ABSTRACT
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bangladesh government took the measure like partial lockdown (PL) and complete lockdown (CL) to curb the spread. These measures gave a chance for environmental restoration. In this study, street dust samples were collected during PL and CL from four main urban land use categories in Dhaka city, such as industrial area (IA), commercial area (CA), public facilities area (PFA), and residential area (RA). Ten potentially toxic elements (Cr, Mn, Zn, Fe, Pb, Cu, Co, Ni, As, and Cd) in fine street dust particles (diameter < 20 µm) were determined following aqua-regia digestion and measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to evaluate distribution, pollution sources, and potential risks to ecological systems and human health. Results showed that during PL, the concentrations of toxic elements in the dust were higher than that of CL. Cd and Fe were lowest and highest in concentration with 1.56 to 41,970 µg/g and 0.82 to 39,330 µg/g in partial and complete lockdown period respectively. All toxic elements were detected at high levels above background values where Fe with the highest and Cd with lowest concentrations, respectively. By land use, the levels of toxic elements pollution followed IA > PFA > RA > CA. Correlation analysis (CA), principal component analysis (PCA), and hierarchal cluster analysis (HCA) revealed that the sources of these analyzed toxic elements were mainly from anthropogenic which are related to industrial and vehicular or traffic emissions. Enrichment factor (EF), geoaccumulation index (Igeo), contamination factor (CF), and pollution load index (PLI) also suggested that the dust was more polluted during PL. Exposure of toxic elements to human was mainly via skin contact followed by ingestion and inhalation. Hazard quotient (HQ) values were < 1 except for Mn through dermal contact at all sites during partial and complete lockdown, similar to hazard index (HI), while Cr further showed high non-carcinogenic risks to children. Generally, children HI values were about 5-6 times higher than those of adults, suggesting a greater vulnerability of children to the health concerns caused by toxic elements in street dust. Carcinogenic risk (CR) values via ingestion pathway indicated all elements (except Pb) had significant health effect, while CR value by inhalation results showed no significant health effect. Cumulative carcinogenic risk (CCR) value had significant health effect except Pb in all land use categories. CCR values decreased during CL and reached at acceptable limit for most of the cases. This research provides a message to the local governments and environmental authorities to have a complete assessment of toxic elements in the street dust of Dhaka megacity in order to assuring public health safety and ecological sustainability.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on our society, environment and public health, in both positive and negative ways. The main aim of this study is to monitor the effect of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns on urban cooling. To do so, satellite images of Landsat 8 for Milan and Rome in Italy, and Wuhan in China were used to look at pre-lockdown and during the lockdown. First, the surface biophysical characteristics for the pre-lockdown and within-lockdown dates of COVID-19 were calculated. Then, the land surface temperature (LST) retrieved from Landsat thermal data was normalized based on cold pixels LST and statistical parameters of normalized LST (NLST) were calculated. Thereafter, the correlation coefficient (r) between the NLST and index-based built-up index (IBI) was estimated. Finally, the surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII) of different cities on the lockdown and pre-lockdown periods was compared with each other. The mean NLST of built-up lands in Milan (from 7.71 °C to 2.32 °C), Rome (from 5.05 °C to 3.54 °C) and Wuhan (from 3.57 °C to 1.77 °C) decreased during the lockdown dates compared to pre-lockdown dates. The r (absolute value) between NLST and IBI for Milan, Rome and Wuhan decreased from 0.43, 0.41 and 0.16 in the pre-lockdown dates to 0.25, 0.24, and 0.12 during lockdown dates respectively, which shows a large decrease for all cities. Analysis of SUHI for these cities showed that SUHII during the lockdown dates compared to pre-lockdown dates decreased by 0.89 °C, 1.78 °C, and 1.07 °C respectively. The results indicated a high and substantial impact of anthropogenic activities and anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) on the SUHI due to the substantial reduction of huge anthropogenic pressure in cities. Our conclusions draw attention to the contribution of COVID-19 lockdowns (reducing the anthropogenic activities) to creating cooler cities.
ABSTRACT
Traffic and production restrictions are two important emergency measures for controlling urban air pollution. The lockdown policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic period are nearly equivalent to the policies of traffic and production restriction, which provides a rare opportunity to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of these emergency measures. Taking Wuhan, China as the study area, this paper firstly verified the changes in six air pollutants and analyzed their change rules in different lockdown periods using statistical methods. Then the structural breakpoints in air pollutants were detected via regression discontinuity design model. To comprehensively understand the effects of restrictions on air pollution, the influences of meteorological conditions on air pollution were also investigated. The results illustrated that the concentrations of PM2.5, PM10 and NO2 decreased significantly during lockdown period. By comparing with the RDD coefficients of PM2.5 (-34.46), PM10 (-37.11) and NO2 (-19.15), the lockdown had little effect on CO (-0.32). The traffic and production restrictions had no apparent effects on SO2. Although O3 showed an increasing trend, the increase was not limited to the lockdown period, meaning that the traffic and production restrictions had less effect on the increasing trend of O3 concentration. Moreover, the structural breakpoints were verified in four air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, NO2, and CO), and the structural breakpoints were caused by lockdown instead of the Spring Festival. The results also indicated that the meteorological conditions were not the main reasons for the changes in air pollutants during the lockdown period. This paper reveals how the traffic and production restrictions affect urban air pollution and provides a strong implementation basis for the air pollution control policy.
ABSTRACT
The authors present a typology of strategies of low-mobility urban groups varying by the levels of solidarity and trust as a reaction to the events taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The typology provides social portraits of the clusters of respondents and covers four behavioral strategies: 'consensus strategy,' 'pro-state strategy,' 'pro-social strategy,' and 'autonomy strategy.' 'Consensus strategy' and 'autonomy strategy' are obvious antagonists not only in initial parameters, but also in behavior patterns. A survey of the low-mobile population from three Russian cities showed that a 'consensus strategy' based on solidarity and trust is more successful in terms of the capability to recover quickly after crises and disasters. The predominance of this strategy is typical for all analyzed low-mobility urban groups, namely elderly people, parents of young children, and especially people with disabilities. This is explained by their everyday experience of overcoming various hardships and barriers, thus being capable of forming the most successful patterns of behavior in terms of resistance to various challenges. The representatives of the 'consensus strategy' are more likely than others to support vaccination, compliance with the imposed restrictions, and state measures. They contracted COVID-19 more often than others and usually endured it in a milder form. The 'autonomy strategy' is less common among low-mobile people. It includes rejection of introduced measures and refusal to take care of health, even despite experiencing severe forms of COVID-19 disease which, unfortunately, is the most common case for the covid-dissidents among the low-mobile population.
ABSTRACT
To examine the bus travel behaviour of the elderly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study analysed the mechanisms influencing the elderly's risk perceptions regarding behavioural intention towards bus travel whilst focusing on the normalisation stage of pandemic prevention and control. Based on the theory of planned behaviour, a structural equation model of the elderly's bus travel intention was constructed. The interactions among six factors-including attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, cognitive risk perception, affective risk perception and the behavioural intention of the elderly's bus travel-were quantitatively analysed. Valid sample data were used for empirical research. The results of this study show that perceived behavioural control, attitudes and subjective norms have a significant positive impact on the behavioural intentions of the elderly's bus travel during the normalisation stage of pandemic prevention and control, with perceived behavioural control being the most influential factor. Moreover, perceived behavioural control also has a significant positive impact on attitudes, which indirectly influences behavioural intention. Cognitive risk perception has a direct and significant negative impact on attitudes, perceived behavioural control and subjective norms;however, affective risk perception only has a significant negative impact on subjective norms. Additionally, there is a positive correlation between the two, with both indirectly and negatively influencing the behavioural intentions of the elderly's bus travel. This study can provide a basis for the formulation and improvement of pandemic prevention measures for bus travel during the normalisation stage of pandemic prevention and control to safeguard the elderly's bus travel rights.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Healthcare workers are at the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic and identified as a priority group for COVID-19 vaccines. We aimed to determine to COVID-19 vaccine acceptance rate and reasons for vaccine refusal in healthcare workers in our hospital. Materials and Methods: A questionnaire consisting of eight questions was applied to healthcare workers working at Ankara City Hospital for 7.5 months after the start of the COVID-19 vaccine in our country, including COVID-19 vaccination, previous years' influenza vaccination, and reasons for vaccine rejection. Results: Six hundred twenty-eight healthcare workers participated in the study. Two hundred fifty-six (40%) of them were doctors. Ninenty-nine of the participants were not vaccinated, the rate of vaccine rejection was 15.7%. The rate of vaccine rejection was the lowest (8.2%) among doctors, and lower among doctors working in the fields of COVID-19 (p= 0.041). While the rates of getting the COVID-19 vaccine were significantly higher in those who had regular or intermittent influenza vaccination every year in the previous years, those who had never had the influenza vaccine did not receive the COVID-19 vaccine either (p= 0.000). The most common reason for vaccine rejection was 'fear of the side effects of the vaccine' (24%), while 'I believe the disease is mild' and 'I want to gain immunity naturally' were other common reasons. Conclusion: Vaccination of healthcare workers has gained even more importance in the COVID-19 pandemic, with both risky and severe working conditions and mortality rates. Determining the reasons for vaccine refusal, finding effective solutions, emphasizing the necessity of vaccination with scientific evidence are important for the control of the pandemic. Vaccination of health workers is a guide in community immunization.
ABSTRACT
The H2020 CIVITAS SUITS project was conceived by Professor Andree Woodcock and colleagues in 2014/15. It was scheduled to run between 2016 and 2020 but owing to the COVID-19 pandemic was extended to spring 2021. The aim of the project was to support capacity building of small–medium local authorities developing sustainable transport measures. This volume provides an account of the outputs of the project, in the form of chapters and recommendations for local authorities and consultants who are entrusted in delivering transport services which are inclusive, fit for purpose and enable accessibility for all. Although larger authorities are relatively well equipped to make these changes, smaller, more traditional local authorities may lack the knowledge, capacity and capability to plan, finance and implement sustainable transport measures at a time of great socio economic, technological and cultural change. Such authorities are also required to adopt new ways of working at the same time as designing and planning multimillion-euro transport projects which will support smart city developments and significantly improve the mobility of their citizens. At the heart of H2020 CIVITAS SUITS is a socio-technical approach, which recognises that capacity building is more than just providing training, and it is about empowering members of an organisation to be innovative. This volume has been written to inform designed to inform the daily practices of transport departments and stakeholder groups engaged in commissioning sustainable transport measures of working on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. © 2023, Transport for West Midlands.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: This paper aims to highlight how a group of novice principals in Connecticut and New York used relational, dispositional and situational factors to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The study aims to support new principals and educational leaders. Design/methodology/approach: Using Mutch's (2015) dispositional, relational and situational framework to guide the inquiry, this paper uses qualitative methods and interviewing in particular to explore the questions of interest. Six novice principals were each interviewed over the 2020–2021 school year, each interview lasting approximately forty-five minutes. Data were analyzed thematically using both deductive coding techniques and cross comparative analysis. Findings: Findings show that novice principals tended to rely on dispositional factors to respond to the crisis. Additionally, novice principals reported limited responses to the situational factors of the crisis due to restricted access and guidance from the district leadership. Research limitations/implications: Due to the small sample size and methodological approach, it may be inappropriate to generalize the findings across all novice principals in all settings. Further research in additional settings and larger samples are encouraged to support the proposed findings. Practical implications: This paper has several implications for districts and leadership preparation programs. Among these is the need for leadership preparation programs to adjust their curricula to train new principals properly. Originality/value: This work fills a gap in the research regarding how new principals respond to a crisis. It also provides insights into practice and possible means to enhance the growing population of new principals entering the educational leadership workforce. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
In March 2022, the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in Shenzhen, a megacity in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of China, led to unusual restrictions on anthropogenic activities within a single city, in contrast to the restrictions COVID-19 caused on a national scale at the beginning of 2020. In this unique event, we found that only under unfavorable meteorological conditions did substantial urban local emission reductions have an impact on air pollutant changes (−42.4%–6.6%), whereas the deweathered changes were very small (−8.3%–3.4%) under favorable meteorological conditions. Primary anthropogenic pollutants, such as NO2, toluene, BC, and primary organic aerosol (POA), responded most considerably to emission reductions from early morning to noon during unfavorable meteorological days;for secondary organic aerosol (SOA), regulating the daytime total oxidant (Ox = O3 + NO2) was found to be more effective than controlling its precursors within the city scale, whereas secondary nitrate displayed the opposite trend. Since Ox changed little during the urban lockdown despite the remarkable decrease in precursors, it is emphasized that regionally coordinated control of VOCs and NOx is necessary to effectively reduce Ox levels. In addition, Shenzhen's NOx emission reduction efforts should be sustained in order to control PM2.5 and O3 pollution synergistically for long-term attainment.
ABSTRACT
Studies on the factors of the COVID-19 pandemic that influence architecture and spaces have presented various, often contradictory, findings, and the same is true for studies making predictions. Considering this, this study aims to use the Delphi technique, an analytical method for synthesizing the opinions of experts across diverse fields to determine major issues in the COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 eras as wells as the architectural and urban spaces in which future changes are expected. This study derived keywords representing major trends and issues that would lead to changes in architectural and urban spaces in the COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 eras, predicted the change patterns for each keyword, and determined the architectural and urban spaces expected to undergo major changes. The experts predicted these keywords to show a variety of changes, including the pattern of increasing influence during the COVID-19 pandemic and then decreasing in influence after the pandemic, the pattern of small influence during the pandemic and the increase in influence after the pandemic, and the pattern of greater influence during and after the pandemic. Furthermore, they predicted that most of the post-COVID-19 changes would occur in the housing sector. Developing architectural guidelines that could incorporate these changes is thus necessary. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of the Architectural Institute of Japan, Architectural Institute of Korea and Architectural Society of China.
ABSTRACT
In 2020 editor-in-chief (Andrew Malekoff) issued a special call for papers for group work stories on pandemic 2020. Among the 28 stories accepted for the series there were 16 from India, 9 from the United States, 2 from Canada and 1 from Israel. General submissions from the U.S., Canada and Israel were typical for the journal. Atypical are submissions from India. Rather than publish the stories in one special issue of the Journal, he decided to spread them out over several issues through 2022. In the course of organizing the special series (with a December 2021 deadline) he continued communication with a few of the authors from India, with particular interest and concern in the deteriorating situation as 2021 unfolded. Although the present commentary is not about group work per se, it is an update by Ajay Saini, Nancy and Andrew Malekoff on the current state of affairs in India, with some contrast to the situation in the U.S., that offers continuing context for the stories in the series. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Remote working is increasingly seen as an effective model in several countries in the last decade, mainly thanks to the development of information and communication technologies in support of common daily working tasks. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has represented a pivotal moment for the adoption of remote working in multiple sectors, with positive effects on the environmental impacts caused by the daily commuting of workers. However, due to the fact that pandemic-induced remote working has represented a major forced experiment on a global scale, and that it has often been imposed rather than chosen by employees, workers' well-being has not always been ensured. This research work presents an analysis of a wide survey of remote workers in public administrations in four different provinces in Italy, with the aim of assessing the main characteristics of the users and the related environmental benefits. Survey data refer to remote workers before COVID-19, thus representing workers who have freely chosen to work from home for different reasons. The results of this work represent a useful tool with which to support the definition of new remote work strategies that could help policy makers reduce a part of the systematic mobility demand. We have also calculated average energy and emission savings to provide useful indicators for a preliminary estimation of the potential environmental benefits of remote working. Considering the entire sample of respondents, workers who would have commuted at least partially by car have saved on average 6 kg of CO2 per day thanks to remote working (with an average round-trip commuting distance of approximately 35 km). The current results will be supplemented by the results of a new survey underway, aimed at evaluating the differences of remote working experiences during the emergency response to COVID-19. © 2023 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has shocked the world due to its pronounced mortality rate, rapid worldwide spread, and profound socioeconomic effects across all societies. As the spearhead of urban policies, local governments play an important role in crisis management during the pandemic. In the context of smart cities, innovative solutions have been required, especially to improve the local government's capacity to manage health crises. This study asks whether smart cities perform better in governing the COVID-19 pandemic. This article focuses on how urban governance impacted cities' performance in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a city-level data set from Indonesia, we constructed a COVID-19 response performance index using principal component analysis that is used in an empirical strategy with quasi-experimental cross-sectional methods to minimize the influence of unobserved covariates and selection bias. This study concludes that smart city status does not have a statistically significant impact on the COVID-19 performance index. We offer three possible accounts based on expert insights, previous empirical studies, and digital upshots on data monitoring and reporting cases. Both theoretical and practical implications can be drawn, thus highlighting the lack of effective integration of technological dimensions into health and urban governance systems in the context of a public health crisis.
ABSTRACT
The recent Covid-19 pandemic highlighted rural-urban interactions, in particular the fact that cities are dependent on the accessibility of non-metropolitan and rural spaces and vice versa. This article seeks to understand how these interactions contributed to emergent relational spaces of rurality during the Covid-19 crisis. The article analyses politicised mobilities between localities and rural-urban linkages that are tied to the sustainability of rural change. The study focuses on two countries: Estonia and Finland, exploring thematic narratives on second-home practices and related politics during the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis. The explored regions were the South Savo region in Finland and the island of Saaremaa and northern coastal villages in Estonia. The analysis indicates ways in which the mobility restrictions and disturbances triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic attributed certain demands and hopes to rural areas and led the shift in rural-urban interactions. The article contributes to the understanding of co-existences between im/mobilities and multi-local living and sustainability in rural change.
ABSTRACT
The contemporary political situation has been characterized, in recent years, by the emergence of multiple forms of populism. Since populist discourses have often used migrants and migrations instrumentally, one should clarify what populism, souverainism and the ‘spatialization of fear' actually mean. In this sense, many European states have ambiguously wavered between the rejection of supranational entities (as in the case of the United Kingdom with the Brexit, or the first version of Marine Le Pen's Front National) and the desire to strengthen European borders, considered culturally homogeneous, against the ‘threat' of foreigners arriving from Africa and Asia. Ever since the coronavirus emergency exploded, populism has been similarly ambiguous with regard to cities, which are sometimes considered the receptacle for all evil (and all diseases), while at other times they are a political model (with obvious reference to the Greek polis) to be defended, once again, in the clash of civilizations that characterizes our era. If, in fact, there are many studies on the construction of the populist discourse at the national or supranational scale, less attention has been paid to the urban scale, which also plays a key role in the articulation between identity rhetoric, practices of confinement and spatial imagery. In this turbulent context, Palermo has also experienced some episodes, albeit not very well known, of populist anti-migrant rhetoric. Since the prevailing narrative for now, due to Covid-19, focuses on security obsessions, migrants have been linked to a stigma that configures them as carriers of dangerous diseases, not only at the national scale but also and especially at the urban level. By building on the existing scientific literature on populism, and through the use of a qualitative methodology based on critical discourse analysis, this contribution aims to outline the links between migration, populism and health emergencies, starting from a theoretical framework and then describing the specific case of Palermo, still subject to rapid changes. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The current study investigates the effects of the school lockdowns during school years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 on the achievement scores of primary school students during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed scores for spelling, reading fluency (i.e., decoding speed), reading comprehension, and mathematics from standardized student tracking systems for 5125 students from 26 primary schools in the urban region of The Hague, the Netherlands. Results showed that students in grades 1 through 3 had significant learning delays after the first lockdown. However, results after the second lockdown showed that most students were able to catch up, compared to students from corresponding grades of cohorts before COVID-19. The magnitude of these positive effects was mostly close to the negative effect of the first lockdown. Apparently, during the second lockdown, schools seemed better prepared and able to deliver more effective home schooling and online instruction. The hypothesis that students' learning from a low SES home environment will suffer most from the school lockdowns could only partly be confirmed. SES effects at the individual level tended to be mitigated by negative effects of SES at the school level, making SES-related differences between schools less profound. The findings of this study offer a broader perspective to evaluate the effects of long-term school closures. Implications for educational practice and issues of inequality between students are discussed.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the latest phenomenon emerging from rural towns and villages, where a surge in traditional cafes and restaurants has spurred a new trend in sustainable tourism development. This phenomenon is linked to local efforts to mitigate the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the series of lockdowns that accompanied it. This paper focuses on two critical lines of inquiry: (1) Where did the idea stem from? and (2) How has it developed to the extent that it now constitutes one of the few primary sources of income for underdeveloped communities? Design/methodology/approach: Exploratory research was conducted in rural and urban areas where tourism is still developing. In depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample consisting of ten owners of rural and traditional cafes who consented to their participation in the study. Findings: Emerging trends such as rural and traditional cafes and restaurants can be a stable source of income for underserved communities in uncertain times. Local entrepreneurs often play a critical role in the development of sustainable rural tourism efforts as they have a better understanding of the needs of their own local community. Furthermore, their projects typically carry higher levels of authenticity and innovation with a greater ability to attract both local and international travelers. Research limitations/implications: Taking into consideration the exploratory nature of this study, a small convenience sample was used. Originality/value: This study highlights the importance of innovation in the tourism industry during precarious times, the most recent example of which was the global COVID-19 pandemic. This paper suggests that the industry can rely on new emerging trends to mitigate the loss of revenue from previous sources of tourism. Furthermore, the study showcases the importance of domestic tourism trends and how it can lead to an expansion in international tourism resources. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
Recent years of the Covid-19 pandemic have seen a proportional increase in the amount of time we spend in our homes each day. In spite of this, urban dwellers continue to spend-although varying from area to area of the world-many hours outside their homes for work, daily needs, recreation, and social relationships. This implies that the urban environment, both tangible and intangible, has several factors that can be both protective and risky for health. As highlighted in the 2016 Quito Conference, health can be the pulse of the new urban agenda for sustainable urban development [1]. It is not easy to take stock of where we are. On a global scale, there still seems to be a limited ethical-cultural awareness, a lack of political attention and thus of resource allocation, an insufficient capacity to use innovative choices and technologies and to actively involve local communities in decision-making processes and in the implementation of possible interventions. On the other hand, there are numerous positive experiences of urban realities that have produced convincing efforts in recent decades to make our cities more livable and healthy. Let us hope that the 2030 agenda proposed by the United Nations on the Sustainable Development Goals can really exert a driving role in this direction. A real willingness to set in motion virtuous processes to guarantee us a better quality of urban life, including by agreeing to revise our development and consumption patterns, will make all the difference. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Urban streets, especially curbside spaces, are increasingly complex and often contested. The Coronavirus pandemic created a new demand for street space to enable physical distancing. The urgency of the pandemic and the fear of covid exposure suspended traditional community engagement opportunities, opposition from residents and business owners, and considerations over the privatization of public street space. This exploratory paper uses the case studies of Toronto and Chicago to trace the past and present regulations and programs affecting curbside parking spaces. Through these cases, this paper addresses larger questions that relate the historical conceptions around curbside parking use with those put forward in response to the pandemic. Given the popularity of pandemic-related curbside space programs and their potential to become long-term interventions, this paper also raises several questions around privatization, access and social equity that must be addressed in future iterations of programs affecting curbside space. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd