Manual: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida Foundation-October 2011-September 2012 Media Placements

A manual for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida Foundation Media Placements for October 2011 - September 2012

Optimum predictive modelling, holistic integration and analysis of energy sources mix for power generation and sustainability in developing economies : a case of the Nigerian power system

Thesis (PhD (Industrial Systems))--University of Pretoria, 2023.Nigeria being the most populous black nation on earth, with a high birth rate and growing industrial, commercial, transportation, and agricultural activities has been caught up with the dilemma of insufficient power supply which has left the nation lagging in terms of socio-economic development among sister nations. With an aggressive transition to renewables all over the world to meet energy obligations and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Nigeria is left with no choice but to join the transition in a bid to uphold the Sustainable Development Goals 7 & 13 (clean and affordable energy & climate action). The power generation mix of Nigeria is largely dependent on natural gas hence, largely in conflict with the mentioned SDGs. Despite these sources of electricity being far fetched from meeting the growing demand for power usage, the non-renewable energy source are noted for creating a significant level of environmental pollution, global warming, and health-related risks. As the need to bring down the rising annual global temperatures to 1.5 degrees in various Conference of Parties (COP) grow in awareness, it’s obvious that Nigeria has a significant role to play towards the actualization of this mission. The ever-increasing demand for electricity, as well as its impact on the environment, necessitates expanding the generation mix by utilizing indigenous sustainable energy sources. Power generation planning that is sustainable and efficient must meet various objectives, many of which conflict with one another in which multi-objective optimization is one of the techniques used for such optimization problems. Using multi-objective optimization, a model for Nigeria’s power supply architecture was developed to integrate indigenous energy sources for a sustainable power generation mix. The model has three competing objectives i.e reducing power generating costs, reducing CO2 emissions and increasing jobs. To solve the multi-objective optimization problem, the Hybrid Structural Interaction Matrix (HSIM) technique was utilized to compute the weights of the three objectives: minimization of costs, minimization of CO2 emissions, and maximization of jobs creation. The General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) was used to solve the multi-objective optimization problem. According to the simulations, Nigeria could address its power supply shortage and generate up to 2,100 TWh of power by 2050. Over the projected period, large hydropower plants and solar PV will be the leading option for Nigeria's power generation mix. Furthermore, power generation from solar thermal, incinerator, nuclear, gas plants, combined plants, and diesel engine will all be part of the power supply mix by 2050. In terms of jobs expected to be created, about 2.05 million jobs will be added by 2050 from the construction and operation of power generation plants with CO2 emissions attaining 266 MtCO2 by 2050. The cost of power generation is expected to decline from a maximum of 36 billion US$in 2030 to 27.1 billion US$ in 2050. Findings in this research concludes that Nigeria can meet its power supply obligations by harnessing indigenous energy sources into an optimal power supply mix. Furthermore, to establish the basis for the power generation mix projection, system drivers responsible for the rising demand of electricity and reduce pace of transition to renewable energy sources were identified from a systems thinking point of view after which they were prioritized using the HSIM concept. Also, the impact of renewable energy on power accessibility, affordability and environmental sustainability was investigated using the system dynamics approach. It was obtained that factors including urbanization, industrialization, agricultural/commercial services growth rates, and pollution are the primary reasons for the rising demand for electricity. The slow transition to renewables in Nigeria is directly linked to the absence of subsidies and government grants, non-existing or few renewable energy financing institutions, scarcity of experienced professionals, barriers to public awareness and information, and ineffective government policies. The outcome from the system dynamics approach on accessibility, affordability, and environmental sustainability of the electricity supply are thought to be enhanced if indeed the country's plan of using 36% renewables in the mix of power sources is to be met.Industrial and Systems EngineeringPhD (Industrial Systems)Unrestricte

The 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference: Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment, Conference Proceedings, 23 - 25 November 2022, Western Sydney University, Kingswood Campus, Sydney, Australia

This is the proceedings of the 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association (AUBEA) conference which will be hosted by Western Sydney University in November 2022. The conference is organised by the School of Engineering, Design, and Built Environment in collaboration with the Centre for Smart Modern Construction, Western Sydney University. This year’s conference theme is “Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment”, and expects to publish over a hundred double-blind peer review papers under the proceedings

Measuring knowledge sharing processes through social network analysis within construction organisations

The construction industry is a knowledge intensive and information dependent industry. Organisations risk losing valuable knowledge, when the employees leave them. Therefore, construction organisations need to nurture opportunities to disseminate knowledge through strengthening knowledge-sharing networks. This study aimed at evaluating the formal and informal knowledge sharing methods in social networks within Australian construction organisations and identifying how knowledge sharing could be improved. Data were collected from two estimating teams in two case studies. The collected data through semi-structured interviews were analysed using UCINET, a Social Network Analysis (SNA) tool, and SNA measures. The findings revealed that one case study consisted of influencers, while the other demonstrated an optimal knowledge sharing structure in both formal and informal knowledge sharing methods. Social networks could vary based on the organisation as well as the individuals’ behaviour. Identifying networks with specific issues and taking steps to strengthen networks will enable to achieve optimum knowledge sharing processes. This research offers knowledge sharing good practices for construction organisations to optimise their knowledge sharing processes

The Whitworthian 2016-2017

The Whitworthian student newspaper for 2016-2017 academic year.https://digitalcommons.whitworth.edu/whitworthian/1101/thumbnail.jp

Barriers to and enablers of climate change adaptation in four South African municipalities, and implications for community based adaptation

The focus of this study is on understanding the multiple and interacting factors that hinder or enable municipal planned climate change adaptation, here called barriers and enablers respectively, and their implications for community based adaptation. To do this I developed a conceptual framework of barriers to and enablers of planned climate change adaptation, which informed a systematic literature review of barriers to planned community based adaptation in developing countries. In this framework barriers were grouped into resource, social and physical barriers. I then conducted empirical case study analysis using qualitative research methods in four South African municipalities to understand what barriers and enablers manifested in these contexts. In light of the reflexive nature of my methodology, my framework was adjusted based on my empirical findings, where contextual barriers were found to better represent the empirical results and subsumed physical barriers. I found my framework useful for analysis, but in the empirical cases, barriers and enablers overlaid and interacted so significantly that in reality it was often difficult to separate them. A key finding was that enablers tended to be more about the way things are done, as opposed to direct opposites of barriers. Comparison of barriers and enablers across the case studies revealed a number of key themes. Municipalities struggle to implement climate change adaptation and community based adaptation within contexts of significant social, economic and ecological challenges. These contextual barriers, when combined with certain cognitive barriers, lead to reactive responses. Existing municipal systems and structures make it difficult to enable climate change adaptation, which is inherently cross‐sectoral and messy, and especially community based adaptation that is bottom‐up and participatory. Lack of locally applicable knowledge, funding and human resources were found to be significant resource barriers, and were often underlain by social barriers relating to perceptions, norms, discourses and governance challenges. Enablers of engaged officials, operating within enabling organisational environments and drawing on partnerships and networks, were able to overcome or circumvent these barriers. When these enablers coincided with windows of opportunity that increased the prioritisation of climate change within the municipality, projects with ancillary benefits were often implemented. Analysis of the barriers and enablers identified in the literature and case studies, informed discussion on whether municipalities are able to implement community based adaptation as defined in the literature, as well as the development of recommendations for how municipal planned climate change adaptation and community based adaptation can be further understood and enabled in the future. These recommendations for practice and research include: (a) To acknowledge and understand the conceptual framings of municipal climate change work, as these framings inform the climate change agenda that is pursued, and hence what municipal climate change adaptation work is done and how it was done. (b) The need for further research into the social barriers that influence the vital enablers of engaged officials, enabling organisational environments, and partnerships and networks. (c) To learn from pilot community‐level interventions that have been implemented by municipalities, as well as from other disciplines and municipalities. (d) To develop top‐down/bottom‐up approaches to enable municipal planned climate change adaptation and community based adaptation, that benefits from high level support and guidance, as well as local level flexibility and learning‐by‐doing. (e) To develop viable mechanisms for municipalities to better engage with the communities they serve

Public Perception of and Preference for Designed Naturalistic Urban Plantings in Beijing, China

Naturalistic plantings provide environmental and human well-being benefits and have become increasingly popular in many parts of the world, particularly in Europe and North America. China, a major carbon emitter with a mission to achieve carbon neutrality, is gradually recognizing the ecological benefits of naturalistic plantings in promoting sustainable environmental improvement. In recent years, naturalistic plantings have been introduced in major Chinese cities such as Beijing and Chengdu. If this approach is to be upscaled to deliver environmental and wellbeing effects across China, there is an urgent need for a greater understanding of the level of acceptance of naturalistic planting design amongst the Chinese public. This study aimed to explore public perceptions of and preferences for designed naturalistic planting design in Beijing, China to inform future urban landscape design and management throughout China. An on-site questionnaire was conducted with 1600 participants who were visiting national nature reserves, urban parks, and EXPO show gardens in Beijing. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were then carried out online or on-site with a sub-set of 47 interviewees. Our results show that most respondents recognized and defined nature according to the degree of human intervention and the scale of a scene. Respondents surveyed in urban parks perceived designed naturalistic urban plantings, more positively than conventional Chinese planting design. They recognized and appreciated naturalistic plantings for their ecological values, enjoyment, and fitness, as well as acknowledging the perception of disorder and unsafety in small-scale design show gardens. We identified relationships between respondents’ gender, age, education level, income and professional background and their preference for designed naturalistic urban plantings. Our study contributes to the growing body of research on urban plantings and provides valuable insights for urban planners and greenspace designers in China. By harnessing the preferred planting characteristics identified in our study, urban planners and designers can shape greener, more sustainable environments that effectively address the challenges of urbanization while creating harmonious spaces that benefit both urban residents and the ecosystem

Ethics of climate change: a normative account

Consider, for instance, you and your family have lived around a place where you enjoyed the flora and fauna of the land as well as the natural environment. Fishing and farming were pleasant activities for your family, and anyone in the community not only to survive but thrive. Your neighbours and the people in the community pride themselves so much in their farming abilities and fishing techniques. Suddenly things start taking a different turn because of rising sea level and changing weather pattern. First, your land began to give way because of sweeping erosion, and later the riverbank serving the community starts drying up. Your neighbour could not hold their own in this grim condition as they started relocating. You even witnessed some of your family and friends leaving the community and you later heard that they have become climate refugees. To put it all together, you were told that what you are experiencing is one of climate change effects. You were told that the loss of the place that you once cherished is not an act of God but the result of the reckless flaring of greenhouse gasses harmful to the environment by some powerful but polluting nations. What will you do? This might sound like a fairy tale. In reality, this is the story of the people of Saint Louis Atlantic Coasts in Senegal, captured by the Global Climate Change Alliance Plus Initiative.1 Their situation has been described as ‘living on the edge’ because for centuries, Saint Louis Atlantic Coasts, home to around 230,000 inhabitants, also known as the ‘Venice of Africa’ has been protected from the pounding Atlantic waves by the ‘Langue de Barbarie,’ a narrow, 30 km peninsula at the mouth of the Senegal river. However, the low-lying sandy spit of land along this World Heritage site is itself rapidly disappearing in the present. This is the consequence of a changing climate and other man-made problems such as illegal sand-mining and over-development. Today, the southern part of the Langue de Barbarie is an island, and the village of Doune Baba Dieye is under more than a metre of water. The villagers have become climate refugees, forced to live in temporary camps on the mainland. Not only have they lost their homes, but they have also lost significant cultural heritage like the farming and fishing culture tied to this place. The ethical considerations that emerge from climate change impacts on the world’s cultural heritage are varied. However, it seems not as self-evident in the way that research on climate change ethics has been framed around economic interest and direct threats to human life and other species. Even when they mention climate impacts on heritage sites around the world, those of Africans have been side-lined. For instance, the impact of climate change on small island nations like Tuvalu, Kiribati2 have gained much traction in climate change discourse, but we do not get to see stories of Africans whose cherished cultural heritage are affected by climate despoliation. How do we respond to this intractable challenge? This is a question of justice and, to be more precise, climate justice. Many principles and proposals for climate justice have been put forward, but the insufficient attention to the vulnerabilities or loss of cultural heritage values of Africans, which is a critical aspect of their social realities, make these theories less persuasive on a global level. This thesis, then, fills this gap in the literature by suggesting that the failure to take cognizance of the injustice in neglecting cultural heritage values when dealing with the burden of climate change is the effect of three problems. One, the value of culture is less understood in this environmental age. Hence, cultural values are excluded or made to be secondary in consideration of principles of climate justice. Second, the idea of Personhood has been neglected in climate ethics and climate justice discourse. Yet, this idea of Personhood can be an enabler of climate justice in that a realization of the significance of cultural heritage to the wellness of the human persons in Africa, makes it loss morally reprehensible. Third, those whose cultural heritage is significantly affected do not get represented in the debate about sharing the burden of climate change. This dissertation thereby builds upon the general findings of the past about anthropogenic climate change, its causes and consequences. Adopting a discursive normative framework, I also address the significance of cultural heritage in this contemporary environmental age and discuss the global justice implications of cultural heritage loss to climate change. This dissertation further provides a critique of mainstream climate justice theories, especially their marginalization of the cultural dimension of climate change. In this regard, the metaphor - ‘cultural storm’ was deployed to argue that climate justice discourses have neither factored the deep socio-cultural impact of climate change nor do they draw on the cultural understanding of justice in putting forward their theories. Given the nature of the indirect, cumulative, and interconnected invisible losses to cultural heritage from climate change, it seems unlikely that they can be addressed by simple tweaks of the climate justice status quo. This dissertation proposes that the idea of personhood in African philosophy, can be conceived to ensure climate justice live up to its expectations in a world of diverse persons dealing with a complex phenomenon like climate change. It argues that a cultural dimension of climate ethics has implications for how mitigation, adaptation and compensation plans should be furthered for global climate justice. At the foundation of my argument, I suggest that what is needed in climate justice discourse is a commitment to explore new and innovative alternatives that will produce an inclusive global climate treaty that is sensitive to the cultural heritage assets that is destroyed by climate change in Africa. This will require a multi-dimensional framework that allows fundamentally different kinds of values and benefits to be given equal visibility and standing in global climate negotiations. The dissertation proceeds in six chapters. In the first chapter, I discuss how climate change denies, damage and destroys cultural heritage values in Africa and argue that it is unjust to ignore this dimension of climate change impact, particularly on the African continent. In the second chapter, I critically discuss the normative value of cultural heritage in an environmentally sustainable and morally appropriate way for this global age. I argue that what is lost when climate change affects cultural heritage is a significant cultural asset that ought to be seriously considered in climate ethics. The third chapter addresses the global justice implications of the destruction of Africa's cultural heritage by climate change that must be paid attention to. In chapter four, I evaluate the plausibility of some of the mainstream climate justice proposals. I offered a different possible critique of current approaches to climate justice to show how they have furthered cultural injustice. The critique of current climate justice theories that I offer, stems from an uninspiring approach that belies logic permitting the sacrificing of that which is connected to others wellbeing as well as the implicit assumptions and the limitation of the idea of justice that undergird these climate justice theories. I offer, in chapter five, a plausible climate ethics theory that recognizes culturally embedded ideas of justice and empower all stakeholders to build by themselves, lives that are, in the light of these ideas, deemed to be adversely impacted by climate change. This theory advances a socio-cultural perspective to climate change which could provide a nuanced basis for understanding and addressing global climate duties that will be sensitive to the loss of cultural heritage. Specifically, I apply the African conception of personhood, to provide a normative basis for a different but intuitive understanding of the cultural dimension of climate ethics. In the final chapter, I discuss how this theory can be applied to rethink current global responses in the form of mitigation, adaptation and compensation in such a way that it takes seriously the impacts of climate change on Africa’s cultural heritage and values.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Philosophy, 202