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On April 6, 2009 (1:32 UTC) an earthquake of magnitude M_W 6.3, caused by a normal fault rupture, shook the Abruzzo Region of Central Italy causing 309 deaths, hundreds injured and thousands homeless. L'Aquila city, which is located very close to the causative fault in hanging wall position, was severely damaged by the event. In this work, after a description of the damages observed in reinforced concrete (RC) buildings, a study on the characterization of damage potential of strong ground motions recorded during the main shock and the strongest aftershocks is presented. Elastic and inelastic spectral demands, in terms of displacement, forces, and energy are estimated and different parameters related to the "ground motion records destructiveness" are calculated. Moreover, the demand imposed on multi degree of freedom systems is estimated by means of nonlinear dynamic analyses and compared to the single degree of freedom systems demand.

This paper investigates the effects of climate on residential electricity use for households from different income classes in Brazil. Using cross-sectional data, the study finds that the temperature elasticity of electricity consumption varies significantly across income classes. The temperature elasticity of low income households is not significantly different from zero but middle and high income families have a long run temperature elasticity of 0.8 and 1.6 respectively. As emerging low latitude countries develop and incomes rise, the welfare damages of warming in the energy sector will become substantial.

Snowstorm, slippery pedestrian walkways, ice and snow on pavement and roofs of structures continue to serve as a threat to life and infrastructure in many low temperature nations. Owing to these menaces coupled with an increase in the demand and cost of energy globally, engineers and planners are tasked to design effective and efficient green technologies to counterbalance these demands. Snow melting systems are gradually gaining widespread application in the areas of bridge, pavements and roofs of buildings. Snow melting loads are an integral part in the design of snow melting systems. This paper developed snow melting and roof snow building load for the Republic of Korea. Annual averages and frequency distribution methods were used in the analysis of a 10-year period weather data. Monthly total as well as peak snowfall rate values were used to generate annual and peak snow melting load values, respectively. It was observed that the annual-average approach is more conservative for most climatic conditions than the frequency analysis method. Minimum flat roof snow building loads were presented to aid in the structural analysis of structures within the Republic of Korea. The developed database in this paper will provide the database for designing a snow melting system and for analyzing the building structural interpretation considering snow weight.

This study focuses on the unequal relationship between energy consumption and its determinants. Past studies have not examined how minor and substantial currency value changes affect energy consumption in the organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) countries. This study compares the effects of modest and significant exchange rate (ER) changes on energy demand (ED) in OECD countries, which include Greece, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, Norway and Italy. Our work adds to the literature by distinguishing the effect of small to significant changes in currency fluctuations. We do this with a sophisticated model, an updated multiple threshold nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (MTNARDL). Next, we compare the model’s outcomes to conventional nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models. According to NARDL and ARDL estimates, co-integration is present in the context of Belgium. However, the MTNARDL model division of series suggests cointegration in all sample countries. It implies that this model is superior to previous ones. We conclude with policy recommendations based on the results of our inquiry.

The building sector, including resident, commercial and public services, is one of the most energy-intensive sectors nowadays. The share of buildings’ energy consumption in the final energy dramatically increases in various scenarios. As the preliminary work of the final energy prediction, the prediction of useful energy demand of the building sector is essential in the fields of energy-related research, especially for the scenarios design. To this end, this paper presents the prediction of energy demand in the building sector based on the Induced Kernel Method (IKM) for the useful energy. First, similar to other learning-based prediction methods, a database is constructed for the training. Specifically, the database contains not only the historical data of the useful energy demand and related indicators, but also some development templates to induce the prediction. Second, the detailed process is mathematically deduced to predict the useful energy demand components of the building sector, including electricity and heating. Finally, using various countries as examples, prediction results of the useful energy are presented in the numerical analysis. Furthermore, by using useful energy prediction results as the input of the MESSAGEix model, the paper further predicts global final energy of the building sector.

Financial development has proven to be one of the major determinants of energy consumption. Although, the U-curve relationship between financial development and energy demand is frequently featured in the literature, there is not much discussion of nonlinear relationships between financial development and energy consumption. In this study we investigated the nexus of these two phenomena in transitional economy countries over the period from 1990 to 2011 employing a Systems-GMM model and the panel cointegration method. The empirical results reveal strong evidence of an inverse U-shaped pattern for the impacts of financial development on energy consumption. The net total effect of financial development on energy demand implies that a one standard deviation increase in financial depth induces a decrease in energy consumption by 0.09 kg of oil equivalent per capita. We also found evidence of Granger causality of financial development on energy demand. The existence of a linkage between the two has been suggested in an earlier study conducted by Coban and Topcu [26]. Although they established the nonlinear nature of the relationship between financial development and energy consumption, this was only apparent after they divided the sample between older and newer EU members. In this respect the effect of financial development on energy consumption is rather dubious because that study used a dynamic panel data model for 15 countries over the period from 1990 to 2011.

This paper reviews recent literature to synthesize the impact of rapid urbanization and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect on vulnerable populations in the US. Rapid urbanization characterized by expanding urban boundaries, replacement of vegetated surfaces with impervious surfaces, low tree canopy cover, and infrastructure development such as freeways complemented by former development-zoning policies have been well documented as a derivative of resource and energy inequality (or energy justice) in low-income communities who are underprepared and under-resourced while living in an aging and dilapidated housing stock. However, literature on UHI is primarily driven by energy and mitigation studies whereas vulnerability studies are driven by demographic data; thus, largely remain isolated due to the lack of an integrated interdisciplinary framework to capture the impact of UHI in vulnerable populations. Through a systematic literature review, we are enquiring, what are UHI impacts on the energy needs and overheating of the population living in aging and dilapidated housing. What resiliency frameworks exist and how does it relate to the UHI, overheating, and housing? We use ScienceDirect, Web-of-Science, Google-Scholar, and Scopus databases and limit our search to the first 200 literature written in English to do a systematic bibliometric analysis to synthesize and compare evidence from literature by using keywords “Urban Heat Island”, “Energy-Burden”, “Energy-Justice”, “Overheating”, “Vulnerability”, “Resilience”. Our study suggests that UHI disproportionately impacts the energy need and indoor overheating of the low-income population, and the discriminatory spatial pattern of intra-urban heat exposure strongly correlates with the built environment characteristics and historical housing policies. The impact further extends to heat-related mortality and cardiovascular diseases. The outcome of this study suggests that future investigation into UHI and its relation to the energy consumption needs to consider demographic data to synthesize the energy burden.