Moving Beyond Geopolitical Boundaries to Secure Democracy in Southeast Asia: Projecting EU in The QUAD

COVID-19 Pandemic has changed state’s view about development. After several economic damages, the plan to bounce back from pandemic impacts is by adopting GDP-ism development which sacrificing democracy. In Southeast Asia, The trend of deconsolidation of democracy indicated by several events such as military coup in Myanmar and protest against Omnibus Law in Indonesia. At the same time, 2020 also marked a revival of Quadrilateral talk between US, Australia, Japan, and India concerning China’s growing influence in Indo-Pacific region. Many scholars observe this cooperation is involving security strategy to contain China’s influence. But yet there are not many writings about democratization process as a way to hold China’s influence especially in Southeast Asia region. This paper is aimed to show that maintaining democracy is important for QUAD to secure their interests and this effort can involve parties beyond geopolitical boundaries. Hence, this paper would like to seek how EU engagement in QUAD can support democratization process in Southeast Asia by considering its economic influence and domestic politic situation in the region. Furthermore, as post-COVID-19 development is concerned in this paper, It is important to seek how democracy can contribute to foster state economic development and become alternative to Chinese development.

Estimating the Potential Economic Impact of Haiti’s 2021 Earthquake

This paper employs a simple methodology to estimate the potential economic damages of the 2021 earthquake in Haiti. The country registered a magnitude 7.2 earthquake off the South Coast on August 14, 2021, that resulted in 2,248 deaths, 12,763 injured and substantial damages to houses and other infrastructure. An additional 329 persons remain missing. We estimate economic damages using econometric techniques and a dataset on natural disasters across a wide range of countries and over an extended time period. Based on this analysis, damages for the 2021 earthquake in Haiti are estimated to reach US$1.6 billion (9.6 percent of GDP) for a scenario with an impact of 2,500 dead or missing. We also generate confidence intervals on these results. We hope these early estimates will provide a useful input to the ongoing Post-Disaster Risk Assessment (PDNA) and will assist the government and its international partners plan efforts to assist the country in terms of relief and reconstruction.

Assessing Economic Damages in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Litigation: The State of Arizona

This article provides a framework for calculating economic damages in personal injury and wrongful death litigation in Arizona by providing the information necessary to produce opinions and testimony that conform to Arizona laws, rules, regulations, and practice.

Assessing Economic Damages in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Litigation: The State of Maryland

This article is one in the Journal of Forensic Economics series providing experts with information about how to prepare and testify about economic damages in personal injury and wrongful death cases in the state of Maryland.1 Topics covered include a review of the Maryland state court system, rules regarding expert testimony, and wrongful death and personal injury economic damages calculations. An Appendix contains the relevant statutes.

Update to Assessing Economic Damages in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Litigation: The State of Nebraska

In a recent paper, Rosenbaum and Richardson (2019) described assessing economic damages in personal injury and wrongful death cases in Nebraska. That article omitted discussion of Nebraska's rules regarding hedonic damages. This note corrects that omission.

Update to Assessing Economic Damages in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Litigation: The State of California

This article is designed to update the original article that appeared in the Journal of Forensic Economics, 17:3 (2004). The article discusses a change in procedure for expert discovery and deposition and five substantive changes and clarifications affecting the legal guidance for valuation of damages in personal injury and wrongful death cases in California.

Digital Warfare Against COVID-19: Global Use of Contact-Tracing Apps

The current COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic has perpetuated a worldwide tussle to control this infection and minimizing death toll and economic damages. The year 2020 would always be remembered as a year of war against a virus, but it would also be marked as a year showing upsurge of technology evolution to deal with infections. Contact tracing has emerged as a new buzzword. Contact tracing digital tools have been introduced worldwide to prevent transmission. In this article, we have outlined various contact tracing apps being used globally, which are rated according to their safety, privacy, and efficacy.

A globally consistent probabilistic wildfire risk model to assess economic damages

<p>Wildfire risk around the world is rapidly increasing, leading to dramatic impacts on ecosystems and society. Economic damages of the past seasons threaten individual households, insurance companies, brokers and governmental authorities alike. Here, we present a probabilistic wildfire risk model to assess fire and economic risk. The model creates synthetic fire seasons through probabilistic ignition and dynamic random-walk spreading of fires.</p><p>The risk of natural catastrophes is commonly modeled using the three components hazard, exposure and vulnerability. This approach is used in the well-established open-source platform CLIMADA (CLIMate ADAptation). Here we show its extension for a globally consistent wildfire risk model. The model allows for the evaluation of economic damages of past and current wildfire events as well as a probabilistic risk assessment for any exposure on a seasonal basis. It is built on open and global data to ensure consistent modelling, including in data-sparse regions.</p><p>The hazard component uses Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) data acquired by the MODIS and VIIRS satellite missions and provided by Earthdata. We aggregate point information of fire activity using clustering algorithms over space and time to identify separate events while allowing for different resolutions (minimum of 375 m). For the exposure component, CLIMADA’s LitPop model is used, which geographically distributes assets using data on night-light intensity and population density. To assess the vulnerability, the model has been calibrated using reported damage data. Although uncertainties remain large, error scores after calibration resemble those of well-established hazards, such as tropical cyclones. To allow for probabilistic risk assessment, synthetic fire seasons are generated using a random-walk-type stochastic fire generator, which hinges on grid-point specific fire spread probabilities combined with an overall fire propagation probability. The framework further allows for a simple integration of additional data in order to reflect climate trends.</p>