scholarly journals Analysis of 220 Years of Floodplain Population Dynamics in the US at Different Spatial Scales

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Firoza Akhter ◽  
Maurizio Mazzoleni ◽  
Luigia Brandimarte

In this study, we explore the long-term trends of floodplain population dynamics at different spatial scales in the contiguous United States (U.S.). We exploit different types of datasets from 1790–2010—i.e., decadal spatial distribution for the population density in the US, global floodplains dataset, large-scale data of flood occurrence and damage, and structural and nonstructural flood protection measures for the US. At the national level, we found that the population initially settled down within the floodplains and then spread across its territory over time. At the state level, we observed that flood damages and national protection measures might have contributed to a learning effect, which in turn, shaped the floodplain population dynamics over time. Finally, at the county level, other socio-economic factors such as local flood insurances, economic activities, and socio-political context may predominantly influence the dynamics. Our study shows that different influencing factors affect floodplain population dynamics at different spatial scales. These facts are crucial for a reliable development and implementation of flood risk management planning.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (94) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasmané Ouedraogo ◽  
Rene Tapsoba ◽  
Moussé Sow ◽  
Ali Compaoré

Does the reliance on diversified tax structure enhance resilience to fiscal risks? This paper gives an answer to this question by proposing a new cross-country tax revenue diversification index (RDI). The RDI builds on the Theil index, and unlike the few existing tax diversification indices, which are constructed only at the state level for the US, is computed at the national level, covering a broad panel of 127 countries over the period 2000-15. We find suggestive evidence that tax revenue diversification reduces tax revenue volatility, thus bringing to the data long-held views about the prominence of tax revenue diversification for fiscal resilience strengthening. While exploring the drivers of the RDI, we find that tax revenue diversification is not just a reflection of economic diversification, but also an outcome of macroeconomic, political and institutional factors. Interestingly, a non-monotone relationship is also at play between the RDI and economic development, with countries’ portfolio of tax sources getting more diversified as their economy develops, until a tipping point, where richer countries start finding it harder to diversify further their tax revenue sources.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
İbrahim Tuğrul Çınar ◽  
İlhan Korkmaz ◽  
Muhammet Yunus Şişman

Abstract Green production is one of the major debates as environmental degradation poses threats globally. The paper attempts to explore the relationship between green economy and environmental quality by using Economic Fitness approach. We develop a Green Complexity Index (GCI) dataset consists of 290 traded green-labeled products for the US States between 2002 and 2018. We analyze the environmental performance of green production using the GCI data at the sub-national level. Findings indicate that exporting more complex green products has insignificant effects on local (i.e., Sulfur dioxide, Particulate Matter 10) and global polluters such as Carbon dioxide (CO2), even accounting for per capita income. Yet, overall economic complexity has a significant negative impact on the emission levels implying that sophisticated production significantly improves environmental quality in the US. The insignificant impact of GCI on environmental degradation suggests that green product classifications should incorporate the production and end-use stages of goods to limit the adverse environmental effects of green-labeled products. The study, therefore, provides policy implications for green industrial policies.JEL codes: O18, Q56, R11


2020 ◽  
pp. 183-195
Author(s):  
Deepa Pillai ◽  
Leena Dam

COVID 19 pandemic has thrown up bitter colors when India witnessed the large scale gory sage of reverse internal migration of unorganized workforce. As compared to intercontinental migration the degree of internal migration is twice. Displacement, lockdowns, loss of employment, starvation and social distancing provoked a frenzied course of mass return for internal migrants in India and other parts of the world. In India there is a peculiar trend of unorganized workforce migration. Out of 29 states and 7 union territories, few states dominate where migrants flock for seeking livelihood. The fleeing of migrants to their inherent origin has weakened the economic activities towards slowdown in the economic growth. This thematic review paper discusses the problems of the internal migrants and their state during and post lockdown announcements in India. The data included extracts of articles, opinions and reviews for which codes were recognized which lead to formulation of research themes. The review also highlights government interventions in addressing the challenges confronted by the internal migrants with social security. This study proposes an arrangement as migrant exchange at state level for efficient policy formulation and accomplishment of social security standards.


2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. A64.3-A65
Author(s):  
Yiqun Chen ◽  
Andrew Curran

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is the GB regulator for health and safety at work. The HSE Health and Work (H&W) program designs and carries out a wide range of interventions; including inspection, enforcement and other regulatory activities as well as prevention; targeting priority health conditions in high-risk sectors. It is anticipated that long-term, sustainable and coordinated actions developed as part of the program will over time improve awareness, behaviors, control of exposures, and, as a result, prevent work-related ill health in GB workforce.An HSE Measuring Strategy, together with measurement framework and principles, has been developed. The measurement framework draws together data systems, covering Attitudes (A), Behaviors (B), Control of exposures (C), and Disease and work-related ill health reduction (D), based on a simple model to provide evidence required for evaluating the short, medium and long term impacts of the large scale and complex H&W program on the GB health and safety system. The Strategy gives a new focus on measuring behavioral changes and risk reductions; and emphasizes longitudinal measurement designs to assess progress over time.For developing the Strategy, workshops were organized to bring stakeholders across HSE to review existing systems for conducting population surveys, collecting exposure intelligence and occupational health surveillance, which have contributed to forming a long-term vision of fit-for-purpose measurement systems.We will present the development of the Strategy and the plans to implement it with the H&W program, which requires close collaborations between epidemiologists and social researchers, policy makers, and other multidisciplinary regulatory specialists. The lessons learnt will help HSE towards building the right evidence base for monitoring and evaluation of a range of national level intervention programs for work-related ill health prevention.©British Crown copyright (2019)


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 599-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colton Margus ◽  
Ritu R. Sarin ◽  
Michael Molloy ◽  
Gregory R. Ciottone

AbstractIntroduction:In 2009, the Institute of Medicine published guidelines for implementation of Crisis Standards of Care (CSC) at the state level in the United States (US). Based in part on the then concern for H1N1 pandemic, there was a recognized need for additional planning at the state level to maintain health system preparedness and conventional care standards when available resources become scarce. Despite the availability of this framework, in the years since and despite repeated large-scale domestic events, implementation remains mixed.Problem:Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) rejuvenates concern for how health systems can maintain quality care when faced with unrelenting burden. This study seeks to outline which states in the US have developed CSC and which areas of care have thus far been addressed.Methods:An online search was conducted for all 50 states in 2015 and again in 2020. For states without CSC plans online, state officials were contacted by email and phone. Public protocols were reviewed to assess for operational implementation capabilities, specifically highlighting guidance on ventilator use, burn management, sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score, pediatric standards, and reliance on influenza planning.Results:Thirty-six states in the US were actively developing (17) or had already developed (19) official CSC guidance. Fourteen states had no publicly acknowledged effort. Eleven of the 17 public plans had updated within five years, with a majority addressing ventilator usage (16/17), influenza planning (14/17), and pediatric care (15/17), but substantially fewer addressing care for burn patients (9/17).Conclusion:Many states lacked publicly available guidance on maintaining standards of care during disasters, and many states with specific care guidelines had not sufficiently addressed the full spectrum of hazard to which their health care systems remain vulnerable.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara Sewalk ◽  
Gaurav Tuli ◽  
Yulin Hswen ◽  
John S Brownstein ◽  
Jared B Hawkins

BACKGROUND Traditional large-scale assessments of patient care in the US have difficulty in representing all aspects of health, beyond hospital care. There are documented differences in access to healthcare across the US. It is important to understand disparities in healthcare to better inform policy makers and healthcare administrations to improve quality of care provided. Previous research indicates online data is available from Twitter about patient experiences and opinions of their healthcare. Understanding patient views through sentiment analyses of Twitter data can be used to supplement traditional feedback surveys. OBJECTIVE We aim to provide a characterization of patient experience sentiments across the US on Twitter over a four year period. METHODS We developed a set of software components to auto-label and examine the patient experience Twitter dataset. The set includes: (I) a classifier to determine patient experience tweets, (II) a geolocation inference engine for social data, (III) a modified version of a sentiment classifier from the literature, and (IV) another engine to determine if the tweet is from a metro or non-metro area. RESULTS Of the 27.3 million tweets collected between February 2013 and February 2017 using a set of patient experience related keywords, the classifier was able to identify 2,779,555 tweets that were labeled as patient experience. After running the patient experience tweets through the geolocation classifier, we identified 876,384 tweets by approximate location to use for spatial analyses. At the national level, we observed 27.7% of positive, 36.3% neutral, 36% of negative Patient Experience tweets. Overall, the average sentiment polarity shifted towards less negative every year across all the regions in the country. The patient experience tweet rate also decreased across all the states over the four year study period. We also observed the sentiment of tweets to have a lower negative fraction during daytime hours, whereas the sentiment of tweets posted between 8pm and 10am tend to have a higher negative fraction. Additionally, tweet sentiment varied by region and by metro vs. non-metro analyses. CONCLUSIONS This study presents methodologies for a deeper understanding of online discussion related to patient experience across space and time, and demonstrates how Twitter can provide a unique and unsolicited perspective from users, which may not be captured from traditional survey methods for understanding patient views.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-96
Author(s):  
Maria Christidou ◽  
Panagiotis Theodore Konstantinou ◽  
Costas Roumanias

We assess the effects of monetary policy on real house prices and housing investment across the US states during the period 1983-2008. We find that an expansionary monetary shock generates higher housing investment and house prices at the national level. At the state level, however the responses of housing investment and house prices differ from the nation-wide responses. We relate this heterogeneity to various observable factors such as property tax rates, howeownership, income inequality, poverty and demographic factors. All these factors are crucial in explaining the heterogeneity of the state-level responses.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (9) ◽  
pp. 667-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Alderman ◽  
Phuong Hong Nguyen ◽  
Purnima Menon

Abstract The Lives Saved Tool (LiST) has been used to estimate the impact of scaling up intervention coverage on undernutrition and mortality. Evidence for the model is largely based on efficacy trials, raising concerns of applicability to large-scale contexts. We modelled the impact of scaling up health programs in India between 2006 and 2016 and compared estimates to observed changes. Demographics, intervention coverage and nutritional status were obtained from National Family and Health Survey 2005–6 (NFHS-3) for the base year and NHFS-4 2015–16 for the endline. We used the LiST to estimate the impact of changes in coverage of interventions over this decade on child mortality and undernutrition at national and subnational levels and calculated the gap between estimated and observed changes in 2016. At the national level, the LiST estimates are close to the actual values of mortality for children <1 year and <5 years in 2016 (at 41 vs 42.6 and 50 vs 56.4, respectively, per 1000 live births). National estimates for stunting, wasting and anaemia at are also close to the actual values of NFHS-4. At the state level, actual changes were higher than the changes from the LiST projections for both mortality and stunting. The predicted changes using the LiST ranged from 33% to 92% of the actual change. The LiST provided national projections close to, albeit slightly below, actual performance over a decade. Reasons for poorer performance of state-specific projections are unknown; further refinements to the LiST for subnational use would improve the usefulness of the tool.


2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 888-910
Author(s):  
BAEKKWAN PARK ◽  
KEVIN GREENE ◽  
MICHAEL COLARESI

This manuscript helps to resolve the ongoing debate concerning the effect of information communication technology on human rights monitoring. We reconceptualize human rights as a taxonomy of nested rights that are judged in textual reports and argue that the increasing density of available information should manifest in deeper taxonomies of human rights. With a new automated system, using supervised learning algorithms, we are able to extract the implicit taxonomies of rights that were judged in texts by the US State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch over time. Our analysis provides new, clear evidence of change in the structure of these taxonomies as well as in the attention to specific rights and the sharpness of distinctions between rights. Our findings bridge the natural language processing and human rights communities and allow a deeper understanding of how changes in technology have affected the recording of human rights over time.


2000 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 249 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. L. Omundsen ◽  
M. J. Sheaves ◽  
B. W. Molony

Acetes sibogae australis, a small swarming crustacean, is an important component of near-shore systems in eastern Australia. It is considered that densities of A. s. australis are highly variable. However, this variability has never been tested on a fine temporal scale. In this study, densities of A. s. australiswithin swarms, as well as swarm length and width, were recorded once a week for seven months at one locality in Townsville, Australia, and once a fortnight for seven months at two other localities in the region. Length frequency of a sub-sample of individuals caught at each sample time was also recorded. Density of A. s. australis fluctuated significantly during the seven months, with numbers per replicate varying between 0 and 1000 individuals. Swarm width and length were significantly correlated with density, contributing to large-scale differences in overall abundance. Length frequencies revealed at least three dominant cohorts present during the seven months, although appearance and disappearance of these did not correspond to density changes. Patterns recorded were similar at the three spatially separate localities. The large fluctuations in A. s. australis abundance over time are likely to have important effects on the near-shore system of Townsville.


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