Molecular characterisation of environmental enterococci derived from water samples and assessment of associated public health hazards

Enterococci are versatile Gram-positive bacteria that can survive under extreme conditions. Most enterococci are non-virulent and found in the gastrointestinal tract of humans and animals. Other strains are opportunistic pathogens that contribute to a large number of nosocomial infections globally. Epidemiological studies demonstrated a direct relationship between the density of enterococci in surface waters and the risk of swimmer-associated gastroenteritis. The distribution of infectious enterococcal strains from the hospital environment or other sources to environmental water bodies through sewage discharge or other means, could increase the prevalence of these strains in the human population. Environmental water quality studies may benefit from focusing on a subset of Enterococcus spp. that are consistently associated with sources of faecal pollution such as domestic sewage, rather than testing for the entire genus. E. faecalis and E. faecium are potentially good focal species for such studies, as they have been consistently identified as the dominant Enterococcus spp. in human faeces and sewage. On the other hand enterococcal infections are predominantly caused by E. faecalis and E. faecium. The characterisation of E. faecalis and E. faecium is important in studying their population structures, particularly in environmental samples. In developing and implementing rapid, robust molecular genotyping techniques, it is possible to more accurately establish the relationship between human and environmental enterococci. Of particular importance, is to determine the distribution of high risk enterococcal clonal complexes, such as E. faecium clonal complex 17 and E. faecalis clonal complexes 2 and 9 in recreational waters. These clonal complexes are recognized as particularly pathogenic enterococcal genotypes that cause severe disease in humans globally. The Pimpama-Coomera watershed is located in South East Queensland, Australia and was investigated in this study mainly because it is used intensively for agriculture and recreational purposes and has a strong anthropogenic impact. The primary aim of this study was to develop novel, universally applicable, robust, rapid and cost effective genotyping methods which are likely to yield more definitive results for the routine monitoring of E. faecalis and E. faecium, particularly in environmental water sources. To fullfill this aim, new genotyping methods were developed based on the interrogation of highly informative single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located in housekeeping genes of both E. faecalis and E. faecium. SNP genotyping was successfully applied in field investigations of the Coomera watershed, South-East Queensland, Australia. E. faecalis and E. faecium isolates were grouped into 29 and 23 SNP profiles respectively. This study showed the high longitudinal diversity of E. faecalis and E. faecium over a period of two years, and both human-related and human-specific SNP profiles were identified. Furthermore, 4.25% of E. faecium strains isolated from water was found to correspond to the important clonal complex-17 (CC17). Strains that belong to CC17 cause the majority of hospital outbreaks and clinical infections globally. Of the six sampling sites of the Coomera River, Paradise Point had the highest number of human-related and human-specific E. faecalis and E. faecium SNP profiles. The secondary aim of this study was to determine the antibiotic-resistance profiles and virulence traits associated with environmental E. faecalis and E. faecium isolates compared to human pathogenic E. faecalis and E. faecium isolates. This was performed to predict the potential health risks associated with coming into contact with these strains in the Coomera watershed. In general, clinical isolates were found to be more resistant to all the antibiotics tested compared to water isolates and they harbored more virulence traits. Multi-drug resistance was more prevalent in clinical isolates (71.18% of E. faecalis and 70.3 % of E. faecium) compared to water isolates (only 5.66 % E. faecium). However, tetracycline, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin and ampicillin resistance was observed in water isolates. The virulence gene esp was the most prevalent virulence determinant observed in clinical isolates (67.79% of E. faecalis and 70.37 % of E. faecium), and this gene has been described as a human-specific marker used for microbial source tracking (MST). The presence of esp in water isolates (16.36% of E. faecalis and 19.14% of E. faecium) could be indicative of human faecal contamination in these waterways. Finally, in order to compare overall gene expression between environmental and clinical strains of E. faecalis, a comparative gene hybridization study was performed. The results of this investigation clearly demonstrated the up-regulation of genes associated with pathogenicity in E. faecalis isolated from water. The expression study was performed at physiological temperatures relative to ambient temperatures. The up-regulation of virulence genes demonstrates that environmental strains of E. faecalis can pose an increased health risk which can lead to serious disease, particularly if these strains belong to the virulent CC17 group. The genotyping techniques developed in this study not only provide a rapid, robust and highly discriminatory tool to characterize E. faecalis and E. faecium, but also enables the efficient identification of virulent enterococci that are distributed in environmental water sources.

Assessing the representativeness of a groundwater quality monitoring network

The monitoring sites comprising a state of the environment (SOE) network must be carefully selected to ensure that they will be representative of the broader resource. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) is a data-driven technique that can potentially be employed to assess the representativeness of a SOE monitoring network. The objective of this paper is to explore the use of HCA as an approach for assessing the representativeness of the New Zealand National Groundwater Monitoring Programme (NGMP), which is comprised of 110 monitoring sites across the country.

Estimating the effects of environmental exposures using a weighted mean of monitoring stations

The health effects of environmental hazards are often examined using time series of the association between a daily response variable (e.g., death) and a daily level of exposure (e.g., temperature). Exposures are usually the average from a network of stations. This gives each station equal importance, and negates the opportunity for some stations to be better measures of exposure. We used a Bayesian hierarchical model that weighted stations using random variables between zero and one. We compared the weighted estimates to the standard model using data on health outcomes (deaths and hospital admissions) and exposures (air pollution and temperature) in Brisbane, Australia. The improvements in model fit were relatively small, and the estimated health effects of pollution were similar using either the standard or weighted estimates. Spatial weighted exposures would be probably more worthwhile when there is either greater spatial detail in the health outcome, or a greater spatial variation in exposure.

Impact of roof surface runoff on urban water quality

The pollutant impacts of urban stormwater runoff on receiving waters are well documented in research literature. However, it is road surfaces that are commonly identified as the significant pollutant source. This paper presents the outcomes of an extensive program of research into the role of roof surfaces in urban water quality with particular focus on solids, nutrients and organic carbon. The outcomes confirmed that roof surfaces play an important role in influencing the pollutant characteristics of urban stormwater runoff. Pollutant build-up and wash-off characteristics for roads and roof surfaces were found to be appreciably different. The pollutant wash-off characteristics exhibited by roof surfaces show that it influences the first flush phenomenon more significantly than road surfaces. In most urban catchments, as roof surfaces constitutes a higher fraction of impervious area compared to road surfaces, it is important that the pollutant generation role of roof surfaces is specifically taken into consideration in stormwater quality mitigation strategies.

Impact of prescribed burning on urban air quality : a case study

For fuel management and/or ecological reasons prescribed burnings are conducted each year across Australia. Smoke from prescribed burnings could be the major source of air pollution in urban environment during the period of intensive prescribed burning. To investigate the impact of prescribed burning on air quality and the characteristics of prescribed burning particles, field measurements were conducted during the end period of a prescribed burning event in September 2011, Brisbane, Australia.

Student feedback systems in higher education: a focused literature review and environmental scan

In recent times, higher education institutions have paid increasing attention to the views of students to obtain feedback on their experience of learning and teaching through internal surveys. This article reviews research in the field and reports on practices in other Australian universities. Findings demonstrate that while student feedback is valued and used by all Australian universities, survey practices are idiosyncratic and in the majority of cases, questionnaires lack validity and reliability; data are used inadequately or inappropriately; and they offer limited potential for cross-sector benchmarking. The study confirms the need for institutions to develop an overarching framework for evaluation in which a valid, reliable, multidimensional and useful student feedback survey constitutes just one part. Given external expectations and internal requirements to collect feedback from students on their experience of learning and teaching, the pursuit of sound evaluation practices will continue to be of interest at local, national and international levels.

Positive impacts of environmental characteristics on health and wellbeing in health-care facilities : a review

Well-designed indoor environments can support people’s health and welfare. In this literature review, we identify the environmental features that affect human health and wellbeing. Environmental characteristics found to influence health outcomes and/or wellbeing included: environmental safety; indoor air quality (e.g. odour and temperature); sound and noise; premises and interior design (e.g. construction materials, viewing nature and experiencing nature, windows versus no windows, light, colours, unit layout and placement of the furniture, the type of room, possibilities to control environmental elements, environmental complexity and sensory simulations, cleanliness, ergonomics and accessibility, ‛‛wayfinding’’); art, and music, among others. Indoor environments that incorporate healing elements can, for instance, reduce anxiety, lower blood pressure, lessen pain and shorten hospital stays.

Preliminary results on the chemical composition of outdoor airborne particles at urban schools and possible implications for the air quality in classrooms

Vehicle emissions are a significant source of fine particles (Dp < 2.5 µm) in an urban environment. These fine particles have been shown to have detrimental health effects, with children thought to be more susceptible. Vehicle emissions are mainly carbonaceous in nature, and carbonaceous aerosols can be defined as either elemental carbon (EC) or organic carbon (OC). EC is a soot-like material emitted from primary sources while OC fraction is a complex mixture of hundreds of organic compounds from either primary or secondary sources (Cao et al., 2006). Therefore the ratio of OC/EC can aid in the identification of source. The purpose of this paper is to use the concentration of OC and EC in fine particles to determine the levels of vehicle emissions in schools. It is expected that this will improve the understanding of the potential exposure of children in a school environment to vehicle emissions.

Traffic and climate change impacts on water quality : measuring build-up and wash-off of heavy metals and petroleum hydrocarbons

Understanding the impacts of traffic and climate change on water quality helps decision makers to develop better policy and plans for dealing with unsustainable urban and transport development. This chapter presents detailed methodologies developed for sample collection and testing for heavy metals and total petroleum hydrocarbons, as part of a research study to investigate the impacts of climate change and changes to urban traffic characteristics on pollutant build-up and wash-off from urban road surfaces. Cadmium, chromium, nickel, copper, lead, iron, aluminium, manganese and zinc were the target heavy metals, and selected gasoline and diesel range organics were the target total petroleum hydrocarbons for this study. The study sites were selected to encompass the urban traffic characteristics of the Gold Coast region, Australia. An improved sample collection method referred to as ‘the wet and dry vacuum system’ for the pollutant build-up, and an effective wash-off plan to incorporate predicted changes to rainfall characteristics due to climate change, were implemented. The novel approach to sample collection for pollutant build-up helped to maintain the integrity of collection efficiency. The wash-off plan helped to incorporate the predicted impacts of climate change in the Gold Coast region. The robust experimental methods developed will help in field sample collection and chemical testing of different stormwater pollutants in build-up and wash-off.

Reputation modelling in citizen science for environmental acoustic data analysis

Citizen Science projects are initiatives in which members of the general public participate in scientific research projects and perform or manage research-related tasks such as data collection and/or data annotation. Citizen Science is technologically possible and scientifically significant. However, as the gathered information is from the crowd, the data quality is always hard to manage. There are many ways to manage data quality, and reputation management is one of the common approaches. In recent year, many research teams have deployed many audio or image sensors in natural environment in order to monitor the status of animals or plants. The collected data will be analysed by ecologists. However, as the amount of collected data is exceedingly huge and the number of ecologists is very limited, it is impossible for scientists to manually analyse all these data. The functions of existing automated tools to process the data are still very limited and the results are still not very accurate. Therefore, researchers have turned to recruiting general citizens who are interested in helping scientific research to do the pre-processing tasks such as species tagging. Although research teams can save time and money by recruiting general citizens to volunteer their time and skills to help data analysis, the reliability of contributed data varies a lot. Therefore, this research aims to investigate techniques to enhance the reliability of data contributed by general citizens in scientific research projects especially for acoustic sensing projects. In particular, we aim to investigate how to use reputation management to enhance data reliability. Reputation systems have been used to solve the uncertainty and improve data quality in many marketing and E-Commerce domains. The commercial organizations which have chosen to embrace the reputation management and implement the technology have gained many benefits. Data quality issues are significant to the domain of Citizen Science due to the quantity and diversity of people and devices involved. However, research on reputation management in this area is relatively new. We therefore start our investigation by examining existing reputation systems in different domains. Then we design novel reputation management approaches for Citizen Science projects to categorise participants and data. We have investigated some critical elements which may influence data reliability in Citizen Science projects. These elements include personal information such as location and education and performance information such as the ability to recognise certain bird calls. The designed reputation framework is evaluated by a series of experiments involving many participants for collecting and interpreting data, in particular, environmental acoustic data. Our research in exploring the advantages of reputation management in Citizen Science (or crowdsourcing in general) will help increase awareness among organizations that are unacquainted with its potential benefits.

Coal seam gas waters - their geochemical signature and potential environmental implications

Coal Seam Gas (CSG) is a form of natural gas (mainly methane) sorbed in underground coal beds. To mine this gas, wells are drilled directly into an underground coal seam and groundwater (CSG water) is pumped out to the surface. This lowers the downhole piezometric pressure and enables gas desporption from the coal matrix. In the United States, this gas has been extracted commercially since the 1980s. The economic success of US CSG projects has inspired exploration and development in Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, Queensland’s Bowen and Surat basins have been the subject of increased CSG development over the last decade. CSG growth in other Australian basins has not matured to the same level but exploration and development are taking place at an accelerated pace in the Sydney Basin (Illawarra and the Hunter Valley, NSW) and in the Gunnedah Basin. Similarly, CSG exploration in New Zealand has focused in the Waikato region (Maramarua and Huntly), in the West Coast region (Buller, Reefton, and Greymouth), and in Southland (Kaitangata, Mataura, and Ohai). Figure 1 shows a Shcoeller diagram with CSG samples from selected basins in Australia, New Zealand, and the USA. CSG water from all of these basins exhibit the same geochemical signature – low calcium, low magnesium, high bicarbonate, low sulphate and, sometimes, high chloride. This water quality is a direct result of specific biological and geological processes that have taken part in the formation of CSG. In general, these processes include the weathering of rocks (carbonates, dolomite, and halite), cation exchange with clays (responsible for enhanced sodium and depleted calcium and magnesium), and biogenic processes (accounting for the presence of high bicarbonate concentrations). The salinity of CSG waters tends to be brackish (TDS < 30000 mg/l) with a fairly neutral pH. These particular characteristics need to be taken into consideration when assessing water management and disposal alternatives. Environmental issues associated with CSG water disposal have been prominent in developed basins such as the Powder River Basin (PRB) in the United States. When disposed on the land or used for irrigation, water having a high dissolved salts content may reduce water availability to crops thus affecting crop yield. In addition, the high sodium, low calcium and low magnesium concentrations increase the potential to disperse soils and significantly reduce the water infiltration rate. Therefore, CSG waters need to be properly characterised, treated, and disposed to safeguard the environment without compromising other natural resources.

Influence of Rainfall and Catchment Characteristics on Urban Stormwater Quality

The accuracy and reliability of urban stormwater quality modelling outcomes are important for stormwater management decision making. The commonly adopted approach where only a limited number of factors are used to predict urban stormwater quality may not adequately represent the complexity of the quality response to a rainfall event or site-to-site differences to support efficient treatment design. This paper discusses an investigation into the influence of rainfall and catchment characteristics on urban stormwater quality in order to investigate the potential areas for errors in current stormwater quality modelling practices. It was found that the influence of rainfall characteristics on pollutant wash-off is step-wise based on specific thresholds. This means that a modelling approach where the wash-off process is predicted as a continuous function of rainfall intensity and duration is not appropriate. Additionally, other than conventional catchment characteristics, namely, land use and impervious surface fraction, other catchment characteristics such as impervious area layout, urban form and site specific characteristics have an important influence on both, pollutant build-up and wash-off processes. Finally, the use of solids as a surrogate to estimate other pollutant species was found to be inappropriate. Individually considering build-up and wash-off processes for each pollutant species should be the preferred option.

Will the application of spatial multi criteria evaluation technique enhance the quality of decision-making to resolve boundary conflicts in the Philippines?

Systematic studies that evaluate the quality of decision-making processes are relatively rare. Using the literature on decision quality, this research develops a framework to assess the quality of decision-making processes for resolving boundary conflicts in the Philippines. The evaluation framework breaks down the decision-making process into three components (the decision procedure, the decision method, and the decision unit) and is applied to two ex-post (one resolved and one unresolved) and one ex-ante cases. The evaluation results from the resolved and the unresolved cases show that the choice of decision method plays a minor role in resolving boundary conflicts whereas the choice of decision procedure is more influential. In the end, a decision unit can choose a simple method to resolve the conflict. The ex-ante case presents a follow-up intended to resolve the unresolved case for a changing decision-making process in which the associated decision unit plans to apply the spatial multi criteria evaluation (SMCE) tool as a decision method. The evaluation results from the ex-ante case confirm that the SMCE has the potential to enhance the decision quality because: a) it provides high quality as a decision method in this changing process, and b) the weaknesses associated with the decision unit and the decision procedure of the unresolved case were found to be eliminated in this process.

Reputation modelling in Citizen Science for environmental acoustic data analysis

Citizen Science projects are initiatives in which members of the general public participate in scientific research projects and perform or manage research-related tasks such as data collection and/or data annotation. Citizen Science is technologically possible and scientifically significant. However, although research teams can save time and money by recruiting general citizens to volunteer their time and skills to help data analysis, the reliability of contributed data varies a lot. Data reliability issues are significant to the domain of Citizen Science due to the quantity and diversity of people and devices involved. Participants may submit low quality, misleading, inaccurate, or even malicious data. Therefore, finding a way to improve the data reliability has become an urgent demand. This study aims to investigate techniques to enhance the reliability of data contributed by general citizens in scientific research projects especially for acoustic sensing projects. In particular, we propose to design a reputation framework to enhance data reliability and also investigate some critical elements that should be aware of during developing and designing new reputation systems.