A Covering Tour Model for Planning Mobile Health Care Facilities in SuhumDistrict, Ghama

The provision of adequate primary health care in developing countries is often troublesome. The problem is to provide a sufficient number of facilities to be geographically accessible, yet few enough to be properly stocked and staffed. In many less developed countries accessibility problems are exacerbated by extensive rainy seasons in which travel is only possible on paved roads. Using the covering tour model we investigate the use of mobile facilities to resolve this dilemma in Suhum District, Ghana. The model minimizes a mobile facility's travel while serving all population centers within range of a feasible stop. Computational results show that in the rainy season the model cannot provide full coverage; over six percent of the population is beyond a covering distance of eight kilometers. In the dry season, 99 percent of the population can be served by a tour at a covering distance of seven kilometers.Beyond a distance of four kilometers, the dry season problem becomes a trade-off between the distance traveled by healthcare patrons and mobile facilities. These results illustrate the importance of flexibility of mobile systems: if accessibility cannot be provided in all seasons it may still be provided at favorable times of the year.     

A Dynamic Location-Allocation Model for Evaluating the Spatial Impacts for Just-in-Time Planning

This paper presents an interperiod network storage location-allocation (INSLA) model to solve the just-in-time production planning problem. The model is extended to a multiobjective problem in which trade-offs between delivery time and transportation costs are analyzed. The results for a hypothetical problem show that in an attempt to reduce inventories on the part of the primary purchaser of raw materials, the possibility exists for less than optimal behavior in the system.     

新时期省区旅游信息化规划的集成化趋势

当前旅游目的地营销系统（DMS）正在成为区域旅游信息化服务的核心平台,并逐渐成为旅游主管部门、旅游企业和旅游消费者互动的第一界面,它对于解决以往旅游信息化建设中出现的基础工作薄弱、信息共享不足、建设模式单一、市场机制缺乏等问题发挥了巨大作用。其发展水平也已成为衡量区域旅游信息化程度的主要标志。因此省区旅游信息化规划呈现出集成化趋势。本文拟从集成驱动力、集成表现、集成外部结构以及集成形式四方面予以论证。旨在对未来省区旅游信息化建设提供参考。     

A Model for Mental Health Needs and Resourcing in Small Geographic Areas: A Multivariate Spatial Perspective

This paper considers how small area variations in a set of psychiatric referral outcomes in a London health authority of 750,000 people may inform health need assessment and health resourcing for mental illness based on true need. As well as adopting a multivariate perspective, the spatial interdependence of the outcomes is included in the modelling approach outlined. By contrast, existing studies on mental health need tend to focus on single outcomes, and may not include spatial dependence. The analysis relates to three hospital referral outcomes for psychiatric conditions, and to total community mental health referrals across sixty‐seven electoral wards in East London.     

Large-scale Research and the Goal of Health: Doable Problem Construction in 'New' Nutrition Science

Abstract

Although comparatively few membrane processes have yet reached widespread and large scale use, research carried out during the recent past has led to a greater realism about the technological and economic strengths and weaknesses of membrane processes. As a result, one may now identify with greater confidence the types of separation problems that are particularly suited to solution by membrane techniques. At the same time new and ingenious possibilities for the use of membranes are continually being suggested and some at least are likely to form the bases of practical procedures in the not too distant future.     

Speed,Vitality and Innovation in the Reinvention of Georgian Planning Aspects of Integration and Role Formation

In this paper, we investigate the influence of speedy reform in a transitional country on the reinvention of spatial planning. For the country of Georgia, we briefly outline the evolution of the planning system since communism, and then analyse through two case studies how the specific transitional pathway of Georgia manifests itself in the reorganization of spatial governance in city (Tbilisi) and natural areas (Borjomi). It is argued that role formation and transformation play a crucial role in such processes, roles being catalysts and modifiers of further reform. We analyse and argue that the mixed results of reform speed and re-centralization of power enable fast change of formal institutions but simultaneously raise obstacles for the crystallization of roles necessary to implement those formal reforms. Our analysis incorporates key concepts derived from institutional economics (in the line of Douglass North) and social systems theory, in Niklas Luhmann's version.? ^? This paper is based on a presentation at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, in November 2009. View all notes     

The Integration of Mental Health Care in Rural Iran

Iran’s rural mental health care system emerged in a context that included experiments in health care prior to the 1979 Revolution and the establishment of a primary health care (PHC) system after the Revolution. Beginning in the 1980s, Iran integrated mental health care into the existing PHC system by treating mental illness much like a communicable disease. Iran advanced treatment options compatible with the existing system, added new training for existing care providers, and incorporated specialists. The integration of mental health care led to the rapid improvement of health outcomes. The integration also created the unintended consequence of privileging pharmaceutical treatments and overlooking mental illnesses affected by somatization.     

A Framework for the Integration of DVD Technology in Geography Teaching and Learning

This article discusses the results when integrating digital versatile disc (DVD) technology in full-time second-year geography for BEd degree students at a university in South Africa, a developing country. It proposes a framework for the integration of the DVD in geography teaching and learning, steered by students’ needs, feedback and observations by the lecturer. The proposed framework recommends clear guidelines on how to integrate the DVD, as well as the interactions between the role players/resources. It also explains how the DVD was compiled, what was included and how it was effectively applied in conjunction with seminars, as an alternative to traditional lectures. An action research design was utilized and both qualitative and quantitative data were collected.     

European Integration and Spatial Rescaling in the Baltic Region: Soft Spaces,Soft Planning and Soft Security

Abstract

Spatial rescaling arguably represents one of the most significant recent changes in planning. Rescaling processes do not merely imply changes in powers across existing layers of decision-making, but also entail new scales of intervention, new actor constellations and new geometries of governance. A wide range of examples of spatial rescaling can be seen across Europe, varying from local through to regional and international. The emergence of “soft spaces”—regions in which strategy is made between or alongside formal institutions and processes—is one of the phenomena associated with contemporary spatial rescaling. These spaces are often overlapping and characterized by fuzzy geographical boundaries. The formation of soft spaces is often articulated in terms of breaking away from the rigidities associated with the practices and expectations of working within existing political or administrative boundaries but can also be viewed as providing a means of bypassing formal procedures and reducing democratic accountability. Focusing on European territorial cooperation and development strategies in the Baltic region, this paper discusses how they are contributing to spatial rescaling in soft spaces and how the strategies can be seen as a form of soft planning and as a means to promote soft security policy (which could be considered as a wider form of foreign policy).     

A Multivariate Model for Spatio‐temporal Health Outcomes with an Application to Suicide Mortality

This article considers models for multivariate mortality outcomes (e.g., bivariate, trivariate, or higher dimensional) observed over a set of areas and through time. The model outlined here allows for spatially structured and white noise errors and for their intercorrelation. It also includes possible temporal continuity in such types of error via structured temporal effects. An extension to spatially varying regression effects is considered, as well as the option of nonparametric specification of priors for spatial residuals and regression effects. Allowing for spatially correlated intercepts or regression effects may alter inferences regarding the changing impact on mortality of socioeconomic or environmental predictors. The modeling framework is illustrated by an application to male and female suicide mortality in London, focusing on the impact on suicide of deprivation and social fragmentation (“anomie”) in the 33 London boroughs during three periods: 1979–83, 1984–88 and 1989–93. Suicide trends by age group are also considered and show considerable differences in the trends in impacts of deprivation and social fragmentation.     

A Method for the Evaluation of Metropolitan Planning: Application to the Context in Spain

The metropolitan urbanization shows evidence that planning at the regional, subregional and municipal levels with its wide range of territorial, urban and sectorial competences is now longer able to significantly influence territorial development. This has led to a greater demand for alternative approaches, methods and instruments. For this research study, the metropolitan area of Granada was used as a field laboratory to assess the capacity of metropolitan planning to have an impact on metropolitan processes and dynamics. For this purpose, a method for metropolitan planning evaluation, MPE methodology, was proposed, which involves two evaluation processes. This method first evaluated the coherence of plans of different competences and at different scales within the metropolitan context (trans-scalar evaluation); it then evaluated the interaction between methods and proposals in plans and metropolitan dynamics (interactive evaluation).     

A Liberal History of European Integration

John Gillingham's voluminous new book chronicles the course of European integration from the 1950s to the present. It contains interesting accounts of a variety of important events, and has the merit of drawing attention to the European Union as a subject for serious historical scholarship. Some readers, however, may find certain of Gillingham's major arguments controversial, especially his insistence that integration has been and will always be primarily about economic liberalization.     

The Validity of Hierarchical Information Integration Choice Experiments to Model Residential Preference and Choice

Integrated conjoint choice models have recently been introduced in the consumer choice literature as an approach to include a large number of influential attributes in a choice experiment and statistically test its assumed hierarchical structure. In the present article, the validity of integrated conjoint choice models is tested using housing choice as an example. The results of this study suggest that the parameters of housing utility functions derived from integrated conjoint choice models are not statistically different across experiments nor are they different from those derived from nonhierarchical conjoint models. This yields support for the validity of these models. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

A Dynamic Household Model for the Housing Market of Amsterdam

This paper addresses the issue of incorporating household dynamics into operational dynamic urban models. Dynamic model approaches that can be used to model urban change are introduced and discussed. We conclude that these different approaches are best combined in an accounting framework. An example of an accounting framework for a dynamic model of Amsterdam is presented. The household submodel is discussed in detail and some preliminary results are given.     

Deconstructing Spatial Planning: Re-interpreting the Articulation of a New Ethos for English Local Planning

This article reviews recent debates about the emergence of “spatial planning” as a new ethos for English planning, suggesting that continued uncertainty around the term's use is partly caused by a failure to consider its emergence as the product of a contested political process. Drawing on an interpretive approach to policy analysis, the article goes on to show how this new organizing principle is a complex articulation of different and potentially contradictory reform impulses. The result is to destabilize the concept of spatial planning, showing how it has been constructed as an “empty signifier”, an unstable and tension-filled discursive stake in an ongoing politics of reform. Finally, it is argued that this has significant implications for the ways in which implementation success and failure should be understood and for analysis of planning reform initiatives and systems more widely.     

A Half Century of Health Data for the U.S. Population: The Integrated Health Interview Series

The U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) is the world's longest survey time series of health data and a rich source of information on health conditions, behaviors, and care from the 1960s to the present. NHIS public-use files are difficult to use for long-term analysis, due to complex file structure, changes in questionnaire content, and evolving variable names and coding schemes. Researchers at the Minnesota Population Center have created the Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS) to overcome these problems. IHIS provides access to thousands of consistently coded and well-documented NHIS variables on the Internet and makes it easy to analyze health trends and differentials. IHIS multiplies the value of NHIS data by allowing researchers to make consistent comparisons over half a century and thus to study U.S. health status as a dynamic process. This article describes the main features of IHIS and suggests fruitful avenues for historical research using these invaluable health data.     

A Unified Model for Dispersing Facilities

One of the important classes of facility dispersion problems involves the location of a number of facilities where the intent is to place them as far apart from each other as possible. Four basic forms of the p‐facility dispersion problem appear in the literature. Erkut and Neuman present a classification system for these four classic constructs. More recently, Curtin and Church expanded upon this framework by the introduction of “multiple types” of facilities, where the dispersion distances between specific types are weighted differently. This article explores another basic assumption found in all four classic models (including the multitype facility constructs of Curtin and Church): that dispersion is accounted for in terms of either distance to the closest facility or distances to all facilities (from a given facility), whether applied to a single type of facility or across a set of facility types. In reality, however, measuring dispersion in terms of whether neighboring facilities to a given facility are dispersed rather than whether all facilities are dispersed away from the given facility often makes more sense. To account for this intermediate measure of dispersion, we propose a construct called partial‐sum dispersion. We propose four “partial‐sum” dispersion problem forms and show that these are generalized forms of the classic set of four models codified by Erkut and Neuman. Further, we present a unifying model that is a generalized form of all four partial‐sum models as well as a generalized form of the original four classic model constructs. Finally, we present computational experience with the general model and conclude with a few examples and suggestions for future research. Una de las clases importantes dentro de los problemas de dispersión de instalaciones de servicios/infraestructura es el caso en el que la localización de un número de instalaciones debe cumplir la condición de maximizar la distancia entre cada par. La literatura especializada cita cuatro formas básicas del problema de dispersión llamados tipo p‐instalación (p‐facility) (Shier 1977; Luna y Chaudhry 1984; Kuby 1987; Erkut y Neuman, 1991). Erkut y Neuman (1991) presentan un sistema de clasificación para estas cuatro formas clásicas. Recientemente, Curtin e Iglesia (2006) ampliaron este marco metodológico al incorporar múltiples tipos de instalaciones, permitiendo que las distancias de dispersión entre diferentes tipos específicos de instalaciones sean ponderadas de manera diferente. El artículo presente explora otro supuesto básico que se encuentra en los cuatro modelos clásicos (y las modifcaciones para acomodar instalaciones multi‐tipo de Curtin e Iglesia): la dispersión es cuantificada en términos de la distancia entre una instalación dada y la instalación más cercana, o entre una instalación dada y la totalidad de las instalaciones. Este supuesto se mantiene si las distancias son aplicadas a un solo tipo de instalación o a múltiples tipos de instalaciones. Sin embargo, en realidad, tiene más sentido medir la dispersión en relación a las instalaciones vecinas, en vez de en relación a la totalidad las instalaciones. Para incorporar esta realidad a un nuevo tipo de medida intermedia de dispersión, se propone una medida llamada dispersión de suma parcial (partial‐sum dispersion). Proponemos cuatro tipos de problemas de dispersión de tipo parcial‐sum y demostramos que éstas son formas generalizadas de los cuatro modelos clásicos presentados por Erkut y Neuman (1991). Además, se presenta un modelo unificado que es una forma generalizada de los cuatro modelos tipo partial‐sum, así como una forma generalizada de las cuatro tipos en el modelo clásico. Por último, se presenta los resultados de pruebas computacionales usando el modelo general y se concluye con algunos ejemplos y sugerencias para investigaciones futuras. 设施分散问题中重要的一类是大量设施的布局,其意图是将它们在空间上尽可能离得更远。目前文献中主要讨论了4种基本形式(Shier 1977; Moon and Chaudhry 1984; Kuby 1987; Erkut and Neuman 1991)。Erkut and Neuman (1991)提出了这4种经典结构的一种分类系统。Curtin and Church (2006)引入设施“多种类型”对上述分类框架进行拓展,在特定类别之间的分散距离的权重存在不同。本文探索了在4种经典模型中所发现的另一种基本假设（包含Curtin and Church的多种类型设施结构）：无论是在单一类型设施或包括多种类型设施中,分散度在解释某一给定设施到最近设施的距离或到所有设施的距离方面都是合理的。然而,在现实中设施分散度度量方面,测量某一给定设施的邻近设施的分散度特征相比于测量给定设施的所有其他设施的散布特征通常更有意义。为解释这种分散度的中间度量,本文提出了一种称为“局部和整体”的结构,包括4种分散问题形式,它们是Erkut and Neuman 4种传统类型的广义形式。本文进而提出了一个统一模型,即所有 “局部和整体”模型和经典类型结构一种广义形式。最后,对统一模型进行了计算检验,并基于几个实证进行了总结,还提出了未来的研究建议。