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The 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes and corresponding Royal Commission reports have resulted in changes to the legislative environment and led to increased public awareness in New Zealand of the earthquake performance of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings. As a result, building regulators, owners, tenants, users and heritage stakeholders will be facing a unique challenge in the near future where assessments, improvements and demolitions of URM buildings are expected to occur at an unusually high rate. Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand and because of the relative prosperity of Auckland during the period 1880-1935 when most URM buildings were being constructed in New Zealand, the city has the largest number of URM buildings in the country. Identifying those buildings most at seismic risk in Auckland's large and varied building stock has warranted a rapid field assessment program supplemented by strategically chosen detailed assessments. Information that can be procured through rapid field inspections includes the building geometric typologies (e.g., heights, building footprint geometry and isolated versus row configuration), elevation type (e.g., perforated frame versus solid wall), wall construction (e.g., solid versus cavity, number of leaves) and basic construction material type (e.g., clay brick versus stone). Furthermore, investigation into the architectural history, heritage status and functional usage of Auckland's URM buildings will affect the direction of retrofit strategies and priorities. As the owner of a large and varied portfolio of URM buildings as well as the local organisation responsible for assessing building safety, Auckland Council is developing exemplar inspection, assessment, prioritisation and retrofit strategies that will target the seismic risks associated with URM buildings, in particular, so as to preserve and enhance safety and the economic and community value of these special buildings. Collaboration amongst Auckland Council, The University of Auckland and GNS Science has resulted in a state-of-the-art rapid quantitative assessment program applied to a sampling of typologically representative URM buildings in Auckland.

ABSTRACTObjectivesHealth services researchers are increasingly engaging with the emerging field of data science, but relatively few have the expertise to understand how innovative data linkage methodologies can, and cannot, be successfully applied in practice. There is little published guidance written specifically for this purpose.
We aimed to develop study design criteria to help researchers in considering whether these methods are appropriate for their projects. A secondary objective was to test the criteria in a case study, and evaluate the application of the data linkage approach.
ApproachClinical procedures requiring further research (according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) were assessed against newly-developed CINDER criteria (Coverage; Identifiers; Numbers; Data; Existing records; Retrieval) to check the suitability of using data linkage methods. The CALON (Cardiac Ablation: Linking Outcomes for NICE) study was then established to evaluate outcomes of cardiac ablation procedures.
Records from the UK's Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM) register were linked to routinely-recorded primary care, secondary care and mortality data in the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank. Demographic profiles of patients identified from the register were compared with a group identified from SAIL. Outpatient attendances before and after ablation were compared using a Generalised Linear Mixed Model, assuming significance of p<0.05. Kaplan-Meier analyses were used to estimate survival.
Evaluation of methodological success concentrated on: adequately characterising patient populations from existing data; matching individuals between datasets; and data completeness/consistency.
ResultsThe linked dataset contained 2220 anonymised records. Almost all (99.7%) patients from the register were matched using deterministic and probabilistic techniques. These patients were similar to individuals identified from hospital records with respect to sex and comorbidity score (p>0.05); mean age differed by 1.6 years (95% CI 0.23-3.04; p=0.02).
Patients accessed 26.7% fewer hospital outpatient appointments after ablation (95% CI 23.4 to 29.8; p<0.001). There was no significant difference in the number of primary care events before and after ablation (95% CI -4.3 to 4.0; p=0.91). Survival was estimated at 91.0% after 5 years. Insufficient granularity of data precluded subgroup analyses.
ConclusionsData linkage can be used to evaluate outcomes of interventions, although there are limitations associated with secondary use of observational data. The CALON study identified a post-ablation reduction in hospital attendances, suggesting an overall improvement in general health.
We aim to publish the full CINDER checklist as a generic resource to facilitate assessment of the feasibility of using data linkage methods in other projects.