Aircraft Noise: Annoyance, House Prices and Valuation

“Nobody wants to buy your house. It’s the aircraft noise. You’ll have to reduce the price a lot.” Aircraft noise around airports causes annoyance, and tends to reduce the price of affected properties. Can annoyance be ‘costed’ by examining house price reductions? Are there other ways of valuing annoyance in monetary terms? This short paper summarises key research results and poses some questions

Air Traffic Management Safety Challenges

The primary goal of the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system is to control accident risk. ATM safety has improved over the decades for many reasons, from better equipment to additional safety defences. But ATM safety targets, improving on current performance, are now extremely demanding. Safety analysts and aviation decision-makers have to make safety assessments based on statistically incomplete evidence. If future risks cannot be estimated with precision, then how is safety to be assured with traffic growth and operational/technical changes? What are the design implications for the USA’s ‘Next Generation Air Transportation System’ (NextGen) and Europe’s Single European Sky ATM Research Programme (SESAR)? ATM accident precursors arise from (eg) pilot/controller workload, miscommunication, and lack of upto- date information. Can these accident precursors confidently be ‘designed out’ by (eg) better system knowledge across ATM participants, automatic safety checks, and machine rather than voice communication? Future potentially hazardous situations could be as ‘messy’ in system terms as the Überlingen mid-air collision. Are ATM safety regulation policies fit for purpose: is it more and more difficult to innovate, to introduce new technologies and novel operational concepts? Must regulators be more active, eg more inspections and monitoring of real operational and organisational practices

Air Traffic Control Safety Indicators: What is Achievable?

European Air Traffic Control is extremely safe. The drawback to this safety record is that it is very difficult to estimate what the ‘underlying’ accident rate for mid-air collisions is now, or to detect any changes over time. The aim is to see if it possible to construct simple ATC safety indicators that correlate with this underlying accident rate. A perfect indicator would be simple to comprehend and capable of being calculated by a checklist process. An important concept is that of ‘system control’: the ability to determine the outcome against reasonably foreseen changes and variations of system parameters. A promising indicator is ‘Incident Not Resolved by ATC’, INRA, incidents in which the ground ATC defences have been ‘used up’. The key question is: if someone says he or she knows how to make a good estimate of the underlying accident rate, then how could this claim be tested? If it correlates very well with INRA, then what would be the argument for saying that it is a better indicator

Controller workload, airspace capacity and future systems.

In air traffic control (ATC), controller workload – or controller mental workload – is an extremely important topic. There have been many research studies, reports and reviews on workload (as it will be referred to here). Indeed, the joke is that researchers will produce ‘reviews of reviews’ (Stein, 1998). The present document necessarily has something of that flavour, and does review many of the ‘breakthrough’ research results, but there is a concentration on some specific questions about workload

Airport safety, capacity and investment

Paper presented at SurTech 2002, The Aviation Surveillance Technologies ConferenceThe title ‘Airport Safety, Capacity and Investment’ could potentially cover an enormous range of topics and approaches. Techniques used include probabilistic risk analysis, queueing theory, operational research, and cost benefit analysis (CBA). The aim here is both to give an impression of the whole subject and to focus on a few key topics. Surveillance technology plays an important part in delivering safety and capacity, but has to be seen in the larger system picture, particularly when investment is contemplated

Air Traffic Safety: continued evolution or a new Paradigm.

The context here is Transport Risk Management. Is the philosophy of Air Traffic Safety different from other modes of transport? – yes, in many ways, it is. The focus is on Air Traffic Management (ATM), covering (eg) air traffic control and airspace structures, which is the part of the aviation system that is most likely to be developed through new paradigms. The primary goal of the ATM system is to control accident risk. ATM safety has improved over the decades for many reasons, from better equipment to additional safety defences. But ATM safety targets, improving on current performance, are now extremely demanding. What are the past and current methodologies for ATM risk assessment; and will they work effectively for the kinds of future systems that people are now imagining and planning? The title contrasts ‘Continued Evolution’ and a ‘New Paradigm’. How will system designers/operators assure safety with traffic growth and operational/technical changes that are more than continued evolution from the current system? What are the design implications for ‘new paradigms’, such as the USA’s ‘Next Generation Air Transportation System’ (NextGen) and Europe’s Single European Sky ATM Research Programme (SESAR)? Achieving and proving safety for NextGen and SESAR is an enormously tough challenge. For example, it will need to cover system resilience, human/automation issues, software/hardware performance/ground/air protection systems. There will be a need for confidence building programmes regarding system design/resilience, eg Human-in-the-Loop simulations with ‘seeded errors’

Clinical epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment of visceral leishmaniasis in the Pokot endemic area of Uganda and Kenya.

Between 2000 and 2010, Médecins Sans Frontières diagnosed and treated 4,831 patients with visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in the Pokot region straddling the border between Uganda and Kenya. A retrospective analysis of routinely collected clinical data showed no marked seasonal or annual fluctuations. Males between 5 and 14 years of age were the most affected group. Marked splenomegaly and anemia were striking features. An rK39 antigen-based rapid diagnostic test was evaluated and found sufficiently accurate to replace the direct agglutination test and spleen aspiration as the first-line diagnostic procedure. The case-fatality rate with sodium stibogluconate as first-line treatment was low. The VL relapses were rare and often diagnosed more than 6 months post-treatment. Post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis was rare but likely to be underdiagnosed. The epidemiological and clinical features of VL in the Pokot area differed markedly from VL in Sudan, the main endemic focus in Africa

Geographical inequalities in use of improved drinking water supply and sanitation across Sub-Saharan Africa: mapping and spatial analysis of cross-sectional survey data.

BACKGROUND: Understanding geographic inequalities in coverage of drinking-water supply and sanitation (WSS) will help track progress towards universal coverage of water and sanitation by identifying marginalized populations, thus helping to control a large number of infectious diseases. This paper uses household survey data to develop comprehensive maps of WSS coverage at high spatial resolution for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Analysis is extended to investigate geographic heterogeneity and relative geographic inequality within countries. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Cluster-level data on household reported use of improved drinking-water supply, sanitation, and open defecation were abstracted from 138 national surveys undertaken from 1991-2012 in 41 countries. Spatially explicit logistic regression models were developed and fitted within a Bayesian framework, and used to predict coverage at the second administrative level (admin2, e.g., district) across SSA for 2012. Results reveal substantial geographical inequalities in predicted use of water and sanitation that exceed urban-rural disparities. The average range in coverage seen between admin2 within countries was 55% for improved drinking water, 54% for use of improved sanitation, and 59% for dependence upon open defecation. There was also some evidence that countries with higher levels of inequality relative to coverage in use of an improved drinking-water source also experienced higher levels of inequality in use of improved sanitation (rural populations r = 0.47, p = 0.002; urban populations r = 0.39, p = 0.01). Results are limited by the quantity of WSS data available, which varies considerably by country, and by the reliability and utility of available indicators. CONCLUSIONS: This study identifies important geographic inequalities in use of WSS previously hidden within national statistics, confirming the necessity for targeted policies and metrics that reach the most marginalized populations. The presented maps and analysis approach can provide a mechanism for monitoring future reductions in inequality within countries, reflecting priorities of the post-2015 development agenda. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Hookworm: “The Great Infection of Mankind”

Over the last five years, there has been increasing recognition of the global health importance of hookworm. New international efforts to control the morbidity of hookworm are in progres