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Ultrasound (US)-guided tunneled femoral peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) are a safe central venous access option in infants and neonates. Studies have shown, however, that femoral central venous access has the potential for high central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) rates with a significant increase in risk around line day 30, though no studies have evaluated these risks exclusively for tunneled femoral PICCs. The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between line duration and the risk of CLABSI in tunneled femoral PICCs in children. Four hundred forty-five patients (196 females, 249 males; median age: 49.4 days; median weight: 3.7 kg) who underwent 573 tunneled femoral PICC placements or exchanges from Jan. 1, 2017, to Jan. 31, 2020, were included in the study. All tunneled femoral PICCs were placed using US technique and catheter specifications, including catheter size (French) and length (cm), were retrieved from the electronic medical record. The location of the PICC placement, the number of lumens, the laterality of placement, and the patient’s age and weight were also recorded. Only non-mucosal barrier injury CLABSIs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definitions, were counted as CLABSI for this study. The number of central line days until a CLABSI event was analyzed with an accelerated failure time model using the exponential, Weibull, and log-normal distributions to determine the probability of a CLABSI over time, taking into consideration the recorded covariates. Tunneled femoral PICC placements accounted for 14,855 line days, during which 20 non-mucosal barrier injury CLABSIs (CLABSI rate of 1.35 per 1,000 line days) occurred during the study period. The highest CLABSI rate occurred in PICCs placed in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at 2.01 per 1,000 line days and the lowest occurred in PICCs placed in interventional radiology at 0.26 per 1,000 line days. Overall, PICCs placed outside of interventional radiology had a CLABSI rate of 1.72 per 1,000 line days. The CLABSI rate during the first 30 days a line was in situ was lower than the rate after 30 days (0.51 per 1,000 line days vs. 3.06 per 1,000 line days, respectively). Statistical modeling and hazard estimation using the Akaike information criterion corrected for small sample size (AICc)-average of log-normal, Weibull and exponential distributions demonstrate the daily risk of CLABSI rapidly increases from day 1 to day 30, with the risk remaining high for the duration of line days. While tunneled femoral PICCs are a relatively safe and effective central venous access alternative, the rate of CLABSI appears to rapidly increase with increasing line days until around day 30 and then remains high thereafter.

This study presents hazard estimation of Kashmir Basin, NW Himalaya using regional ground motion relations, representing one of the most seismically active region in the Himalayan belt. Fault-level seismic recurrence parameters are determined from an updated earthquake catalogue spanning from 25 to 2018 AD for all possible seismic sources. The estimated hazard maps are presented for three ground motion parameters (PGA, short and long period spectral acceleration) for 50, 100, 500 and 2500 years return periods. Moreover, uniform hazard response spectrums and hazard curves are presented for all ten districts of the basin. The southern section of the basin consisting districts of Budgam, Shopian, Pulwama and Kulgam show higher hazard levels due to presence of numerous seismogenic structures in close vicinity. Our results highlight that the imposed seismic hazard in Kashmir basin is highly underestimated which need to be redressed by modifying the current provisional design standards.

The research program titled “Earthquake and Volcano Hazards Observation and Research Program” was started in fiscal year (FY) 2014 as a new five-year project authorized and funded by the Council for Science and Technology of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. It included a new format of collaborative research called, “Core-to-Core Collaborative Research between Earthquake Research Institute, The University of Tokyo and Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University.” In this format, two types of research, “Participation Type Research” and “Subject Proposal Type Research” were conducted from FY2015. A preliminary study was performed in FY2015 for “Integrated Research” of “Participation Type Research,” which developed a framework for seismic risk evaluation at prefectural offices of Osaka and Kochi for an earthquake occurring along the Nankai Trough, considering the epistemic uncertainty. The secondary study was performed from FY2016 through to FY2018, wherein the methodology for the seismic risk evaluation was improved on three aspects: i.e., revision in ground motion prediction models considering the saturation effect, revision in loss models in terms of the fatalities as well as the direct losses of buildings, and extension of target sites to the whole of Osaka and Kochi prefectures. The results suggest that the epistemic uncertainty in the ground motion prediction models is most sensitive to the overall uncertainty of seismic risk. Along with “Integrated Research,” a total of 14 “Research on Specific Topics” related to time-dependent risk analysis, economical risk evaluation, source characterization, structural damage estimation models, ground motion estimation models, soil amplification models, and disaster prevention planning considering the uncertainty of risk assessment, were studied during this period in order to improve the risk assessment studies for “Integrated Research.” With respect to “Subject Proposal Type Research,” a total of 27 individual research themes focused on research to understand hazards/risks by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and to mitigate disasters by them.

This chapter discusses essential topics of earthquake engineering and seismic hazard assessment that are of engineering concern. It begins with a presentation of earthquake consequences. Furthermore, different seismic hazard assessment approaches, the mitigation measures, and the motivation on the emerging topic of offshore earthquake engineering are discussed. Special focus is placed on neo-deterministic seismic hazard assessment for a reliable hazard estimation of engineering applications and possible implementation in engineering design codes and standards.

As offshore wind development is in its infancy along the U.S. Atlantic Coast challenges arise due to the effects of strong storms such as hurricanes. Breaking waves on offshore structures induced by hurricanes are of particular concern to offshore structures due to high magnitude impulse loads caused by wave slamming. Prediction of breaking wave hazards is important in offshore design for load cases using long mean return periods of environmental conditions. A breaking wave hazard estimation model (BWHEM) is introduced that provides a means for assessing breaking hazard at long mean return periods over a large domain along the U.S. Atlantic Coast. The BWHEM combines commonly used breaking criteria with the Inverse First Order Method of producing environmental contours and is applied in a numerical study using a catalog of stochastic hurricanes. The result of the study shows that breaking wave hazard estimation is highly sensitive to the breaking criteria chosen. Criteria including wave steepness and seafloor slope were found to predict breaking conditions at shorter return periods than criteria with only wave height and water depth taken into consideration. Breaking hazard was found to be most important for locations closer to the coast, where breaking was predicted to occur at lower mean return periods than locations further offshore.

A semiempirical model is presented to predict earthquake-induced sliding displacement of earth slopes based on earthquake records of the Iran plateau. The earthquake database selected for the analyses contains 3319 records (of two horizontal components) of ground acceleration relative to 738 earthquakes that occurred in Iran. The predictive model is a function of Arias intensity, yield acceleration coefficient, and the slip length of sliding mass. The performance of the proposed model was tested by comparing its predictions with those of other regional and global models. As an example of possible application of the proposed model, fragility curves are presented, which were calculated according to three damage levels.

Coastal risk assessments rely on proper quantification of storm-induced erosion and flooding, and often involve calculations via numerical models. When the real time-series data of a storm are not available as forcing conditions and only bulk information is accessible, synthetic simplified time-evolutions are assumed. The most common approach in coastal studies uses a symmetric triangular storm shape, characterised by the assumptions that the peak of the waves occurs in the middle of the storm, and that the forcing varies linearly. This study aims to investigate this additional source of uncertainty in hazard estimation, using the XBeach-1D model, to assess the differences in simulated erosion and flooding associated with real and synthetic storm definitions. Analysis is performed for real conditions ranging from moderate to extreme at the Northern Adriatic and North-Western Mediterranean coasts, using beach profiles ranging from dissipative to reflective. The storm definitions generate considerable differences in terms of wave power and timing at the peak of the storm. When synthetic storms were applied, coastal hazards were not adequately reproduced in most of the simulated cases. The energy of the storms, profile characteristics, local storm climates, and water levels did not consistently influence the differences between the synthetic- and reality-based outputs. The work of E. Duo was supported by a PhD grant at the Department of Physics and Earth Science of the University of Ferrara, additional funding from the contribution “5 per mille assegnato all’Università di Ferrara - dichiarazione dei redditi dell'anno 2013” assigned through the “Bando Giovani Ricercatori 2016″ of the University of Ferrara, and the EU H2020 ANYWHERE project (GA 700099; www.anywhere-h2020.eu). The work of M. Sanuy and J.A. Jiménez has been done in the framework of the M-CostAdapt (CTM2017-83655-C2-1-R) research project (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE). Marc Sanuy was supported by a PhD grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.

Education as well as health centers with advanced facilities play an important role in the growth and infrastructure development of any city. Past eight to nine decades have witnessed vast development in the infrastructure and these changes can be very clearly seen in Central Part of India namely Indore Region which has seen a lot many educational hubs like IIT and IIM. This region has also seen commercial development marking its importance in the economic development and growth of the region as a whole. To reduce the damage due to seismic activity, site-specific seismic hazarded analysis of these two institutes have been carried out using the probabilistic concepts. The study that has been carried out develops hazard curves and uniform hazards response spectra for three different probabilities of exceedance (50, 10, and 2%) in a span of 50 years. Seven different ground motion prediction equations have been used to estimate the uncertainty in the hazard estimation. To understand the seismic scenario of the earthquake sources, deaggregation of the seismic results has been done. Post deaggregation, it was observed that earthquakes with higher magnitude are contributing more significantly to the seismic activity for both the sites in Indore Region.

Despite being one of the most active volcanoes in El Salvador, San Miguel is surrounded by important population nuclei and infrastructures. We used existing historical records of past eruptive activity, available geological knowledge and monitoring data gathered over the past sixteen years to conduct the first comprehensive, long-term hazard assessment of this volcano, aimed at helping to reduce the potential risk it poses. We applied probabilistic methods (QVAST and HASSET) specifically designed for volcanic hazard assessment to conduct two hazard analyses, one with a forecasting time window of two years using information on volcanic activity over the past 430 years (historical period), and another with a forecasting window of six months, with information from the past 16 years (monitoring period). In both cases we used the same susceptibility map constructed using the most relevant structural elements, which indicates the spatial probabilities of hosting a new vent on San Miguel volcano. Then, we calculated the most likely eruptive scenarios for each analysis and their corresponding forecasting windows, which revealed that the most hazardous areas correspond to Conacastal canton and hamlets of San Jorge, San Miguel and San Rafael Oriente – all lie within 5 km of the central crater on the northern and southern flanks. This methodology is easy to update, and results can be improved by incorporating new information. This long-term hazard assessment is a significant contribution that will enable local authorities to implement more rational territorial planning and to design better emergency plans for coping with future volcanic crises. © 2018, We also want to thank Observatiorio Ambiental del Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales de El Salvador for providing us data of inestimable value. This research was partially funded by Grant I-COOPA20161 (CSIC).

Benarvan Fault with the length of more than 20km is one the most important faults existing in Azarbaijan region which is located on the southern flank of Bozghoush Mount of Azarbaijan with the general orientation of southwest- northeast. In this research seismicity and seismic risk were determined by deterministic and probabilistic methods and the obtained results were analyzed. To do so, first, existing seismic sources and faults of the region and surrounding regions were identified and investigated in a radius of about 100 km and their characteristics such as length, orientation and distance from the center of Benarvan Village were determined. Then the maximum credible earthquake resulting from the activities of these faults was calculated by using deterministic and probabilistic methods. The Gutenberg-Richter Method was applied for calculating the return period of earthquake magnitude, as well. In fact, in this section the magnitude return period was calculated for the 100 km extent of the region by using the statistical methods. The results of the calculation of return periods for various magnitudes showed that the return period for an M7 earthquake was about 107 years.

Estimation of the physiological length of pregnancy is a challenging problem since both the time origin of the pregnancy and the time of onset of labor are partly observed. The time to spontaneous labor is indeed right-censored, and the time of fertilization is only known up to an error. Therefore, data are subject to both censoring and measurement errors. We focus on the case where the measurement errors affect both the variable of interest and the censoring variable, which is the case of the timing of spontaneous delivery among pregnant women. We propose an estimation strategy to estimate the hazard rate of the underlying variable of interest. We explain the model and this strategy and provide $$L^2$$ -risk bound for the data driven resulting estimator. We also derive estimators of the survival function and the density. Simulations illustrate the performances of the estimator. Lastly, the method is applied to an original real data set of length of pregnancy to estimate rates of previable births, severe preterm births and prolonged pregnancy and the influence of the cervical length of the first semester.

We conduct a systematic survey on locally triggered earthquakes by large distant earthquakes in Changbaishan Volcano, an active intraplate volcano on the border between China and North Korea. We examine waveforms of distant earthquakes recorded at broadband station Changbaishan (CBS) near the volcano with estimated dynamic stresses over 5 kPa between 2000 and 2016. Out of 26 selected distant earthquakes, three of them show positive evidence of triggering during large-amplitude surface waves. The earthquakes that had positive or possible evidences of triggering generated larger long-period surface waves, indicating that they are more efficient in triggering microseismicity. In addition, since 2006 North Korea has conducted five underground nuclear explosion (UNE) tests only ~140 km away from Changbaishan Volcano. By systematically examining waveforms of these UNEs recorded at station CBS, we find that none of them have triggered microearthquakes in Changbaishan Volcano.

Natural earthquakes in western North America can be reasonable proxies for induced earthquakes in central and eastern North America because of the opposing effects that source depth and tectonic setting have on the stress parameter that scales high‐frequency ground‐motion amplitudes. It is critical that ground‐motion prediction equations selected as induced‐event proxies have appropriate near‐distance scaling behavior for small‐to‐moderate shallow events. In this article, we describe the conditions under which natural‐earthquake models are suitable for induced‐seismicity applications. Using examples from Oklahoma and Alberta, we identify at least three models (Abrahamson et al. , 2014; Atkinson, 2015; Yenier and Atkinson, 2015b) that are reasonable proxy estimates of median motions from induced earthquakes in the east for the magnitude–distance range of most concern to hazard estimation from such events: M 3.5–6 at distances to 50 km.

This article introduces a novel non parametric penalized likelihood hazard estimation when the censoring time is dependent on the failure time for each subject under observation. More specifically,...

The accurate modeling of ground motion for induced‐seismicity hazard estimation is critically dependent on how amplitudes scale with distance near the hypocenter. A rich database of ground motions from small events recorded at close distances in the Geysers region of California has been used to constrain the near‐distance saturation effects that control the maximum observed ground motions and intensities for shallow‐induced events. The results of this study support the modeling of these effects using an equivalent point‐source concept, in which the effective source depth increases from a value near 1 km at moment magnitude ( M ) of 2 to a value near 3 km at M 4. This near‐distance saturation behavior can be applied to the development of ground‐motion models for induced seismicity in any region.

This article presents site-specific probable seismic hazard of the Himachal Pradesh province, situated in a seismically active region of northwest Himalaya, using the ground motion relations presented in a companion article. Seismic recurrence parameters for all the documented probable sources are established from an updated earthquake catalogue. The contour maps of probable spectral acceleration at 0, 0.2, and 1 s (5% damping) are presented for 475 and 2475 years return periods. Also, the hazard curves and uniform hazard response spectrums are presented for all the important cities in this province. Results indicate that the present codal provision underestimates the seismic hazard at cities of Bilaspur, Shimla, Hamirpur, Chamba, Mandi, and Solan. In addition, regions near Bilaspur and Chamba exhibit higher hazard levels than what is reported in literature.

This study presents a global sensitivity analysis (SA) of the near‐fault probabilistic seismic‐hazard analysis (PSHA) model. The influence of the model inputs on the computed PSHA results was investigated using the information‐theoretic SA approach. This process is utilized at three different sites in the city of Tehran, the capital of Iran, to identify the most important uncertain inputs by using an entropy‐based sensitivity index as a measure of importance. The analysis showed that the degree of sensitivity of the input variables depends on the site of interest, return period, and structural periods. Using the results obtained, the ground‐motion prediction equations, the minimum magnitude, and b ‐value variables most influence the uncertainty in the hazard estimation. Moreover, the maximum magnitude and the variables that were used to model the near‐fault directivity have a significant contribution at near‐fault sites.

Natural disaster and human-evoked disasters can’t be clearly distinguished in these days. From monitoring, alerting, managing, responding and recovering, all the experts including scientists, policy makers, and software engineers have discussed what will happen, what should be done first, what impacts the disaster events produce on economy and societies. At this moment, experts in each domain would like to apply their scientific models to explain the phenomena of potential disaster events and to estimate the human casualty and economic and social losses. What is model? Do we need data to make a model? How in detail data are enough to build and verified models? This study aims to overcome the difference in understanding natural hazard-related models and to make research and development program on hazard estimation model which is applicable to real worlds with least mismatch or less gap in understanding the concept of model. Here we suggest classification of the level of applications based on the purpose of each model, regardless of disaster types. Classifications were applied to researches and programs on flood, drought, earthquake and volcanic disasters.

Disposal of mining wastes (tailings) is one of the most severe issues related to groundwater contamination. Therefore, a properly selected disposal site helps to prevent the leakage of dissolved materials in the tailings to groundwater, especially in the karstic area. Where the karstic environment is one of the challenges facing groundwater environmental and engineering issues, for instance, groundwater exploration, vulnerability assessment, and hazard estimation. In this study, the resistivity method with a high-resolution surface data survey was carried out to investigate the pond location selection for mining tailings disposal at El Mochito mine site, northwest Honduras. The results of the two-dimensional (2-D) inversion for sixteen surveyed lines revealed that many low resistivity zones. These zones are related to water/clay-bearing zones that are structurally weak. From lines 8-12, the limestone underneath the surface is the most compact, and this is the best location in the survey area for tailings pond construction. The resistivity method has provided insight into the subsurface information and locating hydraulically conductive zones, so it can be useful for selecting the site of mining tailings.

Photoinitiators (PIs) are widely used additives in industrial polymerization process, the contamination of which through migration into foodstuffs has been subjected to increasing public scrutiny. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the PI residue levels and potential exposure pathways from other environmental compartments. In the present study, the occurrence of PI additives with discrete molecular structures, that is, nine benzophenones (BZPs), four thioxanthones (TXs), and eight amine co-initiators (ACIs), was investigated in commercial products, indoor dust and sewage sludge samples. Nine PI compounds were positively detected in ultraviolet curable resins with concentrations of ∑PIs (sum of the detected PIs) up to 2.51 × 10(4) ng/g, and 20 PIs can be found in food contact materials with concentrations of ∑PIs varying from 65.9 to 6.93 × 10(3) ng/g. The wide usage of PIs in commercial products led to the occurrence of 19 PIs in indoor dust, with concentrations of ∑PIs in the range of 245-5.68 × 10(3) ng/g. Meanwhile, all 21 targeted PIs could be identified in the sewage sludge, with concentrations from 67.6 to 2.03 × 10(3) ng/g. Distinct PI composition profiles were observed in different investigated compartments, and BZPs were the dominant homologues in all samples. Most of the target PIs were further identified as class III chemicals by toxic hazard estimation algorithm (Toxtree), which indicates the compounds might be of significant toxicity or have reactive functional groups.

Bivariate survival function can be expressed as the composition of marginal survival functions and a bivariate copula, and consequently, one may estimate bivariate hazard functions via marginal hazard estimation and copula density estimation. Leveraging on earlier developments on penalized likelihood density and hazard estimation, a nonparametric approach to bivariate hazard estimation is being explored in this artical. The new ingredient here is the nonparametric estimation of copula density, a subject of interest by itself, and to accommodate survival data one needs to allow for censoring and truncation in the setting. A simple copularization process is implemented to convert density estimates into copula densities, and a cross-validation scheme is devised for density estimation under censoring and truncation. Empirical performances of the techniques are investigated through simulation studies, and potential applications are illustrated using real-data examples and open-source software.

NowTech has realized Earthquakeguard™ a Rapid Alerting System of Seismic Events – Earthquake Early Warning System, based on a special sensor that does not generate fake alarms. Using this kind of sensors this innovative system is also able to provide a high precise and reliable structural monitoring system, furthermore these sensors are suitable to carry out seismic micro zonation studies and researches for hazard estimation.

Taking into account restrictions set by ICAO for flights in horizontal plane systematic-informative algorithmization of air traffic controllers self-estimation was grounded. That estimation concerns air traffic flight norms violation and takes into account stable and permanent human factor influence upon flight systems safety. Management task solution scheme, decision taking stages and risk grading in air navigation systems are considered. Розглянуто схему вирішення задачі управління, стадії прийняття рішень, ієрархію ризику в аеронавігаційних системах. Known algorithm of American scientist I. Jenis and and L. Mann was improved considering both ICAO qualitative criteria of aviation systems hazard levels and peculiarities of air traffic controllers professional activities. Proposed schrmr of steps and questions will allow air traffic controller to proceed with continuous actions self-analysis during solution taking.

Micro-tremor measurements are one of the most commonly used methods for site response studies and have been widely used by most of the researchers because of its cost effectiveness. This method gives a realistic estimate of the natural ground frequency and can be applied in the areas where large earthquakes do not occur often. Due to the close relation between the nature of micro-tremors and the fundamental dynamic behavior of the surface soil layer, they are frequently used in the field of hazard estimation. The results of micro-tremor analysis are used as an important input for seismic microzonation studies around the world. Himalayan region is one of the most active seismic zones of the world. As such Jammu city lies in Zone IV on Seismic zoning map of India. It has been rocked by 25 earthquakes in between 1828 to 2005 of magnitude 6.0 or more. Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu & Kashmir state is a fast growing city. The micro-tremor data has been collected from locations covering almost every part of Jammu city using Altus K2 SMA. The data were collected by keeping SMA at each site for few hours. On the basis of natural frequency (Nf) the entire study area has been divided into four zones. The natural frequency Nf value shows that the central part of the city is less vulnerable zone, as compared to other parts of the Jammu city. An attempt has been made to compute the vulnerability index (Kg), which could be considered as the indicator of higher damaged areas. The results are in good agreement with the past damaging history of the city.

Practical estimation procedures for the local linear estimation of an unrestricted failure rate when more information is available than just time are developed. This extra information could be a covariate and this covariate could be a time series. Time dependent covariates are sometimes called markers, and failure rates are sometimes called hazards, intensities or mortalities. It is shown through simulations and a practical example that the fully local linear estimation procedure exhibits an excellent practical performance. Two different bandwidth selection procedures are developed. One is an adaptation of classical cross-validation, and the other one is indirect cross-validation. The simulation study concludes that classical cross-validation works well on continuous data while indirect cross-validation performs only marginally better. However, cross-validation breaks down in the practical data application to old-age mortality. Indirect cross-validation is thus shown to be superior when selecting a fully feasible estimation method for marker dependent hazard estimation.