Reflecting Disaster Risk in Development Indicators

Disasters triggered by hazards, such as floods, earthquakes, droughts, and cyclones, pose significant impediments to sustainable development efforts in the most vulnerable and exposed countries. Mainstreaming disaster risk is hence seen as an important global agenda as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) 2015-2030. Yet, conventional development indicators remain largely negligent of the potential setbacks that may be posed by disaster risk. This article discusses the need to reflect disaster risk in development indicators and proposes a concept disaster risk-adjusted human development index (RHDI) as an example. Globally available national-level datasets of disaster risk to public and private assets (including health, educational facilities, and private housing) is combined with an estimate of expenditure on health, education, and capital formation to construct an RHDI. The RHDI is then analyzed across various regions and HDI groups, and contrasted with other HDI variants including inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) and the gender-specific female HDI (FHDI) to identify groups of countries where transformational disaster risk reduction (DRR) approaches may be necessary

Family Business Groups and Tunneling Framework : Application and Evidence from Pakistan

In Pakistan there is a ubiquity of firms in which there exists a controlling shareholder, usually in the form of the family. By and large this control is maintained via crossshareholding and inter-locked directorships which in turn is facilitated by the pyramidal organization of these firms. Moreover, these controlling families have often been alleged of tunneling resources from firms in which they have few cash flow rights to ones in which they have more cash flow rights. This paper attempts to quantify the extent of tunneling prevalent in Pakistani family business groups. The framework that is adopted is one that has been presented by Mullainathan et al. (2000) : we use the responses of different firms to performance shocks and map out the flow of resources within a group of firms to quantify the extent to which the marginal rupee is tunneled. We apply this technique to data on Pakistan business groups.Pakistan, tunneling, business groups, crossshareholding

Modeling Growth, Distribution, and the Environment in a Stock-Flow Consistent Framework

Economic policy in the EU faces a trilemma of solving three challenges simultaneously - growth, distribution, and the environment. In order to assess policies that address these issues simultaneously, economic models need to account for both sector-sector and sector-environment feedbacks within a single framework.This paper presents a multi-sectoral stock-flow consistent (SFC) macro model where a demand-driven economy consisting of multiple institutional sectors - firms, energy, households, government, and financial - interacts with the environment. The model is calibrated for the EU region and five policy scenarios are evaluated; low consumption, a capital stock damage function, carbon taxes, higher share of renewable energy, and technological shocks to productivity. Policy outcomes are tracked on overall output, unemployment, income and income distributions, energy, and emission levels. Results show that investment in mitigation technologies allows for absolute decoupling and ensures that the above three issues can be solved simultaneously. (author's abstract)Series: Ecological Economic Paper

Directed Technological Change in a post-Keynesian Ecological Macromodel

This paper presents a post-Keynesian ecological macro model that combines three strands of literature: the directed technological change mechanism developed in mainstream endogenous growth theory models, the ecological economic literature which highlights the role of green innovation and material flows, and the post-Keynesian school which provides a framework to deal with the demand side of the economy, financial flows, and inter- and intra-sectoral behavioral interactions. The model is stock-flow consistent and introduces research and development (R&D) as a component of GDP funded by private firm investment and public expenditure. The economy uses three complimentary inputs - Labor, Capital, and (non-renewable) Resources. Input productivities depend on R&D expenditures, which are determined by relative changes in their respective prices. Two policy experiments are tested; a Resource tax increase, and an increase in the share of public R&D on Resources. Model results show that policy instruments that are continually increased over a long-time horizon have better chances of achieving a "green" transition than one-of climate policy shocks to the system, that primarily have a short-run affect.Series: Ecological Economic Paper

Towards a Stock-Flow Consistent Ecological Macroeconomics. Work Package 205, MS40 "Report on model results including additional policies to counter averse effects"

Modern western economies (in the Eurozone and elsewhere) face a number of challenges over the coming decades. Achieving full employment, meeting climate change and other key environmental targets, and reducing inequality rank amongst the highest of these. The conventional route to achieving these goals has been to pursue economic growth. But this route has created two critical problems for modern economies. The first is that higher growth leads (ceteris parabis) to higher environmental impact. The second is that fragility in financial balances has accompanied relentless demand expansion. The prevailing global response to the first problem has been to encourage a decoupling of output from impacts by investing in green technologies (green growth). But this response runs the risk of exacerbating problems associated with the over-leveraging of households, firms and governments and places undue confidence in unproven and imagined technologies. An alternative approach is to reduce the pace of growth and to restructure economies around green services (post-growth). But the potential dangers of declining growth rates lie in increased inequality and in rising unemployment. Some more fundamental arguments have also been made against the feasibility of interest-bearing debt within a post-growth economy. The work described in this paper was motivated by the need to address these fundamental dilemmas and to inform the debate that has emerged in recent years about the relative merits of green growth and post-growth scenarios. In pursuit of this aim we have developed a suite of macroeconomic models based on the methodology of Post-Keynesian Stock Flow Consistent (SFC) system dynamics. Taken together these models represent the first steps in constructing a new macroeconomic synthesis capable of exploring the economic and financial dimensions of an economy confronting resource or environmental constraints. Such an ecological macroeconomics includes an account of basic macroeconomic variables such as the GDP, consumption, investment, saving, public spending, employment, and productivity. It also accounts for the performance of the economy in terms of financial balances, net lending positions, money supply, distributional equity and financial stability. This report illustrates the utility of this new approach through a number of specific analyses and scenario explorations. These include an assessment of the Piketty hypothesis (that slow growth increases inequality), an analysis of the "growth imperative" hypothesis (that interest bearing debt requires economic growth for stability), and an analysis of the financial and monetary implications of green investment policies. The work also assesses the scope for fiscal policy to improve social and environmental outcomes.Series: WWWforEurop

Geometric and harmonic means based priority dispatching rules for single machine scheduling problems

[EN] This work proposes two new prority dispatching rules (PDRs) for solving single machine scheduling problems. These rules are based on the geometric mean (GM) and harmonic mean (HM) of the processing time (PT) and the due date (DD) and they are referred to as GMPD and HMPD respectively. Performance of the proposed PDRs is evaluated on the basis of five measures/criteria i.e. Total Flow Time (TFT), Total Lateness (TL), Number of Late Jobs (TNL), Total Earliness (TE) and Number of Early Parts (TNE). It is found that GMPD performs better than other PDRs in achieving optimal values of multiple performance measures. Further, effect of variation in the weight assigned to PT and DD on the combined performance of TFT and TL is also examined which reveals that for deriving optimal values of TFT and TL, weighted harmonic mean (WHMPD) rule with a weight of 0.105 outperforms other PDRs. The weighted geometric mean (WGMPD) rule with a weight of 0.37 is found to be the next after WHMPD followed by the weighted PDT i.e. WPDT rule with a weight of 0.76.Ahmad, S.; Khan, ZA.; Ali, M.; Asjad, M. (2021). Geometric and harmonic means based priority dispatching rules for single machine scheduling problems. International Journal of Production Management and Engineering. 9(2):93-102. https://doi.org/10.4995/ijpme.2021.15217OJS9310292Baharom, M. Z., Nazdah, W., &Hussin, W. (2015). Scheduling Analysis for Job Sequencing in Veneer Lamination Line. Journal of Industrial and Intelligent Information, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.12720/jiii.3.3.181-185Chan, F. T. S., Chan, H. K., Lau, H. C. W., & Ip, R. W. L. (2003). Analysis of dynamic dispatching rules for a flexible manufacturing system. Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 138(1), 325-331. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0924-0136(03)00093-1Cheng, T. C. E., &Kahlbacher, H. G. (1993). Single-machine scheduling to minimize earliness and number of tardy jobs. Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 77(3), 563-573. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00940450da Silva, N. C. O., Scarpin, C. T., Pécora, J. E., & Ruiz, A. (2019). Online single machine scheduling with setup times depending on the jobs sequence. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 129, 251-258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2019.01.038Doh, H.H., Yu, J.M., Kim, J.S., Lee, D.H., & Nam, S.H. (2013). A priority scheduling approach for flexible job shops with multiple process plans. International Journal of Production Research, 51(12), 3748-3764. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2013.765074Dominic, Panneer D. D., Kaliyamoorthy, S., & Kumar, M. S. (2004). Efficient dispatching rules for dynamic job shop scheduling. The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 24(1), 70-75.Ðurasević, M., &Jakobović, D. (2018). A survey of dispatching rules for the dynamic unrelated machines environment. Expert Systems with Applications, 113, 555-569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2018.06.053Forrester, P. (2006). Operations Management: An Integrated Approach. International Journal of Operations & Production Management.Geiger, C. D., &Uzsoy, R. (2008). Learning effective dispatching rules for batch processor scheduling. International Journal of Production Research, 46(6), 1431-1454. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207540600993360Hamidi, M. (2016). Two new sequencing rules for the non-preemptive single machine scheduling problem. The Journal of Business Inquiry, 15(2), 116-127.Holthaus, O., & Rajendran, C. (1997). New dispatching rules for scheduling in a job shop-An experimental study. The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 13(2), 148-153. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01225761Hussain, M. S., & Ali, M. (2019). A Multi-agent Based Dynamic Scheduling of Flexible Manufacturing Systems. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 20(3), 267-290. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40171-019-00214-9Jayamohan, M. S., & Rajendran, C. (2000). New dispatching rules for shop scheduling: A step forward. International Journal of Production Research, 38(3), 563-586. https://doi.org/10.1080/002075400189301Kadipasaoglu, S. N., Xiang, W., &Khumawala, B. M. (1997). A comparison of sequencing rules in static and dynamic hybrid flow systems. International Journal of Production Research, 35(5), 1359-1384. https://doi.org/10.1080/002075497195371Kanet, J. J., & Li, X. (2004). A Weighted Modified Due Date Rule for Sequencing to Minimize Weighted Tardiness. Journal of Scheduling, 7(4), 261-276. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JOSH.0000031421.64487.95Lee, D.K., Shin, J.H., & Lee, D.H. (2020). Operations scheduling for an advanced flexible manufacturing system with multi-fixturing pallets. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 144, 106496. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2020.106496Lu, C.C., Lin, S.W., & Ying, K.C. (2012). Robust scheduling on a single machine to minimize total flow time. Computers & Operations Research, 39(7), 1682-1691. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2011.10.003Krishnan, M., Chinnusamy, T. R., & Karthikeyan, T. (2012). Performance Study of Flexible Manufacturing System Scheduling Using Dispatching Rules in Dynamic Environment. Procedia Engineering, 38, 2793-2798. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2012.06.327Munir, E. U., Li, J., Shi, S., Zou, Z., & Yang, D. (2008). MaxStd: A task scheduling heuristic for heterogeneous computing environment. Information Technology Journal, 7(4), 679-683. https://doi.org/10.3923/itj.2008.679.683Oyetunji, E. O. (2009). Some common performance measures in scheduling problems. Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, 1(2), 6-9.Pinedo, M. L. (2009). Planning and Scheduling in Manufacturing and Services (2nd ed.). Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0910-7Prakash, A., Chan, F. T. S., & Deshmukh, S. G. (2011). FMS scheduling with knowledge based genetic algorithm approach. Expert Systems with Applications, 38(4), 3161-3171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2010.09.002Rafsanjani, M. K., &Bardsiri, A. K. (2012). A New Heuristic Approach for Scheduling Independent Tasks on Heterogeneous Computing Systems. International Journal of Machine Learning and Computing, 371-376. https://doi.org/10.7763/IJMLC.2012.V2.147Tyagi, N., Tripathi, R. P., &Chandramouli, A. B. (2016). Single Machine Scheduling Model with Total Tardiness Problem. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 9(37). https://doi.org/10.17485/ijst/2016/v9i37/97527Vinod, V., & Sridharan, R. (2008). Dynamic job-shop scheduling with sequence-dependent setup times: Simulation modeling and analysis. The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 36(3), 355-372. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-006-0836-4Waikar, A. M., Sarker, B. R., & Lal, A. M. (1995). A comparative study of some priority dispatching rules under different shop loads. Production Planning & Control, 6(4), 301-310. https://doi.org/10.1080/0953728950893028

Quantum information entropy of heavy mesons in the presence of a point-like defect

Using Schr\"{o}dinger's formalism, we investigate the quantum eigenstates of the heavy mesons trapped by a point-like defect and by Cornell's potential. One implements this defect to the model considering a spherical metric profile coupled to it. Furthermore, the Nikiforov-Uvarov method is applied to theory to study the quantum eigenstates of the heavy mesons. To calculate the quantum information entropy (QIE), one considers the wave functions that describe the charmonium and bottomonium states. To explore the QIE, we use the well-known Shannon's entropy formulated at the position and reciprocal space. The analysis of the QIE gives us relevant information about how the quantum information change with the variation of the point-like defect. Consequently, considering the Bialynicki-Birula and Mycielski (BBM) relation, we show how this defect influences the quarkonium position and momentum uncertainty measures.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

The risk and consequences of multiple breadbasket failures: an integrated copula and multilayer agent-based modeling approach

Climate shocks to food systems have been thoroughly researched in terms of food security and supply chain management. However, sparse research exists on the dependent nature of climate shocks on food-producing breadbasket regions and their subsequent cascading impacts. In this paper, we propose that a copula approach, combined with a multilayer network and an agent-based model, can give important insights on how tail-dependent shocks can impact food systems. We show how such shocks can potentially cascade within a region through the behavioral interactions of various layers. Based on our suggested framework, we set up a model for India and show that risks due to drought events multiply if tail dependencies during extremes drought is explicitly taken into account. We further demonstrate that the risk is exacerbated if displacement also takes place. In order to quantify the spatial–temporal evolution of climate risks, we introduce a new measure of multilayer vulnerability that we term Vulnerability Rank or VRank. We find that with higher food production losses, the number of agents that are affected increases nonlinearly due to cascading effects in different network layers. These effects spread to the unaffected regions via large-scale displacement causing sudden changes in production, employment and consumption decisions. Thus, demand shifts also force supply-side adjustments of food networks in the months following the climate shock. We suggest that our framework can provide a more accurate picture of food security-related systemic risks caused by multiple breadbasket failures which, in turn, can better inform risk management and humanitarian aid strategies

Integration of GWAS and transcriptome analyses to identify SNPs and candidate genes for aluminum tolerance in rapeseed (Brassica napus L.)

The exchangeable aluminum (Al), released from the acid soils, is another addition to the environmental stress factors in the form of Al toxicity stress. Al stress affects the normal crop development and reduces the overall yield of rapeseed (Brassica napus L.). The response mechanism of plants to Al toxicity is complicated and difficult to understand with few QTL related studies in rapeseed under Al toxicity stress

Mango germplasm screening for the identification of sources of tolerance to anthracnose

Colletotrichum species are one of the most common causes of postharvest fruit rot in mango in Australia, particularly in the tropical region of north Queensland, and can result in significant losses if not managed. The research aims were to identify sources of anthracnose tolerance and to determine if host material other than fruit could improve or fast track the screening process and result in improved breeding efficiency. Access to the Australian National Mango Genebank (ANMG) collection enabled fruit screening of more than 100 Mangifera indica cultivars or Mangifera species for tolerance to anthracnose by artificial inoculation with Colletotrichum asianum over a period of 14 years. Mean lesion diameters were compared with those on a known susceptible M. indica cultivar Kensington Pride (KP) and a tolerant M. laurina cultivar Lombok. Inoculation of leaf discs and entire leaves was evaluated in the laboratory and the field as alternative assays for tolerance to anthracnose and was assessed by presence/absence of disease. Screening of fruit has shown that anthracnose tolerance within the mango germplasm is highly variable and needs to be assessed over multiple years. None of the alternative laboratory bioassays provided consistent or reliable data. The in-field artificial inoculation of immature leaf flush was successful but was not deemed suitable for adoption due to practical restraints. While resistance to anthracnose in fruit has not yet been identified, some cultivars and Mangifera spp. showed promise for inclusion as parents in future breeding programs