Adaptive Management: A Paradigm for Remediation of Public Facilities Following a Terrorist Attack

Terrorist actions are aimed at maximizing harm (health, psychological, economical, and political) through the combined physical impacts of the act and fear. Immediate and effective response to a terrorist act is critical to limit human and environmental harm, effectively restore facility function, and maintain public confidence. Though there have been terrorist attacks in public facilities that we have learned from, overall our experiences in restoration of public facilities following a terrorist attack are limited. Restoration of public facilities following a release of a hazardous material is inherently far more complex than in industrial settings and has many unique technical, economic, social, and political challenges. For example, there may be a great need to quickly restore the facility to full operation and allow public access even though it was not designed for easy or rapid restoration, and critical information is needed for quantitative risk assessment and effective restoration must be anticipated to be incomplete and uncertain. Whereas present planning documents have substantial linearity in their organization, the “adaptive management” paradigm provides a constructive parallel paradigm for restoration of public facilities that anticipates and plans for uncertainty, inefficiencies, and stakeholder participation. Adaptive management grew out of the need to manage and restore natural resources in highly complex and changing environments with limited knowledge about causal relationships and responses to restoration actions. Similarities between natural resource management and restoration of a public facility after a terrorist attack suggest that integration of adaptive management principles explicitly into restoration processes will result in substantially enhanced and flexible responses necessary to meet the uncertainties of potential terrorist attacks.     

Predictive Bayesian Microbial Dose-Response Assessment Based on Suggested Self-Organization in Primary Illness Response: Cryptosporidium parvum

The probability of illness caused by very low doses of pathogens cannot generally be tested due to the numbers of subjects that would be needed, though such assessments of illness dose response are needed to evaluate drinking water standards. A predictive Bayesian dose-response assessment method was proposed previously to assess the unconditional probability of illness from available information and avoid the inconsistencies of confidence-based approaches. However, the method uses knowledge of the conditional dose-response form, and this form is not well established for the illness endpoint. A conditional parametric dose-response function for gastroenteric illness is proposed here based on simple numerical models of self-organized host-pathogen systems and probabilistic arguments. In the models, illnesses terminate when the host evolves by processes of natural selection to a self-organized critical value of wellness. A generalized beta-Poisson illness dose-response form emerges for the population as a whole. Use of this form is demonstrated in a predictive Bayesian dose-response assessment for cryptosporidiosis. Results suggest that a maximum allowable dose of 5.0 x 10(-7) oocysts/exposure (e.g., 2.5 x 10(-7) oocysts/L water) would correspond with the original goals of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Surface Water Treatment Rule, considering only primary illnesses resulting from Poisson-distributed pathogen counts. This estimate should be revised to account for non-Poisson distributions of Cryptosporidium parvum in drinking water and total response, considering secondary illness propagation in the population.     

Subjective probabilities and utility with event-dependent preferences

This article generalizes Savage's theory to include event-dependent preferences. The state space is partitioned into finitely many events. The induced preferences over consequences are assumed independent of the underlying states within, but not across, these events. This results in an additively separable representation of preferences over acts. The dependence of the preference relation over consequences on the events is represented by event-dependent mappings of the set of consequences onto itself. Given these mappings, the preferences on acts are represented by the expectation of event-dependent utilities on the consequences with respect to unique subjective probabilities on the states.Helpful discussions with David Schmeidler are gratefully acknowledged.     

Making ends meet: perceptions of poverty in Sweden

During the era after the Second World War, Sweden has built a welfare system based on labor market participation and income maintenance. Low unemployment and decent wages are supposed to guarantee people a labor market income or income maintenance, which in turn should provide a proper standard for everyone. However, a rapid increase in unemployment and economic problems have made the future of the Swedish welfare state more uncertain than ever. These circumstances have, among other things, led to the suggestion that Sweden should abandon the income maintenance policy and create a social policy system with the more limited ambition of guaranteeing everyone a minimum income. In that case, one central question must be answered: what constitutes a decent minimum income in today's Sweden? Where should we draw the poverty line under which people will not be forced to live? These questions are central in the current debate. The consensual poverty line method is used in this article to derive a poverty line relevant for today's Sweden. The results shows that more than every fifth household has an income below the consensual poverty line. That is, they have an income that most Swedes would argue is too low to make ends meet. The level of the consensual poverty line was compared with the National Board of Health and Welfare's guidelines for social assistance. The consensual poverty line was shown to be more generous to small households and the norm for social assistance was more generous to larger households. Finally, the expenditure for guaranteeing all Swedish household a minimum income equal to the consensual poverty line was estimated: more than SEK 25 billion per year. The results in the article casts serious doubt on the ability of the Swedish welfare state to secure a decent income to all citizens.     

知识缺失还是知识自负？知识水平对公众食品安全信心的影响研究

通过对中国10个城市成年受访者的调查,发现公众对当前食品安全问题的感知风险水平较高,反映其对食品安全形势较担忧,且对政府食品安全管理部门存在信任危机。不过公众的感知控制力较高,普遍认为自己有保障自身食品安全的能力,因此在日常的食品消费中仍然有较高的信心。研究证实中国公众在食品安全的知识层面存在着知识自负现象,公众自我评估的主观知识水平显著高于实际拥有的客观知识水平,且真正对公众食品安全信心产生影响的是公众的主观知识水平。这说明传统缺失模型所倡导的以科普、辟谣为主要形式的致力于教育公众、提升公众客观知识水平的行动能够取得的效果可能非常有限;而公众的主观知识水平和感知控制力的提升能有效提振公众的食品安全信心。     

Coherent decision analysis with inseparable probabilities and utilities

This article explores the extent to which a decision maker's probabilities can be measured separately from his/her utilities by observing his/her acceptance of small monetary gambles. Only a partial separation is achieved: the acceptable gambles are partitioned into a set of belief gambles, which reveals probabilities distorted by marginal utilities for money, and a set of preference gambles, which reveals utilities reciprocally distorted by marginal utilities for money. However, the information in these gambles still enables us to solve the decision maker's problem: his/her utility-maximizing decision is the one that avoids arbitrage (i.e., incoherence or Dutch books).     

带有快速反应策略供应链系统的补偿策略研究

过长的订购提前期往往使得零售商订货决策感到困难. 快速反应策略能使零售商在获 得更多更准确的市场需求信息后,调整订购量而提高收益. 但是快速反应策略并不一定使供应 商的利润也提高. 有文章指出只有低的服务水平才能使两者利润同时提高,因而这种方法在工 业应用中是不一定可行的. 补偿策略是一种广泛应用的方法,能够提高产品的客户服务水平, 因而研究了补偿策略在快速反应供应链系统中的作用. 在某些条件下,在快速反应供应链系统 中,补偿策略能使零售商与供应商一方的收益不变或者提高,另一方的收益有所提高,即Pare2 to 提高. 还研究了引进补偿策略后,供应链系统的最优解及期望卖出量、期望缺货量和期望残 余量的变化情况.     

Profession and Workplace Expectations of Social Workers: Implications for Social Worker Subjective Well-Being

The expectations people have of social workers, and those that social workers hold of themselves, can negatively affect social worker's perceived well-being, via work stress and strain and other negative workplace experiences. This qualitative research presents findings that help to better understand what aspects of these expectations have the greatest impact on the well-being of a sample (n = 19) of social workers with reported low levels of workplace and profession satisfaction. Our data support a conceptual framework of social worker's expectations that relate to outcomes of practice, social worker roles, the perceived functioning by other health-related professionals, conflict in direct practice with social worker identity and having to work in adverse situations, as all contributing to the well-being of social workers. Findings are discussed in relation to social work practice and the role and function of professional associations and educational programmes in addressing these issues that emerge in practice.     

Assessment of modeling longitudinal binary data based on graphical methods

Longitudinal categorical data are commonly applied in a variety of fields and are frequently analyzed by generalized estimating equation (GEE) method. Prior to making further inference based on the GEE model, the assessment of model fit is crucial. Graphical techniques have long been in widespread use for assessing the model adequacy. We develop alternative graphical approaches utilizing plots of marginal model-checking condition and local mean deviance to assess the GEE model with logit link for longitudinal binary responses. The applications of the proposed procedures are illustrated through two longitudinal binary datasets.     

利用伪随机信号系统辨识钻柱系统

用白噪声信号作为输入信号对钻柱系统脉冲响应进行辨识。研究了伪随机信号的特征及伪随机信号产生的方法,得出了用伪随机信号代替白噪声信号辨识钻柱系统脉冲响应的结论。结合输入信号和输出信号,利用钻柱系统的脉冲响应,讨论了钻柱的临界转速、钻柱共振、钻柱与井壁之间的相互作用、所钻地层岩性等钻井工程问题。