scholarly journals Air Pollutant and Health-Efficiency Evaluation Based on a Dynamic Network Data Envelopment Analysis

Author(s):  
Tao Zhang ◽  
Yung-ho Chiu ◽  
Ying Li ◽  
Tai-Yu Lin

Environmental pollution and the associated societal health issues have attracted recent research attention. While most research has focused on the effect of air pollution on human health and local economies, few articles have discussed the environment, health, and economic development in in an integrated analysis. This paper used a Dynamic Network SBM Model to evaluate production and health efficiencies in Chinese cities and found that the production efficiency scores were slightly higher than the health efficiency scores, with the two-stage efficiency scores in most cities having significant fluctuations. Labor, fixed assets, energy, GDP, and lung disease and mortality reduction efficiencies in the first stage were generally high; however, the medical input efficiencies in the second stage were low, indicating that there was there significant room for improvement in many cities.

Author(s):  
Shi ◽  
Wu ◽  
Huang ◽  
Sun ◽  
Zhang

As the modern economy develops rapidly, environmental pollution and human health have also been threatened. In recent years, relevant research has focused on subjects such as energy and economic, environmental pollution and health issues. Yet this has not considered the use of water resources and the impact of wastewater pollutant emissions on the economy and health. This article has combined the following factors like water consumption with wastewater discharge, pollutant concentration in sewage and local medical care expenditure and put them into the model of water resources, energy and health measurement, and a two-stage dynamic data envelopment analysis (DEA) model considering undesirable outputs is applied to 30 provinces (including autonomous regions and municipalities) to calculate the total efficiency, production efficiency and health efficiency in 2014–2017.The results show that the total efficiency values of most provinces are between 0.2 and 0.4, providing large room for improvement. Production efficiency and health efficiency have increased in recent years, but the health efficiency values of most provinces are still so low that they have dragged back the overall efficiency. The key impact indicators of different provinces are different, and each province should formulate different policies according to its own specific conditions so as to purposefully to deepen the energy, economic and medical reforms in each province, and also to promote sustainable economic development while improving health efficiency.


Author(s):  
Ching-Cheng Lu ◽  
Xin Wu ◽  
Xiang Chen ◽  
Chih-Yu Yang

This study pays more attention to the energy consumption saving, environmental pollution, and health efficiency improvement. We employ the Slack-based measure of Dynamic network Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model (DNSBM) to assess the impact of forestry area on annual and overall energy and health efficiency in 2 intertemporal stages, and also put forward on direction and magnitude to be improved respect to the slack variables. For the empirical study, this study employs the 13 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Plus Three Cooperation (hereinafter referred to as APT) during 2011-2015. From the empirical evidence, it is not easy to raise gross domestic product while reducing energy consumption and PM2.5 emissions to improve energy efficiency. What makes people neglect is the impact of reduced forestry area on health efficiency. Optimistically, all economies are able to adopt measures from policy and technical perspectives, for instance, appropriately adjust energy-related policies, energetically develop innovative energy technologies, and preserve forestry areas, to create a harmonious atmosphere featuring economic development, environmental conservation, and national health and well-being.


Water Policy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiazhong Zheng ◽  
Weiguang Wang ◽  
Dan Chen ◽  
Xinchun Cao ◽  
Wanqiu Xing ◽  
...  

Abstract A coordinated nexus of agricultural resources is vital to achieve food security and sustainable development in China. Comprehensively considering the water–energy–food nexus as well as the external environment, this study adopts a three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) modelling evaluation method to assess the agricultural production efficiency (APE) of seven provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River (MLYR) during 1996–2015. The results show that the three-stage DEA modelling evaluation method reveals real APE and is considered to be a better quantitative method than conventional approaches. A gradually widening range of APE is an important challenge for this region. Significantly, this region generates huge demands for agricultural resources. Moreover, regional emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) decreased from 34.20 million tons standard coal in 1996 to 32.11 million tons standard coal in 2015, though APE has continued to decrease by 2.56% in the past two decades. In general, the management and technology levels should be improved simultaneously, even though specific opportunities for APE improvement vary across provinces in MLYR. However, understanding the temporal and spatial variation of APE along with the WEF nexus from a production-based insight is a vital step toward appropriately targeted policy making for nationwide resources savings and emissions reduction.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanaa Mohamed Aly Helal ◽  
Haga Abdelrahman Elimam

The study aimed to assess the efficiency of health services provided by the government hospitals in various districts of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The number of beds at hospitals, doctors, nursing staff and paramedical categories were used as inputs for the model. The average productivity efficiency of government hospitals in the districts of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2014 was 92.3%; whereas, the average internal production efficiency of these districts in the provision of health services through their respective hospitals was 94.7%; and the average external productivity efficiency in the different cities of the districts in Kingdom of the Saudi Arabia was 97.5%. It has been found that the average overall productivity efficiency was 90.2%, concerning the relative efficiency indicators of government hospitals, which were based on the hospitals’ distribution of Saudi Arabian districts in 2006. An analysis of the indicator showed that the average production efficiency of the services provided (internally) by the districts of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was 94.7%, and that the average of the external production efficiency for such services was 95.4%. The Data Envelopment Analysis is a successful technique in measuring the performance efficiency of hospitals and it also assists to identify possible improvement and reduction in cost.


Author(s):  
N. Aghayi ◽  
Z. Ghelej Beigi ◽  
K. Gholami ◽  
F. Hosseinzadeh Lotfi

The conventional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model considers Decision Making Units (DMUs) as a black box, meaning that these models do not consider the connection and the inner structures of DMUs. Moreover, these models consider that the activities of DMUs in each time are independent of other times, but in the real world, the inner structures of DMUs are complicated, and the activities of DMUs are dependent on other times. Therefore, in this chapter, the authors consider DMUs with network structure and the activity of each DMU in each time dependent to activity of other times, so they call this structure a dynamic network. To this end, in this chapter, models are suggested to evaluate the dynamic network efficiency based on the SBM model, which is a non-radial model of three types with respect to orientation: input-oriented, output-oriented, and non-oriented.


Polymers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 2384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taekyung Lim ◽  
Jeong Hui Lee ◽  
Ju-Hyun Mun ◽  
Keun-Hyeok Yang ◽  
Sanghyun Ju ◽  
...  

With the increasing trend of high-rise, large-scale, and functional modern architectural structures, lightweight aggregate (LWA) concrete that exhibits excellent strength and high functionality has garnered active research attention. In particular, as the properties of concrete vary considerably with the raw materials and the proportions of aggregates in the mix, in-depth research on weight reduction, strength improvement, and functional enhancements of aggregates is crucial. This study used the negative pressure coating of a mixed solution comprising epoxy (mixture of epoxy resin and crosslinker), hyper-crosslinked polymer, and titanium oxide (TiO2) nanoparticles on the LWA, and achieved an improvement in the strength of the LWA as well as a reduction in air pollutants such as NOx and SOx. Compared to a normal LWA with an aggregate impact value (AIV) of 38.7%, the AIV of the proposed epoxy–TiO2-embedded high-strength functional LWA was reduced by approximately half to 21.1%. In addition, the reduction rates of NOx and SOx gases resulting from the photocatalytic properties of TiO2 nanoparticles coated with epoxy were approximately 90.9% and 92.8%, respectively. Epoxy–TiO2, embedded in LWAs through a mixture, exhibited stability, high strength, and a reduction in air pollutant characteristics, despite repeated water washing. The LWA proposed herein offers excellent structural and functional properties and is expected to be used in functional lightweight concrete that can be practically applied in high-rise and large-scale architectural structures.


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