Predictors of hurricane evacuation decisions: A meta-analysis

We systematically review and meta-analyze quantitative prediction models for hurricane evacuation decisions. Drawing on data from 33 prediction models and 29,873 households, we estimate distributions of effects on evacuation decisions for 25 predictors. Mobile home occupancy, evacuation orders, and having an evacuation plan showed the largest positive effects on evacuation, whereas increased age and Black race showed the largest negative effects. These results highlight the importance of both social-economic-structural factors and government action, such as evacuation orders, for enabling evacuation behaviors. Moderator analyses showed that models built using real-hurricane decisions showed larger effects than models of hypothetical decisions, especially for the strongest predictors. Additionally, models in Florida had more consistent results than for other U.S. states, and models with a larger number of covariates showed smaller effect sizes than models with fewer covariates. Importantly, our study improves methodologically and inferentially over previous reviews of this literature.

Mobile home fragility curves

Seismic fragility of mobile (manufactured) homes is investigated. Compiled is a catalog of home performance in past earthquakes. Intensity measures causing damage are characterized by peak ground acceleration and velocity. Damage is defined as when the home is knocked out of position necessitating repairs and re-installation. Four categories of support conditions are identified: unanchored, tie-downs, proprietary systems, and perimeter wall foundations. Suggested fragility curves for unanchored homes and homes with tie-downs are derived from computer simulations. As a benchmark, a fragility curve for proprietary and perimeter wall systems is taken as the same as that for conventional wood homes. Shortcomings of using tie-down and proprietary systems in high seismic zones are discussed. The suggested fragility curves account for the different categories of support conditions thereby representing advancement to those in the Hazus national standardized risk modeling methodology.

The Sociology of Housing Market Intermediaries

The housing market is replete with intermediaries—individuals whose work constructs, maintains, or expands a market. A sociology of housing requires analytic attention to these myriad housing market intermediaries since they affect whether and under what conditions individuals and households can access and maintain access to housing as well as help determine the affordability and quality of that housing. In this chapter we aim to show the utility of intermediaries as a wide category of analysis, particularly for understanding how housing inequality interacts with other forms of social stratification across axes such as gender, class, and race and ethnicity. We summarize recent research and unpack how the work of public and private-sector intermediaries—such as housing developers, building inspectors, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, appraisers, landlords, housing authority case workers, mobile home park operators, and property managers—leads to more or less stratification in the housing market.

Sustainable and Affordable Prefabricated Construction: Developing a Natural, Recycled, and Recyclable Mobile Home

Outdoor tourism is a form of outdoor holiday that is growing rapidly today, and that stands out from other forms of tourism for its immediate relationship with the landscape which becomes for the tourist the main attraction of the holiday intended as a break from ordinary urban life. Outdoor tourism today represents a growing percentage in the tourism sector, in which mobile homes are the real players. Despite the considerable use of this product in open-air accommodations located in relevant landscapes, there is still no sensitivity in the constructive approach and in the choice of materials in terms of sustainability. In the open-air tourism sector, the lack of ecological sensitivity results from two levels of application: one regarding the whole settlement and the public spaces of outdoor accommodations and one regarding the mobile unit from the design to the production process. This paper will provide some practical strategies to introduce the ecological theme in the mobile home for the tourism sector. The research aims to analyze the production system of mobile homes in order to introduce alternative materials within the existing assembly line. The research demonstrates the possibility of a product being sustainable both economically and environmentally, healthy, and well-integrated with landscape by adopting an approach that makes it possible to use the same assembly line currently in use.

How effective are evacuation orders? An analysis of decision making among vulnerable populations in Florida during Hurricane Irma.

Natural disasters preparedness measures are of paramount importance in reducing fatalities, economic tolls, and health concerns for vulnerable populations. One such preparedness measure that policymakers can take is issuing an evacuation order. Our study focuses on vulnerable populations including people in low lying areas, flood evacuation zones, low income communities, sparsely populated areas, and in manufactured or mobile homes. We analyze the evacuation decision and distance of over 170,000 individuals using passively collected location-based service (LBS) data in Florida before, during and after Hurricane Irma. We control for evacuation order, evacuation order date, and storm path. The results of the analysis are in line with hurricane evacuation studies using survey data, which provides validation that using big data can be a reliable and efficient method to analyze hurricane evacuation decision making. Our major findings are that (1) individuals issued a mandatory order are far more likely to evacuate than if given a voluntary order, (2) manufactured and mobile home residents are more likely to evacuate short distances than site-built home residents but less likely to evacuate longer distances, (3) people living in low income census tracts were less likely to evacuate longer distances than those in higher income census tracts and (4) population, employment and road density were positively associated with decision to evacuate. The authors recommend that policies and hurricane preparation measures pay particular attention to less densely populated and low-income regions as these were identified as vulnerable areas that were less likely to evacuate.

The Art of Doing

The purpose of the Business Model Template (BMT) is to help you turn your idea into a viable project or organization. To illustrate this, two real-life case studies are offered in this chapter. Firstly, the KipCaravan project, which is a mobile home—a caravan—for chickens. It involves low-scale egg production in several locations. Secondly, the Sun at School NSV2 project in the city of Nijmegen. For both projects you will find a step-by-step description of the different routes followed. As you will see, the interpretation of the building blocks is different for every project and there is no best order in which to stack the building blocks. Bear in mind that both projects are still up and running successfully at the time of writing. These examples are shown in simplified versions and with the benefit of hindsight, of course. Perhaps the essence of doing business is having the courage to start without a ready-made recipe.

Sliding mode control design for haptic system with vibration mode

Haptic is cutting edge technology having vast application mobile, home, robotics and tele-operations etc. It has enormous scope for tele-surgery using robotic arm with haptic feedback. It brings various dicsipline such as biomedical, neurological, physics and engineering on a single platform. It have numerious scope for all field.For this, haptic robotic arm should able to emulate the desired trajectory with minimum disturbances. In the real time, a robotic haptic arm have various uncertainty, vibrations and other unmodelled parameters which impact the output adversely. In this paper, a haptic device has been modelled in presence of internal vibration mode. A robust nonlinear sliding mode control (SMC) has been proposed in this paper. The efficacy of designed controller has been verified using simulation experiment. It has been observed that using the proposed method system follows desired trajectory accurately.

Prologue

Jose Martinez wakes up at 4 a.m. to ensure he is on time for a ride to the fields. After a quick breakfast, Jose meets his raitero, the driver of a van that carries seven workers to fields up to two hours away. Arriving at the orchard at 6:30 a.m., Jose will work four hours, take a break, work another two hours and, after a half-hour lunch and an afternoon break, quit at 3:30 p.m. and make the drive back to the mobile home he shares with his wife and three children. Jose earns California’s 2019 minimum wage of $12 an hour or $96 for an eight-hour day, but was away from home thirteen hours. He paid $10 for the ride to and from work....