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Archive for April, 2012

Urban planning for fire management

April 30th, 2012 1 comment

Fire are often considered disasters when they destroy infrastructure and lives (independently of the ecological effects); this is specially important in mediterranean-type climate regions where there is a high density of houses in the wildland-urban interface. The most common management action to avoid these disasters are based of fuel reduction (fuel breaks, prescribed fires, etc). However, these actions do not seems to be very successful, at least in crowded regions and where fire occur in extreme weather situations. For instant, in southern California nearly 1000 homes per year have been destroyed by wildfires since 2000, despite their fire management plans. In addition, strong fuel reduction actions have negative biodiversity implications (vegetation degradation, alien invasion, etc.). In a recent paper, Syphard et al. [1] suggest that urban planning could be more efficient in reducing disasters and property losses from fire than fuel management. They found that at the regional scale, fuelbased maps did not predict property loss as well as maps developed using a combination of factors that included housing arrangement and location. Consequently land use planning and housing development policies should be important components of fire risk management plans for the wildland-urban interface.


[1] Syphard A.D., Keeley J.E., Massada A.B., Brennan T.J. & Radeloff V.C. (2012). Housing arrangement and location determine the likelihood of housing loss due to wildfire. PLoS ONE, 7, e33954.

Día del libro, lecturas en tiempos de crisis

April 23rd, 2012 No comments
Algunas ideas de libros para combatir la crisis:
  • Esto tiene arreglo, Alberto Garzón, 2012 [enlace]
  • Lo que España necesita, V Navarro, J Torres, A Garzón, 2012 [enlace] [pdf]
  • Hay alternativas, V Navarro, J Torres, A Garzón, 2011 [pdf]
  • Contra la crisis, otra economía, otro modo de vivir, J Torres, 2011 [enlace]
  • Reacciona. 10 razones por las que debes actuar frente a la crisis, JL Sanpedro y col. 2011 [enlace]
  • El monstruo amable: ¿El mundo se vuelve de derechas?, Raffaele Simone 2012 [enlace]
Los autores:
  • Juan Torres López, Catedrático de Economía Aplicada del la Universidad de Sevilla, tiene un blog con mucha información muy relevante: juantorreslopez.com. Por ejemplo, se puede escuchar una entrevista sobre los Presupuesto Generales del Estado recientemente aprobados [enlace]
  • Vicenç Navarro, Catedrático de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). Uno de los 5 científicos sociales españoles más citados en la literatura mundial; su blog: www.vnavarro.org
  • Alberto Garzón Espinosa, Licenciado en Economía, Universidad de Málaga, Diputado indignado, IU, blog: www.agarzon.net
  • Raffaele Simone, linguista y ensayista, Universidad de Roma. Entrevistas: la vanguardia | público
Y además, 3 lecciones básicas de economia en comic: