Climate change has led to the development of new clean energy technologies. As more cars, heating systems, and other types of equipment are produced that require the new technologies, an uneven distribution of the clean energy systems in the 21^st Century could create a solar and electrical divide, similar to the digital divide, with implications for greater inequality in air quality, health, and other quality of life dimensions across communities. CSDE Trainee Yohan Min studies social equity issues in access to clean energy technologies. His research reveals critical social equity issues that will likely grow over time as climate change and air quality worsen and the new clean energy technologies become more important. Yohan presented his research on the distribution of electrical vehicle (EV) charges at the CSDE Winter 2020 Trainees’ Lightning Talks and Poster Session. His study, “Social Equity of Clean Energy Policies in Electric-Vehicle Charging”, was one of two posters to receive the award for best poster. This study describes the distribution of EV charges across socioeconomic characteristics of census tracks in Seattle, using data from the American Community Survey. Yohan estimated a Poisson generalized linear model (GLM) that included both an intrinsic auto-regressive (ICAR) component to address spatial autocorrelation and an ordinary random-effects component for non-spatial heterogeneity using the BYM2 method and he estimated Geographically Weighted Regressions. The results show strong influences of economic factors, such as median income and the median value of owner- occupied houses, and residential stability on the prevalence of residential EV charger installations. Yohan’s identifies communities with certain characteristics that have few to no EV charger installations, denying residents the ability to use clean energy technology. This research is a component of Yohan’s dissertation.

Yohan is a Doctoral Student in the College of Built Environments. He received an M.S. in Engineering from Purdue University. He is a Graduate Fellow of the Clean Energy Institute. Generally, his research focuses on resilient and sustainable infrastructure systems in the built environment, specifically renewable energy with respect to social equity in response to the uneven distribution of services in vulnerable communities, and innovative management systems that address environmental externalities, human health, and private investment opportunities. Aside from his interests in social equity and access to is residential solar and electric vehicle power charges, Yohan is working on optimized mixed community solar models for underserved communities, and the impact of EV adoption on the electricity usage rate. Yohan works hard to address the inequalities he studies. He is currently a Science Communication Fellow at Pacific Science Center to support diversity in clean energy education. His applied work is extensive. Most recently, he went to Puerto Rico with a UW clean energy team to install solar panels for vulnerable households. In the past, he has served as an Infrastructure Officer at the UNDP in the Philippines and as an energy consultant for the Global Green Growth Institute in South Korea.

CSDE congratulates Yohan on his accomplishments!

The US Census Bureau is required by the privacy law in the US Code to not reveal information about individuals, households, or businesses directly or indirectly through statistics. However, advancements in technology have made traditional methods to protect the identification of individuals and database reconstruction insufficient. Solving a huge system of linear equations and inequalities to reconstruct data is theoretically feasible with today’s computing power. The Census Bureau plans to use a new Differentially Private (DP) algorithm called TopDown to protect privacy in the Decennial Census and has asked for feedback from researchers, policy makers, and communities who use or affected by this data. Beatrix Haddock, data specialist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and part-time student at UW, presented research that addressed this call at the CSDE Winter 2020 Trainees’ Lightning Talks and Poster session. Her poster “Differential Privacy in the 2020 Census: Considering Acceptable and Unacceptable Biases” was one of two posters to receive the best poster award.

An algorithm is DP if, run over two databases that differ on one individual, analysis of the two databases would result in the same conclusions. The Census bureau is still conducting research to decide on various tuning parameters of the DP algorithm, how much noise to introduce with TopDown, and which counts to hold accurate. The effects of different parameter choices are not well understood; however, differential accuracy and biases in the counts across territorial divisions and units of local governments have high stakes consequences for the allotment of congressional seats and vast sums of funding for infrastructure and social programs. The counts are also the basis for denominators in vital statistics data and measures used in demographic, health and social research.

Beatrix and her collaborator, CSDE Affiliate Abraham Flaxman, Associate Professor Health Metrics Sciences and of Global Health, are examining the biases as a foundation for research into methods to mitigate them. Their work follows from a finding by Professor Randall Akee of UCLA that there is a systematic downward bias in counts of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) populations living on reservations. Beatrix’s poster demonstrated the same level of undercount as Akee using example data released by the Census bureau to demonstrate TopDown. The poster also found systematic upward bias in counts of the Asian alone population living in rural blocks at the county level, and a downward bias for the Asian alone population urban blocks. The poster used simulation to examine a potential mechanism driving these biases, hypothesizing that they are due to (1) the particular distribution of Asian alone (or AIAN alone) counts across different counties (or reservations), and (2) the rural vs urban and on- vs off-reservation geographies not being part of the standard geographical hierarchy recognized by TopDown.

Beatrix is a member of the Simulation Science team at IHME and will also work with Professor Flaxman on COVID-19, using census data to map nursing homes across the US. She has coauthored a paper, “Hyperbolicity of links in thickened surfaces” that was recently published in Typology and its Applications. She plans to apply to PhD programs in Applied Math this fall.

CSDE congratulates Beatrix on her accomplishments and wishes her well on her next steps!

The University is closely monitoring COVID-19 and extensive emergency procedures are in place. Be sure to read UW’s coronavirus FAQ page, as it contains important information for everyone in the UW community. CSDE also has an ongoing post regarding mitigating impacts to research activities. Recent updates include:

• UW Human Subjects Division (HSD) temporarily halts some UW HSD research, effective Monday, March 23, 2020.
• NSF announced March deadline date extensions for some solicitations and Dear Colleague Letters (DCLs). 

Please click this link for more details and updates.

NSF recently announced March deadline date extensions for some solicitations and Dear Colleague Letters (DCLs) Please click this link for a list of the solicitations or Dear Colleague Letters (DCLs) with extended deadline dates. Additionally, NSF strongly encourages that you check the NSF Coronavirus Website regularly to critical updates. This update will also be added to CSDE’s ongoing post on research updates due to COVID-19.

The Friends of NCHS is a coalition of public health associations, patient organizations, scientific societies, and research institutions who rely on the information produced by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In order to support NCHS’s continued work to monitor the health of the American people and to allow the agency to make much-needed investments in the next generation of its surveys and products, the Friends of NCHS recommend an appropriation of at least $189 million for the agency in fiscal year (FY) 2021. The recommendation reflects an increase to NCHS’s base budget of $14.6 million from its FY 2020 appropriation, as well as the formalization of an ongoing $14 million transfer from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Informatics as proposed in the President’s FY 2021 Budget Request. We urge the Subcommittee to reject the Administration’s proposed $5.4 million cut to the agency, which would have a devastating impact on NCHS’s ability to continue to provide timely, unbiased, and accurate data on Americans’ health. Please click this link or the link below for the full recommendation and more information.