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Papers by james syme
lead to an unprecedented economic transformation, could align with emergent needs for a just and ... more lead to an unprecedented economic transformation, could align with emergent needs for a just and robust recovery from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The intended audience of this report includes policymakers in Costa Rica and other Latin American countries and individuals working toward decarbonization worldwide. Community Health and Environmental Policy Program RAND Social and Economic Well-Being is a division of the RAND Corporation that seeks to actively improve the health and social and economic well-being of populations and communities throughout the world. This research was conducted in the Community Health and Environmental Policy Program within RAND Social and Economic Well-Being. The program focuses on such topics as infrastructure, science and technology, community design, community health promotion, migration and population dynamics, transportation, energy, and climate and the environment, as well as other policy concerns that are influenced by the natural and built environment, technology, and community organizations and institutions that affect well-being. For more information, email
Los administradores del agua enfrentan desafíos cada vez mayores para satisfacer la demanda de ag... more Los administradores del agua enfrentan desafíos cada vez mayores para satisfacer la demanda de agua, que depende de condiciones socioeconómicas y climáticas. La evolución de estas condiciones en las próximas décadas es profundamente incierta e impredecible. El presente estudio demuestra la utilidad del enfoque de Toma de Decisiones Robustas (RDM por sus siglas en ingles), un método de toma de decisión bajo incertidumbre profunda, para evaluar la vulnerabilidad y las oportunidades de adaptación de la gestión de los recursos hídricos en Mendoza, Argentina. El análisis confirma que el sistema actual de agua de Mendoza es vulnerable a los cambios en el uso de suelo y a los impactos del cambio climático. En casi 900 futuros analizados, la demanda insatisfecha crece significativamente durante los períodos de sequía, un problema que empeora con el tiempo. La mayoría de la demanda insatisfecha se produce en el sector agrícola, con carencias que superan el 35 por ciento en algunos años y fut...
Reconociendo la incertidumbre sobre el futuro, evaluamos miles de futuros plausibles diferentes p... more Reconociendo la incertidumbre sobre el futuro, evaluamos miles de futuros plausibles diferentes para comprender el rango de posibles vías de descarbonización y beneficios netos para la economía costarricense. En todos menos 22 de los más de 3.000 futuros posibles considerados, la implementación del plan de descarbonización conduciría a beneficios económicos que superarían los costos. Nuestros resultados destacan la importancia del cambio modal y las tecnologías de cero carbono en el sector del transporte, aumentando el secuestro de carbono en el sector forestal y la reducción de emisiones en los procesos industriales y ganaderos, para lograr emisiones netas cero. Este trabajo ha ayudado a construir herramientas y capacidad para evaluar las estrategias de descarbonización, que se utilizarán para apoyar la actualización de las Contribuciones Determinadas a Nivel Nacional de Costa Rica, su compromiso con la comunidad internacional en virtud del Acuerdo de París. Nuestro enfoque se pued...
Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be s... more Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND... more This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
Journal of the American Planning Association, 2020
This technical appendix describes the study's cohort model, developed by RAND to support a Robust... more This technical appendix describes the study's cohort model, developed by RAND to support a Robust Decision Making (RDM) analysis of SACOG's Metropolitan Transportation Plan and Sustainable Communities Strategy (MTP/SCS). It also provides additional results from this model and discusses some of its limitations. Cohort Model The cohort model draws on a modeling exercise SACOG conducted for the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to stress-test their plan's projected reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the year 2036 under the requirements of California Senate Bill 375 (Steinberg, 2008). To generate SB 375 emissions results for the exercise, SACOG used the 2016 version of SACSIM (Bradley, Bowman, & Griesenbeck, 2010) also known as SACSIM 16, a regional activity-based travel model that informs development and evaluates performance of the MTP/SCS. Construction of Cohort Groups SACOG stratified the SACSIM model projections using categories of age (5), household income (5), residential density (6), and household proximity to transit (3) as shown in Table A1. A total of 450 cohorts were created from unique combinations of these four categories (5 × 5 × 6 × 3). These stratified cohorts and their associated SACSIM projections for 2036 provide a useful foundation for RAND's RDM analysis, allowing us to add elasticities representing external conditions (e.g., vehicle technology and fuel costs) and policy options (e.g., pricing), and then interpolating and extrapolating among different plausible futures.
Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein ... more Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
In recent years, decision support modeling has embraced deliberation-withanalysis-an iterative pr... more In recent years, decision support modeling has embraced deliberation-withanalysis-an iterative process in which decisionmakers come together with experts to evaluate a complex problem and alternative solutions in a scientifically rigorous and transparent manner. Simulation modeling supports decisionmaking throughout this process; visualizations enable decisionmakers to assess how proposed strategies stand up over time in uncertain conditions. But running these simulation models over standard computers can be slow. This, in turn, can slow the entire decisionmaking process, interrupting valuable interaction between decisionmakers and analytics. What if high-performance computers could deliver the analytics decisionmakers need in near real time? In November 2014, experts from the RAND Corporation and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) conducted a one-day workshop to explore the impact of high-performance computing (HPC) on the use of Robust Decision Making (RDM) in support of stakeholder deliberations, in particular those regarding resource management decisions. The workshop revisited work RAND conducted on the Colorado River Basin in 2012 and was attended by decisionmakers involved in the original study and others interested in advancing the state of the art in quantitative decision support. During the workshop, high-performance computers were used to stress test five new project portfolios over about 12,000 alternative futures in 45 minutes-a process that would have taken six weeks to complete using traditional computer clusters. This document summarizes workshop results and the observations attendees made about the benefits and challenges associated with using HPC in this context. When asked whether the use of HPC in such analyses as those performed for the the Colorado River Basin Study would change their final decisions, three participants said that HPC would have led them to choose a completely different strategy; six said that they would have chosen a slightly different strategy; and the rest answered "don't know." The document also highlights possible ways forward to consider as technology continues to advance the speed of data processing.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND... more This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND... more This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
Elevated nitrate (NO3-) concentrations in drinking water pose a health risk to the public. The du... more Elevated nitrate (NO3-) concentrations in drinking water pose a health risk to the public. The dual stable isotopic signatures of delta15N and delta18O in NO3- in surface- and groundwater are often used to identify and distinguish among sources of NO3- (e.g., sewage, fertilizer, atmospheric deposition). In oxic groundwaters where no denitrification is occurring, direct calculations of mixing fractions using a mass balance approach can be performed if three or fewer sources of NO3- are present, and if the stable isotope ratios of the source terms are defined. There are several limitations to this approach. First, direct calculations of mixing fractions are not possible when four or more NO3- sources may be present. Simple mixing calculations also rely upon treating source isotopic compositions as a single value; however these sources themselves exhibit ranges in stable isotope ratios. More information can be gained by using a probabilistic approach to account for the range and distri...
Isotopes in Environmental and Health Studies, 2013
We used stable isotope ratios to determine the metabolic routing fraction of carbon and nitrogen ... more We used stable isotope ratios to determine the metabolic routing fraction of carbon and nitrogen in feathers in addition to faecal analysis to estimate diet overlap of six sympatric species of manakins in the eastern lowland forest of Ecuador. Collectively, all species varied from-23.7 to-32.7 ‰ for δ(13)C, and from 6.0 to 9.9‰ for δ(15)N, with Machaeropterus regulus showing isotopic differences from the other species. We developed a mixing model that explicitly addresses the routing of carbon and nitrogen to feathers. Interestingly, these results suggest a higher proportion of nitrogen and carbon derived from insects than anticipated based on feeding observations and faecal analysis. A concentration-dependent mixing isotopic model was also used to look at dietary proportions. While larvae and arachnids had higher δ(15)N values, these two groups may also be preferred prey of manakins and may be more assimilated into tissues, leading to a potential overestimation of the contribution to diet. This study supports the finding that manakin species, previously thought be primarily frugivorous, contain a significant amount of arthropods in their diet.
lead to an unprecedented economic transformation, could align with emergent needs for a just and ... more lead to an unprecedented economic transformation, could align with emergent needs for a just and robust recovery from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The intended audience of this report includes policymakers in Costa Rica and other Latin American countries and individuals working toward decarbonization worldwide. Community Health and Environmental Policy Program RAND Social and Economic Well-Being is a division of the RAND Corporation that seeks to actively improve the health and social and economic well-being of populations and communities throughout the world. This research was conducted in the Community Health and Environmental Policy Program within RAND Social and Economic Well-Being. The program focuses on such topics as infrastructure, science and technology, community design, community health promotion, migration and population dynamics, transportation, energy, and climate and the environment, as well as other policy concerns that are influenced by the natural and built environment, technology, and community organizations and institutions that affect well-being. For more information, email
Los administradores del agua enfrentan desafíos cada vez mayores para satisfacer la demanda de ag... more Los administradores del agua enfrentan desafíos cada vez mayores para satisfacer la demanda de agua, que depende de condiciones socioeconómicas y climáticas. La evolución de estas condiciones en las próximas décadas es profundamente incierta e impredecible. El presente estudio demuestra la utilidad del enfoque de Toma de Decisiones Robustas (RDM por sus siglas en ingles), un método de toma de decisión bajo incertidumbre profunda, para evaluar la vulnerabilidad y las oportunidades de adaptación de la gestión de los recursos hídricos en Mendoza, Argentina. El análisis confirma que el sistema actual de agua de Mendoza es vulnerable a los cambios en el uso de suelo y a los impactos del cambio climático. En casi 900 futuros analizados, la demanda insatisfecha crece significativamente durante los períodos de sequía, un problema que empeora con el tiempo. La mayoría de la demanda insatisfecha se produce en el sector agrícola, con carencias que superan el 35 por ciento en algunos años y fut...
Reconociendo la incertidumbre sobre el futuro, evaluamos miles de futuros plausibles diferentes p... more Reconociendo la incertidumbre sobre el futuro, evaluamos miles de futuros plausibles diferentes para comprender el rango de posibles vías de descarbonización y beneficios netos para la economía costarricense. En todos menos 22 de los más de 3.000 futuros posibles considerados, la implementación del plan de descarbonización conduciría a beneficios económicos que superarían los costos. Nuestros resultados destacan la importancia del cambio modal y las tecnologías de cero carbono en el sector del transporte, aumentando el secuestro de carbono en el sector forestal y la reducción de emisiones en los procesos industriales y ganaderos, para lograr emisiones netas cero. Este trabajo ha ayudado a construir herramientas y capacidad para evaluar las estrategias de descarbonización, que se utilizarán para apoyar la actualización de las Contribuciones Determinadas a Nivel Nacional de Costa Rica, su compromiso con la comunidad internacional en virtud del Acuerdo de París. Nuestro enfoque se pued...
Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be s... more Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND... more This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
Journal of the American Planning Association, 2020
This technical appendix describes the study's cohort model, developed by RAND to support a Robust... more This technical appendix describes the study's cohort model, developed by RAND to support a Robust Decision Making (RDM) analysis of SACOG's Metropolitan Transportation Plan and Sustainable Communities Strategy (MTP/SCS). It also provides additional results from this model and discusses some of its limitations. Cohort Model The cohort model draws on a modeling exercise SACOG conducted for the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to stress-test their plan's projected reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the year 2036 under the requirements of California Senate Bill 375 (Steinberg, 2008). To generate SB 375 emissions results for the exercise, SACOG used the 2016 version of SACSIM (Bradley, Bowman, & Griesenbeck, 2010) also known as SACSIM 16, a regional activity-based travel model that informs development and evaluates performance of the MTP/SCS. Construction of Cohort Groups SACOG stratified the SACSIM model projections using categories of age (5), household income (5), residential density (6), and household proximity to transit (3) as shown in Table A1. A total of 450 cohorts were created from unique combinations of these four categories (5 × 5 × 6 × 3). These stratified cohorts and their associated SACSIM projections for 2036 provide a useful foundation for RAND's RDM analysis, allowing us to add elasticities representing external conditions (e.g., vehicle technology and fuel costs) and policy options (e.g., pricing), and then interpolating and extrapolating among different plausible futures.
Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein ... more Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
In recent years, decision support modeling has embraced deliberation-withanalysis-an iterative pr... more In recent years, decision support modeling has embraced deliberation-withanalysis-an iterative process in which decisionmakers come together with experts to evaluate a complex problem and alternative solutions in a scientifically rigorous and transparent manner. Simulation modeling supports decisionmaking throughout this process; visualizations enable decisionmakers to assess how proposed strategies stand up over time in uncertain conditions. But running these simulation models over standard computers can be slow. This, in turn, can slow the entire decisionmaking process, interrupting valuable interaction between decisionmakers and analytics. What if high-performance computers could deliver the analytics decisionmakers need in near real time? In November 2014, experts from the RAND Corporation and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) conducted a one-day workshop to explore the impact of high-performance computing (HPC) on the use of Robust Decision Making (RDM) in support of stakeholder deliberations, in particular those regarding resource management decisions. The workshop revisited work RAND conducted on the Colorado River Basin in 2012 and was attended by decisionmakers involved in the original study and others interested in advancing the state of the art in quantitative decision support. During the workshop, high-performance computers were used to stress test five new project portfolios over about 12,000 alternative futures in 45 minutes-a process that would have taken six weeks to complete using traditional computer clusters. This document summarizes workshop results and the observations attendees made about the benefits and challenges associated with using HPC in this context. When asked whether the use of HPC in such analyses as those performed for the the Colorado River Basin Study would change their final decisions, three participants said that HPC would have led them to choose a completely different strategy; six said that they would have chosen a slightly different strategy; and the rest answered "don't know." The document also highlights possible ways forward to consider as technology continues to advance the speed of data processing.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND... more This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND... more This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
Elevated nitrate (NO3-) concentrations in drinking water pose a health risk to the public. The du... more Elevated nitrate (NO3-) concentrations in drinking water pose a health risk to the public. The dual stable isotopic signatures of delta15N and delta18O in NO3- in surface- and groundwater are often used to identify and distinguish among sources of NO3- (e.g., sewage, fertilizer, atmospheric deposition). In oxic groundwaters where no denitrification is occurring, direct calculations of mixing fractions using a mass balance approach can be performed if three or fewer sources of NO3- are present, and if the stable isotope ratios of the source terms are defined. There are several limitations to this approach. First, direct calculations of mixing fractions are not possible when four or more NO3- sources may be present. Simple mixing calculations also rely upon treating source isotopic compositions as a single value; however these sources themselves exhibit ranges in stable isotope ratios. More information can be gained by using a probabilistic approach to account for the range and distri...
Isotopes in Environmental and Health Studies, 2013
We used stable isotope ratios to determine the metabolic routing fraction of carbon and nitrogen ... more We used stable isotope ratios to determine the metabolic routing fraction of carbon and nitrogen in feathers in addition to faecal analysis to estimate diet overlap of six sympatric species of manakins in the eastern lowland forest of Ecuador. Collectively, all species varied from-23.7 to-32.7 ‰ for δ(13)C, and from 6.0 to 9.9‰ for δ(15)N, with Machaeropterus regulus showing isotopic differences from the other species. We developed a mixing model that explicitly addresses the routing of carbon and nitrogen to feathers. Interestingly, these results suggest a higher proportion of nitrogen and carbon derived from insects than anticipated based on feeding observations and faecal analysis. A concentration-dependent mixing isotopic model was also used to look at dietary proportions. While larvae and arachnids had higher δ(15)N values, these two groups may also be preferred prey of manakins and may be more assimilated into tissues, leading to a potential overestimation of the contribution to diet. This study supports the finding that manakin species, previously thought be primarily frugivorous, contain a significant amount of arthropods in their diet.