Bridging biogeochemical and food web models for an End-to-End representation of marine ecosystem dynamics: The Venice lagoon case study

The simultaneous accounting of effects of natural and anthropogenic changes within a common framework calls for the development of new comprehensive tools capable of integrating biological processes that span a huge range of scales, from viruses to fishes, in addition to their interactions with physical–chemical environmental properties, i.e. End-to-End models.     

计算机网络风险防范数据仓库的研究与设计

随着全球信息化进程的推进,网络风险已经成为阻碍信息化进程的一个重要因素,网络安全问题成为公众关注的焦点.计算机网络安全事件包括病毒、木马、蠕虫、网络监听、黑客攻击、恶意软件、网页仿冒、僵尸网络等,为帮助网民更加有效地防范网络安全事件,针对网络风险防范数据管理的特点,开展了网络风险防范数据库和数据仓库的研究与设计.该研究通过收集、整理和分析一些权威网站关于各种网络安全事件的统计信息以及历年的网络安全调查报告,以SQL Server 2000作为数据库管理系统,建立了一个关于具体网络安全事件的数据库和数据仓库,其中数据仓库中存储了病毒、木马、僵尸网络、网络钓鱼等具体网络安全事件在不同月份或年份的统计信息.随着数据库中数据的不断完善和充分,可以进一步建立挖掘模型,分析这些历史数据,从而为网络安全风险防范提供基础支持.     

基于DEA模型的城市用地经济效益比较研究

运用数据包络分析方法（DEA）,从城市土地的投入和产出角度,对全国30个省会城市的城市用地经济效益进行比较研究。研究结果表明：（1）在全国30个城市（包括直辖市和部分省会城市）,仅上海、杭州、广州和昆明等4个城市为DEA有效城市,即在现有的经济、社会、技术条件下,投入产出达到最佳状态,其余26个城市为非DEA有效城市;（2）南京和哈尔滨处于规模效益递减的发展阶段,上海、杭州、广州和昆明处于规模效益不变的发展阶段,其余24个城市都处于规模效益递增的发展阶段;（3）30个省会城市的城市土地利用经济效益发展极不平衡,呈现东高西低的格局,且城市土地利用普遍不集约;最后对如何提高城市用地经济效益提出了相应的改进措施。     

The USGS Water Availability and Use Science Program: Needs,Establishment, and Goals of a Water Census

Many reports have recognized the need for a national water census for the United States and have called upon the U.S. Geological Survey to undertake this challenge. For example, the National Science and Technology Council stated: “The United States has a strong need for an ongoing census of water that describes the status of our Nation's water resource at any point in time and identifies trends over time.” Responding to the need for this information, the U.S. Congress established the SECURE Water Act. The directives are to provide a more accurate assessment of the status of the water resources of the United States; determine the quantity of water available for beneficial uses; identify long‐term trends in water availability; assist in determination of the quality of the water resources; and develop the basis for an improved ability to forecast the availability of water for future economic, energy production, and environmental uses. This article provides summary and new information on the process and progress on work to estimate water budget components nationwide, involvement of stakeholder interests, efforts to examine water‐use characteristics throughout the Nation, studies of water availability in geographically focused areas and the initiation of methods to provide open access to existing and new water resources information contributing to Open Water Data Initiative (OWDI) efforts and objectives.     

Evaluating the efficiency of green vehicles and diesel vehicles

One of the major interests of governments in the area of environmental protection is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and air pollutants’ emissions (HC, CO, NO_x, PM, and SO_x) from vehicles. This paper aims at evaluating the efficiency of green and diesel vehicles. Two hundred fifty vehicles were selected for comparison study. The results show that the efficiency of each type of vehicle hardly differed in 2008 and 2009, but the gap between green and diesel vehicles became significant in 2010–2012. The results also indicate that larger automotive companies and smaller green vehicles show higher efficiency in recent years, whereas the type of green vehicles and the origin of automotive companies are not significantly related to the efficiency score of green vehicles. These findings provide more information for understanding differences in green vehicles.     

Risk-based Decision Process for Arsenic in Soils: Implications of Conservative Protocols

Making defensible risk-based decisions is a complex process that incorporates risk assessment into a risk management framework. Many site investigations require additional study, negotiations and/or actions for arsenic detected in soil samples, in many cases where no process related sources are identified and no other chemicals of concern are identified. Regulatory agencies develop guidance to standardize approaches to risk-based site investigations that focus on achieving "safe" concentrations. For arsenic, the action level is frequently in the "gray region", a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) term associated with a region of high uncertainty for risk management decisions in the "decision performance curve" associated with the data quality objective (DQO) process. Recognizing the conservative nature of the risk-based screening value for arsenic, approaches to enforce this level (or proof of comparability to natural background) may have numerous consequences including ineffective use of resources, stigmas on properties or actions at industrial or hazardous sites that are inconsistent with their regional setting. Florida has developed regulations and guidance on investigation of brownfield sites and has supported a study by the University of Florida (UF) to evaluate natural background concentrations in Florida soils. This paper discusses the sources of uncertainty near the soil cleanup target levels (SCTLs) in the Florida decision-making framework.     

Bottom-Up Risk Regulation? How Nanotechnology Risk Knowledge Gaps Challenge Federal and State Environmental Agencies

Nanotechnologies have been called the "Next Industrial Revolution." At the same time, scientists are raising concerns about the potential health and environmental risks related to the nano-sized materials used in nanotechnologies. Analyses suggest that current U.S. federal regulatory structures are not likely to adequately address these risks in a proactive manner. Given these trends, the premise of this paper is that state and local-level agencies will likely deal with many "end-of-pipe" issues as nanomaterials enter environmental media without prior toxicity testing, federal standards, or emissions controls. In this paper we (1) briefly describe potential environmental risks and benefits related to emerging nanotechnologies; (2) outline the capacities of the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act to address potential nanotechnology risks, and how risk data gaps challenge these regulations; (3) outline some of the key data gaps that challenge state-level regulatory capacities to address nanotechnologies' potential risks, using Wisconsin as a case study; and (4) discuss advantages and disadvantages of state versus federal approaches to nanotechnology risk regulation. In summary, we suggest some ways government agencies can be better prepared to address nanotechnology risk knowledge gaps and risk management.     

An Assessment of Road Impacts on Wildlife Populations in U.S. National Parks

Current United States National Park Service (NPS) management is challenged to balance visitor use with the environmental and social consequences of automobile use. Wildlife populations in national parks are increasingly vulnerable to road impacts. Other than isolated reports on the incidence of road-related mortality, there is little knowledge of how roads might affect wildlife populations throughout the national park system. Researchers at the Western Transportation Institute synthesized information obtained from a system-wide survey of resource managers to assess the magnitude of their concerns on the impacts of roads on park wildlife. The results characterize current conditions and help identify wildlife-transportation conflicts. A total of 196 national park management units (NPS units) were contacted and 106 responded to our questionnaire. Park resource managers responded that over half of the NPS units’ existing transportation systems were at or above capacity, with traffic volumes currently high or very high in one quarter of them and traffic expected to increase in the majority of units. Data is not generally collected systematically on road-related mortality to wildlife, yet nearly half of the respondents believed road-caused mortality significantly affected wildlife populations. Over one-half believed habitat fragmentation was affecting wildlife populations. Despite these expressed concerns, only 36% of the NPS units used some form of mitigation method to reduce road impacts on wildlife. Nearly half of the respondents expect that these impacts would only worsen in the next five years. Our results underscore the importance for a more systematic approach to address wildlife-roadway conflicts for a situation that is expected to increase in the next five to ten years.     

Performance assessment for municipal solid waste collection in Taiwan

Collecting municipal solid waste (MSW) is a major and expensive task for local waste management authorities, thus efficient MSW collection is a necessity. This study presents a procedure for developing an aggregate indicator (AI) to assess MSW collection efficiency based on multiple factors. The applicabilities of various key performance indicators (KPIs) are evaluated based on five selection criteria, and five KPIs are chosen to form the AI. The relative efficiencies of local MSW collection services are analyzed by the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. A set of common weights for all five KPIs is then generated based on DEA results and four selection rules by modifying a previous approach. Finally, the proposed AI is applied to assess the MSW collection services provided by 307 local governments in Taiwan, and associated results are compared and discussed.