Refugee settlements are highly exposed to extreme weather conditions

Involuntary displacement from conflict and other causes leads to clustering of refugees and internally displaced people, often in long-term settlements. Within refugee-hosting countries, refugee settlements are frequently located in isolated and remote areas, characterized by poor-quality land and harsh climatic conditions. Yet, the exposure...

Cities and infectious diseases: Assessing the exposure of pedestrians to virus transmission along city streets

As cities resume life in public space, they face the difficult task of retaining outdoor activity while decreasing exposure to airborne viruses, such as the novel coronavirus. Even though the transmission risk is higher in indoor spaces, recent evidence suggests that physical contact outdoors also contributes to an increased virus exposure....

Implications of climate change for railway infrastructure

Weather phenomena can result in severe impacts on railway infrastructure. In future, projected changes to the frequency and/or intensity of extreme weather events could change weather–infrastructure risk profiles. Infrastructure owners and operators need to manage current weather impacts and put in place adequate plans to anticipate and adapt...

Analysis and Prediction of Disruptions in Metro Networks

Public transport disruptions can result in major impacts for passengers and operator. Our study objective is to predict disruption exposure at different stations, incorporating their location-specific characteristics. Based on a 13-month incident database for the Washington metro network, we successfully develop a supervised learning model to...

Saving Face: Shared experience and dialogue on social touch, in playful smart public space

Can shared experience and dialogue on social touch be orchestrated in playful smart public spaces? In smart city public spaces, in which physical and virtual realities are currently merging, new forms of social connections, interfaces and experiences are be- ing explored. Within art practice, such new connections include new forms of affective...

Multiscale contextual poverty in the Netherlands

Contextual poverty is a multiscale phenomenon which affects socioeconomic outcomes of people as well asindividual decisions to move in or out of the neighbourhood. Large-scale poverty reflects regional economicstructures. Meso-scale concentrations of poverty within cities are related to city-specific social, economic andhousing characteristics....

Elderly Exposure to Air Pollutants: Measuring, assessing and modelling

This Thesis focuses on the estimation of the human exposure to air pollutants, and gives special attention to one of the most susceptible groups in the general population - elders. To fulfil the goal the work was conducted following the risk assessment paradigm and, consequently, was divided into 5 tasks: 1) characterization of the indoor air...

Exposure to Air Pollutants During Physical Activity

The context for this thesis is the concern that people who practice physical activity are more susceptible to air pollution. For the studies presented here, three perspectives of physical activity were considered: in indoor, i) physical activity in fitness centers; in outdoor ii) the use of bicycle in cycle paths; and iii) active transportation....

Exposing the role of exposure: Identifying and evaluating critical links in public transport networks

Network vulnerability depends on the probability that adverse events occur and on the impacts of such disruptions on network functionality. Most studies on transport network vulnerability have only analysed vulnerability in terms of the reduction in performance indicators given that a disruption occurs. This study presents and applies a method...

A multi-faceted approach for assessing the safety of Israeli Arab children in their travel to and from school

Road crashes are considered as one of the main threats to human life around the world. Children pedestrians are most at risk to be seriously injured in road crashes, in particular, those from economically disadvantaged communities. Various factors contribute to their high involvement in road crashes. Some of these factors are related to the...

Outdoor corrosion testing of aluminium-lithium alloys

Outdoor corrosion and stress corrosion tests were conducted on Al-Li plate and sheet materials for 3 and almost 5 years respectively. The results can be summarized as follows: Corrosion: Peak aged XXXA-T651 (8090-T651) exhibited greater exfoliation corrosion resistance than 2024-T351 and 2324-T39 plate. 2091-T3 and 2024-T3 sheet were found to be...

Effects of cooling rate on corrosion properties of high strength aluminium alloys under atmospheric conditions

Long-term outdoor exposure tests were done to investigate the effect of cooling rate on corrosion and stress corrosion properties of extruded rods of the high strength aluminium alloys 2024-T4, 2023-T6, 7075-T6 and 7075-T73. The 2024 alloy exhibited a high susceptibility to SCC irrespective of best treatment and cooling rate, whereas 7075-T6 was...