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Identifying risk factors of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) for its clinical course became important during the current global health crisis. This study explores the relationship between ambient air quality and the clinical course of COVID-19 during the first German lockdown. Daily air pollutant concentrations (PM10, O3 and NO2) and confirmed COVID-19-related hospital cases and deaths in the four largest German cities are used for multivariate regression analysis to study the correlation of air pollutants with COVID-19-related hospitalised or ICU patients and deaths. A significant positive association of O3 with patients and deaths is observed. NO2 shows a positive correlation with hospitalised and ICU patients. A 10 µg/m3 increase in O3 is linked to a 27% (95% CI: 15% to 39%) increase of COVID-19-related deaths. However, PM10 is associated with a decrease in deaths. Altogether, these findings indicate that air pollutants seem to have a significant influence on the course of COVID-19 infections. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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Density, critical mass, connectivity and exchange, the draw of the crowd: these are the pillars on which the success of the metropolis rested before being overturned by the pandemic. If until yesterday the only rule was "keep going”, now on the desks of mayors worldwide lays the hypothesis that the century of cities is coming to end. The ever-present threat of inequalities and poverty furthers the need for new forms of coexistence with what a city is not, to make urban development more sustainable from an environmental and social point of view. These developments have put both the international debate and adaptation strategies deployed in the midst of the pandemic shock in various cities around the world, including Milan, under the microscope. The aim of the paper is to analyze the hypothesis that cities, by putting in place adequate strategies of innovation and inclusion, developing practices at the service of citizens, organizations, and companies with a social impact, promoting reuse of hybrid spaces, near-working, and building cities on a human scale, inspiring the idea of the "15-min city”, will continue to dominate. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Corona Virus (COVID-19) is a virus that is endemic almost all over the world, including Indonesia. COVID-19 was first confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31, 2019, in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, and then rapidly expanded outside of China. To suppress the Covid-19 case, medical volunteers are needed as the main actors in efforts to handle Covid-19 patients. This makes health care facilities also need to focus on the principles of health worker safety, not only focus on the principles of patient safety. This also makes health care facilities also need to focus on the principles of health worker safety, not only focus on the principles of patient safety. The use of hazmat clothes is one of the efforts to protect health workers when in contact with Covid-19 patients. Hazmat clothes are technically referred to as "encapsulated waterproof protective clothing” which is PPE that must be used for officers from the risk of contracting the Covid-19 virus through airborne droplets and contact with patients and patient body fluids. Although hazmat clothing is an important PPE for health workers to stay protected, the use of hazmat clothing for a long time often makes medical personnel feel uncomfortable when providing services. Based on the problems above, the researchers conducted a study on the heat pipe - thermoelectric hazmat suit cooling vest. This technology can absorb more heat than other methods by simply applying the principle of capillarity to the wicks on the pipe walls. schematic of testing a cooling vest on a hazmat suit. The loading on the thermoelectric is given through the DC - Power supply. The temperature data read by the sensor will be detected by the computer system using the NI 9123 and C-DAQ 9174 modules. The test results can be viewed using the NI LabView 2017 software. The temperature used in this experiment is the result of tests carried out for 30 min. Based on the tests that have been carried out, the heat pipe-based thermoelectric hazmat suit cooling vest has been able to reach the lowest thermoelectric temperature of 24,42 ∘C, which is distributed through heat pipes to body parts. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has shocked the world due to its pronounced mortality rate, rapid worldwide spread, and profound socioeconomic effects across all societies. As the spearhead of urban policies, local governments play an important role in crisis management during the pandemic. In the context of smart cities, innovative solutions have been required, especially to improve the local government's capacity to manage health crises. This study asks whether smart cities perform better in governing the COVID-19 pandemic. This article focuses on how urban governance impacted cities' performance in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a city-level data set from Indonesia, we constructed a COVID-19 response performance index using principal component analysis that is used in an empirical strategy with quasi-experimental cross-sectional methods to minimize the influence of unobserved covariates and selection bias. This study concludes that smart city status does not have a statistically significant impact on the COVID-19 performance index. We offer three possible accounts based on expert insights, previous empirical studies, and digital upshots on data monitoring and reporting cases. Both theoretical and practical implications can be drawn, thus highlighting the lack of effective integration of technological dimensions into health and urban governance systems in the context of a public health crisis.
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In the last decade, e-commerce has been growing consistently. Fostered by the covid pandemic, online retail has grown exponentially, particularly in industries including food, clothing, groceries, and many others. This growth in online retailing activities has raised critical logistic challenges, especially in the last leg of the distribution, commonly referred to as the Last Mile. For instance, traditional truck-based home delivery has reached its limit within metropolitan areas and can no longer be an effective delivery method. Driven by technological progress, several other logistic solutions have been deployed as innovative alternatives to deliver parcels. This includes delivery by drones, smart parcel stations, robots, and crowdsourcing, among others. In this setting, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive review and analysis of the latest trends in last-mile delivery solutions from both industry and academic perspectives (see Figure 1 for overview). We use a content analysis literature review to analyse over 80 relevant publications, derive the necessary features of the latest innovation in the last mile delivery, and point out their different maturity levels and the related theoretical and operational challenges. (Figure presented.). © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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The world is witnessing a pandemic of SARS-CoV2 infection since the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Ever since the first case was reported in Wuhan city of China in December 2019, the virus has spread over 223 countries. Understanding and predicting the dynamics of COVID-19 spread through data analysis will empower our administrations with insights for better planning and response against the burden inflicted on our health care infrastructure and economy. The aim of the study was to analyze and predict COVID-19 spread in Ernakulam district of Kerala. Data was extracted from lab data management system (LDMS), a government portal to enter all the COVID-19 testing details. Using the EpiModel package of R-mathematical modeling of infectious disease dynamics, the predictive analysis for hospitalization rate, percentage of patients requiring oxygen and ICU admission, percentage of patients getting admitted, duration of hospital stay, case fatality rate, age group and gender-wise fatality rate, and hospitalization rate were computed. While calculating the above-said variables, the percentage of vaccinated population, breakthrough infections, and percentage of hospitalization among the vaccinated was also taken into consideration. The time trend of patients in ICU showed men outnumbered women. Positive cases were more among 20–30 years, while 61–70 years age group had more risk for ICU admission. An increase in CFR with advancing age and also a higher CFR among males were seen. Conclusions: Analyzing and predicting the trend of COVID-19 would help the governments to better utilize their limited healthcare resources and adopt timely measures to contain the virus. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Management of crowd information in public transportation (PT) systems is crucial, both to foster sustainable mobility, by increasing the user's comfort and satisfaction during normal operation, as well as to cope with emergency situations, such as pandemic crises, as recently experienced with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) limitations. This article presents a taxonomy and review of sensing technologies based on the Internet of Things (IoT) for real-time crowd analysis, which can be adopted in the different segments of the PT system (buses/trams/trains, railway/metro stations, and bus/tram stops). To discuss such technologies in a clear systematic perspective, we introduce a reference architecture for crowd management, which employs modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) in order to: 1) monitor and predict crowding events;2) implement crowd-aware policies for real-time and adaptive operation control in intelligent transportation systems (ITSs);and 3) inform in real time the users of the crowding status of the PT system, by means of electronic displays installed inside vehicles or at bus/tram stops/stations and/or by mobile transport applications. It is envisioned that the innovative crowd management functionalities enabled by ICT/IoT sensing technologies can be incrementally implemented as an add-on to state-of-the-art ITS platforms, which are already in use by major PT companies operating in urban areas. Moreover, it is argued that, in this new framework, additional services can be delivered to the passengers, such as online ticketing, vehicle access control and reservation in severely crowded situations, and evolved crowd-aware route planning. © 2001-2012 IEEE.
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Rivers are undoubtedly the main pathway of waste dispersed in the environment that from land reaches oceans and seas increasing the amount of marine litter. Major cities are a great source of riverine litter as large urbanization can originate pressure on the integrated waste management resulting in litter entering the rivers. Within this study, we aim to investigate the dynamic of floating riverine macrolitter (items >2.5 cm) in the city of Rome before it reaches the sea by assessing the composition, amount, and seasonal trends of litter transported from the urban centre to the main river mouth of Tiber River. Visual surveys for a whole year (March 2021–February 2022) were conducted from two bridges, Scienza Bridge (in the city) and Scafa Bridge (at the main river mouth) and followed JRC/RIMMEL protocol for riverine litter monitoring. Overall, similar litter composition was observed from the city centre to the mouth with a prevalence of plastic material, mainly related to fragmentation process (i.e. plastic pieces) and single use items, mainly in food and beverage sectors. An extrapolated annual loading of 4 × 105 items/year was estimated at the main mouth of Tiber River. The litter flux seems to be influenced by the seasonal variability and hydrometeorological parameters. The frequency of size classes decreases with increasing size in both sites, and more than half of the recorded items were below 10 cm. Specific categories belonging to "other plastics” have been reported related to anti-Covid-19 behaviour such as face masks and beverage sector, e.g. bottle lids and rings. The main colour of plastics was white, suggesting weathering process of floating riverine litter. This study contributes to increasing knowledge of the origin, composition and spatiotemporal dynamics of riverine floating litter from the city and entering the sea. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, several cities allocated more public spaces for physical activity and recreation instead of road transport through Open Streets. This policy locally reduces traffic and provides experimental testbeds for healthier cities. However, it may also generate unintended impacts. For instance, Open Streets may impact the levels of exposure to environmental noise but there are no studies assessing these unintended impacts. OBJECTIVES: Using noise complaints from New York City (NYC) as a proxy of annoyance caused by environmental noise, we estimated associations at the census tract level between same-day proportion of Open Streets in a census tract and noise complaints in NYC. METHODS: Using data from summer 2019 (pre-implementation) and summer 2021 (post-implementation), we fit regressions to estimate the association between census tract-level proportion of Open Streets and daily noise complaints, with random effects to account for within-tract correlation and natural splines to allow non-linearity in the estimated association. We accounted for temporal trends and other potential confounders, such as population density and poverty rate. RESULTS: In adjusted analyses, daily street/sidewalk noise complaints were nonlinearly associated with an increasing proportion of Open Streets. Specifically, compared to the mean proportion of Open Streets in a census tract (0.11%), 5% of Open Streets had a 1.09 (95% CI: 0.98, 1.20) and 10% had a 1.21 (95% CI: 1.04, 1.42) times higher rate of street/sidewalk noise complaints. Our results were robust to the choice of data source for identifying Open Streets. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that Open Streets in NYC may be linked to an increase in street/sidewalk noise complaints. These results highlight the necessity to reinforce urban policies with a careful analysis for potential unintended impacts to optimize and maximize the benefits of these policies.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Pandemics , Humans , New York City , Noise , CitiesABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on our society, environment and public health, in both positive and negative ways. The main aim of this study is to monitor the effect of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns on urban cooling. To do so, satellite images of Landsat 8 for Milan and Rome in Italy, and Wuhan in China were used to look at pre-lockdown and during the lockdown. First, the surface biophysical characteristics for the pre-lockdown and within-lockdown dates of COVID-19 were calculated. Then, the land surface temperature (LST) retrieved from Landsat thermal data was normalized based on cold pixels LST and statistical parameters of normalized LST (NLST) were calculated. Thereafter, the correlation coefficient (r) between the NLST and index-based built-up index (IBI) was estimated. Finally, the surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII) of different cities on the lockdown and pre-lockdown periods was compared with each other. The mean NLST of built-up lands in Milan (from 7.71 °C to 2.32 °C), Rome (from 5.05 °C to 3.54 °C) and Wuhan (from 3.57 °C to 1.77 °C) decreased during the lockdown dates compared to pre-lockdown dates. The r (absolute value) between NLST and IBI for Milan, Rome and Wuhan decreased from 0.43, 0.41 and 0.16 in the pre-lockdown dates to 0.25, 0.24, and 0.12 during lockdown dates respectively, which shows a large decrease for all cities. Analysis of SUHI for these cities showed that SUHII during the lockdown dates compared to pre-lockdown dates decreased by 0.89 °C, 1.78 °C, and 1.07 °C respectively. The results indicated a high and substantial impact of anthropogenic activities and anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) on the SUHI due to the substantial reduction of huge anthropogenic pressure in cities. Our conclusions draw attention to the contribution of COVID-19 lockdowns (reducing the anthropogenic activities) to creating cooler cities.
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Urban forests provide multiple ecosystem services for city dwellers, amongst which improving public health via mitigating mental stresses and providing attractive spaces for diverse physical activities has attracted increasing attention from scholars and policy makers within the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as urgently-needed post-pandemic urban transformation towards healthy cities. This short communication summarizes existing empirical evidence pertinent to the linkage between urban forests and public health maintenance and improvement, highlights three underlying mechanisms, i.e., physiological, psychological, and immunological pathways, and outlines practical implications for the establishment and management of urban forests as a strategy for planning healthy cities.
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Recently, air pollution especially fine particulate matters (PM2.5) and ozone (O3) has become a severe issue in China. In this study, we first characterized the temporal trends of PM2.5 and O3 for Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Wuhan respectively during 2018-2020. The annual mean PM2.5 has decreased by 7.82%-33.92%, while O3 concentration showed insignificant variations by -6.77%-4.65% during 2018-2020. The generalized additive models (GAMs) were implemented to quantify the contribution of individual meteorological factors and their gas precursors on PM2.5 and O3. On a short-term perspective, GAMs modeling shows that the daily variability of PM2.5 concentration is largely related to the variation of precursor gases (R = 0.67-0.90), while meteorological conditions mainly affect the daily variability of O3 concentration (R = 0.65-0.80) during 2018-2020. The impact of COVID-19 lockdown on PM2.5 and O3 concentrations were also quantified by using GAMs. During the 2020 lockdown, PM2.5 decreased significantly for these megacities, yet the ozone concentration showed an increasing trend compared to 2019. The GAMs analysis indicated that the contribution of precursor gases to PM2.5 and O3 changes is 3-8 times higher than that of meteorological factors. In general, GAMs modeling on air quality is helpful to the understanding and control of PM2.5 and O3 pollution in China.
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Based on the Baidu Index, taking "warehousing"and "warehouse"as the keywords, the Baidu search index of "warehousing"and "warehouse"nationwide is statistically analyzed. It is found that the Baidu search index with "warehousing"and "warehouse"as the keywords has significantly increased before and after the COVID-19 epidemic, which shows that the basic role of logistics warehousing in the national economic and social development is increasingly obvious, and the corresponding demand for logistics warehousing is growing. Based on the big data of Warehouse in Cloud, incomplete statistics of "warehousing demand"of "demand location"in China's provinces are similar to the analysis of differences in the source places (regions and provinces) of different search groups through the "population portrait"of Baidu Index. The "warehousing demand"and "warehousing supply"of the key cities in central and Western China are counted. Focusing on the key cities in central and Western China, the correlation analysis of warehousing rent and demand area is carried out. It is found that, on the one hand, the regional logistics warehousing demand is 3 years (the lease term is less than 1 year or 1-3 years), with intra-period volatility. On the other hand, regional centers (National Central Cities) have absolute advantages in the attraction of regional logistics and warehousing. Furthermore, in recent years, due to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic and extreme meteorological and geological disasters, the adverse impact on the regional economic and social development will show that the demand for logistics and warehousing will be interrupted, reduced and lagged, and the growth will be restored in subsequent years. The average rent of key cities in Western China is 22.52 yuan/m2·month, the average vacancy rate is 11.65%, and there are 1359 warehouses in the park. The average rent of key cities in the central region is 23.5 yuan/m2·month, the average vacancy rate is 13.86%, and there are 1070 warehouses in the park. From the perspective of rent, Changsha shows the highest rent, while Taiyuan shows the lowest rent. Furthermore, the vacancy rate of Chongqing and Xi'an are the highest and lowest, respectively. There is a correlation between the variable of warehousing rent in 2022 and the total retail sales of consumer goods in 2021 (Spearman correlation coefficient is significant). There is a correlation between the variable of average warehousing demand area in 2019-2021 and the sample of the third industry production value in 2021 and the sample variable of total import and export volume of goods in 2021 (Pearson correlation coefficient is significant). The variable of average warehousing demand area in 2019-2021 and the sample variable of resident population. There is a correlation between the total retail sales of social consumer goods in 2021 (Spearman correlation coefficient is significant). On the one hand, the statistical analysis of big data on the digital warehousing information platform can provide reference for the prediction of supply and demand of logistics warehousing and modern logistics service industry in the high-quality development of the region. On the other hand, the spatial econometric analysis of logistics industry and regional economic growth represented by logistics warehousing needs further research. CCS CONCEPTS •Human-centered computing ∼Collaborative and social computing ∼Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms ∼Computer supported cooperative work © 2022 ACM.
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In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought tourism to an abrupt halt. Supply-side stakeholders suddenly found themselves in a lockdown with unusable assets, unprofitable investments and jobs in jeopardy. Using qualitative research, we take a closer look at how they dealt with this unprecedented crisis in the Slovenian urban destinations of Ljubljana and Maribor. Our results show that existing policy and strategy mechanisms did not equip the supply-side stakeholders to tackle the pandemic challenges. However, both institutional ad hoc responses were quick and to some extent adequate. © 2022, University of Ljubljana Press. All rights reserved.
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Cutting-edge technologies are changing the operations of urban last-mile delivery. In particular, innovative technologies, such as delivery drones, have shown promising results in commercial applications. When considered alongside the ongoing pandemic, contactless technologies have become even more important to the daily lives of consumers in highly urbanized areas. This study investigates underlying factors influencing consumers' acceptance of drone delivery in urban cities amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, a model was created by fusing the technology acceptance model, task–technology fit, and privacy calculus theory. Four hundred and fifty survey responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings suggested that perceived usefulness, attitude, and perceived privacy risks directly influence consumers' behavioral intentions. In addition, perceived ease of use, task characteristics, technology characteristics, task–technology fit, and privacy concerns indirectly impact consumers' behavioral intention. This study offers an insightful perspective on consumers' perception of urban last-mile delivery drones while providing insights into urban transport planning and regulation of drone delivery services. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd
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The paper develops the concept of a timescape of a city based on empirical analysis of geospatial big data. We understand the timescape as the temporal shape of a city, which reflects temporal dynamics of a city structure and rhythms based on aggregated time-space behaviour of individuals. The paper uses the concepts of rhythmanalysis and spatial interactions as theoretical basis. We analyse two data types: mobile phone location data and taxi trajectory data, and the city of Prague is taken as the example. The data capture the population mobility peak before the Covid-19 pandemic has burst out. We examine both the temporal (weekly and daily rhythms) and spatial (intra urban and 'extra' urban flows) hierarchies of the city time-space. We have confirmed the existence of distinct differences between workdays and weekend days. It has also been shown that the mobility based on taxi trajectories has specific temporal distribution. Based on 'extra' urban flows, rhythms and thus on the present population of the city we have identified two hierarchically different time waves, long (weekly) and short (daily), when the latter has opposite amplitude and span during workdays and during weekend days.
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Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) complements the clinical surveillance of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its variants' distribution in populations. Many developed nations have established national and regional WBE systems; however, governance and budget constraints could be obstacles for low- and middle-income countries. An urgent need thus exists to identify hotspots to serve as sentinel sites for WBE. We hypothesized that representative wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in two international gateway cities, Bangkok and Phuket, Thailand, could be sentineled for SARS-CoV-2 and its variants to reflect the clinical distribution patterns at city level and serve as early indicators of new variants entering the country. Municipal wastewater samples (n = 132) were collected from eight representative municipal WWTPs in Bangkok and Phuket during 19 sampling events from October 2021 to March 2022, which were tested by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) using the US CDC N1 and N2 multiplex and variant (Alpha, Delta, and Omicron BA.1 and BA.2) singleplex assays. The variant detection ratios from Bangkok and Phuket followed similar trends to the national clinical testing data, and each variant's viral loads agreed with the daily new cases (3-d moving average). Omicron BA.1 was detected in Phuket wastewater prior to Bangkok, possibly due to Phuket's WWTPs serving tourist communities. We found that the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 viral loads predominantly drove the SARS-CoV-2 resurgence. We also noted a shifting pattern in the Bangkok WBE from a 22-d early warning in early 2021 to a near real-time pattern in late 2021. The potential application of tourist hotspots for WBE to indicate the arrival of new variants and re-emerging or unprecedented infectious agents could support tourism-dependent economies by complementing the reduced clinical regulations while maintaining public health protection via wastewater surveillance.
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In the era of COVID-19, planners, and more broadly, city administrators and policy makers, have learned to cope with the accelerated pace of change, the broad band of uncertainty, and the need for rapid decision-making strategies. In the context of ever more diverse communities and greater reliance on technology as an effective response to the social and public health challenges of the pandemic, "smart" cities harness distributed communication and service delivery technologies to enhance the quality of urban life. The voices of citizens from marginalized and under-served populations, such as older adults and people with disabilities, are vital to the development of inclusive smart cities. In this paper, expanding an inclusive policy design approach is proposed that uses `personas' to actively engage those citizens.
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In 2019, there was an epidemic to the human society, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It is an uncertain disease encountered in society for which the technology and human society had not prepared before. COVID-19 first spread over the Wuhan city of China. Since, the past two years of time-span, it has affected the citizen's life culture and expectancy. Now, most of the population are concern about when will be COVID-19 terminate. Basically, this paper aims to analyze the COVID-19 data with features as total confirmed cases, death rate, and vaccination rate around the world-wide region. On analyzing the data, with the help of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, we estimate the termination of COVID-19. The rapid expansion of the COVID-19 epidemic has compelled the need for technology in this field. © 2022 IEEE.
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Medium-sized cities are an important component of the settlement system and are often described as a joining link between urban and rural areas. However, in recent decades they have been impacted by growing competition from large cities which have tremendous appeal for the post-Fordist economy and for various segments of the population. This paper analyses the demographic trajectories of 99 medium-sized cities in Italy with provincial capital status, from the beginning of the twenty-first century to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a twenty-year period marked by many difficulties for the Italian economy in an international context, what has the demographic performance of these cities been? The research addresses two areas. On the one hand, it analyses the demographic vitality of the provincial capitals compared to the metropolitan centres;on the other, it follows the redistribution of populations in the provincial capitals' urban areas, which coincide with the employment areas (Sistemi locali del lavoro). Significant behavioural discontinuities emerge between the decade of 2000-2010 and the following decade, which was characterised by a gradual recovery after the shock of the Great Recession. The picture was changed further by the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, persistent differences between the medium-sized cities of Northern and Southern Italy stand out, but so do new internal divisions within the country, reframing this historical dualism. © Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences • Warsaw • 2022.