Robust Policy in Times of Pandemic

The pandemic exposes policymakers to fundamental uncertainties about future economic scenarios. While policymakers have to act forcefully to mitigate the impact on the economy, these conditions call for policy strategies that are also robust to uncertainty. This article compares two concepts of robust strategies: robust control and robust satisficing. It argues that a robust satisficing strategy is preferred and shows that the crisis responses of governments and central banks in Europe share features of robust satisficing in several dimensions.

TO WHAT EXTENT WE DO UNDERSTAND SMART CITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS INFLUENCING CITY SMARTNESS

Todays large cities are continually evolving human ecosystem, delivering many services to citizens. The dramatic urbanisation processes and increasing numbers of the population in cities put many strains on city infrastructure and services. XXI century urbanisation issues require robust strategies and innovative planning for their future. Easily cities are characterised as smart or intelligent without regard to clear criteria or specification for a city. There are different opinions regarding smart cities, arguing that it may bring positive social and economic change, developed governance and human capital. However, these aspects are heavily achievable without eliminating the present discrepancy in planning. The purpose of the article is to clarify and identify the characteristics of smartness based on current scholar research. The qualitative study overview on integrative literature review and seven Baltic region cities case study explores possible characteristics, and various city dimension factors which can make a city smart.

Plasmonics tunable Ag-coated gold nanorods arrays as reusable SERS substrates for multiplexed antibiotics detection

Antibiotic contaminants in aqueous media pose serious threat to human and ecological environments. Therefore, it is necessary to develop robust strategies to detect antibiotic residues. For this purpose, a self-assembly...

Laboratory based surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Pakistan

COVID-19 cases are alarmingly increasing in Pakistan since May 2020. Laboratory based surveillance system has been in place since the start of the pandemic. The genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 strains isolated locally has been conducted based on partial ORF1b. The sequences were classified to show the phylogenetic correlation and showed 100% homology with those detected in neighboring countries India and China. The rapid increase in cases has led to development of robust strategies to enhance the laboratory testing capacity. We are currently meeting the country requirement to diagnose the virus in the community. Nonetheless, factors like recent ease in lockdown measures has led to massive rise in number of cases in few weeks time.

Partial Unlock for COVID-19-Like Epidemics Can Save 1-3 Million Lives Worldwide

Objectives: We study partial unlock or reopening interaction with seasonal effects in a managed epidemic to quantify overshoot effects on small and large unlock steps and discover robust strategies for reducing overshoot. Methods: We simulate partial unlock of social distancing for epidemics over a range of replication factor, immunity duration and seasonality factor for strategies targeting immunity thresholds using overshoot optimization. Results: Seasonality change must be taken into account as one of the steps in an easing sequence, and a two step unlock, including seasonal effects, minimizes overshoot and deaths. It may cause undershoot, which causes rebounds and assists survival of the pathogen. Conclusions: Partial easing levels, even low levels for economic relief while waiting on a vaccine, have population immunity thresholds based on the reduced replication rates and may experience overshoot as well. We further find a two step strategy remains highly sensitive to variations in case ratio, replication factor, seasonality and timing. We demonstrate a three or more step strategy is more robust, and conclude that the best possible approach minimizes deaths under a range of likely actual conditions which include public response.