1,534 research outputs found
Modeling Infrastructure Vulnerabilities and Adaptation to Climate Change in Urban Systems: Methodology and Application to Metropolitan Boston
Much of the infrastructure in use today was designed and constructed decades if not centuries ago. Many of these infrastructure systems are vulnerable to a variety of anthropogenic or natural disruptions even though their functioning is vital to the creation and maintenance of quality of life in a region. Moreover, concepts and designs have persisted even as technologies have changed. Yet the demands and technologies of the future may require infrastructures ? both material facilities and human institutions ? that are radically different from those of the present. Dealing appropriately with immediate infrastructure vulnerabilities and infrastructure evolution requires a combination of effective short-term crisis management and anticipatory, strategic thinking and planning. Both the "material nature" and institutional issues surrounding urban infrastructure in a changing environment pose formidable challenges to efforts by industrial ecologists to improve the sustainability of urban areas. This presentation describes a collaborative study carried out over the course of more than three years by a group of scientists from engineering, policy analysis, geography and public health, together with a local planning agency and over 200 stakeholders from the public, private and non-profit sectors in metropolitan Boston. The research was conducted as part of the CLIMB project, which explores Climate?s Long-term Impacts on Metro Boston. Special focus was given to vulnerabilities and dynamics of urban infrastructures for energy, communication, transportation, water run-off, and water quality, as well as the interrelatedness of these systems, and implications for public health. Computer-based scenarios are presented for potential future infrastructure dynamics under a variety of assumptions about changes in technology, infrastructure investment, and local climates. The presentation concludes with a set of strategies for environmental investment and policy making that are currently considered for metro Boston, and many of which are highly relevant to, and directly applicable in other locations.
Modeling Infrastructure Vulnerabilities and Adaptation to Climate Change in Urban Systems: Methodology and Application to Metropolitan Boston
Much of the infrastructure in use today was designed and constructed decades if not centuries ago. Many of these infrastructure systems are vulnerable to a variety of anthropogenic or natural disruptions even though their functioning is vital to the creation and maintenance of quality of life in a region. Moreover, concepts and designs have persisted even as technologies have changed. Yet the demands and technologies of the future may require infrastructures - both material facilities and human institutions - that are radically different from those of the present. Dealing appropriately with immediate infrastructure vulnerabilities and infrastructure evolution requires a combination of effective short-term crisis management and anticipatory, strategic thinking and planning. Both the "material nature" and institutional issues surrounding urban infrastructure in a changing environment pose formidable challenges to efforts by industrial ecologists to improve the sustainability of urban areas. This presentation describes a collaborative study carried out over the course of more than three years by a group of scientists from engineering, policy analysis, geography and public health, together with a local planning agency and over 200 stakeholders from the public, private and non-profit sectors in metropolitan Boston. The research was conducted as part of the CLIMB project, which explores Climate's Long-term Impacts on Metro Boston. Special focus was given to vulnerabilities and dynamics of urban infrastructures for energy, communication, transportation, water run-off, and water quality, as well as the interrelatedness of these systems, and implications for public health. Computer-based scenarios are presented for potential future infrastructure dynamics under a variety of assumptions about changes in technology, infrastructure investment, and local climates. The presentation concludes with a set of strategies for environmental investment and policy making that are currently considered for metro Boston, and many of which are highly relevant to, and directly applicable in other locations
Evolutionary Economics: At the Crossroads of Biology and Physics
For almost a century, evolutionary economics has been based to a significant extent on analogies derived from biology. At the same time the discipline suffered from lack of analytical rigor. Recently, advances in thermodynamics and information theory have provided a new foundation for evolutionary studies in biology and economics alike. As a result, the body of studies in evolutionary economics that imports concepts from thermodynamics and information theory to develop new analogies is growing. This paper surveys recent trends in evolutionary economics at the crossroads of biology and physics, and argues to supplant analogies derived from either of the two disciplines. Albeit powerful means to crystallize thought about evolutionary processes in economic systems, analogies from biology have tended to plaster over the many differences between biological and economic processes that are essential to economic systems. Similarly, thermodynamics and information theory cannot provide a non-anthropocentric evaluation of economic processes. Yet, the concepts and measures available from physics can be used to improve our understanding of economic evolution if properly placed into the context of socioeconomic processes. The paper delineates the realm for non-analogy based applications of concepts from physics for the assessment of economic processes in light of discontinuities and emergent complexities
The Impact of Aid for Trade Facilitation on the Costs of Trading
There have been ongoing discussions within the WTO Doha Round on Trade Facilitation and the wider Aid for Trade agenda to assist developing countries in reducing behind-the-border restrictions and to help them benefit from trade reform. Our paper contributes to this debate by analyzing the impact of foreign aid spent on Aid for Trade and Trade Facilitation on the costs of trading. In our empirical investigation, we conduct a panel data estimation for a sample of 99 developing countries for the period 2004-2009. Overall, we find that our aid measures have a negative effect on the costs of trading. --Trade Facilitation,Aid for Trade,Trade Costs
Entropy, economics, and policy
"The laws of thermodynamics constrain transformation of materials and energy, and thus have implications for material and energy use in the economy, for environmental impact, and for policy. This paper provides an overview over the applications of concepts from thermodynamics in economics at the level of individual processes and explores potential constraints at larger system levels - the economy as a whole and the ecosystems within which economies are embedded. Specific emphasis is placed on the ways in which insights from thermodynamics are used to inform economic and policy decision making." (author's abstract
Integrative environmental research and education
"This paper is based on the premise that without integration of knowledge across disciplines, without integration of research with education, and without dialogue between science and stakeholders, opportunities to bound the complexity of environmental processes will be missed. Without adequate integration, solutions to environmental challenges will be partial at best, and new problems and unintended impacts will likely arise that prevent natural resource, economic and social systems from flourishing. On that premise, the paper explores what specifically needs to be integrated, and why, how that integration may occur, and what emotive, social and institutional conditions need to be achieved that may foster integration." (author's abstract
Integrity and Integration: An Exploration of the Personal, Professional, and Pedagogical in the Professoriate
This paper seeks to explore the connections between the concepts of integrity and integration within the professoriate in Christian higher education. Specifically, it examines commonalities and intersections in the definitions of terms, the gaps between rhetoric and reality, and the reasons for those gaps. Implications for a professor’s inner life, scholarship, and teaching are also discussed, and suggestions for closing the gaps are offered
A NONLINEAR MODEL OF INFORMATION AND COORDINATION IN HOG PRODUCTION: TESTING THE COASIAN-FOWLERIAN DYNAMIC HYPOTHESES
The pig-cycle 'explanation' expunded by Coase and Fowler followed a well-integrated economic logic and provides tremendous insight into our understanding of commodity cycles. The paper presents a simulation model that replicates all of Coase and Fowler's results and tests its robustness with an application to U.S. hog production.Livestock Production/Industries, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,
Climate's Long-term Impact on New Zealand Infrastructure (CLINZI) - A Case Study of Hamilton City, New Zealand
Infrastructure systems and services (ISS) are vulnerable to changes in climate. This paper reports on a study of the impact of gradual climate changes on ISS in Hamilton City, New Zealand. This study is unique in that it is the first of its kind to be applied to New Zealand ISS. This study also considers a broader range of ISS than most other climate change studies recently conducted. Using historical climate data and four climate change scenarios, we modelled the impact of climate change on water supply and quality, transport, energy demand, public health and air quality. Our analysis reveals that many of Hamilton City's infrastructure sectors demonstrated greater responsiveness to population changes than changes in gradual climate change. Any future planning decisions should be sensitive to climate change, but not driven by it (even though that may be fashionable to do so). We find there is considerable scope for extending this analysis. First, there is a need for local infrastructure managers to improve the coverage of the data needed for this kind of study. Second, any future study of this kind must focus on daily (rather than monthly) time steps and extreme (as well as gradual) climate changes.Climate change, infrastructure, integrated assessment, adaptation, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, International Relations/Trade, Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries, Political Economy,
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