Social development benefits of hydroelectricity CDM projects in Brazil

In recent years, the concept of sustainable development (SD) has become increasingly recognized and important. Within organizations, SD is often portrayed as a balancing act and requires a combination of three elements to be considered: economy, environment, and society. Traditionally, organizational management research has been focused on economical and environmental fronts. However, social aspects are also important for organizations, especially those in emerging and developing countries. The goal of this article is to investigate the potential of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects to deliver social benefits in Brazil’s hydroelectricity sector. The investigation involved the assessment of 46 registered hydro CDM projects under the Kyoto Protocol in terms of their potential impact on the envisaged social development goals. Two case studies were also examined. Results indicate that organizations managing hydroelectric initiatives in Brazil can provide the pathway toward achieving a number of important social benefits. Successful projects were found to have good community involvement and were managed by both cooperative ventures and money-making corporations. The research also identified several challenges that are hindering hydro CDM projects from delivering more social benefits and enabled a number of recommendations to be extracted for the organizations facing these challenges.     

油品储罐区风险评价技术研究

本文通过分析影响储罐安全的五大因素18项指标,系统建立了单个油品储罐的安全评价指标体系,采用层次分析-模糊综合评价方法,实现单个油品储罐的安全状况分级。并结合区域定量风险评价方法,实现对油品储罐区的整体风险评价。以某油品储罐区为例,利用建立的指标体系与区域风险评价方法,给出了单个储罐安全等级以及储罐区个人风险等值线分布图和社会风险曲线。更全面的给出了储罐区单个储罐与罐区整体不同层次的风险状况,为油品储罐区规划,管理及事故预防和应急救援提供依据。     

Disaster response preparedness coordination through social networks

Studies of coordination in human networks have typically presented models that require stable working relationships. These models cannot be applied to emergency response management, which demands distributed coordination in volatile situations. This paper argues that changes to interconnectedness of nodes in a network may have implications for the potential to coordinate. A social network‐based coordination model is proposed to explore an organizational actor's state of readiness in extreme conditions. To test this hypothesis, the study investigates survey data from state law enforcement, state emergency services and local law enforcement, presenting agency‐based (macro) and cross‐agency (micro) analysis on 224 completed questionnaires. The main findings are: (i) there is a positive correlation between network connectedness and the potential to coordinate; (ii) the concept of tiers within an emergency response network may exist and be characterized by the sub‐network with which an organization associates; (iii) a range or threshold characterizes how interconnected an organization at a given tier should be.     

自然灾害社会易损性评价指标体系框架的构建

按照我们对社会易损性构成的认识,从区域人口易损系统、区域社会结构易损系统和区域社会文化易损系统三方面构建了自然灾害社会易损性评价指标体系。这个指标体系是由一个内部层次分明、逻辑结构清晰的9个指数和39个指标要素构成的框架。该评价体系可以作为政府管理部门和社会公众认识自然灾害的社会属性的科学依据,也是减灾防灾的重要工具。     

条形基础砂土地基的破坏模型试验

为了研究条形基础砂土地基的剪切破坏形式和承载机理,在相似理论的指导下,进行了一组条形基础砂土地基的模型试验,模拟了砂土地基受荷后产生变形、扩展直到破坏的全过程;测量并分析了地基中不同点处的土压力大小及其分布规律,观测了剪切带的形成和发展过程。结果表明,模型试验能够很好地体现砂土地基变形、破坏的整个过程及其沉降变形特性、地基中各点的真实应力状态及其变化规律,对于研究深基坑变形过程和破坏形态具有应用价值。     

软土深基坑滑坡机制分析与优化方案设计

以无锡太湖隧道项目某处软土深基坑开挖施工过程中出现的滑坡实例为研究背景,通过对滑坡破坏模式的现场调查,基于FLAC3D软件建立了基坑地质剖面数值模型,结合数值分析结果与现场监测结果的对比,探讨了滑坡发生的机制,并提出了3种边坡加固设计优化方案并进行了对比分析.结果 表明:引起本次滑坡发生的原因可能是由于土体空间分布不均...     

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE AND PUBLIC PERCEPTION: THE CHALLENGE OF TRANSLATION1

ABSTRACT: Global climate change is examined from the perspective of its relevancy and urgency as a public policy issue. Interpreting from literature specific to investigations into public awareness and concern, climate change is seen as a legitimate though less than urgent issue. The literature reveals that the general public holds surprising misconceptions about the processes contributing to climate change, including failure to grasp the fundamental connection to CO₂. General ambivalence is also suggested from the results of two surveys conducted by The Groundwater Foundation. They first asked participants in a recent Groundwater Guardian Conference to rate levels of discussion and concern for water resources implications in the participants' communities. A second survey polled national water resource organizations about the extent climate change has been a focus of their educational, investigative, or advocacy efforts. The paper concludes by describing basic barriers to stimulating public response to climate change, which education about the issue should address, and by offering a model to educate and involve citizens based on the Groundwater Guardian program developed by the The Groundwater Foundation.     

Animal Rearing as a Contract?

Can animals, and especially cattle, be the subject ofmoral concern? Should we care about their well-being?Two competing ethical theories have addressed suchissues so far. A utilitarian theory which, inBentham's wake, extends moral consideration to everysentient being, and a theory of the rights orinterests of animals which follows Feinberg'sconceptions. This includes various positions rangingfrom the most radical (about animal liberation) tomore moderate ones (concerned with the well-being ofanimals). Notwithstanding their diversity, theseconceptions share some common flaws. First, as anextension of primarily anthropocentric theories (aboututility or rights) they still participate in the flawsof the original setting. Second, extending them tonon-human beings raises the problem of the borderwhich is to be drawn between what can be included inthe purview of moral consideration and what is leftoutside. Third, such theories are not able to distinguishbetween an ethics of wildlife and an ethics ofdomestic life, which too often leads to preposterousstatements. We would like to argue (i) that we should distinguishbetween environmental ethics (concerned withpopulations, species, biotic communities) and animalethics (where animals are taken into consideration individually);(ii) that individualist animal ethics are not relevantfor animal rearing; (iii) that animal rearing is a hierarchicalrelationship which rules are to be found in the fiction of a domesticcontract. Hence, we would like to construct a new conception ofthe ethics of the relation between men and the cattlethey breed based on the idea of a domestic contract.Our main assumption is Mary Midgleys's anthropologicalassumption, according to which human communities,since the Neolithic age, have always included variousanimals, so that relations of sociability have alwaysexisted between human beings and animals within thedomestic community (a mixed community). In order tospecify the hierarchical and non-egalitarian, butinclusive reciprocal obligations and relations insidesuch a community, we will elaborate on the notion ofa ``domestic contract'', an implicitly assumedidea traced back to Lucretius and whichwe will follow up to the physiocrats and Adam Smith.We will show that such an idea relies upon theassumption of communication between cattle farmer andanimals, of shared experience and exchanges betweenthe two parties. We will then show how modern factory,or battery animal farming, can be seen as unilaterallybreaking this domestic contract, forsaking ourduties towards domestic animals.     

脆弱生态区类型划分及其脆弱特征分析

本文应用聚类分析方法,根据全国各县市耕地面积等26项指标的有关数据,对我国生态区进行了类型划分,还分别以环境资源因子、经济发展水平因子、经济技术替代能力因子、域外支持能力因子以及社会发展水平因子等5类因子为聚类变量,对我国脆弱生态区进行了类型划分,并对脆弱特征进行了分析。     

Characterizing the trophy hunting debate on Twitter

Social media is an arena of debate for contentious political and social topics. One conservation topic debated online is the acceptability of trophy hunting, a debate that has implications for national and international policy. We used a mixed-methods approach (grounded theory and quantitative clustering) to identify themes in the trophy hunting debate on Twitter. We examined commonly co-occurring categories that describe people's stances on trophy hunting. We identified 12 categories and 4 preliminary archetypes opposing trophy hunting—activism, scientific, condemning, and objecting—whose opposition derived from different moral reasoning. Few tweets (22) in our sample of 500 supported trophy hunting, whereas 350 opposed it. The debate was hostile; 7% of tweets in our sample were categorized as abusive. Online debates can be unproductive, and our findings may be important for stakeholders wishing to effectively engage in the trophy hunting debate on Twitter. More generally, we contend that because social media is increasingly influential, it is important to formally contextualize public responses to contentious conservation topics in order to aid communication of conservation evidence and to integrate diverse public perspectives in conservation practice.