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The objective of this study was to identify utilization of housing support provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) among autistic people in the U.S. Using 2008 and 2016 Medicaid data, we identified autistic individuals birth to 61 years and linked them to national HUD data. We characterized demographics, co-occurring conditions, and HUD program involvement. Autistic Medicaid enrollees enrolled in HUD increased by 70% between 2008 and 2016. Among 846,350 autistic Medicaid enrollees in 2016, 10.4% (n = 88,315) were HUD-assisted. HUD-assisted autistic individuals, versus non-HUD-assisted, were more likely to be Black/African American and less likely to have private insurance. Most lived in urban areas and were enrolled in the Housing Choice Voucher program. Approximately 2,600 autistic individuals (3%) were homeless at HUD entry. Growing numbers of HUD-assisted autistic individuals point toward an urgent need for federal data to understand and address public health contexts of housing affordability and instability to complement existing clinical autism research investments. Integrated public health, housing, and disability supports must address equitable income supports and housing assistance needed to support the health needs of autistic individuals.

This study evaluates the static and seismic stability of the Narasimharaya Sagar (Gorukallu Balancing Reservoir) earthen dam, located in India’s seismically active Zone II. Using GeoStudio software, seepage, slope stability, and liquefaction analyses were conducted to assess the dam’s performance under static and dynamic conditions. Static analysis revealed factors of safety above permissible limits, ensuring stability under normal conditions. Seismic analysis, incorporating ground shaking with a peak acceleration of 0.1 g, highlighted significant displacements (0.984 m) and a reduced factor of safety (FOS) (1.279), approaching the allowable threshold. Liquefaction zones were identified, particularly in the back shell, indicating a high vulnerability to seismic-induced shear strength loss. To address these risks, geosynthetic reinforcements were applied, with optimized configurations (horizontal layers, 4 m vertical spacing, 20 m length) improving the FOS to 1.503. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of geosynthetics in mitigating soil liquefaction and enhancing seismic resilience, providing a robust framework for improving the safety of earthen dams in earthquake-prone regions.

Flood inundation mapping has become a critical reference for flood risk management, particularly for determining insurance premiums and formulating mitigation strategies in rapidly urbanizing areas with high population density. With recent advancements in mapping technologies and high computing capacity, high‐resolution spatiotemporal datasets can be integrated into flood simulation models. In this study, a hydrological digital elevation model (HyDEM) was implemented at the city scale for Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, to improve urban flood simulations. The HyDEM incorporated specialized datasets, including high‐resolution DEM, building layer, bankline layer, and seadike layer. Using the Delft3D FM 1D–2D modeling platform, 10 basin‐scale models were constructed across Kaohsiung City, and multiresolution computational meshes were employed to achieve a balance between simulation accuracy and computational efficiency. Model performance was validated using two historical flood events, during which it achieved an overall accuracy of 84% for the June 5 Rainstorm event and 80% for the Typhoon Gaemi (2024) event. These results indicate that flood inundation maps (FIMs) can be considerably improved by preserving critical topographic features, particularly building footprints and hydraulic structures such as river and sea dikes. The proposed method thus addresses limitations of earlier generations of FIMs and provides a framework for advancing next‐generation flood inundation maps.

This paper presents a study on bridge pier protection with a single porous basket (SPB) in clear-water experiments. The SPB is a type of combined flow-altering countermeasure. The SPB was installed at a distance ahead of the protected pier. After a series of tests, the results showed that appropriate installation of the SPB was able to effectively adjust the flow pattern to reduce the down-flow motion and horseshoe vortex ahead of the pier. Dominant factors for the pier protection—considered for all tests—included the distance between the basket and pier, submerged depth of the basket, basket length, pier diameter, basket diameter, hole size, porosity, and the flow approaching angle. After evaluating these parameters through laboratory tests, the results of protection were optimized. In optimal conditions, the SPB was able to provide maximum pier protection and decrease the maximum scour depth by as much as 75.53%.

This paper proposes a near-nature ecological technique, which can consist of a wide range of materials, to protect against pier scouring. The proposed technique can involve the use of many long strips that behave like water weeds. This paper studied a protection method against pier scour by using long strips in a submerged overfall, particularly for a pier located at the maximum depth area of overfall scour. The length and size of the strips were chosen as factors to study their protective effect. Our results showed that this approach slowed the flow velocity between the installed strips and bed. The sediment in flow might accordingly move slowly or even settle down. Thus, the pier could be kept stable and safe by the installation of those strips. Experimental results show that the protective effect is more efficient when the strip length is closer to the pier and has a small diameter. Moreover, the maximum protective effect reached 45.5% scour reduction. Varied lengths provided different protective effects against overfall scour. These findings show that this near-nature ecological technique could be a good and economical solution for pier protection in submerged overfalls.

A rapid change in the pore water pressure of unsaturated soil due to a wetting front is a crucial factor and may result in instabilities in layered slopes. This study presents preliminary research on such a change, which we define as the seepage hammer effect. Vertical infiltration with multiple soil layers by column test was implemented to investigate the mechanism of the seepage hammer effect and distinguish it from the well-known Lisse effect and reverse Wieringermeer effect. A two-phase flow model was utilized to understand the evolutions of pore water/air pressure and volumetric water content, and its result evolved into a layered infinite slope stability analysis. Thus, the impacts of the seepage hammer effect on slope stability can be analyzed. This study found that the seepage hammer effect was triggered when the wetting front reached the interface of multiple layers and impermeable layers, and the rising speed of pore water pressure was proportional to the air venting capacity of soil. Slope stability analysis showed that the safety factor may decline suddenly because of the seepage hammer effect. Its relationship with the factor of safety and the sliding velocity is proportional. The detection of the seepage hammer effect could be a potential application of the study of fast-moving landslides.

River slopes can be changed due to an extreme event, e.g., a large-scale earthquake. This can uplift a riverbed greatly and thereby change the behavior of the river flow into a free or submerged overfall. Corresponding damage, including extreme erosion, on bridge piers located in the river can take place due to the aforementioned flow conditions. A reconstructed bridge pier in the same location would also experience a similar impact if the flow condition is not changed. It is important to identify these phenomena and research the mechanism in the interaction between overfall types and scour at bridge piers. Therefore, this paper is aimed at studying a mechanism of free and submerged overfall flow impacts on bridge piers with different distances by a series of moving-bed experiments. The experiment results showed clearly that bridge pier protection requires attention particularly when the pier is located in the maximum scour hole induced by the submerged overfall due to the z directional flow eddies. In many other cases, such as when the location of the bridge pier was at the upstream slope of a scour hole induced by a flow drop, a deposition mound could be observed at the back of the pier. This indicates that, while a pier is at this location, an additional protection takes place on the bridge pier.

Flood risk management has become a growing priority for city managers and disaster risk prevention agencies worldwide. Correspondingly, large investments are made towards data collection, archiving and analysis and technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing play important role in this regard. GIS technologies offer valuable means for delineation of flood plains, zoning of areas that need protection from floods and identification of plans for development and scoping of various kinds of flood protection measures. Flood inundation maps (FIMs) are particularly useful in planning flood disaster risk responses. The purpose of the present paper is to describe efforts in developing new generation of FIMs at the city scale and to demonstrate effectiveness of such maps in the case of the coastal city of Tainan, Taiwan. In the present work, besides pluvial floods, the storm surge influence is also considered. The 1D/2D coupled model SOBEK was used for flood simulations. Different indicators such as Probability of Detection (POD) and Scale of Accuracy (SA) were applied in the calibration and validation stages of the work and their corresponding values were found to be up to 88.1% and 68.0%, respectively. From the overall analysis, it came up that land elevation, tidal phase, and storm surge are the three dominant factors that influence flooding in Tainan. A large number of model simulations were carried out in order to produce FIMs which were then effectively applied in the stakeholder engagement process.

Wastewater-based surveillance is a promising approach for proactive outbreak monitoring. SARS-CoV-2 is shed in stool early in the clinical course and infects a large asymptomatic population, making it an ideal target for wastewater-based monitoring. In this study, we develop a laboratory protocol to quantify viral titers in raw sewage via qPCR analysis and validate results with sequencing analysis. Our results suggest that the number of positive cases estimated from wastewater viral titers is orders of magnitude greater than the number of confirmed clinical cases and therefore may significantly impact efforts to understand the case fatality rate and progression of disease. These data may help inform decisions surrounding the advancement or scale-back of social distancing and quarantine efforts based on dynamic wastewater catchment-level estimations of prevalence. Wastewater surveillance represents a complementary approach to clinical surveillance to measure the presence and prevalence of emerging infectious diseases like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. This innovative data source can improve the precision of epidemiological modeling to understand the penetrance of SARS-CoV-2 in specific vulnerable communities. Here, we tested wastewater collected at a major urban treatment facility in Massachusetts and detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA from the N gene at significant titers (57 to 303 copies per ml of sewage) in the period from 18 to 25 March 2020 using RT-qPCR. We validated detection of SARS-CoV-2 by Sanger sequencing the PCR product from the S gene. Viral titers observed were significantly higher than expected based on clinically confirmed cases in Massachusetts as of 25 March. Our approach is scalable and may be useful in modeling the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and future outbreaks. IMPORTANCE Wastewater-based surveillance is a promising approach for proactive outbreak monitoring. SARS-CoV-2 is shed in stool early in the clinical course and infects a large asymptomatic population, making it an ideal target for wastewater-based monitoring. In this study, we develop a laboratory protocol to quantify viral titers in raw sewage via qPCR analysis and validate results with sequencing analysis. Our results suggest that the number of positive cases estimated from wastewater viral titers is orders of magnitude greater than the number of confirmed clinical cases and therefore may significantly impact efforts to understand the case fatality rate and progression of disease. These data may help inform decisions surrounding the advancement or scale-back of social distancing and quarantine efforts based on dynamic wastewater catchment-level estimations of prevalence.

When water penetrates into soil, interstitial air can become trapped by the infiltrating water. Neglecting the effect of air ventilation could cause deviations in the predicted pore water pressure and the associated effective stress. This study aims at the effect of air ventilation on the coupled hydromechanical responses in homogeneous soil during infiltration. A schematic concept of infiltration conditions (open- and closed-valve) in homogeneous soil is proposed for investigating their impacts on the pore water pressure and effective stress. Experiments of vertical soil column filled with Ottawa sand (ASTM C778 20/30) were designed for two types of air ventilation (namely, open and closed infiltration). The evolution of pore water pressure at the cylinder bottom was recorded, and served as a benchmark problem for evaluating the coupled hydro-mechanical response. Coding with the commercial software, GeoStudio, was employed for the dynamic behaviors of pore-water and -air pressures as well as the evolving effective stress. It was found in both the experiments and numerical investigations that the infiltration condition plays a crucial role for the ascending rate of pore water pressure as well as the associated effective stress. These results illustrate the inevitable impacts of the air ventilation conditions on the mechanical properties of the soil during infiltration.