Analysis of the severity of vehicle-bicycle crashes with data mining techniques

Introduction: Although cycling is increasingly being promoted for transportation, the safety concern of bicyclists is one of the major impediments to their adoption. A thorough investigation on the contributing factors to fatalities and injuries involving bicyclist. Method: This paper designs an integrated data mining framework to determine the significant factors that contribute to the severity of vehicle-bicycle crashes based on the crash dataset of Victorian, Australia (2013–2018). The framework integrates imbalanced data resampling, learning-based feature extraction with gradient boosting algorithm and marginal effect analysis. The top 10 significant predictors of the severity of vehicle-bicycle crashes are extracted, which gives an area under ROC curve (AUC) value of 0.8236 and computing time as 37.8 s. Results: The findings provide insights for understanding and developing countermeasures or policy initiatives to reduce severe vehicle-bicycle crashes.     

A new approach to managing work-related road traffic injury: The development of a health investment framework

Objective: Statistics indicate that employees commuting or traveling as part of their work are overrepresented in workplace injury and death. Despite this, many organizations are unaware of the factors within their organizations that are likely to influence potential reductions in work-related road traffic injury.

Methods: This article presents a multilevel conceptual framework that identifies health investment as the central feature in reducing work-related road traffic injury. Within this framework, we explore factors operating at the individual driver, workgroup supervisor, and organizational senior management levels that create a mutually reinforcing system of safety.

Results: The health investment framework identifies key factors at the senior manager, supervisor, and driver levels to cultivating a safe working environment. These factors are high-performance workplace systems, leader–member exchange and autonomy, trust and empowerment, respectively. The framework demonstrates the important interactions between these factors and how they create a self-sustaining organizational safety system.

Conclusions: The framework aims to provide insight into the future development of interventions that are strategically aligned with the organization and target elements that facilitate and enhance driver safety and ultimately reduce work-related road traffic injury and death.     

金属有机骨架材料MOF-5利用C3H6选择性催化还原NO的研究

采用溶剂热法在不同温度（120、150、180℃）、不同时间（12、24、48 h）条件下制备MOF-5催化剂,利用热重分析仪（TG）、X射线衍射仪（XRD）、傅立叶红外光谱仪（FT-IR）对其进行表征,研究不同条件下MOF-5样品的水热稳定性及特征官能团、化学键等指标.结果表明,利用溶剂热法制备的MOF-5样品稳定性良好,390℃结构开始坍塌.对比FT-IR、XRD等表征结果,选择图线形状最好、出峰位置最多的120℃、24 h条件下的MOF-5样品作为载体,对其进行了Cu的负载,负载量依次为1%、3%、5%.根据TG曲线,选择在MOF-5维持稳定结构、同时与尾气排放环境中的温度较为接近的350℃作为反应温度,利用傅立叶原位红外技术考察不同负载量的Cu-MOF-5在不同温度条件下对NO吸附能力大小、吸附过程中间物的变化情况,初步研究以C₃H₆作为还原剂时的富氧HC-SCR反应的机理.根据原位红外反应结果看出,NO₃^-、—CNO、—CN是重要的中间产物,且以3% Cu负载量的催化剂中间产物变化最为丰富,催化效果最优.     

基于“情景-应对”数据的高层官员应急决策行为分析框架

为研究突发事件应急处置过程中关键官员的决策行为,充实面向高层官员的决策行为实证研究方法,提出基于“情景-应对”数据的高层官员决策行为分析框架。通过设置情景、决策者、决策过程和决策变量以及变量间的作用关系建立框架运行理论内核,从情景选择到决策样本“生成→采集→处理→分析”各环节搭建框架支持完成高层官员决策行为的研究。通过某高层官员地震应急决策模拟演练实例,验证该分析框架的有效性。研究结果表明:基于“情景-应对”数据的分析框架可实现对高层官员决策行为的实证研究,可优化开发以支持更多元化的研究。     

金属有机骨架材料MIL-101用于气态碘单质的吸附与释放

目的研究金属有机骨架材料MIL-101对气态碘单质的吸附与释放。方法采用水热合成法合成金属有机骨架材料MIL-101,并利用X射线衍射(XRD)、扫描电子显微镜(SEM)、N2吸附脱附等温线等表征方法对合成的MIL-101样品进行表征。将制备的金属有机骨架材料MIL-101在75℃环境下对气态碘单质进行吸附,将吸附后的材料于无水乙醇溶液中进行碘单质的释放。结果随着吸附时间的推移,金属有机骨架材料MIL-101对气态碘单质的吸附量逐渐升高,并于8 h逐渐达到饱和吸附量2.61 g(I2)/g(MIL-101)。MIL-101在无水乙醇溶液中随着时间的延长,材料吸附的碘单质渐渐释放出来。结论 MIL-101对气态碘单质在较高温度下有着优异的吸附效果,并表现出良好的循环使用性能,适合用于核电站蒸汽中放射性气态碘的吸附。     

Government management and overexploitation of groundwater resources: absence of local community initiatives in Ardabil plain-Iran

Although mismanagement of groundwater resources has resulted in their destruction over centuries, climate change is speeding up this process more than ever. On the one hand, urgent action by government bodies is needed to address the challenge. On the other hand, a vast body of literature proves that bottom-up collective action, although requiring a longer time period, is a better solution to manage such resources. This research aims to address this dilemma. The groundwater resource in Ardabil plain in Iran, which has long been managed solely through government intervention, has been chosen as a case study to explore the opportunities and limitations of managing a critically endangered area from a common pool resource perspective. Our study suggests that managing Ardabil groundwater resources should be conducted on two scales. The bottom-up institutional agreements should take place at village scale while the government should stay in charge of the overall organization at plain scale.     

Scientific evidence,expert entrepreneurship,and ecosystem narratives in the UK Natural Environment White Paper

The Natural Environment White Paper represents the most important conservation policy shift in the United Kingdom (UK) in twenty years. It formalises the ecosystem approach within national policy objectives and emphasises the economic value of ecosystem services. By analysing the use of various evidence sources, the involvement of science entrepreneurs, and the development of policy narratives, our goal was to understand factors that influenced adoption of an ecosystem service framework in the UK. We interviewed 48 policy actors and found that centrally-sponsored synthesis reports with entrepreneurial authors provided the most influential expert-based knowledge in the development of the White Paper. More recently published reports had greater influence, yet the window of opportunity for scientific evidence having policy impact was greater in the problem-setting stages of policy development. The interaction between teams preparing syntheses and expert entrepreneurs helped influence the construction of strategic policy narratives. Those narratives increased the impact of scientific evidence by communicating and framing key policy-salient messages, and brokering between broad ecosystem-based and environmental economics narratives. The combination of ecological and economics evidence was particularly salient in the UK case due to the context of continued biodiversity loss and the acceptability of valuation narratives within central government. Our findings suggest that evidence impact varies at different stages of the policy process, and that this is driven by the interplay of contextual factors like policy timing, personal influence, and the competition between different sets of actors and narratives.     

Legal and regulatory challenges in the implementation of CO2 geological storage: An Alberta and Canadian perspective

Alberta is the province with the largest CO₂ emissions in Canada, with approximately two-thirds of emissions originating from large stationary sources. Due to the fortuitous association of large CO₂ sources with the storage capacity offered by the underlying Alberta basin, it is expected that large-scale CO₂ geological storage in Canada will occur in Alberta first, and both levels of governments are contemplating measures to facilitate implementation. A review of the current provincial and federal legislation and regulations presented in this paper indicates that the existing legal and regulatory regime is reasonably sufficient, with some modifications, to accommodate the active injection phase of CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) operations, and the early takers of this new technology. However, governments in Alberta and Canada, and likely everywhere, need to address several pressing issues dealing mainly with the CCS post-operational phase. These issues, reviewed in this paper from an Alberta and Canadian perspective, fall into several categories: jurisdictional, property (ownership), regulatory and liability. Because Alberta is a landlocked province, matters relating to CO₂ storage under the seabed will not be addressed here except when discussing matters of jurisdiction and CO₂ classification. Possible models for post-injection liability transfer to the state are also presented. Although this review is focused on western Canada conditions, the issues are broad enough to be of interest in other jurisdictions, which may also adopt parts of the legal and regulatory framework that is quite well developed in Alberta.     

Indicators of urban climate resilience: A contextual approach

As urban populations grow and climate exposure increases, more cities are introducing formal planning processes to adapt to climate change. This paper explains the process applied to eight cities in the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) for developing indicators for planning and monitoring local climate resilience. This process relied on transferring a common conceptual framework for climate resilience, together with a locally led iterative and collaborative process that engaged technical and planning authorities and vulnerable groups. The process varied slightly between cities and generated indicators that were chosen for their contextual fit and availability of data. The main benefit of developing resilience indicators in this way was the local capacity that the process built, in terms of understanding resilience, shared understanding of concepts and measurement and establishment of a common platform for future planning and monitoring of climate adaptation interventions at the city level.     

Drinking water quality governance: A comparative case study of Brazil,Ecuador, and Malawi

Human health is greatly affected by inadequate access to sufficient and safe drinking water, especially in low and middle-income countries. Drinking water governance improvements may be one way to better drinking water quality. Over the past decade, many projects and international organizations have been dedicated to water governance; however, water governance in the drinking water sector is understudied and how to improve water governance remains unclear. We analyze drinking water governance challenges in three countries – Brazil, Ecuador, and Malawi – as perceived by government, service providers, and civil society organizations. A mixed methods approach was used: a clustering model was used for country selection and qualitative semi-structured interviews were used with direct observation in data collection. The clustering model integrated political, economic, social and environmental variables that impact water sector performance, to group countries. Brazil, Ecuador and Malawi were selected with the model so as to represent the diversity of the clusters. This comparative case study is important because similar challenges are identified in the drinking water sectors of each country; while, the countries represent diverse socio-economic and political contexts, and the case selection process provides generalizability to our results. We find that access to safe water could be improved if certain water governance challenges were addressed: coordination and data sharing between ministries that deal with drinking water services; monitoring and enforcement of water quality laws; and sufficient technical capacity to improve administrative and technical management of water services at the local level. From an analysis of our field research, we also developed a conceptual framework that identifies policy levers that could be used to influence governance of drinking water quality on national and sub-national levels, and the relationships between these levers.