基于复杂污染网络,优化电厂减排政策以降低心脏病住院率。
Towards Optimal Environmental Policies: Policy Learning under Arbitrary Bipartite Network Interference
- 提出Q-和A-学习方法应对跨区域污染干扰下的政策决策难题
- 在不同成本约束下可使心脏病住院率每年下降23.37至55.30例/万人年
- 适用于环境健康政策制定者及公共卫生数据科学家
空气污染对心血管疾病和死亡负担的影响已被广泛证实。针对燃煤电厂的减排干预虽有效但成本高昂,如何在现实成本约束下选择能带来最大健康效益的电厂成为挑战。主要难点在于量化特定电厂干预带来的健康收益,而这一过程受制于‘双部网络干扰’(BNI)——即干预在电厂实施,健康影响却发生在可能远距离的社区。本文提出基于Q-和A-学习的新型政策学习方法,以应对任意结构的BNI。我们推导了渐近性质,并在模拟中验证了有限样本下的有效性。将方法应用于涵盖医疗保险索赔、电厂数据和污染传输网络的综合数据集,目标是确定最优脱硫装置安装策略,以最小化缺血性心脏病(IHD)住院率。结果显示,在不同成本约束下,每年可使IHD住院率下降23.37至55.30例/10,000人年。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The substantial effect of air pollution on cardiovascular disease and mortality burdens is well-established. Emissions-reducing interventions on coal-fired power plants -- a major source of hazardous air pollution -- have proven to be an effective, but costly, strategy for reducing pollution-related health burdens. Targeting the power plants that achieve maximum health benefits while satisfying realistic cost constraints is challenging. The primary difficulty lies in quantifying the health benefits of intervening at particular plants. This is further complicated because interventions are applied on power plants, while health impacts occur in potentially distant communities, a setting known as bipartite network interference (BNI). In this paper, we introduce novel policy learning methods based on Q- and A-Learning to determine the optimal policy under arbitrary BNI. We derive asymptotic properties and demonstrate finite sample efficacy in simulations. We apply our novel methods to a comprehensive dataset of Medicare claims, power plant data, and pollution transport networks. Our goal is to determine the optimal strategy for installing power plant scrubbers to minimize ischemic heart disease (IHD) hospitalizations under various cost constraints. We find that annual IHD hospitalization rates could be reduced in a range from 23.37-55.30 per 10,000 person-years through optimal policies under different cost constraints.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。