Resilience and brittleness in the ALERTA RIO system: a field study about the decision-making of forecasters

Natural disasters, particularly those triggered by heavy rainfall, may cause major damage and death. However, if an accurate early warning is issued, the damage can be mitigated. In Latin America and Brazil, characteristics of socioeconomic development often lead to a disorderly growth of cities and, consequently, occupation and irregular construction in risk areas. Therefore, forecasts of heavy rainfall, as well as preventative and mitigatory actions based on meteorological data/alerts, are essential to saving lives and minimizing material loss. An event that would have benefited from such actions is that which occurred in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro in January 2011, when over 800 people lost their lives. This work describes the first research initiative on resilience engineering domain in systems to forecast heavy rains in Rio de Janeiro. The results indicate important sources of brittleness in the system that supports the work of meteorologists, mainly related to the technical and organizational framework, and suggests that the main source of resilience in dealing with critical situations is the tacit knowledge of experts.     

Modelling Positional Uncertainty of Line Features by Accounting for Stochastic Deviations from Straight Line Segments

The assessment of positional uncertainty in line and area features is often based on uncertainty in the coordinates of their elementary vertices which are assumed to be connected by straight lines. Such an approach disregards uncertainty caused by sampling and approximation of a curvilinear feature by a sequence of straight line segments. In this article, a method is proposed that also allows for the latter type of uncertainty by modelling random rectangular deviations from the conventional straight line segments. Using the model on a dense network of sub‐vertices, the contribution of uncertainty due to approximation is emphasised; the sampling effect can be assessed by applying it on a small set of randomly inserted sub‐vertices. A case study demonstrates a feasible way of parameterisation based on assumptions of joint normal distributions for positional errors of the vertices and the rectangular deviations and a uniform distribution of missed sub‐vertices along line segments. Depending on the magnitudes of the different sources of uncertainty, not accounting for potential deviations from straight line segments may drastically underestimate the positional uncertainty of line features.     

TAOS – The Taiwanese‐American Occultation Survey

The Taiwanese‐American Occultation Survey (TAOS) seeks to determine the number and size spectrum for small (∼3 km) bodies in the Kuiper Belt. This will be accomplished by searching for the brief occultations of bright stars (R ∼ 14) by these objects. We have designed and built a special purpose photometric monitoring system for this purpose. TAOS comprises four 50 cm telescopes, each equipped with a 2048 × 2048 pixel CCD camera, in a compact array located in the central highlands of Taiwan. TAOS will monitor up to 2 000 stars at 5 Hz. The system went into scientific operation in the autumn of 2005. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Elasto‐plastic analysis of block structures through a homogenization method

The paper describes the development and numerical implementation of a constitutive relationship for modeling the elasto‐plastic behavior of block structures with periodic texture, regarded at a macroscopic scale as homogenized anisotropic media. The macroscopic model is shown to retain memory of the mechanical characteristics of the joints and of the shape of the blocks. The overall mechanical properties display anisotropy and singularities in the yield surface, arising from the discrete nature of the block structure and the geometrical arrangement of the units. The model is formulated in the framework of multi‐surface plasticity. It is implemented in an finite element (FE) code by means of two different algorithms: an implicit return mapping scheme and a minimization algorithm directly derived from the Haar–Karman principle. The model is validated against analytical and experimental results: the comparison between the homogenized continuum and the original block assembly shows a good agreement in terms of ultimate inelastic behavior, when the size of the block is small as compared with that of the whole assembly. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mobility of metals in nickel mine spoil materials

An understanding of the biogeochemical behaviour of metals in mine spoil materials is a prerequisite to rehabilitate Ni mining sites. The objective of this study was to characterize the fate of metals in different Ni ore spoil materials as influenced by hydrological conditions and fertilisation practices. In tropical ultramafic complexes, the different stages of lateritic weathering lead to two types of ores, and therefore, to two spoil types. They are mainly either a clay-rich saprolite, so-called “garnierite”, enriched in phyllosilicates, or a limonitic material, enriched in Fe oxides. Lysimeter columns were designed to monitor leaching waters through both spoil materials. The garnieritic spoil released higher concentrations of Mg (mean = 2.25 mg L⁻¹), Ni (0.39 mg L⁻¹) and Cr (1.19 mg L⁻¹) than the limonitic spoil (Mg = 0.5 mg L⁻¹; Ni = 0.03 mg L⁻¹ and Cr = 0.25 mg L⁻¹). Chromium was mainly in an anionic form in leaching solutions. As exchangeable pools of Cr(VI) in limonite (980 mg kg⁻¹ of KH₂PO₄-extractable Cr) are considerable its release in water may still occur in the case of a pH increase. In mixed spoil, metal concentrations were almost as low as in the limonitic one. The effect of mineral-N fertilisation was a strong release of cations (Ni, Mg) into the leachate. Phosphate amendment did not affect the soil solution composition under experimental conditions.     

云南天文台1m望远镜卡焦(缩焦)CCD测光系统的初步研究

用云台１ｍ望远镜镜卡焦（缩焦）ＣＣＤ测光系统对测光标准星进行了ＢＶＲＩ四色测光,计算得到了该系统的转换方程及其转换结果,并对计算结果进行了分析讨论．     

The 1925 meteorite fall near Ellemeet and Serooskerke,the Netherlands

Two meteorites impacted in 1925 around the town of Serooskerke on the isle of Schouwen, the Netherlands. The largest mass is widely known as the “Ellemeet” diogenite, while a second mass, heavily weathered due to environmental exposure, also survived until the present day. This work aims to reconstruct the history of the 1925 fall and for the first time documents the second mass, known as the “Serooskerke,” by integrating a historical and experimental approach. The study of historical news archives and cadastral records redefined the 1925 impact site at N 51°42.086′ E 3°49.789′. Environmental exposure experiments reproducing the effects of rainfall and frost weathering identified the latter as the main cause for the second mass' reported disintegration in the field sometime during the 1925–1926 winter. The bulk mineralogy of the second mass was established using XRD powder diffraction for a 2θ range of 3–70° and was found to be identical to an Ellemeet reference sample. UV/VIS/nIR spectroscopy (300–2500 nm) was subsequently used to broadly compare the second mass to HED clan meteorites Bouvante, EET87503, Johnstown and asteroid 4 Vesta in order to corroborate its vestan origin. The historical and geographic relationship of the two masses and the comparable bulk mineralogy supported the pairing of these two meteorites. This makes the Serooskerke a valuable legacy of the 1925 fall, especially as the location of ~50% of the remaining Ellemeet mass is presently unknown.