Objectives: Both the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) can be used to examine motor vehicle crash (MVC) deaths. These 2 data systems operate independently, using different methods to collect and code information about the type of vehicle (e.g., car, truck, bus) and road user (e.g., occupant, motorcyclist, pedestrian) involved in an MVC. A substantial proportion of MVC deaths in NVSS are coded as “unspecified” road user, which reduces the utility of the NVSS data for describing burden and identifying prevention measures. This study aimed to describe characteristics of unspecified road user deaths in NVSS to further our understanding of how these groups may be similar to occupant road user deaths.
Methods: Using data from 1999 to 2015, we compared NVSS and FARS MVC death counts by road user type, overall and by age group, gender, and year. In addition, we examined factors associated with the categorization of an MVC death as unspecified road user such as state of residence of decedent, type of medical death investigation system, and place of death.
Results: The number of MVC occupant deaths in NVSS was smaller than that in FARS in each year and the number of unspecified road user deaths in NVSS was greater than that in FARS. The sum of the number of occupant and unspecified road user deaths in NVSS, however, was approximately equal to the number of FARS occupant deaths. Age group and gender distributions were roughly equivalent for NVSS and FARS occupants and NVSS unspecified road users. Within NVSS, the number of MVC deaths listed as unspecified road user varied across states and over time. Other categories of road users (motorcyclists, pedal cyclists, and pedestrians) were consistent when comparing NVSS and FARS.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the unspecified road user MVC deaths in NVSS look similar to those of MVC occupants according to selected characteristics. Additional study is needed to identify documentation and reporting challenges in individual states and over time and to identify opportunities for improvement in the coding of road user type in NVSS. 相似文献
Habitat fragmentation is a primary driver of wildlife loss, and establishment of biological corridors is a common strategy to mitigate this problem. A flagship example is the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC), which aims to connect protected forest areas between Mexico and Panama to allow dispersal and gene flow of forest organisms. Because forests across Central America have continued to degrade, the functioning of the MBC has been questioned, but reliable estimates of species occurrence were unavailable. Large mammals are suitable indicators of forest functioning, so we assessed their conservation status across the Isthmus of Panama, the narrowest section of the MBC. We used large-scale camera-trap surveys and hierarchical multispecies occupancy models in a Bayesian framework to estimate the occupancy of 9 medium to large mammals and developed an occupancy-weighted connectivity metric to evaluate species-specific functional connectivity. White-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), jaguar (Panthera onca), giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), and tapir (Tapirus bairdii) had low expected occupancy along the MBC in Panama. Puma (Puma concolor), red brocket deer (Mazama temama), ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), and collared peccary (Pecari tajacu), which are more adaptable, had higher occupancy, even in areas with low forest cover near infrastructure. However, the majority of species were subject to ≥1 gap that was larger than their known dispersal distances, suggesting poor connectivity along the MBC in Panama. Based on our results, forests in Darien, Donoso–Santa Fe, and La Amistad International Park are critical for survival of large terrestrial mammals in Panama and 2 areas need restoration. 相似文献
Resilience has become a dominant disaster governance discourse. It has been criticised for insufficiently addressing systemic vulnerabilities while urging the vulnerable to self-organise. The urban resilience discourse involves a particular disconnect: it evokes ‘robustness’ and unaffectedness at the city scale on the one hand, and self-organisation of disaster-affected people and neighbourhoods on the other. This paper explains and illustrates the dual discourse through a case study on the reconstruction of informal and low-income settlements in the aftermath of the fire in Valparaíso, Chile, in 2014, focusing on the communication contents of two non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These NGOs deployed the discourse differently, yet both called for affected neighbourhoods to build a more robust city through self-organisation, and both suggested their work as the missing link between self-organisation and robustness. A danger in deploying the dual discourse is that it requires people who live in informal and low-income settlements to earn their right to the robust city through ‘better’ self-organisation based on fragmented visions. 相似文献