This report addresses the broad role of aftershocks in the Performance-based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) process. This is an area which has, to date, not received careful scrutiny nor explicit quantitative analysis. We begin by introducing Aftershock Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (APSHA). APSHA, similar to conventional mainshock PSHA, is a procedure to characterize the timevarying aft...

In this article we estimate external costs for four representative types of freight trains. For each type of freight train, we estimate three general types of external costs and compare them with the private costs experienced by railroad companies. The general types of external costs include: accidents (fatalities, injuries, and property damage); emissions (air pollution and greenhouse gases); ...

Lifespan costs to reproduction are common across multiple species, and such costs could potentially arise through a number of mechanisms. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, it has been suggested that part of the lifespan cost to hermaphrodites from mating results from physical damage owing to the act of copulation itself. Here, we examine whether mating damages the surface of the hermaphro...

Soybean is one of the ten greatest crops in the world, answering for billion-dollar businesses every year. This crop suffers from insect herbivory that costs millions from producers. Hence, constant monitoring of the crop foliar damage is necessary to guide the application of insecticides. However, current methods to measure foliar damage are expensive and dependent on laboratory facilities, in...

We study the timing-of-extraction problem facing a decentralized mine owner when extraction entails environmental damage. As expected, when the environmental damage from mining is known, the socially optimal timing will depend on the magnitude of the damage relative to these costs in the rest of the world. But when environmental damage is uncertain, and these costs are revealed over time, a qua...

Using the FUND model, an impact assessment is conducted over the 21st century for rises in sea level of up to 2-m/century and a range of socio-economic scenarios downscaled to the national level, including the four SRES storylines. This model balances the costs of retreat with the costs of protection, including the effects of coastal squeeze. While the costs of sea-level rise increase with grea...

Road traffic accidents and the effects they subsequently incur are increasing dramatically, and estimating the cost of road traffic crashes could be a vital step in improving the recognition of this widespread problem. The main objective of this paper is to estimate the cost of road traffic crashes in Iran using the Human Capital (HC) Method. Results of this study indicate that the cost of road...