Anticipatory Resilience Bringing Back the Future into Urban Planning and Knowledge Systems

Anticipatory thinking is a critical component in urban planning practices and knowledge systems in an era of unpredictability and conflicting expectations of the future. This chapter introduces “anticipatory resilience” as a futures-oriented knowledge system that intentionally addresses uncertain climate conditions and explores alternative, desirable future states. It suggests a portfolio of tools suitable for building long-term foresight capacity in urban planning. Examples of knowledge systems interventions are presented to explore the trade-offs, constraints, possibilities, and desires of diverse future scenarios co-generated in settings with people that hold different perspectives, knowledge, and expectations

Beyond bouncing back? Comparing and contesting urban resilience frames in US and Latin American contexts

Urban resilience has gained considerable popularity in planning and policy to address cities’ capacity to cope with climate change. While many studies discuss the different ways that academics define resilience, little attention has been given to how resilience is conceptualized across different urban contexts and among the actors that engage in building resilience ‘on the ground’. Given the implications that resilience frames can have for the solutions that are pursued (and who benefits from them), it is important to examine how transformative definitions of urban resilience are in practice. In this paper, we use data from a survey of nine US and Latin American and Caribbean cities to explore how the concept is framed across multiple governance sectors, including governmental, non-governmental, business, research, and hybrid organizations. We examine these framings in light of recent conceptual developments and tensions found in the literature. The results highlight that, in general across the nine cities, framings converge with definitions of resilience as the ability to resist, cope with, or bounce back to previous conditions, whereas sustainability, equity, and social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) perspectives are rarely associated with resilience. There are noticeable differences across cities and governance actors that point to geographic and political variation in the way resilience is conceptualized. We unpack these differences and discuss their implications for resilience research and practice moving forward. We argue that if resilience is going to remain a major goal for city policies into the future, it needs to be conceived in a more transformative, anticipatory, and equitable way, and acknowledge interconnected SETS

A fuel response model for the design of spent fuel shipping casks

The radiological source terms pertinent to spent fuel shipping cask safety assessments are of three distinct origins. One of these concerns residual contamination within the cask due to handling operations and previous shipments. A second is associated with debris (''crud'') that had been deposited on the fuel rods in the course of reactor operation, and a third involves the radioactive material contained within the rods. Although the lattermost source of radiotoxic material overwhelms the others in terms of inventory, its release into the shipping cask, and thence into the biosphere, requires the breach of an additional release barrier, viz., the fuel rod cladding. Hence, except for the special case involving the transport of fuel rods containing previously breached claddings, considerations of the source terms due to material contained in the fuel rods are complicated by the need to address the likelihood of fuel cladding failure during transport. The purpose of this report is to describe a methodology for estimating the shipping cask source terms contribution due to radioactive material contained within the spent fuel rods. Thus, the probability of fuel cladding failure as well as radioactivity release is addressed. 8 refs., 2 tabs

Strategic, episodic and truncated orientations to planning in post-redundancy career transitions

This article examines different orientations to planning in the context of the post-redundancy transition of workers in the Swedish steel industry. The aim of the article is to extend our understanding of the role of planning in careers transitions. Drawing on careers transitions theories, the article explores the qualitative experience of the journey between a redundancy event and the employment situation several years later. Within the careers literature planning is regarded as important to transitions, yet there is a tendency to present planning as an ongoing and lifelong process. By going beyond the prevalent focus within the career literature on managerial, professional or creative industries workers, the article raises the question of whether highly agential, ongoing, lifelong approaches to planning apply to everyone. Data are based on working-life biographical interviews conducted several years after redundancy. The findings show that although some participants resembled assumptions within the careers literature, there are key variations relating to ongoing planning, reflecting differences in the expectations of agency and perceptions of structural constraint. The analysis identifies three orientations to planning - strategic, episodic and truncated - and explores these in relation to both post-redundancy transition outcomes and, crucially, the experience of the transition journey

Oral health status of a long term care, veteran population

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) operates the largest, integrated health care system in the United States of America. The projected need for long-term-care in the VA health care system parallels an expected increase in need for care in the United States, but precedes the need for care in the general population by 25-30 yr. The VA\u27s Office of Dentistry, in an effort to estimate the resource requirements of this swelling group of veterans, initiated in 1986-7 an oral health survey of long-term care patients. The overall goals were to describe the oral health status of VA nursing home care units (NHCU) residents and to develop a methodology for estimating future dental health services utilization. This study describes the oral health status of the study population. Demographic and oral health data were collected for 650 long-term care residents of six VA NHCUs between October 1986 and July 1987. Data were collected on sociodemographic status, medical history, dental caries, periodontal diseases, oral soft tissue pathology, and the presence of dental prostheses. Caries and periodontal disease were evaluated using the United States National Institute of Dental Research Survey of Employed Adults and Seniors protocols. The oral health status of the population is described using DMF and ESI indices, the prevalence of oral lesions, levels of tooth loss, oral hygiene scores, and the status of existing dentures. Findings show moderate levels of untreated dental caries and periodontal disease and significant tooth loss which increased with age. A need for preventive therapy, restorative dentistry, conservative periodontal therapy, and prosthodontic care was evident

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The following is Chapter 25 of the 2006 edition of The Biomedical Engineering Handbook, Third Edition, Medical Devices and Systems published by CRC Press. Joseph D. Bronzino, editor of the handbook, comments that "Medical Devices and Systems is an authoritative reference text and is considered the "bible" of biomedical engineering. This latest volume presents new and updated material contributed by a team of world-renowned experts. The text reflects the most recent advances in both research and practice, and authoritatively covers sensor and imaging technologies, signal analysis, and medical instrumentation. This Third Edition presents an excellent summary of the status of knowledge and activities of biomedical engineers in the beginning of the 21 st century." The principle author of this chapter, Dr. William Amalu, is joined by three other worldrenowned experts in this field to present the state-of-the-art in infrared breast imaging. The following chapter contains a review of the literature along with a presentation of infrared physics, imaging system standards, a brief historical background, laboratory and patient imaging standards and protocols, and a look at the future of this lifesaving technology. The following is a brief highlight of the chapter that follows: • In 1982, the FDA approved breast thermography as an adjunctive breast cancer screening procedure. • Breast thermography has undergone extensive research since the late 1950's. • Over 30 years of research comprising over 800 peer-reviewed studies on breast thermography exist in the index-medicus literature. • In this database, well over 300,000 women have been included as study participants. • The numbers of participants in many studies are very large --10K, 37K, 60K, 85K … • Some of these studies have followed patients up to 12 years. • Strict standardized interpretation protocols have been established for over 15 years. • Breast thermography has an average sensitivity and specificity of 90%. • An abnormal thermogram is 10 times more significant as a future risk indicator for breast cancer than a first order family history of the disease. • A persistent abnormal thermogram caries with it a 22x higher risk of future breast cancer. • An abnormal infrared image is the single most important marker of high risk for developing breast cancer. • Breast thermography has the ability to detect the first signs that a cancer may be forming up to 10 years before any other procedure can detect it. • Research has shown that breast thermography significantly augments the long-term survival rates of its recipients by as much as 61%. • When used as part of a multimodal approach (clinical examination + mammography + thermography) 95% of early stage cancers will be detected. Prologue The use of infrared imaging in health care is not a recent phenomenon. Its utilization in breast cancer screening, however, is seeing renewed interest. This attention is fueled by research that clearly demonstrates the value of this procedure and the tremendous impact it has on the mortality of breast cancer. Infrared imaging of the breast has undergone extensive research since the late 1950s. Over 800 papers can be found in the indexed medical literature. In this database, well over 300,000 women have been included as study participants. The number of participants in many studies are very large and range from 10,000 to 85,000 women. Some of these studies have followed patients up to 12 years in order to establish the technology's ability as a risk marker. With strict standardized interpretation protocols having been established for over 15 years, infrared imaging of the breast has obtained an average sensitivity and specificity of 90%. As a future risk indicator for breast cancer, a persistent abnormal thermogram caries a 22 times higher risk and is 10 times more 25-2 Medical Systems and Devices significant than a first order family history of the disease. Studies clearly show that an abnormal infrared image is the single most important risk marker for the existence of or future development of breast cancer

Developing Knowledge Systems for Urban Resilience to Cloudburst Rain Events

Cities are particularly vulnerable to cloudbursts - short-duration, intense rainfall events – which are often inadequately addressed through conventional stormwater and flood management policy. Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and intensity of cloudbursts in many cities. As minor cloudburst events become more frequent and extreme events more severe, cities will need to rapidly transform their stormwater drainage and interdependent systems, and the knowledge systems that guide their infrastructure decisions and policy. In this paper, we discuss the evolution of knowledge systems to address these challenges, using three diverse cities (Phoenix, USA; Copenhagen, Denmark; and New York City, USA) as case studies. We found that partnerships between cities – even across national boundaries – can be a particularly important component of cloudburst knowledge systems. We also identified limitations in knowledge systems related to non-stationary climate, the vulnerability of private property and the representation of cloudburst infrastructure in integrated water management, which present opportunities for future research to support decision-making