28 research outputs found
Causes and alternative treatments of neurological conditions due to environmental toxins:An overview
No full textIt is fairly obvious that we live in a toxic world and our brains are poisoned continuously, and this constant low level of exposure over time is slowly damaging our neurons and brain cells. The worse news is that this harmful toxic environment is not going to stop anytime in the foreseeable future and environmental toxins are a leading cause of neurological illnesses. It is also well established that oxidative stress contributes to various diseases including diabetes, heart disease, inflammatory conditions, high blood pressure, and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. It is therefore inevitable that exposure to such conditions including heavy metals, EMF radiation, bacteria and viruses will require a strong immune system to defeat such harmful toxins, and that almost 80 percent of the immune system is located in the gut. The main causes of neurological diseases are already known and the standard drug treatments (e.g., Aricept and Namenda for Alzheimer's) slow the progression of such terrible diseases, but they do not address the root cause of memory loss. Glutathione is known as body's master antioxidant being effective against oxidative stress and inflammation. Along with other natural antioxidants in the body, it works to defeat the harmful effects of free radicals which cause damage to cells and tissue leading to various health conditions. In this review, the main factors, including environmental toxins, causing neurological illnesses like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and natural ways of prevention and treatment protocols have been discussed. The proposed treatment protocol could be lifesaving and is supported by the extensively published literature. </p
Digital Surface Model (DSM) Construction and Flood Hazard Simulation for Development Plans in Naga City, Philippines
No full textA 2D-hydraulic flood propagation models require accurate elevation data. One of the main problems is frequent changes of land use in major cities, where frequent updating of the digital terrain model (DTM) for flood modelling might be needed. On the other hand the assessment should be based on realistic flood hazard indicator that would help to reflect the real impact of urban development on the surrounding areas. This paper presents an example of assessing the impact of flood for future developments in Naga City, the Philippines. The elevation data is constructed through integrating various elevation data derived from many sources. The development impact assessment begins with the detailed observation on
changes in flood characteristics. This is supported by the analyses on the community-based flood risk perception and investigation on changes of flood hazard (based on the flood velocity and depth). In the DTM construction the natural terrain is separated from the man-made terrain. The geostatistical approach is used to investigate the effect of integrating multi-sources of elevation data by evaluating the nugget values. The data sources are prioritized based on the nominal horizontal and vertical accuracy, and form of data. In this paper, there are 4 interpolation methods used, namely Australian National
University's Digital Elevation Model algorithm (ANUDEM), Kriging, Polynomial and Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN). The assessments are based on percentile vertical accuracy assessment, error point’s distribution and visual assessment. As a result, the kriging interpolation method has produced the best DTM and it full-filled the requirements for hydrological flood modelling purpose. Finally the Digital Surface Model (DSM) of the study area was constructed by integrating both man-made and natural
terrains. The DSM was also generated to simulate the new developments in Naga City. The 1D2D SOBEK flood model was used to simulate flood events for 2, 5, 10 and 17.5 years return period flood. In addition, the flood depths and flood extent during Supertyphoon Nanmadol were used in flood model calibration. Flood calibration results revealed that the calibrated flood model was able to simulate the real flood event up to 0.35 m accuracy of flood depth. In the development impact assessment, it was found that the impact of the developments is larger for a larger flood magnitude. Furthermore the pattern of the
changes in flood behaviour depends on the location from the main developments. The Almeda Highway acted as a barrier, that obstructs the flood water from go farther. In addition the small scale construction, for instance the Drainage System in Barangay Triangulo had played a major role in changing the flood behaviour, especially in a small magnitude flood. Through this study, it was proved that by simply elevating ground terrain only can solve the flood problem in a particular area. However, the flood
problem is transferred to another area
Albedo and land surface temperature shift in hydrocarbon seepage potential area, case study in Miri Sarawak Malaysia
No full textThe presence of hydrocarbon seepage is generally associated with rock or mineral alteration product exposures, and changes of soil properties which manifest with bare development and stress vegetation. This alters the surface thermodynamic properties, changes the energy balance related to the surface reflection, absorption and emission, and leads to shift in albedo and LST. Those phenomena may provide a guide for seepage detection which can be recognized inexpensively by remote sensing method. District of Miri is used for study area. Available topographic maps of Miri and LANDSAT ETM+ were used for boundary construction and determination albedo and LST. Three land use classification methods, namely fixed, supervised and NDVI base classifications were employed for this study. By the intensive land use classification and corresponding statistical comparison was found a clearly shift on albedo and land surface temperature between internal and external seepage potential area. The shift shows a regular pattern related to vegetation density or NDVI value. In the low vegetation density or low NDVI value, albedo of internal area turned to lower value than external area. Conversely in the high vegetation density or high NDVI value, albedo of internal area turned to higher value than external area. Land surface temperature of internal seepage potential was generally shifted to higher value than external area in all of land use classes. In dense vegetation area tend to shift the temperature more than poor vegetation area
Flood risk mapping in Kota Tinggi, Malaysia
No full textAccording to the Department of Irrigation and Drainage in Malaysia, about 29, 000 sq. km, or 9% of the total land area and more than 4.82 million people (i.e. 22% of the population) are affected by flooding annually. Damage caused by flooding is estimated about RM 915 million (£160 million). An unprecedented heavy rainfall occurred in Malaysia in December 2006 to January 2007. The consequence of this extreme event has resulted severe impact on few area of Malaysia where Kota Tinggi in Johor state is one the affected area. The objectives of this study are 1) to study the capability of SOBEK for flood simulation, 2) to study the impact of different flood scenarios on those elements in inundated area. Different types of flood maps have been developed where each flood maps is conveyed its spatial information to the end-users. Of these flood maps, flood risk map is very essential as it includes information on the consequences of flooding. Risk results from the interaction of hazard and vulnerability
Digital image processing of remote sensing data in Malaysia
No full textRemote sensing systems now allow image been captured at ranges of electromagnetic spectrum beyond the range of photography. The development of active remote sensing systems, which enable it to function in all weather conditions, had shown a more promising development in the application of this technology. Digital image processing and image enhancement techniques provide recognition of contrasts among features of interests at orders of magnitude better than human eye. Looking at the current global scenario, operational application of remote sensing technology is becoming a common practice and well accepted at operational level in assisting decision making process in the natural resource management, environmental, conservation program and strategic planning. Remote sensing images (and information extracted from such images) are now beginning to be used extensively to locate specific features and conditions of the earth surface. The main objective of this paper is to highlight work on digital image processing in Malaysia as a whole, and also to highlight some of the work that have been carried out at the Department of Remote Sensing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. As digital image processing involved various procedures that may be quite complicated, the first part of this paper provide a brief description on the general term of digital image processing, while the focus of the second part of this paperi digital image processing work that have been cariied out in Malaysia and also at Universiti Teknologi Malaysi
Expectation for the presence of hydrocarbon seepage in onshore tropical region, case study in Miri Sarawak Malaysia
No full textLong term course of hydrocarbon seepage on material sediment and water alters mineralogical composition with corresponding change in chemical and physical properties of rocks and soils. This changes color, hardness, electric, magnetic and radioactive properties of minerals. This alteration product occurs at the surface coincide with the original product of seepage, namely gas emanation, crude oil and brine water effluent resulting change in fertilities rank soils and vegetation manifest which indicated with vegetation stress and bare development. This leads to change refection, absorption accompany with change in albedo, change in surface thermodynamic and emission properties accompany with change in land surface temperature (LST). District of Miri, Serawak state of Malaysia is used for study area. This area is an urban area, located in the tropical region with the complex land cover system around the city. It is potentially having some hydrocarbon seepage due to existing petroleum system. Topographic map of Miri was used to make boundary of internal and external seepage potential area, and LANDSAT ETM+ was used to derivate of albedo and day time land surface temperature. The objective of study is to detect hydrocarbon seepage in onshore area through the investigation of land use / cover anomaly on surface albedo and land surface temperature. Intensive land use / cover classification and corresponding comparison of statistical analysis were performed on albedo, land surface temperature between internal and external seepage potential area. Two dimensional cross plots was also applied to obtain the probable location of seepage. The result clearly shows that the presence of hydrocarbon shifted albedo and LST. The shift was vary with different land use / cover class. The shift was relevant with the resulted pattern of two dimensional cross plots. The cross plots pattern was also shows the probable location of hydrocarbon infected area. According to shift direction, two dimensional cross plots pattern, and employing statistical mean value of albedo and LST in internal seepage potential area for each class allows to expecting the region for the presence of hydrocarbon seepage
Estimation of hydrodynamic roughness over land in tropical environment using lidar data:a case study in Ayer Keroh, Melaka
No full textParameterization of flood modeling overland has benefited from Airborne LiDAR technologies in many ways and one of the prominent examples is the estimation of hydrodynamic roughness. Low density airborne LiDAR with relatively low penetration over vegetation canopy under leaf-on condition further complicate the estimation of hydrodynamic roughness in tropical zone. This paper will present a detail investigation on the capability of airborne LiDAR data for hydrodynamic roughness estimation over tropical region in Air Keroh, Melaka, Malaysia. The study area is divided into four landcover classes i.e. building, forest, grassland and paved road. The airborne LiDAR data was obtained using the Optech ALTM 3100 in 2009 with a posting density of about 0.69 point per meter squared. The estimation of composite hydrodynamic roughness consists of four processing stages namely 1) landcover classification, 2) estimation of parameters as required by the hydrodynamic roughness, 3) estimation of hydrodynamic roughness of individual landcover class and 4) estimation of composite hydrodynamic roughness with different spatial resolutions. In the first stage, the landcover classification is performed by using Support Vector Machine (SVM) on the aerial photo of the study area obtained simultaneously with the airborne LiDAR. Estimation of hydrodynamic value for each landcover class requires different hydrodynamic models expressed by Manning's (n), Chezy (c), and Darcy (f) coefficients. The calculation of hydrodynamic roughness for each landcover class should be done separately, in which finally will be merged at specific spatial resolution to produce composite hydrodynamic roughness map represented by the Manning's n coefficient. In the stage of hydrodynamic roughness estimation building, forest, grassland and paved road require estimation of momentum absorption area, tree density, height of grass and area classified as road respectively. These parameters will be estimated by using airborne LiDAR data and aerial photograph. Estimation of tree density requires delineation of individual trees in forest area. Tree density and diameter at breast height (DBH) of individual tree is then estimated for each tree based on allometric equation. The overall accuracy for landcover classification is 96% with user and producer accuracies more than 80%. The results show that based on the airborne LiDAR data, the height of grass and tree DBH can be estimated with about 0.33m and 0.22m RMSE respectively. Finally, the composite hydrodynamic roughness is calculated based on the conventional averaging concept, which integrates different landcover types in a specific piece of land (spatial resolution)
Application of Satellite Rainfall Products for Flood Inundation Modelling in Kelantan River Basin, Malaysia
No full textThe advent of satellite rainfall products can provide a solution to the scarcity of observed rainfall data. The present study aims to evaluate the performance of high spatial-temporal resolution satellite rainfall products (SRPs) and rain gauge data in hydrological modelling and flood inundation mapping. Four SRPs, Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) - Early, - Late (IMERG-E, IMERG-L), Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation-Near Real Time (GSMaP-NRT), and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks- Cloud Classification System (PERSIANN-CCS) and rain gauge data were used as the primary input to a hydrological model, Rainfall-Runoff-Inundation (RRI) and the simulated flood level and runoff were compared with the observed data using statistical metrics. GSMaP showed the best performance in simulating hourly runoff with the lowest relative bias (RB) and the highest Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 4.9% and 0.79, respectively. Meanwhile, the rain gauge data was able to produce runoff with −12.2% and 0.71 for RB and NSE, respectively. The other three SRPs showed acceptable results in daily discharge simulation (NSE value between 0.42 and 0.49, and RB value between −23.3% and −31.2%). The generated flood map also agreed with the published information. In general, the SRPs, particularly the GSMaP, showed their ability to support rapid flood forecasting required for early warning of floods
A study of volunteered geographic information (VGI) assessment methods for flood hazard mapping: A review
No full textFloods are known as frequent and destructive global events that are caused by natural and human factors. Beside traditional methods, flood hazard mapping has been empowered by spatially enabled cell phones and web mapping technology which are feed by user generated data. This user generated information or Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), becomes the first point of response during any natural disaster. Since this information is created by volunteers, its reliability and credibility issues bring restriction on use of them as main source of information. The available methods of VGI credibility assessment mainly focus on meta data analysis, VGI spatial pattern analysis and comparison of VGI data with reference data. This paper thoroughly discusses recent development in these three groups of VGI assessment methods. At the end we highlighted several research gaps and potentials of combining and improving these methods to support flood hazard mapping
Flood hazard simulation for development plans in urban environment: a case study in Naga City, the Philippines
No full textAccurate and detailed terrain model are essential for hydrodynamics modelling especially in urban area. However, one of the main problems is frequent changes of land use in major cities, where frequent updating of the digital terrain model (DTM) for flood modelling might be needed. This paper presents one of the feasible approaches to assess the impact of developments on flood behaviours in an urban area. The input terrain model for hydrodynamic modelling is constructed through integrating different elevation datasets derived from various sources. Finally, the impact of the development on flood behaviour is made through detailed investigation on changes in flood hazard area. In the Digital Terrain Model development, the semivariogram of the geostatistical approach is used to investigate the effect of integrating various sources of elevation datasets. Furthermore, four interpolation methods were used for terrain interpolation, namely Australian National University's Digital Elevation Model algorithm (ANUDEM), Kriging, Polynomial and Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN). The assessments of the terrain models are based on the “Percentile Vertical Accuracy Assessment�, the distribution of errors and visual assessment of the DTMs. In this study, it was found that the DTM produced by Kriging is better than the DTMs produced by other interpolators and it fits with the requirements for the flood modelling purpose. In conjunction, two sets of Digital Surface Model (DSM) were constructed to represent the situation of Naga City, before and after the developments. The flood modelling is based on the 1D and 2D SOBEK flood model that used to simulate the flood events of 2, 5, 10 and 17.5 years return period flood. According to the results, it was proved that by simply elevating ground terrain in particular areas might not be a good solution for flood mitigation. This approach could create another flood problem in vicinity area
