Rethinking Environmental Justice in Sustainable Cities: Insights from Agent-Based Modeling. New York: Routledge. 228 pages. ISBN 9780415657440, £90.00 hardback. Heather E.Campbell, YushimKim, and AdamEckerd, eds., 2015.

AbstractThe Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has resulted in an ongoing pandemic worldwide. Countries have adopted Non-pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI) to slow down the spread. This study proposes an Agent Based Model that simulates the spread of COVID-19 among the inhabitants of a city. The Agent Based Model can be accommodated for any location by integrating parameters specific to the city. The simulation gives the number of daily confirmed cases. Considering each person as an agent susceptible to COVID-19, the model causes infected individuals to transmit the disease via various actions performed every hour. The model is validated by comparing the simulation to the real data of Ford county, Kansas, USA. Different interventions including contact tracing are applied on a scaled down version of New York city, USA and the parameters that lead to a controlled epidemic are determined. Our experiments suggest that contact tracing via smartphones with more than 60% of the population owning a smartphone combined with a city-wide lock-down results in the effective reproduction number (Rt) to fall below 1 within three weeks of intervention. In the case of 75% or more smartphone users, new infections are eliminated and the spread is contained within three months of intervention. Contact tracing accompanied with early lock-down can suppress the epidemic growth of COVID-19 completely with sufficient smartphone owners. In places where it is difficult to ensure a high percentage of smartphone ownership, tracing only emergency service providers during a lock-down can go a long way to contain the spread. No particular funding was available for this project.

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The Sustainability Myth

10.18574/nyu/9781479835089.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Melissa Checker

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

New York ◽

New York City ◽

Civic Engagement ◽

Environmental Justice ◽

Public Participation ◽

York City ◽

State Of The Art ◽

Community Empowerment ◽

Sustainable Cities

Are today’s sustainable cities built on their own undoing? This book uncovers the hidden costs of sustainable policies and practices in an era of hyper-gentrification. From state-of-the-art parks to rooftop gardens, LEED-certified buildings, bike lanes, and organic shops and restaurants, industrial waterfronts are transforming into eco-friendly urban oases. But how sustainable is this green wave? Will it lift all boats? In New York City, Melissa Checker finds that sustainable initiatives have fostered resource-intensive, high-end development in some areas and left others overburdened with polluting facilities and under-protected from climate change. Checker weaves together ethnographic and historic detail to tell the story of local activists who struggle to improve the environmental health of their neighborhoods while maintaining their affordability. For over a decade, Checker’s research on “environmental gentrification”—the use of environmental improvements to drive high-end redevelopment—has exposed the paradoxes of urban sustainability. This book develops an intricate and comprehensive account of environmental gentrification, from its historic roots to the different forms it takes. Extending this analysis, Checker also challenges popular myths about civic engagement: her work alongside environmental justice activists reveals how institutional mechanisms meant to foster public participation and community empowerment have actually undermined both. And yet Checker finds hope in surprising places. Across the country, sustainability’s broken promises have given rise to new, nonpartisan political formations. Borne of crisis, these grassroots coalitions are crossing racial, economic, and political divides to create new possibilities for our collective future.

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COVID-19 Forecast for Chemung County, NY, April 2020

10.34235/0594fc26-006c-44fa-b89d-5814ff1d1dcc ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Timothy Snyder ◽

Emily Eshraghian

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Assisted Living ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Model Simulation ◽

Critical Time ◽

Agent Based Modeling ◽

Assisted Living Facilities ◽

Hospital Administrators ◽

Agent Based ◽

The Mean

We used an agent-based modeling approach to predict the scope of the COVID-19 outbreak in Chemung County, NY, USA. Chemung County’s first confirmed case was on March 21, 2020. A variety of mitigation efforts were placed prior to announcement of the first confirmed case; this has kept the burden of disease low, in contrast to other areas of New York. Using an agent-based modeling technique, we simulated an outbreak in order to estimate the expected number of total infections and deaths, and the peak hospitalization date and census. This stochastic model is used to assign various attributes to agents (people of Chemung County) and simulate interaction between these agents at various time points. The model simulation took place 256 times; these observations were used to compile key outcomes. Panel A presents our predictions for cumulative values at the mean, 95th, and 5th percentile of the simulations for Exposures (Orange), Illnesses (Red), Recoveries (Green), Hospitalizations (Blue), and Deaths (Black). Panel B presents our predictions for Hospital Census, with a highlight of the mean. We expect there to be a total of 312 (90% CI: 106, 784) combined diagnosed and undiagnosed cases, 19 (90% CI: 10, 33) peak hospital census, and 9 (90% CI: 2, 28) total deaths in Chemung County. Our model indicates the peak hospitalization date to occur on April 17, 2020 (90% CI: April 5, May 16). It is important to note that these estimates do not include data from local assisted living facilities, due to variance and lack of available data. With the continued enforcement of the state-mandated stay-at-home order, we expect that Chemung County health care resources can accommodate the increase in need due to COVID-19, provided other sources such as assisted living facilities do not contribute significantly to the totals. Our analysis of Chemung County serves as an example for modeling rural areas and can inform critical, time-sensitive decisions made by hospital administrators and local officials regarding resource allocation and clinical operation.

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