MEASURING INTANGIBLE BENEFITS -SOME NEEDED RESEARCH1

ABSTRACT. Society has long sought to maximize the welfare of its members by allocating its limited resources so as to provide maximum satisfaction. As long as all of the values that society gains or loses are measured in the market place in terms of price, the process of maximizing through economic models is relatively straightforward. In fact, however, the total value that society receives from the use of its resources is not completely measured through the private market transactions. There are some values created which are external to the market system. The resulting underinvestment in natural resources by the private sector necessitates the entry of the public sector. The presence of intangible benefits and intangible costs has long been recognized, but completely satisfactory methods for including these in the quantitative analysis of benefit-cost have not been developed. Some progress has been made in including recreational values in project analysis via the expenditures method, the Gross National Product method, consumer surplus method, cost method, market value method, and monopoly and discriminating monopoly methods, but little has been done in the area of aesthetic values. Techniques for including such values in project evaluation need to be further researched. Tradeoff models developed by market researchers, the advertising industry, social psychologists and sociologists may have some applicability. Methodology for including proposed multiple objective functions in project analysis is also a critical need.     

箱形长钢梁内焊接危害分析与对策

大跨度起重机箱形梁,因结构强度的要求,需要从两端进入梁内施焊。由于截面小、长度大,作业中产生大量烟尘、毒气,不能及时排出,严重损害工人身体健康。特别在高温季节,焊接热又使梁内温度增高,操作者闷热难忍,危害身心健康,影响工作效率。本文在实验研究基础上,分析了箱形长钢梁内多人焊接时,产生的烟尘、毒气及其分布情况,并“以人为中心”,剖析各种解决焊接危害技术的特点,提出适用于截面在1～2m~2、长度在30～50m范围的钢梁内多人施焊时的排烟降温对策。     

Minimization of socioeconomic disruption for displaced populations following disasters

In the aftermath of catastrophic natural disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes, emergency management agencies come under intense pressure to provide temporary housing to address the large‐scale displacement of the vulnerable population. Temporary housing is essential to enable displaced families to reestablish their normal daily activities until permanent housing solutions can be provided. Temporary housing decisions, however, have often been criticized for their failure to fulfil the socioeconomic needs of the displaced families within acceptable budgets. This paper presents the development of (1) socioeconomic disruption metrics that are capable of quantifying the socioeconomic impacts of temporary housing decisions on displaced populations; and (2) a robust multi‐objective optimization model for temporary housing that is capable of simultaneously minimizing socioeconomic disruptions and public expenditures in an effective and efficient manner. A large‐scale application example is optimized to illustrate the use of the model and demonstrate its capabilities ingenerating optimal plans for realistic temporary housing problems.     

空气质量模型中大气化学机理的发展与比较

大气化学机理是空气质量模型中重要的组成部分,是研究大气化学过程的重要手段和方法。综述了碳键机理(CBM)、区域大气化学机理(RACM)和加州大气污染研究中心机理(SAPRC)3类常用归纳化学机理的发展历程,比较了各化学机理在物种集总方式、物种数和化学反应数等方面的差异,介绍了各类大气化学机理最新版本的更新及在空气质量模型中的应用情况。对不同大气化学机理在空气质量模型中应用的比较进行了分析和总结,讨论了导致不同大气化学机理模拟结果差异的原因,并对空气质量模型中不同大气化学机理的选择和应用提出了建议。     

基于智能交通运输系统(ITS)的交通安全控制体系研究

道路交通事故是当今世界最严重的公害之一 ,道路交通安全问题也受到世界各国的广泛重视。近十年 ,全球发展较快的智能交通运输系统 (ITS)使传统的交通运输状况大为改善 ,大大地提高了现有道路网的通行能力和交通运输的安全性 ,削弱或消除了以往诱发交通事故的不安全因素 ,有效地减少了交通事故的发生。笔者在简述了ITS的应用概况、基本功能以及智能汽车理论研发内容的基础上 ,论述了以ITS技术为基础的交通安全控制体系框架及其功效 ,阐明了我国快速发展ITS技术对提高道路交通安全水平具有重要的战略意义。     

Objectives for Multiple-Species Conservation Planning

Abstract:  The first step in conservation planning is to identify objectives. Most stated objectives for conservation, such as to maximize biodiversity outcomes, are too vague to be useful within a decision-making framework. One way to clarify the issue is to define objectives in terms of the risk of extinction for multiple species. Although the assessment of extinction risk for single species is common, few researchers have formulated an objective function that combines the extinction risks of multiple species. We sought to translate the broad goal of maximizing the viability of species into explicit objectives for use in a decision-theoretic approach to conservation planning. We formulated several objective functions based on extinction risk across many species and illustrated the differences between these objectives with simple examples. Each objective function was the mathematical representation of an approach to conservation and emphasized different levels of threat. Our objectives included minimizing the joint probability of one or more extinctions, minimizing the expected number of extinctions, and minimizing the increase in risk of extinction from the best-case scenario. With objective functions based on joint probabilities of extinction across species, any correlations in extinction probabilities had to be known or the resultant decisions were potentially misleading. Additive objectives, such as the expected number of extinctions, did not produce the same anomalies. We demonstrated that the choice of objective function is central to the decision-making process because alternative objective functions can lead to a different ranking of management options. Therefore, decision makers need to think carefully in selecting and defining their conservation goals.     

British directors perspectives on the impact of health and safety on corporate performance

Occupational health and safety is established as a factor in international competitiveness, but we question the relevance of this economic argument at the organisational level. On this basis we assess the place of health and safety in the senior management agenda, based on findings from recent market research. Out of this we take a brief perspective on the literature on performance assessment and corporate reputation, and their relationship with health and safety in the workplace. We then report original in-depth research on directors' attitudes to and practice in workplace health and safety. We conclude with a summary of the key issues and a discussion of directions for further work.     

Scenario Development as a Basis for Formulating a Research Program on Future Agriculture: A Methodological Approach

To increase the awareness of society to the challenges of global food security, we developed five contrasting global and European scenarios for 2050 and used these to identify important issues for future agricultural research. Using a scenario development method known as morphological analysis, scenarios were constructed that took economic, political, technical, and environmental factors into account. With the scenarios as a starting point future challenges were discussed and research issues and questions were identified in an interactive process with stakeholders and researchers. Based on the outcome of this process, six socioeconomic and biophysical overarching challenges for future agricultural were formulated and related research issues identified. The outcome was compared with research priorities generated in five other research programs. In comparison, our research questions focus more on societal values and the role of consumers in influencing agricultural production, as well as on policy formulation and resolving conflicting goals, areas that are presently under-represented in agricultural research. The partly new and more interdisciplinary research priorities identified in Future Agriculture compared to other programs analyzed are likely a result of the methodological approach used, combining scenarios and interaction between stakeholders and researchers.     

Creating an academic landscape of sustainability science: an analysis of the citation network

Sustainability is an important concept for society, economics, and the environment, with thousands of research papers published on the subject annually. As sustainability science becomes a distinctive research field, it is important to define sustainability clearly and grasp the entire structure, current status, and future directions of sustainability science. This paper provides an academic landscape of sustainability science by analyzing the citation network of papers published in academic journals. A topological clustering method is used to detect the sub-domains of sustainability science. Results show the existence of 15 main research clusters: Agriculture, Fisheries, Ecological Economics, Forestry (agroforestry), Forestry (tropical rain forest), Business, Tourism, Water, Forestry (biodiversity), Urban Planning, Rural Sociology, Energy, Health, Soil, and Wildlife. Agriculture, Fisheries, Ecological Economics, and Forestry (agroforestry) clusters are predominant among these. The Energy cluster is currently developing, as indicated by the age of papers in the cluster, although it has a relatively small number of papers. These results are compared with those obtained by natural language processing. Education, Biotechnology, Medical, Livestock, Climate Change, Welfare, and Livelihood clusters are uniquely extracted by natural language processing, because they are common topics across clusters in the citation network.     

珠江三角洲秋季典型O3污染的气象条件及贡献量化

利用自组织神经网络分析法,对珠江三角洲2013~2017年秋季海平面气压和全风速场进行大样本客观分型.结果表明,影响O₃的天气类型共有7种,由污染程度高低分为高、中、低3类,对应的平均O₃超标率分别为32.3%, 12.0%和4.2%.对比2017年和2016年秋季O₃污染天气分型下促发O₃污染的气象因子差异,2017年秋季高污染型O₃天气形势出现的天数比2016年增多,且中污染型天气形势出现时,2017年的局地污染气象条件更为不利.采用WRF-CAMx模式通过改变气象场输入来量化气象条件贡献,并用实测变化减去气象变化以推算排放贡献.结果表明,气象条件变化导致O₃浓度上升的贡献率为29.8%,而排放的变化引起O₃浓度下降的贡献率为7.1%.在2017年秋季开展的O₃污染防治专项行动指导下的珠江三角洲O₃前体物控制措施,有效缓解了部分由于不利气象条件而引起的O₃污染浓度上升.不利气象条件是导致2017年秋季O₃浓度升高的重要成因.