Poverty and inequality maps for rural Vietnam: an application of small area estimation

The objective of the paper is to update the small area estimates of poverty and inequality for rural Vietnam. The new estimates of province and district level poverty for the year 2006, when combined with estimates available for 1999, allow for examination of how poverty has changed in rural Vietnam over the past seven years. The analysis finds that all provinces across the country experienced a noticeable reduction in rural poverty during the period 1999-2006. Some of the largest reductions in poverty are observed for provinces with poverty rates close to the national average. The poorest provinces have also experienced reductions in poverty, albeit at a more modest pace. Provinces and districts with lower levels of inequality in 2006 have seen above average poverty reductions. The authors consider both expenditure and income based measures of poverty and inequality, and find the results to be very similar.Rural Poverty Reduction,Regional Economic Development,Achieving Shared Growth,Services&Transfers to Poor

Rural Poverty and Inequality Maps in Vietnam: Estimation using Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey 2006 and Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census 2006

The objective of this paper is to estimate poverty and inequality for rural Vietnam at different levels of aggregation by combining the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) from 2006 and the Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census from the same year. Using the small area estimation method, we will produce estimates at the region, province at district level, and will consider both expenditure and income based measures. It is found that all provinces across the country have experienced a noticeable reduction in rural poverty during the period 1999-2006. Some of the largest reductions in poverty are observed for provinces with poverty rates close to the national average. Also the poorest provinces are experiencing reductions in poverty, albeit at a more modest pace. Provinces and districts with a larger poverty reduction in the period 1999-2006 tend to have a lower level of inequality in 2006. Results based on expenditure poverty estimates are found to be very similar to those based on income poverty estimates.Poverty measurement, poverty mapping, agricultural census, household survey, Vietnam

Updating Poverty Maps of Vietnam using Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey 2002 and Population Census 1999

Poverty map is an important for poverty targeting in developing countries. In this study, we combine the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) in 2002 and the Population Census in 1999 to estimate poverty and inequality indexes of all provinces and districts of Vietnam in the year 2002.Poverty measurement, poverty mapping, agricultural census, household survey, Vietnam.

Interactive scheduling of appliance usage in the home

We address the problem of recommending an appliance usage schedule to the homeowner which balances between maximising total savings and maintaining sufficient user convenience. An important challenge within this problem is how to elicit the user preferences with low intrusiveness, in order to identify new schedules with high cost savings, that still lies within the user’s comfort zone. To tackle this problem we propose iDR, an interactive system for generating personalised appliance usage scheduling recommendations that maximise savings and convenience with minimal intrusiveness. In particular, our system learns when to stop interacting with the user during the preference elicitation process, in order to keep the bother cost (e.g., the amount of time the user spends, or the cognitive cost of interacting) minimal. We demonstrate through extensive empirical evaluation on real–world data that our approach improves savings by up to 35%, while maintaining a significantly lower bother cost, compared to state-of the-art benchmarks

Algorithms for appliance usage prediction

Demand-Side Management (DSM) is one of the key elements of future Smart Electricity Grids. DSM involves mechanisms to reduce or shift the consumption of electricity in an attempt to minimise peaks. By so doing it is possible to avoid using expensive peaking plants that are also highly carbon emitting. A key challenge in DSM, however, is the need to predict energy usage from specific home appliances accurately so that consumers can be notified to shift or reduce the use of high energy-consuming appliances. In some cases, such notifications may be also need to be given at very short notice. Hence, to solve the appliance usage prediction problem, in this thesis we develop novel algorithms that take into account both users' daily practices (by taking advantage of the cyclic nature of routine activities) and the inter-dependency between the usage of multiple appliances (i.e., the user's typical consumption patterns). We propose two prediction algorithms to satisfy the needs for fast prediction and high accuracy respectively: i) a rule-based approach, EGH-H, for scenarios in which notifications need to be given at short notice, to find significant patterns in the use of appliances that can capture the user's behaviour (or habits), ii) a graphical{model based approach, GM-PMA (Graphical Model for Prediction in Multiple Appliances) for scenarios that require high prediction accuracy. We demonstrate through extensive empirical evaluations on real{world data from a prominent database of home energy usage that GM-PMA outperforms existing methods by up to 41%, and the runtime of EGH-H is 100 times lower on average, than that of other benchmark algorithms, while maintaining competitive prediction accuracy. Moreover, we demonstrate the use of appliance usage prediction algorithms in the context of demand{side management by proposing an Intelligent Demand Responses (IDR) mechanism, where an agent uses Logistic Inference to learn the user's preferences, and hence provides the best personalised suggestions to the user. We use simulations to evaluate IDR on a number of user types, and show that, by using IDR, users are likely to improve their savings significantly

THE APPLICATION OF GENERAL ENDURANCE EXERCISES TO IMPROVE 3000-METER ARMED RUNS OF MALE MILITIA FORCES AGED 25-28 IN HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM

A 3000-meter run with guns, a common physical exercise to train endurance in military force, is one of the training and competition contents for male soldiers of the Vietnam People's Armed Forces in general and militia forces in particular. The purpose of this study was to build up a general endurance exercise for male militia forces aged 25-28 in Ho Chi Minh City. Independent samples t-test was used to compare the difference between the experimental and control groups, while Paired sample t-test was used to identify the difference between the pre- and post-experimental. By using the general methods in sport, 12 general endurance exercises were selected and applied for male militia forces in 3000-meter armed runs. Besides, the result showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups (the experimental group had higher scores when compared with the control one) after eight weeks of training.  Article visualizations

Rural Poverty and Inequality Maps in Vietnam: Estimation using Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey 2006 and Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census 2006

The objective of this paper is to estimate poverty and inequality for rural Vietnam at different levels of aggregation by combining the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) from 2006 and the Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census from the same year. Using the small area estimation method, we will produce estimates at the region, province at district level, and will consider both expenditure and income based measures. It is found that all provinces across the country have experienced a noticeable reduction in rural poverty during the period 1999-2006. Some of the largest reductions in poverty are observed for provinces with poverty rates close to the national average. Also the poorest provinces are experiencing reductions in poverty, albeit at a more modest pace. Provinces and districts with a larger poverty reduction in the period 1999-2006 tend to have a lower level of inequality in 2006. Results based on expenditure poverty estimates are found to be very similar to those based on income poverty estimates

Rural Poverty and Inequality Maps in Vietnam: Estimation using Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey 2006 and Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census 2006

The objective of this paper is to estimate poverty and inequality for rural Vietnam at different levels of aggregation by combining the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) from 2006 and the Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census from the same year. Using the small area estimation method, we will produce estimates at the region, province at district level, and will consider both expenditure and income based measures. It is found that all provinces across the country have experienced a noticeable reduction in rural poverty during the period 1999-2006. Some of the largest reductions in poverty are observed for provinces with poverty rates close to the national average. Also the poorest provinces are experiencing reductions in poverty, albeit at a more modest pace. Provinces and districts with a larger poverty reduction in the period 1999-2006 tend to have a lower level of inequality in 2006. Results based on expenditure poverty estimates are found to be very similar to those based on income poverty estimates

Updating Poverty Maps of Vietnam using Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey 2002 and Population Census 1999

Poverty map is an important for poverty targeting in developing countries. In this study, we combine the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) in 2002 and the Population Census in 1999 to estimate poverty and inequality indexes of all provinces and districts of Vietnam in the year 2002