A new methodology, fault-dynamic modelling, has been developed for analysis of potentially hazardous situations in the process industries. Traditional fault-tree analysis is used to determine the combinations of component failure that can lead to a particular process upset condition. Realistic dynamic modelling is then used to calculate the time available for corrective action once the upset has started. The method is applied to a phthalic anhydride reactor. The results of the analysis identify three process upsets that can lead to catastrophic failure in 2–5 min if left uncorrected. Other process upsets lead to safe conditions. 相似文献
In this article we apply and test a methodology to estimate cumulative frequency distribution for air pollutant concentration from wind-speed data. We use the inverse relationship after Simpson et al. (Atmospheric Environment, 19, 75–82, 1985) between the opposing percentile values in the statistical distributions for air pollutant concentrations and wind-speed data. This relationship is valid, irrespective of the statistical distributions of both variables, if an inverse relationship between them is also applicable. The available data are five years of 8-h average carbon monoxide concentration and 8-h mean wind-speed, observed in Buenos Aires (Argentina). The performance of the obtained empirical expressions in estimating cumulative frequency distributions for 8-h CO is statistically evaluated. The results show that it is possible to obtain an acceptable cumulative frequency distribution for 8-h CO concentration at the site if the cumulative frequency distribution for wind-speed is known. Q–Q plots show a good agreement between estimated and observed values. From our data, the mean relative error of the estimations was found to be as much as 8.0%. 相似文献
Historical and recent remote sensing data can be used to address temporal and spatial relationships between upland land cover and downstream vegetation response at the watershed scale. This is demonstrated for sub-watersheds draining into Elkhorn Slough, California, where salt marsh habitat has diminished because of the formation of sediment fans that support woody riparian vegetation. Multiple regression models were used to examine which land cover variables and physical properties of the watershed most influenced sediment fan size within 23 sub-watersheds (1.4 ha to 200 ha). Model explanatory power increased (adjusted R(2) = 0.94 vs. 0.75) among large sub-watersheds (>10 ha) and historical watershed variables, such as average farmland slope, flowpath slope, and flowpath distance between farmland and marsh, were significant. It was also possible to explain the increase in riparian vegetation by historical watershed variables for the larger sub-watersheds. Sub-watershed area is the overriding physical characteristic influencing the extent of sedimentation in a salt marsh, while percent cover of agricultural land use is the most influential land cover variable. The results also reveal that salt marsh recovery depends on relative cover of different land use classes in the watershed, with greater chances of recovery associated with less intensive agriculture. This research reveals a potential delay between watershed impacts and wetland response that can be best revealed when conducting multi-temporal analyses on larger watersheds. 相似文献
The desire to capture natural regions in the landscape has been a goal of geographic and environmental classification and ecological land classification (ELC)
for decades. Since the increased adoption of data-centric, multivariate, computational methods, the search for natural regions
has become the search for the best classification that optimally trades off classification complexity for class homogeneity.
In this study, three techniques are investigated for their ability to find the best classification of the physical environments
of the Mt. Lofty Ranges in South Australia: AutoClass-C (a Bayesian classifier), a Kohonen Self-Organising Map neural network,
and a k-means classifier with homogeneity analysis. AutoClass-C is specifically designed to find the classification that optimally
trades off classification complexity for class homogeneity. However, AutoClass analysis was not found to be assumption-free
because it was very sensitive to the user-specified level of relative error of input data. The AutoClass results suggest that
there may be no way of finding the best classification without making critical assumptions as to the level of class heterogeneity
acceptable in the classification when using continuous environmental data. Therefore, rather than relying on adjusting abstract
parameters to arrive at a classification of suitable complexity, it is better to quantify and visualize the data structure
and the relationship between classification complexity and class homogeneity. Individually and when integrated, the Self-Organizing
Map and k-means classification with homogeneity analysis techniques also used in this study facilitate this and provide information
upon which the decision of the scale of classification can be made. It is argued that instead of searching for the elusive
classification of natural regions in the landscape, it is much better to understand and visualize the environmental structure
of the landscape and to use this knowledge to select the best ELC at the required scale of analysis. 相似文献