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People with intellectual disability, autism, and other developmental disabilities have successfully demonstrated their ability to work in the general labor market. Yet, their employment rate remains substantially lower compared with the general population without disabilities. Scaling up the employment outcomes of this population requires improving the effectiveness and efficiency of employment support systems. To this end, this article recommends supporting employment providers rethink how they use their management information systems (MIS): from primary tools that automate billing and compliance to tools that track metrics for continuous quality improvement. As federal and state funding policies are the main factors shaping how MIS are currently used, this article recommends that federal and state policy guidelines be issued that enable employment providers to leverage their MIS to improve effectiveness and efficiency, and thus scale up employment outcomes of job seekers.

Objective Older adults are commonly accompanied to routine medical visits. This study identifies challenges and explores approaches to managing patient-family interactions in primary care. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with primary care clinicians and staff (N = 30) as well as older adult patients and family caregivers (N = 40). Interviews were analyzed using content analysis. Results Three major challenges to patient-family interactions were identified: navigating patient autonomy and family motivation to participate; adjudicating patient-family disagreements; and minimizing obtrusive behaviors by caregivers. Three approaches to managing patient-family interactions were identified. Collaborating involved non-judgmental listening, consensus-building, and validation of different perspectives. Dividing involved separating the patient and family member to elicit confidential information from one member of the dyad. Focusing involved re-directing the conversation to either the patient or family member while minimizing input from the other. Approaches varied by patients’ cognitive status and overall health condition. In general, patients and caregivers expressed the most positive attitudes toward collaborating and patient-directed focusing approaches. Conclusion Primary care clinicians use varied approaches to managing their interactions with patient-family dyads. Patients and caregivers generally prefer those approaches that involve collaborative rather than individual discussions. Practice implications Findings suggest the potential for the development of communication-focused interventions to promote positive clinician-patient-family interactions.

BACKGROUND: Supporting employment consultants in their work with job seekers is critical for increasing the employment outcomes of people with disabilities. OBJECTIVE: To better understand how to leverage data for supporting employment consultants, including what metrics to track, what to do with the data, and what can be improved. METHODS: A panel of three directors of employment programs addressed these questions as part of the Association of People Supporting Employment First (APSE) 2020 conference. RESULTS: Most employment service providers collect data for billing and compliance reporting. Innovative providers leverage data for quality improvement. CONCLUSIONS: Tracking metrics designed specifically for monitoring the implementation of effective employment supports is key for leveraging data for continuous quality improvement and thus improving job seekers’ employment outcomes.

Almost half of the world's population is expected to experience water stress in their daily lives by 2050. The impacts of water scarcity on physical and psychosocial health are especially felt in arid regions of Ethiopia where semi-nomadic pastoralist populations are heavily reliant on groundwater for domestic and livestock needs. However, functional water supply infrastructure and reliable service delivery remain a challenge. A cross-sectional water security household survey of 469 heads of households and borehole runtime sensor data in Afar Region, Ethiopia, has three main findings. First, higher levels of household water insecurity experiences (HWISE) and water-related emotional distress (WRED) are positively correlated (0.57, plt;0.01) and are significantly associated with "limited" water service levels, the non-use of boreholes, and more vulnerable household demographics (female-headed households and lower household incomes). Lower HWISE scores are associated with increased borehole pump usage and reliability, with a cut-off point of 6 h of pump usage per day measured with electronic sensors. Adding additional water points to the dry lowlands of Afar have led to overcrowding and rangeland degradation in the past, highlighting a need to balance increased production for human consumption with livestock use. When it comes to climate resilience and adaptation, ensuring the reliability of what has already been constructed is a top priority for the regional government. Our findings suggest that increasing the reliability and daily usage of existing water supply systems over the short-sighted expansion of sources is worth the investment in services it will take to reach even the most far-flung communities.

While governments and development partners focus on improving community and utility-managed water supplies to ensure access for all, hundreds of millions of people are taking actions to supply their own water. In the WASH sector household investment in construction and improvement of facilities is widely employed in sanitation but in water similar efforts are ignored. Recognition of the contribution of self-supply towards universal access to water and its full potential, is hampered by a lack of data, analysis and guidance. This well-reasoned source book highlights the magnitude of the contribution of self-supply to urban and rural water provision world-wide, and the gains that are possible when governments recognise and support household-led supply development and up-grading. With limited public finances in low- (and many middle-) income countries, self-supply can fill gaps in public provision, especially amongst low-density rural populations. The book focuses on sub-Saharan Africa as the region with the greatest predicted shortfall in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for water. Household supplies can be created, or accelerated to basic or safely managed levels, through approaches that build on the investment and actions of families, with the availability of technology options and cost-effective support from the private and public sectors. The role of self-supply needs greater recognition and a change in mindset of governments, development partners and practitioners if water services are to be extended to all and no-one is to be left behind.

Since the introduction of supported employment in the Developmental Disabilities Act of 1984 and the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986, there has been continued development and refinement of best practices in employment services and supports. Progress includes creative outcomes for individuals with significant support needs including customized jobs and self-employment, community rehabilitation providers that have shifted emphasis to integrated employment, and states that have made a substantial investment in Employment First policy and strategy. Despite these achievements, the promise of integrated employment remains elusive for the majority of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The number of individuals supported in integrated employment by state agencies has remained stagnant for the past 15 years, participation in nonwork services has grown rapidly, and individual employment supports have not been implemented with fidelity. This article presents preliminary findings from activities completed by the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Advancing Employment for Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and discusses a framework for organizing state and federal investments in research, practice, and systems change.

With rising coverage figures and the advent of the Sustainable Development Goals, there is increasing attention given to assessing and monitoring the sustainability of water services. Previous efforts in the rural water supply sector have included the development of sustainability checks, while in the urban water supply sector, benchmarking of water services and the performance of utilities has become common practice. This paper argues that neither rural sustainability checks, nor urban benchmarking frameworks, are entirely suitable for monitoring small town water services. It presents a framework specifically developed and applied for assessing and monitoring small town water services. Application of the framework in seven small towns in Ethiopia shows significant discrepancies between the ideal and actual situations. It reveals specific challenges related to sustainable small town water service provision, including capacity at service provider (utility) level, asset management and regulation. The costs of sustainability checks and prospects for uptake as project and wider sector tools are discussed.

Within the sphere of transition to integrated employment, systems change impacts all aspects of services and supports from broad-based policies addressing funding and contracting to performance management. Although the policymaking obligations of employment systems change rests with governmental agencies, the actual implementation of policies is dependent on those either delivering the services (e.g., such as teachers, transition specialists, service coordinators, and vocational rehabilitation counselors) or those experiencing services (e.g., individuals with disabilities and their families and businesses). The purpose of the Partnerships in Employment National Transition to Employment Systems Change Project was to address state policies and practices to improve transition to postsecondary education and employment outcomes for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Several states incorporated community conversations as a strategy to build consensus for systems change at the grassroots level. We provide an overview of this work and address the ways community conversations contributed to state policy and practice development. We also offer recommendations for how this approach can be used to inform and spur policy change.

Globally, many populations face structural and environmental barriers to access safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. Among these populations are many of the 200 million pastoralists whose livelihood patterns and extreme environmental settings challenge conventional WASH programming approaches. In this paper, we studied the Afar pastoralists in Ethiopia to identify WASH interventions that can mostly alleviate public health risks, within the population's structural and environmental living constraints. Surveys were carried out with 148 individuals and observational assessments made in 12 households as part of a Pastoralist Community WASH Risk Assessment. The results show that low levels of access to infrastructure are further compounded by risky behaviours related to water containment, storage and transportation. Additional behavioural risk factors were identified related to sanitation, hygiene and animal husbandry. The Pastoralist Community WASH Risk Assessment visually interprets the seriousness of the risks against the difficulty of addressing the problem. The assessment recommends interventions on household behaviours, environmental cleanliness, water storage, treatment and hand hygiene via small-scale educational interventions. The framework provides an approach for assessing risks in other marginal populations that are poorly understood and served through conventional approaches.

This paper presents findings on water and sanitation service levels from 16 small and medium towns in four regions of Ethiopia. In these settlements, the proportion of people with access to improved water and sanitation services is found to be high and consistent with other major datasets and reports for urban Ethiopia. However, when service characteristics such as reliability, quality, quantity and accessibility (including travel and queuing time) of water are considered, and for sanitation, quality and use, a different picture emerges. Only a small minority of households, 9% for water and 3% for sanitation, were found to receive services that meet the standards set in the Ethiopian government's first Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP I). Under the second Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP II), standards for urban water services have been set higher and current performance levels are even lower. This paper illustrates the discrepancies between average coverage figures, actual service delivery levels and the increased demands of the GTP II. The paper illustrates the huge scale of the challenge faced in improving WASH service delivery levels in small towns in Ethiopia, which is an issue of wider relevance in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Millions of people in the arid regions of Kenya and Ethiopia face water scarcity and frequent drought. Water resource forecasting and reliable operation of groundwater distribution systems may improve drought resilience. In this study, we examined three remote sensing data sets against in-situ sensor-collected groundwater extraction data from 221 water points serving over 1.34 million people across northern Kenya and Afar, Ethiopia between January 1, 2017 and August 31, 2018. In models containing rainfall as a binary variable, we observed an overall 23% increase in borehole runtime following weeks with no rainfall compared to weeks preceded by some rainfall. Further, a 1 mm increase in rainfall was associated with a 1% decrease in borehole use the following week. When surface water availability is reduced during the dry seasons, groundwater demand increases. Our findings emphasize the imperative to maintain functionality of groundwater boreholes in these regions which often suffer drought related emergencies. Funding provided by the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the National Science Foundation, and the Cisco Foundation. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government.

In crystalline basement regions of Africa, shallow weathered aquifers provide vital water resources for rural communities. To quantify evidence of the behaviour of these shallow aquifers, groundwater levels were observed at a network of 65 boreholes within the Romwe Catchment in southern Zimbabwe. Soil moisture was monitored at selected sites. Groundwater hydrographs showed considerable spatial and temporal variation. Where the soil profile was freely draining, groundwater levels typically responded within a few days of major rainstorms and large annual fluctuations in the water table of up to 7 m were recorded. In areas where a thick clay layer exists, annual fluctuations were smaller and groundwater levels rose more gradually in response to rainfall. In cultivated areas, vertical drainage was an important recharge mechanism. Groundwater hydrographs typically have an exponential recession and, by the end of the dry season in the years studied, levels were close to the base of the weathered aquifer. Variations in hydrograph response between years illustrate the importance of rainfall amount, intensity and distribution on groundwater recharge.

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) often rely on long-term services and supports (LTSS) to live and work in the community or with their families. As policy reforms continue, it is important that we have research goals to guide the field. In August 2015, an expert panel met to discuss the future of LTSS for people with IDD and reached consensus that future work should ensure adequate funding and quality standards are in place, especially with the growth of managed long-term services and supports (MLTSS) programs, the increasing variety of Medicaid funding authorities used to finance supports for people with IDD, the changes in public policy regarding LTSS, and the application of behavioral supports, particularly positive behavior support (PBS).

In August 2015, the Research and Training Center on Community Living at the University of Minnesota, the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Developmental Disabilities and Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Advancing Employment for Individuals With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities at the University of MassachusettsBoston, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), the Association of University Centers on Disability (AUCD), and The Arc of the United States hosted the National Goals in Research, Practice, and Policy conference (also referred to as the National Goals 2015 conference). The purpose of this invitational conference was to bring together researchers, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, family members, policy makers/advocates, practitioners, and other stakeholders to summarize the current state of knowledge and identify a platform of national goals in research that will have the greatest impact on practice and policy concerning intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) by 2025. Within the context of civil rights, notably advanced through the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA, 1990), Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2006), and other landmark legislation, the resultant goals reflect the commitment the United States has already made to people with IDD through federal laws and regulations, court decisions, and national policy initiatives and illuminate the nation’s expectations for the outcomes of relevant public policies and programs. Building upon the findings of the 2003 National Goals meeting, entitled Keeping the Promises: National Goals, State of Knowledge, and Research Agenda for Persons With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, the outcomes of the August 2015 conference emphasize the vision for the future and leadership of research, practice, and policy in intellectual and developmental disabilities. The conference had 10 areas of focus: selfdetermination and self-advocacy; social inclusion; education; employment and economic self-sufficiency; long-term supports and services; health and wellness; aging, retirement, and end of life; supports for families across the life course; trends in the workforce; and justice. The 2015 National Goals in Research, Practice, and Policy conference was kicked off by plenary presentations designed to provide all participants with an overview of where people with IDD live, where they work, the extent of financial resources spent on services and support, and the broad outcomes of these services and supports. Participants were also inspired to honor the past and move on toward the future embracing and building new ways of thinking and new ways of doing.

Employment in general workforce and economic self-sufficiency continue to be the exceptions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), rather than the norm. Research, policy, and practice can and should play a coordinated role in solving this problem. This article summarizes the methods used and the consensus-based national goals identified to guide the direction of the field that were developed by experts in the field. A discussion of the implications of the findings is also provided, including the need for advocacy to advance the goals.

Pounding damage in bridges and buildings range from minor aesthetic effects up to major structural damage inducing building collapse or bridge girder’s unseating. This study proposes the Hunt–Crossley model, a generic model that can have either a linear or nonlinear force–deformation relationship, for the analysis of building pounding. This model has been extensively employed in Mechanical Engineering. There are several approximate solutions for the damping of the model and one of them has been introduced as the ‘Hertzdamp’ model for structural pounding analysis. The exact solution of damping constant for this model has been presented here. The performance of the linear and nonlinear Hunt–Crossley models in simulating impact force between concrete bodies is compared against other existing pounding models, namely: linear viscoelastic, nonlinear viscoelastic and modified linear viscoelastic models. The nonlinear Hunt–Crossley model best predicted the contact force while the linear Hunt–Crossley model had twice the normalized error of the Hertzdamp model, which was still only half as much as the error in other three models. Finally, a numerical simulation of pounding of bridge segments at an expansion joint is conducted with all models. It was observed that the pounding force predictions from Hunt–Crossley models are similar to that obtained in impact experiments while other models produced very different force developments. The Hunt–Crossley models do not have the discontinuities i.e. negative force, instantaneously high initial force or discontinuous transition between deformation and restitution phases of impact which are present in the other models.

Pounding damage in major earthquakes has been observed frequently in the form of aesthetic, minor or major structural cracks and collapse of buildings. These observations have attracted many numerical and experimental studies that led to analytical models for simulating seismic pounding. This study considers pounding between two steel portal frames without a seismic gap. The first frame has a constant natural period while the second frame has variable stiffness and mass values. Five different ground motions are applied to eight combinations of adjacent frames using a shake table. Numerical simulations for the same configurations are carried out with five pounding force models, viz. linear viscoelastic model, modified linear viscoelastic model, nonlinear viscoelastic model, Hertzdamp model and modified Hertzdamp model. The contact element stiffness and coefficient of restitution for numerical models are determined experimentally. The amplification of maximum displacement of the first frame predicted by the numerical simulations is compared with the shake table results. It was found that the Hertzdamp model always overestimated the responses while the other four models also frequently overestimated the amplifications. The predictions from the four models were not significantly different. Since the linear viscoelastic model requires substantially less computation, compared with the other models this model is more suitable for numerical modelling of pounding responses. However, more study is required to refine the numerical models before building pounding can be modelled with enough confidence.

Bridge damage due to pounding at joints of girders and abutments has been observed in many major earthquakes. One reason that this pounding phenomenon is so common is due to the differences between the dynamic characteristics of a girder and the relatively rigid adjoining abutments. Hence, a good understanding of girder–abutment pounding is critical for bridge design. However, the studies on this topic have mainly been numerical and abutment excitation was rarely considered. Very limited experimental investigations were conducted, none of which considered the effect of abutment motion on bridge pounding response. The objective of this study is to experimentally evaluate the influence of abutment excitations on the pounding behaviour of a system consisting of a single bridge span with various fundamental frequencies and its abutments using three shake tables. The excitations are applied in the longitudinal direction of the bridge span. The spatially varying ground excitations are simulated based on the New Zealand design spectra for soft soil, shallow soil and strong rock conditions using an empirical coherency loss function. Results show that with the spatial variation effect of ground motions, a consideration of movable rather than fixed abutments leads to greater relative opening displacement with its adjacent structure and larger pounding potential.

As the number of adults with a diagnosis of autism continues to grow, attention is drawn to whether they receive adequate services and achieve satisfactory employment outcomes, compared with their peers with other disabilities. After examining data from the U.S. state vocational rehabilitation programs from the years 2006–2010, we found that youth with autism received similar levels of services and reported similar employment outcomes compared with their peers with other disabilities. However, these outcomes were modest, declining, and substantially different across states, regardless of the types of disabilities. We recommend continuous monitoring of services and outcomes of people with autism and other disabilities as a means to promote their economic self-sufficiency and inclusion in society.

The Sliding Hinge Joint is a low damage beam-column connection used in steel moment resisting frames. It dissipates energy through sliding in Asymmetric Friction Connections (AFCs) in the bottom web and bottom flange bolt groups. The AFC confines earthquake induced damage to bolts that can be retightened or replaced following a major earthquake. The other joint components sustain negligible damage and would be kept in service and may thus be subjected to further earthquake shaking during the lifetime of the building. The bottom and top flange plates are also subject to inelastic action about their minor axis under joint rotation. This study evaluates the behaviour of the bottom and top flange plates to determine the weld and plate susceptibility to low-cycle fatigue failure. The basic flange plate deformation was approximated by an arc, with the effects of shear slip considered to obtain estimates of likely strain demands. It was shown that even in the most critical case the fatigue life is more than six times the demand expected in a design level earthquake. As a result, it is concluded that properly designed, detailed and connected flange plates are not prone to low-cycle fatigue failure.

This article presents 10 tests on a self-centering Sliding Hinge Joint (SHJ) subassembly. The flexural capacity was generated with a combination of ring springs and Asymmetric Friction Connections, with the proportion varied between tests. The joints produced stable and repeatable hysteretic behavior and minimal damage to the floor slab, with self-centering capability improving with increasing ring spring contribution. There was negligible difference between tests undertaken at static and seismic-dynamic rates of loading. The SHJ had a 20% reduction in strength under a near fault pulse type motion. A simple mathematical model of the SCSHJ rotational behavior is also developed.

Major barriers to cancer therapy include the lack of selective inhibitors of regulatory T cells (Tregs) and the lack of broadly applicable ways to directly target tumors through frequently expressed surface oncogenes. Tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 (TNFR2) is an attractive target protein because of its restricted abundance to highly immunosuppressive Tregs and oncogenic presence on human tumors. We characterized the effect of TNFR2 inhibition using antagonistic antibodies. In culture-based assays, we found that two TNFR2 antagonists inhibited Treg proliferation, reduced soluble TNFR2 secretion from normal cells, and enabled T effector cell expansion. The antagonistic activity occurred in the presence of added TNF, a natural TNFR2 agonist. These TNFR2 antibodies killed Tregs isolated from ovarian cancer ascites more potently than it killed Tregs from healthy donor samples, suggesting that these antibodies may have specificity for the tumor microenvironment. The TNFR2 antagonists also killed OVCAR3 ovarian cancer cells, which have abundant surface TNFR2. The antibodies stabilized antiparallel dimers in cell surface TNFR2 that rendered the receptor unable to activate the nuclear factor κB pathway and trigger cell proliferation. Our data suggest that, by targeting tumor cells and immunosuppressive tumor-associated Tregs, antagonistic TNFR2 antibodies may be an effective treatment for cancers positive for TNFR2.

article i nfo The Sliding Hinge Joint (SHJ) is a low-damage beam-column connection used in steel moment-resisting frames. It allows large beam-column rotation with minimal damage through sliding in asymmetric friction connections. It is however, subject to elastic strength and stiffness degradation and potential residual defor- mations under earthquake shaking and inelastic action. This paper describes the development of the self-centering SHJ incorporating ring springs installed to the beam bottom flange to improve the dynamic re-centering properties and reduce strength degradation. Five 10-storey frames with ring springs generating up to 50% of joint moment capacity were studied analytically using a suite of 10 earthquake records. Ring spring contribution of 40% improved the self-centering properties, resulting in residual drifts less than 0.1% under design level shaking. They also reduced strength degradation.

Seismic performance assessment of old dual riveted steel frame–RC wall buildings using the nonlinear dynamic procedure is presented. The study is based on an existing nine-storey building located in Wellington, New Zealand. The building is representative of medium rise steel framed buildings from the first half of the 20th century. A three dimensional numerical model of the building was developed in an inelastic structural analysis program. Nonlinear characterisations necessary for the prediction of the inelastic cyclic behaviours of the structural components were incorporated into the numerical model. Details of the structural configuration and member properties for the analyses were determined from the original engineering drawings, the construction specifications, as-built concrete strength test results and literature on properties of steel sections used around the period the building was constructed. The inelastic time history analyses were conducted using a suite of seven earthquake records relevant to the seismicity of the building's location. Modal properties of the numerical model compare well with results of a physical test conducted on the building. The implemented modelling procedure appeared to have predicted the most probable seismic performance of this type of building, which would not have been captured by other simplified procedures. The assessment also highlighted the adverse effects the characteristics and location of the walls have on the seismic performance of this type of building by introducing significant torsional and vertical irregularities.

The Sliding Hinge Joint is a flexural connection designed for use at the ends of beams in steel moment resisting frames. It is an asymmetric friction connection, where energy is dissipated through sliding in slotted bolted connections in the beam bottom flange. The friction resistance and the repeatability of the hysteretic force displacement curves are dependent on the type of shim used. Brass or mild steel shims have been researched and used in construction to date. This paper describes tests on the sliding components conducted to investigate the use of steel shims of different hardness. The materials tested were mild steel, high strength quenched and tempered steel, and abrasion resistant steel. The beam and cleats which these shims slid against were Grade 300 mild steel. The specimens were tested dynamically at earthquake rates of loading. The abrasion resistant steel, the hardest material, produced the most stable and consistent sliding characteristics for all displacement cycles on different specimens. It also had the least material wear and the highest friction capacity per bolt. Compared to brass, high strength steels are more readily available, less costly, more easily erected, and less susceptible to corrosion, making them a preferred solution.

This paper was presented at the 2010 NZSEE Annual Conference in Wellington. SUMMARY This paper presents a new technique for modelling the dynamic response of uplifting rigid structures subjected to base excitation. The proposed technique exploits the use of a two-spring foundation, and subsequently an equivalent single-degree-of-freedom procedure is established to model the dynamics of the system. A set of simplified closed-form expressions have been developed to estimate the system’s restoring force-displacement characteristics. The simplified expressions only require details of the system geometry and are shown to predict the nonlinear force-displacement characteristics of a rocking structure as closely as those determined from a complicated pushover analysis. This paper presents two additional numerical examples to demonstrate the use of the proposed technique to simulate the displacement time-histories of a prototype structure under free-vibration-decay or when subjected to earthquake excitations.

Using logistic and multiple regressions, the authors investigated predictors of employment and postsecondary education outcomes of youth with autism in the Vocational Rehabilitation Program. Data were obtained from the RSA911 data set, fiscal year 2008. Findings showed that the odds of gaining employment were greater for youth who received job placement services, yet only 48% of youth received this service. In addition, postsecondary education was among the strongest predictors of better earnings, yet only 10% of youth received college services. The authors recommended providing job placement services and college services to more youth with autism. At the same time, due to the relatively moderate effect sizes of these regression models, they recommend investigating additional variables currently not included in the RSA911 data set.

The New Delhi Statement of 1990 called for universal water supply coverage by the year 2000, a goal that was later replaced by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the timeframe of 2015. As we are fast approaching this deadline, discussions are already under way for targets beyond the MDGs. In the wake of these developments, it is worth taking stock of what we can learn from existing efforts to measure access to water supply, sanitation and hygiene services. This article zooms in on one aspect of sector monitoring – national inventories – carried out in many developing countries as a first step to improve sector performance monitoring. Using the example of the National WASH Inventory in Ethiopia, under way in 2010/11, as a case study, we examine possible reasons why so often these costly and human resource‐intensive baselines tend to remain underutilised.

SUMMARY Pounding between adjacent bridge structures with insufficient separation distance has been identified as one of the primary causes of damage in many major earthquakes. It takes place because the closing relative movement is larger than the structural gap provided between the structures. This relative structural response is controlled not only by the dynamic properties of the participating structures but also by the characteristics of the ground excitations. The consequence of the spatial variation of ground motions has been studied by researchers; however, most of these studies were performed numerically. The objective of the present research is to experimentally evaluate the influence of spatial variation of ground motions on the pounding behaviour of three adjacent bridge segments. The investigation is performed using three shake tables. The input spatially varying ground excitations are simulated based on the New Zealand design spectra for soft soil, shallow soil and strong rock using an empirical coherency loss function. Results confirm that the spatially nonniform ground motions increase the relative displacement of adjacent bridge girders and pounding forces. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.