Integration of technologies and alternative sources of water and energy to promote the sustainability of urban landscapes

Recent research has highlighted the positive role of green areas in urban environments, providing numerous social, environmental and economic services, such as mitigation of the urban heat island effect, storm attenuation, increased water infiltration into the soil, reduction of noise and air pollution, among others. However, the maintenance of green areas may result in high consumption of water, reaching 50% of the total consumption in some municipalities, and energy, becoming a reason of concern. The present study aimed to integrate techniques and technologies that promote the automatic and efficient irrigation of urban landscapes, using alternative sources of energy and water, toward its sustainability. The conceptual unit was able to reduce in 64% the water consumed in irrigation. Rainwater met 69% of the demand and the photovoltaic system supplied all the energy required. The economic feasibility analysis showed that the conceptual unit is financially unfeasible, under the conditions of this study. However, with some interventions for reusing the surplus energy and water, and considering the higher fees charged by other cities, the investment became attractive. In this new scenario, the internal rate of return (15 years) was 27.3% and the discounted payback period was 4.9 years.     

Bilateral Monopoly: A Market for Intercountry River Water Allocation

/ Collaboration of countries with an aim to share fresh surface water resources promises to generate potential joint benefits. Unfortunately, existing agreements lack the perspective and capacity to produce any real action in efficient cross-border water allocation. When that problem is encountered by any two adjacent countries claiming riparian rights to the same watercourse, this paper suggests that apossible solution to be examined is a water market. This market requires the relevant countries to engage in a bargaining process as described in the theory of bilateral monopoly. The bargaining process should determine both the water quantity to be transferred and the price to be paid. However, there has to be a fair allocation of the joint benefits resulting from the transfer for a sustainable price solution. As an empirical illustration, the paper examines the case of river Nestos shared by Bulgaria and Greece in the southern Balkans. A net revenue function quadratic in water is specified and estimated using scarce data on three agricultural crops in Greece. Sensitivity analysis on the size and distribution of the net benefits is also performed.KEY WORDS: Bilateral agreements; Water markets; Efficient allocation     

Analysis of motorcycle accidents using association rule mining-based framework with parameter optimization and GIS technology

IntroductionAnalyzing key factors of motorcycle accidents is an effective method to reduce fatalities and improve road safety. Association Rule Mining (ARM) is an efficient data mining method to identify critical factors associated with injury severity. However, the existing studies have some limitations in applying ARM: (a) Most studies determined parameter thresholds of ARM subjectively, which lacks objectiveness and efficiency; (b) Most studies only listed rules with high parameter thresholds, while lacking in-depth analysis of multiple-item rules. Besides, the existing studies seldom conducted a spatial analysis of motorcycle accidents, which can provide intuitive suggestions for policymakers. Method: To address these limitations, this study proposes an ARM-based framework to identify critical factors related to motorcycle injury severity. A method for parameter optimization is proposed to objectively determine parameter thresholds in ARM. A method of factor extraction is proposed to identify individual key factors from 2-item rules and boosting factors from multiple-item rules. Geographic information system (GIS) is adopted to explore the spatial relationship between key factors and motorcycle injury severity. Results and conclusions: The framework is applied to a case study of motorcycle accidents in Victoria, Australia. Fifteen attributes are selected after data preprocessing. 0.03 and 0.7 are determined as the best thresholds of support and confidence in ARM. Five individual key factors and four boosting factors are identified to be related to fatal injury. Spatial analysis is conducted by GIS to present hot spots of motorcycle accidents. The proposed framework has been validated to have better performance on parameter optimization and rule analysis in ARM. Practical applications: The hot spots of motorcycle accidents related to fatal factors are presented in GIS maps. Policymakers can refer to those maps straightforwardly when decision making. This framework can be applied to various kinds of traffic accidents to improve the performance of severity analysis.     

高效降解青霉素菌的筛选鉴定及降解效果研究

从哈尔滨制药总厂的青霉素发酵药渣中富集筛选出6株青霉素耐受菌株,经驯化后,采用高效液相色谱法检验其对青霉素的降解效率,经比较得到一株青霉素高效降解菌株,编号为JZ6。青霉素浓度300 mg/L,30℃,p H6.7,121 r/min条件下恒温震荡培养24 h后,在青霉素做唯一碳源情况下,青霉素几乎不被降解,外加碳氮源后降解率可达到99.98%。对其进行电镜扫描和16SrDNA序列分析,鉴定其属于洋葱伯克霍尔德菌属(Burkholderia cenocepacia),16SrDNA序列长度为1451bp,在Gen Bank登录号为KF826288。     

高效除磷材料的除磷特性研究

研究了高效除磷材料(Efficient Phosphorus Removal Composite,EPRC)的除磷特性,以及以此材料为填料的吸附柱对模拟含磷废水的除磷效果.试验结果表明: EPRC颗粒在15℃、25℃、35℃时的最大饱和吸附量分别达到1.9535mg/g、2.281mg/g、3.6724mg/g.以EPRC颗粒填充吸附柱处理模拟含磷废水时,停留时间8h、连续进水、运行8d,磷的平均去除率为93%,废水pH值略有升高.     

有机污染场地微生物修复研究进展

结合国内外研究,从典型有机污染物微生物修复机理、降解菌株的筛选、微生物修复技术,以及微生物修复技术的表面活性剂和电化学强化等方面综述了微生物修复技术的研究进展,并对其发展方向和趋势做出展望。     

Irrigation water management policies: Allocation and pricing principles and implementation experience

Food security and sustainable development require efficient use of water resources, especially in irrigation. Economic pricing can be an effective tool to achieve more efficient water use, provided it is supported by other policies in implementation. Applying various water pricing and cost recovery arrangements is suggested for efficient allocation. Any adverse impact on farmers’ incomes must be addressed and more reliable service must accompany higher prices. Experience from several countries suggests a variety of implementation issues. Essential complements to water pricing are water distribution rules and technological choices at critical nodes in the delivery system that allow farmers flexibility in conserving water in response to higher prices. Among supporting institutions, water users associations seem a higher priority than water markets.     

Decentralized mechanisms for river sharing

We study decentralized implementation of efficient outcomes through multilateral bargaining in the river sharing problem. We introduce a class of mechanisms in the form of two-stage games in which agents first announce consumption levels and then bargain over monetary compensations. The defining characteristic of a mechanism is the way it assigns bargaining power to agents as a consequence of their locations, inflows, and consumption decisions. We first determine which mechanisms give incentives to always allocate the water efficiently, in the sense that, regardless of the agents' benefit functions, equilibrium play always yields an efficient outcome. Among these, we take an axiomatic approach to single out three mechanisms that guarantee a fair division of the welfare gain obtained through cooperation along the river.     

Choice set formation for outdoor destinations: The role of motivations and preference discrimination in site selection for the management of public expenditures on protected areas

Effective public expenditure currently dominates the management focus of many protected areas. This calls for explicit modeling of constraints and motivations that, respectively, obstruct and stimulate visits to selected outdoor destinations. Choice set formation is the result of screening and/or inclusion of specific sites (alternatives) to form the set of sites considered in real choices. Evidence shows that the omission of a structural representation of choice set formation is harmful to econometric inference. Yet, the literature has largely ignored the underlying behavioral phenomenon. We show, using a discrete choice experiment involving selection among seven recreational sites in an Italian national park, that choice set formation is behaviorally relevant, even after controlling for preference discrimination. Motivations (why visit?) are important determinants of preliminary site screening for choice set inclusion, as well as site selection, justifying the additional value of such modeling extension.     

Biomass use in chemical and mechanical pulping with biomass-based energy supply

The pulp and paper industry is energy intensive and consumes large amounts of wood. Biomass is a limited resource and its efficient use is therefore important. In this study, the total amount of biomass used for pulp and for energy is estimated for the production of several woodfree (containing only chemical pulp) and mechanical (containing mechanical pulp) printing paper products, under Swedish conditions. Chemical pulp mills today are largely self-sufficient in energy while mechanical pulp mills depend on large amounts of external electricity. Technically, all energy used in pulp- and papermaking can be biomass based. Here, we assume that all energy used, including external electricity and motor fuels, is based on forest biomass. The whole cradle-to-gate chain is included in the analyses. The results indicate that the total amount of biomass required per tonne paper is slightly lower for woodfree than for mechanical paper. For the biomass use per paper area, the paper grammage is decisive. If the grammage can be lowered by increasing the proportion of mechanical pulp, this may lower the biomass use per paper area, despite the higher biomass use per unit mass in mechanical paper. In the production of woodfree paper, energy recovery from residues in the mill accounts for most of the biomass use, while external electricity production accounts for the largest part for mechanical paper. Motor fuel production accounts for 5–7% of the biomass use. The biomass contained in the final paper product is 21–42% of the total biomass use, indicating that waste paper recovery is important. The biomass use was found to be about 15–17% lower for modelled, modern mills compared with mills representative of today's average technology.