Biurokratyczne załatwianie spraw

The article presents the issue of a bureaucratic disposal of matters by public administration authorities. The letter of dissatisfaction was introduced into Polish law as early as 1950. It was an expression of a negative attitude towards red tape. The prohibition of a bureaucratic disposal of matters is a guideline for the entire public sector. Bureaucracy is the negative behavior of officials: learned helplessness, routine, prejudices against applicants, assurance, conformism, and excessive formalism. The legislator’s pejorative assessment does not refer to bureaucracy itself, but to red tape as a dysfunction of bureaucracy. Red tape is the result of organizational culture. The article presents the model of Weberian bureaucracy and a critique of it. The provisions obliging officials to act in an fair, impartial, reasonable and proper manner are discussed, and the example is given of proper, open, efficient and independent European Union administration. The tool that determines bureaucracy is the document. The creation of excessive amounts of documents, as a manifestation of bureaucracy (red tape), is closely related to the development of office techniques. However, the development of information technology and the dissemination of electronic communication channels have changed the face of bureaucracy. The direct contact between an official with an applicant is changing into screen-level bureaucracy, with the claimant’s application being handled by the IT system. The official’s discretionary power has Hus been significantly reduced. The development of e-administration eliminates inappropriate actions of officials. However, a new type of bureaucracy is emerging by IT experts. Art. 227 of the Code of Administrative Proceedings can become a protective measure against theformalism of e-government.

Physician experiences of screen-level features in a prominent electronic health record: Design recommendations from a qualitative study

The goal of this qualitative study was to assess physicians’ perceptions around features of key screens within a prominent commercial EHR, and to solicit end-user recommendations for improved retrieval of high-priority clinical information. We conducted a qualitative, descriptive study of 25 physicians in a medical ICU setting. at a tertiary academic medical center. An in-depth, semi-structured interview guide was developed to elicit physician perceptions on information retrieval as well as favorable and unfavorable features of specific EHR screens. Transcripts were independently coded in a qualitative software management tool by at least two trained coders using a common code book. We successfully obtained vendor permission to map physicians perception’s on full Epic© screenshots. Among the 25 physician participants (13 female; 5 attending physicians, 9 fellows, 11 residents), the majority of participants reported experiencing challenges finding clinical information in the EHR. We present the most favorable and unfavorable screen-level features for four central EHR screens: Flowsheet, Notes/Chart Review, Results Review, and Vital Signs. We also compiled participants’ recommendations for a comprehensive EHR dashboard screen to better support clinical workflow and information retrieval in the medical ICU through User-Centered Design. ICU physicians demonstrated a mix of positive and negative attitudes toward specific screen-level features in a major vendor-based EHR system. Physician perceptions of information overload emerged as a theme across multiple EHR screens. Our findings underscore the importance of qualitative research and end-user feedback in EHR software design and interface optimization at both the vendor and institutional level.

The paratext of digital documents

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide a discussion on how to apply Genette's concept of the paratext to analyze digital documents. The article argues that the concept, despite its shortcomings, is useful because it gives us the terminology to analyze elements often ignored and overlooked.Design/methodology/approachBy taking Gérard Genette's concept of the paratext as point of departure, the paper focuses on three controversial issues in the scholarly work about paratext and digital documents: the division of paratext into peritext and epitext, the explosive growth of paratext and the question of authorization of text and paratext.FindingsQuestions related to the spatial division of the paratext into peritext and epitext, the difficulty of where to draw the line between text and paratext and the question of authorization are not new for digital documents but did already occur in the analog world. Even if many decisions like what to include and what to exclude in an analysis are left to the researcher, this does not mean that Genette's concept is unsuitable for digital documents. On the contrary, the concept gives us the terminology to analyze elements of often ignored and overlooked, also for digital documents.Research limitations/implicationsAs a scholar in the humanities the author can only relate to and therefore analyze what the author can experience and observe on screen level.Originality/valueIn providing a discussion of digital documents and some of the controversial issues discussed by other researchers, this article shows the relevance of Genette's concept, also for our work with digital documents.

Heat Exposure Information at Screen Level for an Impact-Based Forecasting and Warning Service for Heat-Wave Disasters

The importance of impact-based forecasting services, which can support decision-making, is being emphasized to reduce the damage of meteorological disasters, centered around the World Meteorological Organization. The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) began developing impact-based forecasting technology and warning services in 2018. This paper proposes statistical downscaling and bias correction methods for acquiring high-resolution meteorological data for the heat-wave impact forecast system operated by KMA. Hence, digital forecast data from KMA, with 5 km spatial resolution, were downscaled and corrected to a spatial resolution of 1 km using statistical interpolation methods. Cross-validation indicated the superior performance of the Gaussian process regression model (GPRM) technique with low root mean square error and percent bias values and high CC value. The GPRM technology had the lowest forecast error, especially during the hottest period in Korea. In addition, temperatures for land-use areas with low elevations and high activity, such as the urban, road, and agricultural areas, were high. It is essential to provide accurate heat exposure information at the screen level with high human activity. Spatiotemporally accurate heat exposure information can be used more realistically for risk management in agriculture, livestock and fishery, and for adjusting the working hours of outdoor workers in construction and shipbuilding.

Numerical experiments with a parameterization of mires in the COSMO-D2 convection permitting limited-area numerical weather prediction framework

<p>Europe - especially the northern and middle latitudes - is one of Earth’s mire-rich regions. Among the main distribution areas for mires in Central Europe the coastal region along the southeastern corner of the North Sea (Frisia) shows the highest density of mires. Despite of the important role of mires acting as a carbon sink and modifying the Bowen ratio with influence on screen level meteorological parameters their adequate representation in land-surface schemes used in numerical weather prediction and climate models is still insufficient.</p><p>With the recent version 5.06 the COSMO model (Baldauf et al., 2017) offers a parameterization of mires based on Yurova et al. (2014). In this approach the heat diffusion in the vertical domain of the soil multilayer model TERRA is considered with modified equations describing the thermal conductivity for peat with given water/ice contents. The mire hydrology is parameterized by the solution of the Richard's equation in the vertical domain extended by the formulation of a lower boundary condition as a climatological layer of permanent saturation used to simulate the water table position, in conjunction with a mire‐specific evapotranspiration and runoff parameterization.</p><p>The impact of the mire parameterization on screen level meteorological parameters and mesoscale processes was investigated in two numerical experiments with COSMO-D2 in a convection permitting limited-area numerical weather prediction (NWP) framework for summer 2018 and winter 2018/2019.</p><p>We will present results from the objective verification system and discuss the impact of geospatial physiographic data for an improved representation of mires in the NWP framework.</p>

Impact of Weak Coupling between Land and Atmosphere Data Assimilation Systems on Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Global Deterministic Prediction System

A new ensemble-based land surface data assimilation (DA) system is coupled with the atmospheric four-dimensional ensemble-variational data assimilation (4D-EnVar) system with the goal of improving the analyses within Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Global Deterministic Prediction System. Since 2001, the sequential assimilation of surface variables is used to generate the initial conditions to launch the Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) coupled forecast model. The work presented here is to replace the sequential DA with an independent surface DA system, the Canadian Land Data Assimilation System (CaLDAS) assimilating screen-level observations, and to compare assimilation experiments with CaLDAS run in uncoupled and weakly coupled modes. In the uncoupled mode, CaLDAS is used to initialize the forecast without interacting with the 4D-EnVar system. In the coupled mode, the analyses generated from CaLDAS and 4D-EnVar are used to initialize the forecast model. The analyses and forecasts from uncoupled and coupled runs are evaluated against surface and radiosonde observations over different subdomains to conclude the impact of coupling CaLDAS with 4D-EnVar. Results indicate a statistically significant reduction in bias and standard deviation at the surface for screen-level temperature and dewpoint temperature on the order of 0.1 K, and in the lower troposphere between 1000 and 500 hPa on the order of 0.1 dam for geopotential height and 0.1 K for air temperature and dewpoint depression in the coupled DA runs. The positive impact persists up to 5 days over some subdomains. It is concluded that the coupled DA approach generally performs better than the uncoupled version.

The New Stand-Alone Surface Analysis at ECMWF: Implications for Land–Atmosphere DA Coupling

This article presents the “screen-level and surface analysis only” (SSA) system at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). SSA is a simplification of the operational land–atmosphere weakly coupled data assimilation (WCDA). The goal of SSA is to provide 1) efficient research into land surface developments in NWP and 2) land reanalyses with land–atmosphere coupling. SSA maintains a coupled forecast model between assimilation cycles, but the atmospheric analysis is not performed; rather, it is forced from an archived analysis. Hence, SSA is much faster than WCDA, although it lacks feedback between the land and atmospheric analyses. A global sensitivity analysis was performed over one year to compare the WCDA and SSA systems. Prescribed proxy 2-m temperature/humidity screen-level observation errors were approximately doubled in the soil moisture data assimilation, thereby reducing the average size of the root-zone soil moisture analysis increments by about 60%. The systematic impact of these changes on the WCDA surface and near-surface atmospheric dynamics was effectively captured by SSA, although the short-term impact was underestimated. Importantly, the SSA forecast verification scores accurately reflected those of WCDA: atmospheric 1–10-day temperature/humidity forecasts were degraded in the tropics and lower midlatitudes up to about 700 hPa. The soil moisture analysis performance was not significantly impacted. These results endorse SSA as an NWP research tool and confirm the role of assimilating proxy screen-level observations in the soil moisture analysis to improve weather forecasts. Appropriate use and limitations of SSA are considered.

Renewal of aerosol data for ALADIN-HIRLAM radiation parametrizations

Radiative transfer calculations in numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate models require reliable information about aerosol concentration in the atmosphere, combined with data on aerosol optical properties. Replacement of the default input data on vertically integrated climatological aerosol optical depth at 550 nm (AOD550, Tegen climatology) with newer data, based on those available from Copernicus atmosphere monitoring service (CAMS), led to minor differences in the simulated solar irradiance and screen-level temperature in the regional climate model HCLIM-ALARO simulations over Scandinavia and in a clear-sky case study using HARMONIE-AROME NWP model over the Iberian peninsula. In the case study, replacement of the climatological AOD550 with that based on three-dimensional near-real-time aerosol mass mixing ratio resulted in a maximum reduction of the order of 150 W m−2 in the simulated local solar irradiance at noon. Corresponding maximum reduction of the screen-level temperature by almost two degrees was found. The large differences were due to a dust intrusion from Sahara, which is obviously not represented in the average climatological distribution of dust aerosol. Further studies are needed in order to introdude updated aerosol optical properties of all available aerosol types at different wavelengths, make them available for the radiation schemes of ALADIN-HIRLAM and test the impact on the predicted radiation fluxes.

Microscale Warming due to Poor Ventilation at Surface Observation Stations

Screen-level air temperature measurements at surface observation stations are influenced by local-site-scale factors. These local influences may affect global-scale climate change studies. This study investigated the influence of surface obstacles on air temperature measurements at the screen level at climate observation stations in Japan. Screen-level air temperature was measured simultaneously at two neighboring sites (<100 m apart) that differed in terms of their openness. Daytime air temperature was 0°–1°C higher at the narrower site, and theoretical analysis revealed that this warming was caused by poor ventilation. At night, poor ventilation at the narrower site caused the air temperature to be 0°–0.2°C lower, which was demonstrated experimentally and by theoretical analysis. The range of temperature changes due to site narrowing shown in this study is not negligible in climate change studies. Guidelines for site maintenance and metadata recoding were consequently proposed in terms of site openness.

Assimilation of Passive L-band Microwave Brightness Temperatures in the Canadian Land Data Assimilation System: Impacts on Short-Range Warm Season Numerical Weather Prediction

This study examines the impacts of assimilating Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) L-band brightness temperatures (TBs) on warm season short-range numerical weather prediction (NWP) forecasts. Focusing upon the summer 2015 period over North America, offline assimilation cycles are run with the Canadian Land Data Assimilation System (CaLDAS) to compare the impacts of assimilating SMAP TB versus screen-level observations to analyze soil moisture. The analyzed soil moistures are quantitatively compared against a set of in situ sparse soil moisture networks and a set of SMAP core validation sites. These surface analyses are used to initialize a series of 48-h forecasts where near-surface temperature and precipitation are evaluated against in situ observations. Assimilation of SMAP TBs leads to soil moisture that is markedly improved in terms of correlation and standard deviation of the errors (STDE) compared to the use of screen-level observations. NWP forecasts initialized with SMAP-derived soil moistures exhibit a general dry bias in 2-m dewpoint temperatures (TD2m), while displaying a relative warm bias in 2-m temperatures (TT2m), when compared to those forecasts initialized with soil moistures analyzed with screen-level temperature errors. Largest impacts with SMAP are seen for TD2m, where the use of screen-level observations leads to a daytime wet bias that is reduced with SMAP. The overall drier soil moisture leads to improved precipitation bias scores with SMAP. A notable deterioration in TD2m STDE scores was found in the SMAP experiments during the daytime over the Northern Great Plains. A reduction in the daytime TD2m wet bias was found when the observation errors for the screen-level observations were increased.