Modeling Flood Perils and Flood Insurance Program in Taiwan

Taiwan had approximately 3,000 buildings damaged by floods with an economic loss of NT$12.8 billion annually, a figure 4.5 times more than economic losses due to fire damages. Many insurers become extremely cautious when underwriting their flood policies for people living in areas that are frequently struck by floods. The rising damages also trigger the demand for a mandatory national flood insurance program. This paper describes the development of an integrated flood risk assessment model for Taiwan which contains of a hazard, vulnerability and financial analysis module. We take the perspective that the mandatory program will be provided to fire policyholders as part of building and content insurance to mitigate the financial losses. The issue of a long-term balance between fund accumulations and its claim payouts will be addressed along with policy recommendations based on the modeling results.Risk Assessment, Typhoon, Flood Insurance, Financial Analysis, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,

Productivity Change in Taiwan's Farmers' Credit Unions: A Nonparametric Risk-Adjusted Malmquist Approach

This article proposes an extended three-stage DEA methodology similar to Fried et al. (2002) to improve the measurement of productivity growth then the assumption of free disposability of undesirable outpu t does not apply. A directional distance function is used to construct adjusted Malmquist-Luenberger productivity indexes which simultaneously account for the impacts of undesirable outputs, environmental variables, and statistical noise. Panel data for 264 farmers' credit unions (FCUs) in Taiwan covering the 1998-2000 period are employed to illustrate the advantages of this method. On average, the productivity of Taiwan's FCUs is found to have deteriorated over the 1998-2000 period. Although an improvement in efficiency has been observed, the major reason for the deterioration is found to be due to the regression of techno logy.Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index, three-stage DEA, undesirable outputs, directional distance function, Agricultural Finance, Productivity Analysis,

The Association between Virus Prevalence and Intercolonial Aggression Levels in the Yellow Crazy Ant, Anoplolepis Gracilipes (Jerdon).

The recent discovery of multiple viruses in ants, along with the widespread infection of their hosts across geographic ranges, provides an excellent opportunity to test whether viral prevalence in the field is associated with the complexity of social interactions in the ant population. In this study, we examined whether the association exists between the field prevalence of a virus and the intercolonial aggression of its ant host, using the yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) and its natural viral pathogen (TR44839 virus) as a model system. We delimitated the colony boundary and composition of A. gracilipes in a total of 12 study sites in Japan (Okinawa), Taiwan, and Malaysia (Penang), through intercolonial aggression assay. The spatial distribution and prevalence level of the virus was then mapped for each site. The virus occurred at a high prevalence in the surveyed colonies of Okinawa and Taiwan (100% infection rate across all sites), whereas virus prevalence was variable (30%-100%) or none (0%) at the sites in Penang. Coincidentally, colonies in Okinawa and Taiwan displayed a weak intercolonial boundary, as aggression between colonies is generally low or moderate. Contrastingly, sites in Penang were found to harbor a high proportion of mutually aggressive colonies, a pattern potentially indicative of complex colony composition. Our statistical analyses further confirmed the observed correlation, implying that intercolonial interactions likely contribute as one of the effective facilitators of/barriers to virus prevalence in the field population of this ant species

Impacts of Light Rail Transit Tram on the Voltage and Unbalance of the Distribution System

This paper presents the three-phase voltage and unbalance analysis for the distribution system with the loading of a light rail transit (LRT) tram. To investigate the dynamic responses of the system voltage and current, this paper adopts the Alternative Transients Program (ATP) software to model and simulate a multigrounded four-wire distribution system with an LRT loading. Two different definitions about unbalance are used to evaluate the problem. In this paper, the traction supply substation (TSS) with a single-phase transformer configuration is designed first for providing the electric power to the trams of LRT. However, it may result in the significant neutral line current and unbalance phenomenon to deteriorate the power quality of the distribution system. A Le-Blanc connection transformer in the TSS is therefore proposed to solve the problems