Development of a risk measure as a sustainable project selection criterion

SUMMARY

Sustainable decision-making requires consideration of technology, ecology, and the social and political infrastructure of society. While it may never be possible to identify with certainty what is sustainable and what is not, an attempt has been made in this paper to formulate a measure that permits one to compare the performances of project alternatives with respect to risk. An algorithm is presented for the evaluation of a risk criterion that can be used with other criteria in the process of selecting project alternatives. The intent of the risk criterion is to involve project stakeholders in the process of quantifying the risks associated with different project alternatives.     

A prototype expert system for fishway design

The design of structures for fish passage in rivers and streams provides an opportunity to apply expert system concepts to a design problem. Fishways contribute to the sustainable development of water resources projects by providing a path that allows fish migrations to be maintained. A prototype expert system (FDES) has been developed to recommend the most suitable fishway type for given design conditions. A recommendation is provided on the basis of fishway hydraulics, fish passage performance, and cost requirements. Fishway design demands expertise in various scientific disciplines such as hydrology, hydraulics, and fish biology. Expert system technology may be used to reduce design time requirements and to serve as a teaching aid to inexperienced engineers by organizing and accessing the cumulative knowledge of the most experienced designers. The rule-based expert system development tool, VP-Expert, supplies the backward chaining control structure for accessing the knowledge within the prototype.     

Practical sustainability criteria for decision-making

SUMMARY

The new paradigm of sustainability necessitates revisions to traditional decision-making processes. This paper, which is the first in a series of four, outlines the changes required for decision-making to reflect sustainability concerns. Three sustainability criteria, that are the focus of the three subsequent papers, are introduced and the rationale for each is explained. A framework for incorporating the three sustainability criteria into the decision-making process is briefly outlined. The paper ends with the introduction to a case study, the North Central Project (NCP) for electricity supply alternatives. The NCP is used in the three following papers to demonstrate the individual components of the new approach to sustainable decision-making.     

OPTIMIZATION OF THE HYDROMETRIC NETWORK OPERATION BY A HEURISTIC TRAVELING SALESMAN ALGORITHM1

ABSTRACT: The problem of determining the optimal route to operate a network of hydrometric gauges within a given area is formulated and solved by an original heuristic traveling salesman algorithm. The algorithm used for solving the problem takes into account the variation of station service time, the eight-hour maximum working day, existence of more than one home base, and the budget constraint. The traveling salesman algorithm is used to solve the optima! assignment problem within a one-day time limit, locating a starting base, stations to visit, and the closest home base. The ending base for the previous day becomes the starting base for the next day, and the assignment procedure is repeated. The computation proceeds from day to day, until all the stations in the considered region are serviced. The solution obtained presents the optimal route to operate a network of hydrometric gauges. The optimization procedure has been applied to the Dauphin hydrometric field area in Manitoba.     

World water dynamics: global modeling of water resources

The growing scarcity of fresh and clean water is among the most important issues facing civilization in the 21st century. Despite the growing attention to a chronic, pernicious crisis in world's water resources our ability to correctly assess and predict global water availability, use and balance is still quite limited. An attempt is documented here in modeling global world water resources using system dynamics approach. Water resources sector (quantity and quality) is integrated with five sectors that drive industrial growth: population; agriculture; economy; nonrenewable resources; and persistent pollution. WorldWater model is developed on the basis of the last version of World3 model. Simulations of world water dynamics with WorldWater indicate that there is a strong relationship between the world water resources and future industrial growth of the world. It is also shown that the water pollution is the most important future water issue on the global level.     

Improved Weather Generator Algorithm for Multisite Simulation of Precipitation and Temperature

The KnnCAD Version 4 weather generator algorithm for nonparametric, multisite simulations of temperature and precipitation data is presented. The K‐nearest neighbor weather generator essentially reshuffles the historical data, with replacement. In KnnCAD Version 4, a block resampling scheme is introduced to preserve the temporal correlation structure in temperature data. Perturbation of the reshuffled variable data is also added to enhance the generation of extreme values. The Upper Thames River Basin in Ontario, Canada is used as a case study and the model is shown to simulate effectively the historical characteristics at the site. The KnnCAD Version 4 approach is shown to improve on the previous versions of the model and offers a major advantage over many parametric and semiparametric weather generators in that multisite use can be easily achieved without making statistical assumptions dealing with the spatial correlations and probability distributions of each variable.     

Microemulsion with aromatic oil as cleaner media for electropolymerisation

Microemulsion polymerization is widely used as a cleaner alternative way to prepare intrinsically conductive polymers. We studied isothermal phase diagrams for microemulsions of the electropolymerizable heterocyclic aromatic oil 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT), aqueous LiClO₄ solution and alkyl polyethoxylate. Our specific goal was to assess the effect of LiClO₄ salt on the phase behaviour. The phase behaviour was characterized by stepwise titration and microscopic analyses. Here we found that the increase of the concentration of LiClO₄ salt shifts the microemulsion region to lower surfactant content.