MAKING SMARTER ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT DECISIONS1

ABSTRACT: This paper outlines a sound, practical approach for making more informed decisions about environmental policy choices. It emphasizes the importance of using a structured decision process to specify and organize values, use these values to create alternatives, and assess tradeoffs to help achieve a desired balance across key objectives. Although these decision making steps are based on common sense, they are often neglected or poorly carried out as part of the complex evaluations of natural resource options. We discuss several reasons for this frequent neglect of decision making principles and provide examples from recent water use planning projects to demonstrate some of the benefits of using a structured, decision focused approach: new and better solutions, increased and more productive participation by stakeholders, and greater defensibility and acceptance of the resource management evaluation process and its conclusions.     

INTEGRATING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPORT STREAM NATURALIZATION NEAR CHICAGO,ILLINOIS1

ABSTRACT: Many urban and suburban communities in the Midwest are seeking to establish sustainable, morphologically and hydraulically varied, yet dynamically stable fluvial systems that are capable of supporting healthy, biologically diverse aquatic ecosystems — a process known as stream naturalization. This paper describes an integrated research program that seeks to develop a scientific and technological framework to support two stream naturalization projects near Chicago, Illinois. The research program integrates theory and methods in fluvial geomorphology, aquatic ecology, hydraulic engineering and social theory. Both the conceptual and the practical challenges of that integration are discussed. Scientific and technical support emphasize the development of predictive tools to evaluate the performance of possible naturalization designs at scales most appropriate to community based projects. Social analysis focuses on place based evaluations of how communities formulate an environmental vision and then, through decision making, translate this vision into specific stream naturalization strategies. Integration of scientific and technical with social components occurs in the context of community based decision making as the predictive tools are employed by project scientists to help local communities translate their environmental visions into concrete environmental designs. Social analysis of this decision making process reveals how the interplay between the community's vision of what they want the watershed to become, and the scientific perspective on what the watershed can become to achieve the community's environmental goals, leads to the implementation of specific stream naturalization practices.     

GRAPHICALLY MODELING STAKEHOLDER VALUES1

ABSTRACT: This study was designed to give insight into the values considered in environmental policy and illustrate the respondents' personal constructions related to creating policy through the development of a graphic tool. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this study anonymously captured the intensity of values currently held by decision makers and tracked changes in values over time. Data were acquired through observations of and interviews with stakeholders in a five‐year wetland mitigation bank permitting process at the Galveston District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The study included public and private sector respondents in both governmental and nongovernmental roles. The resulting representations of professional and personal stakeholders' values can be used as a tool for improving information exchange in policy negotiation and provides insight into the complexity of individual and corporate perceptions of a policy issue.     

MULTICRITERIA PROGRAMMING OF WATER SUPPLY SYSTEMS FOR RURAL AREAS1

ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to present a multicriteria methodology for decision aid at the stage of programming a water supply system (WSS) for a rural area. The programming stage is an intermediate one between planning and designing water supply facilities, and can be decomposed into two problems: (a) setting up a priority order of water users, taking into account socio-economic criteria; and (b) choosing the best technical variant of the WSS. Among the criteria considered for the latter problem, there is a criterion of distance between the socio-economic priorities of users and the precedence orders of users according to the technical programming, which plays a coordinating role between problems (a) and (b). All steps of the presented methodology are illustrated by a real case study.     

MULTIOBJECTIVE DECISION MAKING TECHNIQUES FOR RESERVOIR OPERATION1

ABSTRACT: Six applications of multiobjective decision making techniques for finding optimal or satisfying operating rules for reservoir systems are presented. The examples include situations with hydropower vs. water supply (for irrigation), flood control vs. low flow augmentation, selection of an operating rule, low-flow vs. reliability, and low flow and recreation vs. water quality. The techniques applied include the constraint method, compromise programming, goal programming, Tchebycheff approach (max-mm), Consensus, and ELECTRE I and II.     

安全科学管理与人为失效研究——分析铁路运输中的人为失效规律

本文论述了安全科学中的人为失效理论与实践问題,即理论上研究了作为一门独立的人为安全学的基本范畴及框架,实践上分析了北京铁路分局某站近30年的事故情况,还探讨了减少人为事故对铁路安全运输的意义、作用及实施对策。     

NEW APPROACHES TO COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING IN CANADA1

ABSTRACT. In 1970, the Canadian Federal Government passed the Canada Water Act which provides for a co-operative federal-provincial approach to water resource management. The purpose of this paper is to outline our definition of comprehensive planning and the approach being taken under the new legislation. Two basic premises underly the definition. They are that resource management consists of an array of problems and that the prime function of planning is to provide information for decision making. The definition of comprehensive planning is embodied in a general statement and a set of principles. The principles define the approach that should be taken to provide adequate information for decision making in today's complex environment. A brief resume of the jurisdictions for water management in Canada leads to a discussion of a joint federal-provincial comprehensive study of the Qu'Appelle River Basin in Southern Saskatchewan. The basin and the study are described briefly. This is followed by an outline of the economic and social considerations which are being incorporated into the comprehensive planning study for the basin.     

垃圾问题的思考

垃圾在告急：垃圾的恶性累积,已成为世界性的环境灾难。对垃圾问题的哲学思考：垃圾是与人类社会同时产生,同步发展的。根据事物发展否定之否定规律,垃圾危机的产生正是对已往社会发展的一种否定。解决垃圾问题,必需树立社会全面发展观和科技全面进步观,运用法律的、经济的、行政的和道德的手段,大力发展处理垃圾的科学技术,减少垃圾的产生,并将产生的垃圾“变废为宝”,才能使社会在否定之否定的过程中持续发展。     

对灾害研究中几个问题的思考

对灾害研究中有关的几个问题进行了探讨。认为： 灾害学是最重要的自然社会科学; 人文灾害比自然灾害更具毁灭性; 研究人文灾害中的公路交通事故、核战争问题、人口问题、环境污染问题等具有重要的现实意义和深远的历史意义。