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- ItemAmbient particulate matter in Santiago, Chile : 1989-2018 : A tale of two size fractions(2020) Jorquera, Héctor; CEDEUS (Chile)
- ItemArtificial intelligence in the new forms of environmental governance in the Chilean State: Towards an eco-algorithmic governance(Wiley, 2023) Tironi, Martin; Lisboa, Diego Ignacio Rivera; CEDEUS (Chile)One of the most popular fields of experimentation with technological solutions based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithmic systems is environmental studies, particularly as it relates to climate change. The promise of mitigating the impact of human activity on the environment through the introduction of sensor technologies has given way to a series of narratives around their role and capabilities. Focusing on the case of Environmental Intelligence, an initiative developed by the Chilean government's Superintendency for the Environment that incorporates AI into the monitoring process, we offer arguments regarding the articulation of an eco-algorithmic governmentality in which the environment is desingularized and reduced to a series of metrics associated with regulatory compliance. The operations that serve to prototype and give shape to the initiative created a series of tensions around the possibility of arriving at other forms of involvement in and understanding of the environment. This article shows how this eco-algorithmic governmentality conceptualizes the environment as an entity that can be optimized and rationalized, generating epistemic frictions with other logics of relationality and situated and terrestrial sensibility.
- ItemChallenges in determining soil moisture and evaporation fluxes using distributed temperature sensing methods(2020) Lagos, M.; Serna, J. L.; Munoz, J. F.; Suárez Poch, Francisco Ignacio; CEDEUS (Chile)
- ItemCoastal Wetlands: Ecosystems Affected by Urbanization?(2020) Rojas Quezada, Carolina Alejandra; Novoa, Vanessa; Rojas, Octavio; Ahumada-Rudolph, Ramón; Sáez, Katia; Fierro, Pablo; CEDEUS (Chile)Coastal wetlands are ecosystems that provide multiple benefits to human settlements; nonetheless, they are seriously threatened due to both a lack of planning instruments and human activities associated mainly with urban growth. An understanding of their functioning and status is crucial for their protection and conservation. Two wetlands with different degrees of urbanization, Rocuant-Andalién (highly urbanized) and Tubul-Raqui (with little urbanization), were analyzed using temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, granulometry, fecal coliform, and macroinvertebrate assemblage variables in summer and winter. In both wetlands marked seasonality in salinity, temperature and sediment texture classification, regulated by oceanic influence and changes in the freshwater budget, was observed. In the Rocuant-Andalién wetland, the increases in pH, dissolved oxygen, gravel percentage, and coliform concentration were statistically significant. Urbanization generated negative impacts on macroinvertebrate assemblage structure that inhabit the wetlands; greater richness and abundance (8.5 times greater) were recorded in the Tubul-Raqui wetland than in the more urbanized wetland. The multivariate statistical analysis reflects the alteration of these complex systems.
- ItemCoping with Natural Disasters and Urban Risk: An Approach to Urban Sustainability from Socio-Environmental Fragmentation and Urban Vulnerability Assessment(Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2014) Link, Felipe; Barth, Katrin; Harris, Jordan Michael; Irarrazaval Irarrazaval, Felipe; Valenzuela, Felipe; Welz, Juliane; William G. Holt; CEDEUS (Chile)Purpose - Cities have been exposed to a variety of natural disasters such as flooding, extreme temperatures, storms, earthquakes, and other natural shocks, and have had to respond and adapt to such pressures over time. In the context of global climate change, natural disasters have increased across the globe. Apart from climate change, many urban environments in Latin America are experiencing significant transformations in land use patterns, socio-demographic change, changing labor markets, and economic growth, resulting from recent decades of globalization. Such transformations have resulted in the internal fragmentation of cities. In this context, the purpose of the present chapter is to demonstrate the importance in both theoretical and methodological terms, of integrating the concept of socio-environmental fragmentation into urban vulnerability research in order to make progress toward higher degrees of local sustainability in those areas of the city that suffer natural disasters and fragmentation. Methodology/approach - A mixed methods approach is used in order to combine different technical issues from urban and climate change studies. Findings - The findings are related to the importance of an integrated approach, regarding the complexity of urban life, and the relationship between the urban, the social, and the environmental phenomenon. Social implications - This chapter relates to the revisit of the current state of preparedness and to determine whether further adaptations are required. The authors understood that these kinds of mixed approaches are necessary in order to understand the new complexity of urban processes.
- ItemEnvironmental health risk perception: Adaptation of a population-based questionnaire from latin america(MDPI AG, 2021) Cortés Arancibia, Sandra Isabel; Burgos, Soledad; Adaros, Héctor; Lucero, Boris; Quiróz-Alcalá, Lesliam; CEDEUS (Chile)BACKGROUND: Environmental risk assessments and interventions to mitigate environmental risks are essential to protect public health. While the objective measurement of environmental hazards is important, it is also critical to address the subjective perception of health risks. A population’s perception of environmental health hazards is a powerful driving force for action and engagement in safety and health behaviors and can also inform the development of effective and more sustainable environmental health policies. To date, no instruments are available to assess risk perception of environmental health hazards in South America even though there are many concerning issues in the region, including mining. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to adapt and validate an environmental health risk perception questionnaire in a Chilean population affected by mining activity among other risks frequently reported in Latin American countries and included the collection of information on trust on public information sources. METHODS: We adapted an Australian risk perception questionnaire for validation in an adult population from a Chilean mining community. This adaptation included two blinded translations (direct, inverse), a pre-test study (n = 20) and a review by environmental health experts. Principal Component Analyses (PCA) was used to identify factors within major domains of interest. The Bartlett test of sphericity, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure and the Cronbach α test were used to assess the instrument’s validity and reliability. The instrument was pilot tested in 205 adults from a mining community in Chañaral. RESULTS: The final adapted questionnaire proved to be a good instrument to measure risk perception in a community chronically exposed to mining waste. For community risks, four factors explained 59.4% of the variance. “Global Issues” (30.2%) included air pollution, contamination of mining, ozone layer depletion and vector diseases. For personal risks, the first two components explained 59.5% of the variance, the main factor (36.7%) was “unhealthy behaviors within the household”. For trust in information, the first factor (36.2%) included as main sources “Media and authorities”. The Cronbach α ranged between 0.68 and 0.75; and the KMO test between 0.7 to 0.79 for community and personal risks and trust. CONCLUSIONS: The final questionnaire is a simple, reliable and useful instrument that can assist in evaluating environmental health risk perceptions in Latin American countries.
- ItemExposición a contaminantes provenientes de termoeléctricas a carbón y salud infantil: ¿cuál es la evidencia internacional y nacional?(Sociedad Chilena de Pediatría, 2019) Cortés Arancibia, Sandra; Yohannessen, Karla V.; Tellerias C., Lidya; Ahumada P., Ericka; CEDEUS (Chile)Las centrales termoeléctricas (CTE) a carbón representan un riesgo para la salud de las comunidades expuestas. Se realizó una revisión de la literatura científica nacional e internacional enfocada en los efectos en salud de niños y la exposición a emisiones al aire provenientes de CTE a carbón. Se incluyeron 21 artículos para su revisión en texto completo, donde se midieron efectos en salud infantil relacionados a presencia de biomarcadores de exposición y efecto, daños perinatales, neuroconductuales y respiratorios principalmente. La exposición a emisiones de CTE a carbón en el embarazo se asoció a niños con bajo peso y muy bajo peso al nacer, menor talla, menor diámetro de Circunferencia del Cráneo (CC) y prematuridad; el diámetro de CC aumentó en recién nacidos después del cierre de CTE. Se encontraron menor coeficiente de desarrollo (CD) y coeficiente intelectual (CI) en niños expuestos a emisiones de CTE a carbón comparados con no expuestos; CD aumentó cuando la central fue cerrada. Por otro lado, vivir en zonas con fuentes de emisión de mercurio (asociadas a CTE y plantas de cemento que funcionan con carbón) se asoció con mayor riesgo de autismo. En salud respiratoria, los artículos fueron consistentes en reportar menor función pulmonar en niños residentes en zonas expuestas a fuentes de combustión de carbón comparados con grupos de niños no expuestos. Es muy necesario abrir el debate en Chile sobre los riesgos controlables a los que se enfrenta la población infantil a consecuencia de plantas generadoras de energía instaladas en Chile.
- ItemMedium-run local economic effects of a major earthquake(OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2022) Aguirre, Paula; Asahi, Kenzo; Diaz-Rioseco, Diego; Riveros, Ignacio; Valdes, Rodrigo O.; CEDEUS (Chile)Existing research is inconclusive regarding the longer-term economic effects of earthquakes. We examine the medium-run impacts of the 2010 earthquake in Chile, the sixth-largest ever recorded, using value-added tax collection as a proxy for economic activity at the municipal level and a measure of local ground-shaking intensity. We find that the affected municipalities suffered a relevant and persistent drop in their economic activity of about 10%, 8-9 years after the event. We discuss the plausibility of the assumption of conditional parallel trends and show that the overall results are robust to using alternative estimation methods.
- ItemMulti-objective optimization to balance thermal comfort and energy use in a mining camp located in the Andes Mountains at high altitude(2020) Dietz, A.; Vera Araya, Sergio Eduardo; Bustamante Gómez, Waldo; Flamant, G.; CEDEUS (Chile)
- ItemMulti-scale temporal analysis of evaporation on a saline lake in the Atacama Desert(2022) Lobos Roco, Felipe Andres; Hartogensis, Oscar; Suarez Poch, Francisco Ignacio; Huerta-Viso, Ariadna; Benedict, Imme; de la Fuente, Alberto; Vila-Guerau de Arellano, Jordi; CEDEUS (Chile)We investigate how evaporation changes depending on the scales in the Altiplano region of the Atacama Desert. More specifically, we focus on the temporal evolution from the climatological to the sub-diurnal scales on a high-altitude saline lake ecosystem. We analyze the evaporation trends over 70 years (1950–2020) at a high-spatial resolution. The method is based on the downscaling of 30 km ERA5 reanalysis data at hourly resolution to 0.1 km spatial resolution data, using artificial neural networks to analyze the main drivers of evaporation. To this end, we use the Penman open-water evaporation equation, modified to compensate for the energy balance non-closure and the ice cover formation on the lake during the night. Our estimation of the hourly climatology of evaporation shows a consistent agreement with eddy-covariance (EC) measurements and reveals that evaporation is controlled by different drivers depending on the time scale. At the sub-diurnal scale, mechanical turbulence is the primary driver of evaporation, and at this scale, it is not radiation-limited. At the seasonal scale, more than 70 % of the evaporation variability is explained by the radiative contribution term. At the same scale, and using a large-scale moisture tracking model, we identify the main sources of moisture to the Chilean Altiplano. In all cases, our regime of precipitation is controlled by large-scale weather patterns closely linked to climatological fluctuations. Moreover, seasonal evaporation significantly influences the saline lake surface spatial changes. From an interannual scale perspective, evaporation increased by 2.1 mm yr−1 during the entire study period, according to global temperature increases. Finally, we find that yearly evaporation depends on the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), where warm and cool ENSO phases are associated with higher evaporation and precipitation rates, respectively. Our results show that warm ENSO phases increase evaporation rates by 15 %, whereas cold phases decrease it by 2 %.
- ItemOptimizing and validating the Gravitational Process Path model for regional debris-flow runout modelling(Copernicus GmbH, 2021) Goetz J.; Kohrs R.; Bustos Morales M.; Henríquez C.; Brenning A.; Parra Hormazábal E.; Araneda Riquelme M.B.; CEDEUS (Chile)© 2021 The Author(s).Knowing the source and runout of debris flows can help in planning strategies aimed at mitigating these hazards. Our research in this paper focuses on developing a novel approach for optimizing runout models for regional susceptibility modelling, with a case study in the upper Maipo River basin in the Andes of Santiago, Chile. We propose a two-stage optimization approach for automatically selecting parameters for estimating runout path and distance. This approach optimizes the random-walk and Perla et al.'s (PCM) two-parameter friction model components of the open-source Gravitational Process Path (GPP) modelling framework. To validate model performance, we assess the spatial transferability of the optimized runout model using spatial cross-validation, including exploring the model's sensitivity to sample size. We also present diagnostic tools for visualizing uncertainties in parameter selection and model performance. Although there was considerable variation in optimal parameters for individual events, we found our runout modelling approach performed well at regional prediction of potential runout areas. We also found that although a relatively small sample size was sufficient to achieve generally good runout modelling performance, larger samples sizes (i.e. ≥80) had higher model performance and lower uncertainties for estimating runout distances at unknown locations. We anticipate that this automated approach using the open-source R software and the System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses geographic information system (SAGA-GIS) will make process-based debris-flow models more readily accessible and thus enable researchers and spatial planners to improve regional-scale hazard assessments.
- ItemTrends in household energy-related GHG emissions during COVID-19 in four Chilean cities(TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2022) Rojas, Carolina; Simon, Francois; Muniz, Ivan; Quintana, Marc; Irarrazaval, Felipe; Stamm, Caroline; Santos, Benedita; CEDEUS (Chile)The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has strongly affected economies and human lifestyles globally. The changes observed in domestic energy consumption patterns have had an impact on household greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since GHG emissions inventories are only available at the country level and at annual intervals, most studies have calculated the local emission variations by extrapolating annual emissions with smaller time and territorial scale consumption data. This research presents a bottom-up method, based on the exploitation of a survey addressed to 1200 households, that provides the information to calculate directly the variation in their energy-related GHG emissions, without the need for extrapolations. This method has been applied to four medium-sized Chilean cities with serious air quality problems. Given the high correlation between atmospheric pollutants such as NOx and CO2 emissions, we estimate that before the appearance of COVID-19, per capita CO2 emissions were already high. The results show that space heating-related GHG emissions have increased moderately (between 1 and 6%), while emissions from electricity and gas consumption for non-heating uses have increased significantly (between 8 and 23%). This has harmed the household economy, highlighting the importance of considering socioeconomic aspects when assessing the impact of COVID-19 in its entirety.
- ItemWater vulnerabilities mapping: a multi-criteria and multi-scale assessment in central Chile(IWA PUBLISHING, 2021) Paegelow, Martin; Quense, Jorge; Peltier, Anne; Henriquez Ruiz, Cristian; Le Goff, Lucie; Arenas Vasquez, Federico; Antoine, Jean Marc; CEDEUS (Chile)One of the major challenges that populations have to face is vulnerability to water: lack of water, flooding, pollution, hazard sensitivity and coping capacity. For the reason of economic, social and environmental inequalities, this paper focuses on water-related vulnerabilities in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago (RMS) in Chile. Our main objective is to understand, through mapping, the multiscalar logics of water vulnerability. This study is carried out at two scales: at the regional level (RMS), we proceed with open access municipal statistical data and maps, while at the local level, a more detailed analysis focussing on the Chacabuco Province is based on the same type of data but with either a higher spatial resolution (Census districts) or a spatially more intensive data processing in order to take into account intra-municipal differences. In this way, we put into perspective the discourse developed in the Chilean media and by the inhabitants of Chacabuco Province regarding the province as an environmental 'sacrifice zone' for the RMS. The vulnerability maps are carried out at different scales in a simple and reproducible way by multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). The results confirm the hypothesis of a sacrifice zone and show that high-resolution data and adequate data processing give, on average, lower vulnerability scores than using only statistical data on the municipal level. The results provide a cartographic decision support for stakeholders. Limitations of the study are discussed and required further research pointed out.
- ItemWhen Residential Energy Labeling Becomes Irrelevant: Sustainability vs. Profitability in the Liberalized Chilean Property Market(2020) Encinas Pino, Felipe; Marmolejo Duarte, C.; Aguirre Núñez, Carlos Andrés; Vergara Perucich, F.; CEDEUS (Chile)