High-impact Scenarios Research Articles

From Dietary Guidelines to Dietary Guidance?

One challenge is to make food consumption healthful and sustainable. Tools to achieve this include science-based documented dietary advice (here: 'dietary guidelines'), and policy-based initiatives and legislation (here: 'dietary guidance'). These two scientific and political tools operate independently, which may be counterproductive, especially if the future gives rise to high-impact scenarios of food crisis. This paper analyses, based on empirical trend data, the potential of dietary guidelines and guidance, and provides suggestions for these to align. Trend-analyses and empirical data point out that dietary guidelines, although relevant, achieve limited uptake by the consumer. Scientists apparently lack the management tools and communication channels to effectively reach the consumer, and thus major changes are not expected. By contrast, emerging issues such as the obesogenic environment and climate change are likely to call for greater involvement of policy-makers. This paper therefore advocates alignment of science and food policy. First, dietary guidelines, used for individual health promoting purposes, should be calibrated on global considerations. Guidelines on red meat consumption are recommended, as red meat consumption is a burden on both health and sustainability. Second, dietary guidance, used for global health and sustainability promoting purposes, should be calibrated on empowering the individual. Guidance in creating self-sufficient local food networks is recommended, as self-sufficient local food networks address both health and sustainability. Opinion Article Clevers and Urlings; EJNFS, 5(4): 250-259, 2015; Article no.EJNFS.2015.022 251

Disease Spread Models to Estimate Highly Uncertain Emerging Diseases Losses for Animal Agriculture Insurance Policies: An Application to the U.S. Farm‐Raised Catfish Industry

Emerging diseases (ED) can have devastating effects on agriculture. Consequently, agricultural insurance for ED can develop if basic insurability criteria are met, including the capability to estimate the severity of ED outbreaks with associated uncertainty. The U.S. farm-raised channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) industry was used to evaluate the feasibility of using a disease spread simulation modeling framework to estimate the potential losses from new ED for agricultural insurance purposes. Two stochastic models were used to simulate the spread of ED between and within channel catfish ponds in Mississippi (MS) under high, medium, and low disease impact scenarios. The mean (95% prediction interval (PI)) proportion of ponds infected within disease-impacted farms was 7.6% (3.8%, 22.8%), 24.5% (3.8%, 72.0%), and 45.6% (4.0%, 92.3%), and the mean (95% PI) proportion of fish mortalities in ponds affected by the disease was 9.8% (1.4%, 26.7%), 49.2% (4.7%, 60.7%), and 88.3% (85.9%, 90.5%) for the low, medium, and high impact scenarios, respectively. The farm-level mortality losses from an ED were up to 40.3% of the total farm inventory and can be used for insurance premium rate development. Disease spread modeling provides a systematic way to organize the current knowledge on the ED perils and, ultimately, use this information to help develop actuarially sound agricultural insurance policies and premiums. However, the estimates obtained will include a large amount of uncertainty driven by the stochastic nature of disease outbreaks, by the uncertainty in the frequency of future ED occurrences, and by the often sparse data available from past outbreaks.

The Treatment of Risk and Uncertainty in the US Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis

AbstractThis note considers the treatment of risk and uncertainty in the recently established ‘social cost of carbon’ (SCC) for analysis of federal regulations in the United States. It argues that the analysis of the US Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon did not go far enough into the tail of low-probability, high-impact scenarios, and, via its approach to discounting, it mis-estimated climate risk, possibly hugely. Given the uncertainty about estimating the SCC, the note concludes by arguing that there is in fact much to commend an approach whereby a quantitative, long-term emissions target is chosen, and the price of carbon for regulatory impact analysis is then based on estimates of the marginal cost of abatement to achieve that very target.

Safety assessment methodology focused on response characteristics of the disposal system and safety assessment for TRU waste in Japan

ABSTRACTIn order to enhance the safety of geological disposal and the reliability of the safety assessment carried out for each stage of the geological disposal project, an assessment methodology focused on a sensitivity analysis and an evaluation of importance, which incorporates “system understanding” and “information feedback” into the existing assessment approach, has been developed in this study. In this paper, the assessment methodology and the assessment results as applied for the transuranic (TRU) waste disposal system in Japan will be described. In the sensitivity analysis, an approximate analytical solution was used in order to understand the response characteristics of the engineered barrier system (EBS). In the importance evaluation, important factors relating to the robustness of system safety were identified based on the response characteristics. Furthermore, important features, events, and processes (FEPs) related to such factors and high-impact scenarios were identified based on the information accumulated through “system understanding” and “information feedback”. Based on this approach, the robustness of the TRU waste disposal system was assessed and measures for improving the robustness were identified.

The Treatment of Risk and Uncertainty in the Us Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis

This note considers the treatment of risk and uncertainty in the recently established ‘social cost of carbon’ (SCC) for analysis of federal regulations in the United States. It argues that the analysis of the US Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon did not go far enough into the tail of low-probability, high-impact scenarios, and, via its approach to discounting, it mis-estimated climate risk, possibly hugely. Given the uncertainty about estimating the SCC, the note concludes by arguing that there is in fact much to commend an approach whereby a quantitative, long-term emissions target is chosen, and the price of carbon for regulatory impact analysis is then based on estimates of the marginal cost of abatement to achieve that very target.

The Challenge of Climate Change Adaptation: Learning from National Planning Efforts in Britain, China, and the USA

This article examines projected climate impacts and national planning efforts in three major countries: the USA, UK and China. The three countries are in varying stages of planning for climate adaptation. Planning frameworks in all three countries suffer from a lack of spe- cificity and urgency. To address this situation, the article recommends two measures. The first is the use of scenario planning, including consideration of high-impact scenarios, to address the downside risks of climate change. Planning in the UK has begun to make use of scenario analysis, although in a less comprehensive manner, while the USA had an earlier experiment in the use of the worst-case scen- ario as a planning tool. The second recommendation is to identify and prioritise impacts on vulnerable populations such as the elderly, the poor and coastal communities. This recommendation has roots in the US planning proposals, but also resonates with international human rights law.

Traffic Management for Planned Special Events Using Traffic Microsimulation Modeling and Tabletop Exercises

This article describes the use of microsimulation for traffic management of special events, including evacuations and traffic incidents. Specifically, the research employed tabletop exercises using the microsimulation software TransModeler to present traffic management alternatives for special events to stakeholders. The exercises involved analysis of evacuation or egress conditions with current traffic management plans, review of possible high-impact incident scenarios, and testing and formulation of improvements to current traffic management procedures, including incident response. Two case studies were developed for the tabletop exercises; one the evacuation of a minor-league baseball stadium and another concerned with vehicular egress plans for a large urban indoor arena. Both venues were in New York State's Capital District region. The results demonstrated that the real-time use of microsimulation during a tabletop exercise elicited many new traffic management strategies. Also, a cost–benefit analysis of using microsimulation models in conjunction with tabletop exercises for these types of events was explored. The project was made possible by funding from the New York State Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration.

The Economic Effects of Climate Change

I review the literature on the economic impacts of climate change, an externality that is unprecedentedly large, complex, and uncertain. Only 14 estimates of the total damage cost of climate change have been published, a research effort that is in sharp contrast to the urgency of the public debate and the proposed expenditure on greenhouse gas emission reduction. These estimates show that climate change initially improves economic welfare. However, these benefits are sunk. Impacts would be predominantly negative later in the century. Global average impacts would be comparable to the welfare loss of a few percent of income, but substantially higher in poor countries. Still, the impact of climate change over a century is comparable to economic growth over a few years. There are over 200 estimates of the marginal damage cost of carbon dioxide emissions. The uncertainty about the social cost of carbon is large and right-skewed. For a standard discount rate, the expected value is $50/tC, which is much lower than the price of carbon in the European Union but much higher than the price of carbon elsewhere. Current estimates of the damage costs of climate change are incomplete, with positive and negative biases. Most important among the missing impacts are the indirect effects of climate change on economic development; large-scale biodiversity loss; low-probability, high-impact scenarios; the impact of climate change on violent conflict; and the impacts of climate change beyond 2100. From a welfare perspective, the impact of climate change is problematic because population is endogenous, and because policy analyses should separate impatience, risk aversion, and inequity aversion between and within countries.

Before and after Climate Change: The Snow Country in Australian Imaginaries

Before and after Climate Change: The Snow Country in Australian Imaginaries

Liquidity, Risk Concentration and Network Structure in the Austrian Large Value Payment System

The objective of this paper is to present a statistical analysis of liquidity, risk concentration, and network structure in ARTIS. The main results of the analysis were: Despite sufficient aggregate liquidity, individual accounts were occasionally illiquid and payment delays occurred frequently. The disaggregated analysis of liquidity usage revealed that liquidity usage was highly heterogeneous across participants. These results demonstrate that conclusions drawn from aggregate liquidity data do not necessarily apply to the individual participant level. In general, the value and the number of payments received and submitted were quite concentrated among the top three banks and the top transfer account in the ARTIS system during the sample period. This conclusion is supported by the analysis of the network topology. An analysis of operational risk in the system (Schmitz et al. 2006) should focus on operational problems at the institutions with high payment concentration risk and high liquidity concentration risk to test for high impact scenarios.