Understanding Perceptions of Climate Change and Resilience in the City of Courtenay, British Columbia

Faced with extreme weather events like flooding and challenges like sea-level rise, cities across the globe are devising strategies to adapt to climate change. Climate change risk perceptions amongst the public have been recognized as important factors influencing their support for various adaptation strategies. It has garnered a lot of attention amongst researchers due to increased focus on democratization and public participation in the last few decades. However, despite being recognized as a key factor influencing climate change adaptation strategies in cities, municipal officials' climate change risk perception has only garnered limited attention. Accordingly, the main objective of this thesis is to understand the factors influencing city officials' climate change risk perceptions and their influence on climate adaptation strategies, using the City of Courtenay as a case study. Another objective was to observe any emerging relationship risk perception and resilience constructs in the City. I reviewed 182 City documents to gain an understanding of climate risk perception, and the adaptation actions within Courtenay. Similarly, I reviewed 54 documents to understand the framing of resilience and identify resilience actions within the City. I also conducted semi-structured interviews with five senior municipal officials from various departments within the City to discern how they perceived climate risk, and how they understood resilience. My findings indicate that climate risk perceptions of officials are influenced by personal experiences, as well as three kinds of knowledge: 1) knowledge of the climate adaptation measures taken by the City (responses); 2) knowledge of climate change projections (future); and, 3) knowledge of what and whom will be impacted in their community (impacts). Further, I found that the climate risk perceptions of officials are reflected in a greater extent in the City documents, and most adaptation actions in the City address the climate hazards identified. I also found that officials' risk perceptions and professional and educational background play an important role in how officials understand resilience. Further, most resilience actions fall under climate adaptation actions in the City. These findings demonstrate the importance of officials' perceptions when it comes to climate adaptation planning and makes a case for a risk-perception based approach for adaptation planning in cities

Carbon Free Colorado: An Integrated Resource Plan for the Public Service Company of Colorado 2020-2050

This Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) outlines the Public Service Company of Colorado’s (PSCo) strategy to accommodate the growing energy demand of its customers while transitioning to renewable energy. The IRP attempts to quantify the impact of Colorado’s clean energy and climate policy by comparing three different scenarios: 1. Reference Scenario. New capacity is met with the lowest cost of generation ignoring Colorado Renewable Energy Standard. 2. 100% Carbon Free by 2050. Additional capacity is met with lowest cost mix of renewables sufficient to meet Colorado’s Renewable Energy Standard. 3. High Electrification. Adheres to Colorado’s Renewable Energy Standard while also accommodating added demand from the electrification of buildings and transportation sectors

Attitude and perception versus reality of COVID-19 vaccination among healthcare professional: a survey

Background: The pandemic of COVID-19 infection has almost paralyzed the world since the first infection was reported in December 2019. We have seen 3 waves of infection in the country, out of which the second wave caused by the delta variant was the most severe. Along with the preventive measures of masking, maintaining social distance, and handwashing, the vaccines seemed to be the most logical next step. Many vaccines received emergency use approvals with hardly any efficacy and adverse effects data available with the process inducing a significant amount of anxiety among the public. This survey was aimed at understanding the attitude and perception of our hospital employees towards COVID-19 vaccination. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study conducted among health care workers (HCW) at CMC, Vellore between March 2021 to July 2021. The HCWs who are willing to participate in this study were recruited and collected the quantitative data on their attitude and perception towards COVID vaccine. In-depth interviews were conducted among those who did not take vaccine to understand the reasons for not taking vaccine. The data were analyzed using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS). Results: The survey results were analyzed on 435 HCWs. 58.4 percent of the HCWs trust the institutional protocols as the trusted source of information about vaccine. Most of the HCWs agreed that vaccines are the only protective way, and they are safe and effective. Conclusions: Sensitization and awareness programs with transparency of vaccine development processes, safety and efficacy will help remove barriers

Surface wave control for large arrays of microwave kinetic inductance detectors

Large ultra-sensitive detector arrays are needed for present and future observatories for far infra-red, submillimeter wave (THz), and millimeter wave astronomy. With increasing array size, it is increasingly important to control stray radiation inside the detector chips themselves, the surface wave. We demonstrate this effect with focal plane arrays of 880 lens-antenna coupled Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs). Presented here are near field measurements of the MKID optical response versus the position on the array of a reimaged optical source. We demonstrate that the optical response of a detector in these arrays saturates off-pixel at the $\sim-30$ dB level compared to the peak pixel response. The result is that the power detected from a point source at the pixel position is almost identical to the stray response integrated over the chip area. With such a contribution, it would be impossible to measure extended sources, while the point source sensitivity is degraded due to an increase of the stray loading. However, we show that by incorporating an on-chip stray light absorber, the surface wave contribution is reduced by a factor $>$10. With the on-chip stray light absorber the point source response is close to simulations down to the $\sim-35$ dB level, the simulation based on an ideal Gaussian illumination of the optics. In addition, as a crosscheck we show that the extended source response of a single pixel in the array with the absorbing grid is in agreement with the integral of the point source measurements.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technolog

Eliminating stray radiation inside large area imaging arrays

With increasing array size, it is increasingly important to control stray radiation inside the detector chips themselves. We demonstrate this effect with focal plane arrays of absorber coupled Lumped Element microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (LEKIDs) and lens-antenna coupled distributed quarter wavelength Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs). In these arrays the response from a point source at the pixel position is at a similar level to the stray response integrated over the entire chip area. For the antenna coupled arrays, we show that this effect can be suppressed by incorporating an on-chip stray light absorber. A similar method should be possible with the LEKID array, especially when they are lens coupled.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1707.0214