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  Artificial intelligence for Europe
  Position paper : January 2019

  • Published: 2019-02-08
  • Corporate Author(s): European Economic and Social Committee
  • Subject: artificial intelligence, consumer, education, EU law, Europe, industrial policy, innovation, labour market, professional qualifications, regulation (EU), social impact, vocational training
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  Forest dynamics in Europe and their ecological consequences
  

  Forests used to constitute the dominant natural vegetation in most of Europe, covering up to 80 % of the land surface. However, the current extent and condition of forest ecosystems are the result of the process of human appropriation (domestication), which started more than 5000 years ago. By t...

  Forests used to constitute the dominant natural vegetation in most of Europe, covering up to 80 % of the land surface. However, the current extent and condition of forest ecosystems are the result of the process of human appropriation (domestication), which started more than 5000 years ago. By the end of the 17th century, more than half of Europe’s original forest had disappeared and covered just a few percent of the total land area in countries such as Denmark or Ireland. In response to forest depletion, stricter forest management practices emerged to replant, protect and maintain forest cover and the multi-functionality of forests in terms of wood production and protection against, for example, soil and wind erosion.

  • Published: 2019-01-21
  • Corporate Author(s): European Environment Agency (EU body or agency)
  • Subject: biodiversity, deforestation, EU environmental policy, Europe, forest, forest conservation, forestry policy, terrestrial ecosystem
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  Literature review of indoor radon surveys in Europe
  

  Natural radioactivity is the main source of population exposure to ionising radiation. Radon and its progenies contribute with more than 50% to annual effective dose received from all sources of ionising radiation (UNSCEAR, 2000). Radon is a radioactive noble gas, with no stable isotopes. Three ...

  Natural radioactivity is the main source of population exposure to ionising radiation. Radon and its progenies contribute with more than 50% to annual effective dose received from all sources of ionising radiation (UNSCEAR, 2000). Radon is a radioactive noble gas, with no stable isotopes. Three naturally occurring isotopes 222Rn, 220Rn and 219Rn originate from the decay chain of three primordial decay series 238U, 232Th and 235U, respectively. The relative importance of Rn isotopes with respect to the population exposure, increases with an increase of their half-lives and their relative abundance and thus the most abundant and long-lived one, 222Rn (T1/2=3.82 days) is the most important. In the regions with high 232Th/232U ratios, 220Rn (also known as thoron) whose half-life is short-lived (T1/2=55.6 s) compared to the half-life of 222Rn, cannot be ignored. First written documents related to the radon problem dated from XVI century when Paracelsius reported about high mortality of solver miners in Saxony and Bohemia and at the end of XIX century, those deaths were attributed to lung cancer. It took 50 years from the discovery of radon in 1901, to identify radon progenies as major cause of lung cancer. Based on the epidemiological studies performed in Europe, Asia and America, radon has been identified as a second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking, being responsible between 3-14% of all lung cancers (WHO, 2009). The exposure of members of the public or of workers to indoor radon is now explicitly taken up in the scope of Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom (Article 2 (2d)) (European Union, 2013). Based on this, the Directive introduces, for the first time, legally binding requirements on protection from exposure to radon.

  • Published: 2019-01-09
  • Corporate Author(s): Joint Research Centre (European Commission)
  • Subject: atmospheric pollutant, carcinogenic substance, chemical product, Europe, rare gas, research report, scientific research, toxic substance
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  The changing nature and role of vocational education and training in Europe
  Volume 3, The responsiveness of European VET systems to external change (1995-2015)

  This publication is the third in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project 'The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18)'. Based on analysis of developments during the past two decades (1995-2015), the report provides important insights into the responsiveness of national VET systems, no...

  This publication is the third in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project 'The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18)'. Based on analysis of developments during the past two decades (1995-2015), the report provides important insights into the responsiveness of national VET systems, notably in relation to changes in demography, technology and the economy. Building on detailed national case studies, the report demonstrates how ‘big shocks’ (the fall of the Berlin wall, the economic crisis of 2008), national policy reforms and incremental developments over time have changed the character of this crucial part of the European education and training landscape.

  • Published: 2018-10-12
  • Corporate Author(s): Cedefop (EU body or agency)
  • Subject: education policy, Europe, labour market, teaching method, vocational education, vocational training
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  Challenges in long-term care in Europe
  A study of national policies

  In most countries, LTC for the elderly is not a distinct social policy field. LTC provisions in many countries are indeed characterised by a fragmentation of responsibilities and consequently a lack of integration between health and social aspects of LTC provision. LTC is typically funded from d...

  In most countries, LTC for the elderly is not a distinct social policy field. LTC provisions in many countries are indeed characterised by a fragmentation of responsibilities and consequently a lack of integration between health and social aspects of LTC provision. LTC is typically funded from different sources and organised at different – horizontal and vertical – levels. The health system is responsible for the care provided by health professionals, while services related to supporting the care-dependent person in the activities of daily life are usually organised by the social sector. Only some countries organise their system in a way which integrates health and social care horizontally (e.g. DK, IE, PT). In most countries, this horizontal split between the health and social sectors is accompanied by a vertical division of responsibilities, with powers attributed at different institutional levels: national, regional and local (e.g. AT, BE, BG, CH, CY, CZ, DE, EE, EL, ES, FR, HR, HU, IT, LI, LT, LV, MK, NO, PL, RO, SI, UK).

  • Published: 2018-10-02
  • Corporate Author(s): Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (European Commission)
  • Subject: EU programme, Europe, health care, health costs, health expenditure, marginalisation, organisation of health care, right to health, social policy, social situation, socially disadvantaged class, welfare
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  The intergenerational transmission of education
  Evidence from the World War II cohorts in Europe

  The negative long-term effects of World War II on those directly exposed to it are well documented, but there is no evidence whether these effects extended to subsequent generations. Our paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing the intergenerational effects of World War II in terms of educationa...

  The negative long-term effects of World War II on those directly exposed to it are well documented, but there is no evidence whether these effects extended to subsequent generations. Our paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing the intergenerational effects of World War II in terms of educational attainments. We focus on parent-children dyads in which parents were born between 1926 and 1949, and show two things. First, parents who suffered the war, that is, were exposed to major war events or personally experienced war-related hardship, ended up with less schooling than parents with similar characteristics who did not. Second, the children of parents who suffered the war have lower educational attainments than the children of parents with similar characteristics who did not suffer the war. Our reduced form results allow us to derive instrumental variables estimates of the coefficient of intergeneration transmission of education, which show that the effect of parental education is stronger for mothers than for fathers. They also show that the mother's education matters more for daughters than for sons.

  • Published: 2019-03-11
  • Corporate Author(s): Joint Research Centre (European Commission)
  • Subject: education, Europe, hunger, pension scheme, research report, war
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  Expected credit loss approaches in Europe and the United States
  Differences from a financial stability perspective : January 2019

  • Published: 2019-01-25
  • Corporate Author(s): European Systemic Risk Board
  • Subject: accounting, credit, Europe, financial institution, financial stability, public policy, United States
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  Building stock inventory to assess seismic vulnerability across Europe
  

  An inventory of exposed assets is a key component of seismic risk assessment studies, together with hazard characterisation and vulnerability assessment. Recent research has brought significant advances on hazard analysis, e.g. Woessner et al. (2015), and fragility curves, e.g. Rossetto et al. (...

  An inventory of exposed assets is a key component of seismic risk assessment studies, together with hazard characterisation and vulnerability assessment. Recent research has brought significant advances on hazard analysis, e.g. Woessner et al. (2015), and fragility curves, e.g. Rossetto et al. (2014). However, detailed and reliable information on exposed structures to be used for large-scale seismic risk assessment is still not widely available. The collection of harmonised data at large scale, such as the European one, represents one of the major challenges in seismic risk assessment studies. For instance, data regarding national housing censuses in Europe are not completely harmonised across countries and significant efforts are required to collect and process census data to be further used in seismic risk studies. Buildings exposure data for seismic risk assessment have been collected at different spatial disaggregation levels, ranging from fine spatial scale surveys, focusing for instance on specific cities around Europe, e.g. Vicente et al. (2011), or on industrial infrastructures (Sousa et al. 2017b), to coarser spatial scale inventories, as in research projects like PAGER – Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response system (Jaiswal et al. 2010) – or NERA – Network of European Research Infrastructures for Earthquake Risk Assessment and Mitigation (Crowley et al. 2012). Information on the building stock has been also collected within the framework of projects aiming at assessing the energy performance of buildings, in such cases, aggregated at much larger areas with similar climatic conditions. Another source of detailed information on the building stock, albeit not fully harmonised across countries, are the national housing censuses. A review of several data sources revealed divergences and incompatibilities among them (Tsionis 2015), which raise questions on their aptness for use in the seismic loss estimation at large regions. Frequently the inventories compiled within research projects contain data aggregated at the level of countries, which is not sufficient for seismic risk assessment. Moreover, they are inferred from a variety of sources and they do not account for the distribution of buildings in small geographical units, which is proven to influence the loss estimates. [...] The aim of this report is to inventory the housing stock in the European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) Member States, using georeferenced data, harmonised in terms of both procedures and variables collected. The harmonised database created in this study provides an overview of the vulnerability of the housing stock across Europe.

  • Published: 2019-01-03
  • Corporate Author(s): Joint Research Centre (European Commission)
  • Subject: accident prevention, building industry, environmental risk prevention, EU research policy, Europe, housing, research report, rural habitat, seismic monitoring, urban area
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  Recent changes in Europe’s cocaine market
  Results from an EMCDDA trendspotter study

  Using trendspotter methodology, this report explores signs of increasing availability and consumption of cocaine in Europe, in an effort to increase our understanding of recent changes in the cocaine market. The study investigates the consequences of these developments on acute health harms link...

  Using trendspotter methodology, this report explores signs of increasing availability and consumption of cocaine in Europe, in an effort to increase our understanding of recent changes in the cocaine market. The study investigates the consequences of these developments on acute health harms linked to cocaine and crack use and reviews the current public health responses to problems related to these drugs.

  • Published: 2018-12-17
  • Corporate Author(s): European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EU body or agency)
  • Subject: drug addiction, Europe, health risk, market, psychotropic substance, public health, report, stimulant
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  Intercalibration of the national classifications of ecological status for very large rivers in Europe
  Biological quality element : phytoplankton

  The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires the national classifications of good ecological status to be harmonised through an intercalibration exercise. In this exercise, significant differences in status classification among Member States are harmonized by comparing and, if necessary...

  The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires the national classifications of good ecological status to be harmonised through an intercalibration exercise. In this exercise, significant differences in status classification among Member States are harmonized by comparing and, if necessary, adjusting the good status boundaries of the national assessment methods. Intercalibration is performed for rivers, lakes, coastal and transitional waters, focusing on selected types of water bodies (intercalibration types), anthropogenic pressures and Biological Quality Elements. Intercalibration exercises were carried out in Geographical Intercalibration Groups - larger geographical units including Member States with similar water body types - and followed the procedure described in the WFD Common Implementation Strategy Guidance document on the intercalibration process (European Commission, 2011). The Technical reports are organized in volumes according to the water category (rivers, lakes, coastal and transitional waters), Biological Quality Element and Geographical Intercalibration group. This volume addresses the intercalibration of the Very large river Phytoplankton ecological assessment methods. Thirteen countries (Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia) participated in the intercalibration exercise and harmonised their benthic invertebrate assessment systems. The results were approved by the WG ECOSTAT and included in the EC Decision on intercalibration (European Commission, 2018). In addition, four countries (Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden) provided justification for excluding Phytoplankton BQE assessment system.

  • Published: 2018-12-14
  • Corporate Author(s): Joint Research Centre (European Commission)
  • Subject: directive (EU), ecological balance, environmental indicator, environmental monitoring, environmental standard, EU environmental policy, Europe, lake, plankton, research report, water management