Review of Forecasting Univariate Time-series Data with Application to Water-Energy Nexus Studies & Proposal of Parallel Hybrid SARIMA-ANN Model

The necessary materials for most human activities are water and energy. Integrated analysis to accurately forecast water and energy consumption enables the implementation of efficient short and long-term resource management planning as well as expanding policy and research possibilities for the supportive infrastructure. However, the integral relationship between water and energy (water-energy nexus) poses a difficult problem for modeling. The accessibility and physical overlay of data sets related to water-energy nexus is another main issue for a reliable water-energy consumption forecast. The framework of urban metabolism (UM) uses several types of data to build a global view and highlight issues of inefficiency within the network. Failure to view the whole system contributes to the inability to comprehend the complexity and interconnectivity of the issues within the system. This complexity is found in most systems, especially with systems that must be able to support and react to vacillating human interaction and behavior. One approach to address the limitations of data accessibility and model inflexibility is through the application of univariate time-series with heterogeneous hybrid modeling addresses. Time-series forecasting uses past observations of the same variable(s) to analyze and separate the pattern from white noise to define underlying relationships to predict future behavior. There are various linear and non-linear models utilized to forecast time-series data sets; however, ground truth data sets with extreme seasonal variation are neither pure linear nor pure non-linear. This truth has propelled model building into hybrid model frameworks to combine linear and non-linear methodologies to reduce the fallacies of both model frameworks with the other\u27s strengths. This problem report works to illustrate the limitations of complex WEN studies, build a timeline of hybrid modeling analysis using univariate time-series data, and develop a parallel hybrid SARIMA-ANN model framework to increase univariate time-series analysis capabilities in order to address previously discussed WEN study limitations. The parallel Hybrid SARIMA – ANN model performs better in comparison to SARIMA, ANN, and Series hybrid SARIMA-ANN; and shows promise for research expansion with structure flexibility to expand with additional variables

Annual Report 2017: CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA)

FTA contributes to 9 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to all CGIAR Intermediate Development Outcomes (IDOs) and to 31 sub-IDOs with different levels of investment. With efforts targeted respectively at 29%, 33%, 38% across System Level Outcomes (SLOs) 1, 2 and 3, FTA balanced its work across four main production systems (natural forests, plantations, pastures and cropping systems with trees) dealing with a number of globally traded and/or locally important tree-crop commodities (timber, oil palm, rubber, coffee, cocoa, coconut, wood fuel, fruits, etc.), that form the basis for the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of smallholders.1 These commodities also represent an important share of the land area, including 13 million km2 of forests and 9.5 million km2 of agricultural lands (45% of the total agricultural area with >10% tree cover)

Survival Analysis: Timelines to English Language Proficiency at the Secondary School Level

The ELL population in the United States continues to increase. Research suggests that the English language proficiency growth rates for numerous ELL students are strongly correlated with their English language proficiency levels (Cook & Zhao, 2011; Conger, 2008). The results of Conger’s 2008 study suggested that just over fifty percent of students gained English language proficiency after three years. According to the same study, the students that did not typically gain English language proficiency were students who entered public schools older and with a lower English language proficiency level. The current study examines the likelihood of high school ELLs in a large, urban district in achieving English language proficiency as measured on the ACCESS for ELLs®. Survival analysis is a robust analytic technique that complements the highly mobile tendencies of ELL students, the ever-expanding ELL population, and the varying English language proficiency timelines. A second survival analysis was performed with language as an additional factor. The analysis suggested the probability of achieving English language proficiency was approximately 20 percent. The analysis indicated there were significant differences between native language groups, demonstrating different languages responded differently to timelines to English language proficiency. If the federal accountability frameworks fail to carefully examine English language proficiency levels, both state and federal educational frameworks risk misjudging expected English language proficiency timelines

Ecology and emergence: Understanding factors that drive variation in process quality and clinical outcomes in general practice

Clinical practice variation (CPV), where differences in healthcare delivery do not reflect differences in patient preferences or clinical need, is considered a hallmark of poor quality care. 'Unwarranted' variation is the focus of mounting policy attention and a growing body of literature, but remains poorly explained and theorised, with ways of determining when variation is warranted only weakly developed. Many assertions around CPV remain under-explored and untested. Much of the literature operates on the assumption that the legitimacy of variation depends on its source or cause, and that variation in processes of care will lead to related variation in outcomes. This doctoral research focuses on two overarching questions relating to CPV in Australian general practice: (1) what is CPV, and how can it be best conceptualised and understood; and (2) what can routinely-collected clinical data tell us about the phenomenon of CPV in general practice? Accordingly, this thesis explores the operationalisation of CPV as a theoretical construct and also examines variation in a series of clinical performance measures for coronary heart disease (CHD) and diabetes. Together, these lines of inquiry constitute a mixed-methods 'sense-making' exercise that seeks an incremental interplay between literature and data, to shed light on the phenomenon of CPV. Data are drawn from a unique dataset of aggregate reporting metrics, using extracted electronic medical record data, among an affiliated group of 36 general practice clinics serving approximately 189,848 patients over a 5-year period. These data are examined descriptively and ultimately analysed using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) against an empirically derived explanatory framework. Theory development draws on complexity science, especially complex adaptive systems theory, and the disciplines of social epidemiology and health ecology. Results show that a series of discourses have strongly shaped thinking about CPV, converging around a normative 'bad apples' approach to understanding variation. However, CPV may also contribute to healthcare quality in ways that are not well considered, especially in primary care settings. I demonstrate that there may be unconventional but more illuminating ways to conceptualise variation that enable our collective understanding to progress. These include using an ecological framework to conceive CPV as an emergent property of coupled, complex adaptive systems, and employing an equity lens to distinguish between CPV in processes and outcomes of care. In descriptive analyses, I find that variation frequently behaves differently across different measures, with crucial system information contained in the interstices of the data. Contrary to common assumptions, relationships between processes and outcomes of care are not straightforward. Using a framework of factors associated with CPV in general practice management of diabetes and CHD, I confirm that causality is complex and multifactorial, operating at a number of levels. Employing the case-based configurational method of QCA, I show that there may be no single or primary cause for CPV. Instead, clinics can arrive at a particular outcome via multiple independent causal pathways which are themselves multifactorial. These multi-component causes may be defined as much by the interactions between component elements as by individual elements themselves. The same factor may have differential effects within different combinations, or at different scales. These findings suggest that relying on causal explanations to demarcate unwarranted variation may be insufficient. However, both theory and methods require continued development to ensure an adequate understanding of the role and representation of warranted and unwarranted variation in performance measurement systems. Case-based configurational methods such as QCA may have substantial utility in helping to explain and delineate these phenomena

Insights from twenty years of comparative research in Pacific Large Ocean States

Under global environmental change, understanding the interactions between people and nature has become critical for human survival. Comparative research can identify trends within social-ecological systems providing key insights for both environmental and developmental research. Island systems, with clear land boundaries, have been proposed as ideal case studies for comparative research, but it is unclear to what extent their potential has been fulfilled. To summarize existing research and identify potential gaps and new directions, we reviewed comparative environmental and developmental research on Pacific Large Ocean States. A diversity of case study locations and research themes were addressed within the sample of reviewed studies. Within the reviewed literature climate change, energy infrastructure, trade and fisheries were key themes of environmental and developmental research compared between island systems. Research was biased towards wealthier Pacific Large Ocean States and those with a relatively higher degree of socio-economic development. Our review highlights the potential value of a stronger a priori inclusion of spatial scale and conceptual frameworks, such as spatial resilience, to facilitate generalization from case studies

Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills