OBJECTIVE The aim of this pilot study was to describe problems in functioning and associated rehabilitation needs in persons with spinal cord injury after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti by applying a newly developed tool based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). DESIGN Pilot study. SUBJECTS Eighteen persons with spinal cord injury (11 women, 7 men)...

Image processing has been proved to be an effective tool for analysis in various fields and applications in engineering. Among the segmentation methods, image thresholding technique is one of the most well-known methods due to its simplicity, robustness, and high precision. The primary objective of image processing is to optimize visualization of particular thematic data set. The type of image ...

This paper describes a study conducted to develop a method to facilitate more reliable determination of the rehabilitation priority order for water pipes by taking into account the pipes’ hydraulic importance. Existing methods use only the pipeline deterioration rate to determine the rehabilitation priority order. Accordingly, the deterioration rate under normal conditions and the hydraulic imp...

Flood is one of the annual disasters in many places. It has not been well-managed yet both pre-disaster and post-disaster. Image processing machine learning are commonly utilized for disaster management systems such as forecasting any potential flood by monitoring water level rivers dams. However, it a limited framework to be implemented strategic plan management. Thus, this study aims develop ...

In December 2004, Tamil Nadu, massive underwater earthquake sent giant waves crashing into coastlines across Southern Asia. Children were hit hard by the tsunami. Families were left homeless and lost their livelihoods. Many children lost their parents or were separated from their families and their schools were destroyed. It is well recognized that the nature and extent of disaster can influenc...

BACKGROUND In recent years, natural disasters and the accompanying health risks have become more frequent, and rehabilitation work has become an important part of government performance. On one hand, social networks play an important role in participants' therapeutic community participation and physical & mental recovery. On the other hand, therapeutic communities with widespread participation ...

BACKGROUND To estimate changes in the cost and utilization of Medicare among beneficiaries over age 65 who have been impacted by a natural disaster, we merged publically available county-level Medicare claims for the years 2008-2012 with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) data related to disasters in each U.S. County from 2007 to 2012. METHODS Fixed-effects generalized linear models w...