Arizona Case Research Articles

Household energy use response to extreme heat with a biophysical model of temperature regulation: An Arizona case study

Rising temperatures associated with climate change are impacting household energy use. Many of today’s industrial-technological-urban humans thermoregulate in the face of varying temperatures using extra-metabolic energy use for heating and cooling our indoor microclimates. Previously, household energy use as a function of temperature change over seasons and time has been described using a three-part model of thermoregulation, the Extra-Metabolic Scholander-Irving model (EMSI), where energy use is lowest in the thermal neutral zone around room temperature and increases in colder and hotter temperatures. However, the EMSI model has only been evaluated for moderately warm cities to date, covering only two parts of the three-part model and lacking evaluation of data for extremely hot temperatures. We show that household energy use in Arizona, a U.S. state that includes hot semi-arid environments, varies across topography, and increases in response to the hottest summer months–exemplifying the third part of the EMSI model. Additionally, household energy use is lowest in the spring and fall and increases in response to colder temperatures in the winter. This relationship has hysteresis related to differences in household income; service regions with lower-income households delay the onset of extra-metabolic energy use for cooling. We use this model to gain predictive insights into energy use demand due to ongoing warming in the context of the desert city of Yuma, Arizona, where a relatively small increase in mean temperatures of ~1.5°C since the Industrial Revolution produced a 20-day increase (6%) in cooling days annually. Our study expands the EMSI model of thermal regulation to the previously missing hot part of the model, thereby gaining insights into the unique challenges of sustaining extra-metabolic thermoregulation in the face of global warming.

The state of environmental justice analyses in NEPA: The case of Arizona

As the unequal impacts of environmental harms and climate change have become apparent, environmental justice (EJ) is an increasingly salient matter in US environmental policy and impact assessments. The EJ impacts of important infrastructural decisions and investments are most often analyzed in environmental impact statements required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—a globally influential piece of legislation—with significant discretion given to organizations on how to conduct these analyses. There is little systematic understanding of how these analyses are conducted and what the findings of these analyses tend to be. In this paper, we analyze a decade's worth of EJ analyses that appear in environmental impact statements conducted in the state of Arizona in the US as a first attempt to fill this gap in understanding. We find that throughout EJ analyses 11 different demographic indicators, ten different community boundaries, and eight different population thresholds are used with considerable variation to identify EJ communities. The variation in how these criteria are applied points to an inconsistent definition of an EJ community throughout the federal government. Still, analyses consistently do not find negative EJ impacts to be likely. While NEPA has promoted positive environmental outcomes in the past, it may currently be failing to do this for EJ. We highlight possible flaws in EJ analysis methods and shortcomings of the NEPA process itself that may cumulatively obstruct meaningful EJ consideration. With the widespread influence of NEPA on environmental impact assesment approaches globally, our findings raise questions that EJ analyses in environmental impact assesments outside the US could suffer from the same methodological shortcomings we identify.

Extraction without reserve: The case of Arizona's penal care regime

Prison healthcare reform and litigation have emerged as critical sites of social and political struggle in early twenty-first century punishment. In the case of Arizona, privatization of its prison healthcare system maintained commitments to cheap and mean punishment in the wake of economic crisis, which led to an ongoing class-action lawsuit over prisoners’ rights violations. By conducting a case study of Arizona's prison healthcare crisis, this article mobilizes important interventions in the theoretical accounts of late mass incarceration and the penal state. Not only did Arizona's brand of penal austerity anticipate the scaling back of social services across the state, but effectively subjected prisoners to a perpetual deferment of care. Drawing upon this sociopolitical context, I elaborate a theory of penal extraction whereby care capacity is not only removed from the prison, but the prisoner's life becomes like an exhaustible resource.

The State of Environmental Justice Analyses in Nepa: The Case of Arizona

The State of Environmental Justice Analyses in Nepa: The Case of Arizona

Arizona's Insanity Defense, Clark, and the 2007 Legislature.

In the post-Hinckley era, four states (Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Kansas) abolished their traditional insanity statutes in 1979 in favor of what are in certain circumstances mens rea insanity statutes. These changes were controversial and attracted early attention of legal scholars and courts in the individual states and at the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2006 Supreme Court decision in Clark v. Arizona had distinct but related concerns that helped crystallize the Court's attention on both mens rea and traditional insanity defense statutes. This decision led to a dramatic precedent that may have settled these matters for generations to come. This article will discuss the changes in the Arizona statutory and case law and the interplay between these changes and the important decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court during the same time span. The result of the changes has led to a situation in Arizona where, for the most serious criminal defendants with mental illness, there is no current mechanism to acquit a defendant on the basis of insanity by a mens rea statute or otherwise.

Organizational Readiness for Community Health Worker Workforce Integration Among Medicaid Contracted Health Plans and Provider Networks: An Arizona Case Study.

Understanding and building organizational capacity for system change and the integration of the Community Health Worker (CHW) workforce within the health scare sector requires a supportive organizational culture among sector leaders and providers. The aim of this mixed-methods study was to assess organizational readiness for CHW workforce integration into Arizona Medicaid health systems and care teams. This collaborative effort was in direct response to emergent state and national CHW workforce policy opportunities, and the shifting health care landscape in Arizona – which merged behavior and physical health. Specifically, and in collaboration with a broad-based, statewide CHW workforce coalition, led by the CHW professional association, we assessed 245 licensed health care professionals with experience working with CHWs and 16 Medicaid-contracted health plan leadership. Our goal was to generate a baseline understanding of the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs these stakeholders held about the integration of CHWs into systems and teams. Our findings demonstrate a high level of organizational readiness and action toward integration of CHWs within the Arizona health care system and care teams. CHWs have emerged as a health care workforce able to enhance the patient experience of care, improve population health, reduce cost of care, and improve the experience of providing care among clinicians and staff.

Specific Learning Disorders in Higher Education: The University of Arizona case study

Over the past decade the growing number of students with Attention and Learning Disorders in universities has been documented all over the world. Difficulties experienced by students during their academic career have led to an increase in the support services offered by Universities to meet their needs. This development has taken place as a result of changing attitudes and instructional practices across many countries. In this paper, we highlight an example from the Unites States where one university provides multiple services to increase optimal outcomes for this specific population.

Development of Rainfall Intensity-Duration-Frequency Curves Based on Dynamically Downscaled Climate Data: Arizona Case Study

AbstractThe ideal framework for water infrastructure design in any region relies on rainfall characteristics of that region, which is defined through rainfall intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) cur...

Se Acabaron Las Palabras: A Post-Mortem Flores v. Arizona Disproportional Funding Analysis of Targeted English Learner Expenditures

Arizona has played a large part in the development and implementation of policy that directly inhibits equity of opportunity for the English learner (EL) population, the largest and most damaging of which came out of legislation passed due to the Flores v. Arizona case which concluded in 2015. This research article seeks to critically challenge how Arizona-reified barriers to learning ELs continue to experience. This article serves as a post-mortem to Flores v. Arizona and measures the relationship between targeted EL expenditures as a function of the percentage of ELs within districts. The findings suggest that the scale of ELs within districts is inversely related to targeted EL expenditures. Furthermore, Arizona has reified laws that inhibit EL educational opportunities across the state.

Cross-scale interactions of socio-hydrological subsystems: examining the frontier of common pool resource governance in Arizona

A critical frontier of water management in the western US is the challenge of cross-scale interactions. It is difficult to establish clear governance boundaries and collectively act when basins are interconnected, surface water and groundwater flows are interrelated, and urban and rural water demands are increasingly affected by regional and international telecoupling. Changing climate, snowpack, and rainfall, peri-urbanization, and shifting economics of rural landscapes further increase sustainable governance challenges. Using a lens of cross-scale interactions drawn from the social-ecological literature, we develop a set of conceptual frames for socio-hydrology that highlight: (1) spatial and temporal mismatches, (2) telecoupled flows, and (3) networked and nested systems. Using the exemplary case of Central Arizona, we explore nesting of the system within the larger western socio-hydrological system (SHS), impacts of changing Colorado River policies, such as the Drought Contingency Plan, and emerging institutional arrangements between the State of Arizona, agricultural communities, and Tribal Nations. We conclude with a set of questions that inform analyses of cross-scale, multi-level governance within social-ecological systems. Without grappling with the dynamics and interconnectedness of SHSs, we cannot sustainably manage water in an increasingly arid West.

Community Dental Health Coordinators: Innovative Impact with Dental Case Management an Arizona Case Study

Community Dental Health Coordinators: Innovative Impact with Dental Case Management an Arizona Case Study

Development of Dust Storm Modeling for Use in Freeway Safety and Operations Management: An Arizona Case Study

Extreme weather conditions such as strong winds, hail, heavy rainfall, heavy snowfall, and high air temperature impact roads, traffic, and operational decisions. Strong winds in arid regions may pick up fine dust particles and create massive blowing plumes dramatically reducing the visibility. This reduced visibility severely impairs driving ability causing catastrophic crashes. The purpose of this research was to investigate the impacts of dust storms on freeway safety and operations. Interstates 8, 10, 15, 17, 19, and 40 running through Arizona were studied in relation to dust loading and crash risks. To achieve this, nine severe Arizona dust storms (2009–2016) were modeled using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled with a chemistry module (WRF-Chem). WRF is a mesoscale numerical weather prediction system with a software architecture allowing for parallel computation. When coupled with a chemistry module (WRF-Chem), it could be used to model the fate and transport of the particulate matter. Dust hot spots were calculated based on Getis-Ord Gi* statistical method and were correlated to dust storm caused crashes. It was shown that a positive Gi* accompanied by dust loading of at least 50 kgm–2 will result in a crash with a 90% confidence level. The outcome of this research could be used by local and federal transportation agencies to communicate warnings to drivers for improved safety.

Assessing local climate zones in arid cities: The case of Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada

The local climate zone (LCZ) classification scheme is a standardization framework to describe the form and function of cities for urban heat island (UHI) studies. This study classifies and evaluates LCZs for two arid desert cities in the Southwestern United States – Phoenix and Las Vegas – following the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) method. Both cities are classified into seven built type LCZs and seven land-cover type LCZs at 100-m resolution using Google Earth, Saga GIS, and Landsat 8 scenes. Average surface cover properties (building fraction, impervious fraction, pervious fraction) and sky view factors of classified LCZs are then evaluated and compared to pre-defined LCZ representative ranges from the literature, and their implications on the surface UHI (SUHI) effect are explained. Results suggest that observed LCZ properties in arid desert environments do not always match the proposed value ranges from the literature, especially with regard to sky view factor (SVF) upper boundaries. Although the LCZ classification scheme was originally designed to describe local climates with respect to air temperature, our analysis shows that much can be learned from investigating land surface temperature (LST) in these zones. This study serves as a substantial new resource laying a foundation for assessing the SUHI in cities using the LCZ scheme, which could inform climate simulations at local and regional scales.

As Abordagens Policiais e o Caso Miranda v. Arizona (1966): violência institucional e o papel das cortes constitucionais na garantia da assistência do defensor na fase policial

O texto analisa a doutrina construída a respeito dos direitos do acusado nos Estados Unidos, a partir da decisão da Suprema Corte no caso Miranda v. Arizona (1966). Descreve-se o modo como o direito de não produzir prova contra si (nemo tenetur se detegere) se manifesta na fase de policiamento, identificação de suspeitos e investigação policial. Pretende-se, com isso, demonstrar as diferenças entre o direito estadunidense e o direito brasileiro, realçando, neste caso, o caráter essencialmente formal das interpretações que visam a garantir direitos aos suspeitos. Desse modo, intenta-se demonstrar a responsabilidade pela violência institucional presente em decisões do Supremo Tribunal Federal, que, ao contrário da Suprema Corte dos Estados Unidos, não se defronta com as dimensões práticas e constitucionais da custódia de suspeitos e das confissões feitas na fase policial.

Landscape-scale wildlife species richness metrics to inform wind and solar energy facility siting: An Arizona case study

The juxtaposition of wildlife and wind or solar energy facility infrastructure can present problems for developers, planners, policy makers, and management agencies. Guidance on siting of these renewable energy facilities may help identify potential wildlife-facility conflicts with species of regulatory or economic concern. However, existing spatial guidance usually does not consider all wildlife that might use a potential facility location or corridors for its servicing infrastructure. We illustrate an approach toward assessing potential wildlife-facility conflicts using readily available vertebrate habitat models. The U.S. Geological Survey's Gap Analysis Program (GAP) has developed spatial models of potential habitat for vertebrate species across the entire nation. To illustrate their applicability, we used GAP models to estimate richness of all native, terrestrial vertebrates within Arizona and for those vertebrates grouped by class or by sensitivity to the type of facility infrastructure. We examined the spatial overlap of high species richness of each group with agency-developed guidance used to inform facility-siting decisions and found that GAP-based richness mappings augmented existing guidance. As the GAP vertebrate habitat models are publicly available for the entire USA, use of these data can provide a coarse view of potential wildlife-facility conflicts and inform facility planning early in the process.

Polarimetric radar observations of dust storms at C- and S-band

Wind-lofted particles in dust storms exhibit repeatable polarimetric radar characteristics in one C-band and three S-band datasets, including reflectivity factor (ZH) <25 dBZ and copolar cross-correlation coefficient (ρhv) <0.65 (and often <0.50). Differential reflectivity (ZDR) varies substantially in dust storms, with values averaging <0 dB in an Arizona case and +1.5 to +4 dB in two southern Plains cases. C-band ZDR was generally +1 to +3 dB in a Kuwait dust storm, similar to the southern Plains cases. ZDR may exhibit small patches of values <–3 dB, especially when observing at an altitude <0.5 km above radar level. Whereas dusty and nondusty convective outflow boundaries may have similar ZH characteristics, non-dusty boundaries may be differentiated by their relatively higher ZDR and ρhv values.

Toward enhanced capability for detecting and predicting dust events in the western United States: the Arizona case study

Abstract. Dust aerosols affect human life, ecosystems, atmospheric chemistry and climate in various aspects. Some studies have revealed intensified dust activity in the western US during the past decades despite the weaker dust activity in non-US regions. It is important to extend the historical dust records, to better understand their temporal changes, and to use such information to improve the daily dust forecasting skill as well as the projection of future dust activity under the changing climate. This study develops dust records in Arizona in 2005–2013 using multiple observation data sets, including in situ measurements at the surface Air Quality System (AQS) and Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) sites, and level 2 deep blue aerosol product by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. The diurnal and inter-annual variability of identified dust events are shown related to observed weather patterns (e.g., wind and soil moisture) and surface conditions (e.g., land cover type and vegetation conditions), suggesting a potential for use of satellite soil moisture and land products to help interpret and predict dust activity. Backtrajectories computed using NOAA's Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model indicate that the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts are important dust source regions during identified dust events in Phoenix, Arizona. Finally, we assess the impact of a recent strong dust event on western US air quality, using various observational and modeling data sets, during a period with a stratospheric ozone intrusion event. The capability of the current US National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC) Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system to represent the magnitude and the temporal variability of aerosol concentrations is evaluated for this event. Directions for integrating observations to further improve dust emission modeling in CMAQ are also suggested.

Integrating solar PV (photovoltaics) in utility system operations: Analytical framework and Arizona case study

A systematic framework is proposed to estimate the impact on operating costs due to uncertainty and variability in renewable resources. The framework quantifies the integration costs associated with sub-hourly variability and uncertainty as well as day-ahead forecasting errors in solar PV (photovoltaics) power. A case study illustrates how changes in system operations may affect these costs for a utility in the southwestern United States (Arizona Public Service Company). We conduct an extensive sensitivity analysis under different assumptions about balancing reserves, system flexibility, fuel prices, and forecasting errors. We find that high solar PV penetrations may lead to operational challenges, particularly during low-load and high solar periods. Increased system flexibility is essential for minimizing integration costs and maintaining reliability. In a set of sensitivity cases where such flexibility is provided, in part, by flexible operations of nuclear power plants, the estimated integration costs vary between $1.0 and $4.4/MWh-PV for a PV penetration level of 17%. The integration costs are primarily due to higher needs for hour-ahead balancing reserves to address the increased sub-hourly variability and uncertainty in the PV resource.

Development pathways at the agriculture–urban interface: the case of Central Arizona

Particular visions of urban development are often codified in multi-year resource management policies. These policies, and the negotiations leading to them, are based in specific problem frames and narratives with long legacies. As conditions change and knowledge improves, there is often a need to revisit how problems, opportunities, and development pathways were defined historically, and to consider the viability of alternative pathways for development. In this article, we examine the case of agriculture near Metropolitan Phoenix, in the Central Arizona region, to highlight how frames and narratives embedded in policy can reinforce particular development pathways, even as information, conditions, and values evolve. Using expert interviews and secondary data, we document alternative frames and narratives that may offer different pathways for development and sustainability in the region. By highlighting alternative narratives, we demonstrate the uncertainties and limitations associated with all narratives about development pathways, and explore the possibilities that narrative shifts can alter future outcomes.

Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) envenomation: Descriptive analysis of calls to United States Poison Centers with focus on Arizona cases

Background. The Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) is a venomous lizard native to the deserts of southwestern United States (US) and northern Mexico. The purpose of this study was to describe human exposures to Gila monsters reported to US poison control centers (PCCs) with a focus on Arizona cases. Methods. The American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS) was used to access and retrospectively review all calls to US PCCs, concerning Gila monsters between January 1, 2000 and October 31, 2011. In addition, detailed records from the two Arizona PCCs were reviewed for the same time period. Results. A total of 319 calls regarding Gila monsters were identified in the NPDS. Of these, 105 (33%) were human exposures; most (79%) occurred in males. A total of 71 (68%) of these 105 cases were referred to a health care facility (HCF); 30 (29%) were managed on-site. Of the 71 HCF referrals, 36 (51%) were discharged home and 17 (24%) were admitted. Most (65%) admissions were to an intensive care unit (ICU). Arizona's PCCs received 70 unique reports of Gila monster bite. Most (77%) of the bites in Arizona involved an upper extremity. Eight (11%) involved patients under the age of 18 years. Eleven (16%) Arizona cases were work-related. Twenty-eight (40%) of the 70 bites in Arizona were evaluated in a HCF, but not admitted. Eleven (16%) were admitted, of which five were to an ICU. Six patients had edema of airway structures; three required emergent airway management, one by cricothyrotomy. There were no deaths. Conclusion. Gila monster bites are uncommon. Many cases did not require hospitalization. Edema of airway structures is an infrequent, but life-threatening complication.