Performance evaluation of integrated resilience engineering factors by data envelopment analysis: The case of a petrochemical plant

Petrochemical units are potentially prone to incidents that have catastrophic consequences such as explosion, leakage of toxic materials, and the stoppage of the production process. Resilience engineering (RE) is a new method that can control incidents and limit their consequences. It includes top-level commitment, reporting culture, learning, awareness, preparedness, and flexibility. However, this study introduces a new concept of RE (referred to as integrated RE or IRE) which includes the above factors in addition to self-organization, teamwork, redundancy and fault-tolerant. This study evaluates performance of IRE in a petrochemical plant through considering the obtained data from questionnaires and data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Moreover, the performance of RE and the new IRE are compared and discussed. The results show that although there is a strong direct correlation between the DEA results in two frameworks, the mean scores of efficiency in IRE is slightly higher than RE. This is the first study that introduces an integrated approach for RE. In addition, this study is amongst the first ones that examine the behavior of resilience engineering by DEA. Moreover, the superiority of IRE is shown through robust statistical analysis.     

上海市浦东开发区的淡水藻类生态调查

本文通过一年的淡水藻类生态调查,用多样性和重现性指数,计算了浦东开发区川扬河和浦东运河若干断面的藻类群落数据。结果表明,有两个断面重污染,一个轻污染,其余符合三级国标。Wilhm污染分级显示,在轻度污染水域,多样性指数与污染无明显相关性。     

Cost effective alternative in meeting the required Safety Integrity Level (SIL)

Demonstrating process safety has always been one of the paramount concerns of Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) companies in the industrial sector, especially with the development of stringent standards such as IEC-61508 and IEC-61511. One of the means of process safety demonstration is through Safety Integrity Level (SIL) Verification. In some cases, SIL verification results show that several Safety Instrumented Functions (SIFs) do not meet their required SIL; and one of the actions is to add new SIF components. However, with the addition of new components comes a change order, which eventually leads to added cost and time overruns for design and construction projects; and in some instances, introduces additional risks to the system. This paper presents a case study based on the SIL verification report of a design and construction project. The scenario of interest involves the over-pressurization in the High Pressure (HP) Flare Knock-Out (KO) Drum which activates a SIF that will close two Shutdown Valves (SDVs), preventing added pressure to be delivered to the KO Drum. Seeing as two SDVs in a 2oo2 configuration need to be closed, the SIF was not able to meet its target failure measure of SIL 2. Three cases were set, in order to meet the required SIL. The first one involves adding new SDVs; the second case made use of upstream existing SDVs, while the third one is similar with the second but differs in configuration of the SDVs. SIL verification was performed for all three cases through the Fault Tree Analysis modeling technique. Results of this study suggest that using existing instruments can be a cost effective way of meeting the required SIL, which eliminates all the hassle and potential risk introduced when bringing in new instruments to the design.     

Positive long-term effect of mulching on species and functional trait diversity in a nutrient-poor mountain meadow in Central Europe

Oligotrophic mountain meadows are threatened biodiversity hotspots throughout Europe. The traditional summer hay-making followed by autumn grazing is no longer economic and question is whether alternative managements can maintain both plant species and functional diversity typical of these habitats. In the Bohemian Forest Mts., we applied three treatments (mowing once a year - i.e., cutting and removing the biomass, mulching once a year - cutting and leaving the crushed biomass to decompose in situ, fallowing - no cutting) in order to assess temporal changes in meadow vegetation, plant trait composition and biomass production in a 13-year experiment. We recorded for each species twenty-five traits as to be most informative of plant strategies related to growth, resource acquisition and carbon-water economy. We compared different components of trait composition (community averages that mostly reflect traits of dominant species vs. the Rao index of functional diversity that reflects trait dissimilarity among species) and their impact on biomass production. We show that mulching promotes species and functional diversity by facilitating heliophilous forbs and legumes with more acquisitive strategies in resource use and release, e.g., higher foliar N and P content. This occurs at the expense of tall grasses (with resource-retentive strategies, e.g., high leaf dry matter content) which dominate the mown and fallow plots. The divergence in most quantitative traits indicates that niche complementarity is the dominant assembly process in mulched plots, which can prevent competitive exclusion and enable species coexistence. The divergent development was detected only after 5-6 years. This slow floristic and functional response is caused by acidity of soil and severe mountain climate that preclude rapid responses of vegetation to land-use changes. We conclude that mulching represents a good compromise maintaining both plant species and functional diversity as well as a relatively high biomass production. Mowing without grazing leads to gradual nutrient loss and thus reduces the productivity and diversity in these oligotrophic ecosystems. Fallowing causes gradual loss in diversity by increased grass competition and litter accumulation.     

Trophic field overlap: A new approach to quantify keystone species

It is a current challenge to better understand the relative importance of species in ecosystems, and the network perspective is able to offer quantitative tools for this. It is plausible to assume, in general, that well-linked species, being key interactors, are also more important for the community. Recently a number of methods have been suggested for quantifying the network position of species in ecological networks (like the topological importance metric, TI). Most of them are based on node centrality indices and it may happen that the two most important species in a food web have very similar interaction structure and they can essentially replace each other if one becomes extinct. For conservation considerations it is a challenge to identify species that are richly connected and, at the same time, have a relatively unique and irreplaceable interaction pattern. We present a new method and illustrate our approach by using the Kuosheng Bay trophic network in Taiwan. The new method is based on the interaction matrix, where the strength of the interaction between nodes i and j depends only on topology. By defining a threshold separating weak and strong interactors, we define the effective range of interactions for each graph node. If the overlaps between pairs of these ranges are quantified, we gain a metric expressing how unique is the interaction pattern of a focal node (TO). The combination of centrality (TI) and uniqueness (TO) is called topological functionality (TF). We compare the nodal importance rank provided by this metric to others based on a variety of centrality measures. The main conclusion is that shrimps seem to have the most unique interaction pattern despite that their structural importance has been underestimated by all conventional centrality indices. Also, our network analysis suggests that fisheries disturb the ecosystem in a more critical network position than the impingement by the local power plant.     

Spatial Patterns of Macrobenthic Communities in Shallow-Water Tidal Embayments and Their Association with Environmental Factors

This study examines the distribution, composition, and structure of benthic communities in nine shallow-water semienclosed embayments on Cape Cod, southeastern Massachusetts. The spatial patterns were used to associate benthic characteristics with local environmental factors. Field data from multiple years were collected to measure macrofaunal abundance, community composition, and environmental characteristics. Multivariate statistics were used to analyze the spatial variations of species composition and the abundance of benthic macrofauna. Canonical ordination, specifically redundancy analysis, was used to determine the relative importance of the environmental factors (nutrients and habitat factors) being studied. The analyses demonstrate that the benthic communities in the shallow tidal embayments are clearly clustered in association with the local environments. Species composition and community structure of the benthic macrofauna are significantly correlated with water column parameters, especially with phytoplankton biomass, total nitrogen, and dissolved oxygen.     

Spatial characteristics analysis by PCR-DGGE for bacterial communities in surface sediments of Tangxi River,Hefei City北大核心CSCD

Microbes play an important role in material circulation and pollutant release in urban sediments, and its community structure can provide an important basis for evaluating the pollution load and ecosystem health of an urban river. In this study, bacterial communities in sediments from different locations of Tangxi River in Anhui Province were analyzed and compared, with an objective of evaluating the effects of aquatic environment on spatial characteristics of bacterial communities and the feasibility of using bacterial community composition as an indicator of urban river health. PCR-DGGE was applied to analyze the bacterial communities; fifteen major bands of 16S rDNA genes fragments from DGGE profiles of sediment samples were further eluted from gel, reamplified and sequenced. The sequences of these fragments were compared with the database in GenBank (NCBI). The collected samples were clustered based on UPGM Aanalysis. In addition, relationships between bacterial communities and environmental factors were analyzed by Monte Carlo test and redundancy analysis (RDA). The DGGE profiles indicated that upstream surface sediments had about 30 bands, but the differences in brightness were not significant. Although midstream surface sediments had only 18 bands on average, the brightness of some bands was relatively high, indicating that some dominant species of bacteria existed in these sediments. The amounts of bands in downstream sediments were between those of upstream and midstream, with some bands of high brightness. The NCBI comparison results showed that ten sequences shared 98-100% homology with known sequences, one with 97%, and the other four with uncultured bacteria. Shannon index (H) of bacterial diversity from upstream surface sediments was 3.31 on average, which was significantly (P < 0.05) higher than that of midstream surface sediments, and slightly higher than that of downstream surface sediments. UPGMA results showed both the distribution of bacteria communities and the diversity were strongly related with the sampling locations (Eigenvalue = 0.188, P = 0.134). Monte Carlo test and RDA analysis showed that the ion exchangeable form of nitrogen (IEF-N) was the main factor influencing the spatial characteristics of bacterial communities in the sediments. The aquatic plants had a significant effect on the richness of bacterial communities in the sediments, and the effectiveness of plant species was more notable than that of the vegetation coverage. The above results indicated that bacterial community structure and diversity in the surface sediments can well reflect the degree of urbanization development and effectiveness of ecological restoration in Tangxi River region.     

Risk-based shutdown management of LNG units

Global demand for natural gas may double by 2030, with Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) growing perhaps fivefold - driven by continued cost reduction. Propane Pre-cooled Mixed Refrigerant (PPMR) of Air Products and Chemicals Inc. (APCI) currently holds 78% of the liquefaction plants on the market. Since the PPMR process has the largest production capacity, its operational reliability needs to be high as any failure may result in catastrophic consequences. Therefore, operational reliability has a key importance in LNG plants. To achieve an acceptable reliability, usually, a constant interval of a preventive maintenance method is used. The limitation of such a method is that the shutdown strategy is not optimum. This study focuses on determining a risk-based shutdown management strategy for APCI plants with capacity of 4.5 million tons per annum. To achieve the minimum risk for the expected life of an LNG plant, a combination of preventive maintenance, active redundancy and standby redundancy is considered. Results of this study reveal that such a combination can significantly reduce the operational risk. This combination improves the plant reliability and maintains it above a minimum operational reliability.     

Knowing fire incidence through fuel phenology: A remotely sensed approach

Fire is a basic ecological factor that contributes to determine vegetation diversity and dynamics in time and space. Fuel characteristics play an essential role in fire ignition and propagation; at the landscape scale fuel availability and flammability are closely related to the vegetation phenology that directly affects wildfire pattern in time and space. In this view, the annual normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) profiles derived from high temporal resolution satellites, like SPOT Vegetation, represent an effective tool for monitoring the coarse-scale vegetation seasonal timing. The objective of this study thus consists in quantifying the explanatory power of multitemporal NDVI profiles on the fire regime characteristics of the potential natural vegetation (PNV) types of Sardinia (Italy) over a 5-year period (2000-2004). The results obtained show a good association between the NDVI temporal dynamics of the PNV of Sardinia and the corresponding fire regime characteristics, emphasizing the role of the bioclimatic timing of the vegetation in controlling the coarse-scale wildfire spatio-temporal distribution of Sardinia. By providing a sound phytogeographical framework for describing different wildfire regimes, PNV maps can thus be considered helpful cartographic documents for fire management strategies at the landscape scale.