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Many countries around the world have chosen lockdown and restrictions on people's mobility as the main strategies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. These actions have significantly affected environmental noise and modified urban soundscapes, opening up an unprecedented opportunity for research in the field. In order to enable these investigations to be carried out in a more harmonized and consistent manner, this paper makes a proposal for a set of indicators that will enable to address the challenge from a number of different approaches. It proposes a minimum set of basic energetic indicators, and the taxonomy that will allow their communication and reporting. In addition, an extended set of descriptors is outlined which better enables the application of more novel approaches to the evaluation of the effect of this new soundscape on people's subjective perception.

Year 2020 will mark History, with the emergence of the new Covid-19 virus, and more importantly, the consequent political decisions to apply freedom restriction at such a largescale. Identifying the human behaviours during this extraordinary period represents a unique opportunity to both improve our fundamental knowledge and to improve future management of similar issues. Throughout almost all the duration of the French lockdown (from March 24, 2020 to May 10, 2020), we carried out an online survey on more than 12,000 individuals well distributed over the country. This online survey was performed by using both Lime-Survey and Google Forms services and was addressed to adults living in France. Statistical analyses combined classical inferential approach, mapping, clustering and text mining. The results showed that a significant part of the population moved out just before the lockdown (around 10% of our sample) and we highlighted three different profiles of participants. The results emphasised that the lockdown measures compliance was lower in two cases: (i) an unfavourable living environment (referring to social and economic inequity) associated with a high feeling of fear and a lack of trust towards Governmental measures; or (ii) the feeling that the risk was low due to the fact that others complied with the measures. In case a similar situation should occur again, it is recommended that Governments broadcast clear speeches to improve trust, limit fear and increase cooperative behaviours.

In response to insufficient understanding of the determinants of change in e-shopping behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in developing countries, this paper used the data from 355 respondents, collected in Hanoi during the social distancing period (April 2020), to explore the factors associated with shopping online more frequently (i.e., representing the growth of e-shopping) for five product types (food, medical products, clothing, electronics, and books) in Hanoi, Vietnam. The results showed that nearly 80% of the respondents engaged in e-shopping more frequently than they did before the outbreak of COVID-19. As regards shopping online more frequently in general (i.e., for at least one product type), females were more likely to do so. In-store shopping enjoyment and a decrease in income were a facilitator and a deterrent, respectively. Regarding specific product types, completely working from home had a positive association with more frequent e-purchasing for electronics. Fear of disease encouraged higher frequencies of e-shopping for food and medical products. Notably, the shortage of physical supply was not a determinant of buying any product type online more frequently. As for the implications of our findings, supporting and encouraging low-income shoppers, older persons, and females to engage in e-shopping is necessary to limit the detrimental effects of the pandemic on their lives. The growth of internet purchasing expresses a need to manage the development of urban delivery services, to limit the uncontrolled proliferation of motorcycles. E-shopping requires delivery to complete the online-to-offline process; therefore, protecting the health of delivery drivers to ensure the safety of the whole online shopping process would be necessary.

Many countries around the world have chosen lockdown and restrictions on people’s mobility as the main strategies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. These actions have significantly affected environmental noise and modified urban soundscapes, opening up an unprecedented opportunity for research in the field. In order to enable these investigations to be carried out in a more harmonized and consistent manner, this paper makes a proposal for a set of indicators that will enable to address the challenge from a number of different approaches. It proposes a minimum set of basic energetic indicators, and the taxonomy that will allow their communication and reporting. In addition, an extended set of descriptors is outlined which better enables the application of more novel approaches to the evaluation of the effect of this new soundscape on people’s subjective perception.

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, some French regions were more affected than others. To relieve those areas most affected, the French government organized transfers of critical patients, notably by plane or helicopter. Our objective was to investigate the impact of such transfers on the pulse oximetric saturation (SpO2)-to-inspired fraction of oxygen (FiO2) ratio among transferred critical patients with COVID-19. We conducted a retrospective study on medical and paramedical records. The primary endpoint was the change in SpO2/FiO2 during transfers. Thirty-eight patients were transferred between 28 March and 5 April 2020, with a mean age of 62.4 years and a mean body mass index of 29.8 kg/m2. The population was 69.7% male, and the leading medical history was hypertension (42.1%), diabetes (34.2%), and dyslipidemia (18.4%). Of 28 patients with full data, we found a decrease of 28.9 points in SpO2/FiO2 (95% confidence interval, 5.8 to 52.1, p = 0.01) between the starting and the arrival intensive care units (SpO2/FiO2, 187.3 ± 61.3 and 158.4 ± 62.8 mmHg, respectively). Air medical transfers organized to relieve intensive care unit teams under surging conditions during the first COVID wave were associated with significant decreases in arterial oxygenation.

_; This proposal adopts a holistic approach to strategic transport investment by discussing the wider economic impacts (WEIs) analysis method in terms of several dominant and emerging methods. The WEIs analysis goes beyond the effects captured in a standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA). A CBA addresses the market for transport services and infrastructure access but neglects the wider impacts on other markets. These wider impacts usually relate to agglomeration, market power, and the behavioral adaptions of firms and households. The high uncertainty in land use changes indicates that WEIs tend to occur in different forms on multiple spatial scales, varying by place and time. Additionally, some activities, such as education, have no direct market value, but may indirectly contribute to the overall economic output and human capital development in cities and regions. Given that the conventional elasticity methods are not goal oriented, it is important to ensure that the WEIs analysis accounts for the stakeholder-specific costs and benefits. Assuming that it is possible to consider all WEIs through theoretical models, major efforts should focus on establishing and maintaining appropriate methodologies and tools. The social and environmental data needed to address biodiversity issues should also be improved and promoted. Complementary to the WEIs, understanding how the behavior of agents changes in response to the new transport options will help clarify the long-term implications of transportation. This will suggest new strategies (territorial appropriation), approaches/ techniques to feasibility, and ?place-based? interrelations, that is, specific interrelations in places. This last aspect is especially important in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected and will likely change transportation behaviors and transport demand in the dynamic future.

During the era of COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease of 2019), telework has been adopted extensively in developing countries for the first time. This study analyzes data of 355 teleworkers in Hanoi (Vietnam) during April 2020, the period of social distancing, to examine various factors associated with (1) complete home-based telework (HBT), (2) the perception of HBT, and (3) the attitude toward the combination between HBT and conventional work at workplace post-COVID-19. It finds that the company's closure policy and the frequency of working from a distance before the social distancing period were the primary determinants of exclusively teleworking. Regarding the perception of HBT, while the fear of COVID-19 was a strong positive factor, difficulties in focusing on work and accessing data were negative factors. Regarding the attitude toward the future development of HBT, attitudinal factors, commute distance, gender, children in household, and the perception of HBT in the social distancing period were the main predictors. The presence of more than one child negatively affected the perception of telework but positively affected the attitude toward establishing the hybrid work mechanism. The findings suggested that HBT has the potential to alleviate traffic congestion in developing countries and it can be promoted by emphasizing its environment-related benefits. The sample used in this research was collected in the initial stage of constrained mobility and it was not well representative; therefore, this study serves as a proof of concept for ongoing wider analyses on HBT post-COVID-19 or in the subsequent lockdown periods.

International audience; The outbreak of COVID-19 has made a global catastrophic situation that caused 1,039,406 deaths out of 35,347,404 infections, and it will also cause significant socio-economic losses with poverty increasing from 17.1 to 25.9%. Although the spreading rate of COVID-19 is very high on October 6, 2020, the death rate is still less than 2.94%. Nonetheless, this review article shows that the lockdown has induced numerous positive impacts on the environment and on energy consumption. For instance, the lockdown has decreased the electricity demand by 30% in Italy, India, Germany, and the USA, and by 12–20% in France, Germany, Spain, India, and the UK. Additionally, the expenditure of the fuel supply has been decreased by 4% in 2020 as compared to the previous years (2012–2019). In particular, The global demand for coal fuel has been reduced by 8% in March and April 2020 as compared to the same time in 2019. In terms of harmful emissions, the lockdowns reduced the emissions of nitrous oxides by 20–30% in China, Italy, France, Spain, and by 77.3% in São Paulo, Brazil. Similarly, the particulate matter level has been reduced from 5–15% in Western Europe, to 200% in New Delhi, India, which in turn has enhanced the air quality in a never-seen manner in recent times. In some places, such as New York, USA, CO2 emission was also reduced by 5–10%. The water quality, in several polluted areas, has also been remarkably enhanced, for example, the dissolved oxygen content in the Ganga River, India, has increased by about 80%. Traffic congestion has also been reduced worldwide, and in some areas, it has been reduced by 50%, such as New York and Los Angeles, USA. Overall, while the COVID-19 pandemic has shrinked the global economy by 13–32%, the pandemic has also clearly benefited to other sectors, which must be considered as the spotlight for the permanent revival of the global ecosystem.

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate – the “global carbon budget” – is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesize data sets and methodology to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFOS) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on land use and land-use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its growth rate (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) and terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) are estimated with global process models constrained by observations. The resulting carbon budget imbalance (BIM), the difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere, is a measure of imperfect data and understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the last decade available (2010–2019), EFOS was 9.6 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 excluding the cement carbonation sink (9.4 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 when the cement carbonation sink is included), and ELUC was 1.6 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1. For the same decade, GATM was 5.1 ± 0.02 GtC yr−1 (2.4 ± 0.01 ppm yr−1), SOCEAN 2.5 ±  0.6 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 3.4 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1, with a budget imbalance BIM of −0.1 GtC yr−1 indicating a near balance between estimated sources and sinks over the last decade. For the year 2019 alone, the growth in EFOS was only about 0.1 % with fossil emissions increasing to 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 excluding the cement carbonation sink (9.7 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 when cement carbonation sink is included), and ELUC was 1.8 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1, for total anthropogenic CO2 emissions of 11.5 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1 (42.2 ± 3.3 GtCO2). Also for 2019, GATM was 5.4 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1 (2.5 ± 0.1 ppm yr−1), SOCEAN was 2.6 ± 0.6 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 3.1 ± 1.2 GtC yr−1, with a BIM of 0.3 GtC. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 409.85 ± 0.1 ppm averaged over 2019. Preliminary data for 2020, accounting for the COVID-19-induced changes in emissions, suggest a decrease in EFOS relative to 2019 of about −7 % (median estimate) based on individual estimates from four studies of −6 %, −7 %, −7 % (−3 % to −11 %), and −13 %. Overall, the mean and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2019, but discrepancies of up to 1 GtC yr−1 persist for the representation of semi-decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from diverse approaches and observations shows (1) no consensus in the mean and trend in land-use change emissions over the last decade, (2) a persistent low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) an apparent discrepancy between the different methods for the ocean sink outside the tropics, particularly in the Southern Ocean. This living data update documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new global carbon budget and the progress in understanding of the global carbon cycle compared with previous publications of this data set (Friedlingstein et al., 2019; Le Quéré et al., 2018b, a, 2016, 2015b, a, 2014, 2013). The data presented in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/gcp-2020 (Friedlingstein et al., 2020).

Abstract. In developing countries, metropolitan cities, due to their economic activities, attract an increasing amount of commuters on a daily basis. This has led to major freeways and roads experiencing high levels of congestion and consequently high pollution levels. In 2020, due to a global pandemic of an outbreak of Corona Virus (COVID-19), the national government declared a national shutdown with only essential traffic being allowed to operate. Given the scenario of the national lock-down this allows for the statistical analysis of the impact of essential traffic on the overall transportation system. Consequently the aim of the paper was to assess the congestion and CO2 emission impact of essential traffic for the City of Johannesburg. Using an exploratory approach, we monitored and collected traffic congestion data from the Tomtom traffic index for the metropolitan city of Johannesburg, South Africa. We develop a relationship between congestion and pollution to visualise the daily variations in pollution and congestion levels. We demonstrate this by comparing variations in congestion levels in two epochs, viz the period without movement restrictions and the period whereby movement is restricted. The results reveal essential traffic on the congestion index to be below 22 percent for both weekends and weekdays. A scenario common only during weekends in 2019. Whilst for the emission index, CO2 levels are approximately less than 45 percent throughout the week. The paper concludes the investment into mining and analysing traffic data has a significantly role for future mobility planning in both the developed and developing world and, more generally, improving the quality of commuting trips in the city.