future research recommendations in research example

Research Implications & Recommendations

A Plain-Language Explainer With Examples + FREE Template

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Reviewers: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | May 2024

The research implications and recommendations are closely related but distinctly different concepts that often trip students up. Here, we’ll unpack them using plain language and loads of examples , so that you can approach your project with confidence.

Overview: Implications & Recommendations

• What are research implications ?
• What are research recommendations ?
• Examples of implications and recommendations
• The “ Big 3 ” categories
• How to write the implications and recommendations
• Template sentences for both sections
• Key takeaways

Implications & Recommendations 101

Let’s start with the basics and define our terms.

At the simplest level, research implications refer to the possible effects or outcomes of a study’s findings. More specifically, they answer the question, “ What do these findings mean?” . In other words, the implications section is where you discuss the broader impact of your study’s findings on theory, practice and future research.

This discussion leads us to the recommendations section , which is where you’ll propose specific actions based on your study’s findings and answer the question, “ What should be done next?” . In other words, the recommendations are practical steps that stakeholders can take to address the key issues identified by your study.

In a nutshell, then, the research implications discuss the broader impact and significance of a study’s findings, while recommendations provide specific actions to take, based on those findings. So, while both of these components are deeply rooted in the findings of the study, they serve different functions within the write up.

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Examples: Implications & Recommendations

The distinction between research implications and research recommendations might still feel a bit conceptual, so let’s look at one or two practical examples:

Let’s assume that your study finds that interactive learning methods significantly improve student engagement compared to traditional lectures. In this case, one of your recommendations could be that schools incorporate more interactive learning techniques into their curriculums to enhance student engagement.

Let’s imagine that your study finds that patients who receive personalised care plans have better health outcomes than those with standard care plans. One of your recommendations might be that healthcare providers develop and implement personalised care plans for their patients.

Now, these are admittedly quite simplistic examples, but they demonstrate the difference (and connection ) between the research implications and the recommendations. Simply put, the implications are about the impact of the findings, while the recommendations are about proposed actions, based on the findings.

The “Big 3” Categories

Now that we’ve defined our terms, let’s dig a little deeper into the implications – specifically, the different types or categories of research implications that exist.

Broadly speaking, implications can be divided into three categories – theoretical implications, practical implications and implications for future research .

Theoretical implications relate to how your study’s findings contribute to or challenge existing theories. For example, if a study on social behaviour uncovers new patterns, it might suggest that modifications to current psychological theories are necessary.

Practical implications , on the other hand, focus on how your study’s findings can be applied in real-world settings. For example, if your study demonstrated the effectiveness of a new teaching method, this would imply that educators should consider adopting this method to improve learning outcomes.

Practical implications can also involve policy reconsiderations . For example, if a study reveals significant health benefits from a particular diet, an implication might be that public health guidelines be re-evaluated.

Last but not least, there are the implications for future research . As the name suggests, this category of implications highlights the research gaps or new questions raised by your study. For example, if your study finds mixed results regarding a relationship between two variables, it might imply the need for further investigation to clarify these findings.

To recap then, the three types of implications are the theoretical, the practical and the implications on future research. Regardless of the category, these implications feed into and shape the recommendations , laying the foundation for the actions you’ll propose.

How To Write The  Sections

Now that we’ve laid the foundations, it’s time to explore how to write up the implications and recommendations sections respectively.

Let’s start with the “ where ” before digging into the “ how ”. Typically, the implications will feature in the discussion section of your document, while the recommendations will be located in the conclusion . That said, layouts can vary between disciplines and institutions, so be sure to check with your university what their preferences are.

For the implications section, a common approach is to structure the write-up based on the three categories we looked at earlier – theoretical, practical and future research implications. In practical terms, this discussion will usually follow a fairly formulaic sentence structure – for example:

This research provides new insights into [theoretical aspect], indicating that…

The study’s outcomes highlight the potential benefits of adopting [specific practice] in..

This study raises several questions that warrant further investigation, such as…

Moving onto the recommendations section, you could again structure your recommendations using the three categories. Alternatively, you could structure the discussion per stakeholder group – for example, policymakers, organisations, researchers, etc.

Again, you’ll likely use a fairly formulaic sentence structure for this section. Here are some examples for your inspiration: 

Based on the findings, [specific group] should consider adopting [new method] to improve…

To address the issues identified, it is recommended that legislation should be introduced to…

Researchers should consider examining [specific variable] to build on the current study’s findings.

Remember, you can grab a copy of our tried and tested templates for both the discussion and conclusion sections over on the Grad Coach blog. You can find the links to those, as well as loads of other free resources, in the description 🙂

FAQs: Implications & Recommendations

How do i determine the implications of my study.

To do this, you’ll need to consider how your findings address gaps in the existing literature, how they could influence theory, practice, or policy, and the potential societal or economic impacts.

When thinking about your findings, it’s also a good idea to revisit your introduction chapter, where you would have discussed the potential significance of your study more broadly. This section can help spark some additional ideas about what your findings mean in relation to your original research aims. 

Should I discuss both positive and negative implications?

Absolutely. You’ll need to discuss both the positive and negative implications to provide a balanced view of how your findings affect the field and any limitations or potential downsides.

Can my research implications be speculative?

Yes and no. While implications are somewhat more speculative than recommendations and can suggest potential future outcomes, they should be grounded in your data and analysis. So, be careful to avoid overly speculative claims.

How do I formulate recommendations?

Ideally, you should base your recommendations on the limitations and implications of your study’s findings. So, consider what further research is needed, how policies could be adapted, or how practices could be improved – and make proposals in this respect.

How specific should my recommendations be?

Your recommendations should be as specific as possible, providing clear guidance on what actions or research should be taken next. As mentioned earlier, the implications can be relatively broad, but the recommendations should be very specific and actionable. Ideally, you should apply the SMART framework to your recommendations.

Can I recommend future research in my recommendations?

Absolutely. Highlighting areas where further research is needed is a key aspect of the recommendations section. Naturally, these recommendations should link to the respective section of your implications (i.e., implications for future research).

Wrapping Up: Key Takeaways

We’ve covered quite a bit of ground here, so let’s quickly recap.

• Research implications refer to the possible effects or outcomes of a study’s findings.
• The recommendations section, on the other hand, is where you’ll propose specific actions based on those findings.
• You can structure your implications section based on the three overarching categories – theoretical, practical and future research implications.
• You can carry this structure through to the recommendations as well, or you can group your recommendations by stakeholder.

Remember to grab a copy of our tried and tested free dissertation template, which covers both the implications and recommendations sections. If you’d like 1:1 help with your research project, be sure to check out our private coaching service, where we hold your hand throughout the research journey, step by step.

Psst... there’s more!

This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

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The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Impactful Recommendations in Research

Are you ready to take your research to the next level? Crafting impactful recommendations is the key to unlocking the full potential of your study. By providing clear, actionable suggestions based on your findings, you can bridge the gap between research and real-world application.

In this ultimate guide, we'll show you how to write recommendations that make a difference in your research report or paper.

You'll learn how to craft specific, actionable recommendations that connect seamlessly with your research findings. Whether you're a student, writer, teacher, or journalist, this guide will help you master the art of writing recommendations in research. Let's get started and make your research count!

Understanding the Purpose of Recommendations

Recommendations in research serve as a vital bridge between your findings and their real-world applications. They provide specific, action-oriented suggestions to guide future studies and decision-making processes. Let's dive into the key purposes of crafting effective recommendations:

Guiding Future Research

Research recommendations play a crucial role in steering scholars and researchers towards promising avenues of exploration. By highlighting gaps in current knowledge and proposing new research questions, recommendations help advance the field and drive innovation.

Influencing Decision-Making

Well-crafted recommendations have the power to shape policies, programs, and strategies across various domains, such as:

• Policy-making
• Product development
• Marketing strategies
• Medical practice

By providing clear, evidence-based suggestions, recommendations facilitate informed decision-making and improve outcomes.

Connecting Research to Practice

Recommendations act as a conduit for transferring knowledge from researchers to practitioners, policymakers, and stakeholders. They bridge the gap between academic findings and their practical applications, ensuring that research insights are effectively translated into real-world solutions.

Enhancing Research Impact

By crafting impactful recommendations, you can amplify the reach and influence of your research, attracting attention from peers, funding agencies, and decision-makers.

Addressing Limitations

Recommendations provide an opportunity to acknowledge and address the limitations of your study. By suggesting concrete and actionable possibilities for future research, you demonstrate a thorough understanding of your work's scope and potential areas for improvement.

Identifying Areas for Future Research

Discovering research gaps is a crucial step in crafting impactful recommendations. It involves reviewing existing studies and identifying unanswered questions or problems that warrant further investigation. Here are some strategies to help you identify areas for future research:

Explore Research Limitations

Take a close look at the limitations section of relevant studies. These limitations often provide valuable insights into potential areas for future research. Consider how addressing these limitations could enhance our understanding of the topic at hand.

Critically Analyze Discussion and Future Research Sections

When reading articles, pay special attention to the discussion and future research sections. These sections often highlight gaps in the current knowledge base and propose avenues for further exploration. Take note of any recurring themes or unanswered questions that emerge across multiple studies.

Utilize Targeted Search Terms

To streamline your search for research gaps, use targeted search terms such as "literature gap" or "future research" in combination with your subject keywords. This approach can help you quickly identify articles that explicitly discuss areas for future investigation.

Seek Guidance from Experts

Don't hesitate to reach out to your research advisor or other experts in your field. Their wealth of knowledge and experience can provide valuable insights into potential research gaps and emerging trends.

By employing these strategies, you'll be well-equipped to identify research gaps and craft recommendations that push the boundaries of current knowledge. Remember, the goal is to refine your research questions and focus your efforts on areas where more understanding is needed.

Structuring Your Recommendations

When it comes to structuring your recommendations, it's essential to keep them concise, organized, and tailored to your audience. Here are some key tips to help you craft impactful recommendations:

Prioritize and Organize

• Limit your recommendations to the most relevant and targeted suggestions for your peers or colleagues in the field.
• Place your recommendations at the end of the report, as they are often top of mind for readers.
• Write your recommendations in order of priority, with the most important ones for decision-makers coming first.

Use a Clear and Actionable Format

• Write recommendations in a clear, concise manner using actionable words derived from the data analyzed in your research.
• Use bullet points instead of long paragraphs for clarity and readability.
• Ensure that your recommendations are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (SMART).

Connect Recommendations to Research

By following this simple formula, you can ensure that your recommendations are directly connected to your research and supported by a clear rationale.

Tailor to Your Audience

• Consider the needs and interests of your target audience when crafting your recommendations.
• Explain how your recommendations can solve the issues explored in your research.
• Acknowledge any limitations or constraints of your study that may impact the implementation of your recommendations.

Avoid Common Pitfalls

• Don't undermine your own work by suggesting incomplete or unnecessary recommendations.
• Avoid using recommendations as a place for self-criticism or introducing new information not covered in your research.
• Ensure that your recommendations are achievable and comprehensive, offering practical solutions for the issues considered in your paper.

By structuring your recommendations effectively, you can enhance the reliability and validity of your research findings, provide valuable strategies and suggestions for future research, and deliver impactful solutions to real-world problems.

Crafting Actionable and Specific Recommendations

Crafting actionable and specific recommendations is the key to ensuring your research findings have a real-world impact. Here are some essential tips to keep in mind:

Embrace Flexibility and Feasibility

Your recommendations should be open to discussion and new information, rather than being set in stone. Consider the following:

• Be realistic and considerate of your team's capabilities when making recommendations.
• Prioritize recommendations based on impact and reach, but be prepared to adjust based on team effort levels.
• Focus on solutions that require the fewest changes first, adopting an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach.

Provide Detailed and Justified Recommendations

To avoid vagueness and misinterpretation, ensure your recommendations are:

• Detailed, including photos, videos, or screenshots whenever possible.
• Justified based on research findings, providing alternatives when findings don't align with expectations or business goals.

Use this formula when writing recommendations:

Observed problem/pain point/unmet need + consequence + potential solution

Adopt a Solution-Oriented Approach

Foster collaboration and participation.

• Promote staff education on current research and create strategies to encourage adoption of promising clinical protocols.
• Include representatives from the treatment community in the development of the research initiative and the review of proposals.
• Require active, early, and permanent participation of treatment staff in the development, implementation, and interpretation of the study.

Tailor Recommendations to the Opportunity

When writing recommendations for a specific opportunity or program:

• Highlight the strengths and qualifications of the researcher.
• Provide specific examples of their work and accomplishments.
• Explain how their research has contributed to the field.
• Emphasize the researcher's potential for future success and their unique contributions.

By following these guidelines, you'll craft actionable and specific recommendations that drive meaningful change and showcase the value of your research.

Connecting Recommendations with Research Findings

Connecting your recommendations with research findings is crucial for ensuring the credibility and impact of your suggestions. Here's how you can seamlessly link your recommendations to the evidence uncovered in your study:

Grounding Recommendations in Research

Your recommendations should be firmly rooted in the data and insights gathered during your research process. Avoid including measures or suggestions that were not discussed or supported by your study findings. This approach ensures that your recommendations are evidence-based and directly relevant to the research at hand.

Highlighting the Significance of Collaboration

Research collaborations offer a wealth of benefits that can enhance an agency's competitive position. Consider the following factors when discussing the importance of collaboration in your recommendations:

• Organizational Development: Participation in research collaborations depends on an agency's stage of development, compatibility with its mission and culture, and financial stability.
• Trust-Building: Long-term collaboration success often hinges on a history of increasing involvement and trust between partners.
• Infrastructure: A permanent infrastructure that facilitates long-term development is key to successful collaborative programs.

Emphasizing Commitment and Participation

Fostering quality improvement and organizational learning.

In your recommendations, highlight the importance of enhancing quality improvement strategies and fostering organizational learning. Show sensitivity to the needs and constraints of community-based programs, as this understanding is crucial for effective collaboration and implementation.

Addressing Limitations and Implications

If not already addressed in the discussion section, your recommendations should mention the limitations of the study and their implications. Examples of limitations include:

• Sample size or composition
• Participant attrition
• Study duration

By acknowledging these limitations, you demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of your research and its potential impact.

By connecting your recommendations with research findings, you provide a solid foundation for your suggestions, emphasize the significance of collaboration, and showcase the potential for future research and practical applications.

Crafting impactful recommendations is a vital skill for any researcher looking to bridge the gap between their findings and real-world applications. By understanding the purpose of recommendations, identifying areas for future research, structuring your suggestions effectively, and connecting them to your research findings, you can unlock the full potential of your study. Remember to prioritize actionable, specific, and evidence-based recommendations that foster collaboration and drive meaningful change.

As you embark on your research journey, embrace the power of well-crafted recommendations to amplify the impact of your work. By following the guidelines outlined in this ultimate guide, you'll be well-equipped to write recommendations that resonate with your audience, inspire further investigation, and contribute to the advancement of your field. So go forth, make your research count, and let your recommendations be the catalyst for positive change.

Q: What are the steps to formulating recommendations in research? A: To formulate recommendations in research, you should first gain a thorough understanding of the research question. Review the existing literature to inform your recommendations and consider the research methods that were used. Identify which data collection techniques were employed and propose suitable data analysis methods. It's also essential to consider any limitations and ethical considerations of your research. Justify your recommendations clearly and finally, provide a summary of your recommendations.

Q: Why are recommendations significant in research studies? A: Recommendations play a crucial role in research as they form a key part of the analysis phase. They provide specific suggestions for interventions or strategies that address the problems and limitations discovered during the study. Recommendations are a direct response to the main findings derived from data collection and analysis, and they can guide future actions or research.

Q: Can you outline the seven steps involved in writing a research paper? A: Certainly. The seven steps to writing an excellent research paper include:

• Allowing yourself sufficient time to complete the paper.
• Defining the scope of your essay and crafting a clear thesis statement.
• Conducting a thorough yet focused search for relevant research materials.
• Reading the research materials carefully and taking detailed notes.
• Writing your paper based on the information you've gathered and analyzed.
• Editing your paper to ensure clarity, coherence, and correctness.
• Submitting your paper following the guidelines provided.

Q: What tips can help make a research paper more effective? A: To enhance the effectiveness of a research paper, plan for the extensive process ahead and understand your audience. Decide on the structure your research writing will take and describe your methodology clearly. Write in a straightforward and clear manner, avoiding the use of clichés or overly complex language.

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How to formulate research recommendations

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• Peer review
• Polly Brown ( pbrown{at}bmjgroup.com ) , publishing manager 1 ,
• Klara Brunnhuber , clinical editor 1 ,
• Kalipso Chalkidou , associate director, research and development 2 ,
• Iain Chalmers , director 3 ,
• Mike Clarke , director 4 ,
• Mark Fenton , editor 3 ,
• Carol Forbes , reviews manager 5 ,
• Julie Glanville , associate director/information service manager 5 ,
• Nicholas J Hicks , consultant in public health medicine 6 ,
• Janet Moody , identification and prioritisation manager 6 ,
• Sara Twaddle , director 7 ,
• Hazim Timimi , systems developer 8 ,
• Pamela Young , senior programme manager 6
• 1 BMJ Publishing Group, London WC1H 9JR,
• 2 National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, London WC1V 6NA,
• 3 Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatments, James Lind Alliance Secretariat, James Lind Initiative, Oxford OX2 7LG,
• 4 UK Cochrane Centre, Oxford OX2 7LG,
• 5 Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, York YO10 5DD,
• 6 National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO16 7PX,
• 7 Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network, Edinburgh EH2 1EN,
• 8 Update Software, Oxford OX2 7LG
• Correspondence to: PBrown
• Accepted 22 September 2006

“More research is needed” is a conclusion that fits most systematic reviews. But authors need to be more specific about what exactly is required

Long awaited reports of new research, systematic reviews, and clinical guidelines are too often a disappointing anticlimax for those wishing to use them to direct future research. After many months or years of effort and intellectual energy put into these projects, authors miss the opportunity to identify unanswered questions and outstanding gaps in the evidence. Most reports contain only a less than helpful, general research recommendation. This means that the potential value of these recommendations is lost.

Current recommendations

In 2005, representatives of organisations commissioning and summarising research, including the BMJ Publishing Group, the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, the National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network, and the UK Cochrane Centre, met as members of the development group for the Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatments (see bmj.com for details on all participating organisations). Our aim was to discuss the state of research recommendations within our organisations and to develop guidelines for improving the presentation of proposals for further research. All organisations had found weaknesses in the way researchers and authors of systematic reviews and clinical guidelines stated the need for further research. As part of the project, a member of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination under-took a rapid literature search to identify information on research recommendation models, which found some individual methods but no group initiatives to attempt to standardise recommendations.

Suggested format for research recommendations on the effects of treatments

Core elements.

E Evidence (What is the current state of the evidence?)

P Population (What is the population of interest?)

I Intervention (What are the interventions of interest?)

C Comparison (What are the comparisons of interest?)

O Outcome (What are the outcomes of interest?)

T Time stamp (Date of recommendation)

Optional elements

d Disease burden or relevance

t Time aspect of core elements of EPICOT

s Appropriate study type according to local need

In January 2006, the National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment presented the findings of an initial comparative analysis of how different organisations currently structure their research recommendations. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment request authors to present recommendations in a four component format for formulating well built clinical questions around treatments: population, intervention, comparison, and outcomes (PICO). 1 In addition, the research recommendation is dated and authors are asked to provide the current state of the evidence to support the proposal.

Clinical Evidence , although not directly standardising its sections for research recommendations, presents gaps in the evidence using a slightly extended version of the PICO format: evidence, population, intervention, comparison, outcomes, and time (EPICOT). Clinical Evidence has used this inherent structure to feed research recommendations on interventions categorised as “unknown effectiveness” back to the National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment and for inclusion in the Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatments ( http://www.duets.nhs.uk/ ).

We decided to propose the EPICOT format as the basis for its statement on formulating research recommendations and tested this proposal through discussion and example. We agreed that this set of components provided enough context for formulating research recommendations without limiting researchers. In order for the proposed framework to be flexible and more widely applicable, the group discussed using several optional components when they seemed relevant or were proposed by one or more of the group members. The final outcome of discussions resulted in the proposed EPICOT+ format (box).

A recent BMJ article highlighted how lack of research hinders the applicability of existing guidelines to patients in primary care who have had a stroke or transient ischaemic attack. 2 Most research in the area had been conducted in younger patients with a recent episode and in a hospital setting. The authors concluded that “further evidence should be collected on the efficacy and adverse effects of intensive blood pressure lowering in representative populations before we implement this guidance [from national and international guidelines] in primary care.” Table 1 outlines how their recommendations could be formulated using the EPICOT+ format. The decision on whether additional research is indeed clinically and ethically warranted will still lie with the organisation considering commissioning the research.

Research recommendation based on gap in the evidence identified by a cross sectional study of clinical guidelines for management of patients who have had a stroke

• View inline

Table 2 shows the use of EPICOT+ for an unanswered question on the effectiveness of compliance therapy in people with schizophrenia, identified by the Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatments.

Research recommendation based on a gap in the evidence on treatment of schizophrenia identified by the Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatments

Discussions around optional elements

Although the group agreed that the PICO elements should be core requirements for a research recommendation, intense discussion centred on the inclusion of factors defining a more detailed context, such as current state of evidence (E), appropriate study type (s), disease burden and relevance (d), and timeliness (t).

Initially, group members interpreted E differently. Some viewed it as the supporting evidence for a research recommendation and others as the suggested study type for a research recommendation. After discussion, we agreed that E should be used to refer to the amount and quality of research supporting the recommendation. However, the issue remained contentious as some of us thought that if a systematic review was available, its reference would sufficiently identify the strength of the existing evidence. Others thought that adding evidence to the set of core elements was important as it provided a summary of the supporting evidence, particularly as the recommendation was likely to be abstracted and used separately from the review or research that led to its formulation. In contrast, the suggested study type (s) was left as an optional element.

A research recommendation will rarely have an absolute value in itself. Its relative priority will be influenced by the burden of ill health (d), which is itself dependent on factors such as local prevalence, disease severity, relevant risk factors, and the priorities of the organisation considering commissioning the research.

Similarly, the issue of time (t) could be seen to be relevant to each of the core elements in varying ways—for example, duration of treatment, length of follow-up. The group therefore agreed that time had a subsidiary role within each core item; however, T as the date of the recommendation served to define its shelf life and therefore retained individual importance.

Applicability and usability

The proposed statement on research recommendations applies to uncertainties of the effects of any form of health intervention or treatment and is intended for research in humans rather than basic scientific research. Further investigation is required to assess the applicability of the format for questions around diagnosis, signs and symptoms, prognosis, investigations, and patient preference.

When the proposed format is applied to a specific research recommendation, the emphasis placed on the relevant part(s) of the EPICOT+ format may vary by author, audience, and intended purpose. For example, a recommendation for research into treatments for transient ischaemic attack may or may not define valid outcome measures to assess quality of life or gather data on adverse effects. Among many other factors, its implementation will also depend on the strength of current findings—that is, strong evidence may support a tightly focused recommendation whereas a lack of evidence would result in a more general recommendation.

The controversy within the group, especially around the optional components, reflects the different perspectives of the participating organisations—whether they were involved in commissioning, undertaking, or summarising research. Further issues will arise during the implementation of the proposed format, and we welcome feedback and discussion.

Summary points

No common guidelines exist for the formulation of recommendations for research on the effects of treatments

Major organisations involved in commissioning or summarising research compared their approaches and agreed on core questions

The essential items can be summarised as EPICOT+ (evidence, population, intervention, comparison, outcome, and time)

Further details, such as disease burden and appropriate study type, should be considered as required

We thank Patricia Atkinson and Jeremy Wyatt.

Contributors and sources All authors contributed to manuscript preparation and approved the final draft. NJH is the guarantor.

Competing interests None declared.

• Richardson WS ,
• Wilson MC ,
• Nishikawa J ,
• Hayward RSA
• McManus RJ ,
• Leonardi-Bee J ,
• PROGRESS Collaborative Group
• Warburton E
• Rothwell P ,
• McIntosh AM ,
• Lawrie SM ,
• Stanfield AC
• O'Donnell C ,
• Donohoe G ,
• Sharkey L ,
• Jablensky A ,
• Sartorius N ,
• Ernberg G ,

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• GETTING STARTED
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FUTURE RESEARCH

Types of future research suggestion.

The Future Research section of your dissertation is often combined with the Research Limitations section of your final, Conclusions chapter. This is because your future research suggestions generally arise out of the research limitations you have identified in your own dissertation. In this article, we discuss six types of future research suggestion. These include: (1) building on a particular finding in your research; (2) addressing a flaw in your research; examining (or testing) a theory (framework or model) either (3) for the first time or (4) in a new context, location and/or culture; (5) re-evaluating and (6) expanding a theory (framework or model). The goal of the article is to help you think about the potential types of future research suggestion that you may want to include in your dissertation.

Before we discuss each of these types of future research suggestion, we should explain why we use the word examining and then put or testing in brackets. This is simply because the word examining may be considered more appropriate when students use a qualitative research design; whereas the word testing fits better with dissertations drawing on a quantitative research design. We also put the words framework or model in brackets after the word theory . We do this because a theory , framework and model are not the same things. In the sections that follow, we discuss six types of future research suggestion.

Addressing research limitations in your dissertation

Building on a particular finding or aspect of your research, examining a conceptual framework (or testing a theoretical model) for the first time, examining a conceptual framework (or testing a theoretical model) in a new context, location and/or culture.

• Expanding a conceptual framework (or testing a theoretical model)

Re-evaluating a conceptual framework (or theoretical model)

In the Research Limitations section of your Conclusions chapter, you will have inevitably detailed the potential flaws (i.e., research limitations) of your dissertation. These may include:

An inability to answer your research questions

Theoretical and conceptual problems

Limitations of your research strategy

Problems of research quality

Identifying what these research limitations were and proposing future research suggestions that address them is arguably the easiest and quickest ways to complete the Future Research section of your Conclusions chapter.

Often, the findings from your dissertation research will highlight a number of new avenues that could be explored in future studies. These can be grouped into two categories:

Your dissertation will inevitably lead to findings that you did not anticipate from the start. These are useful when making future research suggestions because they can lead to entirely new avenues to explore in future studies. If this was the case, it is worth (a) briefly describing what these unanticipated findings were and (b) suggesting a research strategy that could be used to explore such findings in future.

Sometimes, dissertations manage to address all aspects of the research questions that were set. However, this is seldom the case. Typically, there will be aspects of your research questions that could not be answered. This is not necessarily a flaw in your research strategy, but may simply reflect that fact that the findings did not provide all the answers you hoped for. If this was the case, it is worth (a) briefly describing what aspects of your research questions were not answered and (b) suggesting a research strategy that could be used to explore such aspects in future.

You may want to recommend that future research examines the conceptual framework (or tests the theoretical model) that you developed. This is based on the assumption that the primary goal of your dissertation was to set out a conceptual framework (or build a theoretical model). It is also based on the assumption that whilst such a conceptual framework (or theoretical model) was presented, your dissertation did not attempt to examine (or test) it in the field . The focus of your dissertations was most likely a review of the literature rather than something that involved you conducting primary research.

Whilst it is quite rare for dissertations at the undergraduate and master's level to be primarily theoretical in nature like this, it is not unknown. If this was the case, you should think about how the conceptual framework (or theoretical model) that you have presented could be best examined (or tested) in the field . In understanding the how , you should think about two factors in particular:

What is the context, location and/or culture that would best lend itself to my conceptual framework (or theoretical model) if it were to be examined (or tested) in the field?

What research strategy is most appropriate to examine my conceptual framework (or test my theoretical model)?

If the future research suggestion that you want to make is based on examining your conceptual framework (or testing your theoretical model) in the field , you need to suggest the best scenario for doing so.

More often than not, you will not only have set out a conceptual framework (or theoretical model), as described in the previous section, but you will also have examined (or tested) it in the field . When you do this, focus is typically placed on a specific context, location and/or culture.

If this is the case, the obvious future research suggestion that you could propose would be to examine your conceptual framework (or test the theoretical model) in a new context, location and/or culture. For example, perhaps you focused on consumers (rather than businesses), or Canada (rather than the United Kingdom), or a more individualistic culture like the United States (rather than a more collectivist culture like China).

When you propose a new context, location and/or culture as your future research suggestion, make sure you justify the choice that you make. For example, there may be little value in future studies looking at different cultures if culture is not an important component underlying your conceptual framework (or theoretical model). If you are not sure whether a new context, location or culture is more appropriate, or what new context, location or culture you should select, a review the literature will often help clarify where you focus should be.

Expanding a conceptual framework (or theoretical model)

Assuming that you have set out a conceptual framework (or theoretical model) and examined (or tested) it in the field , another series of future research suggestions comes out of expanding that conceptual framework (or theoretical model).

We talk about a series of future research suggestions because there are so many ways that you can expand on your conceptual framework (or theoretical model). For example, you can do this by:

Examining constructs (or variables) that were included in your conceptual framework (or theoretical model) but were not focused.

Looking at a particular relationship aspect of your conceptual framework (or theoretical model) further.

Adding new constructs (or variables) to the conceptual framework (or theoretical model) you set out (if justified by the literature).

It would be possible to include one or a number of these as future research suggestions. Again, make sure that any suggestions you make have are justified , either by your findings or the literature.

With the dissertation process at the undergraduate and master's level lasting between 3 and 9 months, a lot a can happen in between. For example, a specific event (e.g., 9/11, the economic crisis) or some new theory or evidence that undermines (or questions) the literature (theory) and assumptions underpinning your conceptual framework (or theoretical model). Clearly, there is little you can do about this. However, if this happens, reflecting on it and re-evaluating your conceptual framework (or theoretical model), as well as your findings, is an obvious source of future research suggestions.

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Future Research – Thesis Guide

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Future Research

Definition:

Future research refers to investigations and studies that are yet to be conducted, and are aimed at expanding our understanding of a particular subject or area of interest. Future research is typically based on the current state of knowledge and seeks to address unanswered questions, gaps in knowledge, and new areas of inquiry.

How to Write Future Research in Thesis

Here are some steps to help you write effectively about future research in your thesis :

• Identify a research gap: Before you start writing about future research, identify the areas that need further investigation. Look for research gaps and inconsistencies in the literature , and note them down.
• Specify research questions : Once you have identified a research gap, create a list of research questions that you would like to explore in future research. These research questions should be specific, measurable, and relevant to your thesis.
• Discuss limitations: Be sure to discuss any limitations of your research that may require further exploration. This will help to highlight the need for future research and provide a basis for further investigation.
• Suggest methodologies: Provide suggestions for methodologies that could be used to explore the research questions you have identified. Discuss the pros and cons of each methodology and how they would be suitable for your research.
• Explain significance: Explain the significance of the research you have proposed, and how it will contribute to the field. This will help to justify the need for future research and provide a basis for further investigation.
• Provide a timeline : Provide a timeline for the proposed research , indicating when each stage of the research would be conducted. This will help to give a sense of the practicalities involved in conducting the research.
• Conclusion : Summarize the key points you have made about future research and emphasize the importance of exploring the research questions you have identified.

Examples of Future Research in Thesis

SomeExamples of Future Research in Thesis are as follows:

Future Research:

Although this study provides valuable insights into the effects of social media on self-esteem, there are several avenues for future research that could build upon our findings. Firstly, our sample consisted solely of college students, so it would be beneficial to extend this research to other age groups and demographics. Additionally, our study focused only on the impact of social media use on self-esteem, but there are likely other factors that influence how social media affects individuals, such as personality traits and social support. Future research could examine these factors in greater depth. Lastly, while our study looked at the short-term effects of social media use on self-esteem, it would be interesting to explore the long-term effects over time. This could involve conducting longitudinal studies that follow individuals over a period of several years to assess changes in self-esteem and social media use.

While this study provides important insights into the relationship between sleep patterns and academic performance among college students, there are several avenues for future research that could further advance our understanding of this topic.

• This study relied on self-reported sleep patterns, which may be subject to reporting biases. Future research could benefit from using objective measures of sleep, such as actigraphy or polysomnography, to more accurately assess sleep duration and quality.
• This study focused on academic performance as the outcome variable, but there may be other important outcomes to consider, such as mental health or well-being. Future research could explore the relationship between sleep patterns and these other outcomes.
• This study only included college students, and it is unclear if these findings generalize to other populations, such as high school students or working adults. Future research could investigate whether the relationship between sleep patterns and academic performance varies across different populations.
• Fourth, this study did not explore the potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between sleep patterns and academic performance. Future research could investigate the role of factors such as cognitive functioning, motivation, and stress in this relationship.

Overall, there is a need for continued research on the relationship between sleep patterns and academic performance, as this has important implications for the health and well-being of students.

Further research could investigate the long-term effects of mindfulness-based interventions on mental health outcomes among individuals with chronic pain. A longitudinal study could be conducted to examine the sustainability of mindfulness practices in reducing pain-related distress and improving psychological well-being over time. The study could also explore the potential mediating and moderating factors that influence the relationship between mindfulness and mental health outcomes, such as emotional regulation, pain catastrophizing, and social support.

Purpose of Future Research in Thesis

Here are some general purposes of future research that you might consider including in your thesis:

• To address limitations: Your research may have limitations or unanswered questions that could be addressed by future studies. Identify these limitations and suggest potential areas for further research.
• To extend the research : You may have found interesting results in your research, but future studies could help to extend or replicate your findings. Identify these areas where future research could help to build on your work.
• To explore related topics : Your research may have uncovered related topics that were outside the scope of your study. Suggest areas where future research could explore these related topics in more depth.
• To compare different approaches : Your research may have used a particular methodology or approach, but there may be other approaches that could be compared to your approach. Identify these other approaches and suggest areas where future research could compare and contrast them.
• To test hypotheses : Your research may have generated hypotheses that could be tested in future studies. Identify these hypotheses and suggest areas where future research could test them.
• To address practical implications : Your research may have practical implications that could be explored in future studies. Identify these practical implications and suggest areas where future research could investigate how to apply them in practice.

Applications of Future Research

Some examples of applications of future research that you could include in your thesis are:

• Development of new technologies or methods: If your research involves the development of new technologies or methods, you could discuss potential applications of these innovations in future research or practical settings. For example, if you have developed a new drug delivery system, you could speculate about how it might be used in the treatment of other diseases or conditions.
• Extension of your research: If your research only scratches the surface of a particular topic, you could suggest potential avenues for future research that could build upon your findings. For example, if you have studied the effects of a particular drug on a specific population, you could suggest future research that explores the drug’s effects on different populations or in combination with other treatments.
• Investigation of related topics: If your research is part of a larger field or area of inquiry, you could suggest potential research topics that are related to your work. For example, if you have studied the effects of climate change on a particular species, you could suggest future research that explores the impacts of climate change on other species or ecosystems.
• Testing of hypotheses: If your research has generated hypotheses or theories, you could suggest potential experiments or studies that could test these hypotheses in future research. For example, if you have proposed a new theory about the mechanisms of a particular disease, you could suggest experiments that could test this theory in other populations or in different disease contexts.

Advantage of Future Research

Including future research in a thesis has several advantages:

• Demonstrates critical thinking: Including future research shows that the author has thought deeply about the topic and recognizes its limitations. It also demonstrates that the author is interested in advancing the field and is not satisfied with only providing a narrow analysis of the issue at hand.
• Provides a roadmap for future research : Including future research can help guide researchers in the field by suggesting areas that require further investigation. This can help to prevent researchers from repeating the same work and can lead to more efficient use of resources.
• Shows engagement with the field : By including future research, the author demonstrates their engagement with the field and their understanding of ongoing debates and discussions. This can be especially important for students who are just entering the field and want to show their commitment to ongoing research.
• I ncreases the impact of the thesis : Including future research can help to increase the impact of the thesis by highlighting its potential implications for future research and practical applications. This can help to generate interest in the work and attract attention from researchers and practitioners in the field.

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Implications or Recommendations in Research: What's the Difference?

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High-quality research articles that get many citations contain both implications and recommendations. Implications are the impact your research makes, whereas recommendations are specific actions that can then be taken based on your findings, such as for more research or for policymaking.

Updated on August 23, 2022

That seems clear enough, but the two are commonly confused.

This confusion is especially true if you come from a so-called high-context culture in which information is often implied based on the situation, as in many Asian cultures. High-context cultures are different from low-context cultures where information is more direct and explicit (as in North America and many European cultures).

Let's set these two straight in a low-context way; i.e., we'll be specific and direct! This is the best way to be in English academic writing because you're writing for the world.

Implications and recommendations in a research article

The standard format of STEM research articles is what's called IMRaD:

• Introduction
• Discussion/conclusions

Some journals call for a separate conclusions section, while others have the conclusions as the last part of the discussion. You'll write these four (or five) sections in the same sequence, though, no matter the journal.

The discussion section is typically where you restate your results and how well they confirmed your hypotheses. Give readers the answer to the questions for which they're looking to you for an answer.

At this point, many researchers assume their paper is finished. After all, aren't the results the most important part? As you might have guessed, no, you're not quite done yet.

The discussion/conclusions section is where to say what happened and what should now happen

The discussion/conclusions section of every good scientific article should contain the implications and recommendations.

The implications, first of all, are the impact your results have on your specific field. A high-impact, highly cited article will also broaden the scope here and provide implications to other fields. This is what makes research cross-disciplinary.

Recommendations, however, are suggestions to improve your field based on your results.

These two aspects help the reader understand your broader content: How and why your work is important to the world. They also tell the reader what can be changed in the future based on your results.

These aspects are what editors are looking for when selecting papers for peer review.

Implications and recommendations are, thus, written at the end of the discussion section, and before the concluding paragraph. They help to “wrap up” your paper. Once your reader understands what you found, the next logical step is what those results mean and what should come next.

Then they can take the baton, in the form of your work, and run with it. That gets you cited and extends your impact!

The order of implications and recommendations also matters. Both are written after you've summarized your main findings in the discussion section. Then, those results are interpreted based on ongoing work in the field. After this, the implications are stated, followed by the recommendations.

Writing an academic research paper is a bit like running a race. Finish strong, with your most important conclusion (recommendation) at the end. Leave readers with an understanding of your work's importance. Avoid generic, obvious phrases like "more research is needed to fully address this issue." Be specific.

The main differences between implications and recommendations (table)

Now let's dig a bit deeper into actually how to write these parts.

What are implications?

Research implications tell us how and why your results are important for the field at large. They help answer the question of “what does it mean?” Implications tell us how your work contributes to your field and what it adds to it. They're used when you want to tell your peers why your research is important for ongoing theory, practice, policymaking, and for future research.

Crucially, your implications must be evidence-based. This means they must be derived from the results in the paper.

Implications are written after you've summarized your main findings in the discussion section. They come before the recommendations and before the concluding paragraph. There is no specific section dedicated to implications. They must be integrated into your discussion so that the reader understands why the results are meaningful and what they add to the field.

A good strategy is to separate your implications into types. Implications can be social, political, technological, related to policies, or others, depending on your topic. The most frequently used types are theoretical and practical. Theoretical implications relate to how your findings connect to other theories or ideas in your field, while practical implications are related to what we can do with the results.

Key features of implications

• State the impact your research makes
• Helps us understand why your results are important
• Must be evidence-based
• Written in the discussion, before recommendations
• Can be theoretical, practical, or other (social, political, etc.)

Examples of implications

Let's take a look at some examples of research results below with their implications.

The result : one study found that learning items over time improves memory more than cramming material in a bunch of information at once .

The implications : This result suggests memory is better when studying is spread out over time, which could be due to memory consolidation processes.

The result : an intervention study found that mindfulness helps improve mental health if you have anxiety.

The implications : This result has implications for the role of executive functions on anxiety.

The result : a study found that musical learning helps language learning in children .

The implications : these findings suggest that language and music may work together to aid development.

What are recommendations?

As noted above, explaining how your results contribute to the real world is an important part of a successful article.

Likewise, stating how your findings can be used to improve something in future research is equally important. This brings us to the recommendations.

Research recommendations are suggestions and solutions you give for certain situations based on your results. Once the reader understands what your results mean with the implications, the next question they need to know is "what's next?"

Recommendations are calls to action on ways certain things in the field can be improved in the future based on your results. Recommendations are used when you want to convey that something different should be done based on what your analyses revealed.

Similar to implications, recommendations are also evidence-based. This means that your recommendations to the field must be drawn directly from your results.

The goal of the recommendations is to make clear, specific, and realistic suggestions to future researchers before they conduct a similar experiment. No matter what area your research is in, there will always be further research to do. Try to think about what would be helpful for other researchers to know before starting their work.

Recommendations are also written in the discussion section. They come after the implications and before the concluding paragraphs. Similar to the implications, there is usually no specific section dedicated to the recommendations. However, depending on how many solutions you want to suggest to the field, they may be written as a subsection.

Key features of recommendations

• Statements about what can be done differently in the field based on your findings
• Must be realistic and specific
• Written in the discussion, after implications and before conclusions
• Related to both your field and, preferably, a wider context to the research

Examples of recommendations

Here are some research results and their recommendations.

A meta-analysis found that actively recalling material from your memory is better than simply re-reading it .

• The recommendation: Based on these findings, teachers and other educators should encourage students to practice active recall strategies.

A medical intervention found that daily exercise helps prevent cardiovascular disease .

• The recommendation: Based on these results, physicians are recommended to encourage patients to exercise and walk regularly. Also recommended is to encourage more walking through public health offices in communities.

A study found that many research articles do not contain the sample sizes needed to statistically confirm their findings .

The recommendation: To improve the current state of the field, researchers should consider doing power analysis based on their experiment's design.

What else is important about implications and recommendations?

When writing recommendations and implications, be careful not to overstate the impact of your results. It can be tempting for researchers to inflate the importance of their findings and make grandiose statements about what their work means.

Remember that implications and recommendations must be coming directly from your results. Therefore, they must be straightforward, realistic, and plausible.

Another good thing to remember is to make sure the implications and recommendations are stated clearly and separately. Do not attach them to the endings of other paragraphs just to add them in. Use similar example phrases as those listed in the table when starting your sentences to clearly indicate when it's an implication and when it's a recommendation.

When your peers, or brand-new readers, read your paper, they shouldn't have to hunt through your discussion to find the implications and recommendations. They should be clear, visible, and understandable on their own.

That'll get you cited more, and you'll make a greater contribution to your area of science while extending the life and impact of your work.

The AJE Team

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Conclusions and Recommendations for Future Research

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Improving the Nation's Water Security: Opportunities for Research (2007)

Chapter: 6 recommendations for future research directions, 6 recommendations for future research directions.

Progress has been made in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) water security research program (see Chapter 4 ), but many important research questions and technical support needs remain. In Chapter 3 , a framework is suggested for evaluating water security research initiatives that gives priority to research that improves response and recovery and/or develops risk reduction or consequence mitigation measures. The research should also produce tools with a reasonable likelihood of implementation and, where feasible, dual-use benefits. Based on this framework and the review of water security efforts already under way, two important water security research gaps are identified and discussed briefly in this chapter. In addition, short- and long-term water security research recommendations are made. The research recommendations are organized in this chapter according to the three long-term program objectives proposed in Chapter 5 emphasizing pre-incident, incident, and post-incident applications: (1) develop products to support more resilient design and operation of facilities and systems, (2) improve the ability of operators and responders to detect and assess incidents, and (3) improve response and recovery. Both drinking water and wastewater research priorities are addressed together within these three objectives to maximize research synergies that may exist.

KEY RESEARCH GAPS

The Water Security Research and Technical Support Action Plan (EPA, 2004a) set out a comprehensive guide for the EPA’s near-term research initiatives. Although the Action Plan was intended to provide a short-term (three- to four- year) research agenda, the previous National Research Council review (NRC, 2004) noted that several of the Action Plan projects represented long-term research questions not easily ad-

dressed in the original time frame. Therefore, the Action Plan provides a reasonable starting point for building the EPA’s future research program. Nevertheless, the short-term planning horizon of the Action Plan prevented consideration of two key subjects that are critical to a long-term water security research program: behavioral science and innovative system design. The committee recommends the EPA work in collaboration with other organizations to build research initiatives in these two areas.

Behavioral Science

The threat of bioterrorism presents new and different types of risks that are dynamic and pose difficult trade-offs, bringing about intellectual challenges and an emotional valence possibly more important than the risks themselves. Developing an effective communication strategy that meets the needs of the broad range of stakeholders (e.g., response organizations, water organizations and utilities, public health agencies, the public, the media) while addressing security concerns is clearly a high-priority research area. The EPA’s work on risk communication is focused primarily on the development of guidance, protocols, and training, and little emphasis has been devoted to interdisciplinary behavioral science research to better prepare stakeholders for water security incidents or to build confidence in their ability to respond. Behavioral science research could help address, for example, what the public’s beliefs, opinions, and knowledge about water security risks are; how risk perception and other psychological factors affect responses to water-related events; and how to communicate these risks with the public (Gray and Ropeik, 2002; Means, 2002; Roberson and Morely, 2005b). A better understanding of what short-term disruptions customers are prepared to tolerate may also guide response and recovery planning and the development of recovery technologies.

Previous experience with natural disasters and environmental risks provides a basis for investigating and predicting human behavior in risky situations (Fischoff, 2005). Existing models of human behavior during other kinds of crises, however, may not be adequate to forecast human behavior during bioterrorism or water security incidents (DiGiovanni et al., 2003).

Risk communicators consider empirical findings from psychology, cognitive science, communications, and other behavioral and social sciences to varying extents (Bostrom and Lofstedt, 2003). Although decision makers frequently predict panic and irrational behavior in times of

crisis, behavioral science researchers have found that people respond reasonably to such challenges (e.g., Fishoff, 2005). Given the urgency of terror risk communication, risk communicators are obliged to incorporate existing behavioral science research as it relates to water security risks.

The EPA should take advantage of existing behavioral science research that may be applicable to water security issues, but this requires knowledge and experience in behavioral science research. Where gaps exist, the EPA will need to engage in interdisciplinary, rigorous empirical research to obtain the necessary knowledge.

Innovative Designs for Secure and Resilient Water and Wastewater Systems

Innovative designs for water and wastewater infrastructure were not addressed in the EPA Action Plan, but the topic deserves a place in a long-term water security research program. The EPA’s research mission has traditionally included the development and testing of new concepts, technologies, and management structures for water and wastewater utilities to achieve practical objectives in public health, sustainability and cost-effectiveness. The addition of homeland security to its mission provides a unique opportunity to take a holistic view of current design and management of water and wastewater infrastructures. Innovation is needed to address the problem of aging infrastructures while making new water systems more resilient to natural hazards and malicious incidents. The EPA should, therefore, take a leadership role in providing guidance for the planning, design, and implementation of new, more sustainable and resilient water and wastewater facilities for the 21st century.

Disagreggation of large water and wastewater systems should be an overarching theme of innovation. Large and complex systems have developed in the United States following the pattern of urban and suburban sprawl. While there are clear economies of scale for large utilities in construction and system management, there are distinct disadvantages as well. The complexity of large systems makes security measures difficult to implement and complicates the response to an attack. For example, locating the source of incursion within the distribution system and isolating contaminated sections are more difficult in large and complex water systems. Long water residence times are also more likely to occur in large drinking water systems, and, as a result, disinfectant residual may be lacking in the extremities of the system because of the chemical and biological reactions that occur during transport. From a security perspec-

tive, inadequate disinfectant residual means less protection against intentional contamination by a microbial agent.

A breadth of possibilities exists for improving security through innovative infrastructure design. Satellite water treatment plants could boost water quality. Strategic placement of treatment devices (e.g., ultraviolet lamp arrays) within the distribution system could counter a bioterrorism attack. Wastewater treatment systems could be interconnected to provide more flexibility in case of attack, and diversion devices could be installed to isolate contaminants. Box 6-1 describes some of these concepts in greater detail, and specific research recommendations are suggested in the following section.

RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS: DEVELOP PRODUCTS TO SUPPORT MORE RESILIENT DESIGN AND OPERATION OF FACILITIES AND SYSTEMS

Specific research topics are suggested here in two areas to support development of more resilient water and wastewater systems: (1) innovative designs for water and wastewater and (2) improved methods for risk assessment, including processes for threat and consequence assessments.

Innovative Designs for Water and Wastewater Systems

Innovative changes to water infrastructure will require long-term investment in research. Existing systems have been in place for more than a century in older cities. Thus, bold new directions will understandably require intensive research at the outset to produce a defensible economic argument for change. On the other hand, the EPA has the opportunity to develop innovative approaches that can be implemented almost immediately in relatively new, as well as planned, urban and suburban areas. The first step in research would be to enumerate the opportunities for innovation, recognizing the constraints brought about by the size, age, and complexity of existing water and wastewater infrastructures. A broad-gauge, economic analysis should follow that would quantify the costs and multiple benefits of these innovative designs (e.g., increased security, improved drinking water quality, enhanced sustainability of water resources). In addition, there is an implicit need for EPA research-

ers to coordinate with the agency’s regulatory branch to validate the feasibility of the innovative concepts that are proposed.

Each of the infrastructure concepts illustrated in Box 6-1 require far more research to become feasible. The recommendations below outline specific research topics that, if addressed, could improve the safety and sustainability of water resources in the 21st century.

Disaggregation of Water and Wastewater Systems

The “distributed optimal technology network” (DOT-Net) concept (Norton and Weber, 2005; Weber, 2002; 2004) hinges upon the feasibility of distributed treatment via point-of-use (POU)/point-of-entry (POE) devices installed at the scale of individual buildings or perhaps small neighborhoods. The corollary premise is that installation of expensive advanced treatment technology at the centralized water treatment facility is unnecessary when only a fraction of the service area outside a “critical radius” requires additional protection. Only a broad economic analysis of this concept has been published thus far for a hypothetical urban center, but the assumptions need to be verified for actual systems, particularly because of the unique characteristics of individual cities. In addition, far more research is needed on the utility management required to ensure the reliability of POU/POE devices in widespread implementation.

Dual water systems have also been proposed to address aging infrastructure (see Box 6-1 ; Okun, 1997; 2005). As with the DOT-Net concept, long-term research is needed to determine the costs and benefits of constructing an entirely new paradigm for distribution system design. Research issues would include assessing the acceptability of reclaimed water for progressively more intense levels of nonpotable use (e.g., irrigation, toilet flushing, laundering), the acceptability and management demands of decentralized wastewater treatment facilities, and the net benefits to water security.

In-Pipe Interventions to Reduce Exposure

In-pipe engineering interventions (see Box 6-1 ) are deserving of research in a long-term water security research strategy. For example, research is needed to optimize the location of disinfection booster stations or to examine the effectiveness and feasibility of in situ ultraviolet (UV)

irradiation systems as a decontamination strategy. EPA research could also examine various pipe materials (e.g., stainless steel) and evaluate their benefits for security and sustainability relative to their costs.

Infrastructure Designs to Enable Isolation and Interconnection

Most large drinking water systems have the ability to isolate portions of their distribution systems during necessary system repairs, but security concerns provide a new impetus for rapid and effective isolation mechanisms. Research on innovative mechanisms to isolate or divert contaminated water in drinking water and wastewater systems would be useful. The EPA should identify these design options, research their costs and benefits (including dual-use benefits) and their feasibility both for existing systems and new infrastructure, and make this information available to system managers.

Improved Risk Assessments Procedures

A sound risk assessment process allows utilities to make better resource management decisions for enhancing their recovery capacity or security strategies to mitigate the consequences of an attack. The risk assessment process includes assessments of threat, consequences, and vulnerability. To date, most of the efforts to guide utilities in their own risk assessments have focused on vulnerabilities.

Threat Assessment

Water and wastewater utilities today are making resource management decisions related to security without adequate information about the nature and likelihood of threats to their systems. As discussed in Chapter 4 , the EPA has focused their efforts on identifying contaminant threats without conducting similarly detailed analyses of possible physical and cyber threats. Both the nature and likelihood of these threats are needed for efficient allocation of resources at the utility level and within the EPA’s research program. Improved threat assessment would require the EPA and/or a consortium of water experts to work closely with the intelligence community and local law enforcement agencies. Other national and federal laboratory expertise within the Department of Energy,

Department of Defense, and private-public community might be needed as well. Threat assessments for water and wastewater should be periodically reviewed to identify threat scenarios that should be added to the list and to remove those that are no longer a concern. The development of a threat assessment process for local water and wastewater utilities with current techniques used in other infrastructures would also be helpful, provided the threat information could be communicated to those who need it (ASME, 2004; Sandia National Laboratories, 2001).

Consequence Assessment

A consequence assessment should accompany the threat assessment within the risk assessment process. Consequence assessments would provide decision makers with information on the potential for fatalities, public health impacts, economic impacts, property damage, systems disruption, effects on other infrastructures, and loss of public confidence. Procedures for determining the expected consequences from an attack or natural disaster are not currently being systematically developed. As a result, water system managers do not have sufficient data to make decisions about the benefits of risk reduction relative to the costs. The development and application of a consequence assessment procedure would provide decision makers with information needed to decide whether to mitigate the consequences, upgrade with countermeasures, take steps to improve response and recovery capacity, and/or decide to accept the level of risk and take no further action. A fault tree analysis that includes, for example, options for redundant systems or contingency water supplies could provide vital information on whether to invest in security upgrades or less costly consequence mitigation strategies . Many of these approaches have already been developed for other infrastructures (e.g., Risk Assessment Methodology [RAM]-T for the high-voltage power transmission industry or RAM-D for dams, locks, and levees; see Sandia National Laboratories, 2001; 2002). A thorough review of other RAM methodologies could provide guidance for consequence assessment strategies that could be incorporated into the Risk Assessment Methodology for Water Utilities (RAM-W).

The EPA has worked to develop the AT Planner tool to assist utilities in assessing the consequences from physical attacks (see Chapter 4 ). While AT Planner has been validated against actual blast test data for nonwater systems, there remains significant uncertainty in the applicability of the modeling for water security because it has not been validated

against the structures specific to those systems. Therefore, the ongoing evaluation of AT Planner by the EPA and select water utility operators should include an assessment of the applicability of AT Planner for each of the critical and high-consequence components of a water system. The EPA and water utilities should then consider whether any additional validation testing is needed to determine specific failure modes of relevant water system components (e.g., actual storage tanks, pumps, water conduits, chlorine tanks) and possible countermeasures.

Summary of Research Priorities for Secure and Resilient Systems

Short-term priorities.

Develop an improved understanding of physical, cyber, and contaminant threats to water and wastewater systems, especially focusing on physical and cyber threats.

Communicate information on threats and consequences to water system managers through training and information exchange.

Develop an improved threat assessment procedure for water and wastewater utilities that will assist local utilities with their security and response planning.

Develop a process to assist local utilities in determining the consequences from physical, cyber, and contaminant attacks.

Update the risk assessment methodology for water systems to incorporate the latest approaches used in other industries, including developing credible threat descriptions and identifying cascading consequences.

Long-Term Priorities

Develop innovative design strategies for drinking water and wastewater systems that mitigate security risks and identify their costs and benefits in the context of public health, sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and homeland security. These designs might include:

In-pipe intervention strategies for drinking water systems,

Disaggregation of water and wastewater treatment facilities to achieve dual-use benefits, and

Designs that allow for interconnections and isolation.

Evaluate the need to validate AT Planner against structures specific to water systems.

Periodically review the EPA’s prioritized list of threats, contaminants, and threat scenarios to identify items that should be added to the list and remove items that are no longer a concern.

Continue development of technology transfer/training programs so that utilities understand the value of the EPA’s products for both homeland security incidents and natural disasters and know how to utilize the tools to their full extent.

Implementation of Priorities

Some of the research recommendations to support more resilient design and operation of drinking water and wastewater systems lie outside of the EPA’s traditional areas of expertise. To support the Action Plan efforts so far, the EPA has relied heavily on expert contractors to conduct this type of work. The EPA should continue to seek the relevant expertise of other federal agencies and national laboratories in these future efforts. However, the EPA will need to consider how best to balance intramural and extramural research funding to carry out this research, while maintaining appropriate oversight and input into the research activities (see also Chapter 5 ). Increasing staff expertise in some key areas, such as physical security, will be necessary to build a strong and well-rounded water security research program to support more resilient system design and operation.

RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS: IMPROVE THE ABILITY OF OPERATORS AND RESPONDERS TO DETECT AND ASSESS INCIDENTS

Suggestions are provided in this section for future research that should improve the ability of operators and responders to detect and assess water security incidents. Specific research suggestions in the areas of analytical methodologies and monitoring and distribution system modeling are discussed below.

Analytical Methodologies and Monitoring

Expanding existing analytical methods.

For some analytes of relevance to water security concerns, the available or approved detection methods are poor (e.g., some nonregulated analytes). More work needs to be done to expand existing methods to a broader range of analytes. For example, method 300.1 (EPA, 2000) covers only the common anions but could be extended to others, including toxic substances. The extension of existing methods to new analytes would allow a broader range of laboratories to expand their capabilities into the water security area.

Screening methods using conventional gas chromatography (GC) or high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) should also be investigated. Modern high-resolution chromatography combined with high-sensitivity detection (e.g., electron capture, fluorescence) is a powerful, yet accessible tool. Protocols should be developed to make the best use of these widely available capabilities. Software will have to be developed to facilitate the documentation of normal, background signals (fingerprint-type chromatograms). This background information can then be used to detect anomalies. Final protocols would have to be tested thoroughly against priority chemical contaminants. Chromatographic finger-prints have been used to monitor water supplies for nonintentional contamination, so this line of research would provide a dual benefit (D. Metz, Ohio River, personal communication, 2006; P. Schulhof, Seine River, personal communication, 2006).

Progress is being made with the protocol to concentrate samples and identify biological contaminants by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis. Continued research, however, needs to be directed towards reducing the time and effort required to collect, process, and identify samples by automating portions of the protocol such as the concentration step. Such automated collection and sample processing systems would be especially valuable in response to security threats, when water samples could be channeled to existing or new detection technologies capable of onsite processing. The EPA should continue to expand the number of biothreat agents tested with the concentration/PCR protocol to include microbes other than spores, prioritizing test organisms that are both a threat to public health and resistant to chlorine (Morales-Morales, et al., 2003; Straub and Chandler, 2003). Continued testing of the concentration/PCR protocol should include various mixed suspensions of a target

microbe and background microbes to determine specificity of detection and various dilutions of the target microbe to determine sensitivity of detection. The protocol should also be tested on chloraminated water samples.

Developing New Monitoring Technologies

Chemical Detection. New chemical monitoring technologies for security-relevant analytes should be investigated. Examples include quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensors, microfluidic devices (lab-on-a-chip), ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISFETs), and larger-scale optrodes. Extramural agency and corporate partnerships developed by the EPA and longer-term research projects will help the evaluation and consideration of a broader range of detection platforms.

Biological Detection. Biological monitoring devices are essential to assess the type and extent of contamination in a suspected water security event. A broader range of innovative and developing detection technologies for biological agents, including methods that are field deployable and reagent-free, should be considered and evaluated. Innovative, field-deployable detection technologies (e.g., genetic fingerprinting, immunodetection, other technologies in development by universities, the Department of Defense, and industry) could reduce the time and effort for detection and enable earlier response efforts (Iqbal et al., 2000; Ivnitski et al., 2003; Lim et al., 2005; Monk and Walt, 2004; Yu and Bruno, 1996; Zhu et al., 2004). These new technologies might also increase the accuracy of detecting deliberate contamination events and reduce false alarms. Methods that can detect multiple biological agents and those with dual-use benefits should be emphasized over those methods limited to very specific agents (Peruski and Peruski, 2003; Rogers and Mulchandani, 1998). For example, DNA fingerprinting might be more useful than immunodetection systems dependent on a highly specific antibody for operation. The accuracy of these detection methods will depend on availability of quality reagents such as antibodies and primers; therefore, researchers will need to work closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other agencies that have access to such reagents.

Monitoring Devices for Wastewater Collection Systems . Contamination incidents have the potential to disrupt wastewater biological treat-

ment systems; thus, a long-term research program should also include research on monitoring technologies relevant to wastewater security concerns. Although a number of devices are available that can be used to monitor physical, chemical, and biological parameters, none of the currently available devices are robust or reliable enough when used in untreated wastewater to meet security requirements. The EPA should, therefore, encourage development of robust or reliable monitoring devices for wastewater infrastructure.

Syndromic Surveillance Tools. Syndromic surveillance tools may have the potential for detecting disease outbreaks and for investigating the possible role of water in such outbreaks (Berger et al., 2006). The EPA is already working to test two syndromic disease surveillance tools (RODS, ESSENCE) against prior water contamination outbreak data. There are substantive research needs that should be undertaken, however. Clearly, the improvement of existing syndromic surveillance tools is a long-term research objective. For syndromic surveillance to become worthwhile, it should achieve a favorable cost-benefit ratio considering the costs of false positives, and syndromic surveillance should also be adequately integrated into response plans. The implementation of syndromic surveillance systems on a large scale would require a more detailed linkage between disparate databases used in the public health sector and the water supply sector. Research to develop tools to allow local systems to readily fuse information from these disparate sources would be desirable. Such linkages would improve detection and response to waterborne disease outbreaks and more rapidly exclude water as a possible vehicle of disease. This would have important applications for both intentional and nonintentional water contamination events.

Real-Time Monitoring Systems

The development of a fully functional, easy-to-maintain, real-time monitoring system (RTMS) that could someday be used to prevent harm from deliberate attacks on the water system (“detect to prevent”), even with substantial research investments, is many years away. Therefore, the primary emphasis of future research on RTMSs, at least in the near term, should be on developing these technologies to assess the spread of contaminants, not to prevent exposure.

The committee also questions the likelihood of implementation of real-time monitoring devices for specific chemical or biological parame-

ters that are not useful in the day-to-day operation of a system (see Chapters 2 and 4 ). However, there are a few scenarios where implementation of continuous monitors for biological contaminants might be valuable, such as their use in certain water systems under heightened threat conditions (e.g., utilities for which specific intelligence information indicates they may be targeted). As discussed in Chapter 4 , deployment under these circumstances has a greater likelihood for success because the probability of an event is estimated to be much higher and the length of monitoring time is shortened. The use of highly sensitive and specific detection devices under such targeted circumstances would significantly lower the probability of false alarms and reduce the problem of poor positive predictive value (see Chapter 2 ) while also minimizing implementation and maintenance costs. Thus, improving monitoring systems for specific chemical or biological agents in drinking water is a valid long-term research goal. The EPA may find that longer-term research on more speculative sensor development could benefit from a further broadening of the circle of collaborators. Such speculative research may be more appropriately funded through the National Science Foundation or the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, thus freeing up EPA resources for other purposes. To encourage such research, the EPA may wish to build its connections with the private sector on this technology.

Research on detection methods for RTMSs should proceed with careful consideration of the likelihood of implementation of the monitoring devices. In its near-term research plans, the EPA should adopt a first-stage approach to RTMSs, emphasizing generic sensors to detect intrusion or a system anomaly. The intrusion detection would then trigger more resource-intensive follow-up monitoring and analysis. Such an approach has significant dual-use benefits for routine contamination events that could outweigh the costs of implementing and operating these systems. Additional effort to develop cheaper, more accurate, and more easily deployable and maintainable sensors for routine water quality parameters would be useful both for anomaly detection and routine operation. Additional research is also needed, even in first-stage RTMSs, to understand normal water quality variations and distinguish variations that might be caused by a deliberate contamination attack. For example, continuous monitoring of chlorine residual at multiple points in the distribution system often reveals wide variations at different temporal scales due to changes in water demand that affect water residence time (e.g., operation of storage tanks). Although some work to understand inherent water quality variability in distribution systems is being conducted through the

Water Sentinel program, a significant amount of work is needed to translate the findings of this research into criteria for RTMSs to develop systems that have a reasonable likelihood of implementation.

An important component of RTMS research should include data fusion, whereby multiple anomalies must occur before an alarm signal is sent (see also Chapter 4 ). The private sector seems to be taking the lead on many types of multiparameter approaches to RTMSs and the processing of data, especially as described by contaminant or event signatures. It is important that the algorithms are open to peer review and can be accessed by all for development of new and refined approaches.

RTMS sensor research should consider a broader range of technologies, including full-spectrum UV and visible absorption, fluorescence excitation emission matrices, and ionization sensors (Alupoaei et al., 2004; Fenselau and Demirev, 2001; Lay, 2001). Many of these techniques are used as nonspecific chromatography detectors, and as such, they are highly sensitive. Most prototype RTMSs are composed of existing sensors that are designed to measure a specific contaminant, and some technologies have been excluded because they have not led to sensors with a high degree of selectivity. However, RTMSs need not be contaminant-specific; they only need to detect anomalies. Detection of an anomaly can then be followed by more specific contaminant analyses.

The problem of false positive signals from real-time contaminant-specific warning systems has been discussed in Chapter 2 . In essence, the problem is one of unfavorable arithmetic when the probability of a true positive is very small, as it would be for an intentional contamination attack on any particular water system of the tens of thousands of such systems. Therefore, most contaminant-specific alarm signals will be false positives. The EPA should consider the consequences of various rates of false positive signals for both large and small utilities and collect information on how alarms are currently handled by utilities. Workshops and structured surveys on this issue would provide valuable information on current practices, the extent to which positive signals are confirmed, the costs of false alarms, and the views of utility operators on their tolerance for various levels and types of false alarms. This research would provide useful guidance for the developers of water quality monitoring devices, for utilities that are considering implementing devices that are commercially available, and for local and state regulatory agencies who will need assistance interpreting alarm signals in light of the public health consequences.

Technology Testing

The EPA has developed a rigorous technology testing program to provide security product guidance to end users focusing on monitoring and decontamination technology. However, as noted in Chapter 4 , the number of relevant security technologies and agents of interest exceed the capacity and budget of the Technology Testing and Evaluation Program (TTEP). Therefore, developing a test-prioritization plan for TTEP seems especially important and is strongly recommended. Although the process of identifying technologies of interest has begun through the use of stakeholder meetings and advisory boards, activities to date have been weighted toward doing the easiest things first, and only some of these tests provided dual-use benefits. Balancing the homeland security benefits and the benefits to routine water system operations in TTEP will likely require additional strategic planning. One strategy has been to test equipment that is commercially available regardless of whether it addresses a high-risk agent. Instead, the EPA should look beyond the easy-to-identify commercially available equipment and make a greater effort to identify technologies in development that have the potential to address those agents identified as posing the greatest risk to water, considering the likelihood of the threat (including the ease of acquiring particular chemical or biological agents), the potential consequences, and the likelihood of implementing the technology. For a few of the highest-priority threats, the EPA may wish to consider providing technical support and/or funding to encourage more rapid development of a particularly promising technology that has a high likelihood of implementation and significant dual-use benefits, similar to the EPA Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation (SITE) Emerging Technology Program.

Develop Laboratory Capability and Capacity

Adequate laboratory capacity is critical for responding to a terrorist incident affecting water supplies, and although this is not a research issue, the EPA has much to contribute from an applied perspective. The need for mobile analysis units capable of supplementing local laboratories and rapidly responding to geographical areas impacted by terrorist events should be considered. Such mobile laboratories could also address analytical needs that arise during natural catastrophes, such as Hurricane Katrina. Many states have begun to develop mobile laboratory

capabilities as part of their water security activities, and the EPA could glean information on their experiences to date.

The EPA is working with utilities and state and federal agencies to build a national laboratory response network for water sample analysis (i.e., the Water Laboratory Alliance). Some university laboratories may have capabilities that could merit inclusion in the nationwide network. Other laboratories may be stimulated to conduct additional research on improved analytical methods for toxic and biothreat agents if they were better informed of the current state of knowledge and had access to reference standards (access to some reference standards is currently limited due to security concerns). To be successful, a dual-use philosophy should be adopted whenever possible in the development of laboratory capacity (e.g., employing methods/instruments that can also be used for standard analytes).

Distribution System Modeling Tools

Distribution system models provide valuable tools for locating the source of contamination or assessing the spread if the source is known, estimating exposure, identifying locations for sampling, and developing decontamination strategies (see also Chapter 4 ). Distribution system models also have important dual-use applications to routine water quality concerns, and the EPA should continue to emphasize the dual-use value of its modeling tools. Specific recommendations are provided below to advance the capabilities and implementation of the Threat Ensemble Vulnerability Assessment (TEVA) and EPANET models.

Experimental Verification of Species Interaction Subcomponent Models

The final goal of producing a more flexible EPANET model through Multi-Species EPANET (MS-EPANET) is commendable. However, the new subcomponents are based upon developing better fundamental knowledge of reactions within the distribution system involving chemistry (e.g., disinfection kinetics, chemical partitioning), biology (e.g., development of biofilms, release and attachment of microbes), and materials science (e.g., corrosion of pipe materials and its relationship to disinfection efficacy). The large number of system constants in both MS-EPANET and TEVA necessitate significant investment in sensitivity

analysis research to quantify the accuracy of model predictions. The development and testing of all new features of MS-EPANET should be a long-term research goal. Until the validity of these subcomponents is verified and system constants can be assigned with more certainty, the water industry will be reluctant to use the full capability of MS-EPANET. Limitations in the accuracy of model predictions will need to be addressed in guidance to decision makers. A significant commitment will be needed in resources for experimental verification.

Alternate Approaches to Uncertainty Modeling

The Action Plan acknowledges correctly that the distribution system model simulations should incorporate an analysis of uncertainty because the point of attack is unknown. This has led to the use of the well-known Monte Carlo analysis to randomize the location of the attack and run repeated distribution system model simulations (1,000 or more) to generate a probability distribution to relate point of attack to human exposure impact. The focus on short-term results, however, has produced weaknesses in the current EPA approach to uncertainty research.

A broader discussion about how to incorporate uncertainty into the TEVA model should be invited. Approaches such as fuzzy logic (McKone and Deshpande, 2005) and Bayesian Maximum Entropy modeling (Serre and Christakos, 1999) are showing promise but have been applied mainly to homogenous space rather than to network domains. The EPA should encourage alternative ideas for handling uncertainty. If the expertise is not available within the agency, there needs to be a mechanism to expand extramural support for research, particularly within the university community.

Technology Transfer and Training in Use of the TEVA and EPANET Models

Advances in the TEVA model add significant complexity to the EPANET model, which may limit its widespread implementation. The EPA should work to communicate the capabilities of EPANET, MS-EPANET, and TEVA to utilities, emphasizing their value for routine water quality concerns, advanced homeland security planning, and contamination assessment and response activities. Until TEVA and MS-EPANET are further developed and widely available, the EPA should

consider an interim strategy to better inform water utilities on the value and use of existing distribution system models, such as EPANET. Progressive water utilities are already using EPANET to examine possible locations of attack and to track the concentration of contaminants within the distribution system.

Training in the use of MS-EPANET and the proposed TEVA model is also needed. Water utility managers need to be convinced that the costs for adapting a new model for their respective distribution systems are worthwhile, because many utilities have already invested heavily in development, verification, and calibration of existing models. The complexity of the TEVA model may increase these costs further, because many more implementation steps follow those for EPANET to adapt the TEVA “template” to the specifics of each water utility.

Summary of Research Priorities for Better Equipping Operators to Detect and Assess Incidents

Automate the concentration step of the concentration/PCR protocol.

Continue to test the concentration/PCR protocol:

Expand the number of biothreat agents tested to four or five organisms that include microbes other than spores, focusing on microbes that are both a threat to public health and resistant to chlorine.

Test the concentration/PCR protocol with chloraminated water samples.

Test the concentration/PCR protocol to determine sensitivity and specificity of detection.

Field-test RTMSs to determine false positive/false negative rates and maintenance requirements and develop basic criteria for the technology that might lead to a reasonable likelihood of implementation.

Continue research to develop a first-stage RTMS based on routine water quality sensors with dual-use applications.

Analyze the consequences of false positive signals from realtime monitoring systems, emphasizing current practices, the extent to which positive signals are confirmed, the costs of false alarms, and the tolerance of utility operators for false alarms.

Test standard chromatographic methods for their ability to screen for a broad range of toxic agents in routine laboratory testing.

Develop a test-prioritization strategy for TTEP to optimize the resources devoted to this effort.

Invite external peer review of the TEVA model before investing in field testing.

Long-term Priorities

Continue to develop portable, field-deployable systems that can be used to collect and process samples at event locations.

Formulate protocols and develop software for using GC- and HPLC-based fingerprinting to detect suspicious anomalies.

Stimulate research and ultimately development of new sensors for water security analytes based on innovative technologies, such as QCM, ISFETS, and microfluidics.

Evaluate and develop new field-deployable detection technologies for biological agents, including genetic fingerprinting, immunodetection, and reagentless technologies, that have the necessary sensitivity, specificity, and multiplex capabilities.

Develop improved, cheaper, and accurate RTMSs for routine water quality measurements.

Examine the use of nonspecific detection technologies for RTMSs.

Develop data fusion approaches for RTMSs that can minimize false positives.

Develop and test new monitoring technologies suitable for wastewater security applications.

Improve syndromic surveillance tools and develop a health surveillance network with appropriate linkages to water quality monitoring.

Continue to develop and refine the efficiency of a system-wide laboratory response network, including the development of mobile analysis units.

Continue fundamental research to understand the chemical and biological reactions that affect the fate and transport of contaminants in distribution systems to verify the constants used in MS-EPANET and TEVA.

Include alternative approaches to uncertainty design (e.g., fuzzy logic, Bayesian Maximum Entropy) in the TEVA model that are based more strongly upon stochastic than deterministic principles given that many of the input parameters to the current TEVA model are highly uncertain.

Develop projects for training water utilities in the value and use of EPANET, MS-EPANET, and TEVA.

Some of these research priorities may be more appropriately accomplished by universities, companies, or other agencies that have the necessary expertise, resources, and funding to successfully complete these tasks. The development of multiplex detection protocols and portable, field-deployable platforms are examples of tasks that might be better managed by some group other than the EPA. Work to determine the sensitivity and specificity of designated protocols for different biothreat agents could be conducted by university laboratories or private industry, with collaborative input from the EPA, considering their understanding of the needs of the water sector. Utilization of research resources outside the EPA would expand the variety of emerging, innovative analytical technologies that might be used to support the EPA’s efforts in enhancing the nation’s water security.

RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS: IMPROVED RESPONSE AND RECOVERY

Recommendations are provided in this section for future research that should improve response and recovery after a water security incident. Research suggestions related to tools and data for emergency planning and response, contingencies, risk communication and behavioral sciences, decontamination, and lessons learned from natural disasters are presented below.

Tools and Data for Emergency Planning and Response

Continued development of emergency response databases.

The EPA released preliminary versions of the Water Contamination Information Tool (WCIT) and the Consequence Assessment Tool (CAT) to provide data on contaminant properties, toxicity, and exposure threats (see Chapter 4 ), but the databases are still in their infancy, and numerous data gaps exist. The EPA will need to prioritize its continued efforts to further develop these response databases. Therefore, the EPA should develop strategic plans for WCIT and CAT, outlining the long-term goals for the databases and addressing questions such as:

What stakeholders will be served by the databases?

What categories of information do these stakeholders need?

How many contaminants should be included?

What linkages to other databases should be established?

The EPA will need to determine criteria for prioritizing what contaminants are added to the database and how to maintain and update the information. If WCIT and CAT are not continually revised to incorporate the latest scientific knowledge, the databases will become outdated. Expanding or even maintaining a database requires considerable resources, both intellectual and financial. If a commitment is not made initially for the necessary resources to update and maintain a database, spending the resources to create it becomes debatable. The EPA is currently facing similar issues maintaining its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) database.

The EPA should also clearly define the data quality objectives for WCIT/CAT and incorporate peer review of the data, as necessary, to meet these objectives. For example, the EPA may decide that some information about a contaminant is better than none, even if that information has limitations. This is a legitimate approach; however, the EPA should provide a mechanism that helps to ensure that individuals using the databases understand the data quality and their limitations. One mechanism for accomplishing this would be to add quality notations for each datum. Regardless of the approach taken, the EPA needs to describe the extent to which the data have been reviewed.

Evaluation and Improvement of Tools and Databases

With the forthcoming completion of at least the first stages of many tools and databases (e.g., WCIT, CAT), the EPA should consider the evaluation/improvement cycle. This will require the development of procedures to evaluate the utility and usability of these tools by potential constituencies. In addition, the EPA should take advantage of the tests afforded in response to “real-life” incidents. For example, some of the tools and databases were used (albeit in an early stage of their development) in the response to Hurricane Katrina. A formal assessment of knowledge gained from this experience could assist in the improvement and development of the tools.

Filling Data Gaps

The state of knowledge of the health risks from water contaminants that could be used in a malicious event is quite limited, as shown by the limited number of chemicals and even fewer biologicals in the WCIT/CAT databases and the many blank data fields in these databases. Important experimental and computational research is under way at the EPA to address some of these data gaps (see Chapter 4 , Section 3.6), but many gaps remain. There are two applications of toxicity/infectivity information that would be useful to the EPA for response and recovery efforts. The first is development of guidance for dissolved concentrations that would pose an immediate acute risk to exposed individuals, analogous to the inhalation immediate danger to life and health values of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The EPA is currently working on this problem by developing a database on acute and

chronic health effects associated with priority contaminants, although much work remains to be done. The second is guidance for determining the appropriate “acceptable” level remaining after cleanup/decontamination. This second aspect has not yet been strongly emphasized in the EPA research program. It is recommended that the EPA convene a working group to develop research and prioritization strategies for filling these data gaps and for ascertaining current gaps in knowledge with respect to rapid estimation of toxicity/infectivity in the absence of specific experimental information. Decisions for setting priorities for the data gathering efforts should be made with full consideration of dual-use benefits.

Contingencies for Water System Emergencies

Further study of water supply alternatives should be a high priority, considering their pivotal role in response and recovery and their dual-use applications for natural disasters or system failures. However, the subject of water supply contingencies seems to have been given a low priority in the EPA’s research program to date. Completion of the work in progress should be the first priority. The committee debated the value of investing significant resources in developing technologies that could supply drinking water for large communities over long-term disruptions because of the rarity of the need for such technologies. Nevertheless, the EPA should draw upon the research and development efforts of the Department of Defense in this area and work to test the application of these technologies to water security scenarios.

The EPA should consider including new research on contingencies for failures of the human subsystem in water system security. Such research could examine current practices for identifying back-up operators in the case of widespread incapacitation in both short-term and long-term scenarios. This research could also identify best practices, which could be incorporated into EPA guidance to water utilities for their emergency response planning.

Preliminary research suggests that geographic information systems (GIS) could be of significant value to utilities for identifying contingencies in the event of system failures. Therefore, further efforts may be needed to inform utilities about the value of GIS for emergency response and provide guidance for integrating GIS into their emergency planning procedures. National geodata standards may be needed to promote consistency and facilitate data exchange among users.

Behavioral Sciences and Risk Communication

The National Homeland Security Research Center (NHSRC) has made substantial progress in the development of risk communication guidance and training (see Chapter 4 ), but very little emphasis has been devoted to research on understanding how the public may respond to risk communication messages and how to improve communication of risks to the public. Terrorism presents risks that are new, evolving, and difficult to characterize; thus, water security poses communication challenges that should be addressed using scientifically rigorous research in the fields of risk communication and behavioral sciences. The EPA should continually reassess the role risk communication has in its overall risk management framework and fully integrate risk communication efforts into the overall risk management program. Behavioral science and associated risk communication research should be a high priority in the EPA’s future water security research plans. The following recommendations are targeted toward water-security events, but the proposed research has dual benefits for improving non-security-related communications with the public.

Analysis of Factors that Build Trust and Improve Communication

Research and experience prove that one of the most important keys to communication success is an organization’s ability to establish, maintain, and increase trust and credibility with key stakeholders, including employees, regulatory agencies, citizen groups, the public, and the media. To improve overall communication strategies in a water-related emergency, research is needed that analyzes factors that build trust and reduce fear (e.g., What types of concerns do people have related to public health emergencies, water security issues, or bioterrorism? How do utilities build trust and credibility with the public around water security incidents?). In addition, research is needed to analyze methods to counter and reduce the possibility of misinformation or false information being distributed to the public and key stakeholders.

Understanding Institutional Behavior

Building response and recovery capacity requires agencies that might be involved in a water security event to develop stronger working relationships. Although water utilities, public health agencies, law enforcement, emergency responders, and the media do not have a long history of collaborating and working together, several state drinking water programs have taken the lead in carrying out tabletop exercises as well as on-the-ground exercises to address this issue. These state programs have also undertaken measures to facilitate an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the various potential players, including federal, state, and local law enforcement; state and local health agencies; state and local emergency response agencies; and water utilities. The EPA could glean useful information from these ongoing state and local activities. Nevertheless, additional research is needed to better understand the culture of the agencies that will be responding to events, how these agencies will interact in a water-related crisis, and what level of effort is needed to maintain collaboration in planning and preparedness. This research could identify barriers to more effective collaboration, and these findings could be used to create training scenarios that could improve coordination and resolve potential conflicts in advance. This research is a short-term priority given the importance of coordinated interaction during a crisis. The research could be performed relatively quickly because there is a wealth of experiences, particularly at the state level, related to agency interactions in water-related crises.

Investigate Applicability of Research in Behavioral Science

While some of the recommended research on risk communication and behavioral science may need to be managed by the EPA to address specific water security-related issues, the EPA should also take advantage of other behavioral science research currently being conducted through university-based partnerships, including those established by the Homeland Security Centers of Excellence program. For example, the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terror (START) is conducting original research on issues that are poorly understood, including risk perception and communication, household and community preparedness for terrorist attacks, likely behavioral responses by the public, social and psychological vulnerability to terrorism, and strategies for mitigating negative psychologi-

cal effects and enhancing resilience in the face of the terror threat. The START center is also synthesizing existing research findings in order to provide timely guidance for decision makers and the public, paying special attention to how diverse audiences react to and are affected by threats and preparedness efforts.

In addition, the CDC has developed a national network of 50 Centers for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP) to train the public health workforce to respond to threats to our nation's health, including bioterrorism. These centers work to strengthen terrorism preparedness and emergency public health response at the state and local level and to develop a network of academic-based programs contributing to national terrorism preparedness and emergency response capacity. Information from the CPHP may be relevant and useful to the water sector.

Pretesting Risk Communication Messages

Although the message mapping workshops are a good start to assist stakeholders in preparing messages that will be relevant in a water security incident, the messages have not been tested and evaluated. Therefore, the EPA should engage the research community in pretesting messages being developed by the Center for Risk Communication so that case studies and scenarios can be analyzed for effectiveness in reaching key audiences, and problems can be corrected in advance. Sophisticated evaluation techniques and standard research procedures are used by the CDC to pretest public messages. This evaluation research should be based on standard criteria established in the risk communication literature (e.g., Mailback and Parrott, 1995; National Cancer Institute, 2002; Witte et al., 2001).

Analysis of the Risks and Benefits of Releasing Security Information

The decision of when to release or withhold water security information is critical to the development of a risk communication strategy. Therefore, the EPA should analyze the risks and benefits of releasing water security information, considering input from its broad range of constituents, and develop transparent agency guidance on when to release information versus when to withhold it due to security concerns.

The committee considers this a priority because of the difficulty and importance of the information sharing problem.

Water-Related Risk Communication Training

As the lead U.S. agency in water system security, the EPA should assume the responsibility for developing a national training program on water-related risk communication planning and implementation for water managers. This should be done in collaboration with the water and wastewater organizations, state government agencies, public health officials, health care officials, and others engaged in communication of risks during water-related emergencies.

Decontamination

Decontamination research is critical to improving response and recovery, and the products are applicable to address unintentional contamination events from natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, floods, earthquakes) and routine malfunctions (e.g., pipe breaks, negative pressures due to power losses). The EPA has numerous ongoing projects in this area that should be completed, but additional research topics are also suggested below.

Addressing Data Gaps

EPA decontamination research products released thus far have shown that fundamental physical, chemical, and/or biological characteristics of many threat agents of concern are not yet known. Therefore, additional laboratory research is needed related to the behavior of contaminants in water supply and wastewater systems and methods for decontaminating water infrastructure. For example, one research priority would be to develop inactivation rate data for all microbes of concern with both free and combined chlorine strategies, because both approaches are used in the water industry. Rate and equilibrium data for adsorption/desorption of contaminants on pipe walls is also needed, although the EPA could also take advantage of existing databases on structure-activity relationships to predict these behaviors. Long-term re-

search, perhaps in partnership with other Office of Research and Development units, could enhance our understanding of the fate, transport, and transformation of toxics in water and wastewater environments.

Decontamination Strategies

The EPA should build on its ongoing work in the area of decontamination and address gaps in the current knowledge base. For example, research is needed to examine readily available household inactivation methods for biological agents (including spore-formers), such as microwaving. The EPA should also work to further the development of innovative decontamination technologies that address important water security concerns. Research and development on new POU/POE technologies, such as superheated water devices, could help overcome operational disadvantages of the products currently on the market.

Prioritizing Future Surrogate Research

Surrogates are relevant to numerous water security research applications, including research on contaminant fate and transport, human exposure risks, and decontamination. Research is ongoing to identify surrogates or simulants for biological agents, to determine which surrogates are appropriate, and to determine the ability of typical drinking water disinfection practices (chlorination and chloramination) to inactivate those agents (see Chapter 4 , Section 3.2). Much of the research has focused on Bacillus anthracis and other bacterial agents, but the EPA should determine if surrogates for research on biotoxins and viruses are needed and whether additional surrogates are needed for other bacterial agents. A viral simulant or surrogate would be helpful to examine virus survival in fresh water, drinking water, and sewage, as well as virus susceptibility to water disinfectants. Research in this area has relevance to viral bioterrorism agents and also has strong dual-use research applications because viral surrogates could facilitate risk assessment studies on natural viruses (e.g., SARS, avian influenza).

Surrogate research is a laborious experimental process (see Box 4-1 ) that must be conducted in one of the few laboratories already authorized to keep and work with select agents. Considerable research is required to compare the select agent with candidate surrogates under the experimental conditions of interest. As discussed in Chapter 4 , surrogates need not

mimic in all respects the agents they stand in for. For some important security or decontamination uses, it may only be necessary that they provide an appropriate bound on the characteristic of interest in the target agent (e.g., persistence, disinfectant sensitivity). Therefore, the EPA should carefully consider and prioritize the agents and the research applications for which surrogates are needed. The prioritization process for surrogates should consider the following:

Which types of research could be greatly facilitated through the availability of surrogates?

Which types of research with surrogates might have “dual-use” applications (i.e., could the properties of certain surrogates also be usefully extrapolated to other common organisms)?

Which types of research should be done only with select agents?

How closely should the surrogate properties of interest match that of the target organism?

What are the costs and benefits to the research program associated with surrogate development versus use of the pathogenic agents?

The EPA should engage a limited number of individuals (e.g., federal partners, academics) who are involved in similar research in this prioritization process.

Lessons Learned from Natural Disasters

Midway through the committee’s work, NRC (2005; see Appendix A ) suggested the EPA take advantage of experience gained in the aftermath of Katrina so as to improve future response and recovery efforts for water security. While a hurricane caused this catastrophe, it is conceivable that a similar result might have occurred if the levees had been destroyed by terrorist explosives. Thus, New Orleans offered a living laboratory to study many aspects of the impacts of a disaster on water and wastewater systems of all sizes. Failure modes, infrastructure interdependencies, decontamination and service restoration strategies, the availability of alternative supplies, communication strategies, and the ability to service special institutions (e.g., hospitals) and special needs individuals could all have been examined in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. To the best of the committee’s knowledge, however, the EPA has not attempted to compile a knowledge base from this experience. As

time passes, it will become increasingly difficult to reconstruct what transpired. Other natural or manmade disasters, such as the earthquakes in California in 1989 and 1994 or the “Great Flood of 1993” in the Mid-west, or natural contamination events, such as the Milwaukee C ryptosporidium outbreak, may also offer opportunities to mine important data about the failure or recovery of water and wastewater systems, but detailed information on these earlier occurrences may be lacking. In the future, the NHSRC should be poised to seize opportunities for learning about response and recovery after major natural or man-made disasters affecting water or wastewater systems.

Summary of Research Priorities for Improving Response and Recovery

Determine strategic plans for managing and maintaining the WCIT/CAT databases, considering the likely uses and long-term goals for the databases.

Develop and implement a strategy for evaluating the utility and usability of the response tools and databases, including stakeholder feedback and lessons learned during their use under “real-life” incidents.

Convene a working group to develop research strategies for filling the data gaps in WCIT/CAT and other planned emergency response databases.

Contingencies for Water Emergencies

Complete the work in progress on contingencies and infrastructure interdependencies under Section 3.5 of the Action Plan.

Test and evaluate the most promising innovative water supply technologies that enable or enhance the short- or long-term delivery of drinking water in the event of systemic failure of water systems. Analyze the positive features and those areas needing improvement prior to full-scale deployment.

Conduct research on potential contingencies for failures of the “human subsystem.”

Analyze factors that build trust, reduce fear, and prevent panic to improve overall communication strategies in a water-related emergency.

Investigate the behavioral science research being conducted by the Homeland Security University Centers of Excellence and other federal agencies for applicability to the water sector.

Pretest messages being developed by the Center for Risk Communication and analyze case studies and scenarios for effectiveness.

Analyze the risks and benefits of releasing security information to inform the EPA’s risk communication strategies and its practices on information sharing.

Fully integrate risk communication efforts into the overall risk management program and provide adequate resources that ensure these efforts remain a high priority in the EPA’s future water security research program.

Conduct research to better understand how agencies will interact in a water-related crisis situation and determine what strategies will be most effective in encouraging and maintaining collaboration in planning and preparedness.

Complete the many decontamination projects in progress under Section 3.4 of the Action Plan.

Develop predictive models or laboratory data for inactivation of bioterrorism agents in both free chlorine and chloramines that can be used in MS-EPANET and the TEVA model.

Explore development and testing of new POU/POE devices that may overcome the disadvantages of existing devices.

Examine readily available household inactivation methods for biological agents (including spore-forming agents), such as microwaving.

Determine the costs and benefits of further research to identify additional surrogates, considering which agents under which conditions or applications should be prioritized for surrogate development research.

Use the remaining data from the experience of Hurricane Katrina to analyze the optimal response and recovery techniques (e.g., water supply alternatives, contingency planning, and infrastructure interdependencies) that would also apply to water security events.

Integrate experience with decontamination of the distribution system in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to improve EPA guidance for water security decontamination.

Evaluate risk communication strategies related to Hurricane Katrina or other past disaster events to determine if communication strategies related to drinking water safety reached the most vulnerable populations.

Develop a post-event strategy for learning from future natural disasters affecting water systems. This strategy should support on-site assessments of impacts and interdependencies and evaluations of successes and failures during response and recovery.

Continue to develop and maintain the WCIT/CAT databases according to the objectives set forth in the strategic database management plan. Incorporate a mechanism to provide on-going peer review of the data to meet its data quality objectives.

Continue experimental and computational research to fill critical data gaps in WCIT/CAT, including research on the health effects of both acute and chronic exposure to priority contaminants.

Develop new, innovative technologies for supplying drinking water to affected customers over both short- and long-term water system failures.

Risk Communication and Behavioral Sciences

Develop a program of interdisciplinary empirical research in behavioral sciences to better understand how to prepare stakeholders for water security incidents. The EPA should support original research that will help address critical knowledge gaps. For example:

What are the public’s beliefs, opinions, and knowledge about water security risks?

How do risk perception and other psychological factors affect responses to water-related events?

How can these risks be communicated more effectively to the public?

Develop a national training program on water-related risk communication planning and implementation for water managers.

Continue laboratory research to fill the data gaps related to behavior of contaminants in water supply and wastewater systems and methods for decontaminating water infrastructure.

Continue surrogate research based on the research prioritization determined in collaboration with an interagency working group. The EPA should also explore ways that this surrogate research could assist in responding to everyday agents or to other routes of exposure (e.g., inhalation, inactivating agents on surfaces).

The EPA has historically been a lead federal agency in understanding the fate and transport of contaminants in the environment and has a clear understanding of the practical concerns of the water sector. Thus, the EPA remains the appropriate lead agency to develop the tools for emergency response and to prioritize the research needed to fill the remaining gaps, with input from key stakeholders. The EPA is also well suited to develop a national training program on water-related risk communication and to evaluate lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina and other past disaster events. However, innovative technology development research, such as the development of novel technologies for supplying water during system failures, should be conducted by other agencies,

university researchers, or firms with the greatest expertise. The EPA, instead, should focus its efforts on harvesting information on existing technologies, synthesizing this information for end users, and providing guidance to developers on unique technology needs for water security. Behavioral science research and evaluation research is more appropriately conducted by universities or other federal agencies (e.g., CDC) that have the necessary expertise to complete these tasks. However, the EPA still needs in-house behavioral science experts able to supervise and use this work to best advantage.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

In this chapter, recommendations are provided for future research directions in the area of water security. Two key water security research gaps—behavioral science and innovative future system design—that were not considered in the short-term planning horizon of the Action Plan are identified. In accordance with the committee’s charge (see Chapter 1 ), short- and long-term water security research priorities are presented in three areas: (1) developing products to support more resilient design and operation of facilities and systems, (2) improving the ability of operators and responders to detect and assess incidents, and (3) improving response and recovery.

The EPA should develop a program of interdisciplinary empiri cal research in behavioral science to better understand how to pre pare stakeholders for water security incidents. The risks of terrorism are dynamic and uncertain and involve complex behavioral phenomena. The EPA should take advantage of existing behavioral science research that could be applied to water security issues to improve response and recovery efforts. At the same time, when gaps exist, the EPA should support rigorous empirical research that will help address, for example, what the public’s beliefs, opinions, and knowledge about water security risks are; how risk perception and other psychological factors affect responses to water-related events; and how to communicate these risks effectively to the public.

The EPA should take a leadership role in providing guidance for the planning, design, and implementation of new, more sustainable and resilient water and wastewater facilities for the 21st century. Given the investments necessary to upgrade and sustain the country’s water and wastewater systems, research on innovative approaches to make the infrastructure more sustainable and resilient both to routine and

malicious incidents would provide substantial dual-use benefits. The EPA should help develop and test new concepts, technologies, and management structures for water and wastewater utilities to meet objectives of public health, sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and homeland security. Specific research topics related to drinking water and wastewater, such as decentralized systems and in-pipe interventions to reduce exposure from contaminants, are suggested.

Recommended research topics in the area of supporting more resilient design and operation of drinking water and wastewater systems include improved processes for threat and consequence assessments and innovative designs for water and wastewater. A thorough and balanced threat assessment encompassing physical, cyber, and contaminant threats is lacking. To date, the EPA has focused its threat assessments on contaminant threats, but physical and cyber threats deserve more attention and analysis because this information could influence the EPA’s future research priorities and utilities’ preparedness and response planning.

Research suggestions that improve the ability of operators and responders to detect and assess incidents build upon the EPA’s current research in the areas of analytical methodologies and monitoring and distribution system modeling. In the short term, the EPA should continue research to develop and refine a first-stage RTMS based on routine water quality parameters with dual-use applications. Long-term research recommendations include the development of innovative detection technologies and cheaper, more accurate RTMSs. To support the simulation models in development, a substantial amount of fundamental research is needed to improve understanding of the fate and transport of contaminants in distribution systems. Based on the number of emerging technologies and agents of interest, the EPA should develop a prioritization strategy for technology testing to optimize the resources devoted to this effort.

Recommendations for future research priorities to improve response and recovery emphasize the sustainability of tools for emergency planning and response (e.g., WCIT/CAT) and improving research on water security contingencies, behavioral sciences, and risk communication. The EPA should also evaluate the relative importance of future laboratory work on surrogate development and address data gaps in the knowledge of decontamination processes and behavior. So far, the EPA has not taken advantage of the many opportunities from Hurricane Katrina to harvest lessons learned related to response and recovery, and the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

Some of the research recommendations provided in this chapter lie outside of the EPA’s traditional areas of expertise. The EPA will need to consider how best to balance intramural and extramural research funding to carry out this research, while maintaining appropriate oversight and input into the research activities. Increasing staff expertise in some key areas, such as physical security and behavioral sciences, will be necessary to build a strong and well-rounded water security research program.

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Concern over terrorist attacks since 2001 has directed attention to potential vulnerabilities of the nation's water and wastewater systems. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which leads federal efforts to protect the water sector, initiated a research program in 2002 to address immediate research and technical support needs. This report, conducted at EPA's request, evaluates research progress and provides a long-term vision for EPA's research program. The report recommends that EPA develop a strategic research plan, address gaps in expertise among EPA program managers and researchers, and improve its approaches to information dissemination. The report recommends several high-priority research topics for EPA, including conducting empirical research in behavioral science to better understand how to prepare people for water security incidents.

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Suggestions for Future Research

Your dissertation needs to include suggestions for future research. Depending on requirements of your university, suggestions for future research can be either integrated into Research Limitations section or it can be a separate section.

You will need to propose 4-5 suggestions for future studies and these can include the following:

1. Building upon findings of your research . These may relate to findings of your study that you did not anticipate. Moreover, you may suggest future research to address unanswered aspects of your research problem.

2. Addressing limitations of your research . Your research will not be free from limitations and these may relate to formulation of research aim and objectives, application of data collection method, sample size, scope of discussions and analysis etc. You can propose future research suggestions that address the limitations of your study.

3. Constructing the same research in a new context, location and/or culture . It is most likely that you have addressed your research problem within the settings of specific context, location and/or culture. Accordingly, you can propose future studies that can address the same research problem in a different settings, context, location and/or culture.

4. Re-assessing and expanding theory, framework or model you have addressed in your research . Future studies can address the effects of specific event, emergence of a new theory or evidence and/or other recent phenomenon on your research problem.

My e-book,  The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Dissertation in Business Studies: a step by step assistance  offers practical assistance to complete a dissertation with minimum or no stress. The e-book covers all stages of writing a dissertation starting from the selection to the research area to submitting the completed version of the work within the deadline. John Dudovskiy

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A Survival Guide to Summer Research

Let’s face it. The idea of conducting research for the first time can be simultaneously one of the most terrifying and exciting prospects in one’s college career. Whether you plan to pursue a career in research and development, industry, or something completely different, the skills gained through undergraduate research are invaluable. But where do you start?

This is exactly what I was asking myself after my Research Experience and Apprenticeship Program (REAP) proposal was accepted last year. My project involved the conversion of carbon dioxide into methane through catalysis. My job was to synthesize different catalysts containing varying nickel, titanium dioxide, and varying weight percentages of heteropoly acids to determine its effect on increasing the amount of carbon dioxide converted. Despite having done hours of research to understand the topic enough to write a proposal essay, I still had some doubts about whether I was truly qualified. After completing my project, I can safely say that any similar thoughts you may be experiencing are unfounded.  There were several things that made the learning curve much smoother for me. . While not required, these steps may be beneficial to keep in mind as you begin to embark on your own summer research experience.

Prior to research:

If commuting to campus, get a summer parking permit. It can provide peace of mind to not worry about getting a parking permit at the last second. There are also options for summer on-campus housing if that is preferred.

Clearly outline what your goals are. Depending on the type of research project, this could include minimum amounts of data collected, a certain number of experiments run, the hours you plan to work, etc. Ask your mentor what their expectations are to ensure your goals are aligned.

Create an organizational system. For me, this was one of the first times I had to juggle multiple projects simultaneously outside of school. This can quickly become overwhelming. It is important to organize your time and materials in a way that makes sense to you. For me, this involved a research folder for physical documents and a research computer file with Word documents and Excel sheets. Create backups of any files if possible.

Continue learning. Before your project begins, continue to educate yourself as much as possible on your topic of choice. The UNH library has countless databases filled with scholarly articles that likely align with your research topic. They may provide useful insight on how other professionals explore these ideas or what questions are pertinent.

During your research:

Now for the exciting part. Here are the practices I found most useful for efficient research.

Plan each week. This is a 10-week process. It can be very difficult to utilize your time effectively if you are figuring it out as you go. Once you have a solid understanding of the tasks you do, write down what you hope to accomplish before beginning each week.

This is an example from one of my own weekly plans. Even writing a simple plan made me more motivated to complete tasks. I also used a weekly planner to mark important dates, created folders on my computer to make files easy to retrieve, and backed up my files as much as possible. If you ever need to revisit your work months or years later, it is extremely helpful for it to have its own reliable spot.

Document everything. This goes along with planning to some degree, but write down everything you do, even if it seems inconsequential. There are several reasons for this. First, it will greatly help diagnosing errors if results do not make sense or do not meet expectations. When I was having a problem getting my catalyst to form properly, being able to review every step of the process was invaluable to determine the issue, which was slightly too much deionized water being added. Second, if your results are statistically significant, or if you publish your results, understanding exactly what you did to achieve certain results is crucial. Finally, it will assist with writing your project summary once your summer is complete.

Communication is key. If ever you feel stuck or have concerns about anything related to your project, express them to your mentor. No one expects you to solve every problem alone, and whether it be by email, zoom, or in person, mentors are usually happy to assist in any way they can.

Once your research experience is over:

Congratulations! Hopefully you found the process to be as valuable and rewarding as I did. Besides wrapping up final details, many opportunities can be built off your project if want to continue your work.

Tie up loose ends. While you write your research summary and polish any results, I recommend backing up files, organizing and digitalizing documents, and most importantly, thanking everyone who helped you along the process and expressing appreciation for the opportunity.

Consider publishing your research. Did you know the University of New Hampshire has a research journal? Inquiry is an excellent spot to complete the final step of research, which is publication. If written well, the research summary in your final report can be converted to a research brief with minimal work, or you may choose to undergo a longer writing and revision process to publish a full-length research article.

Update your resume and share your experience on LinkedIn. This project likely taught you countless invaluable skills that employers would love to see from prospective employees.

Hopefully these tips help you feel more confident throughout your summer and prove to be as useful as I found them. Anyone can conduct research and there are countless resources available to those ready to utilize them. Good luck and happy researching!

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• The populism of self-destruction: How better policy can blunt the anti-clean energy backlash that threatens humanity’s future

In This Section

• Public policy, values, and politics: Why so much depends on getting them right
• The Ghost Budget: How U.S. war spending went rogue, wasted billions, and how to fix it
• The Great Creep Backward: Policy responses to China’s slowing economy
• Two peoples. Two states. Why U.S. diplomacy in Israel and Palestine needs vision, partners, and a backbone
• We can productively discuss even the toughest topics—here’s how
• Legacy of privilege: David Deming and Raj Chetty on how elite college admissions policies affect who gains power and prestige
• Need to solve an intractable problem? Collaboration is hard but worth it.

HKS Professor Robert Z. Lawrence and Harvard Professor Dustin Tingley say better economic policies can boost clean energy projects in communities that oppose or are wary of them. 

FEATURING Robert Lawrence and Dustin Tingley

51 minutes and 01 seconds.

Populism—the political term that describes a group of self-described “common people” who oppose a group of elites—has turned up in what for many is an unexpected place: the push for a worldwide transition to clean energy. Even though clean energy measures are vital to preventing the most catastrophic consequences of the manmade global climate crisis, they are encountering pushback from multiple sources, ranging from local citizens groups to cost-conscious consumers to self-styled conservationists to right-wing politicians to corporate boardrooms. Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert Z. Lawrence and Professor Dustin Tingley from Harvard’s Department of Government say a number of forces are shaping the new clean energy pushback, including genuine popular resentment in some communities left over from economic transitions like the loss of manufacturing jobs due to globalization. Robert Lawrence is a former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and an economist who studies trade policy. Dustin Tingley is a political scientist researching the politics of the climate crisis and co-author of the new book “Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse.” With time running out for the world to make significant reductions in fossil fuel use, they join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to discuss strategies and policy ideas to keep the momentum going toward a sustainable energy future. 

Episode Notes

Robert Z. Lawrence is the Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment at HKS, a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on trade policy and he currently serves as Faculty Chair of The Practice of Trade Policy executive program at Harvard Kennedy School. He served as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1998 to 2000 and has also been a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author or co-author of numerous books, including “Crimes and Punishments? Retaliation under the WTO;” “Regionalism, Multilateralism and Deeper Integration;” and “Can America Compete?” Lawrence has served on the advisory boards of the Congressional Budget Office, the Overseas Development Council, and the Presidential Commission on United States-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy. He earned his PhD in economics at Yale University. 

Dustin Tingley is Professor of Government in the Government Department at Harvard University and Deputy Vice Provost for Advances in Learning. His research has spanned international relations, international political economy, climate change, causal inference, data science/machine learning, and digital education, with most focus now on the politics of climate change and energy transitions. His new book with Alex Gazmararian, “Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse,” was published with Cambridge University Press. The book features the voices of those on the front lines of the energy transition—a commissioner in Carbon County deciding whether to welcome wind, executives at energy companies searching for solutions, mayors and unions in Minnesota battling for local jobs, and fairgoers in coal country navigating their community's uncertain future. His book on American foreign policy with Helen Milner, "Sailing the Water's Edge," was published in fall 2015, and was awarded the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of U.S. national policy. He teaches courses on the politics of climate change and the environment, data science, and international relations. In the fall of 2023 he is teaching a new course called Energy at Harvard Business School. He received a PhD in Politics from Princeton and BA from the University of Rochester. 

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Editorial support for PolicyCast is provided by Nora Delaney , Robert O’Neill , and James Smith of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg , Delane Meadows , and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.  

Preroll: PolicyCast explores research-based policy solutions to the big problems we’re facing in our society and our world. This podcast is a production of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  

Intro (Robert Lawrence): People are seeing what's happening to their environment in a palpable way, and I think they need to be reminded that they are custodians of this world, and in sense what they care about because a lot of these people, a lot of what's driving populism is a concern about people's children and their future. And you need to tap into that when you talk about climate change because what this is about is preserving the world as we know it, and that's why we love it, in order to be sustainable. So I think that's a pitch that isn't stressed enough to relate it directly to people and what they are concerned about.  

Intro (Dustin Tingley): So I sometimes ask my students: Electricity transmission is a big part of this, and we need to get the electricity from where the renewables are really good to where we actually use the electricity. Now to do that, we've got to build high voltage, direct current lines, really big ones. Not your telephone pole electricity distribution, I mean, these are the big guys, and I ask them—these are students who are scared about climate change, they want to do something in the world, they're getting going—"How many of you would want that in your backyard or within a kilometer even?" You don't get many volunteers. And so I think we have to start with the fact that some of these things are disruptive.

Intro (Ralph Ranalli): Hi, it’s Ralph Ranalli. Welcome back to the Harvard Kennedy School PolicyCast. Populism is a funny word. When you say it out loud, it sounds like it should mean something good or beneficial. It comes from the Latin term “populus,” or “the people,” the same root that gave us words like “public,” “popular,” “publish,” and “population.”  It first appeared in politics in the late 19th Century, when it was adopted by an alliance of reform-minded farmers in the American Midwest. The Populist Party advocated for economic democracy, as well as electoral, banking, land, and monetary reforms. Its proposals include many things we now take for granted: a graduated income tax, secret-ballot elections, and the direct election of U.S. Senators. But things took a darker turn after that. While the original populists did oppose the financial and political elites of the Gilded Age, populism would come to connote not only a conflict between the ordinary people and the elites, but also the manipulation of the populus by demagogues and other elites who stoked popular anger to advance their own ends. And now that darker version of populism as popped up in what for many is an unexpected place: the push for a worldwide transition to clean energy to prevent the most catastrophic consequences of the manmade global climate crisis. Clean energy measures are encountering pushback from multiple sources ranging from local citizens groups, to cost-conscious consumers, to self-styled conservationists, to right-wing politicians, and to corporate boardrooms. My guests today, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert Z. Lawrence and Professor Dustin Tingley from Harvard’s Department of Government, have been studying this phenomenon, it’s root causes, and ways to address it. Robert Lawrence is a former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and an economist who studies trade policy. Dustin Tingley is a political scientist researching the politics of the climate crisis and co-author of the new book “Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse.” They say a number of forces are shaping the new clean energy pushback, including genuine popular resentment in some communities left over from economic transitions like the loss of manufacturing jobs due to globalization. With time running out for the world to make significant reductions in fossil fuel use, they’re here to discuss strategies and policy ideas  to keep the momentum going toward a sustainable energy future.  

Ralph Ranalli: Dustin, Robert, welcome to PolicyCast.

Robert Z. Lawrence: Thank you.

Dustin Tingley: Hey, thanks for having us.

Ralph Ranalli: So I'm generally a pretty upbeat person, but I find myself being sorely tested when I tackle this subject of anti-clean-energy populism. It’s just hard to fathom people actively working against saving the planet we live on. But I think before we start, we should go over some definitions, because I'm not sure that everybody knows what populism is exactly, and what we mean by the term climate populism. Robert, would you like to start? What is populism?

Robert Z. Lawrence: Well, it's a very complex phenomenon, often used for a variety of different political situations. But I would say characteristics of populism are firstly the idea that the society is split between an elite and the common people. That's a major feature. Second is that the elite is pursuing its own interest as opposed to that of the common people. And so what we have are leaders who now either get elected or get power in order to advance the interests of what they define as the real nation, or the real people, as opposed to everybody who lives in a particular country.

Ralph Ranalli: So what do we mean then when we talk about climate populism, Dustin?

Dustin Tingley: Yeah, I think what we mean by climate populism is that the pursuit of goals related to the reduction of the climate threat are being pursued by elites at the detriment of the broader public. The broader set of constituencies that they have. And this can take the form of a variety of things; just making things more expensive. When you make energy more expensive and you're a hardworking person who is having difficulty making ends meet, then that starts to hit … it starts to hit home. And the sort of backlash against climate policy that we're speaking about today, it's real and it is lived through the experience of people and is egged on by populist leaders who will claim that they are not the elite, that they're just out to save the common person, the common family. And sadly, at the end of the day, this wraps up into opposing policies that are designed to make everyone better off in the longer term, but that in the short term can pose some real costs. And so how political leaders can navigate that tension is the million-dollar question of the day.

Ralph Ranalli: There are various sources of this climate pushback. Can you talk a little bit about that, about the places its coming from?  

Dustin Tingley: Yeah, I think there are at least a couple different buckets and then Robert, of course, will have thoughts here. I think one source of pushback is when it comes to policies that have a very direct impact on communities that historically have been producing energy products that are used by the rest. And so this is a type of pushback that would come from regions that historically have producing coal. And so when you talk to folks in those regions. They'll say, "Hey, what gives? We have powered the rest of the country on our backs. We have lived through miserable working conditions, black lung disease, so on and so forth, and now you're coming along and you're putting us out of work and you've got nothing for us."

And so that is one type of pushback that is in a sense highly geographically and economically targeted. There's a second type of pushback, at least, that is much more diffuse, which is your canonical the price of gas, the price of electricity, the price of living is going up due to your elite climate policies. So one is very concentrated, it's oftentimes geographically concentrated, and later we can talk about strategies to unlock that, and then the other one is much more diffuse that would apply to many people. That's one way that we might be able to think about that. There are definitely others that Robert can speak to.

Robert Z. Lawrence: No, I agree with that distinction. I also think that the whole issue of climate change is almost ideally designed for a populist agenda. The first thing is we are being told by the experts, by the scientists, that we have to do this. We have to curtail our emissions of CO₂. So this is not the politics of choice or volition. This is the politics of they are telling us exactly what we have to do, and so we have to accept science. And we saw in the experience of COVID, how certain groups of people reacted when they were told to take vaccines or wear masks. So that's one dimension I think that makes this kind of an ideal, say, topic for populist leaders.  

The second thing is that generally, we're myopic in the sense that it’s hard to mobilize a society to implement policies that are going to pay off over the long run. Now just think about what we're talking about with climate change. We're saying you need to adopt this policy to avoid something that is going to take place in the long run. And indeed, if you do, you may never know that your policies actually succeeded. So showing tangible evidence that the policies themselves are working is very difficult and it takes persuasion. So I'd say that's a second dimension.  

And then just a third is that this also when we are talking about climate populists here, those who are against tend to be on the right. You see, for people on the left, we said populism has this division. And there's an elite and there are the people. The left looks at what's going on and says, “Well, the elite is actually holding back action on climate change because it is the corporations who benefit from fossil fuel production that are promoting resistance. On the other hand, it's the ordinary people who are being hurt by the climate change policies.” So because the left in a sense approaches this particular division in that way, they actually are quite supportive of populism.

Ralph Ranalli: Right. The definition of who is in the elite group is in the eye of the beholder. To me that’s always been the interesting paradox of populism: When the so-called common people rebel against a certain elite, they do so at the urging of—and to the benefit of—a different elite. On the right, they’re demonizing scientific and governing elites, while on the left they’re saying, “No, the elites you need to watch out for are the financial elites, the people who are still getting rich from fossil fuels.” But partisan polarization aside, I think it’s fair to say the scientific consensus now is that the consequences for the future livability of the earth for future generations will be very dire if we don’t take make significant progress on the clean energy transition soon, so it’s important to know exactly where the opposition to that progress is coming from. I’ve read that you can roughly put the opposition into three baskets. First, there are local governments and communities where you have opposition to economic policies or land use policies, like siting power lines or wind farms. Then there are corporations that benefit from the existing fossil fuel infrastructure. And when we talk about the political right in the United States we’re talking about the Republican Party, which has lumped urgent energy transition measures in with everything else they dismiss as “woke.” How do you fight this battle on all those fronts?

Dustin Tingley: Well, I think there's one starting point—and it is a starting point that isn't necessarily as familiar maybe to some elites as it should be—which is to recognize and have a conversation about where are there more or less legitimate concerns? So I sometimes ask my students: You know electricity transmission is a big part of this; we need to get the electricity from where the renewables are really good to where we actually use the electricity. Now to do that, we've got to build high voltage, direct current lines, really big ones. Not your telephone pole electricity distribution, I mean, these are the big guys, and I ask them—these are students who are scared about climate change, they want to do something in the world, they're getting going—"How many of you would want that in your backyard or within a kilometer even?" You don't get many volunteers.  

And so I think we have to start with the fact that some of these things are disruptive and that is not then a statement of, well, we should just concede and not proceed with figuring out how to build renewables and transmission. But it is starting with a premise that there are in some of these cases, legitimate concerns. And that is something that I think is important to do, because it's taking away the elite narrative. Because it is very easy to say, well, the elite doesn't have to have these electricity cables, or they don't have to look at the wind turbines. They only benefit from the net proceeds. So I think that's one example.

A second example, again, more addressing the local opposition side. We can talk about some of these other groups as well. There's a common refrain, I already said it, but I'll just reinforce it, that the benefits of all of this new renewable energy, electricity... That the benefits all go to the other side, whatever the other side is. They all go to the elites, they all go to the cities on the coast, is a sort of one way to think about it. So when you talk with folks from Wyoming, and that will be something that comes up. Where are the benefits for us? Where are the direct benefits? In the words of economics, where are our rents from this? And I think that that's a very reasonable conversation to have. I think it becomes challenging because quite frankly, not all green energy companies are the savior heroes. There can be evil corporations on any side of this. So having real conversations about where do the economic benefits of these things flow?

Robert Z. Lawrence: And I think when it comes to who's going to benefit, the politicians, and I think the Biden administration would be a prime example, they actually don't have much faith in selling the policy as a climate policy. When President Biden wants to talk about climate change, he wants to talk about the jobs. He has to accentuate some other positive benefit. And when they have designed the policies, it's quite remarkable how, as a byproduct of fighting climate change, there are incentives in the program. You get four times as much if you pay union wages, you should be locating in energy communities, or poor communities. He's trying to achieve climate justice. He's trying to remedy the past—by the way, we don't like being dependent on the Chinese for all of the technology and for the electric vehicles. So we need to enhance our competitiveness. So what we have is the climate policy on itself by itself isn't really being sold purely as a climate measure, but rather has all these other efforts at forming coalitions, so that we'll get some support for the policy.  

And there tends to be a tendency to accentuate the positive and not really to have the adequate programs in place for those who are genuinely hurt. Because that's a downer. And I think politicians don't like talking about that. But we saw the experience with international trade, that when we had disruptive trade, say with China, inadequate policies in place to take care of those who are hurt. And not being able to do that can really result in antagonism and ultimately opposition. And our whole country and advanced countries have moved in a protectionist direction, I think partly because of inadequate policies. And Dustin's done a lot of good work on how we could make those policies more effective.

Ralph Ranalli: We've been through this before with the so-called China shock and the loss of manufacturing jobs in the American heartland. There are communities who are saying, "Look, fool us once, shame on you, fool us twice, shame on us," because the policies to mitigate the economic damage caused by the loss of those manufacturing jobs were not adequate. And Dustin, you define this as what you call a credibility problem. Can you talk a bit about that concept of a credibility problem: Where it comes from, and maybe how we can start to move toward restoring some of that lost faith?

Dustin Tingley: Yeah, sure. I'm going deconstruct this into two separate pieces. The first one is what Robert brought up, which I just want to hammer home, and then I'm going to get to the more kind of the credibility problem side of it.  

So the first one is that when we had these shocks from opening up to international trade, and we had mechanisms to compensate the "losers", the reality was there just wasn't much there. These were slivers put in as if say, "Hey, you might lose your job, but it'll be okay." And then when the sort of policy came through, it was like, "Oh, well here's some worker retraining money. And oh, by the way, you need to get a job working anyways while you're getting retrained because how else are you going to pay the bills at home?" And then a lot of this money was only being targeted at individuals rather than thinking more holistically about investments in communities. And why did they do that? They didn't have the money. And so just the paltry amounts of investment into this then led to these feelings of despair, hope, decline in hope, and ultimately many communities just really still being in a very hard place. So that's one bucket.  

The second is what we call more of a credibility problem. That's the idea that I, as a political administration, could say, "Look, I'm passing some policy now that I know is going to hurt you" to say, for example, a traditional fossil fuel community. "And I recognize that. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to get some investment. I might do it through what the Biden administration's doing by saying, "Oh, I'm going to give extra tax credits if you invest in this area," so on and so forth. But here's the problem. These things are taking place over time. They are not some right-away snapshot thing. We make an investment and the next year everything's fine. This is decades long transitions that we're talking about. So the credibility problem is that I could say that to you right now: "Hey, I'm going to make some investments in you, but two years from now, if I'm still in power as that politician, well my priorities well could have changed. There could be other communities and people that I want to help. Or you know what? I might get booted out of office and someone else could come in and they've got their own problems or priorities, et cetera." And so the credibility problem ultimately is that it is hard for me to make long-term commitments that last into the future because when the future arrives, my preferences, my incentives might have changed.

And this is a canonical problem in politics and political economy. But in a setting like this where we're talking about these long-term transitions that require sustained investment over long periods of time, that's really hard for politics and politicians to get right and be able to credibly commit. And that's a challenge. And so, I think it's really important to recognize that communities have gone through these sorts of things. So in some of my book we talk about the Pacific Northwest and timber. I was largely raised in tobacco country in North Carolina. My dad's family is from West Virginia. They have seen all of these things over time. And so this climate stuff is just, just another rodeo.

Ralph Ranalli: You did a lot of survey work in Appalachia, including West Virginia, where your dad is from. What concerns did the people in those the surveys have?

Dustin Tingley: A systematic lack of trust that the government commitments to see them through and make them whole would actually follow through. They also had hope and a very strong sense of: "We're good people, we're hard workers, we're smart, but the deck of cards being dealt to us isn't even giving us a chance." So I think that was definitely one theme that came through. I'll tell you something I didn't see as much of as you might think. You didn't see this... You got opposition to the science and the elitism, but you'd also then get pulled aside and say, "Look, I know climate change is happening. I'm a hunter." But because the messaging is so elite and so these prestigious scientists, there's this like, "No, I've got to reject them. I've got to reject them." Even though these are smart folks, these are naturalists. And you see a lot of that.

Robert Z. Lawrence: So I would like to add onto what Dustin has said. One of the things he said was we're not allocating enough resources to help the losers. And this is particularly the case in the United States, where our federal system has a huge problem of directing resources to place-based policies, which are inherently at the state or the county level. And if you look at how much money we spend in total, its a pittance of what is required. So we traditionally leave this up to the states in the same way as we make local communities pay for their own schooling. And when we're talking about climate change or any one of these adjustments where the benefits are accruing to the nation, and in the case of climate change to the world, then these losers are expected somehow to find the resources to look after themselves. And basically, that's I think part of our problem.  

If you look at other societies, Scandinavia and elsewhere, where they have active labor market policies, they do much better, in a sense, helping those losers. And they're devoting a hugely large amount of resources to help people adjust to change. So I think that's a very fundamental issue that is sort of uniquely American. So the way we try to sell these policies, and the way we've done it actually in climate change is to define what an energy community is, so that it includes almost a third of the whole country or more. And they're all now energy communities. They're entitled to get these tax breaks, and that kind of is the way you'll get it through Congress, but it's not the way you will focus enough resources in helping the people who really need it. So prioritization in our federal government is virtually impossible.

Ralph Ranalli: How much is the federal government helping the states and local communities fund these place-based responses?

Robert Z. Lawrence: We have an economic development agency that provides, I would say a maximum about $4 or $5 billion. And the states themselves, the estimates are, spending $50 or $60 billion in trying to do these place-based policies. So it just gives you an order of magnitude difference. And yet you would say if you're taking something like international trade where the benefits accrue to the nation and the redistribution therefore should be by the nation, it's just inadequate.

Ralph Ranalli: So what's the consequence for the world if the United States—which should be a leader on climate—doesn't get this right? US credibility is important for the worldwide effort on the green energy transition, especially because while developed countries have issues, the developing world has a set of issues that are even tougher. They don't have the resources that the developed world does to tackle these tough problems.  

Dustin Tingley: Well, we've got a real credibility problem on our hands when it comes to helping the developing world. So just to give you some examples, the Paris Agreement—which is one of the more recent climate agreements—a big part of that was a commitment to send $100 billion per year to developing countries to aid in their own climate and energy transitions. All right, fast-forward. How are we doing? How are we doing not so well? A lot of that money is coming in the form of loans and we're not coming close to hitting those targets. And that's not just the US; a number of countries are struggling to meet those commitments. So then you go and talk to these countries, and I have a little bit of research here, and you sort of ask, "Well, yeah, so how's it going?" And they'll say, "We've got no money. Our interest rate context is through the roof. To install renewables, that's an upfront capital expenditure.  

I mean, it's neat and terrifying about renewables. You make the upfront capital expenditure and then you get pretty really cheap energy after. But you got to have that upfront capital, so the interest rates are hitting them even harder. And by the way, all of all those promises that you made us, you're not carrying through on. So you know what we're going to do? Well, we'll go into renewables where it makes sense, but we're going to take advantage of burning our coal and burning our oil and doing whatever it is." Of course.

Robert Z. Lawrence: What we see is that the most adverse effects of climate change are on the poor countries in the world. So they are being expected to bear the biggest... I mean they are going to have to do adaptation, and their adaptation challenges are much larger than those of the rich countries. But in terms of emissions, with the exception of China, the bulk of the emissions are coming from advanced countries, from rich countries.  

And so, from the standpoint of the typical developing country; you are asking me to take steps to mitigate, to try to limit my amount of CO2 emissions, which is going to hinder my ability to grow economically. You are not giving me any money to compensate me either for the money I have to pay in order to do that mitigation, and particularly, where's the money that's going to help me adapt to the mess coming from the advanced countries? Our earlier discussion was of the United States and how we can compensate the losers, but this problem is even larger when it comes to the global issue where the brunt of the burdens are on these poor countries.  

And in a way, the only real... I think there are only two real ways in which you're going to change the behavior of the poor countries. One is there's got to be technological improvement so that actually it makes economic sense for them to go green. So green power has to become cheaper than brown power. And we're not quite there yet. There are some places where we are, but you have to make advances really in that area for them to come on board. The second thing is that you need to show them how they can benefit from helping in the green transition, so that when we look around the world, what we see is a huge amount of minerals, which are located in many places that don't have the resources to exploit them, but are vital, say for things like batteries and other kinds of inputs. We have the ability to use forests as sinks. So if we could have a system where we paid them to do that, they could then see it's in their economic interest actually to contribute to the world's mitigation challenges.  

So I think that's very important, because that'll galvanize them to actually see this as compatible with their long-term strategies. So when we take a technology like solar panels, which are very labor-intensive, and we say, "Well, these should be made in the United States with huge subsidies," we are depriving in a sense, developing countries from specializing in products in which they have a natural advantage. So I actually think our trade protection is hindering. We talk about friend-shoring, but we really need to look after our friends in a sense and invest in their minerals so that we and they benefit.

Ralph Ranalli: Again, that's a tough political sell, though. It doesn't sell quite as well as: "We're going to build a factory here in your town as part of the Inflation Reduction Act." It's our major climate legislation and the word climate wasn't even in it. It was sold as inflation reduction.  

So bringing it back United States on a more local scale, is this a situation where well-designed policies can change hearts and minds and counter this trend towards populism? Perhaps with a from-the-bottom-up versus a top-down approach?

Dustin Tingley: So in some sense, that's the $100 million dollar question that certainly the Biden administration is pretty hopeful that the answer to that is yes. I think there are some things that really hinge on the phrase "well-designed policies," that make that more or less likely. Robert already spoke to one of them, which is, if we have policies that take these investments and so spread them out that the places who actually really need them really aren't getting all that much, then that doesn't sound like a very well-designed thing that's going to change a lot of hearts and minds. I think a second thing is making sure that, to the extent these investments are happening, they're actually good investments that are to the benefit of the communities that they are being located in. And when you get an investment where, yes, there might be some prevailing wage requirements, this sort of thing, but the companies themselves are kind of monkeying with the numbers, the average salary versus the median salary such that if you get some well-paid CEOs, it drags that number up, but you look at what the rank and file are getting, it's a different story that becomes pretty concerning. That doesn't sound like that great of investment, even if the outcome is making batteries or something that's good for the environment. So I think there needs to be sustained attention on making sure that these investments are being made, and that there's accountability, quite frankly. So if you are benefiting from a tax incentive and you are found to not having met the conditions of that tax incentive, there needs to be consequences. And guess, right now, lo and behold, some of those consequences are like, "Oh, you just have to pay the back wages." Well, I mean, come on. That doesn't sound overly well-intentioned.

And this is something that there is a tendency right now in US discourse, to do a couple things. One is to make all potential climate policy that we're interested in thinking about be through the lens of the Inflation Reduction Act. And I think that's fundamentally a mistake. And it's a mistake for a couple of reasons. One is the political sort of motivations of the Inflation Reduction Act, that is to say, how you got it done and through Congress then meant that it was sort of... I don't know what the right expression is, a sort of Christmas tree of policies where there's all these different ornaments on it, and for all sorts of different objectives. And that then that can make it hard. The second, Robert already mentioned, which is we've got to be really careful about the extent to which we're jettisoning the affordances and the advantages of a more open trade system. I completely understand why there are incentives to bulk up our ability to make our own solar panels, or be more independent, et cetera. The reality is cheap solar panels from China has been a boon to saving the planet. You can't run away from that. Now politically, as you said, it's a tough pill. The third is there are policy opportunities or changes that could happen. They need to happen likely through Congress, that we can think a lot more that would start to address some of the local community ability to tap into the advantages and benefits of things like renewable energy. I'll give you just one, it's something that I've been working on as have others.

So there's a lot of federal land in this country, especially out west. On federal land if you are extracting oil, gas, coal, other minerals, and you're leasing your land from the federal government through the Bureau of Land Management, etc., that money goes back into the US Treasury. And then a huge chunk of it goes back to the state and surrounding counties and communities of that federal land that's for oil, gas, coal and mineral resources. Under current law, if you locate a renewable energy site on federal land, the money that is say the lease, other things that are generated from that, that all stays with the Feds. And the reason is literally in the legislation, it is written that for oil and gas, this is how much has to go back to the communities. And it just has not, in some sense been updated to do that. Now that's money that's going back to these communities, and there are a couple of congresspersons that have proposed changes to this, but in a dysfunctional congress, it's hard to get through, and there's some complexities about how this would score with a Congressional budget office. 

But nonetheless, there are things that are smaller, aren't the big signature legislation, but there are vehicles that in some senses could in principle counter some of this populist rhetoric. No, no, the federal government is getting this money back to your community. And the reality is the renewable energy developers love this. The communities and the association of counties in our country, they love this because it's getting money back to them. But it's not going to be through this one legislative vehicle of the IRA, which oh, by the way is in the cross-hairs of a future Republican administration. So I think it's important to think more holistically about what are all the other levers that we can do and leverage that can chip away at this climate-populist opposition side of this?

Robert Z. Lawrence: Let me, if I may start with your question, which had to do with kind of the narrative. How are we going to convince people that this is an important issue? And I also think that is a very important question. I think this whole issue has to be couched in terms that are relevant to the people you're speaking to. And so what do they care about? I mean, Dustin mentioned earlier, hunters. People are seeing what's happening to their environment in a big way, and I think they need to be reminded that they are custodians of this world, and in sense what they care about because a lot of these people, a lot of what's driving populism is a concern about people's children and their future. And you need to tap into that when you talk about climate change because what this is about is preserving the world as we know it, and that's why we love it, in order to be sustainable. So I think that's a pitch that isn't stressed enough to relate it directly to people and what they are concerned about.  

At the same time, I'm quite depressed, because this issue has become so politically polarized. So we're all seeing around us, this evidence of climate change. Everybody knows this—those who are in favor of these policies and those who are against. But for those who are against, it seems that we have become two tribes. We have a Republican tribe and a Democratic tribe. And the Republican tribe have defined themselves and put a huge priority in being against climate change policies, as the Democratic side has done the opposite. And so people may oppose these policies because they feel it's not part of their tribe, it's not part of the positions they were supposed to be taking in order to keep in line with their party members. And that's why I’m kind of pessimistic that the narratives that I was describing are really going to change people's behavior. I think at the end of the day, it's going to have to be a huge investment in technology that literally makes taking action for climate change the smart thing to do. And that's why people will buy... When electric vehicles are cheaper than combustion engine ones, they'll be buying the electric vehicles and it doesn't matter what they believe about the future. And so I would take much more of the money that we're currently allocating to encourage people to buy technologies that are going to become obsolete and use it to promote research into finding those cheaper alternatives. I think that's a crucial thing.  

I think another is that we don't allow... The future for these communities who have been hurt does not necessarily rely in energy. The wind and the sun are not the places necessarily where the coal came from, or the oil came from, or the natural gas came from. For some places, yes, they have a future in energy, but many don't. And so you need to go down to the local level and work with the community in a strategy which is unique to their circumstances and in which they have ownership. And so, it has to be developed by the communities themselves. In Europe, they try to do this with just transitional plans that go down to the local level, and Brussels kind of tries to orchestrate them. The United States has made some progress, but has taken the coward's way out, and that is rather than put a price on carbon and tax it, we have subsidized people to invest in renewables. Now what does that mean? Well, you can say, look, it's just as good if you pay for the renewable as if you penalize the CO2 emitting technology or product. But there is a huge difference, because in the one case, if you use a tax, the government lands up with money. In another case, where's the money coming from? Well, we've pushed it down the road, and so our federal debt is going to grow with our climate change policies, and then we're going to have to figure out how to finance that debt. And that's been pushed out into the future. By contrast, if you use a tax, you can then take the money, and some countries in Europe have done it, Switzerland's done it, and European countries are free to do it. They've raised money through a tax, and now they can have a green dividend in which they give the money back to the citizens so that the citizens on average are not made worse off, and those who conserve do even better. So there is a mechanism there, but you've got to start with the tax, and you've got to put the price on carbon. And I think that's where unfortunately, the United States policies are a failure.

Ralph Ranalli: Robert, well, thank you because you anticipated my final question, which was for some concrete policy recommendations, you just gave us some good ones. Dustin, I want to throw it back to you. If all of a sudden there were a bipartisan committee of Republicans and Democrats who came to you and said: “OK, we’ve agreed that despite our differences we must address the climate crisis, so please give us a couple of policy recommendations that you would prioritize in the near term,” what would they be?

Dustin Tingley: Yeah, so I think one already mentioned, let's figure out the public finance challenge that states and communities are going to face. In Wyoming, 40 to 50% of the state budget is coming from taxes from the extraction of fossil fuels. So we get rid of all that. What the heck are they going to do? Right now, some of my earlier comments about we'll be able to raise some money through taxing renewables, but in those contexts and certainly more than we currently are, but there's a range of things that can be thought about. And those are local public goods. Those are the football stadiums. Those are the libraries, the sort of glue, the social fabric of a lot of places that is going to be hit. So I think we need to systematically take a good look at that.  

The proposal for a carbon tax. I am in the camp of like, yeah, we need to get there for political reasons. We've been hard-pressed to, I have this sneaking hope that all the inefficiencies of this industrial policy and the amount of money it's going to cost to keep doing it is going to kind of wake people up. It might be Republicans to say, "All right, well, given that we jump started this green energy economy with this industrial policy, we can't sustain that, so maybe we should get this carbon price back on the table." Because you know what? At one point it was back on the table, or it was on the table. We just couldn't take advantage of it. And so maybe there's a way, our meandering way to a carbon price in the future is something that I would love to help do that. I think there needs to be more transparency such that when we do have these green investments in communities, that they're actually good and that these companies are playing by the rules and making them be green investments.

At the same time, this is less of a policy thing, but I would implore these companies to get involved with their communities. I'll give you a little story based on just some recent research data I collected with some undergraduates here at Harvard. We went out to a sample of counties throughout the United States that had mixtures of fossil fuel extraction and renewable energy in the mix, and we looked at who sponsored the county fair. Who sponsored the county fair? Maybe all of our listeners don't know what a county fair is, but I'll tell you what a county fair was, for me, which was you go and there's a livestock display. I grew up a little bit more rural, but whatever, it doesn't matter. It's the county fair. The county gets together. We barely found any renewable energy companies sponsoring. And we found loads of fossil fuel companies sponsoring. So that's kind of a message for this new industry to, in some senses, take the playbook of the earlier oil and gas and fossil sector about, well, how are they investing in these communities? So that's less of a policy solution and more of a real business strategy sort of thing that needs to be part of it.  

The final one is, and this is going to connect up with Robert's commentary about research into new technologies. And I don't think it's just a research thing, because we need to scale the innovation, but we also need to have a way to scale the production of that in ways that are efficient. So some of it will be here, some of it can be overseas, and we can do that in partnership. I also think that that helps speak to things like technology transfer to developing countries. We could make investments here in the United States, building, inventing, scaling the production of green energy technologies, some of which would be deployed overseas as part of our commitments to these other countries, and working with them to figure out how that can then further scale their production of similar things. And you know what's good about that? That still involves American companies. That still involves American companies that can be a part of that larger harnessing of new technologies. And that's good politically, and it would be good for the planet.

Robert Z. Lawrence: Let me just add on. If we really place a priority on decarbonization, we want, take the renewables power to be available, the components to be available as cheaply as possible because that's going to encourage the diffusion and use in the United States. So what have we done? We have at the moment, a 25% tariff on imported steel. Think about a wind turbine. It's like the tower with a propeller on it. It uses a huge amount of steel and aluminum and metals. But we've raised the cost of that. Now, the steel tariffs exist for their own purposes. I don't think they're a good idea at all. However, at a minimum, I would exempt the importation of the steel that is used in wind turbines.

Take solar panels. There again, we actually have put very large tariffs on those solar panels that come from China. The Chinese companies have moved to other parts of the world and we're buying from them. But again, we have to look at each of these items and ask, is there a national security risk? Is there an alternative in other countries which would be cheaper? But instead, we have a policy that is obsessed with creating more jobs in the United States at a time when our economy is totally at full employment. So what scares today is not jobs. It's people. So there's completely a win-win option that would involve us buying cheaper components for renewables than the one we've been following.

Ralph Ranalli: Great. Well, I want to thank you both for being here. It's been a very interesting conversation and let's hope that someone's out there listening to these great policy recommendations.

Dustin Tingley: It's great to be here. Thank you.

Robert Z. Lawrence: Thanks. Thank you very much.

Outro (Ralph Ranalli): Thanks for listening. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to PolicyCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss a single episode. And please leave us a review while you’re there.

Editorial support for PolicyCast is provided by Nora Delaney, Robert O’Neill, and Jim Smith of the Harvard Kennedy School Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Design support is provided by Laura King and Delane Meadows. Our social media management is provided by Natalie Montaner. If you’d like to learn more about PolicyCast or explore previous episodes, please visit our home page at hks.harvard.edu/policycast. And until next time, remember to speak bravely, and listen generously.

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Adams J, Bateman B, Becker F, et al. Effectiveness and acceptability of parental financial incentives and quasi-mandatory schemes for increasing uptake of vaccinations in preschool children: systematic review, qualitative study and discrete choice experiment. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2015 Nov. (Health Technology Assessment, No. 19.94.)

Effectiveness and acceptability of parental financial incentives and quasi-mandatory schemes for increasing uptake of vaccinations in preschool children: systematic review, qualitative study and discrete choice experiment.

Chapter 7 recommendations for future research.

Recommendations for future research have been considered in the discussion sections of Chapters 3 – 5 and are summarised here for ease of reference. We have attempted to place these in priority order.

• Further evidence is required on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of parental financial incentive and quasi-mandatory interventions for encouraging the uptake of preschool vaccinations. As such, interventions are likely to be implemented on a large scale; evaluation strategies such as natural experiments and step-wedge designs may be most useful in generating such evidence. 82
• Further evidence is required on the most effective and cost-effective configuration of any parental financial incentive and quasi-mandatory interventions for encouraging the uptake of preschool vaccinations. Intervention development work, taking account of existing behaviour-change theory, may be useful to maximise the potential effectiveness of incentive interventions. This should involve further consideration of the effective component, or components, of financial incentive interventions.
• Further consideration of reasons for non-vaccination should be incorporated into new interventions for promoting the uptake of preschool vaccinations. Parental financial incentive and quasi-mandatory interventions for encouraging uptake of preschool vaccinations may not adequately address the reasons for non-vaccination in high-income countries that tend to achieve overall high coverage of preschool vaccinations.
• Further consideration of how a quasi-mandatory intervention for encouraging the uptake of preschool vaccinations could be designed and implemented is required. Particular issues requiring further consideration include data sharing of vaccination status between health-care providers and schools, responsibilities of different sectors and staff, and how provision would be made for legitimate opt-out.
• If high-quality evidence of effectiveness of parental financial incentive and quasi-mandatory interventions for encouraging uptake of preschool vaccinations is generated, further evidence is required on how to effectively communicate this information to all stakeholders. As acceptability is linked to perceived effectiveness, further evidence on the impact of well-communicated effectiveness evidence on perceived acceptability is also required.
• The factors that may increase acceptance of mandatory schemes warrant further research, and additional DCEs could be conducted to explore parental preferences on how a mandate for vaccination might be imposed.
• Further consideration may be required of how existing systems and resources for encouraging the uptake of preschool vaccinations can be optimised. In particular, further evidence may be required on how to provide accessible information and education, and how to deliver accessible vaccination services. However, although these issues were raised in the present work, we did not conduct a systematic review on these topics and, as such, cannot make definitive recommendations for future research.
• Research engaging parents in an iterative codesign process to design optimally acceptable and usable information that conveys robust and balanced data on the consequences of disease and the benefits and risks of vaccinations is required.

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• Cite this Page Adams J, Bateman B, Becker F, et al. Effectiveness and acceptability of parental financial incentives and quasi-mandatory schemes for increasing uptake of vaccinations in preschool children: systematic review, qualitative study and discrete choice experiment. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2015 Nov. (Health Technology Assessment, No. 19.94.) Chapter 7, Recommendations for future research.
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• Published: 10 May 2024

Adherence to sleep recommendations is associated with higher satisfaction with life among Norwegian adolescents

• Erik Grasaas 1 ,
• Sergej Ostojic 1 &
• Henriette Jahre 2  

BMC Public Health volume  24 , Article number:  1288 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Metrics details

Sleep plays a crucial role in the health and well-being of adolescents; however, inadequate sleep is frequently reported in numerous countries. This current paper aimed to describe sleep duration, factors impacting sleep, consequences of insufficient sleep and satisfaction with life in Norwegian adolescents, stratified by sex and by adherence to the 8-hour sleep recommendation, and to examine potential associations between adherence to the 8-hours sleep recommendation and satisfaction with life.

This is a cross-sectional study using data from the Norwegian Ungdata Survey, collected in 2021. Adolescents from five Norwegian counties were included, comprising a total of 32,161 upper secondary school students. Study variables were collected through an electronic questionnaire administered during school hours and all data are anonymous. Descriptive data of sleep patterns are presented, and linear regressions were conducted adjusting for SES, perceived stress, physical activity level, over-the-counter analgesics use, grade level and screen time.

73% of adolescents did not adhere to the 8-hours of sleep recommendation per night, with similar results for girls and boys. 64% reported tiredness at school (minimum 1–2 days weekly) and 62% reported that screen time negatively affected their ability to sleep. 23% reported that gaming affected their sleep, with a higher prevalence in boys than girls. Satisfaction with life score was 7.0 ± 1.9 points (out of 10) for the total sample, with higher scores for boys (7.3 ± 1.8 points) than girls (6.9 ± 1.9 points). Regressions revealed a positive association with satisfaction with life (B = 0.31, 95% [0.15 to 0.48]) in adolescents adhering to sleep recommendation of 8h compared to the ones not adhering to the sleep recommendation.

Conclusions

Most Norwegian adolescents fail to adhere to the 8-hours of sleep recommendation and the majority feel tired at school or during activities. More than half of adolescents reported that screen time negatively affected their ability to sleep. Adhering to the sleep recommendation was associated with higher life satisfaction. Our findings highlight the importance of sufficient sleep in adolescents, while future research is needed to examine other sleep related measures on adolescents´ satisfaction with life.

Peer Review reports

Sleep is recognized as a crucial factor for children’s and adolescents’ health and wellbeing [ 1 ]. Sleep recommendation vary with age and according to the US National Sleep Foundation teenagers are recommended 8–10 h of sleep [ 2 ]. However, when Gariepy and colleagues examined sleep patterns in 24 European and North American Countries, including 165,793 adolescents, findings revealed that insufficient sleep is prevalent in many countries [ 3 ]. Insufficient sleep impacts the daytime functioning in adolescents, leading to various negative consequences in their lives [ 4 ]. Extensive research evidence has reported that insufficient sleep among adolescents increases the risk of physical, psychosocial, and behavioral problems, and is associated with worse health outcomes [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ].

When examining sleep duration in adolescents, research evidence refers to both the time in bed (TIB) and the sleep onset time (SOT) until wakening as estimates of sleep duration. It is suggested that TIB might overestimate the sleep duration in adolescence [ 10 ], as adolescents don’t immediately fall asleep when they go to bed. The latency time from going to bed to SOT was reported to be on average around 17 min for older adolescents in 2002 [ 11 ]. However, considering the commonality of screen time use before bedtime nowadays, it is presumed that this average time has increased [ 12 , 13 ]. A recent Norwegian sleep study reported the average time between going to bed and SOT was over one hour, revealing that eight in ten adolescents in upper secondary school actually failed to obtain the minimum recommended amount of sleep (8 h) on school days [ 10 ].

Research evidence points to several causes of insufficient sleep in adolescence, which are commonly categorized into internal- and external factors. External factors may include reduced parental involvement, excessive homework or activities, perceived stress, and screen time usage, whereas internal factors refer to puberty and biological processes such as a shift in the circadian rhythm [ 4 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. Regardless of its causes, insufficient sleep is reported to impact all aspects of adolescents’ daily life and wellbeing [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 9 , 14 , 16 , 17 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. A well-known indicator of subjective well-being is Life Satisfaction measure, which serves as a useful complement for comparing data across ages and countries, and is assessed to evaluate their life as a whole rather than their current feelings [ 22 ]. Satisfaction with life is therefore a well-known measure to indicate happiness across countries and time [ 22 ]. According to Diener, the measure reflects the cognitive judgment of one´s satisfaction with life [ 23 ]. It has been reported that girls tend to report lower satisfaction with life compared to boys during adolescence, along with a general decrease in satisfaction with life throughout this period [ 24 ].

Since most Norwegian adolescents do not meet the recommended 8 h of sleep [ 10 ], it is crucial to investigate potential consequences for this age group. Since life satisfactions is a good indicator of adolescent’s well-being, and a proxy for happiness it would be interesting to investigate the relationship between sleep duration and satisfaction with life using large dataset with high response rate. Such research can provide substantial insights for both practice and policy development, potentially emphasizing the significance of adhering to the sleep recommendations in Norway. The main aims of the present study were (1) to describe sleep duration, factors impacting sleep, consequences of insufficient sleep and satisfaction with life in Norwegian adolescents, stratified by sex and by adherence to the 8-hour sleep recommendation, and (2) to examine potential association between adherence to the 8-hours of sleep recommendation and satisfaction with life in Norwegian adolescents.

We hypothesized that adolescents adhering to the 8-hour sleep recommendation would have a more positive association to satisfaction with life compared to adolescents sleeping seven hours or less.

This study is reported according to the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines [ 25 ].

Study design

This is a cross-sectional study using data from the Norwegian Ungdata Survey, collected in 2021. Ungdata is conducted by Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) at Oslo Metropolitan University in collaboration with regional center for drug rehabilitation (KoRus) and the municipal sector’s organization (KS). It is a quality-assured system for carrying out repeated national surveys among pupils in lower and upper secondary schools related to all aspects of health and wellbeing [ 26 ].

The Ungdata survey includes adolescents from lower and upper secondary schools from almost all municipalities in Norway. The survey consists of a comprehensive electronic questionnaire, with a mandatory basic module for all the municipalities, and a set of optional, predefined questions, which municipalities and counties can choose from. In addition, self-composed questions may also be added by the municipalities, counties or collaborating universities. The Ungdata project is financed from the national budget through grants from the Norwegian Directorate of Health [ 26 ].

Ungdata is a free survey offered to all Norwegian counties and their respective municipalities. The yearly sampling is administered by including specific counties. Within the next two following years, the rest of the counties are recruited. According to Ungdata, within a three-year period, close to all Norwegian municipalities have participated in the survey [ 27 ]. Therefore, the national presented findings from Ungdata usually comprises data from the last three years, which results in a representative study sample for the whole target population. However, according to Ungdata, the survey from 2021 should be assessed more separately, due to the pandemic and due to the record high participation of municipalities this year [ 27 ]. In the supplementary information material provided by Ungdata, there are coding for different counties, municipalities, and schools. Indicating that schools were the primary sampling unit. However, the Ungdata dataset does not include a variable including the separate schools.

Study setting

The surveys take place during one school hour (45–55 min) and are carried out electronically by the respective teacher. Pupils who are not interested in taking the survey are provided other schoolwork. The research evidence extracted from the Ungdata Survey is well suited for planning and initiating work towards adolescents and public health [ 26 ].

Participants

Norwegian adolescents from upper secondary school (16–19 years of age) are included in this study. The response rate was 67% from the whole country [ 27 ]. Adolescents from five counties ( n  = 32,161) are included in this specific study because they were the only counties that included sleep in their questionnaire (optional question). Number of participants were lower in questions regarding screentime/gaming affecting their sleep, as these questions were included in only two and three counties, respectively.

Exposure: sleep

Sleep duration was measured using the question “ How many hours of sleep did you get last night”. Seven response alternatives were provided, ranging from, 6 h or less or hourly up to 12 h or more. These response alternatives were recoded into a dichotomous variable to determine whether participants met (8 h or more) or did not meet (7 h or less) the international recommendations for sleep in adolescents [ 2 ]. Problems falling asleep and being tired in school or in activities was measured using four response alternatives, “no days”, “1–2 days”, “3–4 days” and “5 days or more”. If screentime or gaming affected their sleep was measured with two response alternatives, “yes” or “no”. These questions were formulated as: Has screentime affected you to not getting enough sleep and has gaming affected you to not getting enough sleep?

Outcome: satisfaction with life

Satisfaction with life was assessed using the question: “On a scale from 0 to10, how happy are you with your life these days?” Higher scores indicated greater satisfaction with life. This question on satisfaction with life was originally employed in a large Norwegian study called “Young in Oslo in 2018” [ 28 ], including 25,348 adolescents. Using a single-item measure for satisfaction with life has across samples demonstrated a substantial degree of validity and performed similar to the multiple-item satisfaction with life scale [ 29 ]. Especially in adolescence, its reported that a single-item life satisfaction measures perform as well the satisfaction with life scale [ 30 ].

Demographic variables and covariates

The Ungdata study includes demographic measures such as gender, grade level, respective county and municipality, and measures of socioeconomic status (SES). SES is measured by several questions related to parental educational level, books in their home and their level of prosperity. A total sum is calculated based on these three categories and recoded into values from 0 to 3, off which 0 represent lowest SES and 3 the highest SES [ 31 ]. This measure is reported as a validated construct of SES [ 26 ]. As the Ungdata Survey is anonymous, data on age is not available. For overview of study variables and response rate, see Table  1 .

Perceived stress level, physical activity level and use of over-the-counter analgesics (OTCA) are included as categorical covariates in the regression analysis [ 26 ].

Perceived stress level was measured by using the question “ Have you experience so much pressure the last week that you had problems managing it?” . Four response alternatives were provided, “not at all”, “to a small degree”, “to a large degree” and “to a very large degree” [ 26 ]. Perceived stress was found as a relevant psychological covariate in Norwegian adolescents due to the link to exposure and outcome [ 32 , 33 ].

Physical activity level was measured using the question “ How often are you so physical active that you become short of breath or sweaty? ” Six response alternatives were provided from “rare”, to different times a week, up to “at least 5 times a week” [ 26 ].

The use over OTCA was measured by using the question “How often have you used non-prescription drugs (Paracet, Ibux and similar) during the last month?” . Five response alternatives were provided ranging from “no times”, different times a week to “daily” [ 26 ].

Ethical consideration

Participation in the Ungdata survey is voluntary and informed written consent were provided by the adolescents. All questions from Ungdata included in this current study is approved by the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (ref. 821,474), known as SIKT [ 34 ]. As the survey is conducted in May-June, adolescents in upper secondary school were 16 years or older and did not need parental consent. The study is conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration.

Statistical analyses

All statistical analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 25.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). For the descriptive measures, continuous variables are described using means and standard deviations (SDs), and categorical variables are presented with counts and percentages. Sleep variables are presented for the total study sample and stratified into girls and boys, and into those who achieved the recommended sleep duration or not. Linear regressions analyses were conducted to examine the association between achieving the recommended sleep duration (8 h or more) or not and satisfaction with life. Stratified regressions analyses for girls and boys were conducted to investigate potential sex differences in the associations. One sample proportion test revealed high precision (CI) in estimates across the descriptive study variables. Both crude and multiple regression analysis adjusted for SES, perceived stress, physical activity level, OTCA use, grade level and screen time are presented. The results are presented with beta coefficients with 95% confidence intervals and R-squared (R 2 ). P -values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant, and all tests were two‐sided. Sensitivity analysis using 7-hours as a cut-off were used to check the robustness of the results. Due to the large sample size and relatively small number of missing, no imputation or bootstrapping was considered necessary.

In total, 32,161 adolescents from five Counties in Norway were included in the analyses. Response rate remained high in selected study variables ranging from 92.5 to 99.9% (Table  1 ). More boys than girls participated (53% versus 47%), 42% of the participants were from 1st grade, 35% from 2nd grade, and 23% from 3rd grade (Table  2 ).

Descriptive data of sleep in Norwegian adolescents

Descriptive data of sleep variables are presented in Table  3 . 73% of adolescents did not adhere to the 8-hours of sleep recommendation, with similar results for girls and boys. 62% of respondents reported experiencing difficulties falling asleep on at least one day or more. This issue was more prevalent among girls (68%) than boys (56%). Feeling tired at school at least once a week was reported by 64%, by 71% of the girls and by 56% of the boys. 62% of participants stated that screen time negatively affected their ability to get enough sleep, 66% of girls and 57% of boys reported this. 23% of the adolescents reported that gaming affected their ability to get enough sleep, 11% of the girls and 38% of the boys. Satisfaction with life score was 7.0 ± 1.9 points for the total sample (Table  3 ), with higher scores for boys (7.3 ± 1.8 points) than in girls (6.9 ± 1.9 points) (Table  3 ).

Descriptive measures stratified by adhereing to the 8-hours of sleep recommendations or not showed that 54% of adolescents receiving more than 8 h of sleep had no problems with falling asleep, while 32% of adolescents that did not achieve sleep recommendation had these struggles.

50% of adolescents adhering to the recommended sleep duration reported that they never felt tired at school or in other activities, whereas this was reported by 30% of those who did not adhere to the recommendations. Screen time was descriptively reported to affect sufficient sleep in 45% of those who met the recommendations, and in 67% of those who did not. Gaming was descriptively reported to affect sleep for 15% of those who slept 8 h or more, and 26% in those who slept less (Table  4 ).

Associations between adhering to sleep recommendation or not on satisfaction with life

Adjusted multiple regression analysis stratified by sex showed that adhering to the recommended 8 h of sleep was positively associated with satisfaction with life in girls (B = 0.33; 95% CI [0.11–0.56]) and in boys (B = 0.27; 95% CI [0.02–0.52]) compared to those who did not adhere to the sleep recommendation (Table  5 ).

Crude regression analyses revealed a positive association between adhering to the 8-hours of sleep recommendation and satisfaction with life (B = 0.64; 95% CI [0.59–0.68]). Adjusted multiple regression analyses remained significant after adjusting for SES, perceived stress, physical activity level, OTCA use, grade level, screen time and sex (Table  6 ).

Sensitivity analyses

Adjusted sensitivity analysis using 7 h of sleep as a cut-off showed a stronger association with lower life satisfaction than 8 h of sleep for the total sample (B = 0.51 versus B = 0.31). Similar findings of stronger associations using 7 h cut-off were revealed in stratified analyses by gender, in boys (B = 0.39 versus 0.27) and girls (B = 0.60 versus B = 0.33).

In this study, we aimed to describe sleep duration, factors impacting sleep, consequences of insufficient sleep and satisfaction with life in Norwegian adolescents and examine possible associations between adherence to the 8-hours of sleep recommendation and satisfaction with life. Findings revealed that 73% of adolescents did not meet the recommended sleep duration of at least 8 h per night, with similar results for girls and boys. 64% reported that they felt tired at school or in activities, however more prevalent in girls than boys. Screen time had a negative impact for getting enough sleep in 62% and was more prevalent among girls than boys. Gaming disturbed sleep in 23% and was more prevalent among boys. Satisfaction with life score was 7 out of 10 for the total study sample, with somewhat higher scores for boys than girls. Adhering to the 8-hours sleep recommendation was positively associated with satisfaction with life, and there were similar findings in girls and boys. All findings remained statistically significant after adjusting for SES, perceived stress, physical activity level and OTCA use.

Our findings, revealing that 73% of the adolescents did not adhere to the 8-hours of sleep recommendation, are higher compared to international data, which shows that across countries, 32–86% of adolescents meet sleep recommendations [ 3 ]. However, not adhering to the sleep recommendation appears to be common in Norway. In a Norwegian study by Saxvig and colleagues, it was revealed that 84.8% of adolescents aged 16–17 did not adhere to the recommendation of 8-hour sleep [ 10 ]. These findings show a slightly higher prevalence compared to this current study, which may be due to several methodological differences in self-reporting. Saxvig and colleagues presents findings of sleep duration during schooldays, whereas the question provided by Ungdata refers to “how many hours did you sleep last night?”. Assuming that some Ungdata surveys were conducted on Mondays, the findings may be less comparable to data from schooldays, as adolescents commonly report a relatively large discrepancy between sleep duration on schooldays and weekends [ 35 ]. A recent Norwegian study from 2023 reported that younger Norwegian adolescents tend to sleep one and a half hours longer on weekends compared to schooldays [ 36 ]. Despite this, our findings point to the commonality of failing to obtain the recommendation of 8 h of sleep in the everyday life of Norwegian adolescents.

Estimating sleep duration by self-report in adolescence is challenging due to observed discrepancies between self-reported sleep and objectively measured sleep. However, research evidence suggests that adolescents aged 13–17 years may more precisely estimate their own sleep duration compared to when their parents report on their behalf, as parents tend to report an idealized version [ 37 ]. Objective measures, including actigraphy and the currently considered gold standard, polysomnography, offer potential clinical advantages compared to self-reporting [ 38 ]. However, these advantages are primarily related to pathological conditions, such as accurate diagnosis of sleep disorders and treatment monitoring. Lucas-Thompson and colleagues investigated the between- and within-person associations between self-reported and actigraph-measured nighttime sleep duration in adolescence [ 39 ]. The findings indicated that adolescents reporting longer average nighttime sleep also exhibited longer average actigraph measured sleep duration [ 39 ], suggesting that self-reporting in large samples of adolescence is likely to have high validity. Still, there are potential biases that should be discussed, which could be threating the validity of the study, such as self-report bias, including recall bias or social desirability bias. Despite the study is anonymous, there is no guarantee that adolescents´ didn’t under or overestimate their scores based on poor recollection or because of being afraid of observant classmates. Other relevant bias to mention is selection bias. Although the study includes the majority of Norwegian adolescents, findings may not accurately reflect the total target population.

Interestingly, our descriptive findings revealed similar sleep duration in girls and boys, which is in accordance with international data and other Norwegian sleep studies [ 10 , 36 , 40 ]. However, our descriptive findings revealed some differences in terms of feeling tired (sleepiness). Only 29% of girls reported they never felt sleepy during school or in activities, whereof 44% of the boys reported the same. There might be underlying mechanisms related to sleep quality or productivity differences between girls and boys that might interfere, or it could be related to other aspects of adolescents’ life, such as difference in physical activity levels and gender preferences for activities provided at schools. Nevertheless, Forest and colleagues also reported gender differences in daytime sleepiness during school and social activities in adolescents, with girls perceiving more interference from poor sleep on daytime functioning compared to boys [ 41 ]. Findings indicate other measures than sleep duration is needed for understanding daytime functioning in girls and boys. A meta-analytic review from a school setting, showed that sleepiness revealed the strongest association to school performance, followed by adolescents sleep quality and sleep duration [ 42 ].

Another gender difference was that more girls than boys reported that screen time negatively impacted their ability to sleep. It is reported that time spent in front of a screen usually comes at the expense of sleep [ 43 ]. The inability to sleep and screen time use at night are physiologically linked to the brightness and type of light, and such activity inhibit melatonin production, disrupt the circadian rhythm, and consequently affect adolescents´ feeling of sleepiness before bedtime [ 44 ]. Therefore, the systematic review by Hale et al., explicitly advises to limit or reduce screen time exposure, especially before or during bedtime hours, to minimize any harmful effects of screen time on sleep and well-being [ 13 ]. Moreover, Hale and colleagues reported that adolescents spend about 7 h per day in front of a screen [ 13 ]. Gaming might also contribute to the total screen time in adolescence. In our study, more boys than girls reported that gaming affected their ability to sleep. Time spent on video gaming in adolescence is also reported to be negatively associated with sleep duration [ 45 ].

It is interesting to link the differences in daytime sleepiness between girls and boys to the differences in satisfaction with life, as we suspect that there could be coinciding factors at play. Given that girls tend to experience more tiredness and sleepiness, it would presumably influence their subjective well-being and satisfaction with life, as sleepiness is strongly associated with adolescents’ overall quality of life [ 46 ]. Extensive research evidence has reported gender differences in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and satisfaction with life, wherein girls tend to report lower scores than boys [ 24 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 ]. Moreover, our findings of satisfaction with life align with the “Better Life index” score from the OECD, which reports 7.3 as an average score for Norwegians [ 22 ]. Interestingly, in our study, both girls and those not adhering to the sleep recommendations had coinciding satisfaction with life scores below 7.0.

As hypothesized, the findings showed that adolescents adhering to the 8-hour sleep recommendation had higher life satisfaction compared to adolescents sleeping 7 h or less. Quite similar results were found in both girls and boys, despite a slightly lower p -value was revealed among girls compared to boys, both associations remained significant after adjusting for relevant covariates. Indicating respective associations relevant for the total study sample. Interestingly, a Norwegian study by Ness and Saksvik-Lehouillier investigated the relationship between sleep and satisfaction with life in Norwegian university students. Their results indicated that all sleep parameters, such as sleep quality, less variability in rise time, less variability in sleep duration, longer mean sleep duration were associated with better satisfaction with life. However, less variability of sleep duration was identified as a significant predictor for life satisfaction and not mean sleep duration, indicating that less variability of sleep duration might be more relevant to well-being than sleep duration itself [ 51 ]. Research evidence also reports higher risks of negative health outcomes with higher variability in sleep duration from weekdays to weekends in adolescents [ 35 , 52 ]. Further, a recent Norwegian study reported that sleep duration on weekdays was positively associated with all aspects of adolescents´ HRQOL, whereas sleep duration on weekends revealed mostly nonsignificant findings regarding aspects of HRQOL [ 36 ]. These findings highlight the vulnerability of using only one general sleep duration measure to understand the complexity between sleep and satisfaction with life. Nevertheless, our findings reinforce the importance of the 8-hours sleep recommendation for Norwegian adolescents. Sleep is a multifaceted concept, including different measures such as sleep variability, sleep quality and sleepiness, all of which can have distinct impacts on adolescents’ satisfaction with life. Therefore, it is worth exploring the possibility of sleep recommendations that encompass not only sleep duration, but also explicitly address sleep variability and daytime sleepiness in adolescence in the future.

Strengths and limitations

The primary strength of this study lies in its large sample size, comprising adolescents from both urban and rural regions of Norway, collected within a school-based setting. Additionally, the high response rate (99%) regarding variables related to sleep and life satisfaction enhances the study’s reliability. These factors suggest that the findings could be generalizable for a broader population of Norwegian adolescents attending school. The question regarding sleep duration is based on SOT until awakening time, which is considered an accurate estimation of sleep duration [ 10 ]. Further, Ungdata dataset is cleaned and they have several procedures for identifying unserious answers [ 26 ]. Moreover, reporting according to STROBE guidelines [ 25 ] should be considered a strength, as it provides transparency and accurate reporting of study method and results.

This study also has some limitations. The cross-sectional nature of the study hinders us from determining any causal inference between sleep duration and life satisfaction. Further, another limitation is the use of non-validated instruments regarding sleep as the respective questions in Ungdata derives from an unknown origin [ 27 ]. Moreover, the sleep questions did not distinguish between weekdays and weekends, which might have affected the results. Another limitation is that the scope of this paper was focused on adhering to sleep recommendations or not, and as a result, the sleep duration variable was dichotomized. This dichotomization reduced variability in data and excluded other potential sleep-related variables that could have impacted adolescents’ satisfaction with life. Another limitation is due to study variables are measured over different time frames, as exposure is measured within last day and outcome over a few days. The predicting sleep variable would be more robust if data was provided over a longer period, which would convey a better understanding of sleep variability and average sleep duration. Moreover, we do not have any information on the non-responders, which increases the risk of selection bias. Finally, despite significant statistical associations, caution should be exercised when interpeting the findings for clinical relevance. Still, sensitivity analysis using 7 h of sleep as a cut-off shows a stronger association with lower life satisfaction than 8 h of sleep. This might indicate that less sleep is more strongly related to lower life satisfaction. This should be further explored in future studies investigating sleep as a continuous variable. However, we chose to dichotomize the variable according to sleep recommendations to make it clear and easy to interpret for adolescents, practitioners, and policymakers.

Perspectives

This study showed that the majority of adolescents did not adhere to the 8-hours of sleep recommendation, and many of them reported feeling tired at school or in activities. Screen time and gaming were identified as descriptive factors affecting adolescent’s ability to get enough sleep. Our study added new findings to the research literature by uncovering that sleep recommendations were positively associated with higher life satisfaction by controlling for several relevant covariates in a large sample of Norwegian adolescents, underpinning essential information for people working with adolescents and caregivers. Finally, practice and policy aiming at increasing health and satisfaction with life in adolescents should include and highlight sleep recommendations.

This cross-sectional study demonstrated that almost three out of four Norwegian adolescents did not meet the sleep recommendations, and close to two thirds reported that they feel tired at school or in activities. Screen time negatively affected their ability to get enough sleep. Findings revealed a positive association between adhering to the 8-hours of sleep recommendation and satisfaction with life. These findings reinforce the importance of adhering the sleep recommendation for Norwegian adolescents. Adolescence is a critical time wherein insufficient sleep can have significant consequences. Further research is needed to examine other sleep related measures to adolescents’ satisfaction with life.

Data availability

The dataset that support the findings of this study is available upon reasonable request from the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (SIKT) [ 34 ]. Dataset citation required from SIKT: https://doi.org/10.18712/NSD-NSD3007-V3 .

Abbreviations

time in bed

sleep onset time

confidence interval

standard deviation

socioeconomic status

Norwegian Social Research

regional center for drug rehabilitation

the municipal sector´s organization

Strengthening The Reporting Of Observational Studies

Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research

better policies for better lives.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the adolescents participating in Ungdata, NOVA and KoRus for giving us access to the data and the Norwegian Directorate of Health for funding the survey.

The Ungdata project is financed from the Norwegian national budget through grants from the Norwegian Directorate of Health [ 26 ].

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Grasaas, E., Ostojic, S. & Jahre, H. Adherence to sleep recommendations is associated with higher satisfaction with life among Norwegian adolescents. BMC Public Health 24 , 1288 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18725-1

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Plateau mountainous areas occupy about one fifth of the Earth’s surface, they are home to approximately one tenth of the global population, and provide goods and services to about half of humanity. Plateau mountain environments are essential to the survival of the global ecosystem. Many of them are experiencing degradation in terms of accelerated soil erosion, landslides, and rapid loss of habitat and genetic diversity. Compared with other landscapes, plateau mountainous areas are increasingly threatened by climate warming, posing a threat to future water security, biodiversity, and sustainable development. For example, climate warming poses an increased threat of natural hazards from the mountain cryosphere, such as glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), avalanches, slope failures, debris flows, or a combination of one or more hazards in a cascading chain. Other degradations also greatly threaten the plentiful ecosystem services provided by plateau mountainous areas. Given the significance of the mountain eco-environment, it is imperative to be able to track its rapid change, with the goal of being able to develop predictive capacity. Hence, proper management of mountain resources and socio-economic development of the people deserves immediate action. This Research Topic aims to collect the current development of remote sensing applications for the monitoring of plateau mountainous areas. Remote sensing has advanced rapidly in recent years, both in the physical hardware of the sensors and in the algorithms or methodologies used to subsequently process the data. However, the challenges associated with imaging areas of high relief are great, due to the strong topographic effect, frequent cloud over, terrain shadowing, and limited ground observation. Meanwhile, the highly dynamic environment of mountain area further brocks the application of remote sensing for mountain areas. Topics can include but are not limited to: • Mountain Hazards Remote Sensing Identification and Monitoring Techniques; • Quantitative Remote Sensing Retrieval and Modeling in Plateau Mountain Areas; • Remote Sensing Applications in Plateau Lakes; • Application of Remote Sensing in High-altitude Agriculture.

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