Requirements for Topology in 3D GIS

Topology and its various benefits are well understood within the context of 2D Geographical Information Systems. However, requirements in three-dimensional (3D) applications have yet to be defined, with factors such as lack of users' familiarity with the potential of such systems impeding this process. In this paper, we identify and review a number of requirements for topology in 3D applications. The review utilises existing topological frameworks and data models as a starting point. Three key areas were studied for the purposes of requirements identification, namely existing 2D topological systems, requirements for visualisation in 3D and requirements for 3D analysis supported by topology. This was followed by analysis of application areas such as earth sciences and urban modelling which are traditionally associated with GIS, as well as others including medical, biological and chemical science. Requirements for topological functionality in 3D were then grouped and categorised. The paper concludes by suggesting that these requirements can be used as a basis for the implementation of topology in 3D. It is the aim of this review to serve as a focus for further discussion and identification of additional applications that would benefit from 3D topology. © 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Clinical trials on medicinal products in Malta following EU accession

Following EU Accession, Malta has to adopt EU Directives as part of its own legislation. Three such directives concern the conduct of clinical trials in European countries ­ 2001/20/EC, 2003/94/EC and 2005/28/EC. These directives, and the respective guidelines explaining their implementation, have considerably changed the way clinical trials are conducted. While the participation of Malta in clinical trials is to be encouraged for various reasons, these have to be regulated according to the legislation set out by the European Union. In themselves, what these Directives strive to achieve are mainly the safety of the study subject and the protection of the investigators from serious consequences. This short article aims to give a brief overview of these changes to prospective investigators and hospital administrators.peer-reviewe

Attitudes of family doctors, attached to the Department of Family Medicine, towards consulting and treating young people

Background: There is a perceived concern that there is no law which governs the right of young people (YP), defined as ages 15-18, to be treated by doctors and to have their privacy protected from their parents or legal guardians. On the other hand doctors seem not to be covered by a specific law which allows them to see and treat this age group, although the Medical Council has expressed itself once in this regard. Method: This study aimed to assess the perception of doctors to seeing young adults alone since they are considered vulnerable because of their age and may not express concerns and practices if in front of parents or guardians. In this regard a questionnaire was delivered to family doctors attached with the department of family medicine at the University of Malta. Results: the response rate was 72.5%. Most respondents were males. Most (89.6%) agreed that YP have a right toe speak to the family doctor alone. Doctors are happy to discuss various topics with YP alone, but in certain issues, find difficulty in providing treatment to YP alone. There seems to be a significant difference in attitude towards the sex of the doctor with respect to the sex of the patient. Conclusion: The study was meant to be a pilot study including those doctors attached to the Department of Family Medicine at the Medical School, with a future study planned on a larger number. The significance and importance of the results however merited previous publication of this study as a sentinel. Doctors are largely concerned about the law and are sometimes reluctant to see young adults alone even if they feel that they should be able to do so. The importance of having a clarification of the law by an amendment is discussed.peer-reviewe

Maternal awareness of health promotion, parental and preschool childhood obesity

Aim: To investigate the association between parental and preschool childhood obesity, as well as maternal awareness of public health promotion on healthy eating with parental and preschool childhood obesity. Methods: Data were collected by measuring the height and weight of two hundred randomly selected three-year old children and their parents. Details of the early feeding and dietary styles and level of health promotion awareness were assessed in faceto-face structured health interviews with the parents. Results: There were statistically significant relationships between childhood obesity and parents’ obesity (r=0.2; p<0.001). A higher proportion of overweight and obese preschool children showed that their mothers lacked awareness of health promotion as compared to children with normally accepted weight (χ2 (6, n=200)=17.32, p=0.008). Maternal awareness of health promotion on healthy eating appeared to have a protective effect against overweight/obesity in three year old children (odds ratio=0.38, 95% CI=0.20 to 0.70). Furthermore, a higher proportion of overweight/obesity mothers had no awareness of health promotion as compared to mothers with normally accepted weight (χ 2 (4, n=200)=13.29, p=0.01). Maternal awareness of health promotion appeared to also have a protective effect against overweight/obesity in mothers (odds ratio=0.51, 95% CI=0.28 to 0.95). Conclusions: This study showed the protective effect of maternal awareness of health promotion on maternal and preschool childhood obesity. Additionally, this study showed that overweight and obese preschool children had parents who were also overweight and obese.peer-reviewe

Loss of information during design & construction for highways asset management: A geobim perspective

Modern cities will have a catalytic role in regulating global economic growth and development, highlighting their role as centers of economic activity. With urbanisation being a consequence of that, the built environment is pressured to withstand the rapid increase in demand of buildings as well as safe, resilient and sustainable transportation infrastructure. Transportation Infrastructure has a unique characteristic: it is interconnected and thus, it is essential for the stakeholders to be able to capture, analyse and visualise these interlinked relationships efficiently and effectively. This requirement is addressed by an Asset Information Management System (AIMS) which enables the capture of such information from the early stages of a transport infrastructure construction project. Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information Science/Systems (GIS) are two domains which facilitate the authoring, management and exchange of asset information by providing the location underpinning, both in the short term and through the very long lifespan of the infrastructure. These systems are not interoperable by nature, with extensive Extract/Transform/Load procedures required when developing an integrated location-based Asset Management system, with consequent loss of information. The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight regarding the information lifecycle during Design and Construction on a Highways Project, focusing on identifying the stages in which loss of information can impact decision-making during operational Asset Management: (i) 3D Model to IFC, (ii) IFC to AIM and (iii) IFC to 3DGIS for AIM. The discussion highlights the significance of custom property sets and classification systems to bridge the different data structures as well as the power of 3D in visualizing Asset Information, with future work focusing on the potential of early BIM-GIS integration for operational AM

Quantifying Geometric Changes in BIM-GIS Conversion

Abstract. A conversion process is often carried out to migrate data during BIM and GIS integration, often from the highly detailed BIM to the less detailed GIS environment. Due to the differences between the two systems, information loss occurs during conversion. While research has been focusing on addressing information loss on the semantics, it is also necessary to quantify geometric changes resulted from converting geometry representations used in the two systems. This paper describes a preliminary study which evaluates the geometric changes during conversion for a list of primitives. The outcome shows that the metrics are useful both to those carrying out the conversion to balance between potential information loss and resulting data complexity, and to end users of the converted information to assess the fitness for purpose and impact of the conversion results

Mapping social vulnerability to flood hazard in Norfolk, England

In this paper, we present a method to assess social vulnerability through the creation of an Open Source Vulnerability Index (OS-VI). The OS-VI provides context to environmental hazards and allows NGOs and local agencies to better tailor services and provide targeted pre-emptive vulnerability reduction and resilience-building programmes. A deductive indicator-based approach is utilised to incorporate a wide range of vulnerability indicators known to influence vulnerability. Unlike many vulnerability indices, the OS-VI incorporates flood risk as well as the loss of capabilities and the importance of key services (health facilities and food stores) through the measurement of accessibility when determining an area's level of social vulnerability. The index was developed using open-source mapping and analysis software and is composed completely of open-source data from national data sets. The OS-VI was designed at the national level, with data for all proxy indicators available across the entirety of England and Wales. For this paper, a case study is presented concerned with one English county, Norfolk

IMPACT OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT DURING DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION ON DOWNSTREAM BIM-GIS INTEROPERABILITY FOR RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE

The need for efficient and sustainable infrastructure – always critical to a city – is further gaining momentum as urbanisation creates the challenge of sustainably designing, constructing and operating the built environment. The AECOO industry, directly responsible for addressing this challenge, has adopted the use of BIM and GIS to aid in this endeavour. Both BIM and GIS overlap with respect to capturing aspects of the built environment, but are not interoperable by nature. To ensure a consistent and structured way of managing the information produced within these environments, industry standards such as IFC are implemented. Research to date focuses on addressing the integration between BIM and GIS for buildings by delving into the IFC and CityGML interoperability, which has highlighted significant geometric and semantic barriers that in the stage of integration, cannot be easily manoeuvred. The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight regarding the information lifecycle during Design & Construction in the HS2 Rail Infrastructure project and investigate the impact of current information management processes – and in particular Standards such as IFC, – on BIM-GIS interoperability and lifecycle management of an asset. Results demonstrate the levels of mis mapping during the export to IFC which varies depending on the infrastructure asset type. Discussion shows that these can be addressed by the introduction of additional semantic property sets to facilitate downstream BIM-GIS interoperability for O & M, enabling scope for future work

Decision Making in the 4th Dimension—Exploring Use Cases and Technical Options for the Integration of 4D BIM and GIS during Construction

In both the Geospatial (Geo) and Building Information Modelling (BIM) domains, it is widely acknowledged that the integration of geo-data and BIM-data is beneficial and a crucial step towards solving the multi-disciplinary challenges of our built environment. The result of this integration—broadly termed GeoBIM—has the potential to be particularly beneficial in the context of the construction of large infrastructure projects, which could make use of data relating to the larger spatial extents typically handled in geographical information systems (GIS) as well as the detailed models generated by BIM. To date, GeoBIM integration has mainly been explored for buildings, in a 3D context and for small projects. This paper demonstrates the results of the next level of integration, exploring the addition of the fourth dimension by linking project schedule information to create 4D GeoBIM, examining interoperability challenges and benefits in the context of a number of use cases relating to the enabling works for a major commercial infrastructure project. The integrating power of location and time—knowing where and when data relate to—allows us to explore data interoperability challenges relating to linking real world construction data, created using commercial software, with other data sources; we are then able to demonstrate the benefits of 4D GeoBIM in the context of three decision making scenarios: examining the potential for prioritisation of noise mitigation interventions by identifying apartments closest to the noisiest construction process; development of a 4D location-enabled risk register allowing, for example, work to continue underground if a risk is specific to the top of a building; ensuring construction safety by using 3D buffering to ensure that the required distances between moving construction equipment and surrounding infrastructure are not breached. Additionally, once integrated, we are able to ‘democratize’ the data—make it accessible beyond the BIM and GIS expert group—by embedding it into a 3D/4D open source Web GIS tool