Water Reallocation by Settlement: Who Wins, Who Loses, Who Pays?

The 2004 Arizona Water Settlements Act (AWSA) is the current standard for what a comprehensive, negotiated settlement can achieve in terms of water rights reallocation, water resource management, and water supply reliability enhancement. This note reviews the flows of money and water specified in Titles I and II of the AWSA to identify the signatory and non-signatory parties that benefit from the settlement and the allocation of costs between the various parties to the agreement. Opportunity costs are also considered. Innovative elements of the agreement are discussed particularly those that improve water supply reliability for the Gila River Indian Community and third parties. The central roles of water resource management tools and market mechanisms in the AWSA are also discussed

Valuing Private and Public Greenspace Using Remotely Sensed Vegetation Indices

In a typical metropolitan area, greenspace varies substantially in its quality and extent. Remotely sensed vegetation index data is used to characterize the heterogeneity in private and public greenspace (riparian corridors) in metropolitan Tucson, Arizona. This data set enables the researcher to test if: (1) greenness is a significant determinant of house price variation in this desert city; and (2) whether there is an interaction between public and private greenspace. Private greenspace amenities can be endogenously improved by homeowners as a complement or substitute for the greenspace that is publicly provided, whereas public greenspace might be exogenous or endogenous depending on households ability to pressure the local government to protect or restore public greenspace. The results of a Hausman test indicate that endogeneity is a problem in the dataset and therefore an instrumental variable two stage least squares estimation is used. The results of this analysis indicate that homebuyers in the study area have preferences for both greener lots and greener riparian corridors and that private and public greenspace appear to be substitutes. Results are robust across multiple identification strategies designed to address potential endogeneity. The study results could have fundamental implications for the efficient use of limited water supplies in this semi-arid metropolitan area.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

How Do Homebuyers Value Different Types of Green Space?

It is important to understand tradeoffs in preferences for natural and constructed green space in semi-arid urban areas because these lands compete for scarce water resources. We perform a hedonic study using high resolution, remotely-sensed vegetation indices and house sales records. We find that homebuyers in the study area prefer greener lots, greener neighborhoods, and greener nearby riparian corridors, and they pay premiums for proximity to green space amenities. The findings have fundamental implications for the efficient allocation of limited water supplies between different types of green space and for native vegetation conservation in semi-arid metropolitan areas.hedonic model, locally weighted regression, spatial, open space, golf course, park, riparian, Consumer/Household Economics, Land Economics/Use,

Do Homebuyers Care about the 'Quality' of Natural Habitats?

We study if homebuyers in Tucson, Arizona care about the condition of natural habitats and if they have preferences between natural and manmade habitats. Using field work data we examine whether homebuyers willingness to pay is influenced by the biological condition of the neighboring riparian habitat and how homebuyers value alternative manmade green areas, specifically golf courses. We also explore the relationship between the field data and remote sensing vegetation indices. The results of a hedonic analysis of houses that sold within 0.2 miles of 51 stratified-random selected riparian survey sites in Tucson, Arizona reveals that homebuyers significantly value habitat quality and negatively value manmade park-like features. Homebuyers are willing to pay twenty percent more to live near a riparian corridor that is densely vegetated and contains more shrub and tree species, particularly species that are dependent on perennial water flow. These environmental premiums are significant, outweighing structural factors such as an additional garage or swimming pool. Likewise, proximity to a riparian habitat with low biological quality or to a golf course lowers property values.Land Economics/Use,

Designing a flood storage option on agricultural land: What can flood risk managers learn from drought management?

The increasing probability of loss and damage to floods is a global concern. Countries are united by an urgent need to reduce flood risk to households, businesses, agricultural land, and infrastructure. As natural and engineered protection erodes with climate change and development pressures, new approaches to flood risk management delivered at the catchment scale that work with nature hold promise. One nature-based solution that aligns with this Special Issue on river flooding is the temporary storage of floodwaters on the floodplain. In many countries, this would involve controlled flooding inland low-lying agricultural land. Designing schemes that farmers and irrigation districts will adopt is essential. To inform future floodplain storage options, we review farm-centred drought management, specifically, agreements that transfer agricultural water to municipalities through fallowing in California, USA and an Australian farm exit scheme. These initiatives reveal underpinning principles around the need to: balance the multiple objectives of the parties, share the benefits and responsibilities, address local impacts and practical guidance on incentive design including the consideration of conditional participation requirements and responding to farmer and public preferences. In terms of funding there is opportunity for blended financing with flood-prone communities, insurers, and conservation charities

Reconciling place attachment with catchment-based flood risk management:What can we learn from film?

A catchment-based approach to flood risk management (FRM) is gaining prominence in the United Kingdom. It is undertaken with wider awareness of multiple stakeholders, as part of a catchment scale understanding, and, as with other approaches, can visually re-shape place. Land cover and land management change at this scale also has the potential to reconfigure landscape values and place attachment. Researchers have used qualitative, quantitative, and mapping approaches to understand place attachment. Here we explore secondary data, specifically, we transcribe and code the stories of five Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire residents from the short film, Calder about the December 26, 2015 floods. We find place attachment, identity, and social capital are interconnected and feature strongly in the mitigation and prevention phase, post-disaster. Our findings suggest better understanding of place attachment can support a more catchment scale approach to FRM policy and practice

A systematic review of electronic patient records using the meta-narrative approach: Empirical findings and methodological challenges.

Systematic reviews are central to the enterprise of evidence-based medicine (EBM). However, traditional ‘Cochrane’ reviews have major limitations, especially when dealing with heterogeneous methodologies or an applied setting. The meta-narrative review (see Soc Sci Med 2005; 61: 417-30) is one of several new methods that seek to address pragmatic policy-level questions via broad-based literature reviews. Inspired by Kuhn, meta-narrative review takes a historical and paradigmatic approach to considering different areas of research activity. As an interpretive tool, the approach seeks distinct research traditions, each with its own meta-narrative. We then use these ‘stories of how research unfolded’ as a way of making sense of a diverse literature. Incommensurability between different traditions is seen not as a problem to be lamented or resolved but as a window to higher-order explanations about the nuances of empirical data and what these nuances mean for different applied situations. Having originally developed the meta-narrative method for a study of the diffusion of innovations in healthcare, we are now applying it in a review of the electronic patient record (EPR) in an organizational context. We have collated some 600 papers and books across multiple research traditions including health informatics, information systems research, computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and sociology. This very contemporary topic area is raising interesting methodological questions. For example, the EPR literature does not comprise as cleanly delineable traditions for four main reasons: 1. Information and communications technology research is a particularly fast-moving field, so paradigm shifts are relatively common (e.g. the rise of CSCW out of human-computer interaction research). 2. In the electronic age, it is easy for researchers to explore beyond their own discipline and ‘borrow’ theories, ideas and methods from elsewhere. Journal editors may commission overviews from experts in another tradition; authors may explicitly address an audience in another tradition. Research traditions can begin to converge (e.g. papers bringing together CSCW, information systems research and STS). 3. Some researchers are adept ‘boundary spanners’, writing for a number of different academic audiences and adapting their theoretical pedigree to fit (e.g. Marc Berg). 4. Some traditions are characterized not by a single unified paradigm but by active dialogue between competing paradigms (e.g. ‘hard’ versus ‘soft’ perspectives on knowledge management). This work contributes to the STS literature by critically questioning the nature of rigour in secondary research. The EBM movement values ‘Cochrane’ reviews because they meet positivist criteria (e.g. they are rational, objective, replicable, data-led, and transferable across contexts). In contrast, the meta-narrative review is interpretive, reflexive, problem-oriented and work-led, and makes no claim to either replicability or transferability. Rigour is redefined in terms of plausibility, authenticity and usefulness – raising the radical suggestion that the evidence base for key policy decisions can never be set in stone. Systematic reviews are central to the enterprise of evidence-based medicine (EBM). However, traditional ‘Cochrane’ reviews have major limitations, especially when dealing with heterogeneous methodologies or an applied setting. The meta-narrative review (see Soc Sci Med 2005; 61: 417-30) is one of several new methods that seek to address pragmatic policy-level questions via broad-based literature reviews. Inspired by Kuhn, meta-narrative review takes a historical and paradigmatic approach to considering different areas of research activity. As an interpretive tool, the approach seeks distinct research traditions, each with its own meta-narrative. We then use these ‘stories of how research unfolded’ as a way of making sense of a diverse literature. Incommensurability between different traditions is seen not as a problem to be lamented or resolved but as a window to higher-order explanations about the nuances of empirical data and what these nuances mean for different applied situations. Having originally developed the meta-narrative method for a study of the diffusion of innovations in healthcare, we are now applying it in a review of the electronic patient record (EPR) in an organizational context. We have collated some 600 papers and books across multiple research traditions including health informatics, information systems research, computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and sociology. This very contemporary topic area is raising interesting methodological questions. For example, the EPR literature does not comprise as cleanly delineable traditions for four main reasons: 1. Information and communications technology research is a particularly fast-moving field, so paradigm shifts are relatively common (e.g. the rise of CSCW out of human-computer interaction research). 2. In the electronic age, it is easy for researchers to explore beyond their own discipline and ‘borrow’ theories, ideas and methods from elsewhere. Journal editors may commission overviews from experts in another tradition; authors may explicitly address an audience in another tradition. Research traditions can begin to converge (e.g. papers bringing together CSCW, information systems research and STS). 3. Some researchers are adept ‘boundary spanners’, writing for a number of different academic audiences and adapting their theoretical pedigree to fit (e.g. Marc Berg). 4. Some traditions are characterized not by a single unified paradigm but by active dialogue between competing paradigms (e.g. ‘hard’ versus ‘soft’ perspectives on knowledge management). This work contributes to the STS literature by critically questioning the nature of rigour in secondary research. The EBM movement values ‘Cochrane’ reviews because they meet positivist criteria (e.g. they are rational, objective, replicable, data-led, and transferable across contexts). In contrast, the meta-narrative review is interpretive, reflexive, problem-oriented and work-led, and makes no claim to either replicability or transferability. Rigour is redefined in terms of plausibility, authenticity and usefulness – raising the radical suggestion that the evidence base for key policy decisions can never be set in stone

The Bronchiectasis Exacerbation Diary:a novel patient-reported outcome for non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis

Bronchiectasis is a chronic, progressive lung disease believed to result from a vicious cycle of infection and inflammation, with symptoms of chronic cough with sputum production, chronic fatigue, rhinosinusitis, chest pain, breathlessness and haemoptysis. There are currently no established instruments to monitor daily symptoms and exacerbations for use in clinical trials. Following a literature review and three expert clinician interviews, we conducted concept elicitation interviews with 20 patients with bronchiectasis to understand their personal disease experience. Findings from literature and clinician feedback were used to develop a draft version of the Bronchiectasis Exacerbation Diary (BED), which was designed to monitor key symptoms on a daily basis and during exacerbations. Patients were eligible to be interviewed if they were US residents aged ≥18 years, had a computed tomography scan–confirmed diagnosis of bronchiectasis with ≥two exacerbations in the previous 2 years and had no other uncontrolled respiratory conditions. Four waves of five patient interviews each were conducted. Patients (n=20) had a mean±SD age of 53.9±12.8 years, and most were female (85%) and white (85%). A total of 33 symptoms and 23 impacts arose from the patient concept elicitation interviews. The BED was revised and finalised based upon patient feedback. The final BED is a novel, eight-item patient-reported outcome (PRO) instrument for monitoring key exacerbation symptoms on a daily basis with content validity established through comprehensive qualitative research and direct patient insight. The BED PRO development framework will be completed following psychometric evaluations of the data from a phase 3 bronchiectasis clinical trial