Literature on medical dispatch is growing, focusing mainly on efficiency (under and overtriage) and dispatch-assisted CPR. But the issue of population catchment size, functional costs and rationalization is rarely addressed. If we can observe a trend toward a decreasing number of dispatch centres in many European countries, there is today no evidence on what is the right catchment size to reach...

Hydrological models are created for a wide range of scales and intents. The Catchment Modelling Framework (CMF) extends the Python programming language with hydrology specific language elements, to setup specific hydrological models adapted to the scientific problems and the dominant flow processes of a particular study area. CMF provides a straightforward method to test hydrological theories a...

Improving dryland salinity management at catchment scales requires an integrated modelling approach, in which the dominant bio-physical and socio-economic drivers, processes and impacts are considered. This paper presents and evaluates the use of a Bayesian Decision Network (BDN) model as an integrated approach for considering the trade-offs associated with the management of dryland salinity, a...

This study investigates for the first time the relative importance of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and particulate organic carbon (POC) in the fluvial carbon flux from an actively eroding peatland catchment in the southern Pennines, UK. Event scale variability in DOC and POC was examined and the annual flux of fluvial organic carbon was estimated for the catchment. At the event scale, both DO...

GIS software has different useful tools that can be used for sites, demographic and competitive analysis. These tools enable retail and market researchers to find solutions related to many retail planning issues. The aim of this paper is to use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for retail location assessment of two retail centers called Al-Dawly and Al-Mahmal centers located at Jeddah city...

This paper attempts to clarify key biophysical issues and the problems involved in the ethics of socio-ecohydrological catchment management. The issue in managing complex systems is to live with unavoidable change while securing the capacity of the ecohydrological system of the catchment to sustain vital ecological goods and services, aquatic as well as terrestrial, on which humanity depends ul...

Conversion of native vegetation into farmed grassland in the Lake Taupo catchment commenced in the late 1950s. The lake’s iconic value is being threatened by the slow decline in lake water quality that has become apparent since the 1970s. This decline is due to increased nitrogen (N) leaching from the catchment, with 95% of the ‘manageable’ leached N estimated to be sourced from livestock farms...

Functional Land Management (FLM) is proposed as an integrator for sustainability policies and assesses the functional capacity of the soil and land to deliver primary productivity, water purification and regulation, carbon cycling and storage, habitat for biodiversity and recycling of nutrients. This paper presents the catchment challenge as a method to bridge the gap between science, stakehold...

The hydrological catchment areas are commonly extracted from digital elevation models (DEMs). The shortcoming is that computations for large areas are very time consuming and even may be impractical. Furthermore, the DEM may be inaccessible or in a poor quality. This chapter presents an algorithm to approximate the medial axis of river networks, which leads to catchment area delineation. We pro...

The runoff of pesticides (insecticides, herbicides and fungicides) from agricultural lands is a key concern for the health of the iconic Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Relatively low levels of herbicide residues can reduce the productivity of marine plants and corals. However, the risk of these residues to Great Barrier Reef ecosystems has been poorly quantified due to a lack of large-scale dat...