262,213 research outputs found
Isolating the Role of End-User Behavior in the Assessment of Seasonal Forecast Value
No full textRecent improvements in model resolutions, initialization procedures, and representation of large scale hydro-meteorological processes contributed in advancing the accuracy of hydroclimatic forecasts, which are more and more skillful over the seasonal and longer timescales. These forecasts are potentially valuable for informing multisector strategic decisions, including irrigated agriculture, where they can improve crop choices and irrigation scheduling decisions. In this operational context, forecast accuracy is important but not necessarily proportional to the associated economic marginal benefit, which is also affected by how forecasts are employed by end-users.
In this work, we contribute a novel framework to quantify the value of hydroclimatic forecasts by extending traditional quality assessments with estimates of the potential economic benefit of the forecasts to the end-user. We also explore the sensitivity of this benefit to both model set up and end-user behavioral factors. The approach is demonstrated on the Lake Como system (Italy), a regulated lake operated for flood protection and irrigation supply. Our framework relies on an integrated modeling chain composed of three building blocks: bias-adjusted seasonal meteorological forecasts are used as input to the continentally-calibrated E-HYPE hydrological model; predicted lake inflows are used for conditioning the daily lake operations; the resulting lake releases feed an agricultural model to estimate the net profit of the farmers in a downstream irrigation district.
Results suggest that, on average, informing the Lake Como operations based on E-HYPE hydrological forecasts allows gaining about 1% of the farmers’ profit with respect to a baseline solution not informed by any forecast. This gain rises up to about 15% during intense drought episodes. Moreover, our analysis suggests that this value can be largely attributed to the hydrological model and its initial conditions, while the role of meteorological forcing emerges only during dry seasons. Lastly, our results show a high sensitivity to behavioral factors capturing different perception of risk and uncertainty, with the estimated forecast value being potentially undermined if end-users are not able to properly extract the most valuable information from the forecast ensemble
From seasonal forecast skill to end-user economic benefit: the case of the Lake Como
No full textRecent increase in spatiotemporal model resolution, availability of data/monitored variables, improvement in initialization procedures, and more accurate representation of physical processes contributed in advancing the quality of weather and climate services. State-of-the-art meteorological and hydrological forecast services are becoming more and more skillful over seasonal timescales, potentially representing an asset for informing strategic decisions in different economic sectors. Such services can play a key role in irrigated agriculture for supporting crop choices and irrigation scheduling decisions, which strongly depend on the expected hydro-meteorological conditions. However, although the accuracy and reliability of forecast services depend on the set up of the models that generate the forecasts, their (added) value also depends on how decision makers use the provided information in operational contexts.
In this work, we contribute a novel framework to assess the value of weather and climate services, by extending traditional forecast quality assessment methods with estimates of the potential end-user economic benefit from using forecast information. We also explore the sensitivity of the potential economic benefit on both the model set up and decision maker behavioral factors. The framework is demonstrated on the Lake Como system (Italy), a regulated lake primarily operated for flood protection and irrigation supply.
Our framework relies on the following integrated modeling chain: 1) lake inflows are produced from bias adjusted ECMWF System 4 seasonal forecasts used as input to the continentally-calibrated E-HYPE hydrological model; 2) this information is then used for conditioning the daily lake operations; 3) the resulting lake releases finally feed an agricultural model to estimate the net profit of the farmers in the downstream irrigation district. The whole chain was run for a 12-year period running from 1996 to 2007, including a fairly balanced number of normal, wet, and dry agricultural seasons.
Results suggest that, on average, informing the Lake Como operations based on ECMWF System 4 coupled with E-HYPE hydrological forecasts allows gaining about 4% of farmers’ profit with respect to a traditional operating policy conditioned on the modelled inflow climatology. This gain rises up to 16% during intense drought episodes. Moreover, this value is shown to be particularly sensitive to climate forcing inputs, but also on how the lake operator uses the forecast information depending on the different perceptions of risk and uncertaint
Advancing drought detection and management using ML enhanced impact-based drought indexes
No full textFrom skill to value: Isolating the influence of end user behavior on seasonal forecast assessment
No full textRecent improvements in initialization procedures and representation of large-scale hydrometeorological processes have contributed to advancing the accuracy of hydroclimatic forecasts, which are progressively more skillful over seasonal and longer timescales. These forecasts are potentially valuable for informing strategic multisector decisions, including irrigated agriculture, for which they can improve crop choices and irrigation scheduling. In this operational context, the accuracy associated with the forecast system setup does not necessarily yield proportional marginal benefit, as this is also affected by how forecasts are employed by end users. This paper aims at quantifying the value of hydroclimatic forecasts in terms of potential economic benefit to the end users, which allows for the inference of a relation between gains in forecast skill and gains in end user profit. We also explore the sensitivity of this benefit to both forecast system setup and end user behavioral factors. These analyses are supported by an evaluation framework demonstrated on the Lake Como system (Italy), a regulated lake operated for flood protection and irrigation supply. Our framework relies on an integrated modeling chain composed of three building blocks: bias-adjusted seasonal meteorological forecasts are used as input to the continentally calibrated E-HYPE hydrological model; predicted lake inflows are used for conditioning the daily lake operations; and the resulting lake releases feed an agricultural model to estimate the net profit of the farmers in a downstream irrigation district. Results suggest that despite the gain in average conditions being negligible, informing the operations of Lake Como based on seasonal hydrological forecasts during intense drought episodes allows about 15 % of the farmers' profit to be gained with respect to a baseline solution not informed by any forecast. Moreover, our analysis suggests that behavioral factors capturing different perceptions of risk and uncertainty significantly impact the quantification of the benefit to the end users, whereby the estimated forecast value is potentially undermined by different levels of end user risk aversion. Lastly, our results show an intricate skill-to-value relation modulated by the underlying hydrologic conditions, which is well aligned over an exponential function in dry years, while the gains in profit are almost insensitive to the improvements in forecast skill in wet years
Massive feature extraction for explaining and foretelling hydroclimatic time series forecastability at the global scale
No full textStatistical analyses and descriptive characterizations are sometimes assumed to be offering information on time series forecastability. Despite the scientific interest suggested by such assumptions, the relationships between descriptive time series features (e.g., temporal dependence, entropy, seasonality, trend and linearity features) and actual time series forecastability (quantified by issuing and assessing forecasts for the past) are scarcely studied and quantified in the literature. In this work, we aim to fill in this gap by investigating such relationships, and the way that they can be exploited for understanding hydroclimatic forecastability and its patterns. To this end, we follow a systematic framework bringing together a variety of –mostly new for hydrology– concepts and methods, including 57 descriptive features and nine seasonal time series forecasting methods (i.e., one simple, five exponential smoothing, two state space and one automated autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average methods). We apply this framework to three global datasets originating from the larger Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and Global Streamflow Indices and Metadata (GSIM) archives. As these datasets comprise over 13,000 monthly temperature, precipitation and river flow time series from several continents and hydroclimatic regimes, they allow us to provide trustable characterizations and interpretations of 12-month ahead hydroclimatic forecastability at the global scale. We first find that the exponential smoothing and state space methods for time series forecasting are rather equally efficient in identifying an upper limit of this forecastability in terms of Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency, while the simple method is shown to be mostly useful in identifying its lower limit. We then demonstrate that the assessed forecastability is strongly related to several descriptive features, including seasonality, entropy, (partial) autocorrelation, stability, (non)linearity, spikiness and heterogeneity features, among others. We further (i) show that, if such descriptive information is available for a monthly hydroclimatic time series, we can even foretell the quality of its future forecasts with a considerable degree of confidence, and (ii) rank the features according to their efficiency in explaining and foretelling forecastability. We believe that the obtained rankings are of key importance for understanding forecastability. Spatial forecastability patterns are also revealed through our experiments, with East Asia (Europe) being characterized by larger (smaller) monthly temperature time series forecastability and the Indian subcontinent (Australia) being characterized by larger (smaller) monthly precipitation time series forecastability, compared to other continental-scale regions, and less notable differences characterizing monthly river flow from continent to continent. A comprehensive interpretation of such patters through massive feature extraction and feature-based time series clustering is shown to be possible. Indeed, continental-scale regions characterized by different degrees of forecastability are also attributed to different clusters or mixtures of clusters (because of their essential differences in terms of descriptive features)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Protecting Animals 36: Author Witi Ihimaera
No full textIn this very special episode of Knowing Animals I am joined by beloved New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera. Witi has written many books featuring nonhuman animals. He offers us a non-colonial lens through which to think about the human/nonhuman relationship
Author Under Sail The Imagination of Jack London, 1893-1902
No full textIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Spirit Truth -- 2. From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again -- 3. "I Will Build a New Present" -- 4. Sons as Authors -- 5. Fathers as Publishers -- 6. The Daughter as Author -- 7. Lovers as Authors -- 8. At Sea with the Family -- 9. Yellow News, Yellow Stories -- 10. The Return Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About Jay WilliamsIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
Author in Essay by I. A. Goncharov “Pepiniere”
No full textFeatures of the embodiment of the author’s position in the essay by I. A. Goncharov “Pepiniere” are considered. The relevance of the study is due to the poorly studied poetics of this work. A review of the scientific literature on relevant topics is performed. Methodological and theoretical definitions are given. The scientific novelty of the article is in the fact that for the first time attention is paid to artistic techniques that allow to identify the author's position in the specified literary text. The author of the article grounds her opinion from the fact that, despite the dominance of the subjective point of view, other characters’ views stand out in the work. It is concluded in the study that the text of the work represents a biographical author and author-creator. It was established that the position of the author-creator is expressed through the title, epigraphs, which are quotes, as well as through different points of view, including the author-character, the author-narrator, the characters of the work. The author of the article dwells in detail on different ways of expressing the points of view of the author-character and the author-narrator. It is proved that the point of view of the author-character and the author-narrator can intersect, they are interchanged. The author's development of the term comic “point of view” is presented in the article
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