In disaster studies, vulnerability is used to denote “the susceptibility or potential for harm to social, infrastructural, economic and ecological systems” (Pine, 2009, 136). As the nodes of critical systems of human artefacts, urban areas are vulnerable to natural hazards, and suffer losses from disasters. The vulnerability of urban areas is triggered by historical, social, political and physi...

In times of recession, expert systems supporting environmental managers undergo a revival. However, the retrofitting of sustainable water structures is currently undertaken ad hoc using engineering experience supported by minimal formal guidance. There is a lack of practical decision tools that can be used by different professions for the rapid assessment of ecosystem services that can be creat...

The authors used a vulnerability-stress-adaptation framework to examine personality traits and chronic stress as predictors of the developmental course of physical aggression in the early years of marriage. Additionally, personality traits and physical aggression were examined as predictors of the developmental course of chronic stress. Data from 103 couples collected 4 times over the first 3 y...

Recent experimental research has shown that ordinary unbounded steel reinforced elastomeric bearings (SREBs) can be considered as an attractive cost-effective option for the seismic isolation of highway bridges. To further investigate its benefits, the current study is focused on the seismic risk assessment of an optimally designed highway bridge isolated by SREB system. A typical three-span hi...

Walls and frames have different deflection lines and, depending on the seismic mass they support, may often possess different natural periods. In many cases, wall–frame structures present an advantageous behavior. In these structures, the walls and the frames are rigidly connected. Nevertheless, if the walls and the frames were not rigidly connected, an opportunity for an efficient passive cont...

As the frequency and intensity of heatwaves are growing in Australia, strategies to combat heat are becoming more vital. Cities are exposed to urban heat islands (UHIs) due to excess urbanisation. In this study, a definition of urban heatwave (UHW) is conceptualised to investigate the combined impacts of heatwaves and UHIs. To quantify the negative impacts of UHW, indicators—such as excess morb...

An evaluation of the risk to an exposed element from a hazardous event requires a consideration of the element’s vulnerability, which expresses its propensity to suffer damage. This concept allows the assessed level of hazard to be translated to an estimated level of risk and is often used to evaluate the risk from earthquakes and cyclones. However, for other natural perils, such as mass moveme...

Attacks on web applications are growing rapidly with the opening of new technologies, HTML tags and JavaScript functions. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities are being exploited by the attackers to steal web browser's resources (cookies, credentials etc. ) by injecting the malicious JavaScript code on the victim's web applications. The existing techniques like filtering of tags...