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This report describes the Integrated Academic Information Management System (IAIMS) prototype project at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, the factors that led to the selection of this particular project, and the planning for its implementation. The lessons learned to date and implications for the library are summarized.
The August 2003 heat wave in France resulted in many thousands of excess deaths particularly of elderly people. Individual and environmental risk factors for death among the community-dwelling elderly were identified. We conducted a case-control survey and defined cases as people aged 65 years and older who lived at home and died from August 8 through August 13 from causes other than accident, suicide, or surgical complications. Controls were matched with cases for age, sex, and residential area. Interviewers used questionnaires to collect data. Satellite pictures provided profiles of the heat island characteristics around the homes. Lack of mobility was a major risk factor along with some pre-existing medical conditions. Housing characteristics associated with death were lack of thermal insulation and sleeping on the top floor, right under the roof. The temperature around the building was a major risk factor. Behaviour such as dressing lightly and use of cooling techniques and devices were protective factors. These findings suggest people with pre-existing medical conditions were likely to be vulnerable during heat waves and need information on how to adjust daily routines to heat waves. In the long term, building insulation and urban planning must be adapted to provide protection from possible heat waves.
Three blocks of flats were the subject of this study. They have been projected and built at different periods and the study covers the following principal aspects: sanitary urbanization analysis, assay of some of the basic environmental physical factors and physiologic reactions of the human organism and atmosphere contamination. These blocks of flats are still unable to provide wholy adequate sanitary conditions, in conformity with the urbanization setup, edifice situating, planning and organization of public services on the territory and anthropogenic factors. For an optimal environment one should take into consideration all sanitary requirements early in the process of projecting blocks of flats.
Social unequality and social differences of a population can be defined as social structure. The objective of this study is the construction of indices with which an analysis of space-related social disparities from their spacious dimensions can be made. Each dimension has to be described with a multitude of space-related social indicators first, and then identified and calculated with a multivariate statistic procedure (Factor Analysis). With the existing analysis basic dates are provided. This information about the social situation of Berlin districts as well as the resulting political plannings shall contribute to the reduction of existing differences, in particular to the reduction of social disadvantages. In general, decisions regarding allocation on the private as well as on the public sector should be supported by the social structure analysis.
The initial postwar development of new towns in Britain took place at a time when the present British National Health Service was in its infancy, and few attempts were made to integrate health service planning into the overall planning process. The more recent new towns have been the object of better social planning and, at the same time, the National Health Service has been substantially unified, at first functionally and, in 1974, administratively. In consequence, attempts have been made to use the opportunities which such towns present for planning health services in a comprehensive and integrated manner. The evolution of a planning and implementation structure for health services in Milton Keynes, a new town with a target population of 250,000, is described, together with some of the implications for the administratively unified National Health Service which came into being in 1974.
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Our central question is how the local public health services can influence urban development and urban renewal policies. The need for a three-way cooperation between departments of urban planning and development, environmental affairs and health is now being widely acknowledged. In practice, however, it has to face manifold and serious problems. We suggest that there are basically three essential "instruments" which could lead to a new and defined role of health departments in urban development: environmental and health audits, local health profiles and "health promotion committees" or similar bodies for closer cooperation at the local level. These three "instruments" are described in terms of the present state of development and dissemination by analysing empirical studies from public health research. The results indicate that the "new role" of local health services in urban planning and development is presently fulfilled only in a few pilot cases. The lack of basic requirements particularly in terms of resources, motivation and qualifications is the main cause for the inability to implement the three "instruments" on a broader level in local health services.
The Geneva rule was the first one in Switzerland to introduce the concept of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). This assessment constitutes a decision making aid which describes the process set up to allow evaluation of potential environmental impact and comparison of possible variants, recommends the choice for the best option and suggests the precautions to take. It presents much resemblances to HIA. In this case therefore the application of SEA in the urban planning project MICA has been presented. It is in this framework that a first experience of integration HIA to the SEA process was realized. In an additional way to SEA, HIA is focused on the following fields of potential impact: transport and movements, housing, public facilities, water management.
BACKGROUND: Looking out on and being in the green elements of the landscape around us seem to affect health, well-being and feelings of social safety. This article discusses the design of a research program on the effects of green space in the living environment on health, well-being and social safety. METHODS/DESIGN: The program consists of three projects at three different scales: at a macro scale using data on the Netherlands as a whole, at an intermediate scale looking into the specific effect of green space in the urban environment, and at micro scale investigating the effects of allotment gardens. The projects are observational studies, combining existing data on land use and health interview survey data, and collecting new data through questionnaires and interviews. Multilevel analysis and GIS techniques will be used to analyze the data. DISCUSSION: Previous (experimental) research in environmental psychology has shown that a natural environment has a positive effect on well-being through restoration of stress and attentional fatigue. Descriptive epidemiological research has shown a positive relationship between the amount of green space in the living environment and physical and mental health and longevity. The program has three aims. First, to document the relationship between the amount and type of green space in people's living environment and their health, well-being, and feelings of safety. Second, to investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship. Mechanisms relate to exposure (leading to stress reduction and attention restoration), healthy behavior and social integration, and selection. Third, to translate the results into policy on the crossroads of spatial planning, public health, and safety. Strong points of our program are: we study several interrelated dependent variables, in different ordinary settings (as opposed to experimental or extreme settings), focusing on different target groups, using appropriate multilevel methods.
Aspects of urban climatology relevant to urban planning are given in respect of quality of the atmosphere and urban climate modification. This paper deals with the spatial evaluation of emission and incidence of air pollution, local conditions of air flow and diffusion, climatic effects of different surface types and conditions of urban ventilation.
The legalities of the GDR being valid for the protection against noise demand an obligatory classification of the municipal areas with different limits. These limits are comprised compulsory in the GDR-Standard TGL39617 - Protection against Noise; Limits of Noise Immission in Communal Reach. The organs of state and economy have to guarantee observing these limits. The classification of the municipal areas is difficult, because the architects plan the general land use with respect economic points of view, contrary to the organs of hygiene witch have regard to the localisation of the noise sources. The authors propose possibilities to the introduction of steps of save load against noise and to further subdividing of the structure from noise limits.
The primary goals of land-use planning are enunciated. A plea is made for consideration of the total biosphere and not just its separate components. The environmental impact statement process is reviewed and some suggestions made for its strengthening. Moves for international adoption of this process are noted, as well as the concept of eco-development currently under examination by UN agencies.
It was shown that preparation for old age is also a problem of planning social processes and consequently a major problem of health and social policy which must be tackled by the society as a whole. Its solution calls for a wide range of activities in the field of organization of work, housing design, nutrition and reproduction of the working capacity. Ways are shown to supplement preparation training programmes.
A modified rational decision model incorporating salient events and social influences (particularly from sexual partners) is used to analyze adolescent women's consistent use of oral contraceptives (OCs) over a six-month period. Data are taken from a panel study of 308 clients of an inner-city family planning clinic. Expected OC use was computed for each subject on the basis of subjective expected utility (SEU) theory, and is found in multivariate analyses to be a significant predictor of actual OC use. In addition, variables representing baseline and follow-up partner influences, the salience of pregnancy for the subject, and positive side effects of OCs during the first months of use are found to predict OC use. Partner's support of OC use during follow-up and positive side effects of OCs are found to predict OC use among subjects for whom OC use was not the expected decision according to baseline SEU. Implications of the findings for models of adolescents' contraceptive behavior and for clinicians are discussed.
A study of morbidity on a new housing estate reveals a higher prevalence rate of both physical and mental illness. Much of this is due to physical factors associated with the estate which could have been avoided in the light of previous experience had more attention been given to detail. The proposals embodied in the management arrangements for the reorganised National Health Service should provide the machinery to prevent these faults recurring.
Transportation planning models are typically used to estimate future traffic patterns, peak period traffic, travel time, and various environmental or other related traffic flow characteristics. Unfortunately, traffic safety is seldom, if ever, explicitly considered proactively during the transportation planning process. This omission is attributed to various factors, including the lack of available tools needed to estimate the number of crashes during this process. To help fill this void, the research on which this paper is based aimed, as a primary objective, to develop a tool that would allow the estimation of crashes on digital or coded urban transportation networks during the planning process. The secondary objective of the research was to describe how the predictive models should be applied on these networks and explain the important issues and limitations surrounding their application. To accomplish these objectives, safety performance functions specifically created for this work were applied to two sample digital networks created with the help of EMME/2, a software package widely used in transportation planning. The results showed that it is possible to predict crashes on digital transportation networks, but confirmed the reality that the accuracy of the predictions is directly related to the precision of the traffic flow estimates. The crash predictions are also sensitive to how the digital network is coded, and it is shown how appropriate adjustments can be made.
Models of species' distributions are commonly used to inform landscape and conservation planning. In urban and semiurban landscapes, the distributions of species are determined by a combination of natural habitat and anthropogenic impacts. Understanding the spatial influence of these two processes is crucial for making spatially explicit decisions about conservation actions. We present a logistic regression model for the distribution of koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) in a semiurban landscape in eastern Australia that explicitly separates the effect of natural habitat quality and anthropogenic impacts on koala distributions. We achieved this by comparing the predicted distributions from the model with what the predicted distributions would have been if anthropogenic variables were at their mean values. Similar approaches have relied on making predictions assuming anthropogenic variables are zero, which will be unreliable if the training data set does not include anthropogenic variables close to zero. Our approach is novel because it can be applied to landscapes where anthropogenic variables are never close to zero. Our model showed that, averaged across the study area, natural habitat was the main determinant of koala presence. At a local scale, however anthropogenic impacts could be more important, with consequent implications for conservation planning. We demonstrated that this modeling approach, combined with the visual presentation of predictions as a map, provides important information for making decisions on how different conservation actions should be spatially allocated. This method is particularly useful for areas where wildlife and human populations exist in close proximity.
By virtue of their role as contractors of road building and town planning, the public utilities are often responsible for the proliferation of ragweed. Two concrete examples illustrate the various different factors on which the effectiveness of this campaign depends: awareness of the phenomenon, the ability to recognize the plant, the determination to contact land-owners, and the implementing of a correct action strategy which must not only eradicate the plant temporarily but also prevent it from spreading.