The role of organic coatings in the enrichment of marine particles with selenium. The fixation of selenite on an adsorbed amino acid

The enrichment of marine particles with selenium cannot be explained as that with metals present in cationic form by complexation with anionic functional groups of adsorbed organic matter. Physicochemical data obtained using a model system are reported. The surface of the particles is modelized by a mercury electrode whose surface charge density can be easily changed, covered by a layer of adsorbed polymers. Studies with different kinds of macromolecules and salts show a specific interaction between adsorbed polyalanine and selenite. The results can be explained by the concordance of the distances between two oxygen atoms in this oxyanion and between two amine groups of the adsorbed polypeptide. A similar mechanism could occur in marine aggregates whatever their nature, as long as they contain amine groups at their surface which result in this concordance. Some prospects derived from the results are discussed.     

Analysis of dry and wet climate characteristics at Uttarakhand (India) using effective drought index

Natural Hazards - Drought is a complex natural disaster that adversely affects human life and the ecosystem. A variety of drought indexes are available for monitoring meteorological drought events....     

台风菲特暴雨诊断分析

"菲特"台风暴雨具有阶段性特征,包括台风远距离降水、台风倒槽和内螺旋雨带降水、台风外部螺旋雨带降水、台风残留低压环流与冷空气相互作用降水4个阶段。利用地面观测、气象雷达观测、NCEP分析资料,对"菲特"台风暴雨环流形势进行了分析。引导台风东移的高压东西部具有不同热力属性,东部暖性深厚、西部冷性浅薄。浅薄冷高压阻挡登陆台风继续西移,延长台风倒槽和外围螺旋雨带的降水时间。"丹娜丝"台风的靠近,有利于东南风水汽输送的增强。副热带高压的增强,在黄海上空逼近东移高空槽形成稳定的高空急流。文章提出与传统垂直风切变大、高空急流强的冷空气阻挡型不同的侵入型冷空气和台风相互作用形势。侵入型冷空气从低层入侵,影响台风残留低压的外围环流。在低压外围环流的北部形成较强的东北风,并与海上的东风对峙辐合形成海岸锋。冷空气侵入型的空间不对称特征明显:对流有效位能东高西低,垂直风切变西北高东南低。残留低压的中层受冷空气影响较小,沿海地区的东南风持续的时间更长。中层高位涡区与地面海岸锋的互应,为变性的台风残留低压暴雨提供有利条件。     

Influence of long‐period filter cut‐off on elastic spectral displacements

The effect of the long‐period filter cut‐off, T_c, on elastic spectral displacements is investigated using a strong ground‐motion database from Europe and the Middle East. The relation between the filter and oscillator responses is considered to observe the influence of T_c for both analogue and digital records, and the variations with site classification, magnitude, filter order and viscous damping. Robust statistics are derived using the re‐processed European data to generalize the effects of the long‐period filter cut‐off on maximum oscillator deformation demands as a function of these seismological and structural features. Statistics with a 95% confidence interval are derived to suggest usable period ranges for spectral displacement computations as a function of T_c. The results indicate that the maximum period at which spectral displacements can be confidently calculated depend strongly on the site class, magnitude and filter order. The period range where reliable long‐period information can be extracted from digital accelerograms is twice that of analogue records. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Critical evaluation of the customisation process of the UNDRR disaster resilience scorecard for cities to earthquake-induced soil liquefaction disaster events

Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering - As cities become larger and more densely populated the impacts of major earthquake events on city communities become more severe. Improving community resilience...     

Performance of shape indices and classification schemes for characterising perceptual shape complexity of building footprints in GIS

Shape characterisation is important in many fields dealing with spatial data. For this purpose, numerous shape analysis and recognition methods with different degrees of complexity have so far been developed. Among them, relatively simple indices are widely used in spatial applications, but their performance has not been investigated sufficiently, particularly for building footprints (BFs). Therefore, this article focuses on BF shape characterisation with shape indices and classification schemes in a GIS environment. This study consists of four phases. In the first phase, the criteria for BF shape complexity were identified, and accordingly, benchmark data was constructed by human experts in three shape complexity categories. In the second phase, 18 shape indices were selected from the literature and automatically computed in GIS. The performance of these indices was then statistically assessed with histograms, correlation matrix and boxplots, and consequently four indices were found to be appropriate for further investigation. In the third phase, two new indices (Equivalent Rectangular index and Roughness index) were proposed with the objective to measure some BF shape characteristics more efficiently. The proposed indices also were found to be appropriate with the same statistical assessment procedures. In the final phase, BF shape complexity categories were created with the pairs of six appropriate indices and four choropleth mapping classification schemes (equal intervals, natural break, standard deviation, and custom) in GIS. The performance of the index–scheme pairs was assessed against the benchmark data. The findings demonstrated that both new indices and two of the selected indices (Convexity and Rectangularity) delivered higher performance. The custom classification scheme was found more ideal to reveal absolute shape complexity with the index value ranges derived from the boxplots while the other classification schemes were more appropriate to reveal relative shape complexity.     

Evaluation of a recently proposed record selection and scaling procedure for low‐rise to mid‐rise reinforced concrete buildings and its use for probabilistic risk assessment studies

This paper evaluates a recent record selection and scaling procedure of the authors that can determine the probabilistic structural response of buildings behaving either in the elastic or post‐elastic range. This feature marks a significant strength on the procedure as the probabilistic structural response distribution conveys important information on probability‐based damage assessment. The paper presents case studies that show the utilization of the proposed record selection and scaling procedure as a tool for the estimation of damage states and derivation of site‐specific and region‐specific fragility functions. The method can be used to describe exceedance probabilities of damage limits under a certain target hazard level with known annual exceedance rate (via probabilistic seismic hazard assessment). Thus, the resulting fragility models can relate the seismicity of the region (or a site) with the resulting building performance in a more accurate manner. Under this context, this simple and computationally efficient record selection and scaling procedure can be benefitted significantly by probability‐based risk assessment methods that have started to be considered as indispensable for developing robust earthquake loss models. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An extension to the DRASTIC model to assess groundwater vulnerability to pollution: application to the Haouz aquifer of Marrakech (Morocco)

An extension to the DRASTIC model is proposed in order to assess aquifer vulnerability to pollution. In contrast to the DRASTIC model, which considers the unsaturated and saturated zones together and computes a global intrinsic vulnerability index, the suggested approach discriminates between the aquifer vertical vulnerability (a concept related to the pollutant percolation) and the groundwater susceptibility (a concept that depends on the behaviour and uses of the groundwater). This approach is applied to the Haouz aquifer (Morocco) that supplies water to the Marrakech area. This aquifer is widely overexploited and there is evidence that the groundwater quality is threatened by various sources of pollution. Evaluation of the vertical vulnerability indicates that the aquifer mainly presents a moderate-to-weak vertical vulnerability. The zones potentially most favourable to pollutant percolation are mainly located in Central Haouz, along or near the surface wadis. The aquifer susceptibility is high in places located near the N’Fis, Baaja and Issil wadis. Everywhere else, low-to-moderate susceptibility is observed. This new approach therefore enables areas of vertical vulnerability and areas of susceptibility to be delineated separately. As a result, it constitutes a valuable decision-making tool for optimising the management of aquifer water resources and land-use planning.     

A procedure on ground motion selection and scaling for nonlinear response of simple structural systems

This study presents a ground-motion selection and scaling methodology that preserves the basic seismological features of the scaled records with reduced scatter in the nonlinear structural response. The methodology modifies each strong-motion recording with known fundamental seismological parameters using the estimations of ground-motion prediction equations for a given target hazard level. It provides robust estimations on target building response through scaled ground motions and calculates the dispersion about this target. This alternative procedure is not only useful for record scaling and selection but, upon its further refinement, can also be advantageous for the probabilistic methods that assess the engineering demand parameters for a given target hazard level. Case studies that compare the performance of the proposed procedure with some other record selection and scaling methods suggest its usefulness for building performance assessment and loss models. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The high‐frequency limit of usable response spectral ordinates from filtered analogue and digital strong‐motion accelerograms

The range of response frequencies for which spectral ordinates obtained from accelerograms may be considered reliable is limited by several factors, primary among them being the effects of filters that are routinely applied to remove noise from the records. Considerable attention has been focused on the low‐frequency limit of the usable spectral ordinates because of various engineering applications requiring long‐period spectral accelerations or displacements but only recently have rational approaches to selecting the high‐frequency limit been proposed. Since there are applications for which the high‐frequency spectral ordinates are important, the approaches to this issue presented in the recent studies are reviewed and their application to the ground‐motion database from Europe and the Middle East is explored. On the basis of the results of these analyses, it is concluded that a large proportion of this dataset can be used to provide reliable estimates of response spectral ordinates at much shorter periods than may have previously been considered feasible. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.