• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.20-25
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• 2012

New Zealand suffers from regular floods, these being the most common source of insurance claims for damage from natural hazard events in the country. This paper describes the origin and distribution of the largest floods in New Zealand, and describes the systems used to monitor and predict floods. In New Zealand, broad-scale heavy rainfall (and flooding), is the result of warm moist air flowing out from the tropics into the mid-latitudes. There is no monsoon in New Zealand. The terrain has a substantial influence on the distribution of rainfall, with the largest annual totals occurring near the South Island's Southern Alps, the highest mountains in the country. The orographic effect here is extreme, with 3km of elevation gained over a 20km distance from the coast. Across New Zealand, short duration high intensity rainfall from thunderstorms also causes flooding in urban areas and small catchments. Forecasts of severe weather are provided by the New Zealand MetService, a Government owned company. MetService uses global weather models and a number of limited-area weather models to provide warnings and data streams of predicted rainfall to local Councils. Flood monitoring, prediction and warning are carried out by 16 local Councils. All Councils collect their own rainfall and river flow data, and a variety of prediction methods are utilized. These range from experienced staff making intuitive decisions based on previous effects of heavy rain, to hydrological models linked to outputs from MetService weather prediction models. No operational hydrological models are linked to weather radar in New Zealand. Councils provide warnings to Civil Defence Emergency Management, and also directly to farmers and other occupiers of flood prone areas. Warnings are distributed by email, text message and automated voice systems. A nation-wide hydrological model is also operated by NIWA, a Government-owned research institute. It is linked to a single high resolution weather model which runs on a super computer. The NIWA model does not provide public forecasts. The rivers with the greatest flood flows are shown, and these are ranked in terms of peak specific discharge. It can be seen that of the largest floods occur on the West Coast of the South Island, and the greatest flows per unit area are also found in this location.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.26 no.10
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• pp.1379-1387
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• 2013

In a majority of mammals, male infants have heavier body mass and grow faster than female infants. Accordingly, male offspring nursing requires a much greater maternal energy contribution to lactation. It is possible that the maternal-fetal immunoendocrine dialog plays an important role in female preparation for lactation during pregnancy. Immune system genes are an integral part of gene regulatory networks in lactation and tumor necrosis factor alpha ($TNF{\alpha}$) is a proinflammatory cytokine that also plays an important role in normal mammary gland development. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of the sex of calf and/or the -824A/G polymorphism in the promoter region of $TNF{\alpha}$ gene on milk performance traits in Black Pied cattle over the course of lactation. We also studied the allele frequency differences of -824A/G variants across several cattle breeds, which were bred in different climatic conditions. The G allele frequency decreased gradually over the course of lactation events in the Black Pied dairy cattle because of a higher culling rate of cows with the G/G genotype (p<0.001). In contrast to the genotypes A/A and A/G, cows with G/G genotype showed significant variability of milk and milk fat yield subject to sex of delivered calf. Milk yield and milk fat yield were significantly higher in the case of birth of a bull calf than with a heifer calf (p<0.03). The G allele frequency varies from 48% to 58% in Grey Ukrainian and Black Pied cattle to 77% in aboriginal Yakut cattle. Our results suggest that the $TNF{\alpha}$-824A/G gene polymorphism may have an influence on the reproductive efforts of cows over the course of lactation events depending on the sex of progeny. Allocation of resources according to sex of the calf allows optimizing the energy cost of lactation. This may be a probable reason for high G allele frequency in Yakut cattle breeding in extreme environmental conditions. Similarly, the dramatic fall in milk production after birth of a heifer calf increases the probability of culling for the cows with the G/G genotype in animal husbandry.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.525-535
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• 2020

This study aims to evaluate the economic value of the heat wave watch/warning (HW/W) forecast provided by the KMA (Korea Meteorological Administration) for the public sector. Local govermenments of Korea currently use the HW/W forecasts as a major input variable to determine the preparative requisite level for reducing potential damage by extreme heat events. To assess the value of the HW/W, which is not a marketable commodity, a decision-making model taking into account the cost and loss was established. The 'cost' variable was defined as the heat wave countermeasures budget for Seoul and Busan in 2016, and the 'loss' variable was set as the amount of health insurance claims for those 65 and older obtained from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. Using this model, the value of the HW/W in 2016 was calculated as KRW 4,133M and KRW1,090M for Seoul and Busan, respectively. In addition, if the KMA reduces the False Alarm of the HW/W by a single instance, the value will be increased by KRW 76.6M and KRW 16.8M for the two cities. The results of this study are useful in quantitatively estimation of the value of the HW/W forthe public sector.