Data modelling for emergency response

Emergency response is one of the most demanding phases in disaster management. The fire brigade, paramedics, police and municipality are the organisations involved in the first response to the incident. They coordinate their work based on welldefined policies and procedures, but they also need the most complete and up-todate information about the incident, which would allow a reliable decision-making.\ud There is a variety of systems answering the needs of different emergency responders, but they have many drawbacks: the systems are developed for a specific sector; it is difficult to exchange information between systems; the systems offer too much or little information, etc. Several systems have been developed to share information during emergencies but usually they maintain the nformation that is coming from field operations in an unstructured way.\ud This report presents a data model for organisation of dynamic data (operational and situational data) for emergency response. The model is developed within the RGI-239 project ‘Geographical Data Infrastructure for Disaster Management’ (GDI4DM)

Raja Bandung Banana (Musa ParadisiacaL.cv Raja Bandung) Prevents Increased Systolic Blood Pressure in Rats Given Acute Stress Test

The relationships between stress and hypertension have been evaluated. Heightened blood pressure (BP) reactions to acute stress have been implicated in cardiovascular disease\u27s development. Consumption of fruit or vegetables lowering BP. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of Raja Bandung Banana (Musa paradisiacaL. cv Raja Bandung) on blood pressure after acute restraint stress and forced swim test.Twenty male Sprague dawley rats were divided into 4 groups (A,B,C,D) and adapted for 3 days. At 4th day, groups were administered 2 g/200gBw AIN-93M, then exposed to acute restraint (1hour), except group A. After restraint, A&B received water, C received diazepam 0,5mg/kgBW, and D received banana 2,52 g/200gBW. One hour later, the forced swim test was carried out (45 minutes). Blood pressure was measured 1 hour after swim. Result showed,mean of blood pressure significantly increased after treatment (p<0,01) all groups. But, the increasing of blood pressure in C and D group was lower than unrestraint (A) and control (B) group. There was significant difference of blood pressure between control (A&B) and intervention group (C&D), but no significant difference between C and D. Thisresults indicate that Raja Bandung Banana can prevent increased blood pressure on acute stress condition as effective as diazepam

Constrained tGAP for generalisation between scales: the case of Dutch topographic data

This article presents the results of integrating large- and medium-scale data into a unified data structure. This structure can be used as a single non-redundant representation for the input data, which can be queried at any arbitrary scale between the source scales. The solution is based on the constrained topological Generalized Area Partition (tGAP), which stores the results of a generalization process applied to the large-scale dataset, and is controlled by the objects of the medium-scale dataset, which act as constraints on the large-scale objects. The result contains the accurate geometry of the large-scale objects enriched with the generalization knowledge of the medium-scale data, stored as references in the constraint tGAP structure. The advantage of this constrained approach over the original tGAP is the higher quality of the aggregated maps. The idea was implemented with real topographic datasets from The Netherlands for the large- (1:1000) and medium-scale (1:10,000) data. The approach is expected to be equally valid for any categorical map and for other scales as well

Quantifying Link Stability in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks Subject to Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Mobility

The performance of mobile ad hoc networks in general and that of the routing algorithm, in particular, can be heavily affected by the intrinsic dynamic nature of the underlying topology. In this paper, we build a new analytical/numerical framework that characterizes nodes' mobility and the evolution of links between them. This formulation is based on a stationary Markov chain representation of link connectivity. The existence of a link between two nodes depends on their distance, which is governed by the mobility model. In our analysis, nodes move randomly according to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process using one tuning parameter to obtain different levels of randomness in the mobility pattern. Finally, we propose an entropy-rate-based metric that quantifies link uncertainty and evaluates its stability. Numerical results show that the proposed approach can accurately reflect the random mobility in the network and fully captures the link dynamics. It may thus be considered a valuable performance metric for the evaluation of the link stability and connectivity in these networks.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to IEEE International Conference on Communications 201

Spatial prediction of species’ distributions from occurrence-only records: combining point pattern analysis, ENFA and regression-kriging

A computational framework to map species’ distributions (realized density) using occurrence-only data and environmental predictors is presented and illustrated using a textbook example and two case studies: distribution of root vole (Microtes oeconomus) in the Netherlands, and distribution of white-tailed eagle nests (Haliaeetus albicilla) in Croatia. The framework combines strengths of point pattern analysis (kernel smoothing), Ecological Niche Factor Analysis (ENFA) and geostatistics (logistic regression-kriging), as implemented in the spatstat, adehabitat and gstat packages of the R environment for statistical computing. A procedure to generate pseudo-absences is proposed. It uses Habitat Suitability Index (HSI, derived through ENFA) and distance from observations as weight maps to allocate pseudo-absence points. This design ensures that the simulated pseudo-absences fall further away from the occurrence points in both feature and geographical spaces. The simulated pseudo-absences can then be combined with occurrence locations and used to build regression-kriging prediction models. The output of prediction are either probabilitiesy of species’ occurrence or density measures. Addition of the pseudo-absence locations has proven effective — the adjusted R-square increased from 0.71 to 0.80 for root vole (562 records), and from 0.69 to 0.83 for white-tailed eagle (135 records) respectively; pseudo-absences improve spreading of the points in feature space and ensure consistent mapping over the whole area of interest. Results of cross validation (leave-one-out method) for these two species showed that the model explains 98% of the total variability in the density values for the root vole, and 94% of the total variability for the white-tailed eagle. The framework could be further extended to Generalized multivariate Linear Geostatistical Models and spatial prediction of multiple species. A copy of the R script and step-by-step instructions to run such analysis are available via contact author’s website

Constrained set-up of the tGAP structure for progressive vector data transfer

A promising approach to submit a vector map from a server to a mobile client is to send a coarse representation first, which then is incrementally refined. We consider the problem of defining a sequence of such increments for areas of different land-cover classes in a planar partition. In order to submit well-generalised datasets, we propose a method of two stages: First, we create a generalised representation from a detailed dataset, using an optimisation approach that satisfies certain cartographic constraints. Second, we define a sequence of basic merge and simplification operations that transforms the most detailed dataset gradually into the generalised dataset. The obtained sequence of gradual transformations is stored without geometrical redundancy in a structure that builds up on the previously developed tGAP (topological Generalised Area Partitioning) structure. This structure and the algorithm for intermediate levels of detail (LoD) have been implemented in an object-relational database and tested for land-cover data from the official German topographic dataset ATKIS at scale 1:50 000 to the target scale 1:250 000. Results of these tests allow us to conclude that the data at lowest LoD and at intermediate LoDs is well generalised. Applying specialised heuristics the applied optimisation method copes with large datasets; the tGAP structure allows users to efficiently query and retrieve a dataset at a specified LoD. Data are sent progressively from the server to the client: First a coarse representation is sent, which is refined until the requested LoD is reached

Intercultural and Interreligious Communication in the Balkan

The desire to belong in a individual culture means to possess a clear vision for the world, a road map that guides its followers towards the proper understanding of the planet’s past present and future. An established mythology of apparent national identities in the Balkans is somewhat unnaturally reinforced to justify conflicts between religious and ethnic groups, caused as a result of the national identities intertwined among themselves, an element essentially more influential than existence of national identities. For centuries Christians and Muslims in the Balkans have been living in peace, however a few Balkan Societies continue to use violence, national extremism, xenophobia as well as a contemporary practice to solve their problems. A legitimate question can be raised in relation to how common is religious influence used to cause violent and armed conflicts as compared to violence originating from ethnic cleansing, control over territory, political ideology and regional hegemony

Local development and Local Partnerships: Universities applying pro-active PR in a local systems network logics

Facing turmoil and continuous stunning, local governing bodies, decision makers and local actors, in most of cases found the most stable solution has been the regional cooperation and particularly that of increasing and strengthening local human resources capacities at a regional level. Trying to increase competiveness, local systems understand more and more the importance of being flexible, on the frame of a sustainable strategic planning. Local infrastructure and interaction of all local factors and actors, at any time, must consider their development following a wider regional prospective. Important evolutions in the education area, mainly in higher education, gave breath to outstanding improvements in the capacities to develop qualified human resources, matching needs from local developments. While achieving standardized didactic tools at a Mediterranean and furthermore, EU level, they become able to deliver internationally recognized knowledge and capacities, improving so at a general level. human resources among countries with different socio-economic level. At the same time, these developments spread quickly the culture of interaction and collaboration among local actors. This also makes possible knowledge and expertise transfer from excellence center and universities toward local public administration and other local stake holders or public, and increases cooperation standardizing practices according to EU requirements. Local issues need local solutions, but this at no case must cause localization or isolation, all those developments must be conceptualized, oriented and managed in a wider prospective, specific needs must have specific answers, and universities are the best in doing this