CAN A PREDICTED FUTURE STILL BE AN OPEN FUTURE? ALGORITHMIC FORECASTS AND ACTIONABILITY IN PRECISION MEDICINE*

The openness of the future is rightly considered one of the qualifying aspects of the temporality of modern society. The open future, which does not yet exist in the present, implies radical unpredictability. This article discusses how, in the last few centuries, the resulting uncertainty has been managed with probabilistic tools that compute present information about the future in a controlled way. The probabilistic approach has always been plagued by three fundamental problems: performativity, the need for individualization, and the opacity of predictions. We contrast this approach with recent forms of algorithmic forecasting, which seem to turn these problems into resources and produce an innovative form of prediction. But can a predicted future still be an open future? We explore this specific contemporary modality of historical futures by examining the recent debate about the notion of actionability in precision medicine, which focuses on a form of individualized prediction that enables direct intervention in the future it predicts.     

Linked population and economic models: some methodological issues in forecasting,analysis, and policy optimization

Some problems associated with demographic-economic forecasting include finding models appropriate for a declining economy with unemployment, using a multiregional approach in an interregional model, finding a way to show differential consumption while endogenizing unemployment, and avoiding unemployment inconsistencies. The solution to these problems involves the construction of an activity-commodity framework, locating it within a group of forecasting models, and indicating possible ratios towards dynamization of the framework. The authors demonstrate the range of impact multipliers that can be derived from the framework and show how these multipliers relate to Leontief input-output multipliers. It is shown that desired population distribution may be obtained by selecting instruments from the economic sphere to produce, through the constraints vector of an activity-commodity framework, targets selected from demographic activities. The next step in this process, empirical exploitation, was carried out by the authors in the United Kingdom, linking an input-output model with a wide selection of demographic and demographic-economic variables. The generally tenuous control which government has over any variables in systems of this type, especially in market economies, makes application in the policy field of the optimization approach a partly conjectural exercise, although the analytic capacity of the approach can provide clear indications of policy directions.     

Rural communities and small area forecasting: some examples from South Australia

This paper demonstrates and evaluates two different but complementary methodologies of small area forecasting in a rural area some 80 km north of Adelaide. The first approach forecasts overall population trends using a sector-by-sector appraisal of the growth/decline prospects of each economic sector based on detailed field surveys carried out in 1968 and 1970. The second approach was to use the readily available 1971 census and corresponding vital statistics data to project the population of the study area using a simple cohort-component projection methodology. Both approaches made forecasts of expected population levels by 1980, and in that year the authors conducted a resurvey of the same study area. The article demonstrates the need for, and results of, regular updating of the assumptions on which population forecasts are made, for the period 1968–1980 includedan unexpected revival of the farm economy as well as the onset of the international urban-rural migration flow of the ‘population turnaround’. Neither of these trends had been foreseen in the initial forecasts; their effects are shown in the results of the 1980 resurvey, and the utility of the forecasting methodologies is discussed in the light of these findings.     

THE FULL-DISTRIBUTION APPROACH TO AGGREGATE REPRESENTATION IN THE INPUT-OUTPUT MODELING FRAMEWORK*

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a probabilistic specification of coefficients in the input- output modeling framework. Although previous works on probabilistic input-output models attribute uncertainty to measurement and sampling errors, this specification derives from systematic variation directly attributable to industrial, institutional, and location factors. Experiments with national input-output data support the existence of such variation. Employing the specification not only yields a more flexible aggregate modeling framework capable of producing interval impact estimates, but also an alternative perspective on such issues as interregional differentiation and structural comparison, the identification of key industrial sectors, aggregation, and spatial variation in production.     

HISTORIOMETRICS,HISTORICAL AND CARTOGRAPHIC INFORMATION,AND COMPUTERS

Abstract

Accessibility is frequently used in transportation planning to measure the efficiency of new infrastructure in terms of travel time and population served. In this article, the authors apply accessibility concepts based on the geo-historical angle. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationships between population dynamics and the railway expansion from 1830 to 1930. Their approach considers a local scale composed of some 36,000 French communes for the demographic data and more than 28,000 kilometers for the railway network. The methodological framework of this database is based on historical geographic information systems completed by anamorphosis analysis. In this way, they are able to map the changing contours of accessibility from the local to the regional and national scales for historical time.     

Simulating Sources of Uncertainty in Policy Forecasting with a Large-Scale Regional Econometric Model

Long-term forecasts may be helpful in establishing the general framework for a region's policy agenda, and a well-structured economic model offers an opportunity to identify major policy instruments affecting a region's long-term growth. Nevertheless, the uncertainty of long-term forecasts should serve to caution policymakers in interpreting and acting upon such information. To offer perspective on this aspect of forecasts, simulations of the Pittsburgh economy are performed to the year 1995 using a large-scale regional econometric model. The forecasts are based on alternative assumptions concerning the performance of the national economy and the objective conditions characterizing key industries in the region. In this way, the model is used to identify and quantify several major sources of uncertainty in long-term regional forecasts.     

Entangled temporalities: Ghana's national biometric identity registration project

Biometric identity registration technologies are spreading throughout the world. Developing countries in particular, have recently been seen to construct biometric population registers in partnership with international donor organizations. This article traces the temporal entanglements produced by transnational policy mobilities in the inception and implementation of Ghana's national biometric identity registration project. In 2008, Ghana famously introduced the first biometric banking system in Africa. Yet, the e‐zwich payment system marked only the first step towards the current ‘craze’ for biometric identity registration in the West African country. Among the numerous biometric identity documents circulating in Ghana's national and subnational institutions, the national Ghanacard is the most interesting identity registration project in the country, both in terms of its population‐wide reach and the complex constellation of institutions, actors and ideas competing within the project. With a focus on the temporalities of policymaking, the article examines the project's fundamental future orientation, the temporal context of its production with its specific possibilities of imagining and acting upon certain matters, and the rhythms and schedules of project implementation. By doing so, it draws attention to some of the ways in which competing sets of ideas shape large‐scale investments in technology and infrastructure in Africa.     

Developing Direct Displacement-Based Procedures for Simplified Loss Assessment in Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering

Various loss assessment methodologies have been proposed and developed over the past decades to provide risk assessment on a regional scale. There is an increasing need, however, to provide engineers with practical tools for building-specific loss assessment. Recently, progress has been made towards probabilistic loss models such as the PEER framework. However, as comprehensive probabilistic methodologies could be too complex for practicing engineers, this article presents a simplified probabilistic loss assessment methodology that builds on a direct displacement-based framework. The methodology is tested via examination of two RC frame buildings and encouragingly shows similar results to the PEER methodology.     

Nation and reproduction: immigrants and their children in population discourse in Italy

Italian society is undergoing significant demographic changes: on one hand, the widespread decrease in birth rates and extended life expectancies lead to a substantial aging of the population; on the other hand, rising immigration rates constitute an important factor behind the renewal and growth of young population segments. According to conventional disciplinary divisions, such changes are the established domain of demography; however, it mainly draws on ethno‐national categories to investigate them. In reference to the Italian context, this article specifically highlights the way national demography employs forecasts and value judgments derived from a qualitative and selective definition of population to address the marked increase in children born to foreign parents. By examining the reproductive behaviours of migrants in Italy, the article thus offers a wide‐ranging reflection on the social boundaries that shape the formation of an ‘other’ generation.     

Do Exchange Rates and Foreign Incomes Matter for Exports at the State Level?

At the national level, trade-weighted real exchange rates and foreign incomes significantly impact exports. At the subnational level, these variables are generally insignificant in the few studies that include them. We argue that the standard use of national trade weights in the construction of subnational trade-weighted averages of exchange rates and foreign incomes is inappropriate, and we then construct these variables using state-specific trade weights. In our panel data analysis of state-level manufacturing exports, these variables enter significantly and with the expected signs. Also, their out-of-sample forecasting ability is significantly better than that of the national trade-weighted variables.     

The Political Construction of Extractive Regimes in Two Newly Created Indian States: A Comparative Analysis of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh

This article presents a multidimensional account of the politics of resource extraction in two subnational regions of India in response to the question: what are the political conditions that facilitate extraction? Emerging from the same moment of state creation in 2000, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are adjacent mineral-rich states with similar demographic profiles and comparable levels of economic development. The authors argue that despite these similarities and India's highly centralized legislative framework for natural resource governance, the two states have developed distinctive ‘extractive regimes’ in the years since statehood, which contrast in important ways across three dimensions: political organization and history, institutional effectiveness, and the nature and management of social resistance. The article offers the first in-depth, comparative account of how subnational territorial reorganization in India acts as a critical juncture enabling the formation of extractive regimes, which have also converged in important ways in recent years.     

The micro-politics of implementing and resisting principal-agent relations in a weak state

ABSTRACT

To understand why quality of government (QoG) varies, scholars have drawn on two theoretical approaches: principal-agent and collective action theories. The literature tends to bifurcate these two theories, and focuses on the national scale and the structural conditions under which collective action and principal-agent problems arise. This article highlights how principal-agent relationships and collective action problems shape the implementation of decentralisation policy in two subnational governments in Papua New Guinea. It is argued that pathways to QoG are contextual, and determined by both principal-agent and collective action relationships. In the case of PNG, these relations are shaped by history, culture and the agency of elites and citizens.     

ART‐P‐MAP Neural Networks Modeling of Land‐Use Change: Accounting for Spatial Heterogeneity and Uncertainty

Spatial land‐use models over large geographic areas and at fine spatial resolutions face the challenges of spatial heterogeneity, model predictability, data quality, and of the ensuing uncertainty. We propose an improved neural network model, ART‐Probability‐Map (ART‐P‐MAP), tailored to address these issues in the context of spatial modeling of land‐use change. First, it adaptively forms its own network structure to account for spatial heterogeneity. Second, it explicitly infers posterior probabilities of land conversion that facilitates the quantification of prediction uncertainty. Extensive calibration under various test settings is conducted on the proposed model to optimize its utility in seeking useful information within a spatially heterogeneous environment. The calibration strategy involves building a bagging ensemble for training and stratified sampling with varying category proportions for experimentation. Through a temporal validation approach, we examine models’ performance within a systematic assessment framework consisting of global metrics and cell‐level uncertainty measurement. Compared with two baselines, ART‐P‐MAP achieves consistently good and stable performance across experiments and exhibits superior capability to handle the spatial heterogeneity and uncertainty involved in the land‐use change problem. Finally, we conclude that, as a general probabilistic regression model, ART‐P‐MAP is applicable to a broad range of land‐use change modeling approaches, which deserves future research.     

A Spatiotemporal Bayesian Hierarchical Approach to Investigating Patterns of Confidence in the Police at the Neighborhood Level

Public confidence in the police is crucial to effective policing. Improving understanding of public confidence at the local level will better enable the police to conduct proactive confidence interventions to meet the concerns of local communities. Conventional approaches do not consider that public confidence varies across geographic space as well as in time. Neighborhood level approaches to modeling public confidence in the police are hampered by the small number problem and the resulting instability in the estimates and uncertainty in the results. This research illustrates a spatiotemporal Bayesian approach for estimating and forecasting public confidence at the neighborhood level and we use it to examine trends in public confidence in the police in London, UK, for Q2 2006 to Q3 2013. Our approach overcomes the limitations of the small number problem and specifically, we investigate the effect of the spatiotemporal representation structure chosen on the estimates of public confidence produced. We then investigate the use of the model for forecasting by producing one‐step ahead forecasts of the final third of the time series. The results are compared with the forecasts from traditional time‐series forecasting methods like naïve, exponential smoothing, ARIMA, STARIMA, and others. A model with spatially structured and unstructured random effects as well as a normally distributed spatiotemporal interaction term was the most parsimonious and produced the most realistic estimates. It also provided the best forecasts at the London‐wide, Borough, and neighborhood level.     

Between nationalism and regionalism: Higher education policy and national/regional identity in Quebec and Wallonia

This article explores the nexus between nationalism/regionalism and higher education policy at the subnational scale. Relying on a Critical Discourse Analysis, the study investigates how notions of national/regional identity are discursively embedded in the higher education policy discussions of Quebec and Wallonia. A comparative approach based on the distinct logics of subnational politics in both cases is used. Whereas Quebec is considered a quintessential example of ‘subnationalism’, the Walloon case is defined as a political regionalist movement. The findings reveal the permeation of substate identity interests in both Quebec and Wallonia's higher education policy discussions, underscoring parallels between them despite their diverging characters. At the same time, the discourse analysis sheds light on important distinctions in the manner in which this identity discourse is articulated. By juxtaposing identity politics in ‘nationalist’ and ‘regionalist’ movements, the study aims to bridge their conceptualisation and critically reflect on the categorisation of subnational movements.     

The Future Population of Australia's Coastal Lands

In 1986 about 26 per cent of the Australian population lived in the country's coastal fringe. In recent decades coastal fringe population has increased at the same rate as the population elsewhere and, if this proportion holds as total population grows towards a projected level of 27 million by 2051, plausibly there could be another three million people living in the coastal fringe by then. This paper examines, in synoptic fashion, and within the limits of available data, the capacity of the coastal fringe to absorb such population increments.     

基于极限学习机的汉阳陵外藏坑遗址温度预测研究

作为我国首座全封闭式遗址博物馆,汉阳陵外藏坑遗址博物馆已积累超过700万条各类监测数据。然而,受限于海量数据挖掘能力,目前研究中存在监测数据利用率不足和预测模型准确率较低的问题,针对这一问题,引入大数据机器学习领域的极限学习机方法对遗址温度进行系统分析和建模预测。研究结果表明,该方法具有良好的大数据发掘和处理能力,能够有效分析温度的变化规律及特征,并对未来温度变化趋势和细节变化特征实现较为准确的预测。本方法的引入可为遗址预防性保护和管理提供参考。     

河谷型城市兰州中心城区人口规模初步研究

人口容量规模是城市发展的战略性议题,尤其河谷型城市。基于用地空间、水资源及生态环境三个主要影响因素,对河谷型城市人口容量规模的测算途径和方法进行了探讨和总结。以典型河谷型城市兰州中心城区为例,估算了其在该三个因素下的各自适宜人口规模和最大人口规模,进而反映出河谷用地空间对中心城区人口规模的限制作用较水资源及生态环境更为强烈,并根据木桶原理最短边,得出现有条件下适宜人口规模为230.56万、最大人口规模为342.17万的基本结论。     

Turkish nationalism and ethno‐symbolic analysis: the rules of exception

This article examines the applicability of the ethno‐symbolic approach to the study of patriotic Turkish nationalism. In this venue, first it addresses the issue of why many of the existing theoretical models are difficult to use for attending to the case of Turkish nationalism in a comparative framework. Capitalising on the ethno‐symbolic understanding of ideological and ethno‐cultural continuities in the formation of modern nationalisms, this study provides an analysis of points of contestation regarding the history of modern, patriotic Turkish nationalism. It then discusses the demographic and socio‐cultural background of the bonding of exiled masses of Ottoman Muslims with the native Muslims of Anatolia under the banner of a revived, independent Turkish nation. The debate offered here is based on a critical evaluation of the myths and symbols of Turkish national identity within the larger context and time frame of Ottoman/Turkish history.     

THE FUTURE TRAJECTORY OF U.S. CO2 EMISSIONS: THE ROLE OF STATE VS. AGGREGATE INFORMATION*

ABSTRACT This paper provides comparisons of a variety of time‐series methods for short‐run forecasts of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, for the United States, using a recently released state‐level data set from 1960–2001. We test the out‐of‐sample performance of univariate and multivariate forecasting models by aggregating state‐level forecasts versus forecasting the aggregate directly. We find evidence that forecasting the disaggregate series and accounting for spatial effects drastically improves forecasting performance under root mean squared forecast error loss. Based on the in‐sample observations we attempt to explain the emergence of voluntary efforts by states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We find evidence that states with decreasing per capita emissions and a “greener” median voter are more likely to push toward voluntary cutbacks in emissions.