Apart but not alone - Neighbour support and the Covid-19 lockdown

Initial findings from the survey in Bristol and the West Country, 6th - 12th April 2020 (days 14-20 of the UK Government Coronavirus Restrictions

Apart but not alone? A cross-sectional study of neighbour support in a major UK urban area during the COVID-19 lockdown

Background: Evidence from a range of major public health incidents shows that neighbour-based action can have a critical role in emergency response, assistance and recovery. However, there is little research to date on neighbour-based action during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. This article reports on a survey of people engaged in supporting their neighbours in weeks three and four of the UK COVID-19 lockdown.Methods: Members of area-based and community of interest COVID-19 support groups in the Bristol conurbation were invited to complete an online survey. Of 1,255 people who clicked on the survey link, 862 responded; of these, 539 responses were eligible for analysis.Results: Respondents reported providing a wide range of support that went beyond health information, food and medical prescription assistance, to include raising morale through humour, creativity and acts of kindness and solidarity. A substantial proportion felt that they had become more involved in neighbourhood life following the lockdown and had an interest in becoming more involved in future. Neighbour support spanned all adult age groups, including older people categorised as being at-risk to the virus. With respect to most measures, there were no differences in the characteristics of support between respondents in areas of higher and lower deprivation. However, respondents from more deprived areas were more likely to state that they were involved in supporting certain vulnerable groups.Conclusions: As with previous research on major social upheavals, our findings suggest that responses to the viral pandemic and associated social restrictions may increase existing social and health inequalities, and further research should explore this issue in more depth

Using multi-criteria analysis to evaluate the feasibility of Renewable Energy Technologies and sites - the Data4Sustain Web GIS decision support tool

Developing renewable energy supplies face numerous barriers: finance; planning, viability constraints; many technologies; complexity of assessing feasibility; changing policy drivers. Therefore, a renewable energy decision-support tool is needed to systematically identify: constraints impeding / preventing development; feasible and / or priority technologies; integration with infrastructure. Data4Sustain’s Web GIS delineates potential resource and constraints to produce combined feasibility maps, integrating up to 100 data sets, using multi-criteria decision analysis. Resource, Constraint and Feasibility maps across multiple technologies (GSHP, WSHP, Solar Farms, Small and Large Wind, Small Hydro) are integrated into the Web GIS, from which users can export site reports

Swift and XMM-Newton Observations of the Extraordinary GRB 060729: An afterglow with a more than 100 days X-ray light curve

We report the results of the Swift and XMM observations of the Swift-discovered long Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 060729 ($T_{90}$=115s). The afterglow of this burst was exceptionally bright in X-rays as well as at UV/Optical wavelengths showing an unusually long slow decay phase ($\alpha$=0.14\plm0.02) suggesting a larger energy injection phase at early times than in other bursts. The X-ray light curve displays a break at about 60 ks after the burst. The X-ray decay slope after the break is $\alpha$=1.29\plm0.03. Up to 125 days after the burst we do not detect a jet break, suggesting that the jet opening angle is larger than 28 degrees. In the first 2 minutes after the burst (rest frame) the X-ray spectrum of the burst changed dramatically from a hard X-ray spectrum to a very soft one. We find that the X-ray spectra at this early phase can all be fitted by an absorbed single power law model or alternatively by a blackbody plus power law model. The power law fits show that the X-ray spectrum becomes steeper while the absorption column density decreases. In Swift's UV/Optical telescope the afterglow was clearly detected up to 9 days after the burst in all 6 filters and even longer in some of the UV filters with the latest detection in the UVW1 31 days after the burst. A break at about 50 ks is clearly detected in all 6 UVOT filters from a shallow decay slope of about 0.3 and a steeper decay slope of 1.3. In addition to the \swift observations we also present and discuss the results from a 61 ks ToO observation by XMM. (Abriviated)Comment: Accepted to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, 28 pages, 10 figure

Apart but not alone - Neighbour support and the Covid-19 lockdown

Initial findings from the survey in Bristol and the West Country, 6th - 12th April 2020 (days 14-20 of the UK Government Coronavirus Restrictions

A decision support system to assess the feasibility of onshore renewable energy infrastructure

This article introduces a new web-based decision support system created for early-stage feasibility assessments of renewable energy technologies in England, UK. The article includes a review of energy policy and regulation in England and a critical evaluation of literature on similar decision support systems. Overall, it shows a novel solution for a repeatable, scalable digital evidence base for the policy compliant deployment of renewable energy technologies. Data4Sustain is a spatial decision support system developed to quickly identify the feasibility of seven renewable energy technologies across large areas including wind, solar, hydro, shallow and geothermal. A multi-actor approach was used to identify the key factors that influence the technical feasibility of these technologies to generate electricity or heat for local consumption or regional distribution. The research demonstrates opportunities to improve the links between policy and regulation with deployment of renewable energy technologies using novel approaches to digital planning. Deployed, resilient, cost-effective and societally accepted renewable energy generation infrastructure has a role to play in ensuring universal access to affordable, reliableand modern energy supply. This is central to supporting a concerted transition to a low-carbon future in order to address climate change. The selection and siting of renewable energy technology is driven by natural resource availability and physical and regulatory constraints. These factors inform early-stage feasibility of renewables, helping to focus investment of time and money. Understanding their relative importance and identifying the most suitable technologies is a highly complex task due to the disparate and often unconnected sources of data and information needed. Data4Sustain help to overcome these challenges