Search Results (37)

Objectives: Traumatic fractures represent a considerable burden to military personnel across nations. Despite substantial research examining traumatic fracture incidence and risk factors, there is no comprehensive synthesis of evidence on traumatic bone fractures in military populations. This study aimed to identify and synthesise findings from studies reporting on the incidence of, and risk factors for, traumatic fractures in military personnel. Design: Systematic review. Methods: A structured search was performed in PubMed, EBSCO, CINAHL, and ProQuest using key terms related to fractures, occupational exposure, and risk. Eligible studies were screened, and key findings including risk factors, incidence rates, and effect sizes were systematically extracted and summarised. Results: Twenty-nine studies were included, with four studies reporting on recruits/trainees and 25 on qualified personnel. Recruit incidence ranged from 21.8 to 105.3 fractures per 1000 person-years, while the incidence in qualified personnel ranged from 1.9 to 57.6 fractures per 1000 person-years. Enlisted personnel, younger servicemembers (18–29 years), and personnel of the Army and Marine Corps branches were at increased risk. Traumatic fractures predominantly occurred in the lower extremities. Risk factors and mechanisms for traumatic fractures in military personnel included sports participation and physical training. Other common mechanisms included motor vehicle accidents and collisions, and (in combat settings) blasts from improvised explosive devices and gunshot wounds. Conclusions: Traumatic fractures are a substantial source of injury across military careers, not limited to initial training. Army and Marine Corps personnel face higher fracture risks, particularly in the lower limbs, with sports/physical training and combat-related risk factors associated with increased susceptibility. Full article

Explosive ordnance (EO), including AXO (abandoned explosive ordnance), IEDs (improvised explosives devices), and UXO (unexploded ordnance), are widely recognised for their blast and fragmentation hazards, but they also represent a persistent and under-addressed source of occupational chemical exposure for explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) personnel. EOD core activities liberate mixed metals and energetic chemicals, resulting in exposures that are multi-route (inhalation of dusts and fumes, dermal loading amplified by sweat and glove occlusion, and ingestion via hand-to-mouth transfer during eating, drinking, or smoking) and multi-temporal (repeated low-dose background plus task-driven spikes), as well as chemically complex. Clinically, this can present as syndromic overlap across acute and chronic domains, with symptoms that are easily misattributed to heat stress, dehydration, infection, or fatigue. Acute effects of concern include neurotoxic presentations (headache, dizziness, confusion, tremor, and seizure), respiratory and mucosal irritation following dust or fume events, gastrointestinal symptoms, and patterns suggestive of acute hepatic or renal stress, particularly when high-intensity tasks occur in hot environments that compound physiologic strain. Chronic outcomes relevant to repeatedly exposed EOD personnel include renal function decline, neurocognitive effects that can degrade operational decision making and safety, persistent haematologic abnormalities, and endocrine disruption signals, with long-latency risks requiring cautious interpretation given sparse longitudinal data and confounding co-exposures. This review synthesises the current evidence base through an EOD lens and translates it into pragmatic clinical and programmatic actions: task-based exposure characterisation; tiered biomonitoring and medical surveillance aligned to operational tempo; incident-triggered assessment pathways after high-residue events; and prevention strategies that work under field constraints, including contamination control zones, hygiene enforcement, glove and respiratory protection optimisation, tool and vehicle decontamination, and measures to prevent secondary transfer and take-home exposure. The central takeaway is practical: EOD programs can reduce morbidity and improve readiness by treating explosive ordnance as a chemical mixture exposure problem, adopting mixture-aware clinical triage, and embedding surveillance and controls that match how EOD work is actually performed. Full article

Man-made hazards pose serious threats to the safety and preservation of heritage structures. With armed conflict becoming increasingly prominent, it is urgent to enhance our understanding of how these structures respond under extreme conditions to drive conservation strategies. The Citadel of Aleppo in Syria, placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2013 due to the civil war, tragically exemplifies the vulnerability of cultural heritage in times of conflict. In such a framework, this study focuses on the Minaret of the Ayyubid Great Mosque of the Citadel of Aleppo as a representative masonry tower to investigate the effects of man-made threats. Based on a 3D finite element model built in the Abaqus/Explicit environment, blast scenarios associated with aviation bombs and human-borne improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were simulated. The Conventional Weapons Effects (CONWEP) model was used to assess the structural response to blast pressures, also as a function of charge size, standoff distance, and modelling parameters (mesh size, strain rate). This study’s outcomes provide insights into the potential damage caused by aviation bombs and IED attacks, advancing the understanding of the vulnerability of tower-like masonry structures to such hazards while also informing future conservation strategies. Full article

Although the accidental or intentional explosions produced in industrial facilities or in urban areas are events with low probability, they have a high destructive potential and potential for human injuries and/or fatalities. One of the types of such events is given by detonation of improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—dirty bombs for terrorist purposes—which may produce a high number of metallic fragments. Studying mass and spatial distributions of these fragments is useful for evaluating their lethality and destructive potential and may help to implement adequate protective measures. This work brings a closer insight into the fragment dispersion around the detonation of a steel-enclosed C4 charge with cylindrical symmetry. In this respect a specific approach involving both detonation experiments and numerical simulations performed by home-made and commercial software packages for investigation of the fragmentation process and accompanying angular scattering of the fragments was proposed. Special algorithms, which allow the estimation of the spatial distributions of fragments from the numerical analysis of perforations made by the metallic fragments generated by such IEDs on surrounding material walls, are developed. Further, numerical simulations of a similar IED device provided output parameters related to the statistical distributions of mass, kinetic energy and position of the fragments. Experimental fragmentation generated a recovered mass distribution (94 fragments of 67.5 g) that was compared with that extracted from simulation, revealing a reasonable agreement on the 0.3–1 g range. In the case of simulations, 300 fragments from a total number of 374 showed a mass ranging from 0.004 to 0.3 g. The simulations showed that the middle part of the steel case generated fragments of kinetic energy over 4 kJ and its ends generated fragments of kinetic energy under 1 kJ. Experimental fragment scattering distributions were investigated with specific home-made numerical algorithms, which, based on a set of images, analysed the correlations between spatial coordinates of perforations made by fragments on surrounding special panels and provided histograms that are discussed in relation with the fragment-induced lethality degree. Full article

Smokeless powders are a commonly used low explosive within the ammunition industry. Their ease of purchase has allowed criminals to use these products to build improvised explosive devices. Canines have become a vital tool in locating such improvised devices. With differing fabrication processes, one of the most difficult challenges for canine handlers is the optimal selection of training aids to choose as odor targets to allow for broad generalization. Several studies have been underway to understand the chemical odor characterization of smokeless powders, which can help provide canine teams with essential information to understand odor signatures from powder varieties. In this study, a SPME method optimization was conducted using unburned smokeless powders to provide a chemical odor profile assessment. Concurrently, statistical analysis using PCA and Spearman’s rank correlations was performed to explore whether odor volatile composition depicted associations between and within powder brands. The results showed that a longer extraction time (24 h) was optimal across all powders, as this yielded higher compound abundance and number of extracted odor volatiles. The optimal SPME fiber varied per powder, depicting the complexity of powder composition. There were 66 highly frequent compounds among the 18 powders, including 2-ethyl-1-hexanol, diphenylamine (DPA), and dibutyl phthalate. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that while powders may be of the same type (single/double base), they can still portray clustering differences across and within brands. The Spearman’s rank correlation within powder type suggested that the double-base powders had a slightly higher similarity index when compared with the single-base powder types. Understanding the volatile odor profiles of various smokeless powders can enhance canine training by informing the selection of effective training aids and supporting odor generalization. Full article

Supervised machine learning algorithms usually require huge labeled data sets to produce sufficiently good results. For many applications, these data sets are still not available today, and the reasons for this can be manifold. As a solution, the missing training data can be generated by fast simulators. This procedure is well studied and allows filling possible gaps in the training data, which can further improve the results of a machine learning model. For this reason, this article deals with the development of a two-dimensional electromagnetic field simulator for modeling the response of a radar sensor in an imaging system based on the synthetic aperture radar principle. The creation of completely random scenes is essential to achieve data sets with large variance. Therefore, special emphasis is placed on the development of methods that allow creating random objects, which can then be assembled into an entire scene. In the context of this contribution, we focus on humanitarian demining with regard to improvised explosive devices using a ground-penetrating radar system. This is an area where the use of trained classifiers is of great importance, but in practice, there are little to no labeled datasets for the training process. The simulation results show good agreement with the measurement results obtained in a previous contribution, demonstrating the possibility of enhancing sparse training data sets with synthetic data. Full article

Among the many commonly encountered hazards, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) remain the primary threat to military and civilian personnel due to the ease of their production and the widespread availability of their raw materials and precursors. Identifying traces of potential precursors is the first step in developing appropriate control measures. An interesting approach is to identify the precursors that are released around the site as they are handled and transformed into the final IEDs. CO₂ laser photoacoustic spectroscopy can offer the spectral characterization of a number of explosives-related compounds without sample preparation. Benzene, toluene, acetone, and ethylene glycol absorption spectra were determined in the IR region between 9.2 and 10.8 µm. Each substance emitted a unique photoacoustic response corresponding to its chemical composition that could be further used to identify the explosive material. Full article

Landmines and explosive remnants of war are still present in the Western Balkans and remain a deadly legacy of the hostilities at the end of the 20th century. Over the years, several incidents have occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Serbia, and in Croatia where intact ordnance has caused injuries and fatalities. Floods, torrential flows, and gravitational mass movements pose a particular threat. Landmines and explosive remnants of war are mobilized and displaced into previously uncontaminated areas. We first discuss the historical and technical background of this hazardous situation. We then show which hydro-morphological processes are responsible for the mobilization and displacement. We then illustrate how a prediction of the likely contaminated areas can be obtained. We show that the problem can only be tackled using a stochastic-deterministic model. However, for the eventual development of risk-hazard maps, preliminary work using laboratory experiments and field surveys is required. The article, therefore, proposes a novel approach to the problem in an international research project. The aim would be to produce risk-hazard maps that can be used by elected decision-makers, administrative authorities, and emergency personnel in affected municipalities. Full article

There is an ongoing forensic and security need for rapid, on-scene, easy-to-use, non-invasive chemical identification of intact energetic materials at pre-explosion crime scenes. Recent technological advances in instrument miniaturization, wireless transfer and cloud storage of digital data, and multivariate data analysis have created new and very promising options for the use of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy in forensic science. This study shows that in addition to drugs of abuse, portable NIR spectroscopy with multivariate data analysis also offers excellent opportunities to identify intact energetic materials and mixtures. NIR is able to characterize a broad range of chemicals of interest in forensic explosive investigations, covering both organic and inorganic compounds. NIR characterization of actual forensic casework samples convincingly shows that this technique can handle the chemical diversity encountered in forensic explosive investigations. The detailed chemical information contained in the 1350–2550 nm NIR reflectance spectrum allows for correct compound identification within a given class of energetic materials, including nitro-aromatics, nitro-amines, nitrate esters, and peroxides. In addition, the detailed characterization of mixtures of energetic materials, such as plastic formulations containing PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) and RDX (trinitro triazinane), is feasible. The results presented illustrate that the NIR spectra of energetic compounds and mixtures are sufficiently selective to prevent false-positive results for a broad range of food-related products, household chemicals, raw materials used for the production of home-made explosives, drugs of abuse, and products that are sometimes used to create hoax improvised explosive devices. However, for frequently encountered pyrotechnic mixtures, such as black powder, flash powder, and smokeless powder, and some basic inorganic raw materials, the application of NIR spectroscopy remains challenging. Another challenge is presented by casework samples of contaminated, aged, and degraded energetic materials or poor-quality HMEs (home-made explosives), for which the spectral signature deviates significantly from the reference spectra, potentially leading to false-negative outcomes. Full article

Terrorists usually employ Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to cause maximum damage with a single action, in asymmetric war scenarios. In the counter-terrorism fight, bomb disposal specialists have to combat these instruments by safeguarding their lives, avoiding fortuitous IED explosion, and preserving evidence of the device that could lead to the capture of the perpetrators. Some very effective deactivation tools that combine these features are high-speed water-explosive projection devices. To understand and quantify the impacts of the many factors that intervene in their operation and effectiveness, extensive experimental tests should be conducted. However, Operations Research techniques allow robust results to be obtained by minimizing experiments. This study focuses on the use of Design of Experiments (DoE), with a factorial experiment plan divided into two levels, to analyze the influence of the amount of explosive, the diameter of the device (that is, the mass of water to be projected), the density of the water, the distance at which the IED is located, and the resistance of the inner tube material. Results show that the mass of explosive, the diameter of the device, the interaction of the mass of explosive and the density of the water, and the interaction between the resistance of the inner tube and the diameter of the container have a strong influence on the speed of projected water. Full article

The neutralization of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) involves the use of disrupting agents propelled explosively. Due to the special nature of such materials, a proper investigation of the parts most susceptible to sympathetic detonation is in order. The initiation of IEDs is caused by detonation products, shock waves, and propelled disruptive agents. In this paper, initiation of IED composition (acceptor charge) due to the neutralization system’s (donor charge’s) explosive charge detonation is evaluated based on the influence of the first two of the three above-mentioned factors. One of the most susceptible components of IEDs to sympathetic initiation is the blasting cap. Based on an experimental and numerical mix approach, blasting cap tendency to sympathetic detonation in open field had been investigated. The suitability of critical energy fluence and Chapman–Jouguet threshold criteria to the sympathetic detonation tendency of blasting caps was investigated. Experimental and numerical/analytical results describing the phenomenon are in agreement. Full article

This paper proposes the implementation of and experimentation with GPR for real-time automatic detection of buried IEDs. GPR, consisting of hardware and software, was implemented. A UWB antenna was designed and implemented, particularly for the operation of the GPR. The experiments were conducted in order to demonstrate the real-time automatic detection of buried IEDs using GPR with an R-CNN algorithm. In the experiments, the GPR was mounted on a pickup truck and a maintenance train in order to find the IEDs buried under a road and a railway, respectively. B-scan images were collected using the implemented GPR. R-CNN-based detection for the hyperbolic pattern, which indicates the buried IED, was performed along with pre-processing, for example, using zero offset removal, and background removal and filtering. Experimental results in terms of detecting the hyperbolic pattern in B-scan images were shown and verified that the proposed GPR system is superior to the conventional one using region analysis processing-based detection. Results also showed that pre-processing is required in order to improve and/or clean the hyperbolic pattern before detection. The GPR can automatically detect IEDs buried under roads and railways in real time by detecting the hyperbolic pattern appearing in the collected B-scan image. Full article

The last two decades have seen an incessant growth in the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with HD cameras for developing aerial vision-based systems to support civilian and military tasks, including land monitoring, change detection, and object classification. To perform most of these tasks, the artificial intelligence algorithms usually need to know, a priori, what to look for, identify. or recognize. Actually, in most operational scenarios, such as war zones or post-disaster situations, areas and objects of interest are not decidable a priori since their shape and visual features may have been altered by events or even intentionally disguised (e.g., improvised explosive devices (IEDs)). For these reasons, in recent years, more and more research groups are investigating the design of original anomaly detection methods, which, in short, are focused on detecting samples that differ from the others in terms of visual appearance and occurrences with respect to a given environment. In this paper, we present a novel two-branch Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-based method for low-altitude RGB aerial video surveillance to detect and localize anomalies. We have chosen to focus on the low-altitude sequences as we are interested in complex operational scenarios where even a small object or device can represent a reason for danger or attention. The proposed model was tested on the UAV Mosaicking and Change Detection (UMCD) dataset, a one-of-a-kind collection of challenging videos whose sequences were acquired between 6 and 15 m above sea level on three types of ground (i.e., urban, dirt, and countryside). Results demonstrated the effectiveness of the model in terms of Area Under the Receiving Operating Curve (AUROC) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), achieving an average of 97.2% and 95.7%, respectively, thus suggesting that the system can be deployed in real-world applications. Full article

There is growing concern about the possibility of a suicide bomber being immolated when the army forces or the law enforcement agencies discover the place where they prepare their material or simply find themselves inside a building. To study the possible effects that these improvised explosive devices (IEDs) would have on the structures, eight tests were carried out with various configurations of IEDs with vest bombs inside a reinforced concrete (including walls and roof) building constructed ad hoc for these tests. These vests were made with different explosives (black powder, ANFO, AN/AL, PG2). For the characterization of these tests, a high-speed camera and pressure and acceleration sensors were used. The structure behaved surprisingly well, as it withstood all the first seven detonations without apparent structural damage. In the last detonation, located on the ground and with a significant explosive charge, the structural integrity of the roof and some of the walls was compromised. The simulation of the building was carried out with the LS-DYNA software with a Lagrangian formulation for the walls, using the LBE (based on CONWEP) module for the application of the charge. Despite the difficulty of this simulation, the results obtained, in terms of applied pressures and measured accelerations, are acceptable with differences of about 20%. Full article

During the armed conflict in Colombia, homemade improvised antipersonnel landmines were used to neutralize the adversary. Many active artifacts remain buried, causing damage to biodiversity by exploding. The extensive literature describes the effects and injuries caused to humans by conventional landmines. However, there is considerably less information on the behavior and effects of homemade antipersonnel landmines on fauna and good field investigation practices. Our objectives were to describe the characteristics of a controlled explosion of a homemade antipersonnel landmine (using ammonium nitrate as an explosive substance), to compare the effectiveness of some evidence search patterns used in forensic investigation, and to determine the effects on a piece of an animal carcass. The explosion generated a shock wave and an exothermic reaction, generating physical effects on the ground and surrounding structures near the point of explosion. The amputation of the foot in direct contact with the device during the explosion and multiple fractures were the main effects on the animal carcass. Finally, it was determined that finding evidence was more effective in a smaller search area. Many factors can influence the results, which must be weighed when interpreting the results, as discussed in this manuscript. Full article