Participatory approach for integrated basin planning with focus on disaster risk reduction : the case of the Limpopo river

This paper defends the idea that a participatory approach is a suitable method for basin planning integrating both water and land aspects. Assertions made are based on scientific literature review and corroborated by field experience and research carried out in the Limpopo River basin, a transboundary river located in southern Africa which is affected by periodical floods. The paper explains how a basin strategic plan can be drafted and disaster risk reduction strategies derived by combining different types of activities using a bottom-up approach, despite an institutional context which operates through traditional top-down mechanisms. In particular, the "Living with Floods" experience in the lower Limpopo River, in Mozambique, is described as a concrete example of a disaster adaptation measure resulting from a participatory planning exercise. In conclusion, the adopted method and obtained results are discussed and recommendations are formulated for potential replication in similar contexts of the developing world

SHIELD: Sustainable Hybrid Evolutionary Learning Framework for Carbon, Wastewater, and Energy-Aware Data Center Management

Today's cloud data centers are often distributed geographically to provide robust data services. But these geo-distributed data centers (GDDCs) have a significant associated environmental impact due to their increasing carbon emissions and water usage, which needs to be curtailed. Moreover, the energy costs of operating these data centers continue to rise. This paper proposes a novel framework to co-optimize carbon emissions, water footprint, and energy costs of GDDCs, using a hybrid workload management framework called SHIELD that integrates machine learning guided local search with a decomposition-based evolutionary algorithm. Our framework considers geographical factors and time-based differences in power generation/use, costs, and environmental impacts to intelligently manage workload distribution across GDDCs and data center operation. Experimental results show that SHIELD can realize 34.4x speedup and 2.1x improvement in Pareto Hypervolume while reducing the carbon footprint by up to 3.7x, water footprint by up to 1.8x, energy costs by up to 1.3x, and a cumulative improvement across all objectives (carbon, water, cost) of up to 4.8x compared to the state-of-the-art

Energy-Aware Cloud Management through Progressive SLA Specification

Novel energy-aware cloud management methods dynamically reallocate computation across geographically distributed data centers to leverage regional electricity price and temperature differences. As a result, a managed VM may suffer occasional downtimes. Current cloud providers only offer high availability VMs, without enough flexibility to apply such energy-aware management. In this paper we show how to analyse past traces of dynamic cloud management actions based on electricity prices and temperatures to estimate VM availability and price values. We propose a novel SLA specification approach for offering VMs with different availability and price values guaranteed over multiple SLAs to enable flexible energy-aware cloud management. We determine the optimal number of such SLAs as well as their availability and price guaranteed values. We evaluate our approach in a user SLA selection simulation using Wikipedia and Grid'5000 workloads. The results show higher customer conversion and 39% average energy savings per VM.Comment: 14 pages, conferenc

Stated and actual altruistic willingness to pay for insecticide-treated nets in Nigeria: validity of open-ended and binary with follow-up questions.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether the binary with follow-up (BWFU) or open-ended (OPED) contingent valuation question format would yield better valid estimates of altruistic willingness to pay (WTP) and examine the feasibility of using intra-community altruistic contributions to procure insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) for the poor in Nigeria. METHODS: Structured questionnaires were used to elicit stated altruistic WTP from a random sub-sample of respondents that had either the OPED or BWFU used to elicit WTP in Southeast Nigeria. One month after the survey the respondents were asked to redeem their WTP pledges. Construct validity was determined using econometric analyses, while phi correlation coefficient was used to determine criterion validity. FINDINGS: More than 57% of the respondents were hypothetically willing to pay for altruism in both BWFU and OPED groups. Altruistic WTP was positively related to respondents' WTP for own nets (p<0.01) and nets for other household members (p<0.05) in both groups. A total of 27.0% and 33.1% of the respondents with positive hypothetical WTP in the BWFU and OPED actually contributed. Phi correlation coefficient was 0.23 (95%CI 0.20-0.29) in BWFU and 0.49 (95%CI 0.44-0.54) in OPED. The money realised was used to buy some ITNs, which were presented to poor people selected by community leaders. CONCLUSION: The OPED elicited better valid estimates of altruistic WTP than BWFU. The potential for more capable people to contribute for the poor in ITNs programmes actually exist and malaria control programmes should explore altruistic contributions as a means to increase net coverage

Do malaria preventive interventions reach the poor? Socioeconomic inequities in expenditure on and use of mosquito control tools in Sudan.

OBJECTIVES: To determine levels of socioeconomic inequities in the prevention of malaria, and to examine the implications of the findings for improving the equitable control of malaria in the Sudan. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey using a pre-tested interviewer-administered questionnaire was administered to 720 randomly selected householders from six localities in Gezira and Khartoum States. A socioeconomic status (SES) index, which was developed using principal components analysis, was used to examine socioeconomic inequity in the prevention of malaria. FINDINGS: Socioeconomic status was positively related to expenditures and use of vector control tools. The poorest households spent the least amounts of money to prevent malaria and were the least likely to own mosquito nets. CONCLUSION: The inequity in the prevention of malaria in the study areas has to be redressed before malaria can be effectively controlled in Sudan. Malaria control managers should continually determine the extent to which malaria preventive tools reach the poorest socioeconomic groups, and fashion strategies that will ensure that equity is always maintained

Valuing the benefits of a health intervention using three different approaches to contingent valuation: re-treatment of mosquito bed-nets in Nigeria.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the level of willingness to pay (WTP) for re-treatment of mosquito nets and to compare the theoretical validity of WTP estimates from three contingent valuation question formats: the bidding game, binary with follow-up technique, and a novel structured haggling technique that mimicked price-taking behaviour in the study area. METHODS: WTP was elicited from randomly selected respondents from three villages in Southeast Nigeria, using pretested interviewer-administered questionnaires. Respondents' WTP for insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) was first elicited before their WTP for re-treatment of ITNs. Ordinary least-squares regression was used to assess theoretical validity. RESULTS: More than 95% of the respondents were willing to pay for re-treatment. The mean WTP was 37.1 Naira, 43.4 Naira and 49.2 Naira in the bidding game, binary with follow-up and structured haggling groups, respectively (US dollar 1.00 = 120 Naira). The WTP estimates elicited across the three question formats were statistically different (P < 0.01). Ordinary least-squares estimation showed that WTP was positively related to many variables, especially stated WTP for ITNs (P < 0.05). Structured haggling generated the highest number of statistically significant variables to explain WTP. CONCLUSIONS: The three contingent valuation approaches generated different distributions of WTP for net retreatment, possibly due to their inherent differences. Structured haggling generated the most theoretically valid estimates of WTP. The levels of WTP identified suggest that user fees exceeding 50 Naira per net re-treatment may discourage demand for the service. This is an important challenge for ITN programmes