning process, 2) guides the selection of a coherent and effective package of blue-green adaptation measure

An urban drought categorization framework and the vulnerability of a lowland city to groundwater urban droughts

Due to climate change, droughts will intensify in large parts of the world. Drought and its impacts on nature and agriculture have been studied thoroughly, but its effects on the urban environment is rather unexplored. But also the built environment is susceptible to droughts and estimation of its vulnerability is the first step to its protection. This article is focusing on assessing the vulnerability of a city to groundwater drought, using parts of the lowland city of Leiden, the Netherlands, as a case study. Using a new urban drought categorization framework, groundwater drought is separated from soil moisture drought, open water drought and water supply drought, as each has its own impacts. Vulnerability was estimated as the aggregation of drought exposure and damage sensitivity. Drought deficit and duration were used as exposure indicators. Both a Fixed and Variable threshold method was used to quantify these indicators. To quantify drought vulnerability weights were assessed for selected exposure and damage sensitivity indicators using an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) with a small number of experts. Based on these weights the spatial variation in vulnerability for groundwater drought follows damage sensitivity patterns—rather than exposure ones. And, out of all damage sensitivity indicators used, ‘land use', ‘low income' and ‘monuments’ contributed the most to the spatial variation in vulnerability. Due to the fact that the number of drought experts’ opinions in the AHP was limited these vulnerability results however remain uncertain. The proposed methodology however allows water managers to determine vulnerability of urbanized areas to groundwater drought, identify highly vulnerable areas and focus their mitigating actions.Water Resource

Thermal behaviour of an urban lake during summer

Water ManagementCivil Engineering and Geoscience

The influence of Low Impact Development (LID) on basin runoff in a half-urbanized catchment: A case study in San Antonio, Texas

Low Impact Development (LID) was promoted as an alternative to conventional urban drainage methods. The effects of LID at the site or urban scales have been widely evaluated. This project aims to investigate the impact of LID implementation on basin runoff at a regional scale in a half-urbanized catchment, particularly the overlap of urban and rural sub-flows at peak times. A SUPERFLEX conceptual model framework is adapted as a semi-distributed model to simulate the rainfall-runoff relationship in the catchment for San Antonio, Texas, as a case study. Scenario analyses of both urban development and LID implementation are conducted. Results show that (1) the infill urban development strategy benefits more from runoff control than the sprawl urban development; (2) in non-flood season, permeable pavements, bioretention cells, and vegetated swales decrease peak runoff significantly, and permeable pavements, bioretention cells, and green roofs are good at runoff volume retention; (3) contrary to the general opinion about the peak reduction effect of LID, for a partly urbanized, partly rural basin, the LID implementation delays urban peaks and may cause larger stacking of rural and urban peak runoffs, leading to larger basin peaks under extremely wet conditions.Water Resource

Constraints facing the implementation of the greater New Orleans urban water plan

On September 6th of last year the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan (UWP) was presented. A comprehensive plan which addresses flooding caused by heavy rainfall and soil subsidence caused by excessive drainage. Every year parts of the Greater New Orleans Area flood due to severe rainfall events in spring and summer. New Orleans receives an average annual rainfall of approximately 1600 mm. As illustrated in figure 1 the amount can be distributed very unevenly over the area. The drainage system is not able to cope with such events. This is made increasingly difficult by the ongoing subsidence in New Orleans. Due to excessive freeboard in the drainage system in combination with the soft, peaty marshland soils, the land dries out and subsides. The major goals of the UWP are to increase flood safety, provide economic opportunity, and improve quality of life. These goals can be achieved by taking a new approach to water management in New Orleans: by reintroducing water into the city, making use of best management practices as pervious pavement and subsurface storage and introducing multiple lines of flood defense.1 The project area of the UWP includes St. Bernard Parish and the east banks of Orleans and Jefferson Parish.Water ManagementCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Nighttime cooling of an urban pond

One of the processes by which open water cools the air during hot summer days is by storing the heat and increasing its own temperature. This heat is then released at night. The aim of this paper is to analyze this cooling process by quantifying the magnitude of turbulent, latent and sensible, heat fluxes in comparison to radiative and ground fluxes. A detailed vertical temperature profile was measured in an urban pond (~70 cm deep with surface area of 3,627 m2) in Delft (NL) using Distributed Temperature Sensing for a period of one month. The results show that, from the total of 2.7 MJm−2 of heat released by the pond on an average summer night, 43% of the thermal energy is emitted as longwave radiation, 39% as latent energy, and only 11% as sensible heat. An additional 0.10–0.32 MJm−2 is transferred into the bottom of the lake. Temperature distribution and cooling of the water profile is influenced by weather conditions during the preceding day. This paper provides an insight into a behavioral pattern of an urban pond at night. The results can shed some light into the potential of urban bodies to increase the air temperature of their surroundings at night.Water Resource