European Sociological Review 31: 312-25. Abstract We study the biases that arise in estimates of social inequalities in children’s cognitive ability test scores due to (i) children’s misreporting of soci

Lorne L. Dawson: Reconceptualizing Lone-Actor Terrorists as Solo Public Mass Murders

Lorne L. Dawson, Professor Emeritus, University of Waterloo, Canada. In public and expert judgements of whether an incident of mass violence by a lone actor is an instance of terrorism or simply mass m

The staff of the Institute for Futures Studies is deeply saddened to learn that our friend and colleague Geoffrey Brennan has recently passed away. Geoff was a most distinguished scholar and a very val

Seminar with Lorne L. Dawson, Professor Emeritus, University of Waterloo, Canada. Register here > Abstract In public and expert judgements of whether an incident of mass violence by a lone actor is an

Katarina Engberg

I hold a Ph D in Peace and Conflict Research from Uppsala University and a Master in Public Administration, MPA, from Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. I have been a Fellow and researc

Maja Fjaestad

I am an expert coordinator at the Centre for Health Crises at KI and Associate Professor at KTH. I previously worked as State Secretary for the Swedish Minister for Health and Social Affairs and before for strategic development and Nordic cooperation at the Prime Minster’s office. I have also worked as researcher at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH. I have also been visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Desk officer at the Ministry of Industry and political adviser in energy issues to Minister of Energy, Mona Sahlin.

Hydrogeology Journal 25(4) pp. 1077-1091, doi: 10.1007/s10040-016-1504-x Abstract This study developed methodology for statistically assessing groundwater contamination mechanisms. It focused on microbiahumanitarian aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières in 2010. The factors included hydrogeological settings, land use and socio-economic characteristics. The results showed that the residuals of a conventional probit regression model had a significant positive spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I =3.05, I-stat = 9.28); therefore, a spatial model was developed that had better goodness-of-fit to the observations. The mostsignificant factor in this model (p-value 0.005) was the distance from a water source to the nearest Tukul area, an area with informal settlements that lack sanitation services. It is thus recommended that future remediation and monitoring efforts in the city be concentrated in such low-income regions. The spatial model differed from the conventional approach: in contrast with the latter case, lowland topography was not significant at the 5% level, as the p-value was 0.074 in the spatial model and 0.040 in the traditional model. This study showed that statistical risk-factor assessments of groundwater contamination need to consider spatial interactions when the water sources are located close to each other. Future studies might further investigate the cut-off distance that reflects spatial autocorrelation. Particularly, these results advise research on urban groundwater quality.

 Venue: Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13 in Stockholm, or online Welcome to a seminar arranged in collaboration with two visiting researchers from the Hague University of Applied Science,

Anders Tegnell at Folkhälsomyndigheten became one of the most well-known experts during the covid 19-pandemic in Sweden. Photo: Frankie Fouganthin/Wikimedia. In crises, politicians often turn to expert

Institute for Futures Studies Working Paper 2013:1. A revised version is published in World Politics, 1-50, 2015.