The Barents area changes – How will Finland adapt? (Barentsin alue muuttuu – miten Suomi sopeutuu?)

The cumulative impacts of environmental, climatic and societal changes and their consequences will affect the development of the Arctic region in the coming decades. Adaptation to these changes will require measures of all the actors in the region. Finland, part of the Euro-Arctic region, will adapt to these changes in a variety of ways. The Barents area is unique in the Arctic in being a multicultural, relatively densely populated area with well-developed industries and infrastructure. This report examines adaptation to changes and their consequences in the Barents area in terms of governance and Finland’s capacities to adapt. The aim has been to produce comprehensive information from the Finnish perspective for local and national decision-makers about long-term changes in the region, their expected impacts and adaptation options, and to support decision-making that will advance adaptation. The report includes recommendations. This report is based on the contribution of Finnish experts to an Arctic Council and Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) project titled ”Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic” (AACA). The project has prepared a pilot report by Nordic and Russian experts on the Barents area in English on changes, their impacts and adaptation options. The report will be published in 2017 (AMAP 2017)

Urban adaptation to climate change: Climate services for supporting collaborative planning

There is a mounting international interest about how to address the implications of climate change for urban areas. The availability and sharing of “good” knowledge and information is a key prerequisite for a successful planning in cities. Urban planning for adaptation is largely considered as a collective process. This raises the importance of the availability/usability of proper “planner/user friendly” interfaces to interpret and translate the available information into adaptation decisions, and to facilitate the information sharing and collaborative decision making within the interaction network in which the different actors are embedded. Nevertheless, collaborative planning is far from being the standard in urban adaptation. The activities carried out in EU-MACS aimed at detecting and analysing the main barriers hampering the process. To this aim, Problem Structuring Methods and Social Network Analysis were implemented. The evidences collected in an urban case study – i.e. Helsinki – demonstrated that ambiguity in problem understanding and information needs, and missing connections in the mechanisms of interaction among actors-resources-tasks could hamper the effectiveness of collaborative planning and create inefficient flow between information production and decision process. Starting from these premises, and referring to the results of an extensive literature review about existing tools, our research aimed at facilitating the use of climate services to enable the collective decision-making process

The verification of seasonal precipitation forecasts for early warning in Zambia and Malawi

We assess the probabilistic seasonal precipitation forecasts issued by Regional Climate Outlook Forum (RCOF) for the area of two southern African countries, Malawi and Zambia from 2002 to 2013. The forecasts, issued in August, are of rainy season rainfall accumulations in three categories (above normal, normal, and below normal), for early season (October–December) and late season (January–March). As observations we used in-situ observations and interpolated precipitation products from Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP), Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), and Climate Prediction Centre (CPC) Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP). Differences between results from different data products are smaller than confidence intervals calculated by bootstrap. <br><br> We focus on below normal forecasts as they were deemed to be the most important for society. The well-known decomposition of Brier score into three terms (Reliability, Resolution, and Uncertainty) shows that the forecasts are rather reliable or well-calibrated, but have a very low resolution; that is, they are not able to discriminate different events. The forecasts also lack sharpness as forecasts for one category are rarely higher than 40 % or less than 25 %. However, these results might be unnecessarily pessimistic, because seasonal forecasts have gone through much development during the period when the forecasts verified in this paper were issued, and forecasts using current methodology might have performed better

A Framework for Comprehensive Impact Assessment in the Case of an ExtremeWinter Scenario, Considering Integrative Aspects of Systemic Vulnerability and Resilience

In northern regions, society can be seriously interrupted by a prolonged electricity network blackout due to a winter storm that cuts off power, communication and road networks. Due to hard winter weather it is essential to enhance the resilience of society to avoid danger to life. This can be achieved by developing new models to enhance preparedness for coming disaster events and to support rescue and other authorities to focus their resources on the most vulnerable targets in actual cases of emergencies. This paper presents a part of the results of activities performed within the EU project ‘CRISMA – Modelling crisis management for improved action and preparedness’. It focuses on improved resilience by proposing a framework for systemic vulnerability and impact analyses. The described work is conceptually based on risk-hazard and socio-constructive approaches. It is illustrated by means of a scenario consisting of a prolonged blackout together with an extreme winter storm in northern Finland. Scenario components include the integrative analysis of rapidly cooling houses and exposed vulnerable people as well as estimations of the potential costs of the crisis situation. The model can be extended to handle passable routes and the deployment of available rescue and snow ploughing equipment

A framework for comprehensive impact assessment in the case of an extreme winter scenario, considering integrative aspects of systemic vulnerability and resilience

In northern regions, society can be seriously interrupted by a prolonged electricity network blackout due to a winter storm that cuts off power, communication and road networks. Due to hard winter weather it is essential to enhance the resilience of society to avoid danger to life. This can be achieved by developing new models to enhance preparedness for coming disaster events and to support rescue and other authorities to focus their resources on the most vulnerable targets in actual cases of emergencies. This paper presents a part of the results of activities performed within the EU project ‘CRISMA – Modelling crisis management for improved action and preparedness’. It focuses on improved resilience by proposing a framework for systemic vulnerability and impact analyses. The described work is conceptually based on risk-hazard and socio-constructive approaches. It is illustrated by means of a scenario consisting of a prolonged blackout together with an extreme winter storm in northern Finland. Scenario components include the integrative analysis of rapidly cooling houses and exposed vulnerable people as well as estimations of the potential costs of the crisis situation. The model can be extended to handle passable routes and the deployment of available rescue and snow ploughing equipment

Economic analysis of Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred yearling production in Texas

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references.The horse industry in Texas generates $1.5-2.0 billion dollars of total economic activity per year. Combined with related service industries, the horse industry is a major component of a multibillion dollar industry in the State. Prior economic studies on horse production in Texas are nonexistent, therefore, economic information necessary for evaluating the profitability of existing farms and feasibility of new operations is not readily available. This study is concerned with costs associated with producing Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred yearlings in Texas. Two sizes of production systems of each breed were analyzed: farms with five broodmares and farms with twenty broodmares. At the core of the analysis are the four budgets which provide estimated break-even prices for Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred yearlings from the different size farms. These budgets were developed by combining average values from responses received from selected producers and representative values for selected items. The costs are for 30 months-the time from breeding to selling. Results of the analysis reveal that 15 percent of Thoroughbred producers with five broodmares are covering all costs, while 85 percent are covering neither variable nor fixed costs. Sixty-six percent of Thoroughbred operations with twenty broodmares are covering variable costs, but not fixed costs. None of the Quarter Horse farms with five mares are covering both variable and fixed costs. On Quarter Horse farms with twenty broodmares, 40 percent are covering variable costs, yet none of those are covering fixed costs. One implication of this analysis is that the majority of Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred yearling production systems in Texas are not breaking even. However, all of the producers surveyed had additional sources of income, either in a related or non-related field. There are indications that producers are motivated partially by incentives other than monetary ones. The budgets were developed based on representative farms across Texas. However, budget-users should include prices and practices that are specific for their operation to result in a more accurate break-even price for their individual operations