The Mine Action Process

There are three ways to improve the mine action process to allow displaced people to return to their land sooner and with less risk of injury. Naturally, a major increase in aid funding would achieve a similar result using the existing process. Three main avenues to achieve improved outcomes with the same level of funding are as follows: Improving the technology, cost effectiveness and reliability of the mine clearance process, Applying risk management approaches to manage mine contamination problems, and Utilizing local resources and seeking alternative sources of funding more effectively

Technology Needs: Mine Clearance in Egypt and Jordan

I visited Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon in September and October 1999 to learn about mine clearance techniques being used in the Middle East (Trevelyan 2000). This paper summarizes some of my observations and suggestions for further developments

Magnetic Fragment Collection

In a typical manual mine clearance operation, deminers often spend nearly all of their time finding metal fragments in the search for anti-personnel mines. Often there is too much metal to be able to use metal detectors: then the deminers have to probe an entire minefield by hand, every 25 - 50 mm apart, or even dig through thousands of square metres of ground by hand

Quality Standards for Demining

In the last two years, several authors have commented critically on the 99.6 percent standard for humanitarian mine clearance adopted by the United Nations and its agencies. These standards are being redrafted, yet from the literature and recent comments, it is clear that there is little intellectual foundation on which to build a new standard. There are three issues that need to be addressed. First, what is an acceptable quality standard for humanitarian demining? Second, how can one measure the quality levels actually achieved in humanitarian demining? Third, how can one implement a cost-effective training and monitoring process to ensure that the desired standard is achieved consistently

Reducing Accidents in Demining: Achievements in Afghanistan

This article has been removed

Where’s the value in engineering?

New theoretical perspectives on how engineers generate economic and social value have emerged from research on engineering practice, complementing the conventional entrepreneurship emphasis on innovation and start-up enterprises. This research demonstrated, apparently for the first time, how most engineers generate significant economic value with limited if any opportunities for innovation, research and development in their work. In the absence of appropriate theory, students acquire limited understanding on the contributions they will make to society as engineers. Observations from engineering practice provide a more compelling research-based narrative that could attract a more diverse student population, and help graduates secure well-paid employment. Many engineering faculty share uneasy feelings that their students will rarely use the advanced mathematical analysis techniques taught in classes. Research explains how practice solving traditional textbook problems builds tacit knowledge that enables rapid technical decision-making in engineering practice. The research also provides insights on how typical engineering science research supports engineering practice. We argue the benefits from widely disseminating the findings presented in this paper to help faculty staff and students better understand how they will contribute to our collective future. This can help overcome current significant engineering performance shortcomings in sustainability and productivity growth without major curriculum changes

The demography of free-roaming dog populations and applications to disease and population control

Understanding the demography of domestic dog populations is essential for effective disease control, particularly of canine-mediated rabies. Demographic data are also needed to plan effective population management. However, no study has comprehensively evaluated the contribution of demographic processes (i.e. births, deaths and movement) to variations in dog population size or density, or determined the factors that regulate these processes, including human factors. We report the results of a 3-year cohort study of domestic dogs, which is the first to generate detailed data on the temporal variation of these demographic characteristics. The study was undertaken in two communities in each of Bali, Indonesia and Johannesburg, South Africa, in rabies-endemic areas and where the majority of dogs were free-roaming. None of the four communities had been engaged in any dog population management interventions by local authorities or animal welfare organizations. All identified dogs in the four communities were monitored individually throughout the study. We observed either no population growth or a progressive decline in population size during the study period. There was no clear evidence that population size was regulated through environmental resource constraints. Rather, almost all of the identified dogs were owned and fed regularly by their owners, consistent with population size regulated by human demand. Finally, a substantial fraction of the dogs originated from outside the population, entirely through the translocation of dogs by people, rather than from local births. These findings demonstrate that previously reported growth of dog populations is not a general phenomenon and challenge the widely held view that free-roaming dogs are unowned and form closed populations. Synthesis and applications. These observations have broad implications for disease and population control. The accessibility of dogs for vaccination and evaluation through owners and the movement of dogs (some of them infected) by people will determine the viable options for disease control strategies. The impact of human factors on population dynamics will also influence the feasibility of annual vaccination campaigns to control rabies and population control through culling or sterilization. The complex relationship between dogs and people is critically important in the transmission and control of canine-mediated rabies. For effective management, human factors must be considered in the development of disease and population control programmes

Risk factors and variations in detection of new bovine tuberculosis breakdowns via slaughterhouse surveillance in Great Britain.

Slaughterhouse surveillance through post-mortem meat inspection provides an important mechanism for detecting bovine tuberculosis (bTB) infections in cattle herds in Great Britain (GB), complementary to the live animal skin test based programme. We explore patterns in the numbers of herd breakdowns detected through slaughterhouse surveillance and develop a Bayesian hierarchical regression model to assess the associations of animal-level factors with the odds of an infected animal being detected in the slaughterhouse, allowing us to highlight slaughterhouses that show atypical patterns of detection. The analyses demonstrate that the numbers and proportions of breakdowns detected in slaughterhouses increased in GB over the period of study (1998-2013). The odds of an animal being a slaughterhouse case was strongly associated with the region of the country that the animal spent most of its life, with animals living in high-frequency testing areas of England having on average 21 times the odds of detection compared to animals living in Scotland. There was also a strong effect of age, with animals slaughtered at > 60 months of age having 5.3 times the odds of detection compared to animals slaughtered between 0-18 months of age. Smaller effects were observed for cattle having spent time on farms with a history of bTB, quarter of the year that the animal was slaughtered, movement and test history. Over-and-above these risks, the odds of detection increased by a factor of 1.1 for each year of the study. After adjustment for these variables, there were additional variations in risk between slaughterhouses and breed. Our framework has been adopted into the routine annual surveillance reporting carried out by the Animal Plant Health Agency and may be used to target more detailed investigation of meat inspection practices.Defra Project SE3133. (Department of Environment and Rural Affairs, UK Government

Age-dependent patterns of bovine tuberculosis in cattle.

Bovine tuberculosis (BTB) is an important livestock disease, seriously impacting cattle industries in both industrialised and pre-industrialised countries. Like TB in other mammals, infection is life long and, if undiagnosed, may progress to disease years after exposure. The risk of disease in humans is highly age-dependent, however in cattle, age-dependent risks have yet to be quantified, largely due to insufficient data and limited diagnostics. Here, we estimate age-specific reactor rates in Great Britain by combining herd-level testing data with spatial movement data from the Cattle Tracing System (CTS). Using a catalytic model, we find strong age dependencies in infection risk and that the probability of detecting infection increases with age. Between 2004 and 2009, infection incidence in cattle fluctuated around 1%. Age-specific incidence increased monotonically until 24-36 months, with cattle aged between 12 and 36 months experiencing the highest rates of infection. Beef and dairy cattle under 24 months experienced similar infection risks, however major differences occurred in older ages. The average reproductive number in cattle was greater than 1 for the years 2004-2009. These methods reveal a consistent pattern of BTB rates with age, across different population structures and testing patterns. The results provide practical insights into BTB epidemiology and control, suggesting that targeting a mass control programme at cattle between 12 and 36 months could be beneficial.EBP is funded by an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) fellowship. JLNW is supported by the Alborada Trust and the RAPIDD program of the Science & Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the Fogarty International Center, U.S. National Institutes of Health. AJKC is supported by Defra grant no. SE-3127. TJM is supported by the BBSRC. We thank Steve Holdship and Rose Nicholson at Defra the AHVLA team for providing access to the CTS and VetNet