Conservation Pricing Of Household Water Use In Public Water Systems In Georgia's Coastal Communities: A Preliminary Exploration

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of price on residential water use in public water supply systems in Georgia's Coastal region. Particular attention is focused on measures for the elasticity of demand for residential water use inasmuch as a showing of price inelasticity may make the wider adoption of conservation pricing more palatable to small communities with concerns that raising water prices will reduce much-needed revenues.To clarify the nature and importance of the elasticity measure, consider the following simplified example. A community sells 100 units of water for $1.00 per unit. Its' total revenues are$100. Suppose price is increased by 20% to $1.20, and that the units purchased falls by 30$84.00. In this case, we say that demand is "elastic;" the quantity of water used by folks "stretches" relative to the change in price. With elastic demand, rising prices mean lower total revenues. Suppose, however, that with the 20% price increase, demand fell to only 90 units -- a 10% decrease. Total revenues are now $108. In this case we say demand is inelastic -- quantity doesn't really "stretch" much when prices rise. If demand is inelastic, rising prices means higher revenues.From our limited, phase one efforts in these regards, we use aggregate water pricing data from 50 public water supply systems in 28 coastal counties that participated in a survey conducted during late the period 2003-2005. We find strong evidence that, at the margin, residential water use is indeed affected by prices charged for water in this region. We also find what we regard to be reasonably compelling evidence suggesting that residential water demand is inelastic over the range of marginal prices observed in our sample. This latter finding suggests that the use of conservation pricing as a tool for water conservation may not have an adverse effect on community revenues. Indeed, it may well be the case that increasing water prices will increase, not decrease, the community's revenues from the sale of water.In moving to phase two of this work, a great more will be accomplished in terms of refinements in the nature and quality of data used; greater efforts will be placed on attempts to identify functional forms that will yield best estimates for residential water demand in the state. Our ultimate goal is to be capable of responding to the needs of Georgia communities in the coastal region for information related to how one might improve the design of a community's water rate structure, and to conservation pricing policies that will best serve their interests and the interests of the state. Working Paper Number 2005-00

An assessment of hydrological process and landform change: Slave River delta, Northwest Territories

The Slave River Delta, 61˚15\u27N, 113˚30\u27W, is located at the mouth of the Slave River in the southeast arm of Canada\u27s Great Slave Lake. Although the delta itself lies some 1600 km downstream from the W.A.C. Bennett Dam at Hudson\u27s Hope, British Columbia, the mean annual discharge and sediment load of the Slave River have decreased by 16% and 33% respectively since regulation. Such alterations in the Slave River flow regime have significant implications for the growth of the River Delta since the transfer of sediment to the delta front is one of the most important factors in the landform’s continued development. Using data gathered from field research, historical sources, aerial photography, and two Geographical Information Systems, temporal variations in the distribution of flow throughout the Slave River Delta between 1946 and 1994 were identified along with changes in the extent of subaerial landforms. It is estimated that summer flows through Old Steamboat Channel and Middle Channel decreased by approximately 90% and 94% respectively over the 48 year period while discharge in Resdelta Channel has increased by close to 35%. Observations indicate that this shift has been accompanied by increases in channel length and bar formation in Old Steamboat Channel and Middle Channel. This suggests that energy gradients may be decreasing in the distributaries and may lead to their eventual abandonment. According to the available data, completion of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam in 1968 appears to have had some impact on the loss of approximately 652 ha within the delta between 1966 and 1977; however, deltaic growth since regulation has increased by almost three times that of the pre-impoundment period. Examination of depositional environments within the Slave River Delta indicates that most of the growth during the post-impoundment period has occurred within the outer delta region in the quiet sheltered environments of Nagle Bay and Jackfish Bay. Additional growth has been observed in the central portions of the delta as well. Analysis of suspended sediment concentration ([SS]) and discharge in distributary channels indicates a relatively strong relationship during the summer and autumn seasons; however, the relationships is complicated during the spring by the influence of breakup. The relationship between discharge and [SS] is dependent upon the distribution of flow throughout the delta. Within two channel bifurcations of the main body of the Slave River, [SS] versus discharge is generally characterised by the classic power relationship defined by Leopold and Maddock (1953), although there is some indication that the system may be sediment limited during peak flows in the summer. Beyond two bifurcations, discharge and [SS] tends to be inversely related and channels within these classifications are generally characterized by deposition

Comparisons of elastic and rigid blade-element rotor models using parallel processing technology for piloted simulations

A piloted comparison of rigid and aeroelastic blade-element rotor models was conducted at the Crew Station Research and Development Facility (CSRDF) at Ames Research Center. A simulation development and analysis tool, FLIGHTLAB, was used to implement these models in real time using parallel processing technology. Pilot comments and quantitative analysis performed both on-line and off-line confirmed that elastic degrees of freedom significantly affect perceived handling qualities. Trim comparisons show improved correlation with flight test data when elastic modes are modeled. The results demonstrate the efficiency with which the mathematical modeling sophistication of existing simulation facilities can be upgraded using parallel processing, and the importance of these upgrades to simulation fidelity

Global Poverty and the United Nations

The impact of poverty on consumers\u27 lives has received considerable attention in the public policy and marketing literature, but primarily from the perspective of the United States. The purpose of this article is to examine global poverty using the multidimensional position advanced by the United Nations (UN). The authors provide a discussion of the history of the UN, from its founding during World War II to the present, with an emphasis on the resolutions, declarations, and conventions that guide its focus on poverty. Then, the authors present UN data on human development to create an understanding of the magnitude and dimensions of poverty worldwide. They close with recommendations for a specific research agenda for public policy and marketing scholars

Hubble\u27s law implies Benford\u27s law for distances to galaxies

A recent article by Alexopoulos and Leontsinis presented empirical evidence that the first digits of the distances from the Earth to galaxies are a reasonably good fit to the probabilities predicted by Benford’s law, the well known logarithmic statistical distribution of significant digits. The purpose of the present article is to give a theoretical explanation, based on Hubble’s law and mathematical properties of Benford’s law, why galaxy distances might be expected to follow Benford’s law. The new galaxy-distance law derived here, which is robust with respect to change of scale and base, to additive and multiplicative computational or observational errors, and to variability of the Hubble constant in both time and space, predicts that conformity to Benford’s law will improve as more data on distances to galaxies becomes available. Conversely, with the logical derivation of this law presented here, the recent empirical observations may be viewed as independent evidence of the validity of Hubble’s law

Extreme Tail Ratios and Overrepresentation among Subpopulations with Normal Distributions

Given several different populations, the relative proportions of each in the high (or low) end of the distribution of a given characteristic are often more important than the overall average values or standard deviations. In the case of two different normally-distributed random variables, as is shown here, one of the (right) tail ratios will not only eventually be greater than 1 from some point on, but will even become infinitely large. More generally, in every finite mixture of different normal distributions, there will always be exactly one of those distributions that is not only overrepresented in the right tail of the mixture but even completely overwhelms all other subpopulations in the rightmost tails. This property (and the analogous result for the left tails), although not unique to normal distributions, is not shared by other common continuous centrally symmetric unimodal distributions, such as Laplace, nor even by other bell-shaped distributions, such as Cauchy (Lorentz) distributions