Archaeological Mapping Project

In light of the earthquake in Christchurch, as well as the recent ones in Wellington, the need to know the location and types of archaeological sites/themes in Wellington is important. NZHPT, combined with the Wellington Archaeological Group, Wellington Tenths Trust/Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust, are working on a Wellington City archaeological mapping project that will have two purposes, the first being a tool that can be used in an emergency event to guide heritage experts, council, NZHPT and the equivalent of CERA, with a systematic and practical map showing the areas of high, medium, low or no archaeological risk. The second tool that will come out of this project is a mapping tool that can be used by consultants, Wellington City Council, tangata whenua, developers and other groups, on a daily basis to help identify the archaeological potential of an area in respect to proposed development or research.The project will pull together local archaeological consultants' knowledge, tangata whenua knowledge, Wellington City Council and archival information as well as information on previous archaeological authorities and registrations held at NZHPT. We are seeking information and knowledge from people within the heritage community who can help in developing the project.

Forecasting Spatiotemporal Boundary of Emergency-Event-Based Traffic Congestion in Expressway Network Considering Highway Node Acceptance Capacity

Emergency eventscan induce serious traffic congestions in a local area which may propagate to the upstream roads, and even the whole network. Until now, the methodology forecasting spatiotemporal boundary propagation of emergency-event-based traffic congestions, with both explicitness and road network availability, has not been found. This study develops a new method for predicting spatiotemporal boundary of the congestion caused by emergency events, which is more applicable and practical than cell transmission model (CTM)-derived methods. This method divides the expressway network into different sections based on their functions and the shockwave direction caused by the emergency events. It characterizes the velocity of the moving congestion boundary based on kinetic wave theory and volume–density relationship. After determining whether the congestion will spread into the network level through an interchange using a new concept, highway node acceptance capacity (HNAC), we can predict the spatiotemporal boundary and corresponding traffic condition within the boundary. The proposed method is tested under four traffic incident cases with corresponding traffic data collected through field observations. We also compare its prediction performances with other methods used in the literature.

O18 LONG-TERM CROSSOVER RATE FROM WATCHFUL WAITING TO SURGERY OF INITIALLY MIDLY SYMPTOMATIC OR ASYMPTOMATIC INGUINAL HERNIAS IN MEN AGES 50 YEARS AND OLDER

Aim Inguinal hernia (IH) belongs to the most common surgical pathology worldwide. Approximately, one third of patients are asymptomatic. Watchful waiting (WW) has been regarded as a justifiable treatment option, but doubts still exist since high crossover (CO) rates to surgery may occur. The aim of this study is to assess the CO rates after 13-year follow-up of our randomized controlled trial (RCT). Material and Methods In our original study, 496 men with an asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic IH were randomly assigned to elective repair or WW. A retrospective review was conducted of patients initially assigned to WW. Primary outcome was CO rate to surgery. Secondary outcomes included reason for crossing over and time between initial randomisation and the CO to surgery. Results In the original RCT, 95 of 262 WW patients electively crossed over to surgery (35.4%) after 32.9 months. Currently, 212 of the 262 (81.0%) WW patients were reviewed, and 133/212 (62.7%) crossed over to surgery. Median follow-up was 13 years (range, 8-15 years). Mean time to CO was 35.2 months SD (40.8). Motivations for crossing over to surgery were predominantly due to progression of symptoms (83.5%), and in 8 (3.8%) cases due to an emergency event. Conclusions In the presented population, WW on the long-term remains a safe strategy, saving one third of patients an operation, although CO to surgery will likely occur. Insights into the natural course of untreated inguinal hernia that are valuable during patient counseling can be offered in the form of long-term CO rate due to progression of symptoms.

Do I Trust Sending My Kid Back to School?

A suburban elementary school experiences an emergency evacuation. This evacuation event reveals trust and safety concerns. Some parents, staff members, and children express safety concerns, and a key school staff member questions the judgment of another staff member during the emergency event, exacerbating existing tensions between the two. The principal must move the school community forward, while re-establishing trust and addressing safety concerns. Frameworks for repairing trust and trust in schools are considered.

IoT system for remote monitoring of mangrove forest the Sundarbans

In-situ monitoring of mangrove forests is expensive, cumbersome, time consuming and error-prone, hence remote approaches are being used widely nowadays. Remote sensing using satellites, UAVs and other devices is incapable of collecting many important types of data required for processing, therefore a prototype of an IoT device is designed and built for monitoring environmental parameters of the largest mangrove forest in the world, the Sundarbans in Bangladesh. The prototype is tested for a few hours in a simulated environment where the readings are updated every 2 seconds and alert notifications are received if an emergency event occurs. The simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed device and the feasibility of it for low cost remote monitoring of the mangrove forest.

Social Media Behavior and Emotional Evolution during Emergency Events

Online social networks have recently become a vital source for emergency event news and the consequent venting of emotions. However, knowledge on what drives user emotion and behavioral responses to emergency event developments are still limited. Therefore, unlike previous studies that have only explored trending themes and public sentiment in social media, this study sought to develop a holistic framework to assess the impact of emergency developments on emotions and behavior by exploring the evolution of trending themes and public sentiments in social media posts as a focal event developed. By examining the event timelines and the associated hashtags on the popular Chinese social media site Sina-Weibo, the 2019 Wuxi viaduct collapse accident was taken as the research object and the event timeline and the Sina-Weibo tagging function focused on to analyze the behaviors and emotional changes in the social media users and elucidate the correlations. It can conclude that: (i) There were some social media rules being adhered to and that new focused news from the same event impacted user behavior and the popularity of previous thematic discussions. (ii) While the most critical function for users appeared to express their emotions, the user foci changed when recent focus news emerged. (iii) As the news of the collapse deepened, the change in user sentiment was found to be positively correlated with the information released by personal-authentication accounts. This research provides a new perspective on the extraction of information from social media platforms in emergencies and social-emotional transmission rules.

Angioedema and Fatty Acids

Angioedema is a life-threatening emergency event that is associated with bradykinin and histamine-mediated cascades. Although bradykinin-mediated angioedema currently has specific therapeutic options, angioedema is sometimes intractable with current treatments, especially histamine-mediated angioedema, suggesting that some other mediators might contribute to the development of angioedema. Fatty acids are an essential fuel and cell component, and act as a mediator in physiological and pathological human diseases. Recent updates of studies revealed that these fatty acids are involved in vascular permeability and vasodilation, in addition to bradykinin and histamine-mediated reactions. This review summarizes each fatty acid’s function and the specific receptor signaling responses in blood vessels, and focuses on the possible pathogenetic role of fatty acids in angioedema.