How farmers develop local ecological knowledge for on-farm tree management: The perspectives of some farming communities of Ghana

Scientific insights into what it means to manage on-farm trees by local farmers, is an essential step towards documenting local ecological knowledge for sustainable landscape management. A study was therefore conducted in the Kumawu Forest District in the Ashanti Region of Ghana to assess how farmers conceptualise on-farm tree management and develop local knowledge for it. Using a case study approach, data were collected through informal interviews and focus group discussions with 120 farmers drawn from 15 communities who were involved in the management of three cropping systems; cocoa, maize and cassava-cocoyam-plantain mix. It was observed that the farmers regard on-farm tree management as a continuous process which occurs in three phases of the farming cycle; land preparation, crop cultivation and fallow management. For each of the three phases, farmers are guided by specific principles that ensure enough light penetration in-between tree crowns in the land preparation phase, suitable spacing between trees and crops in the crop cultivation phase and adequate tree regeneration in the fallow phase. The decisions made during the selection of tree species, spacing of trees adjudged suitable for any particular cropping system and recruitment of saplings prior to the fallow phase of farming constitute tree management. Farmers develop tree management knowledge by studying the physical characteristics of species, matching them to ecological functions they could perform and how they are likely to respond to treatments meant to control or enhance their development. Species are then subjected to trial and recommended or otherwise.     

Social representations of governance for change towards sustainability: perspectives of sustainability advocates

There is a substantial body of literature on public understandings of large-scale ‘environmental’ phenomena such as climate change and resource degradation. At the same time, political science and economics analyse the governance arrangements to deal with such issues. These realms of research rarely meet: there has been little research into people’s understandings of the governance of environmental change. This study adds a psychological perspective to governance research by investigating social representations of governance that promotes societal change towards sustainability, and related practices. It examines data from qualitative interviews with sustainability-interested people in seven European countries (n = 105). The analysis identified building blocks of representations suitable as an analytical framework for future research on governance representations. The diversity of their content reflected a range of pathways to societal change. Representations often seemed to have a creative function as a guiding vision for individuals’ own practices, but their wider transformative potential was constrained.     

Understanding the distribution of bushmeat hunting effort across landscapes by testing hypotheses about human foraging

Mitigating the massive impacts of defaunation on natural ecosystems requires understanding and predicting hunting effort across the landscape. But such understanding has been hindered by the difficulty of assessing the movement patterns of hunters in thick forests and across complex terrain. We statistically tested hypotheses about the spatial distribution of hunting with circuit theory and structural equation models. We used a data set of >7000 known kill locations in Guyana and hunter movement models to test these methods. Comparing models with different resistance layers (i.e., different estimates of how terrain and land cover influence human movement speed) showed that rivers, on average, limited movement rather than serving as transport arteries. Moreover, far more kills occurred close to villages than in remote areas. This, combined with the lack of support for structural equation models that included latent terms for prey depletion driven by past overhunting, suggests that kill locations in this system tended to be driven by where hunters were currently foraging rather than by influences of historical harvest. These analyses are generalizable to a variety of ecosystems, species, and data types, providing a powerful way of enhancing maps and predictions of hunting effort across complex landscapes.     

Assessment of the effect of technical and management characteristics on the frequency of release from piping: An application to a gas storage facility

The assessment of the frequencies of release from piping due to losses of containment is an essential step in the preparing Safety Reports, drawn up as required by the so-called “Seveso” Directive. These are usually calculated starting from the frequencies of random rupture included in international databases and are not plant-specific, furthermore, the quantification of the effect of the safety management system of the facility is not easy. A simple and flexible approach quantifying technical and management characteristics of the plant has been proposed by Milazzo and co-workers in 2010; it is based on the modification of the frequency taken from literature, through the use of the percentages of failure causes actually possible in that plant, and the judgment about their management. The data about the failure causes are taken from the literature and modified by using corrective factors to adapt them to the industrial context. To make possible the application of the method to a large number of major-hazard industry types, some aspects of the approach needed to be improved; these have been identified during a development project coordinated by RINA Consulting, on behalf of Saipem, with the collaboration of the University of Messina. The improvement of the approach focused on two main points, the development of a method to calculate the corrective factors for the failure causes associated with corrosion and erosion phenomena and the strengthening of the methodology for the formulation of the judgment about the safety management. This paper illustrates the fully improved method, as well as an application to a typical gas storage plant.     

危险品道路运输风险分级指数法研究

危险品道路运输过程风险影响因素多,随机性和不确定性大,定量风险评价比较复杂,至今没有统一的风险评估模型.为了有效预防危险品运输事故和进行快速风险评估,基于运输危险品本身特性和相关的风险影响因素探讨了运输危险品现实风险分级指数法.该方法由危险品风险分级指数、路线影响因素和安全措施补偿因子3部分构成.危险品风险分级指数由危险品加权平均风险等级和运输危险品量、泄漏点与居民区距离以及危险品扩散因子等级确定.危险品加权平均风险等级涉及其健康危害性、可燃性、化学反应活性以及特殊危险性(氧化性和与水反应性)等级的确定.路线影响因素包含运输道路特征、气象条件、交通状况和影响人员分布4类.安全措施补偿因子为车辆、设备、容器、包装因子,人员素质因子和安全管理因子3类.该方法可对运输危险品的潜在风险进行快速分级,有利于采取有效的安全预防和控制措施,降低运输事故概率和沿线影响人员风险.     

城市交通与环境可持续发展指标体系评估系统研究——上海案例应用

可持续发展是一种将社会发展概念从单纯经济增长拓展到经济、社会、环境协调发展的城市发展新模式.交通环境的可持续发展在整个发展体系中占据着重要地位.本文针对目前大城市普遍面临的交通环境压力和经济、交通与环境系统的复杂性,通过构建经济-交通-环境间的压力与响应关系,建立了可用于"回顾过去、解析现状、瞻望未来"的城市交通环境可持续发展指标体系.采用隶属函数对单项指标进行标准化处理,对交通环境可持续发展综合指数的评价,采用层次分析法确定各指标的权重.采用Visual Basic 6.0及Office的Access 2000,开发了交通环境可持续发展指标体系评估系统,并以上海市为案例进行了研究.本系统的开发可为城市交通环境可持续状况评价及发展对策的制定提供技术支持.     

城市天然气工程环境风险评价

结合广州、深圳、东莞、佛山等城市的天然气工程情况,对城市天然气工程的环境风险评价进行了讨论,并采用穆尔哈斯(Moorhowse)和普里恰特(Prichard)提出的热辐射预测模式和爆炸冲击波预测模式对城市天然气工程进行了风险评价.结果表明,如果发生天然气泄漏并引起火灾,假设在10 min以内,城市门站、调压站和城市高中压管道的火球对建筑物和设备的严重损害范围( A 级)最远距离分别为35.8 m、18.0 m和28.7 m,爆炸冲击波严重损害范围( C1 级)分别为距事故处54.8 m、27.8 m和44.4 m.最后从城市门站、调压站选址及输气管道选线、安全防范距离、作业过程中的风险控制与管理以及事故应急对策四方面提出了风险事故的防范措施与对策.     

基于SPA模型的煤矿瓦斯危险源风险评价

根据危险源理论和三类危险源的观点,采用集对分析(SPA)方法,进行了安全一事故集对的同异反分析,指出应采取措施控制不确定项,尤其要控制其中的第二类、第三类危险源才能使系统趋于安全状态;同时建立了煤矿瓦斯危险源风险评价模型,通过联系度的计算得出煤矿瓦斯的安全等级.研究表明,将集对分析方法应用于某煤矿瓦斯危险源风险评价,计算简单,结果较为精确、可靠,为不确定系统的评价提供了一条新思路.     

Dynamic-risk-informed safety barrier management: An application to cost-effective barrier optimization based on data from multiple sources

An integrated approach for performance assessment and management of safety barriers in a systemic manner is needed concerning the prevention and mitigation of major accidents in chemical process industries. Particularly, the effects of safety barriers on system risk reduction should be assessed in a dynamic manner to support the decision-making on safety barrier establishments and improvements. A simulation approach, named Simulink-based Safety Barrier Modeling (SSBM), is proposed in this paper to conduct dynamic risk assessment of chemical facilities with the consideration of the degradation of safety barriers. The main functional features of the SSBM include i) the basic model structures of SSBM can be determined based on bow-tie diagrams, ii) multiple data (periodic proof test data, continuous condition-monitoring data, and accident precursor data) may be combined to update barrier failure probabilities and initiating event probabilities, iii) SSBM is able to handle uncertainty propagation in probabilistic risk assessment by using Monte Carlo simulations, and iv) cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and optimization algorithms are integrated to support the decision-making on safety barrier establishments and improvements. An illustrative case study is demonstrated to show the procedures of applying the SSBM on dynamic risk-informed safety barrier management and validate the feasibility of implementing the SSBM for cost-effective safety barrier optimization.     

煤矿岗前人员不安全状态智能检测系统研究*—以红柳林煤矿为例

为从根本上降低煤矿从业人员实施不安全行为的概率,在充分考虑煤矿从业人员不安全个体状态是诱发其不安全行为的主要原因的基础上,设计开发一套矿工不安全状态智能检测系统。首先,对2007—2022年期间各高危行业安全事故调查报告和专家研究进行归纳,总结得出煤矿从业人员不安全状态的影响因素,构建包括生理状态、心理状态以及个体能力状态在内的3个一级指标和15个二级指标体系;其次,通过相应的表征模型对不安全状态影响因素进行深入剖析;最后,基于构建的从业人员不安全状态倾向数据库,建立煤矿岗前不安全状态智能检测系统。研究结果表明:在下井工作前对从业人员个体状态进行智能检测,能够实现矿工不安全状态“早发现、早干预”,能够有效地降低人因事故发生率,研究结果对煤炭行业安全管理具有重要的参考价值。