Simulating exposure-related human mobility behavior at the neighborhood-level under COVID-19 in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Modeling experts have been continually researching the interplay of human mobility and COVID-19 transmission since the outbreak of the pandemic. They tried to address this problem and support the control of the pandemic spreading at the national or regional levels. However, these modeling approaches had little success in producing empirically verifiable results at the neighborhood level due to a lack of data and limited representation of low spatial scales in the models. To fill this gap, this research aims to present an agent-based model to simulate human mobility choices in the context of COVID-19, based on social activities of individuals in the neighborhood. We apply the VIABLE model to the decision-making process of heterogeneous agents, who populate the system's environment. The agents adapt their mobility and activities autonomously at each iteration to improve their well-being and respond to exposure risks. The study reveals significant temporal variations in mobility choices between the groups of agents with different vulnerability levels under the Covid-19 pandemic. Agents from the same group with similar economic backgrounds tend to select the same mobility patterns and activities leading to segregation at this low scale. We calibrated the model with a focus on Porto Alegre in Brazil.

A life-cycle assessment framework for quantifying the carbon footprint of rural households based on survey data.

This paper presents the development of a life-cycle assessment (LCA) framework for quantifying the carbon footprint of individual households based on detailed household survey data. According to household consumption and production patterns, the comprehensive life-cycle assessment framework is designed with clarified life-cycle boundaries. The framework covers eight types of specific living activities of rural households generated from a large-scale household survey in the Three Gorges Reservoir area in China. Both carbon emissions and carbon sequestrations of households' consumption and production activities can be assessed, and eventually the integrative carbon footprint is evaluated. The LCA framework enables comprehensive and relatively precise assessment of carbon footprint at a household level and thus adds value to studies in the fields of carbon emission reduction, carbon neutrality and climate policies.