scholarly journals Impacts of urbanisation level and distance from potential natural mosquito breeding habitats on the abundance of canine dirofilariosis

2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Attila Trájer ◽  
Antal Rengei ◽  
Kinga Farkas-Iványi ◽  
Ákos Bede-Fazekas
Keyword(s):  
Medical Problem ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Breeding Habitats ◽  
Mosquito Breeding ◽  
Fluvial Habitat ◽  
Occurrence Patterns ◽  
The City ◽  
Knott’S Test ◽  
Natural Water Bodies

Dirofilariosis is an emerging mosquito-borne veterinary and medical problem in the Northern hemisphere. The ecological investigation of 56 canine dirofilariosis cases in new endemic locations was performed in Szeged, Hungary. The aim was to analyse the influence of the spatial patterns of dog abundance and the potential mosquito breeding habitats on the spatial occurrence patterns of dirofilariosis in the city of Szeged. The limnoecological characterisation was based on the fluvial habitat classification of Amoros of natural water bodies; the built environment was evaluated using the UrbanisationScore urbanisation intensity measuring software. Dirofilaria immitis accounted for 51% and D. repens for 34.3% of the dirofilariosis cases, and in 20% of the cases only the Knott’s test was positive. It was concluded that most of the cases were related to locations with a medium to high urbanisation index, although the proximity of mosquito-bearing waters also played an important role in the observed spatial infection patterns. We found that the distance from potential mosquito habitats and the urbanisation intensity determine the abundance of dirofilariosis in urban environments.

scholarly journals Characterization of Potential Larval Habitats and Spatial Distribution of Anopheles Species Larvae During the Dry Season in Mutare City, Zimbabwe: a Cross-sectional Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aramu Makuwaza ◽  
Paddington Tinashe Mundagowa ◽  
Tapiwa Gowera ◽  
Nobert Mudare ◽  
Mukuma Lubinda ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Malaria Vectors ◽  
Major Public Health Problem ◽  
Larval Habitats ◽  
Breeding Habitats ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
Mosquito Breeding ◽  
The City

Abstract Background: Malaria is traditionally known to be concentrated in rural areas but the disease is increasingly becoming a major public health problem for urban settlements in Africa. National malaria reports show that Mutare City had the greatest endemic malaria burden among all urban settlements in Zimbabwe. To prevent malaria outbreaks, it is essential to monitor malaria vectors in populous urban centers to establish the foci of the vectors while they are still small. This study sought to identify, describe, quantify, geocode mosquito potential larval habitats and their spatial distribution within the city. Methods: Mutare City was divided into four regions and the study was conducted from June to November 2019. Larval sampling of 223 potential habitats was done and the collected larvae were reared until they became adult mosquitoes before being morphologically identified using the keys developed by Gillies and Coetzee. Data were entered and analyzed using Epi Info version 7.2.1.0 statistical package.Results: Anopheline speciation showed that the city was infested with Anopheles funestus (4.9%), An. arabiensis (0.3%), An. pretoriensis (91.3%) An. coustani (0.5%), An. rufipes (2.8%), and An. maculipalpis (0.2%). Overall, An. funestus group was the predominant with An. arabiensis complex less common. The species composition of An. funestus group varied significantly among the sampling habitats. Results showed most mosquito breeding habitats were due to human activities such as agriculture, earth mining, and leaking piped water valves. The digging of shallow wells for domestic use in the high-density areas also contributed to the increase in mosquito breeding habitats.Conclusion: The most significant malaria vectors in the city were An. funestus ss and An. arabiensis. The proliferation of larval habitat hotspots in Mutare City was being fueled by human activities related to earning a living and housing construction. Effective interventions for enhanced larval source management could use a multi-sectoral approach involving all the urban stakeholders. Considering the rapid expansion of the city, more investment is needed to target the most productive habitats by fixing leaking water pipes and frequent application of larvicides with greater residual activity to treat permanent habitats particularly before the rainy season.

scholarly journals Cities on Circular Economy: Urban Strategies based on the study of pioneering local experiences

2021 ◽  
Vol 1203 (2) ◽  
pp. 022140
Author(s):  
Alberto Lloret Martínez ◽  
Nuria Nebot-Gómez de Salazar ◽  
Carlos Rosa-Jiménez
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
Economic Model ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Efficient Management ◽  
Local Initiatives ◽  
The City

Abstract Today's society is in a critical situation: the prevailing linear model of the economy has led to an overexploitation of natural resources, and it has generated environmental impacts that affect the health of all living beings. An economic model of a cyclical nature, or circular economy, is presented as a solution in this situation. This form of economy facilitates the optimization of the useful life of materials, reducing the environmental impact, allowing products and materials to retain their value throughout the production and use cycle. The main purpose of this work is to identify urban strategies carried out by local experiences in pioneering cities that are actively committed to the development of a circular economy as an economic model of society. Cases such as Amsterdam, London, Paris or Milan stand out. The ultimate goal is to show examples that can inspire other cities and local governments to implement measures towards this new model of economy and urban development. The study of local cases throughout the strategies carried out has made possible to establish relationships between the different experiences analysed and to identify the areas with the greatest development and those in which there is less experience. Efficient waste management is one of the most explored areas and where a greater number of local initiatives have been identified. But alongside this, there are other areas that need to be explored: the efficient management of water resources, energy, or food in the city. In response to these, some urban strategies stand out: regeneration of public spaces, sustainable mobility infrastructures, renaturation of urban environments, urban limits, integration of pre-existences, citizen participation and governance are some of them. The contribution of the work focuses on the identification and classification of a whole series of urban strategies already implemented for their possible transfer to other environments.

Minimetrò in Perugia as leverage for urban regeneration

TERRITORIO ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 148-163
Author(s):  
Luca Fondacci
Keyword(s):  
Urban Regeneration ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Field Surveys ◽  
Peripheral Area ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Considerable Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Historical Centre

In the 1970s, the fragile historical centre of the city of Perugia was a key area where the binomial of sustainable mobility and urban regeneration was developed and applied. At the turn of the xxi century, the low carbon automatic people-mover Minimetrò broadened that application from the city's historical centre to the outskirts, promoting the enhancement of several urban environments. This paper is the outcome of an investigation of original sources, field surveys and direct interviews, which addresses the Minimetrò as the backbone of a wide regeneration process which has had a considerable impact on the economic development of a peripheral area of the city which was previously devoid of any clear urban sense. The conclusion proposes some solutions to improve the nature of the Minimetrò as an experimental alternative means of transport.

STUDY OF ORNAMENTS IN HUNTO SULTAN AMAY MOSQUE GORONTALO

ARTic ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 167-176
Author(s):  
Risti Puspita Sari Hunowu
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
The Other ◽  
Visual Form ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Existing Form ◽  
The City ◽  
Dutch Colonial

This research is aimed at studying the Hunto Sultan Amay Mosque located in Gorontalo City. Hunto Sultan Amay Mosque is the oldest mosque in the city of Gorontalo The Hunto Sultan Amay Mosque was built as proof of Sultan Amay's love for a daughter and is a representation of Islam in Gorontalo. Researchers will investigate the visual form of the Hunto Sultan Amay Mosque which was originally like an ancient mosque in the archipelago. can be seen from the shape of the roof which initially used an overlapping roof and then converted into a dome as well as mosques in the world, we can be sure the Hunto Sultan Amay Mosque uses a dome roof after the arrival of Dutch Colonial. The researcher used a qualitative method by observing the existing form in detail from the building of the mosque with an aesthetic approach, reviewing objects and selecting the selected ornament giving a classification of the shapes, so that the section became a reference for the author as research material. Based on the analysis of this thesis, the form  of the Hunto Sultan Amay mosque as well as the mosques located in the archipelago and the existence of ornaments in the Hunto Sultan Amay Mosque as a decorative structure support the grandeur of a mosque. On the other hand, Hunto Mosque ornaments reveal a teaching. The form of a teaching is manifested in the form of motives and does not depict living beings in a realist or naturalist manner. the decorative forms of the Hunto Sultan Sultan Mosque in general tend to lead to a form of flora, geometric ornaments, and ornament of calligraphy dominated by the distinctive colors of Islam, namely gold, white, red, yellow and green.

scholarly journals Facilitating fine-grained intra-urban dengue forecasting by integrating urban environments measured from street-view images

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kang Liu ◽  
Ling Yin ◽  
Meng Zhang ◽  
Min Kang ◽  
Ai-Ping Deng ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Feature Vector ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Environmental Feature ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Environmental Features ◽  
Street View ◽  
The City ◽  
Dengue Epidemic

Abstract Background Dengue fever (DF) is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that has threatened tropical and subtropical regions in recent decades. An early and targeted warning of a dengue epidemic is important for vector control. Current studies have primarily determined weather conditions to be the main factor for dengue forecasting, thereby neglecting that environmental suitability for mosquito breeding is also an important factor, especially in fine-grained intra-urban settings. Considering that street-view images are promising for depicting physical environments, this study proposes a framework for facilitating fine-grained intra-urban dengue forecasting by integrating the urban environments measured from street-view images. Methods The dengue epidemic that occurred in 167 townships of Guangzhou City, China, between 2015 and 2019 was taken as a study case. First, feature vectors of street-view images acquired inside each township were extracted by a pre-trained convolutional neural network, and then aggregated as an environmental feature vector of the township. Thus, townships with similar physical settings would exhibit similar environmental features. Second, the environmental feature vector is combined with commonly used features (e.g., temperature, rainfall, and past case count) as inputs to machine-learning models for weekly dengue forecasting. Results The performance of machine-learning forecasting models (i.e., MLP and SVM) integrated with and without environmental features were compared. This indicates that models integrating environmental features can identify high-risk urban units across the city more precisely than those using common features alone. In addition, the top 30% of high-risk townships predicted by our proposed methods can capture approximately 50–60% of dengue cases across the city. Conclusions Incorporating local environments measured from street view images is effective in facilitating fine-grained intra-urban dengue forecasting, which is beneficial for conducting spatially precise dengue prevention and control.

scholarly journals Terrain classification of ladar data over Haitian urban environments using a lower envelope follower and adaptive gradient operator

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy L. Neuenschwander ◽  
Melba M. Crawford ◽  
Lori A. Magruder ◽  
Christopher A. Weed ◽  
Richard Cannata ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environments ◽  
Lower Envelope ◽  
Terrain Classification ◽  
Gradient Operator

scholarly journals Prediction limits of mobile phone activity modelling

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 160900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dániel Kondor ◽  
Sebastian Grauwin ◽  
Zsófia Kallus ◽  
István Gódor ◽  
Stanislav Sobolevsky ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Prediction Limits ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
City Structure ◽  
The City

Thanks to their widespread usage, mobile devices have become one of the main sensors of human behaviour and digital traces left behind can be used as a proxy to study urban environments. Exploring the nature of the spatio-temporal patterns of mobile phone activity could thus be a crucial step towards understanding the full spectrum of human activities. Using 10 months of mobile phone records from Greater London resolved in both space and time, we investigate the regularity of human telecommunication activity on urban scales. We evaluate several options for decomposing activity timelines into typical and residual patterns, accounting for the strong periodic and seasonal components. We carry out our analysis on various spatial scales, showing that regularity increases as we look at aggregated activity in larger spatial units with more activity in them. We examine the statistical properties of the residuals and show that it can be explained by noise and specific outliers. Also, we look at sources of deviations from the general trends, which we find to be explainable based on knowledge of the city structure and places of attractions. We show examples how some of the outliers can be related to external factors such as specific social events.

A case study of noise pollution levels during the restrictions period due to COVID-19.

2021 ◽  
Vol 263 (6) ◽  
pp. 206-214
Author(s):  
David Montes-González ◽  
Juan Miguel Barrigón-Morillas ◽  
Ana Cristina Bejarano-Quintas ◽  
Manuel Parejo-Pizarro ◽  
Guillermo Rey-Gozalo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Acoustic Measurements ◽  
Pollution Levels ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) led to the need for drastic control measures around the world to reduce the impact on the health of the population. The confinement of people in their homes resulted in a significant reduction in human activity at every level (economic, social, industrial, etc.), which was reflected in a decrease in environmental pollution levels. Studying the evolution of parameters, such as the level of environmental noise caused by vehicle traffic in urban environments, makes it possible to assess the impact of this type of measure. This paper presents a case study of the acoustic situation in Cáceres (Spain) during the restriction period by means of long-term acoustic measurements at various points of the city.

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