Application of Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) and delineation of natural risk zones in Greater Lisbon,Portugal

Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) was applied to Greater Lisbon (Portugal). Based on the concepts used for the SoVI assessments in the US, 46 variables representing social vulnerability of the 149 civil parishes of Greater Lisbon were chosen. Thirty-eight variables were selected after application of correlation tests. They were standardized, and a Principal Component Analysis and a Varimax rotation were applied to them. Seven factors were extracted using the Kaiser criterion, which explain 79.5% of the variance, and the SoVI scores were then mapped using a standard deviation classification. Twelve of the 149 civil parishes of Greater Lisbon have a very high social vulnerability and 24 of them have a high social vulnerability. The map of SoVI was then integrated with susceptibility maps of earthquakes, floods, flash floods, landslides, tsunami, and coastal erosion, thus delineating risk zones. Twenty-two civil parishes of Greater Lisbon have a very high risk; among them, 17 belong to Lisbon Municipality, four belong to Loures Municipality, and one belongs to Vila Franca de Xira Municipality. Finally, exposed population was considered and combined with risk zones map in order to assess the number of people being potentially exposed to risk and their location.     

城市化与生态环境相互作用系统脆弱性时空变化规律--以黑龙江省东部煤电化基地为例

本文分析了黑龙江省东部煤电化基地城市化与生态环境脆弱性之间的耦合关系,采用SPSS主成分分析的方法对城市化与生态环境脆弱性之间的时空规律进行分析,得出了黑龙江省东部煤电化基地各城市的综合得分,绘制出黑龙江省东部煤电化基地的时间脆弱性曲线和空间地域分布图,进一步分析了城市化对生态环境脆弱性的时间规律和空间规律,并得出了以下结论：（1）黑龙江省东部煤电化基地的各城市的脆弱性较高,但改善空间较大。（2）黑龙江省东部煤电化基地各城市的脆弱性地域差异较大,其中牡丹江的脆弱性较低。（3）黑龙江省东部煤电化基地各城市应以清洁生产、资源循环利用为主要的循环经济生产模式,大力发展旅游、对外贸易等绿色经济。     

人口对生态环境脆弱性影响的相关分析——以陕西榆林为例

在西部许多地区人口发展对生态环境脆弱性变化影响很大。以陕西省榆林市为例,运用统计学方法从定量方面探讨了人口变动对生态环境脆弱性的影响,同时,对人口与生态环境脆弱性变化进行了综合评价。     

Modelling international tourism demand and volatility in small island tourism economies

Small island tourism economies (SITEs) vary in their size, land area, location, narrow resource bases, economic development, overwhelming reliance on tourism and consistent inflow of foreign direct investment for economic growth. Small island tourism economics differ in their ethnic diversity, political systems, economic and environmental vulnerability, ecological fragility and the risks facing investors. Owing to natural disasters, ethnic conflicts, crime and the threat of global terrorism, there have been dramatic changes in the arrivals of international tourists to SITEs. These variations in international tourism demand to SITEs, particularly the conditional variance (or volatility) in international tourist arrivals, have not previously been analysed in the tourism research literature. An examination of the conditional volatility of international tourist arrivals is essential for policy analysis and marketing purposes. This paper models the conditional mean and conditional variance of the logarithm of monthly international tourist arrivals and the growth rate (or log‐difference) in the monthly international tourist arrivals for six SITEs, namely Barbados, Cyprus, Dominica, Fiji, Maldives and Seychelles. Diagnostic checks of the regularity conditions of the logarithm of monthly international tourist arrivals and their growth rates suggest that the estimated univariate models of trends and volatility are statistically adequate. Therefore, the estimated models are appropriate for purposes of public and private sector management of tourism. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Climate risk,vulnerability and resilience: Supporting livelihood of smallholders in semiarid India

Using panel data from 256 smallholder households from 2006 to 2014 in three semiarid regions India, this study develops a framework for quantifying vulnerability and resilience by accounting for a smallholder household’s ability to adapt and respond to climatic risk. Findings indicate that although smallholders with smaller landholdings are more vulnerable to climatic risk (drought, in our case), they are also more resilient than their counterparts. Results reveal that cropping intensity and crop risk increase the vulnerability of smallholders to climatic risk, but large farms are less vulnerable. Diversification in on-farm enterprises, like livestock units, and off-farm income sources, play significant roles in increasing smallholder households’ resilience to climatic risk. Other drivers of resiliency include the choice of cash and risky crops, borrowing capacity, liquid investments, and the ability to regain yields.     

旅游经济依赖背景下区域经济脆弱性评价研究——以张家界市、阿坝州、丽江市为例

将“过度依赖旅游业”作为导致经济脆弱性的主要诱因,构建旅游经济依赖型目的地经济脆弱性评价指标体系,利用熵值法确定指标权重,进而运用S/R模型和障碍度模型评价脆弱性值并确定主要影响因素。结果表明：张家界市、阿坝州、丽江市的经济发展长期处于极端脆弱或很脆弱状态,投资和出口对经济发展的带动不足、过度依赖旅游业、旅游发展与经济发展水平不匹配、旅游繁荣导致的去工业化和去农业化是经济脆弱性高的主要原因。     

ON THE CONCAVITY AND QUASICONCAVITY PROPERTIES OF UTILITY FUNCTIONS

Concavity and quasiconcavity have always been important properties in financial economics particularly in decision problems when an objective function has to be maximized over a convex set. Both properties have mainly been used as purely technical assumptions. In this paper, we link concavity and quasiconcavity of a utility function to the basic concepts of risk aversion, prudence, risk vulnerability and temperance. We show that concavity means the agent is more risk vulnerable than prudent. In particular, we can see when a function is both concave and quasiconcave and when it is only quasiconcave.     

A composite indicator model to assess natural disaster risks in industry on a spatial level

In the event of natural disasters, industrial production sites can be affected by both direct physical damage and indirect damage. The indirect damage, which often exceeds the direct ones in value, mainly arises from business interruptions resulting from the impairment of information and material flows as well as from domino effects in interlaced supply chains. The importance of industry for society and the domino effects often result in severe economic, social, and environmental consequences of industrial disasters making industrial risk management an important task for risk managers at the administrative level (e.g. civil protection authorities). Since the possible industrial disaster damage depends not only on hazard and exposure but also on the vulnerability of a system, an effective and efficient industrial risk management requires information about the system’s regionalized vulnerability. This paper presents a new methodology for structural industrial vulnerability assessment based on production factors that enables to assess the regional industrial disaster vulnerability. In order to capture industry-specific vulnerability factors and to account for the processes underlying regional industrial vulnerability, a two-stage approach is developed. This approach combines a composite indicator model to assess sector-specific vulnerability indices (V_s) with a new regionalization method. The composite indicator model is based on methodologies from the field of multicriteria decision analysis (MultiAttribute Value Theory) and the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory Method is applied to correct the (V_s) for interdependencies among the indicators. Finally, the developed approach is applied to an exemplar case study and the industrial vulnerability of 44 administrative districts in the German federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg is assessed.