Wind speed perception and risk

Background How accurately do people perceive extreme wind speeds and how does that perception affect the perceived risk? Prior research on human–wind interaction has focused on comfort levels in urban settings or knock-down thresholds. No systematic experimental research has attempted to assess people's ability to estimate extreme wind speeds and perceptions of their associated risks. Method We exposed 76 people to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 mph (4.5, 8.9, 13.4, 17.9, 22.3, and 26.8 m/s) winds in randomized orders and asked them to estimate wind speed and the corresponding risk they felt. Results Multilevel modeling showed that people were accurate at lower wind speeds but overestimated wind speeds at higher levels. Wind speed perceptions mediated the direct relationship between actual wind speeds and perceptions of risk (i.e., the greater the perceived wind speed, the greater the perceived risk). The number of tropical cyclones people had experienced moderated the strength of the actual–perceived wind speed relationship; consequently, mediation was stronger for people who had experienced fewer storms. Conclusion These findings provide a clearer understanding of wind and risk perception, which can aid development of public policy solutions toward communicating the severity and risks associated with natural disasters.

Urban traffic state estimation: Fusing point and zone based data

Loop detectors are the oldest and widely used traffic data source. On urban arterials, they are mainly installed for signal control. Recently state of the art Bluetooth MAC Scanners (BMS) has significantly captured the interest of stakeholders for exploiting it for area wide traffic monitoring. Loop detectors provide flow- a fundamental traffic parameter; whereas BMS provides individual vehicle travel time between BMS stations. Hence, these two data sources complement each other, and if integrated should increase the accuracy and reliability of the traffic state estimation. This paper proposed a model that integrates loops and BMS data for seamless travel time and density estimation for urban signalised network. The proposed model is validated using both real and simulated data and the results indicate that the accuracy of the proposed model is over 90%.

Quantitative estimation of bioturbation based on digital image analysis

Quantitative determination of modification of primary sediment features, by the activity of organisms (i.e., bioturbation) is essential in geosciences. Some methods proposed since the 1960s are mainly based on visual or subjective determinations. The first semiquantitative evaluations of the Bioturbation Index, Ichnofabric Index, or the amount of bioturbation were attempted, in the best cases using a series of flashcards designed in different situations. Recently, more effective methods involve the use of analytical and computational methods such as X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging or computed tomography; these methods are complex and often expensive. This paper presents a compilation of different methods, using Adobe® Photoshop® software CS6, for digital estimation that are a part of the IDIAP (Ichnological Digital Analysis Images Package), which is an inexpensive alternative to recently proposed methods, easy to use, and especially recommended for core samples. The different methods — “Similar Pixel Selection Method (SPSM)”, “Magic Wand Method (MWM)” and the “Color Range Selection Method (CRSM)” — entail advantages and disadvantages depending on the sediment (e.g., composition, color, texture, porosity, etc.) and ichnological features (size of traces, infilling material, burrow wall, etc.). The IDIAP provides an estimation of the amount of trace fossils produced by a particular ichnotaxon, by a whole ichnocoenosis or even for a complete ichnofabric. We recommend the application of the complete IDIAP to a given case study, followed by selection of the most appropriate method. The IDIAP was applied to core material recovered from the IODP Expedition 339, enabling us, for the first time, to arrive at a quantitative estimation of the discrete trace fossil assemblage in core samples.

Internal audit involvement in enterprise risk management

Purpose The paper examines the impact of internal auditors’ involvement in Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) on perceptions of their willingness to report a breakdown in risk procedures and whether a strong relationship with the audit committee affects such willingness to report. The study also investigates the use of ERM and the role of internal audit in ERM in Australian private and public sector entities. Design/methodology/approach The study uses an experimental design, manipulating (i) the internal auditor’s involvement in ERM and (ii) the strength of the relationship between internal audit and the audit committee. Participants are 117 certified internal auditors. The study also gathers descriptive data on the use of ERM. Findings The study indicates that a high involvement in ERM impacts the perceptions of internal auditors’ willingness to report a breakdown in risk procedures to the audit committee. However, a strong relationship with the audit committee does not appear to affect their perceived willingness to report. The study also finds that the majority of organisations have recently adopted ERM. Internal auditors are involved in ERM assurance activities but some also engage in activities that could compromise objectivity.

Setting water quality objectives for the health of freshwater fish

An important responsibility of the Environment Protection Authority, Victoria, is to set objectives for levels of environmental contaminants. To support the development of environmental objectives for water quality, a need has been identified to understand the dual impacts of concentration and duration of a contaminant on biota in freshwater streams. For suspended solids contamination, information reported by Newcombe and Jensen [ North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 16(4):693--727, 1996] study of freshwater fish and the daily suspended solids data from the United States Geological Survey stream monitoring network is utilised. The study group was requested to examine both the utility of the Newcombe and Jensen and the USA data, as well as the formulation of a procedure for use by the Environment Protection Authority Victoria that takes concentration and duration of harmful episodes into account when assessing water quality. The extent to which the impact of a toxic event on fish health could be modelled deterministically was also considered. It was found that concentration and exposure duration were the main compounding factors on the severity of effects of suspended solids on freshwater fish. A protocol for assessing the cumulative effect on fish health and a simple deterministic model, based on the biology of gill harm and recovery, was proposed. References D. W. T. Au, C. A. Pollino, R. S. S Wu, P. K. S. Shin, S. T. F. Lau, and J. Y. M. Tang. Chronic effects of suspended solids on gill structure, osmoregulation, growth, and triiodothyronine in juvenile green grouper epinephelus coioides . Marine Ecology Press Series , 266:255--264, 2004. J.C. Bezdek, S.K. Chuah, and D. Leep. Generalized k-nearest neighbor rules. Fuzzy Sets and Systems , 18:237--26, 1986. E. T. Champagne, K. L. Bett-Garber, A. M. McClung, and C. Bergman. {Sensory characteristics of diverse rice cultivars as influenced by genetic and environmental factors}. Cereal Chem. , {81}:{237--243}, {2004}. S. G. Cheung and P. K. S. Shin. Size effects of suspended particles on gill damage in green-lipped mussel perna viridis. Marine Pollution Bulletin , 51(8--12):801--810, 2005. D. H. Evans. The fish gill: site of action and model for toxic effects of environmental pollutants. Environmental Health Perspectives , 71:44--58, 1987. G. C. Grigg. The failure of oxygen transport in a fish at low levels of ambient oxygen. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. , 29:1253--1257, 1969. G. Holmes, A. Donkin, and I.H. Witten. {Weka: A machine learning workbench}. In Proceedings of the Second Australia and New Zealand Conference on Intelligent Information Systems , volume {24}, pages {357--361}, {Brisbane, Australia}, {1994}. {IEEE Computer Society}. D. D. Macdonald and C. P. Newcombe. Utility of the stress index for predicting suspended sediment effects: response to comments. North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 13:873--876, 1993. C. P. Newcombe. Suspended sediment in aquatic ecosystems: ill effects as a function of concentration and duration of exposure. Technical report, British Columbia Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, Habitat Protection branch, Victoria, 1994. C. P. Newcombe and J. O. T. Jensen. Channel suspended sediment and fisheries: A synthesis for quantitative assessment of risk and impact. North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 16(4):693--727, 1996. C. P. Newcombe and D. D. Macdonald. Effects of suspended sediments on aquatic ecosystems. North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 11(1):72--82, 1991. K. Schmidt-Nielsen. Scaling. Why is animal size so important? Cambridge University Press, NY, 1984. J. S. Schwartz, A. Simon, and L. Klimetz. Use of fish functional traits to associate in-stream suspended sediment transport metrics with biological impairment. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment , 179(1--4):347--369, 2011. E. Al Shaw and J. S. Richardson. Direct and indirect effects of sediment pulse duration on stream invertebrate assemb ages and rainbow trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) growth and survival. Canadian Journal of Fish and Aquatic Science , 58:2213--2221, 2001. P. Tiwari and H. Hasegawa. {Demand for housing in Tokyo: A discrete choice analysis}. Regional Studies , {38}:{27--42}, {2004}. Y. Tramblay, A. Saint-Hilaire, T. B. M. J. Ouarda, F. Moatar, and B Hecht. Estimation of local extreme suspended sediment concentrations in california rivers. Science of the Total Environment , 408:4221--

A method for risk analysis across governance systems : a great barrier reef case study

Healthy governance systems are key to delivering sound environmental management outcomes from global to local scales. There are, however, surprisingly few risk assessment methods that can pinpoint those domains and sub-domains within governance systems that are most likely to influence good environmental outcomes at any particular scale, or those if absent or dysfunctional, most likely to prevent effective environmental management. This paper proposes a new risk assessment method for analysing governance systems. This method is then tested through its preliminary application to a significant real-world context: governance as it relates to the health of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The GBR exists at a supra-regional scale along most of the north eastern coast of Australia. Brodie et al (2012 Mar. Pollut. Bull. 65 81-100) have recently reviewed the state and trend of the health of the GBR, finding that overall trends remain of significant concern. At the same time, official international concern over the governance of the reef has recently been signalled globally by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). These environmental and political contexts make the GBR an ideal candidate for use in testing and reviewing the application of improved tools for governance risk assessment. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Safe perioperative fasting : implementation of evidence based guidelines and an ‘at risk’ checklist

Introduction Guidelines existed at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) to direct preoperative/pre-procedural fasting in day patients undergoing general anaesthetic. However audit, risk analyses and a recent research project at the RCH identified prolonged pre-procedural fasting times in children undergoing day surgical and gastroenterology procedures. Aims 1. Reduce median fasting time to <8 hrs for children admitted for a day procedure under general anaesthetic; 2. Identify children at risk of perioperative hypoglycaemia. Methods The study was conducted in 4 phases: 1) revision and implementation of evidence-based perioperative fasting guidelines with staff education relating to these guidelines; 2) cross-sectional descriptive study with day surgical patients (n = 377) requiring preoperative fasting. ‘Normal risk’ and ‘High risk’ groups were identified for fasting hypoglycaemia using an ‘at risk’ checklist. Venous blood glucose (BGL) testing was performed at a) anaesthetic induction; b) prior to first caloric food/fluid postoperatively; 3) chart audit to evaluate efficacy of guidelines and parent information; 4) development of recommendations for clinical practice. Results The median fasting time for children having morning surgery (14 hrs, IQ range 5–22 hrs) was twice as long compared to afternoon lists (7 hrs, IQ range 6–22 hrs) (p < 0.001). Median fasting times were not significantly different between ‘at risk’ and control groups (p = 0.496). However the proportion of children who experienced hypoglycaemia (BGL <3 mmol/L) was greater in the ‘at risk’ group (5, 8%) compared to the control group (18, 4.3%). Although not statistically significant (x2 = 2.254, p = 0.133), ‘at risk’ children appear more likely to experience hypoglycaemia as children in the control group, constituting a clinically significant finding. Conclusion Appropriate identification and management of ‘high risk’ children, will reduce the risk of deleterious sequelae in children undergoing surgical or investigative procedures requiring general anaesthesia.

Estimating present day extreme water level exceedance probabilities around the coastline of Australia : tides, extra-tropical storm surges and mean sea level

The occurrence of extreme water levels along low-lying, highly populated and/or developed coastlines can lead to considerable loss of life and billions of dollars of damage to coastal infrastructure. Therefore it is vitally important that the exceedance probabilities of extreme water levels are accurately evaluated to inform risk-based flood management, engineering and future land-use planning. This ensures the risk of catastrophic structural failures due to under-design or expensive wastes due to over-design are minimised. This paper estimates for the first time present day extreme water level exceedence probabilities around the whole coastline of Australia. A high-resolution depth averaged hydrodynamic model has been configured for the Australian continental shelf region and has been forced with tidal levels from a global tidal model and meteorological fields from a global reanalysis to generate a 61-year hindcast of water levels. Output from this model has been successfully validated against measurements from 30 tide gauge sites. At each numeric coastal grid point, extreme value distributions have been fitted to the derived time series of annual maxima and the several largest water levels each year to estimate exceedence probabilities. This provides a reliable estimate of water level probabilities around southern Australia; a region mainly impacted by extra-tropical cyclones. However, as the meteorological forcing used only weakly includes the effects of tropical cyclones, extreme water level probabilities are underestimated around the western, northern and north-eastern Australian coastline. In a companion paper we build on the work presented here and more accurately include tropical cyclone-induced surges in the estimation of extreme water level. The multi-decadal hindcast generated here has been used primarily to estimate extreme water level exceedance probabilities but could be used more widely in the future for a variety of other research and practical applications.

Variation in risk seeking behaviour following large losses : a natural experiment

This study explores people's risk taking behaviour after having suffered large real-world losses following a natural disaster. Using the margins of the 2011 Australian floods (Brisbane) as a natural experimental setting, we find that homeowners who were victims of the floods and face large losses in property values are 50% more likely to opt for a risky gamble -- a scratch card giving a small chance of a large gain ($500,000) -- than for a sure amount of comparable value ($10). This finding is consistent with prospect theory predictions regarding the adoption of a risk-seeking attitude after a loss.

From impact assessment to user-friendly risk management decision-making

In earlier cultures and societies, hazards and risks to human health were dealt with by methods derived from myth, metaphor and ritual. In modem society however, notions of hazard and risk have been transformed from the level of a folk discourse to that of an expert centred concept (Plough & Krimsky, 1987). With the professionalization of risk and hazard analysis came a preferred framework for decision making based on a range of 'technical' methodologies (Giere, 1991 ). This is especially true for decision processes relating to risk assessment and management, and impact assessment. Such approaches however, often entail narrow technical-based theoretical assumptions about human behaviour and the natural world, and the· methods used. They therefore carry 'in-built' error factors that contribute considerable uncertainty to the results.

Conflicting notions of risk : the chasm of conflict between institutions and the public

The trust and credibility gap between institutional regulators and the public is based on fundamental social and cultural differences related to power and authority. It is also associated with the 'distance' of a bureaucracies from those whom they serve. The nature of public concern about risk may be investigated by considering specific cognitive decision making 'rules' such as 'familiarity' of a hazard or 'voluntariness' of exposure. A more complete appreciation of the 'how' and 'why' of public response to danger from industrial hazards can be gained by appreciating these 'rules' within the broader context of mis-communication between 'elite' regulators and a highly diverse public. If the results of risk assessments are expressed in technical terms alone, it is unlikely that any real communication will occur. Further, if issues related to the 'remote' nature of much institutional decision making are not addressed, closure of the 'gap' may be difficult to bring about.

Integrated approach for diagnostics and prognostics of HP LNG pump based on health state probability estimation

Effective machine fault prognostic technologies can lead to elimination of unscheduled downtime and increase machine useful life and consequently lead to reduction of maintenance costs as well as prevention of human casualties in real engineering asset management. This paper presents a technique for accurate assessment of the remnant life of machines based on health state probability estimation technique and historical failure knowledge embedded in the closed loop diagnostic and prognostic system. To estimate a discrete machine degradation state which can represent the complex nature of machine degradation effectively, the proposed prognostic model employed a classification algorithm which can use a number of damage sensitive features compared to conventional time series analysis techniques for accurate long-term prediction. To validate the feasibility of the proposed model, the five different level data of typical four faults from High Pressure Liquefied Natural Gas (HP-LNG) pumps were used for the comparison of intelligent diagnostic test using five different classification algorithms. In addition, two sets of impeller-rub data were analysed and employed to predict the remnant life of pump based on estimation of health state probability using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. The results obtained were very encouraging and showed that the proposed prognostics system has the potential to be used as an estimation tool for machine remnant life prediction in real life industrial applications.

Recursive pathways to marginal likelihood estimation with prior-sensitivity analysis

We investigate the utility to computational Bayesian analyses of a particular family of recursive marginal likelihood estimators characterized by the (equivalent) algorithms known as "biased sampling" or "reverse logistic regression" in the statistics literature and "the density of states" in physics. Through a pair of numerical examples (including mixture modeling of the well-known galaxy dataset) we highlight the remarkable diversity of sampling schemes amenable to such recursive normalization, as well as the notable efficiency of the resulting pseudo-mixture distributions for gauging prior-sensitivity in the Bayesian model selection context. Our key theoretical contributions are to introduce a novel heuristic ("thermodynamic integration via importance sampling") for qualifying the role of the bridging sequence in this procedure, and to reveal various connections between these recursive estimators and the nested sampling technique.

Numerical estimation of 3D mechanical forces exerted by cells on non-linear materials

The exchange of physical forces in both cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions play a significant role in a variety of physiological and pathological processes, such as cell migration, cancer metastasis, inflammation and wound healing. Therefore, great interest exists in accurately quantifying the forces that cells exert on their substrate during migration. Traction Force Microscopy (TFM) is the most widely used method for measuring cell traction forces. Several mathematical techniques have been developed to estimate forces from TFM experiments. However, certain simplifications are commonly assumed, such as linear elasticity of the materials and/or free geometries, which in some cases may lead to inaccurate results. Here, cellular forces are numerically estimated by solving a minimization problem that combines multiple non-linear FEM solutions. Our simulations, free from constraints on the geometrical and the mechanical conditions, show that forces are predicted with higher accuracy than when using the standard approaches.

Pandemic planning as risk management : how fared the Australian Federation?

The role of law in managing public health challenges such as influenza pandemics poses special challenges. This article reviews Australian plans in the context of the H1N1 09 experience to assess whether risk management was facilitated or inhibited by the "number" of levels or phases of management, the degree of prescriptive detail for particular phases, the number of plans, the clarity of the relationship between them, and the role of the media. Despite differences in the content and form of the plans at the time of the H1N1 09 emerging pandemic, the article argues that in practice, the plans proved to be responsive and robust bases for managing pandemic risks. It is suggested that this was because the plans proved to be frameworks for coordination rather than prescriptive straitjackets, to be only one component of the regulatory response, and to offer the varied tool box of possible responses, as called for by the theory of responsive regulation. Consistent with the principle of subsidiarity, it is argued that the plans did not inhibit localised responses such as selective school closures or rapid responses to selected populations such as cruise ship passengers.