scholarly journals Quantitative Framework for Establishing Low-Risk Inter-District Travel Corridors During COVID-19

Author(s):  
Raviraj Dave ◽  
Tushar Choudhari ◽  
Avijit Maji ◽  
Udit Bhatia

Aspirations to slow down the spread of novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) resulted in unprecedented restrictions on personal and work-related travels in various nations across the globe in 2020. As a consequence, economic activities within and across the countries were almost halted. As restrictions loosen and cities start to resume public and private transport to revamp the economy, it becomes critical to assess the commuters’ travel-related risk in light of the ongoing pandemic. The paper develops a generalizable quantitative framework to evaluate the commute-related risk arising from inter-district and intra-district travel by combining nonparametric data envelopment analysis for vulnerability assessment with transportation network analysis. It demonstrates the application of the proposed model for establishing travel corridors within and across Gujarat and Maharashtra, two Indian states that have reported many COVID-19 cases since early April 2020. The findings suggest that establishing travel corridors between a pair of districts solely based on the health vulnerability indices of the origin and destination discards the en-route travel risks from the prevalent pandemic, underestimating the threat. For example, while the resultant of social and health vulnerabilities of Narmada and Vadodara districts is relatively moderate, the en-route travel risk exacerbates the overall travel risk of travel between them. The study provides a quantitative framework to identify the alternate path with the least risk and hence establish low-risk travel corridors within and across states while accounting for social and health vulnerabilities in addition to transit-time related risks.

1987 ◽  
Vol 31 (02) ◽  
pp. 101-106
Author(s):  
Kyu Nam Cho ◽  
William S. Vorus

A new three-dimensional method is proposed for analyzing orthogonally stiffened grillage structures. The method is based on earlier work related to bridge decks. The relationship between system displacement and loads is described mathematically, and matrices are developed to examine the shear compatibility between plate and beam elements. The paper concludes with a comparison between deflections obtained by several different procedures and the proposed model.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 4412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dayong Nie ◽  
Elena Panfilova ◽  
Vadim Samusenkov ◽  
Alexey Mikhaylov

E-learning brings new dimensions to traditional education. This especially affects countries that, due to many factors, have historically been considered the “talent pool” for the world community. In this study, a model for financing e-education has been developed that is applicable to Russian realities. The model was built around the balance between demand (global politics, economics, and principles of sustainable development) and supply (sources of direct financing). As a result, a key challenge of improving the e-learning financing methodology and models, specifically the efficiency of government spending and private investing, demands the use of new approaches and mechanisms. To improve e-learning financing, a clear understanding of the applied purpose of public and private means is required. Responsibilities for the e-learning outcome of institutions that receive financing are linked to their status. An unclear understanding of these issues is more likely associated with the issue of transparency of financing than with inefficiency. The proposed model allows transforming the “standards” of financing both in the field of e-education and Russian education in general and presents a new vision of participants’ interaction in the educational process, taking into account a set of restrictions and market features.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Sudhir K. Samantaray

Changes have taken place in the lives of Indian organisations due to globalization and developments in information and communication technology revolutions. The present research focused on comparative perspectives and conceptual frame work suggested by Daft (1995) to study public and private sector organisations relating to culture, structure and strategy on organisational effectiveness. 400 front line managers comprising of 200 public and 200 private sectors, were taken into consideration. Group t-tests were conducted to assess the similarities and dissimilarities among HR personnel. The findings made a modest empirical contribution to understanding the fundamental challenges of sectoral perspectives. On one hand, the findings confirmed significant differences between public and private sector employees in their perceptions of organisational culture, structure and strategy; and on the other hand, examined the theoretical model of the relationship between organisational effectiveness as a series of work-related outcomes stating no significant differences across the sectors. The study provided practical implications for organisational development in linking structural variables to performance; focused on organisational culture in organisational efforts; addressed organisational issues holistically; suggested future studies in the areas of measurement improvement; and explored further research questions.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Frost ◽  
Katie Tseng ◽  
Stephanie Hauck ◽  
Geetanjali Kappor ◽  
Aditi Sriram ◽  
...  

Objective: The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has rapidly emerged to become a global pandemic and is known to cause a high risk to patients over the age of 70 and those with co-morbidities, such as hypertension and diabetes. Though children are at comparatively lower risk compared to adults, the Indian population has a large young demographic that is likely to be at higher risk due to exposure to pollution, malnutrition and poor access to medical care. We aimed to quantify the potential impact of COVID-19 on Indias child population. Methods: We combined district family household survey data with data from the COVID-19 outbreak in China to analyze the potential impact of COVID-19 on children under the age of 5, under three different scenarios; each of which assumed the prevalence of infection to be 0.5%, 1%, or 5%. Results: We find that in the lowest prevalence scenario, across the most populous 18 Indian states, asymptomatic, non-hospitalized symptomatic and hospitalized symptomatic cases could reach 87,200, 412,900 and 31,900, respectively. In a moderate prevalence scenario, these figures reach 174,500, 825,800, and 63,800, and in the worst case, high prevalence scenario these cases could climb as high as 872,200, 4,128,900 and 319,700. Conclusion: These estimates show COVID-19 has the potential to pose a substantial threat to Indias large population of children, particularly those suffering from malnutrition and exposure to indoor air pollution, who may have limited access to health services.


Author(s):  
Fabio Biasotto Feitosa ◽  
Flávio de São Pedro Filho ◽  
Luciana Bezerra Gonçalves ◽  
Vanessa Piffer ◽  
Lucas Moreira de Souza ◽  
...  

Entrepreneurship is an effective way of overcoming conjunctural factors; it is also a dignifying solution for all business-oriented people. This study aims to answer the following question: how to enable the social reinsertion of therapeutic communities’ graduates by resorting to the concepts of entrepreneurship? It also aims to investigate the  skills of individuals cared for at therapeutic centers and who are in the final stage of drug addiction treatment, attempting to promote their social reintegration, job creation and sustainable income. To achieve this goal, this study’s  specific objectives are: (1) present the practical applicability of entrepreneurial concepts as sustainable economic activities; (2) characterize the fundamental aspects for the development of entrepreneurial skills considering contextualized reality drawing on Bloom’s Taxonomy; (3) suggest re-adequacy of social reintegration public policies, considering the concepts of social innovation with sustainability. Here, Case Study Method and procedures such as instrumentalization of an introductory workshop, development of participants’ skills; gathering, analysis and interpretation of data are applied. As a result, thirty graduates from therapeutic communities had the chance to get in touch with the concepts of entrepreneurship as a tool for their social reinsertion. It is expected that this outcome may contribute to the improvement in their quality of life, considering that the study is based on factual reality and that its findings can be reproduced in situations of similar reality. This work is relevant to both public and private entities engaged with social responsibility and sustainability. 


Author(s):  
Miriam Mutambudzi ◽  
Claire L Niedzwiedz ◽  
Ewan B Macdonald ◽  
Alastair H Leyland ◽  
Frances S Mair ◽  
...  

Objectives: To investigate severe COVID-19 risk by occupational group. Methods: Baseline UK Biobank data (2006-10) for England were linked to SARS-CoV-2 test results from Public Health England (16 March to 26 July 2020). Included participants were employed or self-employed at baseline, alive and aged less than 65 years in 2020. Poisson regression models adjusted sequentially for baseline demographic, socioeconomic, work-related, health, and lifestyle-related risk factors to assess risk ratios (RRs) for testing positive in hospital or death due to COVID-19 by three occupational classification schemes (including Standard Occupation Classification 2000). Results: Of 120,075 participants, 271 had severe COVID-19. Relative to non-essential workers, healthcare workers (RR 7.43, 95% CI:5.52,10.00), social and education workers (RR 1.84, 95% CI:1.21,2.82) and other essential workers (RR=1.60, 95% CI:1.05,2.45) had higher risk of severe COVID-19. Using more detailed groupings, medical support staff (RR 8.70, 95% CI:4.87,15.55), social care (RR 2.46, 95% CI:1.47,4.14) and transport workers (RR= 2.20, 95% CI:1.21,4.00) had highest risk within the broader groups. Compared to white non-essential workers, non-white non-essential workers had a higher risk (RR 3.27, 95% CI: 1.90,5.62) and non-white essential workers had the highest risk (RR 8.34, 95% CI:5.17,13.47). Using SOC2000 major groups, associate professional and technical occupations, personal service occupations and plant and machine operatives had higher risk, compared to managers and senior officials. Conclusions: Essential workers have higher risk of severe COVID-19. These findings underscore the need for national and organizational policies and practices that protect and support workers with elevated risk of severe COVID-19.


Author(s):  
Saikat Biswas

Crisis of Indian agriculture is very pertinent at this moment as green revolution is gradually losing its hope. Excessive, pointless exploitation of broods of green revolution has left bad footprints on country’s food security and environmental safety. With the motto to ensure food security by reviving Indian agriculture in environmentally safe way as well as to release farmers from debt cycle and suicides, zero budget natural farming (ZBNF) has come in the picture, which discards uses of all the chemical farming inputs and relies on natural way of farming i.e. rejuvenating soil and crop health through its own practices (Jivamrita, Bijamrita, mulching, soil aeration, intercropping, crop diversification, bunds, bio-pesticides etc.). ZBNF movement right now is the most popular agrarian movement which begun in 2002 in Karnataka and later successfully spread in many states (specially, of South India) of the nation through numbers of trainings, demonstrations and various promotional activities. Successful outcomes from farmers’ fields of south Indian states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka etc. are encouraging and grabbing attention of farmers, public and private organisations towards ZBNF in recent times. Yet, various controversies regarding its transparency,      inadequate information, efficacy, practices, idealisms, even the term ‘zero budget’ etc. have agglutinated around ZBNF over the years since it debuted. Critics in fact have cited several references of drastic yield reductions with ZBNF practices in many places. Adequate scientific evaluation or monitoring of ZBNF’s successes or failures through multi-locational trials is now therefore the needful before allowing or restraining its run in Indian agriculture.


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