Creating affordable Internet map server applications for regional scale applications

This paper presents an overview and process for developing an Internet Map Server (IMS) application for a local volunteer watershed group using an Internal Internet Map Server (IIMS) strategy. The paper illustrates that modern GIS architectures utilizing an internal Internet map server coupled with a spatial SQL command language allow for rapid development of IMS applications. The implication of this approach means that powerful IMS applications can be rapidly and affordably developed for volunteer organizations that lack significant funds or a full time information technology staff.     

生态城市建设研究--以衢州市为例

本文以浙江省欠发达地区衢州市为例，对其生态城市建设进行研究，指出其建设生态城市的必要性、可行性，并对衢州市域土地利用的分区管治提出构想，最后提出了建设衢州生态城市相应的对策措施。     

An online water quality monitoring and management system developed for the Liming River basin in Daqing, China

This paper describes an online water quality monitoring and management system that was developed by combining a chemical oxygen demand sensor with an artificial neural network technology and a virtual instrument technique. The system was used to model the hydrological environment of the Liming River basin in Daqing City, China, in an effort to maintain the water quality in this basin at a level compatible with the status of Daqing City as a scenic resort. Operation of the system during the past 2 years has shown that an optimal allocation of water (including water released from an environmental reservoir to mitigate pollution events) could be achieved for the basin using the information gathered by the system; using mathematic models established for this system, the quantity of water released from the reservoir is adequate to improve the overall water environment. The results demonstrate that the system provides an effective approach to water quality control for environmental protection.     

Animal Rights: Autonomy and Redundancy

Even if animal liberation were to be adopted, would rights for animals be redundant – or even deleterious? Such an objection, most prominently voiced by L. W. Sumner and Paul W. Taylor, is misguided, risks an anthropocentric and anthropomorphic conception of autonomy and freedom, overly agent-centered rights conceptions, and an overlooking of the likely harmful consequences of positing rights for humans but not for nonhuman animals. The objection in question also stems from an overly pessimistic construal of autonomy-infringements thought to result from extending rights to animals, and also, of confusions that supposedly may ensue from ascribing animal rights. Whether or not a case for animal liberation and/or animal rights can cogently be made, the redundancy-or-worse objection to animal rights need pose no barrier.     

Feasibility of geographic information systems approach for natural resource management

Geographic information systems (GIS) technology is altering the work environment for planning and decision-making tasks. This article is an account of a resource application that make use of the GIS technology. It provides some cost estimates and reasons for the fairly slow development toward an integrated resource data base for environmental planning and management. It tries to identify some of the constraints of such an integrated data-base approach toward environmental assessment.     

Developing an integrative urban resilience capacity index for plan making

Urban resilience assessment can help planners understand the status of resilience in an urban system and identify needs for improving resilience capacities. The issues related to urban resilience are complex because of multiple urban system components, threats from different sources, and uncertainty of the future. Urban resilience theories have progressed to consider an urban system as an integrated complex system; however, urban resilience assessments are inconsistent and underdeveloped in assessing an integrated urban system for different threats at various uncertainties. In an effort to address this deficiency, we propose to develop an Integrative Urban Resilience Capacity Index (IURCI) for assessing urban resilience capacity for all threats. To improve the quality of urban resilience assessment, the IURCI considers urban physical form, spatial structure, preparation for future, and performance after plan implementation to measure resilience capacities of absorption, mitigation, and adaptation. It is built in a Scenario-Based Planning Support System (SB-PSS). The SB-PSS is a framework and an open system that integrates IURCI with scenario generation, modeling, and assessment to inform the public, planners, and other stakeholders about the consequences of different planning policies and to assist them make decisions for implementing a preferred scenario.     

Coefficients of pollution: Interindustry linkage and pollution in Belgium

The paper briefly develops an approach toward using pollution coefficients from one country as an expedience for applying an environmental economic analysis to a separate, but similar country for which hard data may not be available.The Coefficients are defined based upon information available from the Netherlands and the United States in combination with input-output data available for Belgium. A combination of the various data results in a crude estimate of the direct and indirect pollution generation per unit activity in different sectors on a country-wide basis.     

Optimal renewable resource management in the presence of endogenous risk of invasion

In this paper we examine the optimal management of a renewable resource that is at risk from alien species invasion. The objective of this paper is to derive implications for optimal management of a resource when options exist for both preventing the arrival of an invasive species and mitigating the impact of that arrival. Uncertainty about the timing and nature of an invasion can have important implications for the choice of management strategy, and a key feature of this analysis is an explicit treatment of that uncertainty.     

An Expert System for Waste Management

Management of hazardous waste is an increasing problem for both the companies that generate the waste and for the communities that eventually experience the consequences of the management decisions. Thus, both social and political aspects must be considered when solving these problems. It is thus important that waste management technologies are evaluated by a panel of experts with various backgrounds. The methodology for developing an expert system for waste treatment technology evaluation was discussed. An expert system was developed to select the “best” waste treatment alternatives. This expert system includes two different knowledge bases: one for the economic and technical parts of the problem and another for the social and political aspects. This expert system was developed on an IBM personal computer using Turbo Prolog™. The pulp and paper industry was selected as an example problem for developing this expert system, which system was tested using two example waste streams from the pulp and paper industry. The results agree with the current treatment facilities the companies are using.     

Procedural rationality and ethical theory

This paper is based on one given by Professor Faludi at the Conference on Planning Theory at Torino, Italy in 1986. It answers criticisms of his procedural planning theory voiced by various theorists and enjoined by the authors of the call for papers for the conference. The paper argues that the misgivings voiced by critics have their parallel in ethical theory and develops the view that procedural rationality and utilitarianism share an ethical principle. The paper concludes with a call for an end to sterile debate and an acceptance of different modes of argument.     

浅谈清洁生产审核企业后监管体系建设

清洁生产审核企业后监管体系的建立是对现有清洁生产政策法规的有利补充,是加强对企业可持续清洁生产工作管理的客观要求。本文通过对后监管体系建设的必要性及其框架内容的描述,为区域后监管体系的建成提供科学的参考和借鉴。     

A PRECIPITATION ESTIMATION TECHNIQUE FOR DEVELOPING ISOHYETS IN AN ARID AREA USING VEGETATION AND TOPOGRAPHIC PARAMETERS1

A technique is presented for developing an isohyet map for the Hualapai Valley, a closed hydrologic basin of about 315 square miles in the northwestern Great Basin in Nevada. In this basin there is practically no climatic data, and in the northwest Great Basin there are too few stations for determination of rainfall on a detailed basis. Using a vegetational typing to represent a range in elevation and precipitation, an initial mean annual rainfall is determined for selected points on a grid pattern. This rainfall is then modified by using topographic parameters of slope, orientation, exposure, and rainfall shadow effect. The resulting point determinations of mean annual rainfall are then smoothed using a trend surface analysis, and an isohyetal map is drawn from the smoothed points. The technique provides an estimated accuracy of one inch of mean annual precipitation and one mile of resolution on isohyets.     

Developing green infrastructure ‘thinking’: devising and applying an interactive group-based methodology for practitioners

Recent years have witnessed a wave of interest in the concept of green infrastructure (GI) as a means of applying an ecosystem approach to spatial planning practice; however, more limited attention has been paid to decision-making processes or tools to enhance GI within spatial plans and guidance. We address this deficit by reporting on the development and application of an interactive group-based methodology to enhance GI ‘thinking’ and interdisciplinary collaboration, drawing on the literature on the sociology of interactions. Our findings suggest that a game-based approach to GI problem-solving was successful in breaking down professional barriers by creating an informal learning arena, providing an enabling opportunity for participants to solve problems in an iterative, non-linear style to develop principles for action with transferability to ongoing plan formation. This style of problem-solving was characterised by shifting norms and routines of interaction, leading to problem re-framing and a search for alternative solutions.     

RUNOFF SIMULATION USING RADAR RAINFALL DATA1

ABSTRACT: Rainfall data products generated with the national network of WSR-88D radars are an important new data source provided by the National Weather Service. Radar-based data include rainfall depth on an hourly basis for grid cells that are nominally 4 km square. The availability of such data enables application of improved techniques for rainfall-runoff simulation. A simple quasi-distributed approach that applies a linear runoff transform to grid-ded rainfall excess has been developed. The approach is an adaptation of the Clark conceptual runoff model, which employs translation and linear storage. Data development for, and results of, an initial application to a 4160 km² watershed in the Midwestern U.S. are illustrated.     

制度与市场机制在治理污染中的作用

寻找一种既能促进经济发展又能保护环境的控制环境污染的有效途径具有十分重要的意义。新制度经济理论为环境污染的控制及其政策的制定提供了理论基础。该理论认为,当传统的管制方法不能实现资源最优配置的时候,通过界定产权和进行产权交易的方法是可以得到满意结果的。     

The Ethics and Politics of Animal Welfare in New Zealand: Broiler Chicken Production as a Case Study

The cause of poor welfare in broilers is multifactorial, but genotype is a major contributor. Modern broilers have been bred for rapid growth, and this leads to increases in lameness and ascites as the legs and hearts of the heavier birds find it difficult to cope with the extra demands placed on them. Visible lameness indicative of pain is more common in New Zealand than in Europe. The government, however, insists that New Zealand welfare standards are higher than Europe. The government also appears to have a strong antipathy to those demanding better welfare for broilers. Reasons for this antipathy and disparities between government statements and research results are discussed. Government publications reveal that animal welfare is seen as a question of image for market access and that there is little concern with animal welfare as an ethical imperative for its own sake. The Animal Welfare Act in theory makes it an offence to ill treat an animal, but in practice allows exemptions for industrial agriculture. The interests of animals may be better protected by an independent animal welfare advisory service.     

钢铁企业雨水资源的应用前景分析

钢铁企业是用水大户，节约工业新水量、降低吨钢耗新水指标已经成为钢铁企业节能减排的重要任务之一。雨水作为一种重要的淡水资源，日益受到钢铁企业的重视。开发利用雨水资源是钢铁企业摆脱有限水资源束缚、可持续发展的重要出路之一。本文从实际情况出发，对钢铁企业雨水资源应用的前景和需要解决的问题作了初步的分析。     

REAL CODED GENETIC ALGORITHM OPTIMIZATION OF LONG TERM RESERVOIR OPERATION1

ABSTRACT: An optimization and simulation model holds promise as an efficient and robust method for long term reservoir operation, an increasingly important facet of managing water resources. Recently, genetic algorithms have been demonstrated to be highly effective optimization methods. According to previous studies, a real coded genetic algorithm (RGA) has many advantages over a binary coded genetic algorithm. Accordingly, this work applies an RGA to obtain the 10‐day (the traditional period of reservoir operation in Taiwan) operating rule curves for the proposed reservoir system. The RGA is combined with an effective and flexible scheme for coding the reservoir rule curves and applied to an important reservoir in Taiwan, considering a water reservoir development scenario to the year 2021. Each rule curve is evaluated using a complex simulation model to determine a performance index for a given flow series. The process of generating and evaluating decision parameters is repeated until no further improvement in performance is obtained. Many experiments were performed to determine the suitable RGA components, including macro evolutionary (ME) selection and blend‐α crossover. Macro evolution (ME) can be applied to prevent the premature problem of the conventional selection scheme of genetic algorithm. The purpose of adjusting a of a crossover scheme is to determine the exploratory or exploitative degree of various subpopulations. The appropriate rule curve searched by an RGA can minimize the water deficit and maintain the high water level of the reservoir. The results also show that the most promising RGA for this problem consists of these revised operators significantly improves the performance of a system. It is also very efficient for optimizing other highly nonlinear systems.     

SUITABILITY ANALYSIS FOR SELECTION OF PIPELINE ROUTES1

ABSTRACT: A brief review of environmental assessment methods is presented as an introduction to a study of environmental management problems in a coastal area of southern Louisiana. The assessment method used in the study is called suitability analysis and involves the use of matrices. The matrix approach is simply a convenient method for organizing all factors representing environmental concerns in a region. The matrices proved to be very useful in defining the present state of an environmental regime and in maintaining an inventory of regional features and potential impacts. The method is described in detail and illustrated by evaluating the potential impacts of a major pipeline construction job in the area. Of major concern is the potential impact on the water resources of the region. Disruption to the natural drainage could be detremental, and affect the suitability of available water for a given use. Limitations of the method are discussed and potential areas for improvement and research are noted. Coupled with an economic assessment, the suitability analysis method should prove beneficial for selecting development sites for industries, residential areas, and other construction activities.