Expertise,safety, reliability,and decision making: practical industrial experience

This paper presents our practical experience of expert opinion deduced from concrete field applications, concerning mainly safety and reliability modeling. First, expertise is defined and the approach used for eliciting expertise is shortly described. Quality and value of information from experts are important challenges for decision making from risk analysis. Expertise is very useful for supplying data when not enough field observations are available for estimating parameter uncertainties and quantifying risk analysis models, which are inputs to a decision-making process. Applications presented herein concern mainly the role of expert judgment in reliability.     

Expedient Metrics to Describe Plant Community Change Across Gradients of Anthropogenic Influence

Human influence associated with land use may cause considerable biodiversity losses, namely in oceanic islands such as the Azores. Our goal was to identify plant indicator species across two gradients of increasing anthropogenic influence and management (arborescent and herbaceous communities) and determine similarity between plant communities of uncategorized vegetation plots to those in reference gradients using metrics derived from R programming. We intend to test and provide an expedient way to determine the conservation value of a given uncategorized vegetation plot based on the number of native, endemic, introduced, and invasive indicator species present. Using the metric IndVal, plant taxa with a significant indicator value for each community type in the two anthropogenic gradients were determined. A new metric, ComVal, was developed to assess the similarity of an uncategorized vegetation plot toward a reference community type, based on (i) the percentage of pre-defined indicator species from reference communities present in the vegetation plots, and (ii) the percentage of indicator species, specific to a given reference community type, present in the vegetation plot. Using a data resampling approach, the communities were randomly used as training or validation sets to classify vegetation plots based on ComVal. The percentage match with reference community types ranged from 77 to 100 % and from 79 to 100 %, for herbaceous and arborescent vegetation plots, respectively. Both IndVal and ComVal are part of a suite of useful tools characterizing plant communities and plant community change along gradients of anthropogenic influence without a priori knowledge of their biology and ecology.     

The Achievement of a Decentralized Water Management Through Stakeholder Participation: An Example from the Drôme River Catchment Area in France (1981–2008)

Different water Acts (e.g., the European Water Framework Directive) and stakeholders involved in aquatic affairs have promoted integrated river basin management over recent decades. However, few studies have provided feedback on these policies. The aim of the current article is to fill this gap by exploring how local newspapers reflect the implementation of a broad public participation within a catchment of France known for its innovation with regard to this domain. The media coverage of a water management strategy in the Drôme watershed from 1981 to 2008 was investigated using a content analysis and a geographic information system. We sought to determine what public participation and decentralized decision-making can be in practice. The results showed that this policy was integrated because of its social perspective, the high number of involved stakeholders, the willingness to handle water issues, and the local scale suitable for participation. We emphasized the prominence of the watershed scale guaranteed by the local water authority. This area was also characterized by compromise, arrangements, and power dynamics on a fine scale. We examined the most politically engaged writings regarding water management, which topics of each group emphasized, and how the groups agreed and disagreed on issues based on their values and context. The temporal pattern of participation implementation was progressive but worked by fits and starts.     

粮食产量预测理论、方法与应用Ⅰ.科技进步增产理论、模型及其应用

粮食增产趋势及增产原因是国家制定宏观农业政策和措施的依据。科技进步增产理论是指：气候是波动的,科技是持续进步的,它是粮食多年持续增产的主要驱动力;科技进步增产预测模型是多年平均单产移动的回归方程。全国和东北三省粮食增产潜力案例分析结果表明：科技进步单产加速时间最早的是辽宁省,最晚的是黑龙江省;与全国相比,吉林省和辽宁省科技进步贡献率高于全国平均水平,黑龙江省低于全国平均水平,吉林省最高。本文初步得出以下结论：科技进步增产理论科学、模型实用、预测结果准确。     

黄河口及邻近海域溶解态无机磷、有机磷、总磷的分布研究

于2003年8月下旬对黄河口及邻近海域进行了十船连续同步27h采样调查,分析了调查区域的溶解态无机磷、有机磷、总磷的平面分布、断面分布、时间分布特征.结果表明,在调查区域内,溶解态无机磷浓度很低,而溶解态有机磷浓度较高(占溶解态总磷的85%以上),是溶解态总磷的主要组成部分.各形态磷的平面分布、断面分布均呈现出由河口向邻近海域降低的趋势,溶解态总磷、溶解态有机磷梯度变化较溶解态无机磷更为明显;潮汐对河口浅水区的各形态磷浓度影响较大,对邻近调查海域的影响不明显.     

基于博弈赋权物元和证据理论的无线闭塞中心风险评估*

为客观地对无线闭塞中心进行风险评估,建立基于博弈赋权物元和证据理论的评估模型,根据故障树分析法识别的风险因子构建评估指标体系,采用博弈论思想对直觉模糊层次分析法计算的主观权重和熵权法计算的客观权重进行最优组合,进而确定综合权重。运用物元理论和证据理论确定各指标的风险等级和系统整体风险等级,并通过实例分析对评估模型进行对比验证。结果表明:无线闭塞中心整体风险等级为“可容许的”,与实际情况相符。其中,系统外部通信故障的风险等级为“不期望的”,需要对其相关设备加强风险控制。     

The effect of alkaline pretreatment on the anaerobic digestion of fruit and vegetable wastes from a central food distribution market

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - Anaerobic digestion of the organic fraction of municipal solid wastes is a well-established process for biogas production and various forms of...     

Recycling EDTA solutions used to remediate metal-polluted soils

The objective of this research was to investigate the recycling of ethylenediamine-tetraacetic acid (EDTA) used for the removal of trace metals from contaminated soils. We successfully used Na2S combined with Ca(OH)2 to precipitate the trace metals allowing us to recycle the EDTA. The results of batch and column leaching experiments show that both Ca-EDTA and Na-EDTA are powerful chelating agents with a similar soil remediation potential. The major advantage of Ca-EDTA is the preservation of soil organic matter. We found that Na2S was capable of separating the metals Cd, Cu and Pb from EDTA; however, the precipitation of Zn required the addition of Ca(OH)2. After reusing the reclaimed EDTA seven times, over a 14-day period, EDTA reagent losses ranged from 19.5% to 23.5%. Successive washing cycles enhanced the removal of trace metals from contaminated soils. The metal sulfide precipitates contain high concentrations of metals and could potentially be recycled.