Collided with COVID-19 Pandemic, the 2020 Yangtze Flood Is Exceptionally Severe

During June to July, 2020, persistent heavy precipitation in the Yangtze River Basin (YRB) is resulting in extensive flooding, with over 158 fatalities and tremendous economic losses. This year's disastrous flooding extreme is exceptionally different from those of other years. It contains over 1000-year return period events (for 30-day cumulative precipitation) as observed in Anhui, Guizhou and Sichuan Provinces. The mean precipitation is 308 mm in July 2020, being 54 mm higher than that of July 1998, when serious floods affected the entire Basin causing tremendous socio-economic consequences. Compared with 1998, the short-term (e.g., 1 day) precipitation in YRB did not show significant increases, while the long-term (e.g., 30 days) cumulative precipitation increases significantly. The highest observed 30-day cumulative precipitation is 1221 mm (in Anhui Province) in 2020, while the highest one in 1998 was 1028 mm (in Jiangxi Province). We thus find that this persistent heavy precipitation is the main cause of flooding in 2020. At the same time, TGR may mitigate up 43% of upstream flood, although the main contributors to this year's YRB flood are in the middle and lower reaches. Affected by COVID-19, the number of people at risk in the threatened area are increased, and their capacities to mitigate the dual impacts of COVID-19 pandemic and flooding are hindered since (a) the flooding-caused mitigations may limit people's ability to prevent from virus spreading, and (b) the pandemic is retaining a large amount of migrant workers being within YRB and subject to flooding impacts. Overall, our main discovery is that, although the short-term precipitation in YRB did not increase significantly in 2020, the cumulative one increased significantly in 2020!. © 2022 ISEIS All rights reserved.

The reshaping of the future by the Covid 19 pandemic: an assessment of the impact on population and resources

The WHO declared Covid 19 as a pandemic on the eleventh of March, 2020. This led to individuals, governments, institutions and businesses asking what impact this pandemic would have on the future. What imprint would this outbreak leave on human civilisation? Pandemics can alter the course of history. Pandemics impact people, governments, policies and economies. The pandemic has broken out at a time of significant demographic transition. 2020 was the first year in documented human history where the global population of people over the age of 60 is more than the population of children younger than 5 years of age. The richer countries have high concentrations of aging populations. Historically, pandemics have had significant impacts on cities and urban areas. Public health institutions, garbage collection, sanitation, scientific drainage and hospitals all developed to varying extents in urban responses to epidemics. The covid 19 pandemic has also brought about changes. In 2019, the United Nations reported that there had been a 33 percent increase in the population of migrants across the world. The international migrant population was put at 270 million. The previous forecast was for this population level to be attained in 2050. But the pandemic has slowed the growth of migration. The impact of the pandemic on energy markets was immediate and cataclysmic. Large parts of the global economy were forced to close down. The demand for petroleum fell by 25 percent in the United States. The demand for public transport fell by 70 percent in San Francisco, 60 percent in London and 80 percent in Italy and France between March and May 2020. Pandemics and changes in climate are inextricably linked. As humans encroach further into the wild, the United Nations expects more animal viruses to infect and affect humans. 75 percent of all emerging infectious diseases originate in animals. 60 percent of viruses infecting humans come from wildlife and livestock. Zoonotic epidemics are triggered by flooding, climate variability and other extreme weather events linked to climate change. Climate change has also expanded the span of geographies susceptible to zoonoses. Even though this pandemic has brought to the fore these dangers, steps to effectively tackle climate change and to implement practices in agriculture that are more sustainable have halted. The global food system is responsible for fulfilling the nutrition requirements of 80 percent of the world's population. This system has been greatly disturbed by the pandemic. 4 shocks account for this great disturbance: 1. The movement of agricultural goods has been disturbed by restrictions on transport. 2. Supply chains have been seriously damaged by borders being sealed and bans on exports. 3. Overall production has been reduced because of major disruptions in the supply of agricultural raw material, labor and services. 4. Food purchasing power has reduced dramatically because of job losses, especially among the socioeconomically disadvantaged sections of society.Copyright © 2020 Ubiquity Press. All rights reserved.

Flooding and climate change: the impact of flooding on hospitals

Climate change is expected to increase the risk of extreme weather conditions (and the associated risk of flooding). This means that hospitals must explicitly take into account a situation in which severe weather jeopardizes continuity of care. They must therefore include a water test in their technical design and take this into account in their contingency plans, whereby an evacuation is only proposed as the very last. Coordination with other hospitals, the government, the fire service, the Red Cross, the military and other actors in the emergency services, as well as multidisciplinary exercises are crucial. In the summer of 2021, this turned out not to be a distant future, but pure reality. This article describes the impact of an imminent flood on Belgian and Dutch hospitals along the Meuse, as well as their experiences and approach to this precarious situation in the summer of 2021. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the contingency plans and evacuation protocols used must also take into account specific hygiene measures, which makes the response to such calamities even more complex. In this article, the authors discuss the risks of flooding for the healthcare sector and make policy proposals for day-to-day practice.

Protection or Peril of Following the Crowd in a Pandemic-Concurrent Flood Evacuation

The decisions of whether and how to evacuate during a climate disaster are influenced by a wide range of factors, including emergency messaging, social influences, and sociodemographics. Further complexity is introduced when multiple hazards occur simultaneously, such as a flood evacuation taking place amid a viral pandemic that requires physical distancing. Such multihazard events can necessitate a nuanced navigation of competing decision-making strategies wherein a desire to follow peers is weighed against contagion risks. To better understand these trade-offs, we distributed an online survey during a COVID-19 pandemic surge in July 2020 to 600 individuals in three midwestern and three southern states in the United States with high risk of flooding. In this paper, we estimate a random parameter discrete choice model in both preference space and willingness-to-pay space. The results of our model show that the directionality and magnitude of the influence of peers' choices of whether and how to evacuate vary widely across respondents. Overall, the decision of whether to evacuate is positively impacted by peer behavior, while the decision of how to evacuate (i.e., ride-type selection) is negatively impacted by peer influence. Furthermore, an increase in flood threat level lessens the magnitude of peer impacts. In terms of the COVID-19 pandemic impacts, respondents who perceive it to be a major health risk are more reluctant to evacuate, but this effect is mitigated by increased flood threat level. These findings have important implications for the design of tailored emergency messaging strategies and the role of shared rides in multihazard evacuations. Specifically, emphasizing or deemphasizing the severity of each threat in a multihazard scenario may assist in: (1) encouraging a reprioritization of competing risk perceptions;and (2) magnifying or neutralizing the impacts of social influence, thereby (3) nudging evacuation decision-making toward a desired outcome. © 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Implications of COVID-19 and "super floods" for routine vaccination in Pakistan: The reemergence of vaccine preventable-diseases such as polio and measles.

With multiple waves and variants, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected routine vaccination programs globally. Its impact is also visible in Pakistan as routine health services continue to be disrupted. Consequently, thousands of children have emerged as vulnerable in the face of vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs), which have already started causing outbreaks in the country. Infections with polio and measles have been significantly reported, especially during the last few years. This reemergence of both diseases is posing great challenges for the country at local, national, and global levels. These impacts are being multiplied by the 2022 flooding - called "super floods" - in the country. Hence, relevant stakeholders, such as the Pakistani government and the World Health Organization (WHO), need to revisit the entire vaccination program to address and resolve issues occurring at the management or local levels. It is highly important to pay attention to the context that provides a fertile ground to negatively affect vaccine uptake.

Flooding in Nigeria and Ghana: opportunities for partnerships in disaster-risk reduction

Disasters annually ravage numerous African countries. Flooding is the most severe and prevalent adverse event and has serious implications for sustainable development. As the world is currently facing the COVID-19 pandemic, disasters such as flooding are still occurring but limited attention is being paid. This research analyzes the cause of flooding in Nigeria and Ghana, two countries regularly affected by floods. Previous analysis of the causes of flooding has mainly been done on a national scale. This work adopts a transnational approach by studying the flooding phenomena in both countries. It highlights an opportunity for international partnership in disaster-risk reduction (DRR) as both Nigeria and Ghana are signatories to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction that advocates an understanding of disaster risk and aims to foster international cooperation. Appreciating the root causes of flooding is the first step in building awareness of the common problem that could be the foundation of seeking and adopting solutions. A systematic review of peer-reviewed papers was conducted. This study finds that the underlying drivers of flooding are similar in the two nations and advocates research and data-sharing as ways of partnering to tackle the common problem. This finding has the potential to promote and facilitate capacity building for DRR and flood-risk management (FRM). Potential solutions could also be scaled to other countries of comparable profiles facing related flooding challenges. This approach is likely to yield better and quicker results while presenting opportunities for partnership in achieving the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that has already suffered COVID-19-related setbacks.

Urban climate-health governance: charting the role of public health in large global city adaptation plans

Over the last decade many large world cities have scaled up efforts at climate adaptation, a primary focus of which is protecting population health. With extreme weather disasters increasing worldwide, public health agencies are among local institutions under greatest stress;the Covid-19 pandemic has only heightened pressure on these agencies. Yet the limited literature examining adaptation actions across world cities suggest few, mainly high-income cities report health-related adaptation, while city public health agency engagement in adaptation has received little research attention. In this comparative review, we aimed to characterize the public health role in the adaptation plans of 22 large cities pre-identified as highly health-adaptive, by examining five health-associated adaptation activities chosen as "promising practice" based on evidence synthesized from evaluation research and practical experience: (i) hazard and vulnerability mapping;(ii) extreme weather preparedness and response;(iii) extreme heat plans (including heat early warning);(iv) non-heat early warning (e.g., flooding, vector-borne disease);and (v) climate-health monitoring and outcome surveillance. We found most (90%) city adaptation plans reported actions in at least three of these five activity areas. However, only 73% of these health-focused plans reported involvement of a public health agency (though the share was higher for cities in low- and middle-income countries). We detected differences across the five activities, including an ascending pattern of public health engagement starting with heat plans and including activities such as preparedness and mapping as health agency involvement increased. We also identified substantial presence of other city agencies-notably urban planning, emergency management and public utilities-in implementing these health-associated activities. With every world region likely to experience more widespread and intensifying climate impacts, and growing pressure on local public health agencies in conjunction with the Covid-19 pandemic, we identify opportunities for enhancing public health engagement in climate adaptation in large cities with a view to scaling up their ability to contribute to climate adaptation goals.

Why They Stayed and Why They Left-A Case Study from Ellicott City, MD after Flash Flooding.

Ellicott City, MD was devasted by flash flooding in 2016 and 2018. A lack of qualitative research has been conducted on topics related to sense of place and flash flooding, especially in the United States. In this study, we reveal reasons why some who experienced flash flooding continued to stay the flood zone and why some leave. We utilized a phenomenological approach to answer these research questions. Data were generated through in-depth interviews with 19 participants from the Historic District and adjacent neighborhoods in Ellicott City. The most common reasons participants stayed were: (1) Community Impact, (2) Historical Land, and (3) Financial Burden. The most common reasons participants left were: (1) Emotional Exhaustion and Frustration, (2) Fear/Anxiety, and (3) Financial Burden. The results of our study indicate that reasons individuals who experience flash flooding stay, or leave may include community/historical, environmental, emotional, and economic factors. This reveals the complexity of relocation and sense of place after natural/environmental disasters and supports previous literature that suggests tailored response efforts based on these unique set of burdens. This paper aims to identify burdens and understand flood victims' decisions to help policy makers improve flood response efforts.

Record flooding in Pakistan poses major health risks

The recent record floods in Pakistan are the biggest natural disaster in the history of the country. Satellite images show the great extent of land submerged in inland lakes.1 The United Nations secretary general António Guterres described the flooding as a “monsoon on steroids.”2

Effect of Bevacizumab in Treatment of Severe COVID-19- Observations from a Tertiary Care ICU in South India ABS0032)

Aim and background: One of the primary causes of mortality and morbidity in the COVID-19 pandemic is dyspnea and hypoxia secondary to the pulmonary ARDS caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It results in the increased expression of VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) triggered by the hypoxia. VEGF is responsible for increased permeablity of the vasculature causing leaky capillaries in the alveoli and flooding of the air spaces. VEGF also participates in the lung inflammation. Bevacizumab is an anti-VEGF monoclonal antibody being used in cancer treatment since more than a decade without any serious adverse effects. Objective: Whether the addition of bevacizumab to standard treatment helps to have an effect on the need for invasive ventilation, duration of ICU stay, and all-cause mortality caused by the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Materials and methods: We retrospectively compared patients of either gender aged between 18 and 80 years who tested positive with RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 and were hypoxic but not needing mechanical ventilation at admission from a single tertiary care hospital ICU in southern India admitted between April 2021 and July 2021. We excluded pregnant women and patients with chronic kidney and liver disease. The control group received standard treatment which included remdesivir, steroids, anticoagulants, and oxygen supplementation as required whereas the test group received a single intravenous dose of bevacizumab (400-500 mg@7.5 mg/kg/iv) along with standard treatment. We compared the need of invasive ventilation, length of stay in ICU, and all-cause mortality. Results: 16 patients (57.1%) in the bevacizumab group required invasive ventilation later, whereas 15 patients (60%) in the control group ended up requiring invasive ventilation (p = 0.63). 10 patients (35.7%) in bevacizumab group died whereas 5 patients (20%) in the control group died during their stay in ICU P(0.2), the rest got discharged home. The average length of stay in ICU was 13.8 ± 7.05 days in bevacizumab group compared with 18.48 ± 15.21 days in the control group. Mortality rates in patients who needed invasive ventilation were 45.5% in the bevacizumab group vs 50% in the control group, whereas mortality rates in patients not needing invasive ventilation were 31.2% in the bevacizumab group vs 0% in the control group. The average length of stay in ICU in patients needing invasive ventilation was 18.8 ± 6.95 days in the bevacizumab group vs 25.2 ± 20.8 days in the control group, whereas the average length of stay in ICU in patients not needing invasive ventilation was 11.06 ± 5.5 days in the bevacizumab group vs 14 ± 8.03 days in the control group. Conclusion: The addition of bevacizumab to standard treatment did not have any statistically significant effect on the need for invasive ventilation, length of stay in ICU, and all-cause mortality caused by the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Patients who required invasive ventilation had longer lengths of stay and higher mortality rates as compared to patients who did not need invasive ventilation in both the groups, but it was not statistically significant.

System Dynamic Simulation to Determine The Effect Of Water Consumption on Land Subsidence During Covid-19 Pandemic in Jakarta

Excessive groundwater extraction is believed to be one of the main factors for land subsidence which may be caused by tidal flooding due to the position of the surface which is lower than sea level. Covid-19 pandemic that has occurred in Indonesia since March 2020 has caused changes in water consumption patterns which derives from piped water and groundwater. There are many offices and industries that implement work from home (WFH) makes many buildings have a declining occupancy rate. With the decrease in the occupancy rate of the WFH policy, there will be a possibility that groundwater consumption from high-rise buildings that draw groundwater from deep aquifers can be reduced. This research is in the form of modelling and simulation that is used to build a level of understanding on a whole system as well as the interrelationships and interactions between its constituent variables. The purpose of this research was to determine the effect of groundwater consumption during Covid-19 pandemic on land subsidence in Jakarta using the dynamic system simulation method. The results showed that the work from home policy reduces groundwater consumption by 64.7%. In addition, the reduction in groundwater consumption during the Covid-19 pandemic caused land subsidence in Jakarta slows down and the rate of land subsidence in Jakarta decreased from 3.7 cm/year to 1 cm/year.

Telemedicine to Timor-Leste: Implementing an International Cardiac Telehealth Service During Population Dislocation, Floods and COVID-19

Background: The East Timor Hearts Fund (ETHF) has provided cardiac services in Timor-Leste since 2010, conducting three clinics yearly. With international border closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, development of collaborative telehealth services was required. Methods: Scoping discussions identified major challenges (structural, patient-related and medical system-related). At two pilot clinics, patient history, investigation and management were collated. Clinic metrics were compared to an index face-to-face clinic in February 2019. Post-clinic discussions identified areas of success and shortfall in the conduct of the telehealth clinics. Results: 23 patients were reviewed at the online telehealth clinics held onsite at Timorese medical facilities. Compared to an index 2019 clinic, there were markedly lower numbers of new referrals (2 vs 190 patients, 8.7% vs 59.4%). Patients seen at the online clinic were predominantly female (17/23, 73.9%) and Dili-based (18/23, 78.3%) with a mean age of 25.9 ± 7.2 years old. The majority (12/23, 52.2%) had isolated rheumatic mitral valve disease. Investigations including electrocardiography, pathology, echocardiography and 6-minute walk tests were conducted in select patients. Medication advice was provided for 10 (43.5%) patients. 11 patients (47.8%) were deemed to require urgent intervention. Post-clinic discussions indicated general satisfaction with telehealth clinics, although frustration at current inability to provide interventional services was highlighted. Conclusion: Our pilot telehealth clinics indicate that capacity-building telemedicine can be rapidly implemented in an emergency setting internationally. Clinic design benefits from careful identification and resolution of challenges to optimise flow. Cardiac patients in Timor-Leste have a significant burden of disease amenable to intervention.

Assessing Barriers in Adaptation of Water Management Innovations under Rotational Canal Water Distribution System

This study assessed problems associated with irrigation water provisions and the potential barriers to the adaptation of the interventions (soil moisture sensors, on-farm water storage facilities and the drip method) under rotational canal water distribution in Punjab, Pakistan. Three groups of stakeholders were individually surveyed during September–December 2020: (i) 72 farmers, (ii) 15 officials, and (iii) 14 academicians. We used descriptive statistical analysis, cross-tabulation and the Fisher test to explore the pattern of responses across the groups. The main problems in the canal water distribution system were expressed by the farmers as limited water allocation, while academicians were concerned mostly with inflexibility and officials indicated discussion among neighbors. According to the farmers’ responses, the conventional depth/interval of irrigation is flooding the field with water and observing the plants, indicating over-irrigation behavior. Moreover, the most important barriers in the adaptation of the interventions that were highly rated by the three groups were low awareness, lack of training and financial resources. Additionally, farmers’ education revealed a statistically significant influence on awareness of soil moisture sensors and water storage facilities, while large farm holders showed a positive relationship to conducting a joint experiment with scientists and farmers’ associations on part of their land to improve water use efficiency.

A Social Vulnerability Framework to Identify and Assist With Environmental Injustice

t is well established that socioeconomic and demographic factors, such as race and ethnicity, income, and education, are independently linked to health disparities.1 Tools that combine multiple socioeconomic and demographic variables into an overall rank, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), provide a quantitative framework that can be used by policymakers to identify communities that have higher overall social vulnerability with regard to disparate health outcomes and living conditions across multiple factors, and to develop targeted interventions.2 Historically, the SVI and similar frameworks have been crafted for emergency preparedness and response and used for study and practice in more extreme natural and human-caused disaster scenarios. Over the years, the SVI has been used for public health research and practice, communications, and accessibility planning, and to target geographically specific interventions related to natural disasters such as flooding and hurricanes,3, human-caused events such as chemical spills,2 and disease outbreaks like the recent COVID-19 pandemic.4 However, addressing issues of health inequity attributable to environmental injustice is imperative, and should not be restricted to alleviating the impact of event-specific hazards. Environmental injustice in the built environment is often associated with the disproportionate placement of hazardous and industrial sites and polluting transportation infrastructure in socially vulnerable neighborhoods,5 where residents often lack the social or economic capital to influence policy decisions.6 Although existing research links housing and health equity,7 the impact of poor housing conditions and household exposures to lead, pests, and indoor air pollutants on the health and well-being of socially vulnerable populations is an important and often overlooked aspect of environmental injustice.7,8 The Environmental Protection Agency's definition of environmental justice is all-encompassing and espouses the idea that environmental justice is only achieved when "everyone enjoys: The SVI has already been used outside the realm of disaster management to better characterize obesity10 and physical fitness.11 Hollar et al. set a new precedent for the value it may bring to the environmental justice sector, and additional research should be done to understand its utility in identifying communities that may be more likely to experience other socially linked conditions associated with environmental injustice, such as routine exposure to indoor and outdoor environmental pollutants, chronic disease burden, poor working conditions, lack of greenspace, and other issues with the built environment, in addition to housing conditions.

Quantifying the Impacts of the 2020 Flood on Crop Production and Food Security in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River, China

This study uses satellite imagery and geospatial data to examine the impact of floods over the main planting areas for double-cropping rice and grain crops in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. During summer 2020, a long-lasting 62-day heavy rainfall caused record-breaking floods over large areas of China, especially the Yangtze basin. Through close examination of Sentinel-1/2 satellite imagery and Copernicus Global Land Cover, between July and August 2020, the inundation area reached 21,941 and 23,063 km2, and the crop-affected area reached 11,649 and 11,346 km2, respectively. We estimated that approximately 4.66 million metric tons of grain crops were seriously affected in these two months. While the PRC government denied that food security existed, the number of Grains and Feeds imported from the U.S. between January to July 2021 increased by 316%. This study shows that with modern remote sensing techniques, stakeholders can obtain critical estimates of large-scale disaster events much earlier than other indicators, such as disaster field surveys or crop price statistics. Potential use could include but is not limited to monitoring floods and land use coverage changes.

Development Procedure for Performance Estimation and Main Dimensions Calculation of a Highly-Boosted Ethanol Engine with Water Injection

The management of the global energy resources has stimulated the emergence of various agreements in favor of the environment. Among the most famous are the Conference of Parties (COP) and Route 2030, which aim to limit global warming to 1.5 °C by reducing the energy consumption and global emission levels. In order to comply with the international standards for energy consumption and pollutant emissions, the Brazilian government has been promoting the expansion of biofuels in the national energy matrix. Considering this scenario, the development of a novel internal combustion engine for the exclusive use of ethanol as a fuel, equipped with state-of-the-art technologies and employing modern design concepts, consists of an innovative and promising pathway for future Brazilian mobility, from both environmental and technological outlooks. In this sense, this work presents a method to determine the main engine dimensions as part of the initial process for a new ethanol prototype engine development. The Brazilian biofuel was selected due to its physicochemical properties, which allow the engine to achieve higher loads, and also due to its large availability as a renewable energy source in the country. Furthermore, a port water injection system was fitted to the engine in order to assist the combustion process by mitigating the knock tendency. The predicted overall engine performance was obtained by carrying out a GT-PowerTM 1D-CFD simulation, whose results pointed to a maximum torque of 279 Nm from 2000 to 4000 rpm and an indicated peak power of 135 kW at 5500 rpm. With a maximum water-to-fuel ratio of 19.2%, the engine was able to perform its entire full load curve at the MBT condition, a fact that makes the WI approach along with the ethanol fuel a very attractive solution. As a result of the specific design and optimization of each geometric parameter for this unique ethanol engine, a maximum indicated fuel conversion efficiency of 45.3% was achieved. Moreover, the engine was capable of achieving over 40% of the indicated fuel conversion efficiency in almost its entire full load curve.