Yes / To assess developments over time in the capture, curation and use of quality and safety information in managing hospital services. Setting: Four acute National Health Service hospitals in England. Participants: 111.5 hours of observation of hospital board and directorate meetings, and 72 hours of ward observations. 86 interviews with board level and middle managers and with ward managers and staff. Results: There were substantial improvements in the quantity and quality of data produced for boards and middle managers between 2013 and 2016, starting from a low base. All four hospitals deployed data warehouses, repositories where datasets from otherwise disparate departmental systems could be managed. Three of them deployed real-time ward management systems, which were used extensively by nurses and other staff. Conclusions: The findings, particularly relating to the deployment of real-time ward management systems, are a corrective to the many negative accounts of information technology implementations. The hospital information infrastructures were elements in a wider move, away from a reliance on individual professionals exercising judgements and towards team-based and data-driven approaches to the active management of risks. They were not, though, using their fine-grained data to develop ultrasafe working practices. / NIHR Health Service and Delivery Research (HS&DR) programme, project 13/07/68.

Yes / There have been concerns about the quality and safety of NHS hospital services since the turn of the millennium. This study investigated the progress that acute NHS hospital trusts have made in developing and using technology infrastructures to enable them to monitor quality and safety following the publication in 2013 of the second Francis report on the scandal at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (The Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry. Chaired by Sir Robert Francis QC. Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry. HC 898. London: The Stationery Office; 2013). Methods: A telephone survey of 15 acute NHS trusts in the Yorkshire and the Humber region, and a review of board papers of all acute NHS trusts in England for January 2015, were undertaken. The telephone survey was used to identify trusts for a larger field study, which was undertaken in four acute NHS trusts between April 2015 and September 2016. The methods included the direct observation of the use of whiteboards and other technologies on two wards in each trust, an observation of board quality committees, semistructured interviews and an analysis of the quality and safety data in board papers. Published sources about national and local agencies were reviewed to identify the trust quality and safety data that these agencies accessed and used. An interview programme was also undertaken with those organisations. The Biography of Artefacts approach was used to analyse the data. Findings: The data and technology infrastructures within trusts had developed over many years. The overall design had been substantially determined by national agencies, and was geared to data processing: capturing and validating data for submission to national agencies. Trust boards had taken advantage of these data and used them to provide assurance about quality and safety. Less positively, the infrastructures were fragmented, with different technologies used to handle different quality and safety data. Real-time management systems on wards, including electronic whiteboards and mobile devices, were used and valued by nurses and other staff. The systems support the proactive management of clinical risks. These developments have occurred within a broad context, with trusts focusing on improving the quality and safety of services and publishing far more data on their performance than they did just 3 years earlier. Trust-level data suggest that quality and safety improved at all four trusts between 2013 and 2016. Our findings indicate that the technology infrastructures contributed to these improvements. There remains considerable scope to rationalise those infrastructures. / National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme.

Immersive media (IM) is a class of technologies that aim to create an immersive environment for viewers, such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR or XR), and 360° or panoramic projection installations. The preservation of immersive media is a growing field of research and practice, whether for historical reference of these technologies, or for re-exhibition of artistic/creative works. IM benefits from existing strategies developed for preservation of complex digital and physical media such as software-based art and installation artworks, but the unique characteristics of IM lead to unique preservation needs. Exploring how these needs may be met through expanded documentation and cataloging practices prompts reflection on how such changes could set larger institutional shifts into motion.

Yes / The development of self-moderating and self-sensing concrete composites with high and stable thermal/electrical conductivity is essential to mitigate and monitor the temperature deformation behaviours (TDB) of engineering infrastructures such as highways, bridge pavements, airstrips and ports. Owing to the micron-scale diameter and high aspect ratio, stainless steel wires (SSWs) can establish a comprehensive and extensive thermal/electrical, as well as reinforcing, three-dimensional network within the concrete matrix, even at a low content. This paper thus investigated the TDB self-moderating and self-sensing performances of SSWs enhanced ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC). The main experiments were carried out on SSWs enhanced UHPC slabs, measuring 250 mm×225 mm×16 mm. The volume contents of SSWs studied were 0 %, 0.5 vol%, 1.0 vol% and 1.5 vol%. The TDB self-moderating and self-sensing experiments were carried out under different conditions, including indoor and outdoor environments. Such composites showed effective and highly stable capabilities in reducing the temperature difference and diminishing the strain of pavement slabs under different environmental conditions. Compared with the UHPC without SSWs, UHPC with 1.5 vol% of SSWs can reduce the temperature difference by 7.4 °C (39.4 %) when being heated from 21.6 °C to 50 °C, thus, reducing the maximum tensile/compressive strains by 83.1 %/82.2 %, and the tensile/compressive stresses by 70.8 %/82.0 %. At a heating rate of 67.1 °C/min, incorporating 1.5 vol% of SSWs results in significant reductions in both vertical displacement and stress, amounting to 98.6 % and 89.6 %, respectively. The 1.5 vol% SSWs reinforced UHPC slab also suppressed 25.0 % of temperature difference, 76.6 % of strain and 70.7 % of stress in scorching outdoor environments. The TDB of SSWs reinforced UHPC can be real-timely reflected by monitoring the quick and small-scale resistance fluctuations, and the fractional changes in resistivity can reach 5.24 % with a response time of 0.23 s. The self-moderating and self-sensing performances of such composites remained stable after repeated heating experiments, thus suggesting its potential for promising applications in engineering infrastructures which are susceptible to deformation under high-temperature conditions. / National Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51908103 , 51978127 , and 52178188 ), and the Major Science and Technology Research Project of the China Building Materials Federation ( 2023JBGS10-02 ). / The full text will be available at the end of the publisher's embargo: 13th May 2025

Dans les régions nordiques, l'accumulation préférentielle d'un couvert neigeux isolant en bordure des infrastructures de transport linéaires limite l'extraction de la chaleur en hiver. En terrain pergélisolé, cette modification de l'équilibre thermique peut être une cause importante de la dégradation du pergélisol sous-jacent affectant grandement les propriétés structurales de la chaussée. Puisque les transferts de chaleur dans le manteau neigeux sont essentiellement gouvernés par le mécanisme de conduction, son effet isolant peut être contré en diminuant l'épaisseur de neige présente sur les pentes et aux pieds du remblai. Pour ce faire, l'adoucissement de la pente des talus favorise un écoulement laminaire du vent qui souffle plus facilement la neige loin du remblai et minimise son accumulation. Les présents travaux de recherche ont pour objectif de mettre au point une méthode de conception visant la stabilisation thermique des infrastructures de transport linéaires construites sur le pergélisol en optimisant la géométrie du remblai de façon à prendre en compte l'accumulation de neige préférentielle. L'approche générale de l'étude repose sur l'utilisation d'un modèle bidimensionnel, réalisé à l'aide du logiciel de modélisation géothermique TEMP/W, qui simule l'effet du couvert neigeux sur le sol sous-jacent. L'instrumentation d'un transect de la piste d'atterrissage de Tasiujaq, au Nunavik, a permis d'y documenter le régime thermique du sol et l'évolution du couvert neigeux. À partir de ces données, le facteur n de gel a pu être exprimé en fonction de la hauteur de neige suivant une équation logarithmique. Cette relation empirique sert de condition limite à la surface du modèle géothermique. Le modèle, calibré et validé à l'aide de températures collectées au site d'essai de Tasiujaq, permet de quantifier l'impact de la géométrie du remblai sur le gradient de température dans le sol d'infrastructure. Ce dernier est calculé à partir de la température à l'interface entre le remblai et le sol et celle à la profondeur de variation d'amplitude annuelle nulle. Un gradient de température nul ou négatif est visé afin de préserver le pergélisol. Un tel régime thermique est obtenu en corrigeant la température à l'interface. Ainsi, afin d'obtenir les températures à l'interface correspondantes, des simulations numériques sont effectuées pour six pentes de talus variant de 45 à 14% (11H : 5V à 7H : 1V), et ce, pour trois hauteurs de remblai. Ultimement, ces résultats sont présentés sous la forme d'un outil de calcul de la pente requise pour assurer la stabilité thermique d'un remblai en fonction de la hauteur du remblai pour des sites où le vent et l'orientation favorise l'accumulation de neige. / In northern regions, preferential accumulation of an insulating snowpack along linear transportation infrastructures prevents the extraction of heat in winter. In permafrost terrain, this thermal equilibrium modification can be a significant cause of the underlying permafrost degradation, which affects the structural properties of the roadway. Since heat transfers through the snowpack are essentially controlled by the mechanism of conduction, its insulating effect can be counteracted by decreasing the thickness of snow on the slopes and at the toe of the embankment. To achieve this goal, the gentle slope promotes a laminar wind flow that blows snow away easily and, therefore, minimizes its accumulation. The main objective of this research project is to develop a design method aiming for thermal stabilization of linear transportation infrastructures built on permafrost by optimizing the embankment geometry to consider the preferential accumulation of snow. The general approach of the study relies on the use of a 2D model (produced with the modeling software TEMP/W) simulating the snowpack effect on the underlying ground. The monitoring of a transect at Tasiujaq airstrip, in Nunavik, documents the thermal regime in the ground and the evolution of the snowpack. Based on those data, the freezing n-factor was expressed as a function of the snow thickness following a logarithmic equation. This empirical relation is used as an upper boundary of the geothermal model. Once calibrated and validated with the data collected at theTasiujaq test site, the model allows to quantify the impact of the embankment geometry on the temperature gradient in the natural subgrade ground. This gradient is calculated from the temperature at the interface between the embankment and the ground and the temperature at the depth of zero annual amplitude. A temperature gradient of zero or less is aimed to preserve the permafrost. This ground thermal regime is obtained by correcting the temperature at the interface. Therefore, numeric simulations are run for six slopes between 45 and 14% and for three embankment thickness. Finally, these results are presented through an engineering tool calculating the slope needed to assure the thermal stability of the infrastructure depending of the embankment height.

Condition assessment of civil engineering infrastructure systems is of growing importance as they face aging and degradation due to both human-made activities and environmental factors. Nevertheless, challenges persist in data collection, leading to "data scarcity", and the need for frequent site visits in inspections, presenting significant obstacles in the assessment of the civil infrastructure systems. This dissertation aims to overcome these challenges by exploring the potential of two emerging technologies: Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR). In tackling the issue of data scarcity, the research question revolves around how Generative AI can be utilized to mitigate data collection-related constraints and increase data availability, thus facilitating health monitoring applications of infrastructure systems. For that, using various Generative AI models, the dissertation works on acceleration response data generation, including data augmentation and domain translation applications on different structures. In addressing the site visit challenge, the dissertation focuses on the use of VR to bring the infrastructure to the experts in a single collaborative immersive environment and investigate its impact on decision-making in inspections. For that, using VR technology, the dissertation develops a Virtual Meeting Environment (VME) integrated with the infrastructure data and models presented through novel immersive visualization techniques. The dissertation further investigates the impact of VME on decision-making in infrastructure inspections through experimentation with engineers. These investigations of the use of Generative AI and VR demonstrate various contributions. Generative AI effectively tackles the need for vast datasets in data-intensive damage detection applications. It also demonstrates its potential in estimating representative response data for various structural conditions across dissimilar infrastructures. VME, on the other hand, offers an increased understanding of the material along with a safer, practical, and cost-effective complementing alternative to traditional in-person site visits. It further reveals how VME improves decision-making in infrastructure inspections.

La gélivité des sols d'infrastructure de deux sites routiers (Cap-santé et St-David) à été étudiée. Des potentiels de ségrégation (SP) des sols d'infrastructure ont été déterminés en laboratoire sur des échantillons intacts et reconstitués provenant des deux sites routiers et directement sur le terrain avec une instrumentation appropriée. Cette étude confirme que les SP sont plus faibles dans la croûte que dans le sol n'ayant jamais gelé et que les SP augmentent avec la teneur en eau. Le SP évalué à partir d'échantillons intacts en laboratoire est une bonne estimation de celui déterminé directement sur la chaussée avec une instrumentation appropriée. Par conséquent, l'utilisation des SP établis en laboratoire sur des échantillons intacts devraient donner une bonne estimation du soulèvement au gel de la chaussée. Cependant, il faut tenir compte des conditions particulières du terrain (stratigraphie, variation du pourcentage d'argile, nappe phréatique, degré de saturation, etc.). Il y a une différence entre les SP évalués sur des échantillons intacts et reconstitués ainsi que dans le mécanisme de formation des lentilles de glace lors du gel. La différence entre les SP dépend du type de sol. Cette différence est plus grande pour les sols se retrouvant dans une croûte argileuse et pour les argiles ayant un indice de liquidité élevé. Dans un tel cas, des essais sur échantillons intacts sont recommandés. Finalement, il a été montré que la relation empirique de Konrad (1999) est plus précise pour estimer les SP de sols argileux reconstitués que celle de Konrad (2005) mais, cette dernière est mieux adaptée pour les sols fins avec peu de minéraux argileux.

Depuis plusieurs années, les changements climatiques ont une grande influence sur la dégradation du pergélisol, laquelle impacte directement la stabilité des infrastructures. Le Nunavik est la partie nord de la province de Québec où il n'y a pas de routes ou de voies ferrées reliant les villages. Le transport aérien et maritime est donc essentiel pour assurer la communication entre les villages et le reste de la province. La construction de remblais de transport affecte inévitablement le régime thermique du sol et peut entraîner une dégradation thermique du pergélisol sous-jacent, ce qui entraîne une perte importante des capacités structurelles et fonctionnelles de l'infrastructure. Pour réduire les impacts du dégel du pergélisol sur les infrastructures de transport, plusieurs techniques de protection ont été développées. Ces différentes techniques sont basées sur la réduction de l’apport de chaleur sous l’infrastructure et sur l’augmentation de l’extraction de chaleur du remblai. Ce document présente l’’analyse des résultats d'un suivi à long terme de trois sites adaptés en utilisant des données climatologiques et des données sur la température du sol présentées graphiquement avec des analyses détaillées et la validation de la stabilité thermique avec des abaques de conception. À Tasiujaq les trois méthodes de mitigation qui ont été installées dans la pente du remblai de la piste d’atterrissage sont le remblai à pente douce, le remblai à convection d'air et le drain thermique, et les résultats de l’analyse démontrent comment la pente douce a la meilleure performance, dans les conditions de climat à Tasiujaq. À la piste d'atterrissage de Puvirnituq, le projet étudie un remblai à convection d'air, et conclue que la hauteur actuelle du remblai permet de garantir la stabilité thermique en laissant une marge de sécurité pour les futurs changements climatiques. Sur la route menant à l’aéroport de Salluit, la méthode de mitigation du pergélisol à l'étude est un drain thermique selon les analyses effectuées, la stabilisation thermique n'était pas nécessaire, mais elle a été bénéfique en offrant une grande marge de sécurité à cette importante infrastructure. / For several years now, climate change has had a major influence on the degradation of permafrost, which has a direct impact on infrastructure stability. Nunavik is the northern part of the province of Quebec where there are no roads or railways connecting the villages. Air and marine transportation are therefore essential to ensure communication between the villages and the rest of the province. The construction of transportation embankments inevitably affects the thermal regime of the ground and can lead to thermal degradation of the underlying permafrost, resulting in a significant loss of structural and functional capacity of the infrastructure. To reduce the impacts of permafrost thawing on transportation infrastructure, several protection techniques have been developed. These different techniques are based on reducing the heat input under the infrastructure and increasing the heat extraction from the embankment. The analysis of the results of a long-term monitoring of three test sites is presented in this document. In Tasiujaq, the three mitigation methods that have been installed in the slope of the airstrip embankment are a gentle slope embankment, an air convection embankment and a heat drain, and the results of the analysis demonstrate how the gentle slope performs best under Tasiujaq's climate conditions. At the Puvirnituq airstrip, the project is studying an air convection embankment, finding that the current height of the embankment provides thermal stability by leaving a one-metre safety margin for future climate change. On the road to the Salluit airport, the permafrost mitigation method under study is a heat drain, which, according to the analyses performed, was not necessary in terms of heat balance, but was beneficial in generating a large safety margin for this important infrastructure.

Les infrastructures linéaires sont reconnues pour faciliter la dispersion de plantes indésirables dans leur emprise et les habitats adjacents. Toutefois, les impacts des emprises de lignes électriques ont été peu étudiés, particulièrement en milieux humides. Cette étude a examiné la végétation des emprises de lignes électriques et de leurs habitats adjacents dans 23 tourbières ombrotrophes (bogs) et 11 minérotrophes (fens). Dans les fens, la dispersion des espèces indésirables est facilitée le long des emprises et certaines espèces peuvent se propager à plus de 43 m dans les habitats adjacents. Au contraire, ces infrastructures ne semblent pas favoriser la dispersion des espèces indésirables dans les bogs puisque leur présence était limitée à la marge des sites et était négligeable dans les habitats tourbeux adjacents. Finalement, les caractéristiques intrinsèques des tourbières, telles leur degré de minérotrophie (bog ou fen) et leur structure végétale (tourbière ouverte, semi-forestière ou forestière) semblent grandement influencer l’envahissement. / Linear infrastructures are known to facilitate the spread of undesirable plants within their right-of-way (ROW) as well as in adjacent habitats. However, the impacts of power-lines ROWs have been weakly studied, particularly in wetlands. This study examined the vegetation of 23 ombrotrophic (bogs) and 11 minerotrophic (fens) peatlands intersected by a power-line ROW. The results showed that the spread of undesirable species along the feature is possible in fens and that some of those species could disperse into the adjacent habitat to more than 43 m from the ROW. Inversely, those features seemed to be inefficient dispersal vectors in bogs, because undesirable species were restricted to the bog margin in the ROW, and almost none dispersed in the adjacent habitats. Finally, intrinsic characteristics of peatlands, such as their degree of minerotrophy (bog or fen) and their vegetation type (open, semiforested or wooded peatland) seem to be important factors influencing invasion.

Les besoins croissants en puissance de calcul sont généralement satisfaits en fédérant de plus en plus d’ordinateurs (ou noeuds) pour former des infrastructures distribuées. La tendance actuelle est d’utiliser la virtualisation système dans ces infrastructures, afin de découpler les logiciels des noeuds sous-jacents en les encapsulant dans des machines virtuelles. Pour gérer efficacement ces infrastructures virtualisées, de nouveaux gestionnaires logiciels ont été mis en place. Ces gestionnaires sont pour la plupart hautement centralisés (les tâches de gestion sont effectuées par un nombre restreint de nœuds dédiés). Cela limite leur capacité à passer à l’échelle, autrement dit à gérer de manière réactive des infrastructures de grande taille, qui sont de plus en plus courantes. Au cours de cette thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés aux façons d’améliorer cet aspect ; l’une d’entre elles consiste à décentraliser le traitement des tâches de gestion, lorsque cela s’avère judicieux. Notre réflexion s’est concentrée plus particulièrement sur l’ordonnancement dynamique des machines virtuelles, pour donner naissance à la proposition DVMS (Distributed Virtual Machine Scheduler). Nous avons mis en œuvre un prototype, que nous avons validé au travers de simulations (notamment via l’outil SimGrid), et d’expériences sur le banc de test Grid’5000. Nous avons pu constater que DVMS se montrait particulièrement réactif pour gérer des infrastructures virtualisées constituées de dizaines de milliers de machines virtuelles réparties sur des milliers de nœuds. Nous nous sommes ensuite penchés sur les perspectives d’extension et d’amélioration de DVMS. L’objectif est de disposer à terme d’un gestionnaire décentralisé complet, objectif qui devrait être atteint au travers de l’initiative Discovery qui fait suite à ces travaux. / The increasing need in computing power has been satisfied by federating more and more computers (called nodes) to build the so-called distributed infrastructures. Over the past few years, system virtualization has been introduced in these infrastructures (the software is decoupled from the hardware by packaging it in virtual machines), which has lead to the development of software managers in charge of operating these virtualized infrastructures. Most of these managers are highly centralized (management tasks are performed by a restricted set of dedicated nodes). As established, this restricts the scalability of managers, in other words their ability to be reactive to manage large-scale infrastructures, that are more and more common. During this Ph.D., we studied how to mitigate these concerns ; one solution is to decentralize the processing of management tasks, when appropriate. Our work focused in particular on the dynamic scheduling of virtual machines, resulting in the DVMS (Distributed Virtual Machine Scheduler) proposal. We implemented a prototype, that was validated by means of simulations (especially with the SimGrid tool) and with experiments on the Grid’5000 test bed. We observed that DVMS was very reactive to schedule tens of thousands of virtual machines distributed over thousands of nodes. We then took an interest in the perspectives to improve and extend DVMS. The final goal is to build a full decentralized manager. This goal should be reached by the Discovery initiative,that will leverage this work.