State of Environment

Indicator 48 - Station and ship person days

Index: Description | Data | Custodian evaluation | Related resources | Parameters

Description

Indicator Definition
Human population in stations and ships expressed in person-days.


Responsible organisation

Australian Antarctic Division ( Australia )

Custodians

No custodians.

Theme area

Human Settlements

Indicator type

Pressure

Criteria the indicator satisfies

The following 14 out of 15 criteria

1. Serve as a robust indicator of environmental change
2. Reflect a fundamental or highly-valued aspect of the environment or an important environmental issue
3. Be either national in scope or applicable to regional environmental issues of national significance
4. Provide an early warning of potential problems
5. Be capable of being monitored to provide statistically verifiable and reproducible data that shows trends over time and, preferably, apply to a broad range of environmental regions
6. Be scientifically credible
7. Be easy to understand
8. Be monitored with relative ease
9. Be cost-effective
10. Have relevance to policy and management needs
11. Contribute to monitoring of progress towards implementing commitments in nationally important environmental policies
13. Contribute to the fulfillment of reporting obligations under international agreements
14. Where possible and appropriate, use existing commercial and managerial indicators
15. Where possible and appropriate, be consistent and comparable with other countries� and state and territory indicators

Date input

Monthly measurements

Monitoring location

Geographic coverage

Rationale For Indicator Selection
It is generally accepted that the potential impact on the natural environment
is proportional to the human population. This is the 'human footprint'. Human
activities can cause disruption in physical, chemical and biological systems.
As stated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (1996): "To understand the
human impact on the Australian environment, it is necessary to know how many
people live here, and how they are distributed across the continent."


This indicator reveals where the greatest direct pressures related to size of
the human population (e.g. fuel usage, sewerage and other waste generation
etc) occur.


Design and Strategy For Indicator Monitoring Program
Spatial scale: Antarctic and sub-Antarctic stations and ANARE ships travelling
to and from these stations.


Frequency: Monthly figures reported annually.


Measurement technique: The Polar Medicine Branch collects data on all
expeditioner movements. These data are entered into the Health Register and
updated as personnel arrive on or leave a station.


Research Issues
Now that this figure is available, research is required to ascertain the
quantitive relationships of station and ship population to other indicators
such as fuel usage and waste generation. This measure may be able to deliver a
quantitative estimate of human pressure on the Antarctic environment.


Data

Temporal range of the available data, as described by the metadata record, is from 01-Oct-1986 .

Timespan
October-1986 to May-2016
Number of data points
2370

To view or download any of the data, you must be logged in

Data quality, interpretation and analysis of indicator data

Data usage constraints

' This data set conforms to the PICCCBY Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). '

Data access constraints

' These data are publicly available for download from the URL given below. '

Custodian evaluation

21 May 2002

In the timespan January 1993 to December 2001 the following total number of person-days were recorded for each station:

Heard Island 3502

Mawson 95474

Davis 123992

Casey 99960

Macquarie Island 97798

For Heard Island, the graphing of person-days against time shows that occupation during the last decade has been occasional and sporadic, with only a few months of activity in early 1993 and 2000/2001.

The graphs for Macquarie Island and the three continental Antarctic stations shows a strong seasonal variation, with the person-days on-station during the summer months being 2 to 4 times above that of the winter-over period.

The slight variation in person-days which can be noted during the winter-over period is not due to any variation in the station population, but rather to the fact that some months are one day longer than others.

24 Sep 2003

The data illustrated details the person-days at each Australian Antarctic and subantarctic location as determined by the persons' location of the responsibility for primary remote medical care. For Heard Island, the graphing of person-days against time shows that occupation during the last decade has been occasional and sporadic, with only a few months of activity in early 1993 and 2000/2001. The graphs for Macquarie Island and the three continental Antarctic stations show a strong seasonal variation, with the person-days on-station during the summer months being 2 to 4 times above that of the winter-over period. These graphs show consistent person-days over the continental station and slightly lesser numbers at Macquarie Island in recent years. The slight variation in person-days which can be noted during the winter-over period is not due to any variation in the station population, but rather to the fact that some months are one day longer than others. Data for ship person-days is yet to be entered.

12 Nov 2003

Pressure scale - 4 - moderate external pressure on the environment, degradation documented
1 - undetectable external pressure on the environment
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
7 - extreme external pressure on the environment, degradation accelerating
State of Knowledge scale - 4 - Fair
1 - Poor
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
7 - Excellent

24 Jan 2006

The data illustrates a critical long term dataset(19+ years) detailing actual person-days occupying both stations in the Antarctic, the subantarctic and Australian Antarctic programme shipping against time. This data is derived from the ANARE Health Register(AAS12) which records expeditioner's location as the location of responsibility for primary medical care. Expeditioner transfers from ship or aircraft to station or return from Antarctica, the subantarctic or the southern ocean are recorded where medical responsibility is transferred within the Australian Antarctic programme. As in previous evaluations Heard Island visits occur intermittently during various austral summer seasons without recent wintering parties. Macquarie Island and Mawson stations appear to have had a reduction in numbers of person-days at each site respectvely in recent times whilst maintaining continual summer and wintering activity. It should be noted since the last evaluation, the long term dataset for ship person-days has been added. In addition there has been a review of the entire dataset including the correction of incidental errors in the ANARE Health Register data during the period prior to June 30 2006 which has optimised the accuracy of the data. Ongoing ANARE health register data entry and error correction has been undertaken by the AAD Polar Medicine Unit within the parameters of this system. During 2006 it is anticipated there will be some changes in the collection and recording of this data as the current database is requiring replacement to contemporary database system.

State of Knowledge scale - 6
1 - Poor
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
7 - Excellent

For definitions of the Scale categories, consult the Explanation of the Status Categories

Related resources

Project 12 - ANARE health register [observational]
Scientific Bibliography 17251 - Sullivan, P. and Gormly, P. (1999) The Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) Health Register. From: The 6th Annual Conference Proceedings of National Centre for Classification in Health, pp36-43. National Centre for Classification in Health, Lidcombe.
Scientific Bibliography 17252 - Sullivan, P., Gormly, P.J., Lugg, D.J., Watts, D.W. (1991) The Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) Health Register: Three Years of Operation In Postl B, et al eds. Circumpolar Health 90, pp 502-504. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.
SOE Indicator 47 - Number and nature of incidents resulting in environmental impact
SOE Indicator 49 - Medical consultations per person year
SOE Indicator 50 - Volume of wastewater discharged from Australian Antarctic Stations
SOE Indicator 51 - Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) of wastewater discharged from Australian Antarctic Stations
SOE Indicator 52 - Suspended solids (SS) content of wastewater discharged from Australian Antarctic Stations
SOE Indicator 53 - Waste returned to Australia
SOE Indicator 54 - Amount of waste incinerated at Australian Antarctic Stations
SOE Indicator 56 - Monthly fuel usage of the generator sets and boilers
SOE Indicator 57 - Monthly incinerator fuel usage of Australian Antarctic Stations
SOE Indicator 58 - Monthly total of fuel used by vehicles at Australian Antarctic Stations
SOE Indicator 59 - Monthly electricity usage at Australian Antarctic Stations
SOE Indicator 60 - Total flight hours in the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT) by Australian helicopters and fixed wing aircraft
SOE Indicator 61 - Total potable water consumption at Australian Antarctic Stations
SOE Indicator 75 - Seabird strikes at Australian Antarctic Stations and on ships
SOE Indicator 76 - Monthly fuel usage of ships travelling to Australian Antarctic Stations

Parameters

The properties link can be used to view details of the parameters measured for this indicator.

Parameter Name Unit of measure Properties
Person-days person days Properties

The following parameters and/or sensor notes are from the metadata record.

Parameters

EARTH SCIENCE > HUMAN DIMENSIONS > PUBLIC HEALTH > MORBIDITY

Related URLs

http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=SOE_human_population
Citation reference for this metadata record and dataset

http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/portal/download_file.cfm?file_id=1272
Download page for Australian Antarctic Data Centre

http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/portal/download_file.cfm?file_id=872
Download page for Australian Antarctic Data Centre