Nest-building by crested tit Parus cristatus males: an analysis of costs and benefits

In a population of crested tits in Belgium, one out of three breeding males participated in nest-building. Since variation in the amount of nest-building among 11 building males was low, analysis of male nest-building allowed a logistic regression design. The probability of building increased with male condition and for late nests. The effect of male condition decreased with date, and date was the only factor predicting nest-building for repeat broods. The effect of male condition on nest-building suggests that building entails important costs for males. Based on correlative data, we argue that building by males shortens the interval between the start of nest-building and the onset of egg-laying by about 5 days. Since clutch size, incubation and nestling time did not differ between early and late broods, male nest-building apparently affects fledging date. Since early fledgers (early dispersers) are more likely to settle in future winter flocks, building behaviour by crested tit males should be favoured by natural selection. So far, male nest-building in hole-breeding birds might have been overlooked due to the widespread use of artificial nest-boxes in behavioural studies.     

关于安全投资效益目标函数的建立和优化

通过对安全投资与事故经济损失的规律性的分析研究，确立安全投资与经济效益的内在关系，进一步探索在我国现有财力和安全水平的基础上，找准安全投资的投向，优化安全投资的合理分配，从而实现最大限度地提高企业安全生产水平和安全投资效益。为政府部门或企业提供一套经过优化、科学合理、操作性又比较强的安全投资方案，供各级领导进行安全决策，实现本部门、本单位的安全投资计划时参考     

Wellhead treatment costs for groundwater contaminated with pesticides: A preliminary analysis for pineapple in Hawaii

In Hawaii, trace concentrations of pesticides used in the production of pineapple were found in the groundwater supplies of Mililani Town in the Pearl Harbor Basin on the island of Oahu. Groundwater serves as the major source of drinking water and residents pay for wellhead treatment of the contaminated water, via their monthly water bill. The agricultural chemical users within the Pearl Harbor Basin do not include these wellhead treatment costs in their production costs. The agricultural industry benefits from using pesticides but does not pay the entire societal cost of using these chemicals. In this study we evaluate the specific financial cost of wellhead treatment, and not the economic value of groundwater. While wellhead treatment costs could conceivably be shared by several parties, this study focuses on the financial impact of the pineapple industry alone. This study factors annual wellhead treatment costs into annual pineapple production costs to measure the effect on annual financial return from pineapple production. Wellhead treatment costs are calculated from the existing granulated activated carbon (GAC) water treatment facility for Millilani Wells I and II. Pineapple production costs are estimated from previous cost of production studies. The inclusion of wellhead treatment costs produces different production-cost results, depending on the scale of analysis. At the local scale, the Mililani wellhead treatment costs can be factored into the production costs of the pineapple fields, which were probably responsible for contamination of the Mililani Wells, without causing a deficit in economic return. At the larger regional scale, however, the return from all of the pineapple grown in the Pearl Harbor Basin can not sustain the cost of wellhead treatmentfor the entire water supply of the basin. Recommendations point to the prevention of groundwater contamination as more cost-effective measure than wellhead treatment.     

对某煤矿29年防尘投入的成本效益分析报告

从卫生经济学角度出发,对山东某煤矿就尘肺病所造成经济损失进行了调查分析,采用类回顾性群组对比法,分析、评价了29年来(1962—1990年)该矿采取防尘措施所取得的经济效益,为进一步开展预防尘肺病的卫生经济学研究提供科学依据。     

Public reaction to the risks of energy technology

Implicit in every government decision on energy technology is a trade-off of a certain amount of risk in return for societal benefits. As a result of growing public concern over such risks, environmental analysts are increasingly being requested not only to describe potential adverse consequences but also to quantify their probability. However, this task is frustrated not only by inadequate experience with, and incomplete knowledge of, the causality of environmental impacts, but also by a disparity between individual and societal views of risk. While the societal view is based on objective risk functions andnet societal benefit, individuals tend to rely on subjective judgment, and consider the distribution as well as the amount of benefit. Thus, environmental risk assessments, produced by analysts on behalf of society as a whole, are likely to be quite speculative, and are unlikely to be reliable indicators of the acceptability of risk to the public.     

Applying integrated assessment methodologies to air quality plans: Two European cases

Air pollution Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) can be used for determining how emissions should be reduced to improve air quality and to protect human health in a cost-efficient way. The application of IAM is also useful to spread information to the general public and to explain the effectiveness of proposed Air Quality Plans. In this paper, the application of the RIAT+ system to determine suitable abatement measures to improve the air quality at a regional/local level is presented for two European cases: the Brussels Capital Region (Belgium) and the Porto Urban Area (Portugal). Both regions are affected with PM10 or NO₂ concentrations that exceed the limit values specified by the European Union legislation. To properly assess air quality abatement measures a surrogate model was used, allowing the implementation of an efficient optimization procedure. This model is derived in both cases through a set of simulations performed using a Chemistry Transport Model fed with different emission reduction scenarios. In addition, internal costs (due to the implementation of emission reduction measures) and external costs (due to population exposure to air pollutant concentrations) of policy options were considered. The application of this integrated assessment modelling system in scenario (Brussels case) and optimization (Porto) modes contributes to identifying some advantages and limitations of these two approaches and also provides some guidance when urban air quality has to be assessed.     

Managing a forgotten greenhouse gas under existing U.S. law: An interdisciplinary analysis

The United States’ legal strategy for addressing climate change in recent years has relied on authority from existing legislation. This has led to measures on a number of different greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, methane and hydrofluorocarbons. However, one greenhouse gas has been largely forgotten: nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is the third most abundantly emitted greenhouse gas in the U.S. and worldwide, as well as the largest remaining threat to the stratospheric ozone layer. In addition, the nitrogen atoms in nitrous oxide are part of the highly fluid nitrogen cycle where nitrogen atoms transform readily among different chemical forms, each with a unique environmental and human health impact – a process known as the nitrogen cascade. While the science of the nitrogen cascade has been explored for over a decade, there has been little work on the legal implications of this phenomenon. And yet the nitrogen cascade expands the legal options available for controlling nitrous oxide. This paper studies these options in a U.S. context and explores the environmental and economic impacts of enacting them. We determine that the Clean Air Act, and in particular its broad authority for controlling ozone depleting substances, is the most promising legal pathway for regulating nitrous oxide across all major sources. Invoking such authority could generate significant climate and stratospheric ozone benefits over 2015–2030, equivalent to taking 12 million cars permanently off the road, and 100 million chlorofluorocarbon-laden refrigerators out of service. The economic benefits could sum to over $700 billion over 2015–2030, with every $1.00 spent on abating emissions leading to $4.10 in societal benefits. The bulk of these benefits would come from reductions in other forms of nitrogen pollution such as ammonia and nitrate, highlighting the important and multiple co-benefits that could be achieved by abating nitrous oxide emissions. With the Paris Climate Agreement calling for limiting global temperature increases to “well below” two degrees Celsius, all mitigation opportunities across all sectors need to be considered. This paper suggests that nitrous oxide warrants more attention from policy-makers in the U.S. and around the world.     

Multi-criteria decision-making considering risk and uncertainty in physical asset management

In this work we present a method for risk-informed decision-making in the physical asset management context whereby risk evaluation and cost-benefit analysis are considered in a common framework. The methodology uses quantitative risk measures to prioritize projects based on a combination of risk tolerance criteria, cost-benefit analysis and uncertainty reduction metrics. There is a need in the risk and asset management literature for a unified framework through which quantitative risk can be evaluated against tolerability criteria and trade-off decisions can be made between risk treatment options. The methodology uses quantitative risk measures for loss of life, loss of production and loss of property. A risk matrix is used to classify risk as intolerable, As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP) or broadly tolerable. Risks in the intolerable and ALARP region require risk treatment, and risk treatment options are generated. Risk reduction benefit of the treatment options is quantified, and cost-benefit analysis is performed using discounted cashflow analysis. The Analytic Hierarchy Process is used to derive weights for prioritization criteria based on decision-maker preferences. The weights, along with prioritization criteria for risk reduction, tolerance criteria and project cost, are used to prioritize projects using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution. The usefulness of the methodology for improved decision-making is illustrated using a numerical example.     

Techno-economic characteristics of wastewater treatment plants retrofitted from the conventional activated sludge process to the membrane bioreactor process

• Retrofitting from CAS to MBR increased effluent quality and environmental benefits. • Retrofitting from CAS to MBR increased energy consumption but not operating cost. • Retrofitting from CAS to MBR increased the net profit and cost efficiency. • The advantage of MBR is related to the adopted effluent standard. • The techno-economy of MBR improves with stricter effluent standards. While a growing number of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are being retrofitted from the conventional activated sludge (CAS) process to the membrane bioreactor (MBR) process, the debate on the techno-economy of MBR vs. CAS has continued and calls for a thorough assessment based on techno-economic valuation. In this study, we analyzed the operating data of 20 large-scale WWTPs (capacity≥10000 m³/d) and compared their techno-economy before and after the retrofitting from CAS to MBR. Through cost-benefit analysis, we evaluated the net profit by subtracting the operating cost from the environmental benefit (estimated by the shadow price of pollutant removal and water reclamation). After the retrofitting, the removal rate of pollutants increased (e.g., from 89.0% to 93.3% on average for NH₃-N), the average energy consumption increased from 0.40 to 0.57 kWh/m³, but the operating cost did not increase significantly. The average marginal environmental benefit increased remarkably (from 0.47 to 0.66 CNY/g for NH₃-N removal), leading to an increase in the average net profit from 19.4 to 24.4 CNY/m³. We further scored the technical efficiencies via data envelopment analysis based on non-radial directional distance functions. After the retrofitting, the relative cost efficiency increased from 0.70 to 0.73 (the theoretical maximum is 1), while the relative energy efficiency did not change significantly. The techno-economy is closely related to the effluent standard adopted, particularly when truncating the extra benefit of pollutant removal beyond the standard in economic modeling. The modeling results suggested that MBR is more profitable than CAS given stricter effluent standards.     

Project appraisal and planning for overdeveloped countries: I. The costing of nonrenewable resources

In cost-benefit analysis, natural resources, like other factors of production, should be costed as a mixture of marginal social cost of exploiting additional resources and lost marginal social benefit of forgone alternative uses, according to the way in which extra resources are made available to a project. For a nonrenewable resource, changes in future marginal social cost and marginal social benefit are likely to add significantly to the immediate elements of cost, as successively less tractable resource stocks are exploited. Of the several reasons given for ignoring these future costs, the most plausible is that technological advance justifies a heavy discount on the future. However, neither historical nor logical arguments demonstrate the inevitability of efficacious technological advance.