Chapter 4 Data System and Data Management in a Federation of HPC/ Cloud Centers

Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Supercomputin

Greenhouse gas emissions from food systems: building the evidence base

New estimates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the food system were developed at the country level, for the period 1990–2018, integrating data from crop and livestock production, on-farm energy use, land use and land use change, domestic food transport and food waste disposal. With these new country-level components in place, and by adding global and regional estimates of energy use in food supply chains, we estimate that total GHG emissions from the food system were about 16 CO2eq yr−1 in 2018, or one-third of the global anthropogenic total. Three quarters of these emissions, 13 Gt CO2eq yr−1, were generated either within the farm gate or in pre- and post-production activities, such as manufacturing, transport, processing, and waste disposal. The remainder was generated through land use change at the conversion boundaries of natural ecosystems to agricultural land. Results further indicate that pre- and post-production emissions were proportionally more important in developed than in developing countries, and that during 1990–2018, land use change emissions decreased while pre- and post-production emissions increased. We also report results on a per capita basis, showing world total food systems per capita emissions decreasing during 1990–2018 from 2.9 to 2.2 t CO2eq cap−1, with per capita emissions in developed countries about twice those in developing countries in 2018. Our findings also highlight that conventional IPCC categories, used by countries to report emissions in the National GHG inventory, systematically underestimate the contribution of the food system to total anthropogenic emissions. We provide a comparative mapping of food system categories and activities in order to better quantify food-related emissions in national reporting and identify mitigation opportunities across the entire food system

Economic Analysis of Knowledge: The History of Thought and the Central Themes

Following the development of knowledge economies, there has been a rapid expansion of economic analysis of knowledge, both in the context of technological knowledge in particular and the decision theory in general. This paper surveys this literature by identifying the main themes and contributions and outlines the future prospects of the discipline. The wide scope of knowledge related questions in terms of applicability and alternative approaches has led to the fragmentation of research. Nevertheless, one can identify a continuing tradition which analyses various aspects of the generation, dissemination and use of knowledge in the economy

3D Point clouds for representing landscape change

Along with increasingly rapid changes of our present landscapes, exchangeable land use patterns are evolving that lead to decreasing identification of the people with their environment. To evaluate people’s perceptions of and reactions to possible future landscape development scenarios, we aimed to develop realistic-looking landscape depictions from a pedestrian perspective, including environmental sound. With this, we faced the challenge of how to most effectively and efficiently visualize potential landscape change scenarios. In this context, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data are a promising resource to create realistic landscape depictions. We present an innovative workflow combining 3D point cloud data collection and modelling with audio recordings for visualizing scenarios of landscape change. The focus is laid on the visualization process and the integration of various geographic data sets. In the discussion of the resulting workflow we consider strengths and weaknesses of our solution regarding data collection, as well as technical and ethical issues. Overall, the presented approach looks promising, but still requires a great deal of manual labor. We recommend to further develop the visualization workflow, for example, by speeding up the data acquisition process of the point cloud data, and by further automatization of the data processing steps

Explaining the Schwarzenegger Phenomenon: Local Frontrunners in Climate Policy

The surge of local climate policy is a puzzling political-economic phenomenon. Why have local policy-makers, incapable of mitigating global warming through individual emissions reductions, adopted ambitious policies while national governments refrain from action? I construct a game-theoretic model of two-level climate policy with incomplete information over political benefits. In equilibrium, the government selects a lax national regulation, and local policy-makers with private information on high local benefits choose more ambitious policies despite incentives to free ride. The analysis also suggests that even though local policy-makers prefer not to reveal information to the government, they must do so to pursue short-term political gains. Counterintuitively, new information can lead to more ambitious national regulation even if the government learns that the local political benefits are likely lower than expected. As an empirical application, I study the evolution of climate policies in the United States. (c) 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chapter 4 Data System and Data Management in a Federation of HPC/ Cloud Centers

Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Supercomputin