Search Results (22)

This paper discusses the viability of using a low-code multimodal large language model agent with computer vision functionality to support occupational safety and health evaluations on construction sites. The central hypothesis aims to verify that these systems can provide reliable answers, as evaluated against a ground truth review, including the identification of high-risk dangers. A conversational agent was given the task of finding hazards and checking for national legislative compliance within a dataset of 100 real-world construction photos. The comparison of the agent’s results to the ground truth provides insight into current limitations. The primary issues identified were inconsistent taxonomies, inadequate causal reasoning, and insufficient contextual consideration, all of which adversely impacted performance—particularly when analyzing low-resolution images. The metrics supporting the conclusion synthesize that this tool is a valuable augmentation technology, enhancing safety evaluations while still requiring human supervision to ensure reliability. Full article

Assessing the seismic performance of buildings from various epochs is essential for guiding retrofitting policies and educating occupants about their homes’ conditions. However, limited resources pose challenges. Some approaches focus on detailed analyses of a limited number of buildings, while others favor broader coverage with less precision. This paper presents a seismic risk assessment method that balances and integrates the strengths of both, using a comprehensive building survey. We propose a low-cost indicator for evaluating the structural resilience of individual buildings, designed to inform both authorities and property owners, support building rankings, and raise awareness. This indicator classifies buildings by their taxonomy and uses analytical capacity curves (2D or 3D studies) obtained from consulting hundreds of studies to determine the ultimate acceleration (agu) that each building type can withstand before collapse. It also considers irregularities found during the survey (to the exterior and interior) through structural modifiers Δ, and adjusts the peak ground acceleration the building can withstand, agu, based on macroseismic data from past events and based on potential retrofitting, Δ+. Although this method may not achieve high accuracy, it provides a significant approximation for detailed analysis with limited resources and is easy to replicate for similar constructions. The final agu value, considered as resistance, is then compared to the seismic demand at the foundation of the building (accounting for hazard and soil conditions at the building location), resulting in a final R-value. This paper provides specificities to the methodology and applies it to selected areas of the City of Lisbon, clearly supporting the advancement of a more sustainable society. Full article

The paper will focus on the topic of adapting digital humanities methods from architectural history to technical history, considering mapping and image analysis for increasing disaster resilience in Art Nouveau and Modernist buildings in different geographical areas—including lessons from Europe to the USA. The project proposes the transformation of the collection of photographs of early 20th-century architecture gathered by the applicant over about 30 years of travel into a database by answering the research question on how threats from the hazards of earthquakes, floods, and fires can be answered by taking into account the local culture in the European countries covered, for buildings from a period when the architecture styles were already global at that time. For this purpose, digital humanities methods of image annotation (including architectural volumetric analysis) and mapping are employed. From the knowledge gathered and the resulting database, a prototyping ontology and taxonomy is derived. This outcome can be further developed into a set of evaluation criteria, considering the decisions that can be taken to prioritize the retrofit interventions depending on the geographic positions of the buildings. Full article

The variety of hazards with a potential impact on cultural heritage requires a multidisciplinary approach and a preliminary overview of the existing methods for risk assessment in order to define a comprehensive hazard taxonomy. The starting point of the research thus aims to build a multidisciplinary framework to support the risk assessment process according to the classification of cultural heritage based on the harmonization of European vocabularies’ definitions and protocols. To collect the necessary information, such as hazard classification, indicators, indices and thresholds, a series of methodologies was adopted: analysis of the main international protocols and the EU Research projects related to risk assessment in cultural heritage, expert-based knowledge and a systematic literature review. The research aims to fill a gap in the field of quantitative and indicator-based risk assessment that does not present a unique and all-encompassing framework capable of collecting the main natural and anthropic risks along with the related taxonomy in a single repository. The framework has been set up to be consulted by researchers, professionals and public administrations to support the evaluation process of potential risks on tangible outdoor heritage enabling users to incrementally add exposure and vulnerability data for each specific risk. Full article

Southeastern Europe faces a significant earthquake threat, endangering lives, property, and infrastructure thus jeopardizing sustainable development. The development of a Rapid Earthquake Damage Assessment System (REDAS) designed to deliver crucial earthquake damage information for scenario planning, real-time response, and bolstering public awareness and preparedness is presented. In doing so, REDAS enhances community resilience and safeguards sustainability. REDAS comprises a Rapid Earthquake Damage Assessment platform (REDA.p), a smartphone application, and an Educational Hub (Edu.Hub). REDA.p provides both scenario-based and near real-time seismic damage evaluation of structures, gas pipelines, and geotechnical failures, based on harmonized Ground Motion Prediction Equations and a comprehensive building taxonomy scheme covering the area under investigation. To assess regional landslide hazards, the Infinite Slope Model and a statistics-based model have been implemented, alongside a statistical model for liquefaction probability assessment. Validated against historical data, REDA.p integrates real-time input from key earthquake monitoring networks in the region, covering cross-border areas as well, while in designated urban zones, the system is enhanced by real-time data from a dense earthquake monitoring network deployed in selected school buildings. The smartphone app and Edu.Hub disseminate critical information, guidelines, and tools to improve public prevention, preparedness, and response capacities, thereby enhancing societal resilience. Full article

The authors have proposed a method of reiterating the statistical analysis of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the UNFCCC Parties, which were updated at Conference of the Parties-26. The present analysis confirms the taxonomy developed in 2020, based on 2475 adaptive solutions recorded in 2022 NDCs, and discusses the differences observed. An ex ante adaptation metric is proposed, which allows monitoring of adaptive solutions over time and comparisons between projects in time and space. The fitness coefficient evaluates the ex ante relevance of these adaptive projects in relation to the climate challenges of each country. The authors have proposed a program of continuous improvement instead of a definitive calculation. The authors have developed an algorithm to automate the text analysis and minimize the subjectivity of the analysis. The objective is to assign a level of vulnerability to each project for each hazard in the country. The correspondence analysis was used to derive the most representative dimensions of project category dispersion and vulnerability intensities from a contingency table for each hazard. This coefficient can be made available to experts, project developers, and funders for ex ante evaluation and selection of candidate projects for funding before more in-depth analyses are carried out. Full article

Cognitive failures at the information acquiring (safety training), comprehension, or application stages led to near-miss or accidents on-site. The previous studies rarely considered the cognitive processes of two different kinds of construction safety training. Cognitive processes are a series of chemical and electrical brain impulses that allow you to perceive your surroundings and acquire knowledge. Additionally, their attention was more inclined toward the worker’s behavior during hazard identification on-site while on duty. A study is proposed to fill the knowledge gap by developing the mechanism models of the two safety training approaches. The mechanism models were developed based on cognitive psychology and Bloom’s taxonomy and six steps of cognitive learning theory. A worker’s safety training is vital in acquiring, storing, retrieving, and utilizing the appropriate information for hazard identification on-site. It is assumed that those trained by advanced techniques may quickly identify and avoid hazards on construction sites because of the fundamental nature of the training, and when they come across threats, they may promptly use their working memory and prevent them, especially for more complex projects. The main benefit of making such a model, from a cognitive point of view, is that it can help us learn more about the mental processes of two different types of construction safety training, and it can also help us come up with specific management suggestions to make up for the approaches’ flaws. Future research will concentrate on the organizational aspects and other cognitive failures that could lead to accidents. Full article

Biases in snake venom research have been partially identified but seldomly quantified. Using the Google Scholar web search engine, we collected a total of 267 articles published between 1964 and 2021, and reviewed them to assess the main trends in this field of study. We developed a 4-category classification of the harmful potential of each of the 298 snake species retrieved from the analysed publications, and tested whether taxonomy, realm of origin, and/or assigned hazard category could affect how often each of them appeared in the articles considered. Overall, viperids were significantly more represented than any other snake taxon retrieved. The Neotropics were the most represented biogeographic realm for number of studied species, whereas information about the country of origin of the analysed specimens was often incomplete. The vast majority of the publications focused on snake venom characterisation, whereas more ecology-related topics were rarely considered. Hazard category and biogeographic realm of origin of each species had a significant effect on the number of articles dedicated to it, suggesting that a snake’s harmful potential and place of origin influence its popularity in venom studies. Our analysis showed an overall positive trend in the number of snake venom studies published yearly, but also underlined severe neglect of snake families of supposedly minor medical relevance (e.g., Atractaspididae), underrepresentation of some of the areas most impacted by snakebite (i.e., Indomalayan and Afrotropic realms), and limited interest in the ecological and functional context of snake venom. Full article

Numerous potentially toxic plankton species commonly occur in the Black Sea, and phycotoxins have been reported. However, the taxonomy, phycotoxin profiles, and distribution of harmful microalgae in the basin are still understudied. An integrated microscopic (light microscopy) and molecular (18S rRNA gene metabarcoding and qPCR) approach complemented with toxin analysis was applied at 41 stations in the northwestern part of the Black Sea for better taxonomic coverage and toxin profiling in natural populations. The combined dataset included 20 potentially toxic species, some of which (Dinophysis acuminata, Dinophysis acuta, Gonyaulax spinifera, and Karlodinium veneficum) were detected in over 95% of the stations. In parallel, pectenotoxins (PTX-2 as a major toxin) were registered in all samples, and yessotoxins were present at most of the sampling points. PTX-1 and PTX-13, as well as some YTX variants, were recorded for the first time in the basin. A positive correlation was found between the cell abundance of Dinophysis acuta and pectenotoxins, and between Lingulodinium polyedra and Protoceratium reticulatum and yessotoxins. Toxic microalgae and toxin variant abundance and spatial distribution was associated with environmental parameters. Despite the low levels of the identified phycotoxins and their low oral toxicity, chronic toxic exposure could represent an ecosystem and human health hazard. Full article

Topic classification is the task of mapping text onto a set of meaningful labels known beforehand. This scenario is very common both in academia and industry whenever there is the need of categorizing a big corpus of documents according to set custom labels. The standard supervised approach, however, requires thousands of documents to be manually labelled, and additional effort every time the label taxonomy changes. To obviate these downsides, we investigated the application of a zero-shot approach to topic classification. In this setting, a subset of these topics, or even all of them, is not seen at training time, challenging the model to classify corresponding examples using additional information. We first show how zero-shot classification can perform the topic-classification task without any supervision. Secondly, we build a novel hazard-detection dataset by manually selecting tweets gathered by LINKS Foundation for this task, where we demonstrate the effectivenes of our cost-free method on a real-world problem. The idea is to leverage a pre-trained text-embedder (MPNet) to map both text and topics into the same semantic vector space where they can be compared. We demonstrate that these semantic spaces are better aligned when their dimension is reduced, keeping only the most useful information. We investigated three different dimensionality reduction techniques, namely, linear projection, autoencoding and PCA. Using the macro F1-score as the standard metric, it was found that PCA is the best performing technique, recording improvements for each dataset in comparison with the performance on the baseline. Full article

The present work is concerned with the introduction of a new first level pre- and post-earthquake seismic assessment protocol for buildings that relies on the use of recorded structural response. As earthquakes represent a constant and unpredictable threat for the building stock around the globe, the protocols already in use for assessing the risk should be revised and should also take into account the information hidden in data recorded in the field. Nowadays, data collection does not require expensive equipment and over-qualified personnel. In this direction, the proposed seismic assessment protocol aims to illustrate the ease of widely adopting Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) equipment (e.g., accelerographs), based on the work that has been carried out over the past years on subjects related to earthquake risk estimation. Building taxonomy and damage estimation, like those found in Hazus^®–MH and other hazard assessment tools, can be enriched and modified properly to distinguish and classify the very earthquake-prone buildings from the others, and tag them for further assessment and rehabilitation as seismic codes suggest. Full article

Risk perception is important in organizational and societal governance contexts. This article presents a high-level analysis of risk perception research using Web of Science core collection databases, scientometrics methods and visualization tools. The focus is on trends in outputs, geographical and temporal trends, and patterns in the associated scientific categories. Thematic clusters and temporal dynamics of focus topics are identified using keyword analysis. A co-citation analysis is performed to identify the evolution of research fronts and key documents. The results indicate that research output is growing fast, with most contributions originating from western countries. The domain is highly interdisciplinary, rooted in psychology and social sciences, but branching into domains related to environmental sciences, medicine, and engineering. Significant research themes focus on perceptions related to health, with a focus on cancer, human immunodeficiency virus, and epidemiology, natural hazards and major disasters, traffic accidents, technological and industrial risks, and customer trust. Risk perception research originated from consumer choice decisions, with subsequent research fronts focusing on understanding the risk perception concept, and on developing taxonomies and measurement methods. Applied research fronts focus on environmental hazards, traffic accidents, breast cancer and, more recently, e-commerce transactions and flood risk. Based on the results, various avenues for future research are described. Full article

The black yeast-like fungus Aureobasidium melanogenum is an opportunistic human pathogen frequently found indoors. Its traits, potentially linked to pathogenesis, have never been systematically studied. Here, we examine 49 A. melanogenum strains for growth at 37 °C, siderophore production, hemolytic activity, and assimilation of hydrocarbons and human neurotransmitters and report within-species variability. All but one strain grew at 37 °C. All strains produced siderophores and showed some hemolytic activity. The largest differences between strains were observed in the assimilation of hydrocarbons and human neurotransmitters. We show for the first time that fungi from the order Dothideales can assimilate aromatic hydrocarbons. To explain the background, we sequenced the genomes of all 49 strains and identified genes putatively involved in siderophore production and hemolysis. Genomic analysis revealed a fairly structured population of A.melanogenum, raising the possibility that some phylogenetic lineages have higher virulence potential than others. Population genomics indicated that the species is strictly clonal, although more than half of the genomes were diploid. The existence of relatively heterozygous diploids in an otherwise clonal species is described for only the second time in fungi. The genomic and phenotypic data from this study should help to resolve the non-trivial taxonomy of the genus Aureobasidium and reduce the medical hazards of exploiting the biotechnological potential of other, non-pathogenic species of this genus. Full article

Recent population migrations have led to numerous accidents and deaths. Little research has been done to help migrants in their journey. For this reason, a literature review of the latest research conducted in previous years is required to identify new research trends in human-swarm interaction. This article presents a review of techniques that can be used in a robots swarm to find, locate, protect and help migrants in hazardous environment such as militarized zone. The paper presents a swarm interaction taxonomy including a detailed study on the control of swarm with and without interaction. As the interaction mainly occurs in cluttered or crowded environment (with obstacles) the paper discussed the algorithms related to navigation that can be included with an interaction strategy. It focused on comparing algorithms and their advantages and disadvantages. Full article

The development of adaptation indicators and metrics that can be aggregated and compared to support environmental management is a key challenge for climate experts, finance institutions, and decision-makers. To provide an operational ex-ante evaluation of alternative adaptation strategies, statistical evaluation was conducted on 1562 adaptation projects contained in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted by almost all parties who signed the Paris Agreement in 2015. As a preliminary stage, we are suggesting a physical risk taxonomy derived from climate model databases and an adaptation project taxonomy using a text analysis. The second stage, consisting of an evaluation metric using a correspondence analysis between adaptation projects and risk classes, was inspired by the analogy with adaptation mechanisms in living organisms—assessing the correct correspondence between threats from the environment and adaptive solutions. It allowed us to develop a coefficient ranging from 0 to 1, expressing the degree of correspondence between adaptive measures’ categories and hazard levels, which we refer to as fitness. Our coefficient would make it possible to compare project classes with each other ex-ante or, conversely, to deduce the most relevant adaptation solutions from climate-change-related hazards. The fitness coefficient could also be used as a preliminary stage of assessment to create a short-list of adaptation projects that are relevant to address a given physical hazard with a given intensity. Full article