1,109 research outputs found
Climate change perceptions and their individual-level determinants: A cross-European analysis
No full textSupplemental information to Poortinga et al 2019 - Global Environmental Chang
Climate change perceptions and their individual-level determinants: A cross-European analysis
No full textSupplemental information to Poortinga et al 2019 - Global Environmental Chang
Climate change perceptions and their individual-level determinants: A cross-European analysis
No full textSupplemental information to Poortinga et al 2019 - Global Environmental Chang
Foreignness as a constraint on learning: the impact of migrants on disaster resilience in small islands
No full textKnowledge about natural hazard management has increased significantly since Gilbert White's seminal research in 1945, yet people are still badly affected by natural hazards. A key question remains in natural hazards research: why, when all the conditions for effective disaster risk reduction are in place, do some people not take action to reduce their risk of harm? Through a questionnaire-based study we investigated the motivating factors that led residents of the Cayman Islands to prepare for annual tropical cyclones (hurricanes). Factors that increase the likelihood of individuals preparing for hurricanes are: previous experience of major storms, having linking networks and ties, having a child under the age of 15 in the home, and residency status - expatriate residents are less likely to prepare. Factors that appear to prevent adaptive behaviour include: living close to or adjacent to the coast, recent migration to the islands, and living in rented accommodation. The findings of the survey confirm that even within societies that are well prepared for tropical cyclones, there are still sub-groups who do not engage with the preparedness process. In the case of the Cayman Islands, new migrants are the most vulnerable to tropical cyclones as they tend to fall into the demographic groups least likely to prepare for cyclones, live in locations with high levels of exposure to cyclone impacts, and interact mostly with other expatriates with no previous experience of cyclone impacts. As climate change promises to bring an increasing intensity of tropical cyclones, these findings have relevance for all islands which draw on migrant workers to support economic growth
Digging through the dirt: a general method for abstract discrete state estimation with limited prior knowledge
No full textAutonomous robots are often successfully deployed in controlled environments. Operation in uncontrolled situations remains challenging; it is hypothesized that the detection of abstract discrete states (ADS) can improve operation in these circumstances. ADS are high-level system states that are not directly detectable and influence system dynamics. An example of a typical ADS problem that is used in this thesis is that of a wheeled robot driving through puddles of mud that, when entered, alters the velocity of the robot. When the robot is in such a puddle, it is in an ADS 'mud', and when it is not, it is in an ADS 'free'. ADS can be indirectly inferred through the analysis of lower-level data such as the velocity of the robot. The goal of this thesis is to design a general abstract discrete state estimator (ADSE) operating with limited prior knowledge. An ADSE is a hierarchical system for detecting changes in ADS. The ADSE should be general; applicable to multiple ADSE problems. The ADSE should further operate under limited prior knowledge: only assuming that the amount of ADS and the ADS that describes the regular operation are known. The basis for the ADSE designed in this thesis is a Gaussian hidden Markov model (GHMM), a hidden Markov model enhanced with Gaussian emissions. Randomly generated experiments are done on a simple but general ADSE problem. Two unsupervised learning methods derived from Expectation Maximization are evaluated, namely Baum-Welch (BW) and forward extraction (FWE). FWE is introduced in this thesis and is a simpler implementation of Viterbi extraction, leveraging assumptions of ADSE to in theory gain computational efficiency. We found that both BW and FWE exhibit superior performance compared to a likelihood-based baseline estimator when the maximum score of the learning curve is considered. When the final score is considered, in some cases, FWE displays a deteriorating learning curve, resulting in worse final scores compared to the baseline. Furthermore, it was found that the lower the overlap coefficient (therefore the less similar the ADS), the higher the maximum reached score. It was further shown that BW exhibits better convergence than FWE to the true model parameters. Besides this, FWE obtained comparable or in some cases even superior scores compared to BW. In general, from the results, the diversity of the experiments conducted, and the assumptions made we can conclude that the GHMM can be a general method for an ADSE with limited prior knowledge. To quantify the suitability of the GHMM for ADSE, further research should include the evaluation of different ADSE methods on the same problem. There exists a tradeoff between the lower computational cost FWE and the more stable but more computationally intensive BW learning. Therefore, future research can include a combination of these methods. Other extensions include extending the GHMM to a Gaussian mixture hidden Markov model to allow for the modeling of more complex distributions, or the application to multiple states or a changing environment.https://github.com/Wouter-deBoer/adseMechanical Engineering | Vehicle Engineering | Cognitive Robotic
embalming and reperfusion of porcine kidneys
No full text<p>These are the data of the following article:</p>
<p>Understanding Thiel embalming in pig kidneys to develop a new circulation model</p>
<p>First author: Wouter Willaert</p
Nederland op een kantelpunt: Interview met Wouter Veldhuis over het Stedelijk Netwerk Nederland en het sociaal netwerk van woonwijken
Get PDFDe stedenbouwkundige en architect Wouter Veldhuis en landschapsarchitect Jannemarie de Jonge zijn per 1 december 2020 Rijksadviseur voor de fysieke leefomgeving. Later in september 2021 komt daar de architect Francesco Veenstra bij als Rijksbouwmeester en dan is het nieuwe trio College van Rijksadviseurs weer compleet. De uitdagingen voor het college zijn groot. De ruimteclaims die er liggen in stad en land, de hooggestemde ambities om klimaatneutraal en circulair te zijn in 2050, de roep om een minister voor de fysieke leefomgeving en of wonen en weer een echt ministerie met budget. Het enorme probleem op de woningmarkt en de druk om één miljoen woningen ergens bij te bouwen. Op 24 april sprak het team van 1M Homes initiative van de TU Delft met de nieuw benoemde rijksadviseur voor de fysieke leefomgeving Wouter Veldhuis over de aanstaande veranderingen
Health and social outcomes of housing policies to alleviate fuel poverty
Get PDFThis chapter considers the implications of housing policies to alleviate fuel poverty, through a comprehensive narrative review of the literature on the consequences of living in fuel poverty and cold homes, and those on the health and social outcomes of home energy-efficiency improvements. The chapter shows that living in fuel poverty and cold homes has severe implications for people's physical health and their mental and social wellbeing, and that these can be alleviated with well-designed housing policies. It further shows that, while demand-led schemes are more likely than area-based ones to provide health benefits, any housing improvement program can have substantial positive social outcomes by improving living conditions and household finances. The policy implications of these findings are discussed
Community resilience and health: The role of bonding, bridging, and linking aspects of social capital
No full textThe current study draws on data from the 2007 and 2009 Citizenship Survey collected in England (n=17,572) to explore the role of social capital in building community resilience and health, using the bonding, bridging, and linking social capital framework of Szreter and Woolcock (2004). The results show that the indicators of the different types of social capital are only weakly interrelated, suggesting that they capture different aspects of the social environment. In line with the expectations, most indicators of bonding, bridging, and linking social capital were significantly associated with neighbourhood deprivation and self-reported health. In particular bonding and bridging social cohesion, civic participation, heterogeneous socio-economic relationships, and political efficacy and trust appeared important for community health after controlling for neighbourhood deprivation. However, no support was found for the hypothesis that the different aspects help buffer against the detrimental influences of neighbourhood deprivation
Antecedents of Young People’s Mitigative Actions in Navigating Crises in the Face of COVID-19 and Climate Change
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