Integrating Entropy‐Based Naïve Bayes and GIS for Spatial Evaluation of Flood Hazard

Regional flood risk caused by intensive rainfall under extreme climate conditions has increasingly attracted global attention. Mapping and evaluation of flood hazard are vital parts in flood risk assessment. This study develops an integrated framework for estimating spatial likelihood of flood hazard by coupling weighted naïve Bayes (WNB), geographic information system, and remote sensing. The north part of Fitzroy River Basin in Queensland, Australia, was selected as a case study site. The environmental indices, including extreme rainfall, evapotranspiration, net‐water index, soil water retention, elevation, slope, drainage proximity, and density, were generated from spatial data representing climate, soil, vegetation, hydrology, and topography. These indices were weighted using the statistics‐based entropy method. The weighted indices were input into the WNB‐based model to delineate a regional flood risk map that indicates the likelihood of flood occurrence. The resultant map was validated by the maximum inundation extent extracted from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery. The evaluation results, including mapping and evaluation of the distribution of flood hazard, are helpful in guiding flood inundation disaster responses for the region. The novel approach presented consists of weighted grid data, image‐based sampling and validation, cell‐by‐cell probability inferring and spatial mapping. It is superior to an existing spatial naive Bayes (NB) method for regional flood hazard assessment. It can also be extended to other likelihood‐related environmental hazard studies.     

De-individualising autobiography: a reconsideration of the role of autobiographical life writing within disability studies

This article pursues a reconsideration of the role of autobiographical life writing within the context of disability studies. I respond to concerns that this genre tends toward a problematic and politically limiting individualism that undermines the consideration of disability as a social phenomenon, reproduces the depiction of disabled people as isolated outcasts, and replicates the meritocratic myths of personal achievement that dominate contemporary western capitalism. While not rejecting these concerns in their entirety, I attempt to develop a particular set of reading practices that may be productively employed to strategically work against the individualising tendencies of autobiographical life writing. These strategies include a commitment to seeing the realm of the ‘private’ as social, reading auto/biographically, and seeking to deconstruct the narrative myth of the liberal humanist ‘choosing’ subject. In conclusion, I offer a brief discussion of the particular ethical and methodological opportunities created by the greater consideration of these texts within disability studies.     

Navigating the First Year of College: Siblings,Parents, and First-Generation Students’ Experiences

Although college education is a key to upward mobility, students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to enter and complete college than their more advantaged peers. Prior literature has illuminated how cultural capital contributes to these disparities. An alternative conceptualization of cultural capital, however, suggests that it can also play a role in social mobility. In this study, we build on and extend the literature on cultural mobility by proposing that exposure to education can benefit not only individuals but also families. We examine the influence of older siblings who attended college on the experiences of younger college-going siblings in families where neither parent has completed college (i.e., first-generation families). We find that students rarely rely on their older siblings as sources of information and advice, except in a few instances where older siblings attended the same institution. However, both the topics and nature of conversations between parents and students differ between families with and without older college-educated siblings. The primary benefit of having college-educated siblings is thus related to students’ engagement with and support received from parents. These findings have important implications for cultural capital research and understanding experiences of first-generation college students.     

Predicting Problem Gambling in Australian Adults Using a Multifaceted Model of Impulsivity

Impulsivity is a factor that has been linked strongly to problem gambling; however, conceptualization problems have impeded research in this area. Research suggests that there may be as many as five impulsivity subtypes and that some but not all of these subtypes are involved in problem gambling. This cross-sectional and correlational study used the multifaceted UPPS-P Impulsive Behaviour Scale as a predictor of problem gambling in a community (N = 200) sample of Australian adult gamblers. Of the five impulsivity subtypes, negative urgency, positive urgency and sensation seeking were found to be positively related to problem gambling, while lack of premeditation and lack of perseverance were unrelated. Multiple regression analyses revealed that positive urgency and negative urgency were the only significant predictors of problem gambling, suggesting that individuals who have the tendency to act rashly when in a positive or negative mood are more likely to display problem gambling behaviour. The results provide further evidence of the significant role of strong emotions in problem gambling. Further, it appears that problem gambling can be motivated both by the impulsive desire to avoid negative mood states and by the impulsive desire to maintain and enhance positive mood states.     

THE DYNAMIC EFFECTS OF U.S. FOOD AID

Although food aid may have important medium- to long-term effects, there is a glaring absence of empirical research on food aid dynamics. This paper applies vector autoregression methods to data from 18 countries over the period 1961–95. We find evidence that food aid has a pronounced J-curve effect on recipient country per capita commercial food imports but only negligible negative effects on recipient country per capita food production. The commercial export gains are primarily enjoyed, however, by the donors' competitors, revealing heretofore unrecognized positive pecuniary trade externalities associated with foreign assistance. ( JEL F14, O13, Q17, Q18)     

Assessment of the Regional Economic Impacts of Catastrophic Events: CGE Analysis of Resource Loss and Behavioral Effects of an RDD Attack Scenario

We investigate the regional economic consequences of a hypothetical catastrophic event—attack via radiological dispersal device (RDD)—centered on the downtown Los Angeles area. We distinguish two routes via which such an event might affect regional economic activity: (i) reduction in effective resource supply (the resource loss effect) and (ii) shifts in the perceptions of economic agents (the behavioral effect). The resource loss effect relates to the physical destructiveness of the event, while the behavioral effect relates to changes in fear and risk perception. Both affect the size of the regional economy. RDD detonation causes little capital damage and few casualties, but generates substantial short‐run resource loss via business interruption. Changes in fear and risk perception increase the supply cost of resources to the affected region, while simultaneously reducing demand for goods produced in the region. We use results from a nationwide survey, tailored to our RDD scenario, to inform our model values for behavioral effects. Survey results, supplemented by findings from previous research on stigmatized asset values, suggest that in the region affected by the RDD, households may require higher wages, investors may require higher returns, and customers may require price discounts. We show that because behavioral effects may have lingering long‐term deleterious impacts on both the supply‐cost of resources to a region and willingness to pay for regional output, they can generate changes in regional gross domestic product (GDP) much greater than those generated by resource loss effects. Implications for policies that have the potential to mitigate these effects are discussed.