Environment (Faculty of)

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Data-driven climate indices as a climate translation service
(University of Waterloo, 2020-05-13) Matthews, Lindsay; Andrey, Jean; Scott, Daniel
Weather and climate have a powerful influence on humans and society. The ways in which individuals, organizations, and communities are sensitive to weather and climate varies considerably due to social, economic, institutional, and technological factors (Kirchhoff et al. 2013). The complexity and variability across space and time of the human-environment interface motivates the demand for tools and techniques that are able to effectively translate climatic information into usable products and services for decision-making. Furthermore, notwithstanding the extensive availability of weather and climate information, its use in informing both weather risk-management decisions and climate-change adaptation initiatives remains limited. One factor in the underutilization of weather and climate information stems from the difficulty of translating weather and climate data into useable information for decision-makers (Rayner et al. 2005, Lemos 2008, Weaver et al. 2013, Fellman 2012, Kirchhoff et al. 2013, Soares & Dessai 2015). Organizations have been increasingly seeking tools that can inform decision-making for both short-term weather risk management and long-term climate change adaptation measures (WMO 2016). Regardless of the temporal scope of a decision, there is a need to identify and quantify the climatic sensitivity and associated risks and opportunities of climatic stimuli (Damm et al. 2019). The non-linearity of climate-society interactions combined with the highly context-dependent nature of societal sensitivities to climatic stimuli poses a number of practical challenges. This gap in research, and in practice, provides a novel research opportunity to investigate the prospect of developing techniques that can quantify weather sensitivity in a variety of applications. These context-specific and user-driven climatic information products and services are often referred to as climate translation products and services (Damm et al. 2019). A core impediment to the development of climate translation services is an incomplete understanding of how individuals, organizations, and sectors are sensitive to climatic stimuli. A number of methods has been used to define this sensitivity but to date and there has been a dominant focus on stated-preference methods to ascertain user needs and sectoral climatic sensitivities. Expert consultations, user interviews, and participant surveys have been used extensively to define context-specific weather and climate sensitivities. However, a growing literature explores the use of data-driven techniques to explore societal sensitivity to weather and climate. Focusing on the highly climate-sensitive transportation and tourism sectors, this dissertation proposes a conceptualization of climatic sensitivity that is premised on the need for multiple climatic thresholds. This dissertation proposes a framework for data-driven techniques that can be used to develop climatic indices based on the underlying relationships between weather and society and presents the first data-driven approach to define multiple climatic thresholds for the climate-society nexus in two climate-sensitive sectors. The overarching purpose of this dissertation is to further the development of climate services and increase the scholarly understanding of context-specific climatic thresholds that communicate a societal response and can be applied to weather forecasts and climate projections at different temporal scales. The first manuscript uses expert knowledge in combination with mathematical optimization to develop a data-driven winter severity index that works well in predicting winter maintenance activity across 20 road maintenance jurisdictions in Ontario. The second manuscript builds on the first paper through an extension to include climate change projections, and provides greater focus on role of co-production in climate services development. This second manuscript explores the frequency, and intensity of past and future winter weather as it relates to winter road maintenance of provincial highways in Ontario, Canada. The climate change analysis reveals that winter severity, as it relates to snow and ice control, is projected to decrease through to the end of the century. The third manuscript of this dissertation explores the feasibility of transferring the methods developed in the first two manuscripts to develop a data-driven tourism climate index for Ontario Provincial Parks. This third study advances our understanding of beach park-visitor’s climatic sensitivity and provides tourism planners, managers, and decision-makers with enhanced information to inform decision-making. The final manuscript of the dissertation examines the intra-annual effect of weather on tourism demand to three Caribbean destinations (Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Lucia) from Ontario, Canada. This study refines the Holiday Climate Index: Beach through optimization to develop two new indices which estimate the climatic pull-factor of the destination, and the climatic push-factor from the source market. Findings reveal that the data-driven indices have greater predictive accuracy than the extant climate indices for tourism. In conclusion, this dissertation demonstrates the feasibility of developing data-driven indices in the transportation and tourism sectors that can form the foundation of climate service translation tools.
Evaluation of safety effects of roundabouts in the Region of Waterloo: inclement weather and conversion
(University of Waterloo, 2017-05-19) Zhao, Yue; Andrey, Jean; Deadman, Peter
Roundabouts, as a form of intersection traffic control, significantly improve safety and efficiency. In Canada, the benefits of roundabouts have drawn growing interest, and roundabouts are being constructed increasingly in recent years. However, compared with the popularity of roundabouts in other western countries, the Canadian experience with roundabouts is limited. To enhance the understanding of the safety of roundabouts both overall and during inclement weather, this research first provides risk estimates of collision occurrence at roundabouts and signalized intersections under inclement weather conditions relative to clear weather condition by using the matched-pair approach. This method reasonably controls for the effect of time-dependent variables by assuming that travel patterns are similar from one week to the next. Secondly, the empirical Bayes approach is used to analyze the safety effect of converting signal-controlled intersections to roundabouts. This method is able to estimate the safety impact of the conversion without the disadvantage of the regression-to-mean bias. There is no evidence of a statistically significant increase in crashes on days with rainfall relative to ‘good’ weather conditions for roundabouts, whereas there is evidence of such an increase in crash risk estimated to be 7 to 36 percent for signalized intersections. In addition, roundabout installation is shown as an effective safety prevention for severe collisions in the Region of Waterloo. However, roundabouts experience increases in total collisions both overall and during days with precipitation. The results of this study offer explanations regarding the effect of inclement weather on roundabout safety and the safety implications of the conversion from conventional signalized intersections to modern roundabouts in the Region of Waterloo.
The Influence of Weather and Climate Change on Pedestrian Safety
(University of Waterloo, 2016-05-06) Badri, Amel; Andrey, Jean
Although walking is one of the most sustainable means of transportation with a number of related health benefits to human life, in a number of regions, walking on roads can lead to increased chances of injury and death from a collision. Due to the dramatic growth in motor vehicle usage, pedestrians are easily susceptible to collisions with these vehicles. This problem is even more enhanced when inclement weather occurs. Pedestrian vulnerability is more heightened during weather hazards, since such hazards tend to increase the risk of collisions. The influence of weather hazards on motor vehicle safety and collision risk is established in the road safety literature, but fewer research exists on the safety and risk of pedestrian-vehicle collisions during inclement weather. Therefore, the first objective of the thesis is to estimate the relative risk of collisions during rainfall in two urban Canadian Regions: the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Vancouver. The second objective is predictive in nature using a combination of the relative risk estimates and available climate models to understand the possible influence of climate change on pedestrian safety in both regions by the mid-century. The results indicated that present-day relative risk of collisions during rainfall relative to dry weather is higher for pedestrians in Vancouver than Toronto, however, at a finer temporal scale the relative risk is almost the same for both regions. By mid-century, the results of the climate modeling exercise estimate an increase in mean annual rain days for both regions, where much of the increase is for light rainfall days. This additional increase in mean annual rain days will increase pedestrian collisions each year by a small amount in Toronto and by a slightly higher amount in Vancouver. In both regions, collisions occurring at public intersections and casualties have significant increase in risk during rainfall. Moreover, with climate change, the additional collisions are belonging to public intersection collisions and casualties in Toronto and Vancouver, respectively. Evidently, most of the increase in risk and additional collisions by mid-century is attributable to moderate and heavy rainfall periods. Therefore, safety interventions should consider the impact of intense rainfall on pedestrian safety in the present and future possible climate.
Into the Woods: Investigating the Effects of Weather Information and Attentiveness on Outdoor Recreational Activities
(University of Waterloo, 2024-11-22) Woods, Kyle; Andrey, Jean; Mills, Brian
Responses to quick-onset atmospheric weather hazards, including thunderstorms, are influenced by the characteristics of risk messages and the characteristics of the message receivers. Message characteristics relating to the probability of and imminency of thunderstorm impacts, as well as the severity of the information and use of wireless emergency alerts are thought to influence responses through amplifying recipients’ risk perceptions. Receiver characteristics relating to past experiences, knowledge and preparedness, sociodemographic characteristics, among others, also play an influential role in the hazard-response cycle. However, the complex role that recipients’ attentiveness has in this hazard-response cycle has not been adequately addressed. This thesis investigates the role that attentiveness and thunderstorm information messaging play in outdoor recreational activity responses. For this investigation, an experiment consisting of a hypothetical hiking activity under an evolving thunderstorm threat was carried out in an online survey of a sample of 476 adult respondents who regularly camp and hike in southern Ontario during the thunderstorm season. Respondents received relevant weather information through a forecast displayed on a smartphone screen before the hike and subsequent watches (1 hour later) and warnings (2 hour later) during the hike, constituting three scenarios. Correspondingly, half of the respondents received a severe thunderstorm watch consisting of higher-severity information and a wireless emergency alert notification with a subsequent severe thunderstorm warning. Respondents' attentiveness, risk perceptions, and behavioural response intentions were recorded following each scenario and comparisons were made between responses from the common and higher-severity message conditions groups to investigate the effect of higher-severity information and WEAs across a thunderstorm event. Receiver characteristics thought to potentially influence observed relationships between attentiveness, risk perceptions, and behaviours during the specific experimental situation were also explored to provide a more complete understanding of the pathways of influence to behavioural responses during thunderstorm events. Empirical results illustrate that outdoor recreationists are highly attentive and responsive to thunderstorm information; whereas most respondents are unlikely to go ahead with a hike following a weather forecast mentioning the risk of severe thunderstorms. Official severe thunderstorm watch alerts increased respondents' attentiveness to the weather and led to increased proactive protective action likelihoods by most of the remaining participants. Wireless emergency alerts did not change respondents' attentiveness to severe thunderstorm warnings. The pathways of influence to protective actions show that attentiveness amplifies risk perceptions, which acts as a mediator to behavioural response intentions. Individuals' receiver characteristics affected the observed pathways of influence to protective actions. Most notably, respondents’ general weather attentiveness greatly amplified their likelihood to be attentive to the weather during a thunderstorm event and amplified their likelihood to take protective actions. The conclusions of this research underscore the importance of attentiveness in the hazard-response cycle and the need for easier accessibility and exposure to weather forecasts and official alerts in outdoor recreational areas to increase attentiveness and desirable behavioural responses.
Metrics for Evaluating Walking School Bus Programs: A Case Study of Waterloo Region, Ontario
(University of Waterloo, 2016-05-03) Agar, Lauren; Andrey, Jean
Normative planning concerns direct sustainable development planning; however, many assertions are made without empirical backing and discount many of the values and characteristics of today’s populations. A potentially viable form of Active and Sustainable School Transportation (ASST) is the Walking School Bus (WSB) concept. The WSB can be defined as a group of students walking to school together under the supervision of one or more adults (or older students). Proponents often suggest the WSB as a means to address the barriers to ASST by taking into account the key values influencing school-based travel decisions. The purpose of this thesis is to address the question to what extent and in which circumstances are WSB programs successful in addressing the key barriers to ASST. Using a case study of four elementary schools of the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) in Southwestern Ontario, WSB routing is developed using Geographic Information Systems software. To address the research question, metrics are established that evaluate WSB routes based on safety, convenience, and cost. These metrics are used to compare the WSB results at all four schools to determine if neighbourhood walkability and student density influence the outcomes. Further, the policy context in which student transportation services are provided in Ontario is explored. The results of this study indicate that WSB programs can be successful in achieving a safe and convenient way for students to use ASST. Participation in WSB programs at four WRDSB schools would cut down exposure to unsupervised travel by 93%. This includes a 61% reduction in unsupervised intersection crossings. WSB programs are most convenient for parents as the results suggest an average of 16 minutes and 26 seconds per day may be saved by not accompanying their child to and from school. A student participating in a WSB program may experience only a minor inconvenience of 1 minute and 3 seconds on average extra per trip because of route detours. Finally, the cost of WSB programs, if led by paid adults, can be substantial. Approximately 11 Full-Time Equivalent positions would be required to operate WSB programs at all four case study schools using the parameters established for this study. Comparison of the WSB results at all four schools indicated only nominal variations between neighbourhoods with high and medium walkability ratings and between neighbourhoods with high and low student density. This shows that WSBs are feasible in varying neighbourhood types within the Region of Waterloo and has demonstrated that neighbourhood walkability and student density have no apparent effect on the achieving the primary objectives of a WSB program. Human decision-making and individual’s values influencing these decisions adds a substantial amount of complexity to the field of ASST. In a society that continues to be risk adverse, WSBs may become increasingly desirable despite the upfront cost. Therefore, this thesis does not draw any conclusions on whether or not WSB programs should be implemented, but rather provides the basis for evaluating the costs and benefits of WSB programs in a broader decision-making context.
Public Attention to Environmental Hazards
(University of Waterloo, 2017-11-21) Silver, Amber; Andrey, Jean
Although public attention has been noted as being influential within the hazard-response cycle, it has received almost no consideration within the risk and hazards literature. This is surprising, as attention is often noted in other disciplines for bridging the gap between information and action, and therefore public attention is highly relevant to the study of risk communication and response. It is prudent, therefore, to draw insights on public attention from other disciplines and bring them to bear on challenges pertaining to the human dimensions of environmental hazards. This dissertation presents original research that investigates this important issue. The first manuscript examines the use of Facebook after a significant tornado event that occurred in southern Ontario, Canada in August 2011. The results of this research underscore the usefulness of Facebook and Facebook groups for information seeking, decision support, and misinformation management. The second manuscript investigates the ways that Twitter was used by different actors groups (e.g., weather professionals, weather enthusiasts, news media, first responders, and citizens) during a second tornado-warning storm that affected southern Ontario, Canada in September 2016. The results of this research underscore the fact that Twitter is a powerful platform for the interpretation of both official and unofficial weather information. This interpretation is an iterative process that occurs both individually and collectively—a process that is often referred to as sense-making. The results of the second manuscript also highlight the fact that activity on Twitter can be indicative of professional, rather than “public”, attention to severe weather. The final manuscript draws on theoretical and empirical insights from research across numerous disciplines in order to frame the concept of public attention. Next, theoretical insights from the existing literature on public attention were taken together with empirical insights gained from the two original research projects, in order to develop a conceptual model of public attention. This model shows the process of attention creation from the initial point of exposure, to the iterative and collaborative process of sense-making, to an outcome (i.e., perception, decision, or action). The results of this dissertation emphasize the usefulness of public attention as a lens through which social scientists and other researchers can explore human behaviour when confronted with uncertainty—a topic that is of interest across the social sciences.
Transition to electric vehicles: the importance of macro and micro influences on spatial and temporal patterns
(University of Waterloo, 2025-01-20) Chen, Yixin; Andrey, Jean
The climate crisis is widely recognized as being caused by unsustainable consumption and production patterns across various social domains, which motivates the demand for an acceleration of transformative changes with the goal of sustainability. Socio-technical transitions, offers a path forward. That said, a core impediment is an incomplete understanding of how multiple elements co-evolve in different contexts. Various lenses, theories, and approaches have been used to analyse and explain technology adoption and diffusion in societies; these can be characterised as macro-level (‘structure’) or micro-level (‘agency’), but to date the linkages between them in understanding transition processes have been under-explored. This gap provides a research opportunity for the thesis to question in what ways can macro-level and micro-level lenses explain the spatial and temporal patterns of the transition process to electric vehicles (EVs), an example of a transition for the decarbonization of mobility. With specific reference to Canada, the thesis aims to illuminate the multi-dimensionality and complexity of how the transition to EVs is unfolding, using a quantitative approach including indicator development and statistical modelling. The thesis adopts two complementary components. One aims to describe and explain the spatial and temporal patterns of transition to EVs at a national level between 2017 and 2022 by drawing upon the ‘geography of transitions’ literature and modelling secondary data of new EV registration by seven provinces in Canada by quarter. The other component seeks to understand and assess changes of consumers’ likelihood and perceptions to purchase EVs in one municipality, Waterloo Region, between 2020 and 2023, framed by ‘diffusion of innovation’ concepts and based on primary data from two public surveys. In both analyses, robust models highlighted the importance of various factors in leading to EV adoption and diffusion. These macro-level and micro-level analyses both depict the transition to EVs in Canada as proceeding at a slow pace, with variations across space and time and society. The micro-level analysis further suggests that the transition is hampered by the resistance of nearly half of the population in the local context. Longitudinal dynamics of individual consumers’ perceptions of EVs and differences and changes at the landscape level mutually reinforce each other. For example, consumers’ recognition of EVs’ environmental benefits have the most substantial influence on people’s interest in EVs, which also echoes the significant role of societal environmentalism, as one of the representations of informal localized institutions at a provincial level, in driving the EV transition. The importance of EVs’ economic perspectives in individuals’ likelihood to adopt EVs increased between 2020 and 2023, which is aligned with the considerable influence of rising gasoline prices on the increase of new EV registrations in Canada. The findings of the two analyses raise concerns about whether Canada can achieve its commitment of 100% zero-emissions vehicle sales by 2035 and whether EVs can fully penetrate the Canadian market. The Canadian transition process of EVs is a co-evolutionary process with multiple elements interacting with one another. Therefore, no single policy or action can singly accelerate the process. The heterogeneity across consumers highlights the importance of tailored strategies for different consumer segments and the importance of longitudinal dynamics in investigations. In conclusion, macro-level and micro-level lenses are both important in understanding socio-technical transitions due to their integration, synergy, and complementarity.
Understanding the influence of weather and warning information on trip and activity decisions, behaviour, and risk outcomes
(University of Waterloo, 2021-09-10) Mills, Brian N.; Andrey, Jean
Winter storms present challenges to the safe design, operation and maintenance of transportation systems. Weather warning information, often originating from publicly funded meteorological services, is intended to support decision making in ways that reduce risk and disruption. Among the general public, the most frequent weather-sensitive decisions are those associated with personal mobility—routine trips that serve or facilitate social interaction, employment, business, shopping, recreation and leisure activities. While existing research examines hazard perceptions, driver adjustments, and the effects of weather on mobility and safety outcomes, few studies have explicitly investigated how weather and related warnings affect trip and activity decisions and behaviour, and risk outcomes, during winter storms. Gaps in the literature remain regarding: non-auto modes of winter mobility; dynamic aspects of individual hazard perception, information use, and trip and activity behaviour; effects of research design, method and measurement choices on insights about warning efficacy; and the applicability of current behavioural theory to enhance understanding. These concerns were addressed in this dissertation using a mixed-methods approach that included: formal risk analysis of large secondary motor vehicle collision and fall injury data sets; semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of households with high levels of everyday travel; experience sampling of the same cohort during multiple winter storms in near real-time; and analysis, evaluation, and interpretation of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. The research resulted in several important empirical findings, theoretical considerations, and methodological contributions. Empirical analyses showed that falls account for a greater proportion of the excess injury burden during winter storms than motor vehicle collisions. Further, no official government warning was issued in almost two-thirds of winter storm events that produced excess injuries. The interviews and winter storm surveys exposed more nuanced and detailed interpretations of factors thought to affect trip behaviour, including variable definitions and perceptions of winter storm hazards and a complex arrangement of elements that comprise concern. Empirical findings also supported a role for official warnings in raising participant awareness and increasing confidence in general storm expectations and concern, but highlighted people’s reliance on informal sources to inform specific mobility intentions and behaviours as a storm progressed. vi This dissertation is among the first to incorporate and evaluate a general behavioural theory—the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)—to help explain the influence of weather information on trip and activity practices during winter storms. An interpretive analysis raised questions about the effectiveness of guidance offered through TPB, diagnosing a particular inability of the model to accommodate and discretize potential interaction, sequencing, or substitution among certain protective behaviours. Other contributions of the dissertation were methodological. They included development and successful application of new event definition criteria to capture the entire life cycle and evolution of discrete winter storms as might be perceived and experienced by the public; the design of a consistency analysis method to assess and interrogate TPB constructs using small samples; and the combination of pre-season interviews with a novel experience sampling procedure used to examine inter- and intra-storm effects, which shed unique light upon dynamic aspects of factors and TPB constructs thought to affect the influence of winter weather-related risk information on trip and activity behaviour. The multiple dimensions of temporal and within-participant variation in risk outcomes, exposure, beliefs, perceptions, and preferences revealed through this dissertation strongly points to a future of warning services that necessarily must be tailored to individual situations and circumstances at discrete points in time in order to increase efficacy and societal value.

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