The application of high albedo surfaces and highly reflective or 'cool' materials is often advocated as a means to mitigate urban heat island and to decrease indoor temperatures and thus to reduce cooling loads in warm weather. Besides the horizontal surfaces of roofs and roads, the application of reflective coatings is increasingly recommended for walls as well. In case of facades, the influence of surface reflectivity is shown to be greater for lightweight structures. The effect is most pronounced during daytime, under clear and calm conditions. The current paper investigates the role of facade albedo, heat transmission coefficient and fenestration ratio on the canopy layer microclimate though a numerical simulation study. To consider the interplay between built form and facade properties, the study takes four metropolitan urban block typologies from Budapest as models. The examination focuses on the airspace within these urban blocks. Considering that mean radiant temperature and air temperature govern human thermal comfort during clear and calm weather, the analysis is performed on the basis of these two parameters. The study utilizes ENVI-met for microclimate modeling and MATLAB for data analysis. The results indicate that among the three facade parameters albedo drives the canopy layer microclimate. Changes in facade albedo are found to be directly proportional with changes in air and radiant temperatures: higher values increased both air and radiant temperatures. The impact of fenestration ratio is primarily exerted though the albedo indirectly, as increasing fenestration ratio decreases the albedo of walls. The influence of heat transmission coefficient is found to be marginal.
10C.7
Analyses of Environmental Factors Affecting Change in Microclimate Urban Bioclimatology
Naoshi Kakitsuba, Meijo University, Nagoya-shi, Aichi Prefecture, Japan
Prior to the present study, microclimates in the housing estate located east of Nagoya city, JAPAN had been consecutively observed for eight years. The results indicated that cool or hot spots appeared periodically on the specific locations. Considering such unfathomable observation, the present study was designed to analyze an underlying mechanism of microclimate formation.
Ambient temperature (Ta), relative humidity, wind velocity (V), wind direction, solar irradiation and surface temperature of planimetric features in the vicinity of the location in the housing estate were observed in addition to observation to estimate effect of a difference in soil surface and solar irradiation on change in Ta. The results demonstrated that wind direction, wind temperature and
surface temperature of planimetric features were the major contributory factors. For example, it was found that Ta was directly proportional to V (r=0.6) in summer whereas it was inversely proportional to V (r=0.86) in winter. The underlying mechanism of microclimate development was then discussed.
11A.1
Perspectives on Climate Mediated Health Effects of Air Pollution Atmospheric Effects on Human Health II
Naresh Kumar, University of Miami, Miami, FL
The atmospheric physical and chemical processes can greatly alter the concentration, type and composition of air pollutants when they interact with weather conditions such as solar radiation, temperature, wind, and relative humidity. While the health effects of air pollution have subject to intensive research investigation for the past several decades, how climate especially extreme weather events mediates the effects of air pollution on health has received little attention. This research offers perspectives on interdisciplinary data and methodologies to conduct research on climate mediated health effects of air pollution, and future implications of such this type of research to face and manage the challenges of global warming. We will discuss an application of the effects of criteria pollutants (PM2.5, CO, O3, NO2, SO2 and Pb), mediated by extreme temperature and precipitation, on adverse birth outcomes, including premature delivery and low birth weight.
11A.2
The global monitoring of meteor-tropic effects: results for the region of North America and the Caribbean
Atmospheric Effects on Human Health II
Luis B. Lecha Estela, Centro de Estudios y Servicios Ambientales (CESAM) de Villa Clara, Santa Clara, Villa Clara, Cuba
At the end of the XX century Lecha and Delgado (1996) developed a method of biometeorological forecasts for Cuba, supported on the observed relationship between the occurrence of abrupt weather changes and the increase of the daily number of attentions by some chronic illnesses in the medical emergency services of the cities of Havana, Santa Clara and Sagua la Grande. The biometeorological forecasts are operational by means of the PronBiomet model, necessary to calculate the differences in 24 hours of the partial oxygen density of the air (PODA index), starting from the Global Forecast System objective forecasts of the atmospheric pressure at the sea level, the surface temperature and humidity of the air available on-line from (http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/filter_gfs_hd.pl). The emission of biometeorological forecasts to the Cuban health institutions began experimentally in May of 2007 and their content underwent national validation during 3 years (2007-2009). Later on applications were made in Brazil (2010), Spain (2011) and Mexico (2012-2013), being obtained satisfactory results in all cases. The official service to the health institutions of Villa Clara province began in February of 2012 and so far, the 70 emitted forecasts have had acceptance inside the medical community and a good operational performance, given appropriately informative watches, warnings or alerts to the health system before the occurrence of significant meteor-tropic effects among the local population. However, the effectiveness has shown different success levels according to the illness: for the increases of bronchial asthma crises (97%), in the hypertensive crises (88%), with the brain-vascular illnesses (85%), the migraines (82%) and they were acceptable in the case of the cardiovascular diseases (75%). That is to say, with 3 successes every 4 emitted forecasts. The practical implementation of
the service from the medical counterpart allowed the design and implementation of new procedures for the surveillance and treatment of the meteor-pathological reactions that occurs in the population, associated to abrupt weather changes or to the presence of other adverse environmental conditions.
The procedures of surveillance and treatment of the arterial hypertension and the bronchial asthma attentions at Emergencies are already working, and they are in development new procedures for the attentions of medical urgencies due to brain-vascular and cardiovascular diseases. From the year 2008 the application of the model PronBiomet was extended to the regions of North America and the Caribbean, South America, Europe and oriental Asia, as well as personalized applications were programmed for isolated countries as Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Mexico, besides Cuba that also has a high resolution version of the model. It permited to develop the daily & global monitoring of the more significant meteor-tropic effects, using in all the cases the normalized scale of the PODA index like the main reference biometeorological indicator for analysis and comparisons among regions and populations. The monitoring of meteor-tropic effects is expressed in synoptic-statistical terms by means of the mean number of days with contrasting and very contrasting weather changes in boxes of 5 X 5 degrees of latitude and longitude, containing each one of them: 121 nodes of data obtained from the GFS database with a space resolution of 0.5 degree. The workspace for North America and the Caribbean extends from the 10°N up to 80°N and from the 40°W up to 120°W, with a total of 12,400 nodes with information of the atmospheric pressure reduced at the mean sea level, the surface temperature and humidity of the air, variables needed to calculate the partial oxygen density of the air and its differences in 24 hours (inter-daily) for each node of the region and every day during the period from January of 2008 until December of 2013. The results of the monitoring made for this geographical region indicate that it was happened a very remarkable increase of the biometeorological inter-daily contrasts during the last two years in a wide geographical area that extends from Alberta in Canada until the southern states of the USA. A clear regional difference exists in the spatial patterns of occurrence of inter-daily weather contrasts, corresponding to the increase of the PODA index (hyperoxia sensations) most of the extreme contrasts in the northern part of the area of more frequent contrasts; while in the southern portions of the area of maxima contrasts the decrease of the PODA index prevails (hypoxia sensations) such as the cause of occurrence of the more outstanding meteor-tropic effects. From the point of view of their genesis, the hyperoxia sensations are related with the influence of the polar air masses and the hypoxia sensations are in correspondence with the frequent formation of extratropicales cyclones, that coming from the Gulf of Mexico or near areas move through the southern and oriental states of the USA. The maximum nuclei of inter-daily weather contrasts are located and they displace, according to the season of the year, following the behavior of the main synoptic patterns, reaching in the quarter December-February their maximum decline to the south and in the summer (quarter June-August) their maximum northern decline. However in the tropical zone of the region and along the Pacific ocean coast, including most of the west coast of Mexico, the behavior and influence of the subtropical anticyclones and the presence of hurricanes and tropical waves determines the highest or smaller occurrence of inter-daily weather contrasts able to produce significant meteor-tropics effects. The increment of meteor-tropic impacts associated to intense winter storms on the USA and Canada during the winter 2013-2014 coincide with the remarkable increase of winter cyclones affecting Europe, especially Spain, France and UK. Also the presence of a "polar vortex" was observed in the half troposphere in the middle of the United States last winter 2013-2014. It favored the occurrence of significant biometeorological contrasts in the region. Such evidences may be early signals of a new global very meteor-tropic pattern of the general circulation of the atmosphere, that it would be consequence of the increasing unbalance of mass and energy through latitudes, derived from an increase, already physically perceptible, of the temperature of the whole climate system.
11A.3
ACOUSTIC CLIMATE OF SELECTED ROAD SECTORS IN POLAND AND ITS INFLUENCE ON QUALITY OF LIFE
Atmospheric Effects on Human Health II
Krzysztof Blazejczyk, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warszawa, Poland; J. Baranowski and A.
Blazejczyk
Traffic noise is integral part of life in contemporary societies. Because of increasing number of cars and development of road network about 20% of population of Poland lives under great acoustic stress and its number increases from year to year. There are some regulations dealing with environmental noise in specific types of landscape and settlements. The paper will present the essential results of field research of acoustic climate observed in the surroundings of selected sectors of national roads in Poland. The noise levels were measured in different distance (up to 1 km) from state roads and highways. Daytime and night levels of noise were monitored. Several features of acoustic climate (equivalent noise level, its amplitude and frequency of overloaded noise) were compared with traffic characteristics. We have observed the greatest influence of road traffic within 200-300 m belt along studied roads. 500 m was defined as a distance of stressed acoustic climate. When considering propagation of noise we have found great influence of local environmental factors as relief, land cover and ground moisture. The research was supported by Polish National Centre for Research (NCN) grant No N N306 564940, “Multi criteria assessment of the influence of selected road corridors on natural environment and socio-economic development of surrounded areas”.
11A.4
Weather and Cardiovascular Diseases in Quebec Using Empirical Mode Decomposition Atmospheric Effects on Human Health II
Pierre Masselot, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), Quebec, QC, Canada; F.
Chebana, D. Belanger, B. Abdous, A. St-Hilaire and T. B. M. J. Ouarda
Climate change has an impact on human health with an increase in mortality associated to extreme meteorological events. Among the diseases influenced by climate change are cardiovascular diseases (CVD) which represent the second cause of mortality in Quebec. Therefore, the understanding and quantification of the influence of weather on CVD is an important issue for future years. The difficulty to quantify the influence of weather on health lies partly in the complexity of their cycles. Indeed, weather processes are often nonstationary, interdependent and can present several levels of influence which can make the true influence difficult to detect. To overcome such drawbacks, empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is performed on weather data series to obtain components called intrinsic mode functions (IMF). An IMF represents one mode of oscillation of the original series, e.g. annual variations of temperatures. They are basic oscillations allowing little changes in amplitude and frequency over the IMF. They are (quasi) stationary and orthogonal to each other. Moreover, the sum of all the obtained IMFs from a series is equal to this series, meaning that there is no loss of information. The methodology proposed here consists in using IMFs obtained from weather series as new covariates in regression models to explain health issues, applied to CVDs in Quebec (Canada). This approach allows to explain CVDs according to the different modes of variations of the weather, e.g. the influence of weekly variations alone. Since each weather series is decomposed in several IMFs (at least ten in our case), the whole number of new covariates increases quickly. The Lasso method is able to manage a large number of covariates to
shrink the regression model and keep only few covariates. This method allows to outline the most important IMFs on the triggering of CVDs. For instance, this method outlines the importance of annual variation of temperatures and long term trends of temperatures and precipitation on CVD deaths in Montreal. Furthermore, EMD also allows decomposing mortality and morbidity CVD series and separates their different scales of variations. Then, undesired variations, such as the weekend effect on hospitalizations, can be removed. Moreover, each remaining IMF of CVD series can be separately introduced as new response variables in regression models with weather IMFs as covariates. This could help to outline the effect of different weather variables at different scales.
Preliminary results of the Lasso in a linear fashion show that, in Montreal, ten days lagged annual variations and long term trend of temperatures along with the trend of precipitations have a major influence on CVD mortality. Those three components explain the annual seasonality and the trend of deaths.
11A.5
Time Lag Analysis in Health-Weather Effects Atmospheric Effects on Human Health II
Noel Petit, Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minnesota
A review of health-weather effect research over the past few years indicates some effects are immediate and some may have a lag of up to 30 days. We found many lags in the 1 to 7 day range such as Ozone affecting Asthma in the 2-3 day lag (Li, Wang, etal, 2011) and temperature changes correlated with Pacemaker replacement with lags up to 30 days (Liu, Chang, etal, 2011) Of course, many environmental health effects have much longer time lags (air and water pollution, eg.). This paper is concerned only with fairly immediate effects that can be attributable to day-to-day weather and leaves the long term environmental effects to others. Our med-weather.com web site has attempted to show health effects such as asthma, cardio-vascular, arthritis, migraine, reaction-time and heat stress. We forecast from previous research but only use a 5 day forecast as the time-line for our effects. Many weather related effects may have longer lag time, so we will review the literature and discuss how we extended our weather analysis to account for this lag.
11A.6
Investigating links between mortality and slow atmospheric variations Atmospheric Effects on Human Health II
Augustin Vintzileos, University of Maryland / ESSIC / CICS-MD, Camp Springs, MD; S. C.
Sheridan, C. C. Lee, J. Gottschalck and M. Halpert
In this paper we analyze mortality data from 1975 to 2004 over several metropolitan areas of the United States in conjunction with meteorological data from the NCEP Reanalysis-1 to investigate links between weather/climate and mortality. In an attempt to detect the strongest signals between mortality and climate we only consider the 75+ age group. We first detrend mortality data in order to account for the increasing number of people entering the 75+ age group. We then compute the mean annual cycle of mortality which we remove from the detrended data. We show that the resulting time series is related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Finally we present composite meteorological conditions during abnormally high summer mortality events specifically focusing on the Madden-Julian Oscillation. We conclude the presentation by discussing these links between mortality and slow atmospheric variations from the perspective of subseasonal forecasting.
11B.1
WEATHER-READY NATION: HOSPITAL RESILIENCE in the UNITED STATES Disasters and Hazards
Wendy Marie Thomas, NOAA/NWS, Silver Spring, MD
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is working through the Weather-Ready Nation (WRN) program to advance hospital resilience in the face of extreme weather events. It is all too common that these critical infrastructures become damaged or destroyed during severe weather events, or that life-threatening service interruptions ensue. It has become a high-level concern that is raised as an area for needed activity in the President's Climate Action Plan. Building preparedness and resilience to these critical infrastructure requires an All-Hands on Deck approach between federal agencies and also engagements between the public and private sectors. This presentation will explore National Weather Service's engagement internally and with its partners in addressing this issue of critical national need.
11B.2
Harvesting Twitter's tweets through Web GIS for disaster relief Disasters and Hazards
Xiannian Chen, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV; X. Ye and G. Elmes
With technologies advancement, such as Web 2.0 and mobile devices, average citizens can contribute data based on their understanding to a problem, a phenomenon, or an event. Jeff Howe (2005) coined a new term “crowdsourcing”, which was later defined by Brabham (2008) as “online, distributed problem-solving and production model”. In crowdsourcing, the efforts from general public (voluntarily or without notices) or participants can help to solve problems or provide own their own about an event. The data from crowdsourcing actions has gained great attentions from academia researchers and industrial practitioners. One big category of crowdsourcing data are from social media websites, such as Twitter, Flickr. As user-generated-content, social media data provides real-information by volunteers from a local perspective which is not always realistic to have official agents on site during one event. Social media data has been used in national security, disaster management, social/crisis event, and other fields. In some climatic disaster events, such as Hurricane Sandy, social media data that were utilized by official agencies, such as FEMA and Red Cross demonstrated its power in locating victims, dispatching resources, and saving lives.
The advancements in technologies also enable new means of data collection. By utilizing APIs that are provided by social media websites, Web 2.0-based Web GIS portal can easily have users visually specify location for data harvesting, data mapping if applicable, and data storing. It can fuse collected, geo-tagged social media data with other geospatial data. The collected data can be saved in format as standalone files, such as CSV file, or can be saved in database for distributed access.
In the case of tweets from Twitter, this presentation majorly introduces Web GIS platform for real time tweets collection and live mapping of the geo-tagged tweets. By using Twitter's Search API, the web platform provides an interface for users to specify corresponding search parameters, including search keywords, search location, and other parameters, to retrieve subjects related and location related social media. Most importantly, it presents a way to save the real-time collected social media data into a distributed (geo)database, and disseminate the saved data lively.
11B.3
PROJECTING RESIDENTIAL TORNADO EXPOSURE RATES THROUGH ARCMAP DIGITIZATION TECHNIQUES AND THE EMPLOYMENT OF BOTH U.S. CENSUS AND MIGRATION PATTERN DATA
Disasters and Hazards
Marius J. Paulikas, Kent State University, Kent, OH
Multiple tornado studies in the past have employed U.S. Census blocks on Arcmap software as a means of estimating total numbers of individuals who may be directly impacted by a tornado event.
This process has consisted of mapping tornado damage paths with U.S. census block polygons on Arcmap software. While U.S. census blocks provide total numbers of homes and population counts for a given geographic area, they do not capture the true spatial patterns of individual housing structures populating a given area. Given that tornadoes are relatively small-scale geographic features, the intersection of census blocks with synthetic tornado damage paths provide limited degrees of spatial accuracy when compiling estimates of homes that may be exposed to such events. This study outlines a proposed methodology intended to allow more precise estimates to be gauged when accounting for total numbers of homes and individuals that may be exposed to various small-scale natural disaster events. The process first consists of manually digitizing individual building footprints through satellite imagery on Arcmap software to account for actual spatial locations of residential structures; the digitization process simply requires the creation of individual residential centroid point features, which represent the mean location of each structure. Each centroid point is then spatially joined with data stemming from the respective U.S. census block polygon the centroid falls underneath. Lastly, to better gauge the likelihood of individuals being home during the time of a natural disaster event, data stemming from a national migration survey is incorporated into this study; the migration data is comprised of aggregated daily business activities stemming from over 9,000 interview subjects. The intersection of a synthetic tornado damage path with individual centroids (representing homes) consisting of census and migration statistics may ultimately yield more precise numbers of residents who may be exposed to a hypothetical tornado event.
11B.4
Combination of multi-sensor remote sensing data for drought monitoring over Southwest China Disasters and Hazards
Cui Hao, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, Beijing, China; J. Zhang Abstract: The existing remote sensing drought indices were seldom used in complex areas with varied landforms, climates and vegetation types. This paper intended to propose the optimized meteorological drought index (OMDI) and the optimized vegetation drought index (OVDI) from multi-source satellite data to monitor drought in three bio-climate regions of Southwest China. The OMDI and OVDI were integrated with parameters such as precipitation, temperature, soil moisture and vegetation information, which were derived from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Land Surface Temperature (MODIS LST), AMSR-E Soil Moisture (AMSR-E SM), the soil moisture product of China Land Soil Moisture Assimilation System (CLSMAS), and MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (MODIS NDVI), respectively.
Different sources of satellite data for one parameter were compared with in-situ drought indices in order to select the best data source to derive the OMDI and OVDI. The Constrained Optimization (CO) method was adopted to determine the optimal weights of each satellite-based index generating
combined drought indices. The result showed that the highest positive correlation and lowest root mean square error (RMSE) between the OMDI and 1-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI-1) was found in three regions of Southwest China, suggesting that the OMDI was a good index in monitoring meteorological drought; in contrast, the OVDI was best correlated to 3-month SPEI (SPEI-3), and had similar trend with soil relative water content (RWC) in temporal scale, suggesting it a potential indicator of agricultural drought. The spatial patterns of OMDI and OVDI along with the comparisons of SPEI-1 and SPEI-3 for different months in one year or one month in different years showed significantly varied drought locations and areas, demonstrating regional and seasonal fluctuations, and suggesting that drought in Southwest China should be monitored in seasonal and regional level, and more fine distinctions of seasons and regions need to be considered in the future studies of this area.
11B.5
A GIS-BASED FLOOD RISK MAPPING ALONG THE NIGER-BENUE RIVER BASIN IN NIGERIA USING WATERSHED APPROACH
Disasters and Hazards
Ademola Akinbobola, FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, Akure, Nigeria; E. C. okogbue and O. olajiire
Floods are water induced disasters that lead to temporary inundation of dry land and cause serious damages in the affected location such as loss of lives and properties and destruction of infrastructures. They have become common occurrences in Nigeria and the recorded impacts of flooding on the inhabitants are alarming, causing hundreds of deaths and rendering thousands homeless. The impact of floods on people globally has led to the development of mitigation measures that could reduce the associated risk of floods to a manageable point. The management of flood risk begins with identification of areas prone to flood. This study used the scientific technique of GIS to identify flood risk areas along the River Niger-Benue basin. Satellite imageries SRTM DEM that covers the study area was used in this research. Monthly rainfall data was used to generate maps of standardized precipitation index (SPI) for thirty years (1978 to 2007). The SPI maps were used to determine the degree of precipitation condition across Nigeria and also to identify the locations where flood events are being triggered. The SRTM DEM was used to generate the flow direction and flow accumulation maps. Flow direction and Flow accumulation were used to generate the watershed and flood risk map. The flood risk map shows that 45% of Nigeria towns and villages are within the flood risk zone. Finally, some recommendations were made which will help the policy makers improve on flood management in the country. Keywords: Flood, Flood risk, flow direction, satellite imagery
11B.6
Health Factors and Medical Emergency Issues of Fishing Communities of Kutubdia Island, Bangladesh
Disasters and Hazards
Munshi Khaledur Rahman, 413 McGilvrey Hall, Kent, OH; T. W. Schmidlin
Sickness from sea motion or other causes is a common concern among the people who spend time at sea. The people of Kutubdia Island do not have access to advanced health care locally. Fishers who stay on the sea for a long period of time are susceptible to multiple health problems. The objectives of this research are to explore sickness patterns and medical emergencies that fishers face during their fishing activities. This study was conducted based up on primary data using