Sustainable urban development focuses on enhancing urban well-being, while also balancing the demands of urban social and economic development, natural resource consumption, and environmental pollution. This work used general data envelopment analysis to assess the urban sustainability efficiency (USE) and sustainability potential (SP) in Lanzhou and Xiamen, two cities that are characteristic of urban areas in western and eastern China. The assessment indicator system included important natural and urban welfare factors as input and output indices, respectively. The results showed that overall urban sustainability efficiency increased in Lanzhou and Xiamen from 1985 to 2010, but that the sustainability of natural resources clearly decreased. The urban sustainability efficiency of Xiamen was higher than that of Lanzhou, and the sustainability potential of Xiamen was lower than that of Lanzhou; this indicates that Xiamen performed better in terms of urban sustainable development. The urban sustainability efficiency in Xiamen has increased with increasing urban population, and the rate and scale of economic development have been higher than in Lanzhou. The assessment and analysis performed in this study show that cities with different natural resources and development characteristics have different forms, patterns, and trajectories of sustainable development. 相似文献
Wind tunnel measurements of the total drag force for aligned arrays of cubes exposed to two different boundary-layer flows at three flow velocities are discussed. The drag force for eight different building packing densities λp (from 0.028 to 1) is measured with a standard load cell generating a novel dataset. Different λp are reproduced by increasing the number of buildings on the same lot area; this represents a real situation that an urban planner is faced with when a lot area of a given (fixed) size is allocated to the development of new built areas. It is assumed that the surrounding terrain is uniform and there is a transition from a given roughness (smooth) to a new roughness (rough). The approaching flow will adjust itself over the new surface within a distance that in general may be larger than the horizontal length covered by the array. We investigate the region where the flow adjustment occurs. The wide range of packing densities allowed us to analyse in detail the evolution of the drag force. The drag force increases with increasing packing densities until it reaches a maximum at an intermediate packing density (λp = 0.25 in our case) followed by a slight decrease at larger packing densities. The value of the drag force depends on the flow adjustment along the array which is evaluated by introducing the parameter “drag area” to retrieve information about the drag distribution at different λp. Results clearly suggest a change of the distribution of the drag force, which is found to be relatively uniform at low packing densities, while most of the force acts on first rows of the arrays at large packing densities. The drag area constitutes the basis for the formulation of a new adjustment length scale defined as the ratio between the volume of the air within the array and the drag area. The proposed adjustment length scale automatically takes into account the change in drag distribution along the array for a better parameterization of urban effects in dispersion models. 相似文献
A comparison between the most promising design configurations for the industrial application of gasification based, plastics-to-energy cogenerators in the 2-6 MWe range is presented. A pilot scale bubbling fluidized bed air gasifier, having a feeding capacity of 100 kg/h, provided experimental data: the syngas complete composition, the characterization of the bed material, the entrained fines collected at the cyclone and the purge material from the scrubber. Mass and energy balances and material and substance flow analyses have been therefore drawn to assess and compare design solutions utilizing two mixed plastic wastes (MPW) obtained from separate collection of plastic packaging, after different levels of pre-treatments. The related techno-economic performances have been finally estimated on the basis of the manufacturer’s specifications. The study concludes that the MPW obtained after a very simple pre-treatment and fed to a gasifier coupled with a steam turbine is the solution that currently offers the higher reliability and provides the higher internal rate of return for the investigated range of electrical energy production. 相似文献
Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This work proposed a novel mathematical framework for the sustainability assessment of sewage sludge to energy (SStE) scenarios, by resorting to fuzzy... 相似文献
Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The international community has generally recognized the key role of developing countries’ cities in reducing carbon emissions, an elemental way... 相似文献
To examine pesticide mixture toxicity to aqueous organisms, we assessed the single and combined toxicities of thiamethoxam and other four pesticides (chlorpyrifos, beta-cypermethrin, tetraconazole, and azoxystrobin) to the rare minnow (Gobiocypris rarus). Data from 96-h semi-static toxicity assays of various developmental phases (embryonic, larval, juvenile, and adult phases) showed that beta-cypermethrin, chlorpyrifos, and azoxystrobin had the highest toxicities to G. rarus, and their LC50 values ranged from 0.0031 to 0.86 mg a.i. L?1, from 0.016 to 6.38 mg a.i. L?1, and from 0.39 to 1.08 mg a.i. L?1, respectively. Tetraconazole displayed a comparatively high toxicity, and its LC50 values ranged from 3.48 to 16.73 mg a.i. L?1. By contrast, thiamethoxam exhibited the lowest toxic effect with LC50 values ranging from 37.85 to 351.9 mg a.i. L?1. Rare minnow larvae were more sensitive than embryos to all the pesticides tested. Our data showed that a pesticide mixture of thiamethoxam–tetraconazole elicited synergetic toxicity to G. rarus. Moreover, pesticide mixtures containing beta-cypermethrin in combination with chlorpyrifos or tetraconazole also had synergetic toxicities to fish. The majority of pesticides are presumed to have additive toxicity, while our data emphasized that the concurrent existence of some chemicals in the aqueous circumstance could cause synergetic toxic effect, leading to severe loss to the aqueous environments in comparison with their single toxicities. Thence, the synergetic impacts of chemical mixtures should be considered when assessing the ecological risk of chemicals.