Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) Hazard Mitigation at Himalayan Region, Nepal

Glacier retreat is a strong indicator of climate change and global warming. The anthropogenic changes in the Earth's atmosphere are mostly to blame for the climate extremes and their consequences in the last few decades. The Himalayan region is no exclusion to the trend. As glaciers begin to retreat, the glacial lake starts to fill or form behind the natural moraine or ice dam in the glaciers. The sudden release of the water, known as the Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF), can release a large amount of water and sediment. There have been various destructive GLOFs recorded in Nepal since the 1960s. It is vital to understand the GLOF dynamics, geomorphology and historical events to mitigate the GLOF hazards in the region. An advanced approach based on remote sensing data and empirical evidence is more suitable to tackle these issues. This research investigated 11 among 30 past events recorded in the HKH region (Nepal) to establish the causes and triggering factors that led to the catastrophic failure, which helped establish the vulnerability assessment of these glacial lakes. This eventually led to creating a GLOF vulnerability assessment framework that is unique and useful to the communities. This research concluded that 40% of the GLOF events was due to the moraine dam failure. In the retrospective approach, 5 out of 11 glacial lakes scored a very high total vulnerability score (TVR), which suffered catastrophic events in the past. The TVR of the currently existing 21 potential dangerous glacial lakes (PDGL) in Nepal was also conducted using the proposed assessment framework that concluded the 7 very high, 4 high, 5 medium, and the rest are low. Hence, this assessment tool's reliability is very high. This research also concluded that there should integrated approach to climate change adaptation and hazard mitigations in the region

Three essays on labor, gender and development

2022 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.In my PhD dissertation, I write three research essays on labor, gender and development in India. These essays are based on applied economic research and use longitudinal data estimation techniques. These essays relate to my overall interest in topics surrounding inadequate access to basic infrastructures–electricity, water and credit–and their impact on gender inequities, development opportunities, health, education and labor force participation in India. The first essay focuses on informal finance and women empowerment from an economic and non-economic standpoint. The second essay examines reliable electrification and gender differences in employment, health and household decision making. The third chapter discusses access to piped water and gender differences in employment, health, education and household decision making. The first essay titled, Friends and Benefits? Rotating Savings and Credit Associations as Alternative for Women's Empowerment in India, co-authored with Ramaa Vasudevan and Anita Alves Pena, builds on a theoretical model of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs). In informal social and financial organizations like ROSCAs, members contribute to a common pot of money that is awarded to a different member at each meeting randomly or through a bid. This study examines the effects of ROSCA on women's socio-economic freedom and autonomy at the national level in India. We compare ROSCAs to agency based micro-credit schemes and analyze their effects using nationally representative longitudinal gender-disaggregated data from 2005-2012. Building on a theoretical model of household savings and spousal bargaining power, we use individual fixed effects and instrumental variable regressions to test the theoretical predictions. Among others, results show that ROSCA membership increases the likelihood of women's cash in hand for expenditure by 1.7 percentage points, say in major purchase decisions by 3.9 percentage points and fertility choice by 4.7 percentage points. These margins exceed those for exogenous micro-credit schemes and are robust to sensitivity tests. This study is the first to contrast ROSCAs with other micro-credit schemes at the national level. We propose scaling up and associating longstanding ROSCAs with self-help groups for more inclusive development. The second essay titled, Does Reliable Electrification Reduce Gender Differences: Evidence from India, co-authored with Ramaa Vasudevan, Anita Alves Pena and Ray Miller, looks at the issue of the lack of reliable electrification in India despite massive improvements in electricity access in the past decade. We argue that reliable electricity could reduce the time allocated to home production thereby increasing labor market participation, more for women than men. This essay is purely empirical in nature and revolves around the issue of electrification and gender differences in India. We analyze the effect of quality of electricity on gender differences using a comprehensive set of labor and non-labor market outcomes in India viz. labor force participation (usual status and usual principal status of employment), fuel and water collection, decision making for women and choices of fuel and energy for the household. Using the temporal variation in household electricity hours from the India Human Development Survey (2005-2012), we use individual fixed effects and instrumental variables regressions. Our analysis reveals contrasting trends with significant progress at the extensive margin of electricity access, but little progress at the intensive margin of quality, hours of electricity. We find that reliable electrification improves socio-economic status of women relative to men through increased employment opportunities and reduced time allocation to home production. For instance, 10 more hours of electricity increases the likelihood of employment in the 'usual status' by 2.1 pp for men, and 3.9 pp for women. The study recommends considering electricity as a right, and as part of the broader strategy for reducing gender disparities in India. The third essay titled, Who Benefits from Piped Water? Evidence from a Gendered Analysis in India looks at the effect of access to piped water on employment in farm work, wage/salary work, work days, earnings, health and education outcomes by gender in India. Developing countries, including India, have made impressive progress in providing households with piped water in the last two decades. Yet, access and quality of water available for daily use remains very low. Given the disproportionate burden of home production, the 'hidden' agricultural labor of women, and the fact that India has inadequate access to clean water for daily use, intra-household labor and health inequality could be larger in the absence of piped water access. The disproportionate burden on women of water collection and distribution in the household in developing economies calls for a study on the relationship between piped water supply and gender differences in employment, women's health, child health and education. I use spatiotemporal data from the largest gender disaggregated human development survey in India, 2005–2012, and carry out econometric analyses using individual fixed effects, village fixed effects and instrumental variable regressions to evaluate the effects. Results show that household access to piped water increases the likelihood of wage/salary employment by 11 percent, and annual earnings increase by 14 percent for women, comparatively higher than men, but only in rural areas. In urban areas, there is no effect of pipe water on women's employment. With piped water, women's self-reported health improves; child's health and education outcomes also improve. The study recommends evaluating the social demand curve for piped water supply, and the consideration of piped water supply as necessity, as part of a broader strategy to reduce gender differences and minimize poverty. Overall, these essays are motivated by the lack of emphasis and policy action on micro-credit and basic infrastructures for the poor and the disadvantaged, especially in rural India. Therefore, all three papers in this dissertation provide policy recommendations to problems of India's economic development relating to gender inequity, marginalization, unemployment, education and health, which thread the three essays together

Electrification and Socio-Economic Empowerment of Women in India

This study examines the effect of quality of electrification on empowerment of women in terms of economic autonomy, agency, mobility, decision-making abilities, and time allocation in fuel collection in India. It moves beyond the consensus of counting electried households as a measure of progress in gender parity, and analyzes how the quality of electrification affects women's intra-household bargaining power, labor supply decision and fuel collection time. We develop a set of indices using principal component analysis from a large cross-section of gender-disaggregated survey. We use two stage least squares instrumental variables regression to assess the causal effect of access and hours of electricity on women's empowerment using geographic instrumental variables along with district and caste fixed effects. The results show that quality of electrication has significant positive effects on all empowerment indices. However, the effect differs at the margin of defficiency, location, living standards and education. The study recommends revisiting the paradigm of access to electrification and women empowerment by focusing on the quality of not only extensive but also intensive electrification to enhance life and economic opportunities for women and their households

Electrification and Household Welfare in India

Access to reliable energy is central to improvements in living standards and is a Sustainable Development Goal. This study moves beyond counting the electrified households and examines the effect of the hours of electricity households receives on their welfare. We hypothesize that additional hours of electricity have different effects on the poor, the middle income and the rich, as well as in rural and urban areas. The methods used are panel fixed effects instrumental variables, cross sectional fixed effects instrumental variables, and logistic regression with data from the Indian Human Development Survey 2005-2012. We focus on extensive and the intensity margins, i.e. how access and additional hours of electricity affect household welfare in terms of consumption expenditure, income, assets and poverty status. The results show large gaps between the benefits and costs of electricity supply among consumer groups. We also find that electricity theft is positively correlated with the net returns from electrification. Progressive pricing with targeted subsidies for the poor can increase household welfare while reducing the financial losses of the State Electricity Boards

Segmentation of Optic Disc and Optic Cup in Retinal Fundus Images Using Coupled Shape Regression

Accurate segmentation of optic cup and disc in retinal fundus images is required to derive the cup-to-disc ratio (CDR) parameter which is the main indicator for Glaucoma assessment. In this paper, we propose a coupled regression method for accurate segmentation of optic cup and disc in retinal colour fundus image. The proposed coupled regression framework consists of a parameter regressor which directly predicts CDR from a given image, as well as an ensemble shape regressor which iteratively estimates the OD-OC boundary by taking into account the CDR estimated by the parameter regressor. The parameter regressor and the shape regressor are then coupled together within a feedback loop so that estimation of one reinforces the other. Both parameter regressor and the ensemble shape regressor are modeled using Boosted Regression Trees. The proposed optic cup and disc segmentation method is applied on an image set of 50 patients and demonstrates high segmentation accuracy. A comparative study shows that our proposed method outperforms state of the art methods for cup segmentation

Concurrent Lazy Splay Tree with Relativistic Programming Approach

A splay tree is a self-adjusting binary search tree in which recently accessed elements are quick to access again. Splay operation causes the sequential bottleneck at the root of the tree in concurrent environment. The Lazy splaying is to rotate the tree at most one per access so that very frequently accessed item does full splaying. We present the RCU (Read-copy-update) based synchronization mechanism for splay tree operations which allows reads to occur concurrently with updates such as deletion and restructuring by splay rotation. This approach is generalized as relativistic programming. The relativistic programming is the programming technique for concurrent shared-memory architectures which tolerates different threads seeing events occurring in different orders, so that events are not necessarily globally ordered, but rather subject to constraints of per-thread ordering. The main idea of the algorithm is that the update operations are carried out concurrently with traversals/reads. Each update is carried out for new reads to see the new state, while allowing pre-existing reads to proceed on the old state. Then the update is completed after all pre-existing reads have completed

Development of superhydrophobicity in silane treated diatomaceous earth and polymer coatings

This dissertation describes the development of superhydrophobicity in fluorosilane treated diatomaceous earth (DE) particles and polymer coatings. The amount of silane coupling agent on the surface of DE particles has been determined by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The presence of silane coupling agents on the DE particles has been confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The minimum amount of fluorosilane coupling agent required to exhibit superhydrophobicity has been determined. The development of the superhydrophobicity in the coatings with simple polymers like polystyrene (PS) or poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc) as binders has been followed as a function of the particle loading using contact angle measurements and scanning electron microscopy.The effect of particle morphology in the development of superhydrophobicity has been studied systematically. It was found that less-dense treated CelTix DE particles produced superhydrophobicity at 30 wt% of particles loading compared to more dense treated DiaFil DE (rod-shaped) and EcoFlat DE (irregularly shaped) particles with low molecular mass polystyrene binder system. The effects of particle morphology, surface area, porosity and density in the development of superhydrophobicity have been described.The effect of viscosity of the binder solution in the development of superhydrophobicity has been observed. Changes in the solvent systems have not affected the superhydrophobicity for similar coating compositions. The DE particles were found to be robust and the coatings prepared with the sonicated DE samples also exhibited superhydrophobicity.Additionally, untreated and treated diatomaceous earth particles and epoxy composites have been prepared. The thermal and dynamic mechanical properties of DE/epoxy composites have been evaluated. The mechanical properties of the DE/epoxy composites revealed that treated DE particles act as better reinforcing agents compared to untreated DE particles

Electrification and Welfare for the Marginalized: Evidence from India

Uneven electrication can be a source of welfare disparity. Given the recent progress of electrication in India, we analyze the differences in access and reliability of electricity, and its impact on household welfare for marginalized and dominant social groups by caste and religion. We carry out longitudinal analysis from a national survey, 2005-2012, using OLS, fixed effects, and panel instrumental variable regressions. Our analysis shows that marginalized groups (Hindu Schedule Caste/Schedule Tribe and Muslims) had higher likelihood of electricity access compared to the dominant groups (Hindu forward castes and Other Backward Caste). In terms of electricity reliability, marginalized groups lost less electricity hours in a day as compared to dominant groups. Results showed that electrification enabled marginalized households to increase their consumption, assets and move out of poverty; the effects were more pronounced in rural areas. The findings are robust to alternative ways of measuring consumption, and use of more recent data set, 2015-2018. We posit that electri_cation improved the livelihoods of marginalized groups. However, it did not reduce absolute disparities among social groups