Search

• The 15-min city concept has been contextualized and applied differently. • Its implementation requires a robust methodology for assessing cities' compliance. • Despite previous research, some theoretical and methodological questions remain. • Identifying key components and predominant practice for assessing city performance. • Recommendations for a more holistic assessment of compliance. Triggered by the COVID-19 crisis, the 15-min city concept has emerged as a new model of city vision. This increasingly popular urban planning paradigm brings the idea of living locally at the forefront of city planning, aiming to alleviate the intense urban challenges. Although the 15-min city concept may hold a paradigm-changing potential for the future of urban and transport planning, its implementation should be supported by a comprehensive methodology for assessing cities' compliance with the concept requirements, which in turn requires a thorough understanding of the concept's core elements and principles. While previous research has contributed greatly to the literature of measuring cities' performance from a 15-min city perspective, some theoretical and, in particular, methodological questions remain open. To this end, the current paper seeks to shed light on these issues, through examining the key components, determining the state-of-the-art and the predominant practice, identifying the gaps, and providing recommendations for a more holistic compliance assessment. The major gaps were found to be related to the methodological approaches used, with the different concept dimensions being treated in a fragmentary manner. The recommendations provided could further enhance the performance evaluation process, towards the development of accessible and well-connected urban neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuclear Medicine has applied radiopharmaceuticals to diagnose and treat several diseases for decades. The decay of the radionuclide inserted in the drug needs to be monitored and controlled to avoid unnecessary impact on the environment, as well as on the general public. Gamma-ray spectrometry is the technique usually selected to identify and quantify these gamma emitters radionuclides. When radionuclides' active concentrations are close to upper limit specifications, doubts are raised about whether they meet the regulatory body's definitions. A different and innovative approach to assessing compliance in these situations is the use of guard band, interval between the boundary and the end of the acceptance zone. The study presented aimed the evaluation of the guard bands' effect on the disposal limits of some radionuclides commonly used in a medical facility. A relatively small increase in the activity concentration could be observed when the guard bands approach was used for the detector's uncertainty. However, these values can be used when activity concentrations are on the boundary of the exemption level. According to the results achieved with this study, guard bands can be seen as an alternative approach to the current one that do not use an in-depth metrological study. For the biota study, and under the described conditions, it was verified that the guard band approach did not show significant damage. • Guard band was applied to customary uncertainties from gamma spectrometry technique. • Results help the decision-making when releases are around the exemption level. • Guard band approach applied to nuclear medicine releases does not impact the biota. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to ground the credibility of the sunbeds’ ultraviolet radiation compliance assessment with the 0.3 W/m 2 erythema effective irradiance limit, it is highly important to use reliable measuring equipment and to justify reasonably the measurement’s result. Recently, the first surveillance action of the artificial tanning sector in Greece has been finalised. The action consisted of in situ erythema effective irradiance measurements from sunbeds at commercial premises offering artificial tanning services at various cities throughout Greece. Four different broadband erythemal weighted radiometers were used in order to compare them during in situ sunbeds’ radiation measurements, at commercial premises, and to choose the most suitable one for compliance inspections. Furthermore a rationale has been introduced in order to compare the measurement’s result with the limit, and decide about compliance or not, taking into account the measurement’s expanded uncertainty. According to this approach, compliance, probable compliance or non-compliance is verified when the measurement’s result taking into account the measurement’s expanded uncertainty does not, probably or does exceed the 0.3 W/m 2 limit, respectively. Ultraviolet radiation exceeded the 0.3 W/m 2 erythema effective irradiance limit in 63.5% (33 out of 52) of the sunbeds and probably exceeded the limit in 11.5% (6 out of 52) of the sunbeds, according to the measurements performed with the radiometer which was chosen as the most suitable one and the proposed rationale for compliance justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blood alcohol concentration is the most frequent analytical determination carried out in forensic toxicology laboratories worldwide. It is usually required to assess if an offence has been committed by comparing blood alcohol levels with specified legal limits, which can vary widely among countries. Due to possible serious legal consequences associated with non-compliant alcohol levels, measurement uncertainty should be carefully evaluated, along with other metrological aspects which can influence the final result. The whole procedure can be time-consuming and error-generating in routine practice, increasing the risks for unreliable assessments. A software application named Ethanol WorkBook (EtWB) was developed at the author's laboratory by using Visual Basic for Application language and MS Excel(®), with the aim of providing help to forensic analysts involved in blood alcohol determinations. The program can (i) calculate measurement uncertainties and decision limits with different methodologies; (ii) assess compliance to specification limits with a guard-band approach; (iii) manage quality control (QC) data and create control charts for QC samples; (iv) create control maps from real cases data archives; (v) provide laboratory reports with graphical outputs for elaborated data and (vi) create comprehensive searchable case archives. A typical example of drink driving case is presented and discussed to illustrate the importance of a metrological approach for reliable compliance assessment and to demonstrate software application in routine practice. The tool is made freely available to the scientific community at request. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adherence to planned budget and time schedule of engineering construction projects is an important indicator for the successful project planning and implementation. Most of the Palestinian governmental and municipal organizations face technical and financial challenges during the planning, bidding, and execution phases of their projects. The paper investigates and assesses the cost changes and delays for a sample of forty-six municipal road projects that were executed as part of the Municipal Development Program, financed through a multi-donor fund, administered by the Municipal Development and Lending Fund, and followed up by local consultants. It supports small- to medium-sized municipal projects, mainly roads, and has restrictions on budget and time changes. The findings indicate that there are limited cost deviations with an average of about 5% and that about 8% of the projects suffered from unjustified delays. The paper analyzes the reasons behind the noticed cost and/or time deviations, which include the underestimation of the project budget, delay by the contractors, lack of deterrent measures, and addition of new items or making changes in the scope of the project that result in variation orders. Recommended actions are identified, which are expected to contribute to reducing the consequences of the indicated challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Evaluation of analytical results reliability is of core importance as crucial decisions are taken with them. From the various methodologies to evaluate the fitness of purpose of analytical methods, overall measurement uncertainty estimation is more and more applied. Overall measurement uncertainty allows to combine simultaneously the remaining systematic influences to the random sources of uncertainty and allows assessing the reliability of results generated by analytical methods. However there are various interpretations on how to estimate overall measurement uncertainty, and thus various models for estimating it. Each model together with its assumptions has great impacts on the risks to abusively declare that analytical methods are suitable for their intended purpose. This review paper aims at (i) summarizing the various models used to estimate overall measurement uncertainty, (ii) provide their pros and cons, (iii) review the main areas of application and (iv) as a conclusion provide some recommendations when evaluating overall measurement uncertainty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Ground water bodies are important resources for drinking water, including bottled water, and national regulatory bodies should assess their quality continuously. For this purpose, an effective assessment system of bottled water at source should be installed. A hierarchical nested balance design for the collection of random primary duplicate water samples, and their replicate analyses, is described, and the use of robust analysis of variance to estimate measurement uncertainty. The latter is subsequently used for the development of four probabilistic categories for the classification of element concentrations in bottled water with respect to legislative standard values, i.e., (a) compliant (below Lower Threshold Limit), (b) possibly non-compliant (possibly above Standard Value), (c) probably non-compliant (probably above Standard Value), and (d) non-compliant (above Upper Threshold Limit), for the reliable assessment of compliance to European Union and national drinking water standards. Overall, the quality of European bottled water is considered good, with the exception of a few that have concentrations in Mn, B, Ba, As, Fe, Ni, Se, and Al, which are definitely above the estimated respective Upper Threshold Limit and, thus, exceed the corresponding legislative standard value defined by European Union directives. National regulatory bodies should verify these results, and install an efficient assessment system of compliance to regulatory limits using the methodology described in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel method was proposed to develop joint nutrient criteria. • Quantile regression is applied to build nutrients-CHL relationship. • Synergistic effect of TP and TN to CHL was reflected in joint nutrient criteria. • We bridged the gap between nutrient criteria and water quality compliance assessment. Nutrient criteria provide the numeric basis for lake eutrophication management. However, there are two obstacles that can hinder the effective application of nutrient criteria, including 1) although total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN) might co-limit phytoplankton biomass in eutrophic lakes, their criteria are often developed independently; and 2) the linkage between nutrient criteria and the percentile-based compliance assessment method of chlorophyll a (CHL; as a measure of phytoplankton biomass) has not been well established. To resolve these obstacles, we propose a novel analytical framework of nutrient criteria development, by which joint nutrient criteria are developed using quantile regression (QR). We demonstrated the steps necessary to utilize this novel approach using TP, TN, and CHL data from Lake Dianchi, a hypereutrophic lake located in southwestern China. First, we built candidate QR models to quantify the nutrient-CHL relationship at six regression quantiles. Next, we conducted the sequential Wald test to select the "best" model for each regression quantile. Finally, we visualized the joint nutrient criteria surface using a contour map. The contour map effectively illustrated the joint nutrient criteria by showing the linkage of TP and TN criterion. In addition, based on the QR, it was easy to deduce nutrient criteria which met the requirement of percentile-based compliance assessment. We further found that joint nutrient criteria could help the selection of an efficient load reduction strategy in the watershed. The proposed method can be generalized to other systems and may facilitate site-specific lake eutrophication management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]