Organizational and Institutional Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

This issue of American Behavioral Scientist deals with the various ways in which different kinds of organizations cope with the manifold challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, these articles map the challenges and opportunities encountered by a variety of organizations in a major public health crisis. The first section of the issue takes up the theme of adaptive crisis response in relation to two different kinds of organizations. This section begins with a comprehensive overview of U.S. nonprofit organizations’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second article expands on the theme of communication practices in organizations using digital communication platforms which facilitate constructive forms of disagreement or “creative conflict.” Both of these articles indicate the potential positive outcomes of entrepreneurial organizational response. In the next section, we turn to organizational responses hampered by digital inequalities. The first article addresses digital inequalities and eLearning during the pandemic in the country of Pakistan. The next article also uses a digital inequalities framework to probe infrastructural inadequacies faced by the criminal justice system in terms of hindrances to external communication for incarcerated populations during the pandemic. This pair of articles underscores the importance of infrastructure as a necessary element of successful crisis response. The third section of the issue continues with case studies of carceral institutions with the first article offering insight into strategies used by incarcerated people to generate a sense of normality despite pandemic disruptions. Finally, the issue closes with an article revealing the delicate balancing act which rural U.S. law enforcement carried out when competing imperatives made it extremely difficult to manage public health and public safety simultaneously

Cascading Crises: Society in the Age of COVID-19

The tsunami of change triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed society in a series of cascading crises. Unlike disasters that are more temporarily and spatially bounded, the pandemic has continued to expand across time and space for over a year, leaving an unusually broad range of second-order and third-order harms in its wake. Globally, the unusual conditions of the pandemic—unlike other crises—have impacted almost every facet of our lives. The pandemic has deepened existing inequalities and created new vulnerabilities related to social isolation, incarceration, involuntary exclusion from the labor market, diminished economic opportunity, life-and-death risk in the workplace, and a host of emergent digital, emotional, and economic divides. In tandem, many less advantaged individuals and groups have suffered disproportionate hardship related to the pandemic in the form of fear and anxiety, exposure to misinformation, and the effects of the politicization of the crisis. Many of these phenomena will have a long tail that we are only beginning to understand. Nonetheless, the research also offers evidence of resilience on several fronts including nimble organizational response, emergent communication practices, spontaneous solidarity, and the power of hope. While we do not know what the post COVID-19 world will look like, the scholarship here tells us that the virus has not exhausted society’s adaptive potential

Semiautomatic interpretation of 3D sedimentological structures on geologic images: An object-based approach

International audienceThe characterization of sedimentary structures is an important step in constructing quantitative models of sedimentary deposits from digital images, such as 3D seismic data, satellite images, or digital outcrops. However, the interpretation of these structures generally consists of tedious line pickings followed by surface modeling to define geobodies. Automatic geobody extraction is an alternative, but it is sensitive to image noise, and it does not account for prior sedimentary knowledge. We decided to combine minimal picking by an interpreter with object-guided image processing and optimization to achieve fast and semiautomatic geobody interpretation. Our approach used a realistic volumetric geobody representation based on nonuniform rational basis splines, which can easily be deformed by the interpreter and numerical optimization. Custom edge detection guided by some initial rough interpretations was performed to strengthen the most relevant edges in the picture. Automatic optimization was then computed to fit the initial geobody to these highlighted edges. This approach was applied on satellite pictures showing alluvial channels, and some preliminary results on 3D seismic time slices were also presented. The interpreted channels were then used in a retrodeformation process to automatically reconstruct the point bars. This semiautomatic method opens new perspectives to help interpreters rapidly come up with 3D models of sedimentary structures from subsurface and analog surface data sets

Modeling Channel Forms and Related Sedimentary Objects Using a Boundary Representation Based on Non-uniform Rational B-Splines

International audienceIn this paper, we aim at providing a flexible and compact volumetric object model capable of representing many sedimentary structures at different scales. Geo-bodies are defined by a boundary representation; each bounding surface is constructed as a parametric deformable surface. We propose a three-dimensional sedimentary object with a compact parametrization which allows for representing various geometries and provides a curvilinear framework for modeling internal heterogeneities. This representation is based on Non Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) smoothly interpolate between a set of points. The three-dimensional models of geobodies are generated using a small number of parameters, and hence can be easily modified. This can be done by a point and click user interactions for manual editing or by a Monte-Carlo sampling for stochastic simulation. Each elementary shape is controlled by deformation rules and has connection constraints with associated objects, in order to maintain the geometry and the consistency through editing. The boundary representations of the different sedimentary structures are used to construct hexahedral conformal grids in order to perform petrophysical property simulations following the particular three-dimensional parametric space of each object. Finally these properties can be upscaled, according to erosion rules, to a global grid that represents the global depositional environment

Modeling Channel Forms Using a Boundary Representation Based on Non-uniform Rational B-Splines

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Channel simulation using L-system, potential field and NURBS

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Introduction: Mediating crisis: COVID-19 and beyond

Prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, this issue of First Monday brings together international scholars to examine how crises are mediated in a variety of geographic, media, and institutional settings. The issue examines foci including the digital skills needed in a time of crisis, organizational response and adaptation to crisis, mediated crisis response, and innovative methods with which to study crises from the pandemic and beyond

Introduction: Mediating crisis: COVID-19 and beyond

This paper provides a summary of content in this special issue

Digital inequalities in time of pandemic: COVID-19 exposure risk profiles and new forms of vulnerability

In this article, we argue that new kinds of risk are emerging with the COVID-19 virus, and that these risks are unequally distributed. As we expose to view, digital inequalities and social inequalities are rendering certain subgroups significantly more vulnerable to exposure to COVID-19. Vulnerable populations bearing disproportionate risks include the social isolated, older adults, penal system subjects, digitally disadvantaged students, gig workers, and last-mile workers. Therefore, we map out the intersection between COVID-19 risk factors and digital inequalities on each of these populations in order to examine how the digitally resourced have additional tools to mitigate some of the risks associated with the pandemic. We shed light on how the ongoing pandemic is deepening key axes of social differentiation, which were previously occluded from view. These newly manifested forms of social differentiation can be conceived along several related dimensions. At their most general and abstract, these risks have to do with the capacity individuals have to control the risk of pathogen exposure. In order to fully manage exposure risk, individuals must control their physical environment to the greatest extent possible in order to prevent contact with potentially compromised physical spaces. In addition, they must control their social interactional environment to the greatest extent possible in order to minimize their contacts with potentially infected individuals. All else equal, those individuals who exercise more control over their exposure risk — on the basis of their control over their physical and social interactional environments — stand a better chance of staying healthy than those individuals who cannot manage exposure risk. Individuals therefore vary in terms of what we call their COVID-19 exposure risk profile (CERPs). CERPs hinge on preexisting forms of social differentiation such as socioeconomic status, as individuals with more economic resources at their disposal can better insulate themselves from exposure risk. Alongside socioeconomic status, one of the key forms of social differentiation connected with CERPs is digital (dis)advantage. Ceteris paribus, individuals who can more effectively digitize key parts of their lives enjoy better CERPs than individuals who cannot digitize these life realms. Therefore we believe that digital inequalities are directly and increasingly related to both life-or-death exposure to COVID-19, as well as excess deaths attributable to the larger conditions generated by the pandemic

Cascading Crises: Society in the Age of COVID-19

The tsunami of change triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed society in a series of cascading crises. Unlike disasters that are more temporarily and spatially bounded, the pandemic has continued to expand across time and space for over a year, leaving an unusually broad range of second-order and third-order harms in its wake. Globally, the unusual conditions of the pandemic—unlike other crises—have impacted almost every facet of our lives. The pandemic has deepened existing inequalities and created new vulnerabilities related to social isolation, incarceration, involuntary exclusion from the labor market, diminished economic opportunity, life-and-death risk in the workplace, and a host of emergent digital, emotional, and economic divides. In tandem, many less advantaged individuals and groups have suffered disproportionate hardship related to the pandemic in the form of fear and anxiety, exposure to misinformation, and the effects of the politicization of the crisis. Many of these phenomena will have a long tail that we are only beginning to understand. Nonetheless, the research also offers evidence of resilience on several fronts including nimble organizational response, emergent communication practices, spontaneous solidarity, and the power of hope. While we do not know what the post COVID-19 world will look like, the scholarship here tells us that the virus has not exhausted society’s adaptive potential