Area-based Scheme Research Articles

A Comparison of The Health Impacts of Individual Level and Area Based Welsh Government Fuel Poverty Schemes

IntroductionLiving in a cold and/or damp house is known to increase the risk of morbidity, mortality and excess winter deaths. To reduce fuel poverty in Wales, the Welsh Government developed schemes to provide energy efficiency improvements to those most likely affected by fuel poverty.
 We explored the relative impacts on health of an individual-level scheme, Warm Homes Nest, and an area-based scheme, Arbed.
 Objectives and ApproachOverall aim: to evaluate the health impacts of Welsh Government funded schemes designed to reduce fuel poverty. Presented objective: to investigate the relative impact of the individual-level and area-based schemes on the health of recipients. A longitudinal dataset was created using the anonymised residence that received improvements linked to residents’ health measures using routine health records held in the SAIL Databank at Swansea University.
 We used difference-in-difference (DID) estimations to compare any changes in recipient health before and after intervention with any concurrent change in health in those yet to receive the intervention.
 ResultsAn analysis of the Warm Homes Nest Scheme, published in 2017 and presented at the IPDLN 2018 conference found a positive impact of the scheme on the health of recipients.
 This presentation will describe the further analysis comparing the area-based Arbed scheme with both the recipients of the individual-level Nest scheme and groups in comparable need that had not yet received the intervention. We will present results focussing on the relative impacts of the two schemes on respiratory health, infection prescribing and mental health.
 Conclusion / ImplicationsProviding home energy efficiency interventions has the potential to benefit population health, however there is a scarcity of evidence comparing different methods of implementing schemes. Our findings will inform more effectively focussed home energy efficiency schemes and potentially thus improve the health and wellbeing of people living in Wales.

Fuel Poverty Data Linking Project

Background with rationaleIn Wales, a household is considered to be in fuel poverty if it needs to spend more than 10% of its net income on maintaining a satisfactory heating regime. Addressing fuel poverty is particularly important to Wales with an estimated 29% of households in fuel poverty compared with 17% in the UK overall.
 To tackle fuel poverty in Wales, the Welsh Government implemented two fuel poverty schemes. Warm Homes Nest is a demand-led scheme and Warm Homes Arbed an area-based scheme. Both schemes provide free home energy efficiency measures e.g. home insulation or boilers.
 Main AimTo use linked administrative data to evaluate the impacts of Welsh Government home energy efficiency schemes for low income households. The findings will inform future fuel poverty schemes in Wales.
 Methods/ApproachIndividual-level data from both schemes was anonymously linked to routine health records, using the SAIL (Secure Anonymised Information Linkage) Databank, to examine the health service use of recipients.
 We used difference-in-difference estimations to compare any changes in the health of recipients before and after intervention with any concurrent change in health in those yet to receive an intervention.
 ResultsResults published in 2017 indicated positive effects for the Nest scheme, including positive impacts on respiratory health and general health.
 We will report results comparing the health impacts of the Arbed and Nest schemes. The study will be the first to directly compare the health impacts of a demand-led and an area-based energy efficiency scheme.
 Conclusion Providing home energy efficiency interventions has the potential to benefit population health; however, there is a scarcity of evidence comparing different methods of implementing schemes. Our findings will inform more effectively focussed home energy efficiency schemes and potentially improve the health of people living in Wales.

Evaluating the impacts on health outcomes of Welsh Government funded schemes designed to improve the energy efficiency of the homes of low income households: A comparison of individual level and area based schemes.

IntroductionLiving in a cold and/or damp house can damage health. To reduce fuel poverty in Wales, the Welsh Government developed domestic energy efficiency schemes - an individual-level scheme, Warm Homes Nest and an area-based scheme, Warm Homes Arbed. Both schemes provide improvements to those most likely affected by fuel poverty.
 Objectives and ApproachOverall aim: to evaluate the health impacts of Welsh Government funded schemes designed to reduce fuel poverty. Presented objective: to investigate the relative impact of the individual-level and area-based schemes on the health of recipients.
 A longitudinal dataset was created using the anonymised residence that received improvements linked to residents’ health measures (hospital admissions, GP prescriptions and clinical diagnoses) using routine health records held in the SAIL Databank at Swansea University.
 We used difference-in-difference (DID) estimations to compare any changes in recipient health before and after intervention with any concurrent change in health in those yet to receive the intervention.
 ResultsAn analysis of the Warm Homes Nest Scheme, published in 2017 and presented at the IPDLN 2017 conference found a positive impact of the scheme on the health of recipients.
 This presentation will describe the further analysis (concluding shortly) comparing the area-based Arbed scheme with both the recipients of the individual-level Nest scheme and groups in comparable need that had not yet received the intervention. We will present results focussing on the relative impacts of the two schemes on cardiovascular, respiratory and general health.
 Conclusion/ImplicationsProviding home energy efficiency interventions has the potential to benefit population health; however, there is a scarcity of evidence comparing different methods of implementing schemes. Our findings will inform more effectively-focussed home energy efficiency schemes and potentially thus improve the health of people living in Wales.

An Efficient Area-Based Localization Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

The area-based localization schemes estimate the residence area of the unknown nodes, using only the position of some reference nodes, called anchors. Unfortunately, these algorithms suffer from the wrong decisions made about the presence inside a given area. In this paper, an attempt is made to overcome this shortcoming by introducing a new area-based scheme for wireless sensor networks (WSN), called REAL (REliable Area-based Localization algorithm). REAL scheme is range-free and energy efficient. It does not require the remaining nodes to exchange information; it is only based on proximity information of neighboring anchors for the localization process. Our REAL scheme introduces a new specific geometric shape that defines the sensor’s residence area and performs a new efficient test to check the presence of a sensor inside a given area. Extensive simulations were conducted to evaluate the performance of REAL scheme. The simulation results confirmed that REAL scheme guaranty better location accuracy and higher percentage of localizable nodes, compared to state of the art approaches.

Reducing carbon, tackling fuel poverty: adoption and performance of air-source heat pumps in East Yorkshire, UK

Deploying heating technologies, such as air-source heat pumps (ASHPs), can respond to the dual challenges of tackling fuel poverty and reducing carbon emissions from domestic energy consumption. In the UK, ASHP performance has been found to be below design levels. Elements of three strands of literature – innovation diffusion, environmental psychology and neighbourhood effects – are combined to gain insights into why the adoption and performance of ASHPs are lagging policy targets and design potential. Evidence from users, installers and area-based scheme facilitators suggests that the perceived complexity of the technology is a barrier. The level of technology maturity and the typical profile of the elderly fuel poor do not match; the target group might prefer to be late adopters or laggards in adopting technology. The role of installers is critical as the disruption from installation is a barrier to adoption and ASHPs place demands on users to change existing practices.

Depth Map Coding Based on Synthesized View Distortion Function

This paper presents an efficient depth map coding method based on a newly defined rendering view distortion function. As compared to the conventional depth map coding in which distortion is measured by only investigating the coding error in depth map, the proposed scheme focuses on virtually synthesized view quality by involving co-located color information. In detail, the proposed distortion function estimates rendered view quality, where area-based scheme is provided in order to mimic the warping/view-rendering process accurately. Moreover, the coding performance of the proposed distortion metric is even improved by involving the additional SKIP mode derived by co-located color coding information. The simulation results show the proposed scheme could achieve approximately 30% bit-rate saving for depth data, and about 10% bit-rate saving for overall multi-view data.

Enhanced Relevance-Based Approach for Network Controls

Simple flooding, probabilistic approach, area-based scheme, knowledge-based approach and Multi hop Vehicular broadcast is not suitable for VANETs scenario because of its dynamic nature. Relevance scheme is proposed to disseminate the relevant message for sharing in VANETs and discards the redundant messages from the network and improves the over all performance of network. The relevance-based approach does not provide network control and it only broadcast user traffic. This paper presents an improvement in mathematical model to consider the network control. Simulations using NS-2 show that proposed mathematical model consider the network control and improve the global benefit. Povzetek: Predstavljen je matematicen model izboljsanega nadzora in upravljanja z mrežo.

Paging and Location Management in IEEE 802.16j Multihop Relay Network

IEEE 802.16j is an emerging wireless broadband networking standard that integrates infrastructure base stations with multihop relay technology. Based on the idle mode operation in IEEE 802.16j, we propose a novel location management and paging scheme. It integrates the paging area-based and the timer-based location update mechanism. In paging area-based scheme, an idle mode mobile station updates when it moves to a new paging area. In timer-based scheme, an idle mode MS updates when the location update timer expires. In this work, we formulate the mathematical model to evaluate the performance of the proposed paging scheme. A new random walk mobility model that is suitable for modeling in multihop relay network is created. Optimization of location update timer is also investigated.

Optimizing the benefits of urban road user charging

Traffic congestion is a feature of most modern cities but attempts to control it or limit its effects have met with only modest success. There is significant and continuing interest in the concept of charging city vehicle users, although apart from the use of parking charges actual operational schemes are few and far between. In this paper, we compare three alternative charging policies using a simplified model of travel demand and supply, which we combine with cost benefit techniques. The charging policies are area-based charging in which users pay to locate in or enter an area, terminal-charging based on supplementary parking fees in residential and non-residential locations and distance-based charging which is a charge related to how far users travel. The model allows for behavioural effects resulting from trip diversion and demand suppression, as well as capacity restraint (speed-flow feedback effects based on limited route capacity). In the case study, we parameterize the model using data and geographical dimensions based on London. We show that area based charging delivers the least benefits whilst a hybrid policy based on terminal and distance-based charges delivers the most. Because it is of topical interest, we compare our results and predictions with the Mayor's strategy for London, which is an area-based scheme. We conclude that the revenue generated using a hybrid policy would be as great as for an area based scheme whilst at the same time delivering substantially greater benefits to road users in terms of travel time and other savings.

Retrieval of ocean winds from satellite scatterometer by a neural network

This paper presents the reconstruction of a wind field from three-beam scatterometer measurements under the framework of a neural network. A neural network is adopted to implement the inversion of a geophysical model function (GMF) that relates the scatterometer measurements of normalized radar cross section to surface wind speed and direction. To illustrate the functionality and applicability of the neural network, a set of wind fields generated by means of the Monte Carlo simulation are used. At each sample point of the wind field, the speed and direction are simulated. Then, a GMF CMOD4 is used to synthesize the normalized radar cross section at three pointing antennas according to the ERS-1 configuration. In such a case, the neural network is constructed to model the inverse transfer function. For inputs, a pixel-based and area-based scheme are considered. The network training is accomplished by mapping input-output pairs that are randomly selected from the database of simulated wind fields. The effectiveness of the neural network as an inverse transfer function is validated. Four data sets of ERS-1 scatterometer data over the western Pacific were selected for case study. Intercomparison with other methods concludes that the use of neural network has its indispensable advantages and better retrieval accuracy can be obtained.