Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications
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ItemThe carbon footprint of treating patients with septic shock in the intensive care unit(College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand, 2018-12-01)OBJECTIVE: To use life cycle assessment to determine the environmental footprint of the care of patients with septic shock in the intensive care unit (ICU). DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Prospective, observational life cycle assessment examining the use of energy for heating, ventilation and air conditioning; lighting; machines; and all consumables and waste associated with treating ten patients with septic shock in the ICU at BarnesJewish Hospital, St. Louis, MO, United States (US-ICU) and ten patients at Footscray Hospital, Melbourne, Vic, Australia (Aus-ICU). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Environmental footprint, particularly greenhouse gas emissions. RESULTS: Energy use per patient averaged 272 kWh/day for the US-ICU and 143 kWh/day for the Aus-ICU. The average daily amount of single-use materials per patient was 3.4 kg (range, 1.0-6.3 kg) for the US-ICU and 3.4 kg (range, 1.2-8.7 kg) for the Aus-ICU. The average daily particularly greenhouse gas emissions arising from treating patients in the US-ICU was 178 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) emissions (range, 165-228 kg CO2-e), while for the Aus-ICU the carbon footprint was 88 kg CO2-e (range, 77-107 kg CO2-e). Energy accounted for 155 kg CO2-e in the US-ICU (87%) and 67 kg CO2-e in the Aus-ICU (76%). The daily treatment of one patient with septic shock in the US-ICU was equivalent to the total daily carbon footprint of 3.5 Americans' CO2-e emissions, and for the Aus-ICU, it was equivalent to the emissions of 1.5 Australians. CONCLUSION: The carbon footprints of the ICUs were dominated by the energy use for heating, ventilation and air conditioning; consumables were relatively less important, with limited effect of intensity of patient care. There is large opportunity for reducing the ICUs' carbon footprint by improving the energy efficiency of buildings and increasing the use of renewable energy sources.
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ItemA Novel Approach for 3D Modeling and Geovisualization of Easement Rights in Apartments(CMV Verlag, 2018-12-01)
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ItemA novel approach for 3D neighbourhood analysis(Copernicus GmbH, 2017-09-12)Abstract. Population growth and lack of land in urban areas have caused massive developments such as high rises and underground infrastructures. Land authorities in the international context recognizes 3D cadastres as a solution to efficiently manage these developments in complex cities. Although a 2D cadastre does not efficiently register these developments, it is currently being used in many jurisdictions for registering land and property information. Limitations in analysis and presentation are considered as examples of such limitations. 3D neighbourhood analysis by automatically finding 3D spaces has become an issue of major interest in recent years. Whereas the neighbourhood analysis has been in the focus of research, the idea of 3D neighbourhood analysis has rarely been addressed in 3 dimensional information systems (3D GIS) analysis. In this paper, a novel approach for 3D neighbourhood analysis has been proposed by recording spatial and descriptive information of the apartment units and easements. This approach uses the coordinates of the subject apartment unit to find the neighbour spaces. By considering a buffer around the edges of the unit, neighbour spaces are accurately detected. This method was implemented in ESRI ArcScene and three case studies were defined to test the efficiency of this approach. The results show that spaces are accurately detected in various complex scenarios. This approach can also be applied for other applications such as property management and disaster management in order to find the affected apartments around a defined space.
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ItemGrowth differentiation factor 15 is a myomitokine governing systemic energy homeostasis.(Rockefeller University Press, 2017-01-02)Reduced mitochondrial electron transport chain activity promotes longevity and improves energy homeostasis via cell-autonomous and -non-autonomous factors in multiple model systems. This mitohormetic effect is thought to involve the mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPRmt), an adaptive stress-response pathway activated by mitochondrial proteotoxic stress. Using mice with skeletal muscle-specific deficiency of Crif1 (muscle-specific knockout [MKO]), an integral protein of the large mitoribosomal subunit (39S), we identified growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15) as a UPRmt-associated cell-non-autonomous myomitokine that regulates systemic energy homeostasis. MKO mice were protected against obesity and sensitized to insulin, an effect associated with elevated GDF15 secretion after UPRmt activation. In ob/ob mice, administration of recombinant GDF15 decreased body weight and improved insulin sensitivity, which was attributed to elevated oxidative metabolism and lipid mobilization in the liver, muscle, and adipose tissue. Thus, GDF15 is a potent mitohormetic signal that safeguards against the onset of obesity and insulin resistance.
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ItemReduced oxidative capacity in macrophages results in systemic insulin resistance.(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2018-04-19)Oxidative functions of adipose tissue macrophages control the polarization of M1-like and M2-like phenotypes, but whether reduced macrophage oxidative function causes systemic insulin resistance in vivo is not clear. Here, we show that mice with reduced mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos) due to myeloid-specific deletion of CR6-interacting factor 1 (Crif1), an essential mitoribosomal factor involved in biogenesis of OxPhos subunits, have M1-like polarization of macrophages and systemic insulin resistance with adipose inflammation. Macrophage GDF15 expression is reduced in mice with impaired oxidative function, but induced upon stimulation with rosiglitazone and IL-4. GDF15 upregulates the oxidative function of macrophages, leading to M2-like polarization, and reverses insulin resistance in ob/ob mice and HFD-fed mice with myeloid-specific deletion of Crif1. Thus, reduced macrophage oxidative function controls systemic insulin resistance and adipose inflammation, which can be reversed with GDF15 and leads to improved oxidative function of macrophages.
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ItemBalancing Rural Household Livelihood and Regional Ecological Footprint in Water Source Areas of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project(MDPI AG, 2017-08)There is a knowledge gap and practical demand to understand the co-evolutionary relationship between rural household livelihood and regional ecological footprints for developing sustainable livelihoods in ecological conservation regions. This paper tracks the change trajectories of rural household livelihoods and regional ecological footprints in four water source areas of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project where various ecological and environmental protection projects and measures are being proposed to protect water quality. As a result, some concerns regarding rural livelihood have arisen. The sustainable livelihood approach developed by DFID (Department for International Development in UK) was used to measure the natural, physical, financial, human, and social capitals of rural livelihoods, while the ecological footprint accounting approach was used to calculate the amount of bio-productive spaces that produce the yearly resource flows for human consumption. The study period is 2000–2014 and data was obtained from the Statistical Yearbooks. The results show that the change trend of natural capitals of rural households, which have increased by 72.5% (SY), 98.8% (NY), 69.3% (TA), and 120.3% (JN) within 15 years, determine the overall change track of rural livelihoods and that rural household livelihood grows with the expansion of regional ecological footprints. Sensitivity of regional eco-footprints to rural livelihood varies from 5.8 to 0.5 in case areas. It is recommended that in the “post South-to-North Water Diversion era”, four policy instruments—population transfer and relocation, industrial restructuring and updating, rural infrastructure and community reconstruction, and cross-ecological compensation—should be adopted to improve sustainable livelihoods in these four water source areas.
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ItemKey factors influencing differences in stream water quality across space(WILEY, 2018-01-01)Globally, many rivers are experiencing declining water quality, for example, with altered levels of sediments, salts, and nutrients. Effective water quality management requires a sound understanding of how and why water quality differs across space, both within and between river catchments. Land cover, land use, land management, atmospheric deposition, geology and soil type, climate, topography, and catchment hydrology are the key features of a catchment that affect: (1) the amount of suspended sediment, nutrient, and salt concentrations in catchments (i.e., the source), (2) the mobilization ,and (3) the delivery of these constituents to receiving waters. There are, however, complexities in the relationship between landscape characteristics and stream water quality. The strength of this relationship can be influenced by the distance and spatial arrangement of constituent sources within the catchment, cross correlations between landscape characteristics, and seasonality. A knowledge gap that should be addressed in future studies is that of interactions and cross correlations between landscape characteristics. There is currently limited understanding of how the relationships between landscape characteristics and water quality responses can shift based on the other characteristics of the catchment. Understanding the many forces driving stream water quality and the complexities and interactions in these forces is necessary for the development of successful water quality management strategies. This knowledge could be used to develop predictive models, which would aid in forecasting of riverine water quality. WIREs Water 2018, 5:e1260. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1260 This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Hydrological Processes Science of Water > Water Quality
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ItemThe value of water in storage: Implications for operational policies(Curran Associate Inc., 2018-01-01)With desalination plants becoming an increasingly common feature of water supply systems for major cities, the options for managing water security are now markedly different to past times when the short-term response to low water availability essentially revolved around reducing usage. The operation of desalination plants and other components of diversified water supply systems now enable operators to increase availability, essentially by producing water. The operation of such systems clearly impacts operational costs but, more subtly, also impacts future augmentation decisions. This can have major cost implications as there is a trade-off between the costs of operating a water supply system and the probability and timing of future augmentations that leads to important differences in the economics of reliably supplying water. This paper first summarises an economic analysis framework in which to explore the interaction of short (operational) and long (capital investment) term decisions towards maintaining water security. It then explores the implications of different operation approaches in Melbourne’s water supply system, assuming a planned augmentation pathway under conditions of low water availability. We assume augmentation decisions are prompted by critically low water availability events, rather than long-term reliability analysis. We show that the majority of the variation in cost of maintaining a reliable water supply is associated with impacts of operational rules on likely capital investment and that this results in a strong interaction between short and long-term decision making. The outcome of this work has implications for both operational decision making and augmentation planning for urban water supply systems. These implications are relevant to any water supply system where a climate independent water supply source, such as desalination, can be accessed.
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ItemAn evaluation of a methodology for seasonal soil water forecasting for Australian dry land cropping systems(ELSEVIER, 2018-05-01)Soil water is a critical resource in many rain-fed agricultural systems. Climate variability represents a significant risk in these systems, which has been addressed in the past through seasonal weather outlooks. This study undertakes a pilot assessment of the potential to extend seasonal weather outlooks to plant available soil water (PASW). We analyse 20 sites in the southeast Australian wheat belt using seasonal weather outlooks from the Predictive Ocean-Atmosphere Model for Australia (POAMA; (the operational seasonal model of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology), which were downscaled and used in conjunction with the Agricultural Production Simulator (APSIM). Hindcast rainfall, potential evapotranspiration (PET) and PASW outlooks were produced on a monthly basis for 33 years at a point scale. The outlooks were assessed using a range of ensemble verification tools. The results showed hit rates that outperformed climatology for rainfall and PET in the short-term (0–2 months), and for PASW with longer lead times (2–5 months). Continuous rank probability skill scores (CRPSS) were generally statistically worse than climatology for rainfall and PET and statistically better than climatology for PASW over 1–3 months. The influence of initial soil water is seasonally dependent, with longer dependence in low evapotranspiration periods. Improved weather model downscaling approaches would transition to climatology and could improve both weather and PASW outlooks. PASW outlooks were strongly reliant on initial conditions, indicating the importance of understanding current soil water status, which needs to be interpreted in a seasonal context as its influence varies over the year. Expanded operational soil water monitoring would be important if PASW outlooks are to become routine.
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ItemPredicting groundwater recharge for varying land cover and climate conditions - a global meta-study(COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH, 2018-05-07)Abstract. Groundwater recharge is one of the important factors determining the groundwater development potential of an area. Even though recharge plays a key role in controlling groundwater system dynamics, much uncertainty remains regarding the relationships between groundwater recharge and its governing factors at a large scale. Therefore, this study aims to identify the most influential factors of groundwater recharge, and to develop an empirical model to estimate diffuse rainfall recharge at a global scale. Recharge estimates reported in the literature from various parts of the world (715 sites) were compiled and used in model building and testing exercises. Unlike conventional recharge estimates from water balance, this study used a multimodel inference approach and information theory to explain the relationship between groundwater recharge and influential factors, and to predict groundwater recharge at 0.5∘ resolution. The results show that meteorological factors (precipitation and potential evapotranspiration) and vegetation factors (land use and land cover) had the most predictive power for recharge. According to the model, long-term global average annual recharge (1981–2014) was 134 mm yr−1 with a prediction error ranging from −8 to 10 mm yr−1 for 97.2 % of cases. The recharge estimates presented in this study are unique and more reliable than the existing global groundwater recharge estimates because of the extensive validation carried out using both independent local estimates collated from the literature and national statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In a water-scarce future driven by increased anthropogenic development, the results from this study will aid in making informed decisions about groundwater potential at a large scale.