In many developing countries, the stress of rapidly growing populations, mismanagement of resources and changing climate has created a burden on already compromised water resources. In Africa, where a significant proportion of the population is without access to improved water source, the urgency for clean available water sources to sustain healthy and productive human and natural populations has become a priority. As a water scarce country, Kenya has seen an increased investment in rainwater harvesting (RWH) projects to harness the vastly untapped rainwater resource, particularly in rural areas. Most of RWH literature is centered on the potential and implementation of rainwater harvesting systems, however not much focus has been placed on examining the demand satisfaction of these systems. This study investigates the reliability of rooftop rainwater harvesting (RRWH) as a key priority source of water supply for domestic use in three towns in Western Kenya: Kisumu, Nakuru and Lodwar. This was done using two approaches (1) the fraction of time water was available and (2) the fraction of time that a minimum demand was met, with acceptable reliability of 0.95 or higher. Actual rainfall data and RRWH parameters were used to produce supply/demand simulations of the system under Constant-Demand and Responsive-Demand scenarios over ten years. It was observed that all towns achieved acceptable reliability values for RRWH in terms of water availability however Lodwar only achieved demand satisfaction below 0.95. This study concluded that though RRWH cannot satisfy the minimum demand requirement through all days of the year, it is more than able to provide an alternative water supply for the domestic household in periods of long dry spells or when primary water source are inadequate.

The exponential growth of the world population led by the geographic expansion of urban areas in developing countries has put massive pressure on natural resources especially land and water. Water supply and water scarcity remain one of the major challenges facing the industrializing world. The United Nations forecast further increase in population which, in the absence of management and policies, will inevitably put more resources at risk. Changing climatic conditions causing more frequent and intense rainfall will also affect water management systems in the vulnerable urban areas of developing countries. The goal of this study was twofold; first analyze the patterns of water consumption in the rapidly growing city of Lagos, Nigeria and use them in a System Dynamics (SD) model to make projections about future demand. The second part used remote sensing to quantify the contribution of extensive land use/cover change to urban flooding. Land use/cover dynamics over the past decade was analyzed using satellite imagery provided by Landsat Thematic Mapping (TM). Unsupervised classification was performed with false color composite using the Iterative Self-Organizing Data Analysis (ISODATA) technique in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The study area was divided into four different land use types during image classification: bare land, built-up area, water bodies, and vegetation. For water demand, two different scenarios of population growth including 5.5% and 2.75 % annual increase were considered. The results showed that water demand dropped by 67% of its current value when losses in distribution were reduced by 20% and population annual growth rate kept at 2.75% over the study period. Bare land and water bodies lost 1.31% and 1.61% of their current area respectively while built-up area grew by 1.11%. These changes in land use/cover changes led to a 64% increase in average surface runoff, mostly attributable to increasing surface imperviousness and the absence of an adequate urban drainage system. This paper intends to assist the authorities of the city of Lagos who adopted a master plan in 2010 as a road map to reduce to city’s vulnerability to flooding and close the gap between water demand and water supply by 2050.

The goal of this thesis is to explore how household heterogeneity propagates and amplifies macroeconomic shocks within the economy using both economic theory and empirical data. The assumption of a single "representative" household has been a mainstay of macroeconomic research over the past half-century. However recent work suggests that not only is there a considerable degree of heterogeneity among households, but that these differences have a significant impact on a range of macroeconomic issues such as the e?ectiveness of fiscal stimulus (Kaplan et al., 2014; Broda and Parker, 2014), monetary policy (Auclert, 2017; Kaplan et al., 2016), the housing market (Attanasio et al., 2012; Blundell et al., 2008; Guerrieri and Iacoviello, 2017; Ngai et al., 2016; Mian et al., 2013), consumption (Ahn et al., 2017a; Blundell and Preston, 1998; Campbell and Cocco, 2007; Engelhardt, 1996) and employment (Ravn and Sterk, 2016; McKay and Reis, 2016; Abo-Zaid, 2013a) among many others. This literature has highlighted how households respond differently to aggregate shocks or changes in policy and how simply aggregating or averaging across them can obscure important truths about the economy. However, relaxing this assumption poses several challenges. The first is choosing the degree and manner in which households di?er. While in reality households can differ along many dimensions, in practice it is only feasible to include a small number of these in any given model. Thus one must choose the most salient dimensions along which households differ and the structural reasons behind such differences. For example, when examining the dynamics behind the housing market is it important to model differences in income, wealth, age, tastes or composition? No single model will be able to incorporate all these differences and so it is incumbent on researchers to proritise and justify their choices. In this thesis I will show why household heterogeneity in the housing and labour markets is both empirically relevant and an important consideration when considering the problem of optimal policy. The second challenge is a computational one. While models can be structured such that differentiated households make identical decisions, in general these differences will cause choices, and thus outcomes, across households to diverge. This produces a non-degenerate distribution of households across their specific state variables. This raises the problem of how this potentially infinite-dimension distribution is incorporated within the model. Previous literature has developed a range of options for handling this problem including approximating the distribution with a small handful of moments (Krusell and Smith, 1998) and approximating it with projection and perturbation methods (Reiter, 2009). In this thesis I will outline two different methods for dealing with this computational problem. The first, set out in Chapter 1, shows how market clearing prices can be feasibly calculated by aggregating over the distribution of households. The second approach involves simulating the model with aggregate uncertainty using numerical derivatives based on impulse response functions. The first chapter of this thesis will examine how heterogeneity in wealth and income affects households' decision to purchase housing and the implications for their consumption of non-durable goods. It constructs an Aiyagari-Bewley-Huggett model in which households are subject to an idiosyncratic income shock and thus hold different amounts of liquid wealth and illiquid housing. I then evaluate how the anticipated changes in household debt associated with the leveraged purchase of housing affect the consumption of non-durable goods. I show that the differences in income and wealth lead to significant variance in marginal propensities to consume among households. I show that households that are saving for a house deposit can have negative marginal propensities to consume as they lower their consumption in anticipation of being credit constrained as the probability that they will buy a house increases. This result has important implications for the design of fiscal policy, as it shows that payments to first time home buyers, which was a common policy response to the Global Financial Crisis, can lead to falls in aggregate consumption rather than stimulating growth. The second and third chapters examine how the combination of heterogeneity in workers' wages and downward nominal wage rigidity affects the transmission and design of different aspects of monetary policy. In Chapter 2 I show that in this environment there is a trade-off between a higher rate of inflation which gives workers more flexibility when setting real wages, at the cost of greater price dispersion in the goods market. After outlining a numerical algorithm to solve the model I use micro-data on the distribution of workers' change in wages to calibrate the nominal wage rigidity. I show that downward nominal wage rigidities bend the Phillips curve constraining the inflation rate from falling in times of low demand. This indicates that an inflation rate that is only moderately below its target can mask large falls in the output gap. Finally, I find that the monetary policy rule can be implemented by placing a higher weight on wage inflation, relative to a symmetric nominal wage rigidity. In Chapter 3 I discuss how downwardly rigid wages can amplify or mitigate the welfare loss caused by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates and how this varies with the parameterisation of the model. I find that the optimal rate of inflation is increased by the presence of both nominal interest rate and wage rigidities, when modeled either separately or in tandem, and is 3 per cent in the baseline calibration of the model.

O turismo entrou em um período de forte expansão após a Segunda Guerra Mundial que perdura até os dias atuais. O aumento da circulação de turistas repercute na geração de renda e empregos para os países visitados, além do enriquecimento adquirido através das trocas culturais. Este crescimento tem despertado o interesse da comunidade científica, bem como profissional, com o intuito de explorar as metodologias para a modelagem e previsão da demanda turística. Estimativas acuradas da demanda servem de apoio para corretas tomadas de decisão por parte dos gestores quanto ao dimensionamento adequado de recursos financeiros, especialmente frente à realização de um evento de grandes proporções. Neste sentido, este trabalho tem por objetivos verificar quais são as técnicas atualmente mais utilizadas para previsão de demandas turísticas através de revisão da literatura, desde 2005 até 2015; utilizar dois métodos de modelagem (ARIMA e RNA) para modelar e prever a demanda turística de duas sedes olímpicas recentes; comparar essas previsões com as previsões obtidas por cinco métodos de combinação de previsões (médias aritmética, harmônica e geométrica, variância mínima e regressão linear) e; aplicar o método mais acurado para prever a demanda turística do Brasil. Os resultados foram avaliados através de três medidas de acurácia. Em virtude da realização dos Jogos Olímpicos em 2016, a demanda brasileira para este período foi modelada e prevista e a previsão foi ajustada segundo um ajuste matemático sazonal, objetivando ganho de acurácia. Foi observado ganho de acurácia quando as previsões foram combinadas e, na série brasileira, o ajuste adotado indicou um acréscimo de 175% na demanda original para agosto de 2016. / Tourism has experienced a strong increase since the end of World War II. The increase in tourist circulation results in income and employment expansion, besides the cultural enrichment involved in such experiences. This growth has attracted attention from the scientific community as well as professional, with the objective of exploring the methodologies for tourism demand modelling and forecasts. Accurate demand estimates serve as support for correct decision making by managers especially considering financial resource scaling for major events. In this sense, this study aims to verify which techniques are more currently used for forecasting tourism demand through review of the literature from 2005 to 2015; using two modeling methods (ARIMA and ANN) to make models and forecasting the tourism demand of two recent Olympic hosts; comparing these forecasts with the forecasts obtained for five methods of combining forecasts (arithmetic, harmonic and geometric means, minimum variance and linear regression) and; applying the most accurated method to forecast the tourism demand in Brazil. The results were evaluated using three different accuracy measurements. By virtue of the 2016 Olympic Games, the Brazilian tourism demand was modeled and the forecast was adjusted by a seasonal mathematical adjustment, designed for better precision. A gain in preciseness was observed when forecasts were combined and, for the Brazilian series, the adopted adjustment indicated an increase of 175% when compared with the original demand for August 2016.

Esta tese tem como objetivo compreender as práticas relacionadas ao consumo de produtos audiovisuais sob demanda em plataformas digitais através da investigação das práticas relacionadas à Netflix na rotina dos seus usuários. O referencial teórico toma como base a Teoria da Prática, na qual a prática é considerada um comportamento rotinizado, com vários elementos interconectados, em uma relação constante entre agentes e objetos. O estudo empírico acontece a partir de entrevistas semiestruturadas e observação dos espaços de consumo — os respondentes foram selecionados por meio de um questionário prévio compartilhado em sites de redes sociais. A investigação acontece com base em cinco eixos: materiais, competências, dinâmicas afetivas, relacionais e espaço-temporais. Em termos gerais, conclui-se que o consumo de conteúdo na Netflix e as práticas relacionadas adquiriram ao longo do tempo um caráter social e recursivo, e assumem também uma dimensão afetiva no cotidiano dos usuários. Nesse sentido, nota-se também o estabelecimento e a reprodução de fluxos de consumo interconectados, nos quais usuários e empresa relacionam-se continuamente: de um lado, há a disponibilização contínua de conteúdo, e do outro, o acesso rotinizado, fragmentado e marcado pela insaciabilidade e autonomia do tempo dedicado à prática, o que favorece a manutenção da estrutura. / The aim of this study is to understand consumption habits of on-demand audiovisual products available on digital platforms by investigating how Netflix is incorporated into the routines of its subscribers. The theoretical reference is based on the practice theory, where the practice is a routine behavior with many interconnected elements of a constant relationship between agents and objects. The empirical research is comprised of semi-structured interviews and by observing spaces of consumption – the respondents were selected from a survey made available on social network sites. The research is based on five axes: materials, skills, affective dynamics, relational and space-time. Overall, it is concluded that content consumption in Netflix and related practices acquired a social and recursive character over time, assuming an affective dimension. In this respect, users and companies are constantly relating with one another in a flowing exchange of interconnected consumption. On one hand, there is constant access to content; on the other, there is routine access which can be fragmented and determined by one’s insatiableness and how much time is spent on it, a key to maintaining its structure.

No description available.

Thesis (MTech (Electrical Engineering))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2011. / Initiatives that are directed towards improving power management by a utility provider have to consider technical feasibility, socio-economic and the environment. Patterns of power consumption world over indicate that demand for electricity has over the years been on the rise due to increase in activities that demand usage of electricity. Such activities include construction and property development, development of industries and infrastructure. These activities have strained the power production, whose development does not match the increase in demand. ESKOM, a government authority mandated to generate, transmit and distribute power in South Africa has seen demand surpassing its generation capacity, hence resorting to load shedding actions. Load shedding imposes inconveniences to the consumers who are completely disconnected from the grid, translating to unpredictable periods of darkness. Utility providers have an option of constructing new peaker plants which lie idle most of the day, to take care of high demand during the peak periods, hence, avoid effecting load shedding actions. Various ways of managing load have been presented in this research. In particular, the research investigated possible ways utilities use in managing their capacity with an aim of developing an alternative method and tool for Demand Side Management applications that can be used by energy utility to improve reliability, manage and control consumption of electrical energy through selective shedding of the load connected to the consumer when the demand surpasses the utility's safe capacity.

Orientador: Nemre Adas Saliba / Banca: Renato Moreira Arcieri / Banca: Roosevelt da Silva Barros / Resumo: O Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) trouxe reformulações políticas e a reorganização de serviços de saúde bucal, baseadas em princípios doutrinários: universalidade, eqüidade e integralidade. O estudo teve como objetivo analisar e descrever a organização da demanda de pacientes, do serviço de saúde bucal de um município do estado de São Paulo, com enfoque na organização e na resolubilidade do serviço. Trata-se de um estudo exploratório, quanti-qualitativo descritivo dos serviços de saúde bucal, ofertados à população no município de Penápolis - SP. Foram utilizadas diversas estratégias metodológicas: análise documental, análise de dados secundários e entrevista semiestruturada com a Coordenadora de Saúde Bucal do município para obtenção de informações sobre o funcionamento e organização específicas do sistema de saúde do município. Foram analisados prontuários dos pacientes atendidos no período de dezembro a janeiro de 2010 no Centro de Especialidades Odontológicas e descrito o fluxo de pacientes, referenciados e contra-referênciados entre a Atenção Básica e Atenção Secundária. Categorias foram pré-definidas e ajustadas para análise: Descrição da rede de serviços odontológicos; Organização e Integração da Atenção Básica e Atenção Especializada; Procedimentos referenciados ao Centro de Especialidades Odontológicas, que tiveram no mínimo a primeira consulta; Procedimentos referenciados ao Centro de Especialidades Odontológicas, que tiveram tratamento especializado realizado; Tempo necessário para a conclusão do tratamento no Centro de Especialidade Odontológica; Número de consultas para conclusão do tratamento. A Atenção Básica Odontológica possui 10 Cirurgiões-Dentistas, 5 Equipes de Saúde Bucal e um Centro de Especialidades Odontológicas com 5 especialistas. O encaminhamento entre os níveis... / Abstract: The Brazilian Health System (SUS) brought reformulations on policies and reorganization of dental services, based on doctrine principles: universality, equality and integrality. The study had the aim to analyze and describe the organization of patients' demand, on dental services from a city of São Paulo State, focusing on organization, resolution of service. It's an exploratory and descriptive study with quantitative and qualitative characteristic of dental services offered to population from Penápolis-SP. It was used many methodological strategies: documental analysis, analysis of secondary data and semi-structured interview with the Coordinator of Dental Health from the studied city about the functioning and specific organization of city. It was also analyzed the recorders of patients attended on Centre of Dental Specialties and it was described the flow of patients referred and back-referred between Primary and Secondary Attention. Categories were predefined and adjusted: description of dental services net; Organization and Integration of Primary and Specialized Attention; Proceedings referred to Centre of Dental Specialties that had at least the first consult; Proceedings referred to the Centre of Dental Specialties that had completed the specialized treatment; The time necessary for conclusion in the Centre of Dental Specialties, Number of consults to conclude the specialized treatment. The Primary Dental Attention has 10 dentists, 5 teams of Oral Health and one Centre of Dental Specialties with 5 experts. The reference between the levels of attention is performed by records, developed on the own service and it indicate the needed specialty. In the Centre of Dental Specialties it was registered 1236 proceedings referred from Primary Attention, among them, 623 to endodontic (50,4%). It was concluded 757 (62,6%) cases... / Mestre

Esta tese tem como objetivo compreender as práticas relacionadas ao consumo de produtos audiovisuais sob demanda em plataformas digitais através da investigação das práticas relacionadas à Netflix na rotina dos seus usuários. O referencial teórico toma como base a Teoria da Prática, na qual a prática é considerada um comportamento rotinizado, com vários elementos interconectados, em uma relação constante entre agentes e objetos. O estudo empírico acontece a partir de entrevistas semiestruturadas e observação dos espaços de consumo — os respondentes foram selecionados por meio de um questionário prévio compartilhado em sites de redes sociais. A investigação acontece com base em cinco eixos: materiais, competências, dinâmicas afetivas, relacionais e espaço-temporais. Em termos gerais, conclui-se que o consumo de conteúdo na Netflix e as práticas relacionadas adquiriram ao longo do tempo um caráter social e recursivo, e assumem também uma dimensão afetiva no cotidiano dos usuários. Nesse sentido, nota-se também o estabelecimento e a reprodução de fluxos de consumo interconectados, nos quais usuários e empresa relacionam-se continuamente: de um lado, há a disponibilização contínua de conteúdo, e do outro, o acesso rotinizado, fragmentado e marcado pela insaciabilidade e autonomia do tempo dedicado à prática, o que favorece a manutenção da estrutura. / The aim of this study is to understand consumption habits of on-demand audiovisual products available on digital platforms by investigating how Netflix is incorporated into the routines of its subscribers. The theoretical reference is based on the practice theory, where the practice is a routine behavior with many interconnected elements of a constant relationship between agents and objects. The empirical research is comprised of semi-structured interviews and by observing spaces of consumption – the respondents were selected from a survey made available on social network sites. The research is based on five axes: materials, skills, affective dynamics, relational and space-time. Overall, it is concluded that content consumption in Netflix and related practices acquired a social and recursive character over time, assuming an affective dimension. In this respect, users and companies are constantly relating with one another in a flowing exchange of interconnected consumption. On one hand, there is constant access to content; on the other, there is routine access which can be fragmented and determined by one’s insatiableness and how much time is spent on it, a key to maintaining its structure.

O objetivo do presente trabalho foi analisar a trajetória de desaceleração, vivenciada pela economia brasileira, a partir dos anos 1990 até 2013, com o foco nas restrições impostas ao crescimento econômico – do lado da oferta, de demanda e institucionais – e suas implicações fundamentais. Apoiado nas principais interpretações teóricas e também na literatura empírica sobre a insuficiência do crescimento econômico no Brasil, elaborou-se uma investigação teórico-histórico-empírica, a fim de identificar os principais obstáculos existentes, investigando-se o seu papel na determinação da trajetória verificada nas últimas décadas. O procedimento metodológico envolveu três etapas. Na primeira, buscou-se explicitar um aparato teórico-conceitual, a partir de uma resenha literária sobre a temática do crescimento econômico, com ênfase nos fatores que podem restringir o referido processo, de acordo com três abordagens principais: a economia tradicional (ortodoxa), a vertente keynesiana-neoestruturalista e a visão da economia institucional. A segunda etapa realizou uma discussão reflexiva que identificou o contexto do surgimento e a evolução dos obstáculos relevantes ao crescimento sustentado no Brasil. Na terceira etapa, desenvolveu-se uma análise econométrica que se dividiu em duas partes: a primeira utilizou a metodologia para dados em painéis, para inferir as correlações entre algumas variáveis selecionadas e o crescimento econômico em um conjunto de 67 países entre 1990 e 2013, e a segunda realizou uma análise de séries temporais, visando avaliar a relação entre as restrições ao crescimento e a trajetória de baixo dinamismo, verificada a partir dos anos 1990. Os principais resultados da pesquisa sugeriram a existência de uma relação forte e direta entre a presença das restrições – de oferta, de demanda e institucionais – e o desempenho pífio da economia brasileira, que ocorreu em razão da deterioração dos canais fundamentais para o crescimento sustentado: o investimento, a produtividade e o setor externo, justificando o quadro de semiestagnação que caracterizou as últimas décadas. / The objective of this study was to analyze the trend of deceleration experienced by the Brazilian economy, from the years 1990 to 2013 with a focus on restrictions on economic growth - on the supply side, demand and institutional ones - and its fundamental implications. Supported by the main theoretical interpretations and also by the empirical literature on the failure of economic growth in Brazil, we elaborated a theoretical and historical-empirical research to identify the main obstacles, investigating its role in determining the trend observed in recent decades. The methodological procedure involved three steps. At first, we tried to clarify a theoretical and conceptual apparatus, through a literature review on the economic growth, with emphasis on factors that may restrict this process, according to three main approaches: the traditional (Orthodox) economy, the Keynesian-neoestruturalist vision and the institutional economics. The second stage held a reflective discussion which identified the emergence of the context and the evolution of relevant obstacles to the resumption of economic growth in Brazil. In the third stage, we dedicated to an econometric analysis was divided into two parts developed: the first used the methodology for data panels aiming to infer some correlations between selected variables and economic growth in a set of 67 countries between 1990 and 2013 and, the second, we conducted a time series analysis to evaluate the relationship between the constraints to growth and the trajectory of low dynamism observed from the early 1990. The main results of this study suggested the existence of a strong and direct relationship between the presence of restrictions – of the supply and demand side and institutional ones - and the weak performance of the Brazilian economy, which took place due to the deterioration of basic channels for sustained growth: investment, productivity and the external sector, justifying the semi-stagnation framework that characterized the last decades.