An Applied Method for General Regional Seismic Loss Assessment—With A Case Study in Los Angeles County

We describe the formulation and application of an integrated general regional seismic loss assessment (RSLA) method for buildings in seismic regions. An efficient method for RSLA is valuable for engineers involved in city planning, risk management, and insurance dealings. In contrast to previously reported methods, the framework presented herein is hazard-based and utilizes a regional rapid seismic hazard deaggregation tool that allows regional assessment to be conducted more efficiently. The proposed technique is implemented as an example to assess general regional seismic loss in Los Angeles County for a ground motion hazard with 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years.     

When regional innovation policies meet policy rationales and evidence: a plea for policy analysis

In spite of recent advancements regarding regional innovation policy rationales and evidence, there are few analyses about the actual features of existing regional innovation policies. Nevertheless, a policy analysis perspective is important in order to recognize their distinctive patterns across regions, and to understand how rationales and evidence can be translated into policy-making. To this purpose, this paper develops a framework to study the extent to which regional innovation policies have changed during the past few years. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an important development of innovation policy rationales, advocating for more specialization; likewise, greater data availability at the regional level has allowed more sophisticated assessment of innovation performance. Finally, the crisis since 2008 has had ravaging effects in some regions, with job losses and severe economic sluggishness. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect transforming dynamics in regional innovation policies. Against this backdrop, the paper compares the institutional frameworks and budgetary priorities of four Spanish regions during the period 2001–2014: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia. In so doing, it aims at studying the extent to which regional governments have readily addressed past and new challenges related to their regional innovation system, and if so, how.     

Sustainability of Highway Bridge Networks Under Seismic Hazard

In order to evaluate the seismic risk of transportation networks, it is necessary to develop a methodology that integrates the probabilities of occurrence of seismic events in a region, the vulnerability of the civil infrastructure, and the consequences of the seismic hazard to the society, environment, and economy. In this article, a framework for the time-variant seismic sustainability and risk assessment of highway bridge networks is presented. The sustainability of the network is quantified in terms of its social, environmental, and economic metrics. These include the expected downtime, expected energy waste and carbon dioxide emissions, and the expected loss. The methodology considers the probability of occurrence of a set of seismic scenarios that reflect the seismic activity of the region. The performance of network links is quantified based on individual bridge performance evaluated through fragility analyses. The sustainability and risk depend on the damage states of both the links and the bridges within the network following an earthquake scenario. The time-variation of the sustainability metrics and risk due to structural deterioration is identified. The approach is illustrated on a transportation network located in Alameda County, California.     

Policy Bubbles

We develop the concept of a policy bubble to capture the notion of long‐term overinvestment in a policy. In sketching the relation of policy bubbles to economic bubbles, we describe how these two concepts have similar origins but different trajectories because they are filtered by different institutions. We examine in some detail three likely instances of ongoing policy bubbles: crime policy, school reform (charter schools and private education vouchers), and the contracting and privatization of public services. We show how these cases differ from the housing bubble of 1997–2007, how they differ from each other, and the extent to which they can be considered policy bubbles. Last, we suggest this concept can help unify the policy process literature with the practice of policy evaluation and outline testable hypotheses for future research.     

On exposure,vulnerability and violence: Spatial distribution of risk factors for climate change and violent conflict across Kenya and Uganda

Recent studies discuss the link between climate change and violent conflict, especially for East Africa. While there is extensive literature on the question whether climate change increases the risk of violent conflict onset, not much is known about where a climate-conflict link is most likely to be found. We address this question by analyzing the spatial distribution of the factors commonly associated with a high exposure and vulnerability to climate change, and a high risk of violent conflict onset in Kenya and Uganda. Drawing on recent literature and quantitative data for the period 1998–2008, we develop various specifications of a composite risk index (CRI) with a spatial resolution of half a degree for Kenya and Uganda in the year 2008. A quantitative comparison with conflict data for the year 2008 provides support for the composite risk index. Finally, the composite risk index is contrasted with the findings of three qualitative case studies, which provide mixed support for the index and help to identify its strengths and weaknesses as well as conceptual needs for further quantitative studies on climate change and violent conflict.     

扩大中国乡土社会的认知解读范围——《天柱文书》序简

《天柱文书》首辑凡22册68卷,近已由江苏人民出版社出版。透过大量新公布的文书史料,不仅可以更好地了解清水江文明,推劲区域学研究的健康发展,同时也能丰富文书学的成果宝藏,扩大中国乡土社会的资料取用与认知解读范围,从而大有裨于吾国学术文化事业的兴盛与繁荣。     

Not Just a Jesuit Atlas of China: Qing Imperial Cartography and Its European Connections

In the literature, the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ or Huangyu quanlan tu 皇輿全覽圖, is mostly referred to as ‘the Jesuit atlas of China’. The reason is that this early eighteenth-century atlas of all Qing China’s territories plus Korea and Tibet is assumed to have resulted from European missionaries importing European cartographic practices. In this essay, I argue that this view is outdated and can no longer be sustained. By revisiting the background of the missionaries’ involvement in cartographic exchanges between Asia and Europe, the techniques used for surveying Qing territories and the production of the resulting atlases, I show that the mapping project behind the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ is best understood as a creative answer to the unique needs of Qing frontier management and imperial control, made possible by the integration, in mensurational and in representational terms, of European and East Asian cartographic practices.     

Perceived Risk and Citizen Preferences for Governmental Management of Routine Hazards

Risk perceptions are important to the policy process because they inform individuals’ preferences for government management of hazards that affect personal safety, public health, or ecological conditions. Studies of risk in the policy process have often focused on explicating the determinants of risk perceptions for highly salient, high consequence hazards (e.g., nuclear energy). We argue that it is useful to also study more routinely experienced hazards; doing so shows the relevance of risk perceptions in individuals’ daily lives. Our investigation focuses on the impact perceived risk has on citizens’ preferences over hazard management policies (as distinct from identifying risk perception determinants per se). We use a recursive structural equation model to analyze public opinion data measuring attitudes in three distinct issue domains: air pollution, crime, and hazardous waste storage and disposal. We find that citizens utilize perceived risk rationally: greater perceived risk generally produces support for more proactive government to manage potential hazards. This perceived risk–policy response relationship generally holds even though the policy options respondents were asked to consider entailed nontrivial costs to the public. The exception seems to be when individuals know less about the substantive issue domain.     

Dynamic optimization of horticulture among the Muscogee Creek Indians of the southeastern United States

This paper reviews archaeological applications of optimization theory applied to resource use. A model of agricultural corn production is derived for a single Muscogee Creek Indian town (CA 1725–1825) which was situated in the southeastern United States. The corn productivity model is based on soil depletion, soil variation, known locations of horticultural fields, population size, and nutritional requirements. The corn productivity model shows that corn production varied significantly between 1725 and 1825. The residents of the town shifted their horticultural gardens in order to maintain a nutritional minimum. The model was compared to the marginal value theorem and expectations derived from risk minimization models. Residents of Cussetuh abandoned their horticultural fields well before the instantaneous long-term average rate of production for the habitat. The model shows that the residents of Cussetuh were risk minimizers and were not maximizing the long term average rate of corn yield in their gardens.     

A dendrochronological investigation of stringed instruments from the collection of the Cherubini Conservatory in Florence,Italy

A total of forty-nine stringed instruments of the Conservatory Cherubini collection, at the Musical Instruments Department of the Accademia Gallery in Florence, were submitted to a dendrochronological investigation in order to date them, check the validity of their attribution and to find out more about their construction characteristics. Thirty-seven instruments were successfully dated, thereby determining the terminus post quem date of manufacture. The correlation values of the statistical cross-dating tests were generally very high. The dendrochronological analyses determined which instruments had been made from wood of the same provenance and, in some cases, from the same tree trunk. The mean chronology built from the musical instrument series, named “Accademia Master Chronology”, is 558 years long and dates from 1396 to 1953AD. The interval between the youngest ring dated dendrochronologically and the given date of manufacture increased constantly in the course of the centuries, from a mean value of just over eleven years for instruments built in the eighteenth century, to nearly 74 years in the twentieth century, when the use of old wood from other artefacts became more frequent. Furthermore, in the Cherubini Collection, the average tree rings on violins are smaller than those of other stringed instruments; in fact, they increase in proportion to instrument size and are widest in cello and double bass.