Progressing urban climate research using a high-density monitoring network system.

An increasing number of urban meteorological networks (UMNs) and automated data acquisition are irreplaceable tools in modern urban climate monitoring, evaluation, and analysis. The most serious issue in such systems is data loss, caused primarily by communication problems between stations and servers. The Novi Sad Urban Network (NSUNET) consists of 28 remote stations and 2 servers built solely on open-source technologies. It is used for monitoring climate peculiarities and acquiring long-term meteorological data from the urban area of Novi Sad, as well as for the early warning notification to the city emergency services of the current urban weather conditions. Since its deployment, the system has managed to overcome most of the problems related to today's UMNs, to operate at a low Internet service fee, and ensure high reliability and performance on low-budget hardware. This study includes details on how to develop such a system and it presents a statistical analysis of the NSUNET system's performances and the measurement data. Furthermore, this kind of monitoring system provides good results in the analysis of air/surface temperature and outdoor human thermal comfort in the local climate zones (LCZs) of urban and surrounding areas and can help identify hot spots/districts in the urban area.

Smart Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Technologies (SEMAT)-A New Paradigm for Low-Cost, Remote Aquatic Environmental Monitoring.

Expense and the logistical difficulties with deploying scientific monitoring equipment are the biggest limitations to undertaking large scale monitoring of aquatic environments. The Smart Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Technologies (SEMAT) project is aimed at addressing this problem by creating an open standard for low-cost, near real-time, remote aquatic environmental monitoring systems. This paper presents the latest refinement of the SEMAT system in-line with the evolution of existing technologies, inexpensive sensors and environmental monitoring expectations. We provide a systems analysis and design of the SEMAT remote monitoring units and the back-end data management system. The system's value is augmented through a unique e-waste recycling and repurposing model which engages/educates the community in the production of the SEMAT units using social enterprise. SEMAT serves as an open standard for the community to innovate around to further the state of play with low-cost environmental monitoring. The latest SEMAT units have been trialled in a peri-urban lake setting and the results demonstrate the system's capabilities to provide ongoing data in near real-time to validate an environmental model of the study site.

Design and implementation of an affordable, public sector electronic medical record in rural Nepal.

INTRODUCTION: Globally, electronic medical records are central to the infrastructure of modern healthcare systems. Yet the vast majority of electronic medical records have been designed for resource-rich environments and are not feasible in settings of poverty. Here we describe the design and implementation of an electronic medical record at a public sector district hospital in rural Nepal, and its subsequent expansion to an additional public sector facility.DevelopmentThe electronic medical record was designed to solve for the following elements of public sector healthcare delivery: 1) integration of the systems across inpatient, surgical, outpatient, emergency, laboratory, radiology, and pharmacy sites of care; 2) effective data extraction for impact evaluation and government regulation; 3) optimization for longitudinal care provision and patient tracking; and 4) effectiveness for quality improvement initiatives. APPLICATION: For these purposes, we adapted Bahmni, a product built with open-source components for patient tracking, clinical protocols, pharmacy, laboratory, imaging, financial management, and supply logistics. In close partnership with government officials, we deployed the system in February of 2015, added on additional functionality, and iteratively improved the system over the following year. This experience enabled us then to deploy the system at an additional district-level hospital in a different part of the country in under four weeks. We discuss the implementation challenges and the strategies we pursued to build an electronic medical record for the public sector in rural Nepal.DiscussionOver the course of 18 months, we were able to develop, deploy and iterate upon the electronic medical record, and then deploy the refined product at an additional facility within only four weeks. Our experience suggests the feasibility of an integrated electronic medical record for public sector care delivery even in settings of rural poverty.