Suchergebnisse

Governments and developers around the globe are exploiting the benefits of island spatiality to sell urban sustainability. Many new-build smart cities, eco-cities, and sustainable cities ('smart eco-cities') are constructed on small islands or otherwise bounded from surrounding urban space. Island spatiality presents benefits for selling smart eco-cities as role models of sustainable innovation: ease of creating value, ease of measuring sustainability, and ease of communicating success. These benefits, however, are all largely illusory, contributing primarily to the appearance of sustainability for the sake of economic profit. The great innovation of island smart-cities is frequently an innovation in the selling of sustainability. By monetising the environment through ecosystem services, incentivising largely symbolic 'green' projects and architecture, drawing attention away from unsustainable practices elsewhere, and exacerbating social inequality, island smart eco-cities may be making the world less sustainable. They may also be unreproducible by design and lead to a global devaluing of genuinely sustainable but non-iconic urban development. Island smart eco-cities increasingly serve as secessionary enclaves for a global elite, privileging corporate over public interests and spearheading an invidious argument of sustainable development by deregulation.

In science, the resilience concept has increasingly been embraced as a framework for disaster-related work. As a result, policy supports 'resilient communities' programs. The current transition from a 'descriptive' scientific concept explaining the state of a system to a 'normative' agenda applied by local authorities faces various challenges. To contribute to the A|Z journal's special issue on Cities at Risk, this paper argues that it is crucial to address and explain these challenges in order to effectively increase resilience. It examines some theoretical foundations and underlying assumptions of the resilience concept and highlights some challenges associated with practical application in urban locations. Most importantly, the chronic needs and root causes of vulnerability will remain unsolved and will continue to generate vulnerable groups as long as efforts to increase resilience ignore the preconditions and root causes of (what is effectively social and political) vulnerability. Building resilience in cities provides opportunities to address under-studied elements, to gain understanding about the historical and socio-political processes that create and maintain social vulnerabilities, and to develop designs capable of identifying options for intervention and leverage points that can move communities toward less vulnerable development pathways.

Background: Vibrio cholerae is a water-borne pathogen with a global burden estimate at 1.4 to 4.0 million annual cases. Over 94% of these cases are reported in Africa and more research is needed to understand cholera dynamics in the region. Cholera data are lacking, mainly due to reporting issues, creating barriers for widespread research on cholera epidemiology and management in Africa. Main body: Here, we present datasets that were created to help address this gap, collating freely available sub-national cholera data for Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The data were collated from a variety of English and French publicly available sources, including the World Health Organization, PubMed, UNICEF, EM-DAT, the Nigerian CDC and peer-reviewed literature. These data include information on cases, deaths, age, gender, oral cholera vaccination, risk factors and interventions. Conclusion: These datasets can facilitate qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research in these two high burden countries to assist in public health planning. The data can be used in collaboration with organisations in the two countries, which have also collected data or undertaking research. By making the data and methods available, we aim to encourage their use and further data collection and compilation to help improve the data gaps for cholera in Africa.

Abstract. A major hazard during the eruption of explosive volcanoes is the formation of pyroclastic density currents (PDCs). Casualties and physical building damage from PDCs are caused by the temperature, pressure, and particle load of the flow. This paper examines the vulnerability of buildings and occupants to the forces imposed by PDCs along with associated infiltration of PDC particle and gas mixtures into an intact building. New studies are presented of building and occupant vulnerability with respect to temperature, pressure, and ash concentration. Initial mitigation recommendations are provided.

Abstract. Plinian and subplinian volcanic eruptions can be accompanied by tephra falls which may last hours or days, posing threats to people, buildings and economic activity. Numerous historical examples exist of tephra damage and tephra casualties. The mechanisms and consequences of roof collapse from static tephra load are an important area of tephra damage requiring more research. This paper contributes to this work by estimating the structural vulnerability of buildings to tephra load based on both analytical studies and observed damage. New studies are presented of roof strengths in the area around Mt. Vesuvius in southern Italy and of field surveys undertaken in other European volcanic locations to assess building vulnerability to tephra fall. The results are a proposed set of new European tephra fall roof vulnerability curves in areas potentially threatened by explosive volcanic eruptions along with comments on the human casualty implications of roof collapse under tephra loading. Some mitigation recommendations are provided.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is promoted and critiqued by many players involved in or opposed to petroleum exploration and extraction, although a common understanding of CSR's theoretical and practical meanings rarely exists. This paper uses Arctic petroleum in the Barents region (Norway and Russia) to investigate local perceptions of CSR. We conducted open-ended, semi-structured interviews in four locations: Hammerfest, Murmansk, Komi Republic, and Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO). Interviewees included the local population, regional and local authorities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and petroleum company representatives. The field research suggests that those who gain directly from the petroleum industry and do not directly experience negative impacts were more inclined to be positive about the industry, although overall, general support for petroleum activity was high. In some cases, positive economic benefits resulted in greater tolerance of environmental risk. Sometimes, the industry and government were criticised by locals for failing to support a more equitable distribution of broader economic benefits. Rather than splitting along for-profit/NGO or indigenous/non-indigenous lines, our analysis suggests that those who are closer to the petroleum industry or its benefits, termed 'insiders', tend to be more positive than 'outsiders'. This study is perhaps the first of its kind in its focus on local perceptions of CSR for Arctic petroleum across the Barents region. The findings of this study not only match with that of the previous literature on Arctic petroleum but also provide further practical and theoretical insights by indicating subtleties and nuances within the localities examined.

Abstract. A multi-hazard, multi-vulnerability impact model has been developed for application to European volcanoes that could significantly damage human settlements. This impact model is based on volcanological analyses of the potential hazards and hazard intensities coupled with engineering analyses of the vulnerability to these hazards of residential buildings in four European locations threatened by explosive volcanic eruptions. For a given case study site, inputs to the model are population data, building characteristics, volcano scenarios as a series of hazard intensities, and scenarios such as the time of eruption or the percentage of the population which has been evacuated. Outputs are the rates of fatalities, seriously injured casualties, and destroyed buildings for a given scenario. These results are displayed in a GIS, thereby presenting risk maps which are easy to use for presenting to public officials, the media, and the public. Technical limitations of the model are discussed and future planned developments are considered. This work contributes to the EU-funded project EXPLORIS (Explosive Eruption Risk and Decision Support for EU Populations Threatened by Volcanoes, EVR1-2001-00047).

The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change is an international, multidisciplinary research collaboration between academic institutions and practitioners across the world. It follows on from the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission, which concluded that the response to climate change could be "the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century". The Lancet Countdown aims to track the health impacts of climate hazards; health resilience and adaptation; health co-benefits of climate change mitigation; economics and finance; and political and broader engagement. These focus areas form the five thematic working groups of the Lancet Countdown and represent different aspects of the complex association between health and climate change. These thematic groups will provide indicators for a global overview of health and climate change; national case studies highlighting countries leading the way or going against the trend; and engagement with a range of stakeholders. The Lancet Countdown ultimately aims to report annually on a series of indicators across these five working groups. This paper outlines the potential indicators and indicator domains to be tracked by the collaboration, with suggestions on the methodologies and datasets available to achieve this end. The proposed indicator domains require further refinement, and mark the beginning of an ongoing consultation process—from November, 2016 to early 2017—to develop these domains, identify key areas not currently covered, and change indicators where necessary. This collaboration will actively seek to engage with existing monitoring processes, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and WHO's climate and health country profiles. The indicators will also evolve over time through ongoing collaboration with experts and a range of stakeholders, and be dependent on the emergence of new evidence and knowledge. During the course of its work, the Lancet Countdown will adopt a collaborative and iterative process, which aims to complement existing initiatives, welcome engagement with new partners, and be open to developing new research projects on health and climate change.

Executive summary The Lancet Countdown is an international collaboration that independently monitors the health consequences of a changing climate. Publishing updated, new, and improved indicators each year, the Lancet Countdown represents the consensus of leading researchers from 43 academic institutions and UN agencies. The 44 indicators of this report expose an unabated rise in the health impacts of climate change and the current health consequences of the delayed and inconsistent response of countries around the globe—providing a clear imperative for accelerated action that puts the health of people and planet above all else. The 2021 report coincides with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26), at which countries are facing pressure to realise the ambition of the Paris Agreement to keep the global average temperature rise to 1·5°C and to mobilise the financial resources required for all countries to have an effective climate response. These negotiations unfold in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic—a global health crisis that has claimed millions of lives, affected livelihoods and communities around the globe, and exposed deep fissures and inequities in the world's capacity to cope with, and respond to, health emergencies. Yet, in its response to both crises, the world is faced with an unprecedented opportunity to ensure a healthy future for all. Deepening inequities in a warming world Record temperatures in 2020 resulted in a new high of 3·1 billion more person-days of heatwave exposure among people older than 65 years and 626 million more person-days affecting children younger than 1 year, compared with the annual average for the 1986–2005 baseline (indicator 1.1.2). Looking to 2021, people older than 65 years or younger than 1 year, along with people facing social disadvantages, were the most affected by the record-breaking temperatures of over 40°C in the Pacific Northwest areas of the USA and Canada in June, 2021— an event that would have been almost ...

The Lancet Countdown tracks progress on health and climate change and provides an independent assessment of the health effects of climate change, the implementation of the Paris Agreement,1 and the health implications of these actions. It follows on from the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change,2 which concluded that anthropogenic climate change threatens to undermine the past 50 years of gains in public health, and conversely, that a comprehensive response to climate change could be "the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century". The Lancet Countdown is a collaboration between 24 academic institutions and intergovernmental organisations based in every continent and with representation from a wide range of disciplines. The collaboration includes climate scientists, ecologists, economists, engineers, experts in energy, food, and transport systems, geographers, mathematicians, social and political scientists, public health professionals, and doctors. It reports annual indicators across five sections: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation planning and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement.

The Lancet Countdown is an international collaboration established to provide an independent, global monitoring system dedicated to tracking the emerging health profile of the changing climate. The 2020 report presents 43 indicators across five sections: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerabilities; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement. This report represents the findings and consensus of the 35 leading academic institutions and UN agencies that make up The Lancet Countdown, and draws on the expertise of climate scientists, geographers, engineers, experts in energy, food, and transport, economists, social, and political scientists, data scientists, public health professionals, and doctors.