Estimating Potential Climate Change Effects on the Upper Neuse Watershed Water Balance Using the SWAT Model

Climate change poses water resource challenges for many already water stressed watersheds throughout the world. One such watershed is the Upper Neuse Watershed in North Carolina, which serves as a water source for the large and growing Research Triangle Park region. The aim of this study was to quantify possible changes in the watershed’s water balance due to climate change. To do this, we used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model forced with different climate scenarios for baseline, mid‐century, and end‐century time periods using five different downscaled General Circulation Models. Before running these scenarios, the SWAT model was calibrated and validated using daily streamflow records within the watershed. The study results suggest that, even under a mitigation scenario, precipitation will increase by 7.7% from the baseline to mid‐century time period and by 9.8% between the baseline and end‐century time period. Over the same periods, evapotranspiration (ET) would decrease by 5.5 and 7.6%, water yield would increase by 25.1% and 33.2%, and soil water would increase by 1.4% and 1.9%. Perhaps most importantly, the model results show, under a high emission scenario, large seasonal differences with ET estimated to decrease by up to 42% and water yield to increase by up to 157% in late summer and fall. Planning for the wetter predicted future and corresponding seasonal changes will be critical for mitigating the impacts of climate change on water resources.     

An application of a modified theory of planned behavior model to investigate adolescents’ job safety knowledge,norms, attitude and intention to enact workplace safety and health skills

Introduction: For many reasons, including a lack of adequate safety training and education, U.S. adolescents experience a higher rate of job-related injury compared to adult workers. Widely used social-psychological theories in public health research and practice, such as the theory of planned behavior, may provide guidance for developing and evaluating school-based interventions to prepare adolescents for workplace hazards and risks. Method: Using a structural equation modeling approach, the current study explores whether a modified theory of planned behavior model provides insight on 1,748 eighth graders’ occupational safety and health (OSH) attitude, subjective norm, self-efficacy and behavioral intention, before and after receiving instruction on a free, national young worker safety and health curriculum. Reliability estimates for the measures were produced and direct and indirect associations between knowledge and other model constructs assessed. Results: Overall, the findings align with the theory of planned behavior. The structural equation model adequately fit the data; most path coefficients are statistically significant and knowledge has indirect effects on behavioral intention. Confirmatory factor analyses suggest that the knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy, and behavioral intention measures each reflect a unique dimension (reliability estimates ≥0.86), while the subjective norm measure did not perform adequately. Conclusion: The findings presented provide support for using behavioral theory (specifically a modified theory of planned behavior) to investigate adolescents’ knowledge, perceptions, and behavioral intention to engage in safe and healthful activities at work, an understanding of which may contribute to reducing the downstream burden of injury on this vulnerable population—the future workforce. Practical application: Health behavior theories, commonly used in the social and behavioral sciences, have utility and provide guidance for developing and evaluating OSH interventions, including those aimed at preventing injuries and promoting the health and safety of adolescent workers in the U.S., who are injured at higher rates than are adults.     

System safety assessment using safety entropy

Safety assessment has a primary role in hazardous operations. Most studies on safety assessment focus on risk and accident modeling, in which safety is absent. These top-down methods are highly dependent on the occurred accidents to establish accidental scenarios, which may make the assessment approach lagging behind the evolving modern systems. Moreover, this “special to general” logic is scientifically suspect in safety assessment. There is a call for the development of safety assessment methods in the presence of system safety to complement risk-focused safety analysis. These methods should provide a framework based on a bottom-up approach to examine system safety from the operational perspective. This paper has attempted to provide a potential solution. In particular, a novel concept of safety entropy is proposed to integrate with The Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM), which is used to form the qualitative understanding of a system. A formula consisted of safety entropy, functional conformability, and system complexity has been established to determine the spontaneity of the safety state-changing process. The proposed method is applied to the safety assessment of a propane feed-control system. The results show the applicability of the method. Nevertheless, the model still needs to be further improved to fulfill better support for safety-related decision problems.     

Recent application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in process safety and loss prevention: A review

In recent years, significant progress has been made to ensure that process industries are among the safest workplaces in the world. However, with the increasing complexity of existing technologies and new problems brought about by emerging technologies, a strong need still exists to study the fundamentals of process safety and predict possible scenarios. This is attained by conducting the corresponding consequence modeling and risk assessments. As a result of the continuous advancement of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools and exponentially increased computation capabilities along with better understandings of the underlying physics, CFD simulations have been applied widely in the areas of process safety and loss prevention to gain new insights, improve existing models, and assess new hazardous scenarios. In this review, 126 papers from 2010 to 2020 have been included in order to systematically categorize and summarize recent applications of CFD for fires, explosions, dispersions of flammable and toxic materials from accidental releases, incident investigations and reconstructions, and other areas of process safety. The advantages of CFD modeling are discussed and the future of CFD applications in this research area is outlined.     

基于改进的SPAR-H化工实验室人因可靠性分析

近年来化工实验室事故屡禁不止,其中人的不安全行为是导致事故发生的主要原因.为评估实验人员可靠性,进一步管控化工实验室人的不安全行为,基于标准化工厂人因可靠性分析(SPAR-H)方法,结合化工实验室人因失误的特点,确定了更加适用于化工实验室的人因可靠性分析方法.首先依据"S-O-P"认知模型对人因失误类型进行划分;然后基...     

BIM技术在钢结构建筑抗震减灾管理中的应用

为提高钢结构建筑抗震减灾性能,降低建筑坍塌风险,研究BIM技术在钢结构建筑抗震减灾管理中的应用方法是非常必要的.利用BIM技术在钢结构建筑整体建造中的动态建模、可视化、信息共享管理以及抗震减灾性能检测等优势,在建筑抗震减灾管理决策阶段,选出最优方案,针对方案中影响建筑抗震减灾性能风险制定管理策略;在设计阶段,创建三维建...     

A Simulation Study to Assess the Sensitivity of a Forest Health Monitoring Network to Outbreaks of Defoliating Insects

The sensitivity of the United States Forest Health Monitoring network to outbreaks of defoliating insects was examined by means of a simulation study. A model constructed specifically for the study was used to generate a wide variety of defoliation patterns in forested landscapes. Forest configuration was that of Minnesota, USA, as expressed by the GAP land cover classification. Combinations of model parameters were based on a Latin Hypercube sample. The relationship between the average number of plots defoliated and outbreak characteristics was then examined via multiple regression. Both theoretical and model results pointed to a strong, linear relationship between the average number of plots defoliated and outbreak size. Model results provided additional insight, suggesting a significant relationship between the average number of plots defoliated and other outbreak characteristics after outbreak size was taken into account.     

顺序氯化对微生物、副产物和生物稳定性的综合控制

在中试规模试验中,研究了“短时游离氯后转氯胺的顺序氯化消毒工艺”对微生物、消毒副产物和生物稳定性指标的控制效果.该顺序氯化消毒工艺综合利用了游离氯消毒灭活微生物迅速彻底,氯胺消毒副产物生产量低的特点,通过氯化消毒技术的组合,安全经济地实现了消毒卫生学和消毒副产物指标的双重控制.该消毒工艺对细菌总数、异养菌平板计数、总大肠菌群指标的控制效果略好于传统游离氯消毒,对脊髓灰质炎病毒和大肠杆菌f2噬菌体的灭活效果与游离氯相同.相同原水条件下,顺序氯化消毒工艺比游离氯消毒工艺产生的三卤甲烷浓度减少35.8%～77.0%;卤乙酸减少36.6%～54.8%.消毒进水水质越差,顺序氯化消毒工艺在消毒副产物控制方面就越有优势.该工艺对生物稳定性指标的控制效果明显高于游离氯消毒.     

负压二次曝气二氧化氯发生器的研制与应用

以氯酸钠和工业盐酸为基本原料,采用独特的负压二次曝气工艺,在催化剂作用下,经氧化还原反应产生以二氧化氯为主的混合消毒气体,经吸收后形成一定浓度的二氧化氯混合消毒液,与待处理水充分混合,达到杀菌消毒的目的。     

氯对紫外线灭活枯草芽孢杆菌的协同作用

以枯草芽孢杆菌为研究对象,研究了紫外线和氯单独及联合作用时的灭菌效果.结果表明,单独氯消毒时,对枯草芽孢杆菌的灭活效果很低,CT值为300(mg·min)/L时,灭活率仅为0.53个对数级;单独紫外线消毒对枯草芽孢杆菌有较好的灭活效果,紫外线剂量为40mJ/cm²时,对其有3.3个对数级的灭活效果.紫外线和氯联合消毒时,对枯草芽孢杆菌的灭活效果大大增强,当紫外线剂量为40mJ/cm²,氯的CT值为300(mg·min)/L时,对枯草芽孢杆菌的灭活率可达6.2个对数级,远高于二者单独作用效果之和.紫外线与氯的作用顺序对消毒效果有明显影响,以先紫外线照射后再加氯的效果最好.通过Berenbaum公式计算可知,紫外线与氯联合灭菌是一种协同作用,并且随着紫外线剂量及氯投量的增加,协同作用增强.