The validity of certain critical reasoning steps carried out during or on the sidelines of the environmental science, public health survey, medical experiment, population risk assessment, or disease space-time mapping under conditions of in situ uncertainty and space-time heterogeneity, is often not given sufficient attention and may even be out of the investigator's line of thought. For example, the technical complexity of an environmental exposure experiment may overshadow the logical assumptions made when moving from one phase of the experiment to the next, or the study of population risk assessment may focus on analytical and computational matters, whereas methodological and cultural factors are neglected.This book helps health investigators structure their thinking so that they avoid logical mistakes and argument pitfalls, and also gain new insights about reality, improve their awareness of the environment and context within which one's thinking takes place.

This book includes a collection of researches that contains research data, discussions and conclusions focusing on several related geotechnical aspects of infrastructure. Topics include issues related to civil infrastructure such as temperature-induced lateral earth pressure on bridge abutment, subsidence of high speed rail and expressway, application of recycled rubber mats, railway ballast evaluation, hurricane protection floodwall, tunnel portal stability, deep excavation case study and properties of contaminated soils. Various types of research were used in the various studies, including field measurements, numerical analyses and laboratory measurements. This findings and results should lead to more resilient infrastructure design, maintenance and management, which will provide benefits to both civil engineering practitioners, researchers and students

This book presents new research studies dealing with the attempts made by the scientists and practitioners to address some key engineering issues in tunneling engineering, geotechnical engineering, and municipal sustainability issues that are becoming quite relevant in today's world. With high urbanization rates, advancement in technologies, difficulties in construction of subway tunnel in soft marine clay deposits, and severe ground subsidence due to excessive groundwater withdrawal pose many challenges in their management. Papers were selected from the 5th GeoChina International Conference 2018 - Civil Infrastructures Confronting Severe Weathers and Climate Changes: From Failure to Sustainability, held on July 23 to 25, 2018 in HangZhou, China.

The availability of spatial databases and widespread use of geographic information systems has stimulated increasing interest in the analysis and modelling of spatial data. Spatial data analysis focuses on detecting patterns, and on exploring and modelling relationships between them in order to understand the processes responsible for their emergence. In this way, the role of space is emphasised , and our understanding of the working and representation of space, spatial patterns, and processes is enhanced. In applied research, the recognition of the spatial dimension often yields different and more meaningful results and helps to avoid erroneous conclusions. This book aims to provide an introduction into spatial data analysis to graduates interested in applied statistical research. The text has been structured from a data-driven rather than a theory-based perspective, and focuses on those models, methods and techniques which are both accessible and of practical use for graduate students. Exploratory techniques as well as more formal model-based approaches are presented, and both area data and origin-destination flow data are considered.

Applications of spatial data, coupled with geographic information systems, are finding increasing use in the disciplines of geography and geology, as well as environmental science, ecology, epidemiology, economics and the social sciences. Disciplines that are concerned with spatial variations and patterns and the relationships between such patterns. Spatial data is defined here as data where the absolute locations and/or relative spatial locations of the observations are taken into account, in addition to the values relating to the phenomena of interest. This textbook is aimed at students seeking to apply GIS and spatial data analysis and statistics to their fields of study and focuses on detecting patterns and exploring and modeling relationships between such patterns in order to understand the processes responsible for the observed patterns. It avoids an exhaustive presentation of the whole of spatial data analysis, providing instead a subset of techniques that are both accessible and of practical use. The spatial analysis techniques presented include: visualisation tools, exploratory devices and more formal model-based approaches. The data used are subdivided into four broad data types: those concerned with the location of point events (spatial point patterns); with measurements made over a set of areal units (area data); with attributes measured at sampled point locations (geostatistical data); and with the spatial interaction of flow data consisting of measurements which are associated with a link or pair of locations representing points or areas. Each chapter is accompanied by a set of examples, case studies and computer based exercises which involve real world data sets and reflect a range of applications across disciplines. A package of specially prepared software tools accompanies the book, incorporating the data sets used in the text.