Perception of Climate Risk among Rural Farmers in Vietnam: Consistency within Households and with the Empirical Record

Rural farmers in Vietnamese communes perceive climate risk and potential impacts on livelihood within a complex context that may influence individual and household decisions. In a primary survey of 1,145 residents of the Thach Ha district of Ha Tinh province, we gathered data regarding perception about stability in climate, potential risks to livelihood, demographic characteristics, orientation toward risk, and interest in expanding economic activity. Temporal analysis of meteorological and economic indicator data forms an empirical basis for comparison with human perception. We ask the basic question: Are rural farmers’ perceptions of climate consistent with the historical record and reproducible within households? We find that respondents do perceive climate anomalies, with some anchoring on recent extreme events as revealed by climate observational data, and further that spouses disproportionately share perceptions relative to randomly simulated pairings. To put climate‐related risk perception in a larger context, we examine patterns across a range of risks to livelihood faced by farmers (livestock disease, pests, markets, health), using dimension reduction techniques. We find that our respondents distinguish among potential causes of low economic productivity, with substantial emphasis on climate‐related impacts. They do not express uniform concern across risks, but rather average patterns reveal common modes and distinguish climate concern. Still, among those expressing concern about climate‐related risks to livelihood we do not find an association with expressed intention to pursue changes in economic activity as a risk management response.     

中国居民家庭脆弱性及因病致贫效应分析

为定量分析医疗支出对家庭经济水平的冲击,以贫困脆弱性指标作为家庭经济风险的代理变量,利用微观调查数据构造反事实框架估计就医行为对家庭经济境遇的冲击,验证了医疗与家庭致贫效应的因果关系和影响程度。家庭成员在过去半年内若因病住院,对家庭福利会造成损失,损失幅度因贫困标准、样本年份而不同。2012年在贫困线标准为2美元条件下,家庭经济风险概率值增加0.31。分城乡和收入高低不同组估计,农村居民以及低收入群体的福利水平受就医影响幅度大于对应的其他群体。     

长江三角洲城市群洪涝灾害脆弱性评估及影响因素分析

长江三角洲城市群人口、财产、基础设施高度密集,暴雨洪涝灾害带来的影响越来越大,对该区域城市洪涝灾害脆弱性进行评估是保障长江三角洲区域一体化、可持续发展的基础。以长江三角洲城市群中心区27个城市为研究对象,基于超效率DEA模型,将洪涝灾害脆弱性看作一个负面“生产活动”,构建城市洪涝灾害脆弱性评估模型,在分析脆弱性空间分异特征的基础上确定该地区城市洪涝灾害脆弱性的主要影响因素。结果显示：从整体上看,长江三角洲城市群洪涝灾害脆弱性水平差异较大,安徽及浙江远高于江苏和上海,其中,上海的洪灾脆弱性最低;从空间上看,脆弱性分布有明显的地域集聚特征,脆弱性高的城市分布在浙江东南沿海和安徽南部丘陵地区;降雨量、城市发展水平及基础设施的完善性等因素对城市洪涝灾害脆弱性影响显著。     

Stakeholder Perspectives on Children's Mental Health Needs and Supports in Six Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries

Low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMIC) are faced with disproportionately high levels of unmet child mental health needs. This study explored through interviews the perspectives of 17 inter‐agency service stakeholders from Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Rwanda and Turkey on existing supports and challenges. Four themes emerged on the holistic nature of children's mental health needs linked with disadvantage; limited resources and skilled workforce; stigma; and strategies for future implementation, including awareness, parental engagement, skills‐based programmes and cultural adaptation. Stakeholder input is essential in conceptualising, developing and evaluating culturally appropriate interventions for vulnerable children in LMIC.     

Economics of Disaster Risk,Social Vulnerability,and Mental Health Resilience

We investigate the relationship between exposure to Hurricanes Katrina and/or Rita and mental health resilience by vulnerability status, with particular focus on the mental health outcomes of single mothers versus the general public. We advance a measurable notion of mental health resilience to disaster events. We also calculate the economic costs of poor mental health days added by natural disaster exposure. Negative binomial analyses show that hurricane exposure increases the expected count of poor mental health days for all persons by 18.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 7.44–31.14%), and by 71.88% (95% CI, 39.48–211.82%) for single females with children. Monthly time‐series show that single mothers have lower event resilience, experiencing higher added mental stress. Results also show that the count of poor mental health days is sensitive to hurricane intensity, increasing by a factor of 1.06 (95% CI, 1.02–1.10) for every billion (U.S.$) dollars of damage added for all exposed persons, and by a factor of 1.08 (95% CI, 1.03–1.14) for single mothers. We estimate that single mothers, as a group, suffered over $130 million in productivity loss from added postdisaster stress and disability. Results illustrate the measurability of mental health resilience as a two‐dimensional concept of resistance capacity and recovery time. Overall, we show that natural disasters regressively tax disadvantaged population strata.     

Vulnerability Assessment of Mining Subsidence Hazards

Between 1996 and 1999, five mining subsidence events occurred in the iron-ore field in Lorraine, France, and damaged several hundred buildings. Because of the thousand hectares of undermined areas, an assessment of the vulnerability of buildings and land is necessary for risk management. Risk assessment methods changed from initial risk management decisions that took place immediately after the mining subsidence to the risk assessment studies that are currently under consideration. These changes reveal much about the complexity of the vulnerability concept and about difficulties in developing simple and relevant methods for its assessment. The objective of this article is to present this process, suggest improvements on the basis of theoretical definitions of the vulnerability, and give an operational example of vulnerability assessment in the seismic field. The vulnerability is divided into three components: weakness, stakes value, and resilience. Final improvements take into account these three components and constitute an original method of assessing the vulnerability of a city to subsidence.     

健康在多大程度上引致贫困脆弱性——基于CHNS农村数据的经验分析

贫困脆弱性的产生,很大程度上归因于居民健康水平的下降.在阐述健康引致贫困理论机制的基础上,基于CHNS在2000-2009年间追踪调查数据,对贫困脆弱性和健康效用指数HUI进行测度,估计并分析健康对贫困脆弱性的影响与内在机制.研究发现:居民健康水平的恶化会使其面临更高的贫困脆弱性,居民健康水平每下降10％,贫困脆弱性大约会上升6％；健康影响贫困脆弱性的作用机制中,物质资本和社会资本渠道被证明是相对有效的,而人力资本渠道尽管体现出微弱效应,但尚未在统计上得到显著性验证.因此,制订前瞻性的反贫政策应着眼于建立健康风险防范机制,包括提高农村医疗保障水平和重大疾病救助力度,并增加农村公共服务的投入,以促进其均衡化发展.     

Critical Infrastructure Vulnerability to Spatially Localized Failures with Applications to Chinese Railway System

This article studies a general type of initiating events in critical infrastructures, called spatially localized failures (SLFs), which are defined as the failure of a set of infrastructure components distributed in a spatially localized area due to damage sustained, while other components outside the area do not directly fail. These failures can be regarded as a special type of intentional attack, such as bomb or explosive assault, or a generalized modeling of the impact of localized natural hazards on large‐scale systems. This article introduces three SLFs models: node centered SLFs, district‐based SLFs, and circle‐shaped SLFs, and proposes a SLFs‐induced vulnerability analysis method from three aspects: identification of critical locations, comparisons of infrastructure vulnerability to random failures, topologically localized failures and SLFs, and quantification of infrastructure information value. The proposed SLFs‐induced vulnerability analysis method is finally applied to the Chinese railway system and can be also easily adapted to analyze other critical infrastructures for valuable protection suggestions.     

A Discussion of Findings and Their Possible Implications from a Workshop on Bioterrorism Threat Assessment and Risk Management

In November 2001, the Monterey Institute of International Studies convened a workshop on bioterrorism threat assessment and risk management. Risk assessment practitioners from various disciplines, but without specialized knowledge of terrorism, were brought together with security and intelligence threat analysts to stimulate an exchange that could be useful to both communities. This article, prepared by a subset of the participants, comments on the workshop's findings and their implications and makes three recommendations, two short term (use of threat assessment methodologies and vulnerability analysis) and one long term (application of quantitative risk assessment and modeling), regarding the practical application of risk assessment methods to bioterrorism issues.     

农村家庭“因教致贫”现象解读与政策建议——基于脆弱性理论视角

教育具有促进政治进步、经济发展、文化传承的正向功能。然而,"知识改变命运"作为一个真理性的命题,在我国广大农村地区似乎成为了一个悖论,出现了较大面积的"因教致贫"反常现象。农村"因教致贫"问题具有多维度性和多层面性,是一个复杂的系统性问题。一般来说,此问题涉及到农村的经济基础、自然环境、政策环境以及社会环境等各个层面,农村家庭的抗风险能力差决定了农民家庭脆弱性程度较高,较高的脆弱性是导致"因教致贫"的真正原因。因此,从就学就业先后顺序出发,引入脆弱性理论,分析"因教致贫"动态形成过程中的脆弱性因子,对农村地区"因教致贫"现象进行深入探讨和研究,并提出相应的政策建议。