Studies carried out in different countries correlate social, economic, environmental, and health factors with the number of cases and deaths from COVID-19. However, such studies do not reveal which factors make one country more exposed to COVID-19 than other. Based on the composite indicators approach, this research identifies the factors that most impact the number of cases and deaths of COVID-19 worldwide and measures countries’ exposure to COVID-19. Three composite indicators of exposure to COVID-19 were constructed through Principal Component Analysis, Simple Additive Weighting, and k-means clustering. The number of cases and deaths from COVID-19 is strongly correlated ( R > 0.60) with composite indicator scores and moderately concordant ( K > 0.4) with country clusters. Factors directly or indirectly associated with the age of the population are the ones that most expose countries to COVID-19. The population of countries most exposed to COVID-19 is 12 years older on average. The proportion of the elderly population in these countries is at least twice that of countries less exposed to COVID-19. Factors that can increase the population’s life expectancy, such as Gross Domestic Product per capita and the Human Development Index, are four times and 1.3 times higher in more exposed countries to COVID-19. Providing better living conditions increases both the population’s life expectancy and the country’s exposure to COVID-19.
The generation of heliothermal electricity has received increasing attention throughout the world in countries such as Spain, the USA, Germany and many others. In Brazil, this type of energy generation in the form of large projects (above 80 MW) remains unexplored. However, it is known that in the country, there are extensive areas of normal direct irradiation with high intensity and a low seasonality factor, especially in the semiarid regions in Brazil, mainly the North and Northeast of Minas Gerais. Moreover, these Minas Gerais regions have other significant characteristics for the installation of these plants: proximity to transmission lines, flatness, the fact that the respective vegetation is not endangered, a suitable land use profile (availability of land not used in agriculture), low wind speed, low population density, and, most recently, an increase in the demand for local electric energy due to the economic growth above the Brazilian average rate. Furthermore, the introduction of solar plants in that region, due to its distributed nature, will bring development and growth to the region (normally poor) by generating employment and income. This article presents a study of the optimal location of thermoelectric plants in the semiarid regions of Minas Gerais, conducted with Geographical Information System (GIS) technology. GIS consists of a set of specialised resources that allow the manipulation of spatial data, bringing efficiency and agility in the identification of suitable places for the installation of solar plants, while simultaneously enabling the consideration of future scenarios for energy planning, with its respective impact, costs and benefits. The study has identified very promising solar irradiation levels for the electric generation by solar energy, whether thermoelectric or photovoltaic, reaching an annual solar irradiation of 2700 kWh/m² in the summer and in the range of 2200 -2400 kWh/m² on an annual basis. This area includes a vast region in the North/Northeast of the state, which also has continuous and flat regions, with slopes inferior to 3%; in addition, high-quality hydro resources C. Tiba et al. 424are abundant and well distributed. Furthermore, the Minas Gerais region has few areas with high agriculture profile and reduced quantity of protected units. Therefore, generally speaking, the coverage of the transmission lines in that region is suitable. Considering the most relevant aspects mentioned before, and taking as a reference the micro-region limits defined by the IBGE, the following micro-regions were classified as the most promising ones: 1) Janaúba, 2) Januária, 3) Pirapora and Unaí, 4) Pirapora and Paracatu, 5) Curvelo and Três Marias, and 6) Patrocínio and Araxá. Finally, it is important to highlight that this potential might be explored gradually in the medium term, with the shortage of other supply sources, the scale up and readiness of such technologies, as well as the creation of a complex solar-wind-hydro system that leverages the strong complementarity of such resource...
Resumo Esta pesquisa se insere no contexto da desigualdade urbana, que se revela, em parte, pela concentração da oferta de bens-serviços públicos em áreas mais favorecidas em detrimento de áreas menos favorecidas. Além de trazer evidências empíricas que confirmam esse entendimento, exploram-se alternativas para aumentar a progressividade dos tributos. Busca-se, assim, atribuir um imposto maior àqueles que se beneficiam mais da valorização imobiliária e do bem-estar produzido por tais bens e serviços. Logo, o objetivo desta pesquisa foi criar um mecanismo para extrair recursos de áreas mais favorecidas e investi-los, na forma de bens-serviços públicos, em áreas menos favorecidas. Para tanto, selecionaram-se variáveis relacionadas aos bens-serviços públicos (agrupamento hierárquico) e criou-se uma Variável de Síntese Bens-Serviços Públicos (VS-BSP) (análise de componentes principais). Os resultados revelaram que áreas menos favorecidas possuíam 2,54 e 2,52 vezes menos VS-BSP e renda, respectivamente. Com a nova alíquota do IPTU, que considera a progressividade tributária e a proporção da VS-BSP nos domicílios, pode-se atribuir uma alíquota 157% maior para áreas mais favorecidas. Estima-se que essa alíquota possa contribuir para uma redução de 47% da diferença na oferta de bens-serviços públicos entre áreas mais e menos favorecidas.
Appropriate information on solar resources is very important for a variety of technological areas, such as agriculture, meteorology, forestry engineering, and water resources, particularly for an innovative technology such as solar energy. In the market entry process of an innovative technology such as solar energy, the increased and sustained deployment of this energy technology strongly depends on the economy and reliability of the solar systems installed. The economy and reliability of a system are the consequences of a well-prepared project, resulting from an accurate knowledge of the solar resource available. Therefore, knowing the potential of the solar resource accurately is not only a need but also an imperative for the larger diffusion and use of the solar energy. The existing sources of the information on radiation in MG are quite varied, both at the institutional level and in different types of publications. The publications containing this information are project reports, internal reports of institutions, and several magazines. Thus, the quality of the data varies considerably, the information presents spatial and temporal discontinuity; moreover, the instruments and the measurement units are not standardised. The general objective of this paper is to recover, to qualify, to standardize, and to make available the best information from the current existing solar resource in MG, Brazil, either in the form of isoline charts of solar radiation or a numerical database. In this paper, the procedure to elaborate the maps of daily solar radiation and insolation, along with the monthly and annual averages, is described. We present one map with the localisation of the recording stations in addition to one annual and 12 monthly contour maps. The map of the daily global solar irradiation and the annual average determined in this project show that solar radiation on the state of Minas Gerais ranges from 4.5 to 6.5 kWh/m 2. The maximum values occur in the northern region of Minas Gerais, and the minimum C. Tiba et al. 259 values occur in the southeast region, where there are areas of higher altitude (Mantiqueira and Serra do Caparaó) and the rainfall is more intense, with total annual rainfall greater than 1400 mm. The North and Northeast Regions of MG, where the largest annual irradiation of 6.5 kWh/m 2 occurs, are characterised by a semiarid climate with annual rainfall between 600-800 mm and altitudes between 400-600 m. The maritime tropical air mass that acts between Brazil and Africa is the main climatic factor that inhibits cloud formation and, consequently, the rainfall in this region. Finally, the map of annual insolation reveals a consistent correlation between the daily rainfall and the solar radiation annual average.
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