Flexibility in Water Resources Management: Review of Concepts and Development of Assessment Measures for Flood Management Systems

Discussions around adapting water management systems to climate change often express the need to increase system flexibility. Yet despite the frequent use of the term flexibility, very little work has examined what exactly it means to have a flexible water management system, what features of a system make it more flexible than another system, or when the costs to implement flexible options outweigh the benefits gained from increased flexibility. To define and operationalize the concept of flexibility in the field of water resources management, this article reviews and analyzes concepts of flexibility from the fields of information technology, manufacturing, management, and adaptive social‐ecological systems. We identify five characteristics of flexible water resources systems, namely: slack, redundancy, connectivity, compatibility/coordination, and adjustability. We then operationalize the assessment of flexibility for flood management systems by proposing original flexibility metrics and discussing their application. We conclude with a discussion on the tradeoffs of increasing flexibility.     

ACP1000堆型RVD系统中不同核安全级别管道的应力分析与评定

目的保证RVD系统管道的应力评定能够满足RCCM规范要求,保证RVD系统能够正常运行。方法首先探究弯头的柔性系数对不同核安全级别管道在应力计算上的影响;其次,借助管道分析软件PIPESTRESS对RVD管道系统最初版本的布置设计进行分析与评定,并分析应力过大的原因。考虑到柔性系数的影响,对不同核安全级别管道布置采取不同的调整方法,降低管道在各个工况下的应力。结果经过修改后的RVD系统管道应力满足RCCM规范要求。结论通过对RVD系统管道的应力的分析与评定,掌握了此类问题的解决方法,总结了设计中应注意的问题,为核电站中的管道设计提供参考。     

An economic evaluation framework for land-use-based conservation policy instruments in a changing climate

Climate change is a key threat to biodiversity. To conserve species under climate change, ecologists and conservation scientists suggest 2 main conservation strategies regarding land use: supporting species’ range shifts to enable it to follow its climatic requirements by creating migration pathways, such as corridors and stepping stones, and conserving climate refugia (i.e., existing habitat areas that are somewhat buffered from climate change). The policy instruments that could be used to implement these conservation strategies have yet to be evaluated comprehensively from an economic perspective. The economic analyses of environmental policy instruments are often based on ecological effectiveness and cost-effectiveness criteria. We adapted these general criteria to evaluate policy instruments for species’ conservation under climate change and applied them to a conceptual analysis of land purchases, offsets, and conservation payments. Depending on whether the strategy supporting species’ range shifts or conserving climate refugia is selected, the evaluation of the policy instruments differed substantially. For example, to ensure ecological effectiveness, habitat persistence over time was especially important for climate refugia and was best achieved by a land-purchase policy instrument. In contrast, for the strategy supporting range shifts to be ecologically effective, a high degree of flexibility in the location of conserved sites was required to ensure that new habitat sites can be created in the species’ new range. Offset programs were best suited for that because the location of conservation sites can be chosen comparatively freely and may also be adapted over time.     

国家储备物资的属性功能及其作用价值

从全球化、国情和宏观经济运行的现代视角对国家储备物资的实质属性及其功能特征进行深入和系统分析的基础上,揭示了国家储备物资在国家发展、社会稳定和经济建设等方面的必要性及其投入使用的作用原理,对国家储备物资参与国家经济、安全和社会生活的现代价值及其意义进行了研究。研究证明,在应对突发性事件或不确定因素所造成的巨灾和风险时,国家储备物资因其属性功能而不仅具有比较优势,更具有绝对优势;它们的投入和使用对国家政治和经济的稳定,保证民生和国家安全等方面,可以发挥刚性作用与弹性作用。这种功能性的优势及其作用是市场机制不具备的效能,是社会其他资源或力量无法替代的,在经济全球化和现代化发展中,它们是国家实力与核心竞争力的重要成分。     

基于均匀实验设计的曝气池柔性设计方法

为了解决污水处理过程由于水质水量等不确定性参数偏离设计值所引发的问题,提出了一种基于均匀实验设计的曝气池柔性设计方法。该方法用均匀设计产生不确定性参数区域内具有代表性的不确定性情形,用因子设计生成应对这些情形的操作方案,在柔性瓶颈处通过直观分析寻找改进设计方案的策略。从案例研究可以看出,传统的没有系统化地考虑不确定性参数变化的设计方法,所设计的曝气池在一些不确定性情形下,可能无法正常运行,而本方法有助于避免这一缺陷。     

Interpersonal emotion regulation strategies: Enabling flexibility in high-stress work environments

While scholars have demonstrated that emotions play a central role in cognition, behavior, and decision making, most of the studies on emotions in work contexts show that emotions, or their expression, are often suppressed. We thus investigated how workers in high-stress work environments deal with emotions and remain functional by focusing on the range of extrinsic regulation strategies used by workers in these environments. Drawing from participant observations and in-depth, semistructured interviews, we show how police officers are flexible in their choices of emotion-regulation strategies and how contextual factors emerge as the crux of this process. We contribute to the understanding of regulatory flexibility—defined as the process of matching emotion regulation strategies to environmental circumstances as they unfold in real work situations—by identifying two main enabling factors: coregulation and third party interference.