scholarly journals Informing University COVID-19 Decisions Using Simple Compartmental Models

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hurt ◽  
Aniruddha Adiga ◽  
Madhav Marathe ◽  
Christopher Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Hot Spots ◽  
Causal Model ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Fall Semester ◽  
Time Varying Parameter ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Local Agencies ◽  
Case Data

Tracking the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major challenge for policy makers. Although, several efforts are ongoing for accurate forecasting of cases, deaths, and hospitalization at various resolutions, few have been attempted for college campuses despite their potential to become COVID-19 hot-spots. In this paper, we present a real-time effort towards weekly forecasting of campus-level cases during the fall semester for four universities in Virginia, United States. We discuss the challenges related to data curation. A causal model is employed for forecasting with one free time-varying parameter, calibrated against case data. The model is then run forward in time to obtain multiple forecasts. We retrospectively evaluate the performance and, while forecast quality suffers during the campus reopening phase, the model makes reasonable forecasts as the fall semester progresses. We provide sensitivity analysis for the several model parameters. In addition, the forecasts are provided weekly to various state and local agencies.

scholarly journals Anticipating and Adapting to the Future Impacts of Climate Change on the Health, Security and Welfare of Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) Communities in Southeastern USA

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 1196
Author(s):  
Thomas Allen ◽  
Joshua Behr ◽  
Anamaria Bukvic ◽  
Ryan S. D. Calder ◽  
Kiki Caruson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health And Safety ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Coastal Zones ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Model Code ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Local Agencies

Low elevation coastal zones (LECZ) are extensive throughout the southeastern United States. LECZ communities are threatened by inundation from sea level rise, storm surge, wetland degradation, land subsidence, and hydrological flooding. Communication among scientists, stakeholders, policy makers and minority and poor residents must improve. We must predict processes spanning the ecological, physical, social, and health sciences. Communities need to address linkages of (1) human and socioeconomic vulnerabilities; (2) public health and safety; (3) economic concerns; (4) land loss; (5) wetland threats; and (6) coastal inundation. Essential capabilities must include a network to assemble and distribute data and model code to assess risk and its causes, support adaptive management, and improve the resiliency of communities. Better communication of information and understanding among residents and officials is essential. Here we review recent background literature on these matters and offer recommendations for integrating natural and social sciences. We advocate for a cyber-network of scientists, modelers, engineers, educators, and stakeholders from academia, federal state and local agencies, non-governmental organizations, residents, and the private sector. Our vision is to enhance future resilience of LECZ communities by offering approaches to mitigate hazards to human health, safety and welfare and reduce impacts to coastal residents and industries.

scholarly journals Communicating Prevention Messages to Policy Makers: The Role of Stories in Promoting Physical Activity

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (s1) ◽  
pp. S99-S107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Stamatakis ◽  
Timothy D. McBride ◽  
Ross C. Brownson
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Physical Activity Promotion ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Effective Interventions ◽  
Prevention Messages ◽  
Activity Promotion ◽  
Health Promoting ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Public Health Practitioners ◽  
Research To Policy

Background:While effective interventions to promote physical activity have been identified, efforts to translate these interventions into policy have lagged behind. To improve the translation of evidence into policy, researchers and public health practitioners need to consider new ways for communicating health promoting messages to state and local policymakers.Methods:In this article, we describe issues related to the translation of evidence supporting physical activity promotion, and offer some communication approaches and tools that are likely to be beneficial in translating research to policy.Results:We discuss the use of narrative (ie, stories) and describe its potential role in improving communication of research in policy-making settings. In addition, we provide an outline for the development and design of policy briefs on physical activity, and for how to target these briefs effectively to policy-oriented audiences.Conclusions:Improvements in researchers' and practitioners' abilities to translate the evidence they generate into high-quality materials for policy makers can greatly enhance efforts to enact policies that promote physical activity.

Environmental Pollution Control: Regulatory Considerations and a Case in Point

1993 ◽  
Vol 9 (03) ◽  
pp. 159-166
Author(s):  
Jonathan Ross
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Pollution ◽  
Pollution Control ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
The United States ◽  
Environmental Laws ◽  
Environmentally Sensitive ◽  
Dry Dock ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Local Agencies ◽  
Laws And Regulations

During recent years, the United States has paid increasing attention to controlling and minimizing environmental pollution. One result of this attention is the development of new laws and regulations, enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by state and local agencies. These new environmental laws and regulations are considerably more stringent than those of past years and they directly impact how shipyards must conduct their operations. This paper discusses these laws and regulations at the national, state (including California, Virginia, and Connecticut), and local levels. With the environmental regulatory background in focus, the paper proceeds to explore the effects of the regulatory trend on one particular segment of the shipbuilding and ship repair industry: floating dry docks. Floating dry docks provide an illuminating example, because of the environmentally sensitive industrial activities carried out on board, such as grit blasting and painting with antifouling paints. The operational norms of floating dry dock pollution control are discussed, starting with present day commercial and Navy facilities, and culminating with the Navy's newest floating dry dock design, the AFDB 10.

Policy Responses to El Niño 1997-1998 : Implications for Forecast Value and the Future of Climate Services

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger A., Jr. Pielke
Keyword(s):  
El Niño ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Climate Anomalies ◽  
Future Production ◽  
Climate Forecasts ◽  
The Future ◽  
Climate Event ◽  
State And Local

El Niño 97-98 will be remembered as one of the strongest ever recorded (Glantz, 1999). For the first time, climate anomalies associated with the event were anticipated by scientists, and this information was communicated to the public and policy makers to prepare for the “meteorological mayhem that climatologists are predicting will beset the entire globe this winter. The source of coming chaos is El Niño . . .” (Brownlee and Tangley, 1997). Congress and government agencies reacted in varying ways, as illustrated by the headlines presented in Figure 7-1. The link between El Niño events and seasonal weather and climate anomalies across the globe are called teleconnections (Glantz and Tarlton, 1991). Typically, during an El Niño cycle hurricane frequencies in the Atlantic are depressed, the southeast United States receives more rain than usual (chapter 2), and parts of Australia, Africa, and South America experience drought. Global attention became focused on the El Niño phenomenon following the 1982-1983 event, which, at that time, had the greatest magnitude of any El Niño observed in more than a century. After El Niño 82-83, many seasonal anomalies that had occurred during its two years were attributed, rightly or wrongly, to its influence on the atmosphere. As a consequence of the event, societies around the world experienced both costs and benefits (Glantz et al., 1987). Another lasting consequence of the 1982-1983 event was an increase in research into the phenomenon. One result of this research in the late 1990s has been the production of forecasts of El Niño (and La Niña) events and the seasonal climate anomalies associated with them. This chapter discusses the use of climate forecasts by policy makers, drawing on experiences from El Niño 97-98, which replaced the 1982-1983 eventas the” climate event of the century.” The purpose of this chapter is to draw lessons from the use of El Niño -based climate forecasts during the 1997-1998 event in order to improve the future production, delivery, and use of climate predictions. This chapter focuses on examples of federal, state, and local responses in California, Florida, and Colorado to illustrate the lessons.

The Effects of State and Local Economic Incentives on Business Start-Ups in the United States: County-Level Evidence

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-187
Author(s):  
Mark Partridge ◽  
Sydney Schreiner ◽  
Alexandra Tsvetkova ◽  
Carlianne Elizabeth Patrick
Keyword(s):  
Local Economic Development ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Labor Market Flexibility ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Start Ups

Even as economic incentives are increasingly used by policy makers to spur state and local economic development, their use is controversial among the public and academics. The authors examine whether state and local incentives lead to higher rates of business start-ups in metropolitan counties. Existing research indicates that start-ups are important for supporting (net) job creation, long-term growth, innovation, and development. The authors find that incentives have a statistically significant, negative relationship with start-up rates in total and for some industries including export-based and others that often receive incentives. The findings support critics who contend that incentives crowd out other economic activity, potentially reducing long-term growth. The authors also find that greater intersectoral job flows are positively linked to total start-ups, consistent with claims of those who advocate for policies that enhance labor market flexibility through reducing barriers to job mobility.

scholarly journals Catastrophic Health Impacts of Spiraling Climate Change: How Certain Can We Be About Their Magnitudes?

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zaid Chalabi ◽  
Anna M. Foss
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Environmental Exposures ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Total Uncertainty ◽  
Human Health Impacts

Recently, there has been a strong interest in the climate emergency and the human health impacts of climate change. Although estimates have been quoted, the modeling methods used have either been simplistic or opaque, making it difficult for policy makers to have confidence in these estimates. Providing central estimates of health impacts, without any quantification of their uncertainty, is deficient because such an approach does not acknowledge the inherent uncertainty in extreme environmental exposures associated with spiraling climate change and related health impacts. Furthermore, presenting only the uncertainty bounds around central estimates, without information on how the uncertainty in each of the model parameters and assumptions contribute to the total uncertainty, is insufficient because this approach hides those parameters and assumptions which contribute most to the total uncertainty. We propose a framework for calculating the catastrophic human health impacts of spiraling climate change and the associated uncertainties. Our framework comprises three building blocks: (A) a climate model to simulate the environmental exposure extremes of spiraling climate change; (B) a health impact model which estimates the health burdens of the extremes of environmental exposures; and (C) an analytical mathematical method which characterizes the uncertainty in (A) and (B), propagates the uncertainty in-between and through these models, and attributes the proportion of uncertainty in the health outcomes to model assumptions and parameter values. Once applied, our framework can be of significant value to policy makers because it handles uncertainty transparently while taking into account the complex interactions between climate and human health.

TRAINING AND DOCUMENTATION1

1995 ◽  
Vol 1995 (1) ◽  
pp. 1011-1011
Author(s):  
Michael D. Cain ◽  
Linda C. George
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Administrative Support ◽  
Tracking System ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Regulatory Requirements ◽  
Response Training ◽  
Oil Spill Response ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Local Agencies

ABSTRACT This presentation will visually demonstrate information on oil spill response training and documentation for compliance with current requirements, with a link to the response training and documentation requirements of international, federal, state, and local agencies. Administrative support and a computer-generated tracking system are used to assist in compliance with these regulatory requirements.

Reparation and Reconciliation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christi M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
White Students ◽  
Voluntary Associations ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
American Missionary Association ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Berea College ◽  
Howard University ◽  
Leadership Class

Reparation and Reconciliation is the first book to reveal the nineteenth-century struggle for racial integration on U.S. college campuses. As the Civil War ended, the need to heal the scars of slavery, expand the middle class, and reunite the nation engendered a dramatic interest in higher education by policy makers, voluntary associations, and African Americans more broadly. Formed in 1846 by Protestant abolitionists, the American Missionary Association united a network of colleges open to all, designed especially to educate African American and white students together, both male and female. The AMA and its affiliates envisioned integrated campuses as a training ground to produce a new leadership class for a racially integrated democracy. Case studies at three colleges--Berea College, Oberlin College, and Howard University--reveal the strategies administrators used and the challenges they faced as higher education quickly developed as a competitive social field.

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