The AVI project: A bibliographical and archive inventory of landslides and floods in Italy

The AVI project was commissioned by the Minister of Civil Protection to the National Group for Prevention of Hydrogeologic Hazards to complete an inventory of areas historically affected by landslides and floods in Italy. More than 300 people, divided into 15 research teams and two support groups, worked for one year on the project. Twenty-two journals were systematically searched for the period 1918–1990, 350,000 newspaper issues were screened, and 39,953 articles were collected. About 150 experts on mass movement and floods were interviewed and 1482 published and unpublished technical and scientific reports were reviewed. The results of the AVI project, in spite of the limitations, represent the most comprehensive archiving of mass movement and floods ever prepared in Italy. The type and quality of the information collected and the methodologies and techniques used to make the inventory are discussed. Possible applications and future developments are also presented.     

Groundwater mapping: An analysis of the United States Hydrological Investigation Atlas Series

Groundwater mapping is a critical component of efficient water resource management today. Difficulties arise when highly specialized and complex groundwater data are collected and presented in map form. This is an analysis of the map content and its presentation in the USGS Hydrological Investigation Atlas Series. This analysis reveals the problems to be surmounted in mapping groundwater information. The technical nature of the groundwater data requires special design considerations.     

安徽嘉山台的多极距电阻率观测

利用1990年以来安徽嘉山台的多极距电阻率观测资料进行反演分析，结果显示： 嘉山台的浅层(第一层)电阻率变化幅度最大，认为是受气象和灌溉等因素的干扰； 第二层变化幅度迅速减小； 第三层变化平稳； 深层(第四层)电阻率变化幅度比二、 三层大，可能与层厚为∝有关，原因尚须进一步研究。     

Information Management System for Site Remediation Efforts

/ Environmental regulatory agencies are responsible for protecting human health and the environment in their constituencies. Their responsibilities include the identification, evaluation, and cleanup of contaminated sites. Leaking underground storage tanks (USTs) constitute a major source of subsurface and groundwater contamination. A significant portion of a regulatory body's efforts may be directed toward the management of UST-contaminated sites. In order to manage remedial sites effectively, vast quantities of information must be maintained, including analytical dataon chemical contaminants, remedial design features, and performance details. Currently, most regulatory agencies maintain such information manually. This makes it difficult to manage the data effectively. Some agencies have introduced automated record-keeping systems. However, the ad hoc approach in these endeavors makes it difficult to efficiently analyze, disseminate, and utilize the data. This paper identifies the information requirements for UST-contaminated site management at the Waste Cleanup Section of the Department of Environmental Resources Management in Dade County, Florida. It presents a viable design for an information management system to meet these requirements. The proposed solution is based on a back-end relational database management system with relevant tools for sophisticated data analysis and data mining. The database is designed with all tables in the third normal form to ensure data integrity, flexible access, and efficient query processing. In addition to all standard reports required by the agency, the system provides answers to ad hoc queries that are typically difficult to answer under the existing system. The database also serves as a repository of information for a decision support system to aid engineering design and risk analysis. The system may be integrated with a geographic information system for effective presentation and dissemination of spatial data.     

Simulation modeling and resource management

Simulation models are becoming increasingly important as tools for synthesizing and applying information in almost all aspects of land management. They are particulary valuable for predicting and comparing outcomes of alternative decisions and assumptions. Models also permit managers to consider and integrate the potential influences of a large number of variables.     

Modelling and Prediction of Diesel Engine Performance using Relevance Vector Machine

Diesel engines are being increasingly adopted by many car manufacturers today, yet no exact mathematical diesel engine model exists due to its highly nonlinear nature. In the current literature, black-box identification has been widely used for diesel engine modelling and many artificial neural network (ANN) based models have been developed. However, ANN has many drawbacks such as multiple local minima, user burden on selection of optimal network structure, large training data size, and over-fitting risk. To overcome these drawbacks, this article proposes to apply an emerging machine learning technique, relevance vector machine (RVM), to model and predict the diesel engine performance. The property of global optimal solution of RVM allows the model to be trained using only a few experimental data sets. In this study, the inputs of the model are engine speed, load, and cooling water temperature, while the output parameters are the brake-specific fuel consumption and the amount of exhaust emissions like nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide. Experimental results show that the model accuracy is satisfactory even the training data is scarce. Moreover, the model accuracy is compared with that using typical ANN. Evaluation results also show that RVM is superior to typical ANN approach.     

It’s All in the Numbers: Acreage Tallies and Environmental Program Evaluation

Increasingly, performance measurement is being used to hold federal agencies accountable, represent environmental progress, and evaluate the effectiveness of environmental programs. The need to track measurable outputs has created a tendency to present programmatic progress solely by quantifiable data, despite the inherent complexity of natural resource management. Wetlands and fire management programs are two specific environmental arenas that have come to overemphasize the tracking of acreage numbers to validate existing policy direction. In both of these arenas, we find the definition and categorization of "countable" acres to be inconsistent and unreliable. We explore this systemic flaw for both wetlands and fire programs and describe its implications for environmental policy and natural resource management more broadly. We conclude with recommendations for improved performance measurement in these arenas.     

基于环境一号卫星的四川盆地气溶胶光学厚度精细化反演

四川盆地为中国灰霾形势较为严重的区域之一,对四川盆地大气灰霾的监测具有十分重要的意义。利用环境一号卫星数据,对能表征大气污染程度的气溶胶光学厚度进行了反演。提出了用EVI植被指数判定暗像元精细化反演气溶胶光学厚度的方法,该方法能较好地去除部分大气影响,气溶胶光学厚度反演结果与CE318的气溶胶光学厚度结果相关性较高,误差较小,具有较高的精度,反演结果满足精细化要求。反演结果表明,四川盆地内有德阳、成都、眉山和乐山4个气溶胶光学厚度高值区,该高值区呈带状分布且与四川盆地的地形密切相关。     

生物阳极及其反转为生物阴极降解氯霉素

为了探讨生物阳极能否降解氯霉素以及生物阳极反转为生物阴极后能否替代生物阴极,通过驯化生物阳极降解氯霉素和生物阳极反转为生物阴极的实验,表明生物阳极经过长期氯霉素浓度梯度增加(5~80 mg·L-1)的驯化,具有较好产电能力的同时,对氯霉素也具有一定的降解能力(k=0.098 5).生物阳极反转为生物阴极后并将电位恒定在-0.40 V vs.SHE时,该生物阴极相对于反转前生物阳极的电位(-0.20 V vs.SHE)有了明显的降低,导致微生物活性受到一定的影响,但阴极生物膜仍具有较强的催化降解氯霉素的能力,其还原降解速率常数k为0.264 3,明显高于非生物阴极对照(k=0.160 9).生物阳极反转生物阴极的模式不仅实现了氯霉素的硝基还原,而且发生了芳香胺产物侧链的完全脱氯和羰基还原反应.