Why do health economists promote technology adoption rather than the search for efficiency? A proposal for a change in our approach to economic evaluation in health care

Acknowledgments Financial Support: HERU and HSRU receive a core grant from the Chief Scientist’s Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates, and the Centre for Clinical epidemiology & Evaluation is funded by Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. The model used for the illustrative case study in this paper was developed as part of a NHS Technology Assessment Review, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment Program (project number 09/146/01). The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Scottish Government, NHS, Vancouver Coastal Health, NIHR HTA Program or the Department of Health. The authors wish to thank Kathleen Boyd and members of the audience at the UK Health Economists Study Group, for comments received on an earlier version of this paper. We also wish to thank Cynthia Fraser (University of Aberdeen) for literature searches undertaken to inform the manuscript, and Mohsen Sadatsafavi (University of British Columbia) for comments on an earlier draft

Beyond megaprojects?. Water alternatives for mass tourism in coastal Mediterranean Spain

Water availability in adequate quantities and qualities is a fundamental requirement for tourism. In the Mediterranean, one of the world’s leading tourist destinations, water availability is subject to modest and erratic precipitation figures which may decline with climate change. The tourist industry therefore may have to assure future supplies by either recurring to new technologies such as desalination or increasing efficiency in water use. A third and yet little explored alternative would be to seek for complementary of uses with irrigation, the traditional user in many coastal Mediterranean areas and holder of substantial amounts of water. In this paper we present the example of the Consorcio de Aguas de la Marina Baja to show how Benidorm, in Mediterranean Spain and one of the most important tourist centers of the Mediterranean, obtains part of its water through agreements with farmers by which these trade their water with Benidorm and other towns’ treated wastewater of enough quality to be used for irrigation, and obtain several compensations in return. The advantages and disadvantages of the water trade between farmers and tourist interests in the Benidorm area are discussed and we argue that solutions to the pending water crisis of many coastal Mediterranean tourist areas may not need to rely uniquely on expensive technologies to generate new resources but may attempt other alternatives.

Coastal Massachusetts, Marblehead to Hampton Harbor, New Hampshire, Nautical Chart, 1776 (Image 1 of 2) (Raster Image)

This layer is a georeferenced raster image of the untitled, historic nautical chart: [A chart of the harbours of Hampton, Newbury, Ipswich, Jebeka, Squam, Cape Ann, Manchester, Beverly, Salem, Marble Head &c.] (sheet originally published in 1776). The map is [sheet 23] from the Atlantic Neptune atlas Vol. 3 : Charts of the coast and harbors of New England, from surveys taken by Samuel Holland and published by J.F.W. Des Barres, 1781. Scale [ca. 1:50,000]. This layer is image 1 of 2 total images of the two sheet source map, representing the southern portion of the map. Covers coastal Massachusetts from Ipswich Harbor to Marblehead. The image is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the 'World Mercator' (WGS 84) projected coordinate system. All map collar information is also available as part of the raster image, including any inset maps, profiles, statistical tables, directories, text, illustrations, or other information associated with the principal map. This map shows coastal features such as harbors, inlets, rocks, channels, points, coves, shoals, islands, and more. Includes also selected land features such as cities and towns, buildings, and roads. Relief is shown by hachures; depths by soundings. This layer is part of a selection of digitally scanned and georeferenced historic maps from The Harvard Map Collection. The entire Atlantic Neptune atlas Vol. 3 : Charts of the coast and harbors of New England has been scanned and georeferenced as part of this selection.

Coastal Massachusetts, Marblehead to Hampton Harbor, New Hampshire, Nautical Chart, 1776 (Image 2 of 2) (Raster Image)

This layer is a georeferenced raster image of the untitled, historic nautical chart: [A chart of the harbours of Hampton, Newbury, Ipswich, Jebeka, Squam, Cape Ann, Manchester, Beverly, Salem, Marble Head &c.] (sheet originally published in 1776). The map is [sheet 24] from the Atlantic Neptune atlas Vol. 3 : Charts of the coast and harbors of New England, from surveys taken by Samuel Holland and published by J.F.W. Des Barres, 1781. Scale [ca. 1:50,000]. This layer is image 2 of 2 total images of the two sheet source map, representing the northern portion of the map. Covers coastal Massachusetts and New Hampshire from Ipswich Harbor, Massachusetts to Hampton Harbor, New Hampshire. The image is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the 'World Mercator' (WGS 84) projected coordinate system. All map collar information is also available as part of the raster image, including any inset maps, profiles, statistical tables, directories, text, illustrations, or other information associated with the principal map. This map shows coastal features such as harbors, inlets, rocks, channels, points, coves, shoals, islands, and more. Includes also selected land features such as cities and towns, buildings, and roads. Relief is shown by hachures; depths by soundings. This layer is part of a selection of digitally scanned and georeferenced historic maps from The Harvard Map Collection. The entire Atlantic Neptune atlas Vol. 3 : Charts of the coast and harbors of New England has been scanned and georeferenced as part of this selection.

Effects of climate change on fisheries : from a global to a regional perspective

Tese de doutoramento, Biologia (Biologia Marinha e Aquacultura), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2016

Dating sediments in coastal areas and potential applications for constraining the palaeo-environmental context of an archaeological site at Vohemar

We present an overview on different environmental zones within coastal areas and summarise the physical basis behind the three most important methods that are available to date Holocene coastal sediments. Besides radiocarbon and uranium series dating, Optically Stimulated Luminescence (Osl) has increasingly been applied for dating in coastal settings over the past decade. This is illustrated by a number of case studies showing that Osl can be applied to sediments from almost any kind of coastal environment, covering a potential dating range from some years up to several hundred thousand years. Osl dating may hence be the method of choice for deciphering natural environmental change along coasts as well as the presence and the impact of human occupation in such areas. In addition, we briefly show how and where these dating methods could be applied to constrain the palaeo-environmental context of an archaeological site at Vohemar in north-eastern Madagascar.

Mineralogical compositions of sediment samples from the San Francisco Bay coastal system

The mineralogical compositions of 119 samples collected from throughout the San Francisco Bay coastal system, including bayfloor and seafloor, area beaches, cliff outcrops, and major drainages, were determined using X-ray diffraction (XRD). Comparison of the mineral concentrations and application of statistical cluster analysis of XRD spectra allowed for the determination of provenances and transport pathways. The use of XRD mineral identifications provides semi-quantitative compositions needed for comparisons of beach and offshore sands with potential cliff and river sources, but the innovative cluster analysis of XRD diffraction spectra provides a unique visualization of how groups of samples within the San Francisco Bay coastal system are related so that sand-sized sediment transport pathways can be inferred. The main vector for sediment transport as defined by the XRD analysis is from San Francisco Bay to the outer coast, where the sand then accumulates on the ebb tidal delta and also moves alongshore. This mineralogical link defines a critical pathway because large volumes of sediment have been removed from the Bay over the last century via channel dredging, aggregate mining, and borrow pit mining, with comparable volumes of erosion from the ebb tidal delta over the same period, in addition to high rates of shoreline retreat along the adjacent, open-coast beaches. Therefore, while previously only a temporal relationship was established, the transport pathway defined by mineralogical and geochemical tracers support the link between anthropogenic activities in the Bay and widespread erosion outside the Bay. The XRD results also establish the regional and local importance of sediment derived from cliff erosion, as well as both proximal and distal fluvial sources. This research is an important contribution to a broader provenance study aimed at identifying the driving forces for widespread geomorphic change in a heavily urbanized coastal-estuarine system.

Ensemble prediction distribution maps of macroalgae for current conditions and four climate change scenarios and high resultion bathymetry for Potter Cove, WAP, Antarctica

Species distribution models (SDM) predict species occurrence based on statistical relationships with environmental conditions. The R-package biomod2 which includes 10 different SDM techniques and 10 different evaluation methods was used in this study. Macroalgae are the main biomass producers in Potter Cove, King George Island (Isla 25 de Mayo), Antarctica, and they are sensitive to climate change factors such as suspended particulate matter (SPM). Macroalgae presence and absence data were used to test SDMs suitability and, simultaneously, to assess the environmental response of macroalgae as well as to model four scenarios of distribution shifts by varying SPM conditions due to climate change. According to the averaged evaluation scores of Relative Operating Characteristics (ROC) and True scale statistics (TSS) by models, those methods based on a multitude of decision trees such as Random Forest and Classification Tree Analysis, reached the highest predictive power followed by generalized boosted models (GBM) and maximum-entropy approaches (Maxent). The final ensemble model used 135 of 200 calculated models (TSS > 0.7) and identified hard substrate and SPM as the most influencing parameters followed by distance to glacier, total organic carbon (TOC), bathymetry and slope. The climate change scenarios show an invasive reaction of the macroalgae in case of less SPM and a retreat of the macroalgae in case of higher assumed SPM values.