Water use in unconventional oil and gas development: an assessment on water use metric evaluation and selection

This study identifies five data input categories essential to quantifying water use and the environmental impacts via water use metrics (i.e., Water Footprints) when evaluating water use during upstream unconventional oil and gas. Published water use metrics, which included provisions for addressing each of the five categories, were selected for evaluation. The selected metrics were compared and evaluated against data parameters defined within each of the input categories. Finally, a decision tree for method selection, which differentiates between assessment mechanisms, impact indicator, and result units, is presented to facilitate method selection of future studies of water use in unconventional oil and gas development.     

Attributes,challenges and future directions of community resilience

With the continuous development of human society, the damage to the natural environment is becoming increasingly large, causing crisis events to occur frequently. In recent years, the study of community resilience is becoming popular among scholars because of its perspective on disaster prevention and mitigation. In this study, we apply database retrieval to untangle community resilience-related papers from multiple directions. We analyze the connotation, attribute, and composition of community, resilience, and community resilience comprehensively by summarizing important issues and research progress in community resilience. Challenges and shortcomings faced by community resilience development are also determined. Moreover, we put forward the research directions that future research can focus on. Through literature review, current research on community resilience focuses on the following aspects: “infrastructure construction,” “crowd in the community,” “economic resilience,” “social capital,” and “measurement of community resilience.” Such research is not yet systematic and relatively decentralized. The attention to collective resilience in the community is relatively weak, which makes achieving the goal of “people-oriented and systematic control” difficult. Therefore, this study states that the development of future community resilience should stand from the perspective of “system of system” and build on knowledge and tools of various relevant domains. Therefore, public needs and participation are highlighted as breakthrough points. The research should integrate infrastructure and economic resilience, social resource allocation, network connection, and other aspects to build a holistic and functional resilient community.     

Scaling and universality in urban economic diversification

Understanding cities is central to addressing major global challenges from climate change to economic resilience. Although increasingly perceived as fundamental socio-economic units, the detailed fabric of urban economic activities is only recently accessible to comprehensive analyses with the availability of large datasets. Here, we study abundances of business categories across US metropolitan statistical areas, and provide a framework for measuring the intrinsic diversity of economic activities that transcends scales of the classification scheme. A universal structure common to all cities is revealed, manifesting self-similarity in internal economic structure as well as aggregated metrics (GDP, patents, crime). We present a simple mathematical derivation of the universality, and provide a model, together with its economic implications of open-ended diversity created by urbanization, for understanding the observed empirical distribution. Given the universal distribution, scaling analyses for individual business categories enable us to determine their relative abundances as a function of city size. These results shed light on the processes of economic differentiation with scale, suggesting a general structure for the growth of national economies as integrated urban systems.     

A systematic literature review of the capabilities and performance metrics of supply chain resilience

ABSTRACT

Research on supply chain resilience (SCRE) capabilities and its performance measurement has been growing in recent years. However, the investigation of these concepts has primarily been conducted independently despite the interdependence of these concepts. A systematic literature review of 153 papers was conducted based on the principles of rigour, transparency and replicability required by the methodology. For the first time, we structurally reviewed the 11 SCRE performance metrics categories and its capabilities in SCRE Capabilities-Performance Metrics Framework (SCPM) developed based on the three resilience dimensions (readiness, response and recovery). The framework enables researchers to seek fundamental knowledge and to pursue further research regarding SCRE assessment. This study also provides practical value offering a guidance for decision-makers considering the trade-off among different capabilities and performance metrics.     

社区地震安全韧性评估系统及应用示范

韧性是指系统在受到外界扰动时抵抗、调整、恢复和适应的能力。北京历史上多次发生重大地震灾害,地震风险非常严峻。提升地震安全(Safety)韧性(Resilience)是北京市防灾减灾工作的重点之一。目前虽然对地震韧性问题已有诸多研究,但是尚缺少可以实操的区域地震韧性评价方法和工具。在北京市地震局的支持下,清华大学团队提出了可操作的社区韧性定量评价方法,并以一个典型社区为研究对象,开展了地震安全韧性评估工作,并开发了相应的系统平台。研究内容主要包括:社区韧性评估体系;建筑系统韧性评估;交通系统韧性评估;生命线系统韧性评估;非实体系统韧性评估;并在此基础上开发了韧性评估系统应用示范软件平台。评估结果表明:该社区整体韧性水平有待提升。其中:交通系统满足需求的能力较其他系统高;建筑系统韧性水平不足,但在不同地震强度下满足需求的能力较为稳定;生命线系统在地震强度较低时韧性水平较高,地震强度较高时韧性水平较低,满足需求的能力与地震强度密切相关。针对上述结果,研究针对建筑系统提出了若干韧性提升措施并进行了讨论。该研究定量评估了包含多个子系统的典型社区地震安全韧性水平,成果可以作为示范为未来北京市范围内的推广应用提供参考。     

Interpollutant emission trading of ozone precursors in southeast Texas

Interpollutant trading (IPT) allows for trades among emissions of different compounds that contribute to ambient concentrations of the same pollutant. Shortages of single pollutant offsets have motivated the consideration of interpollutant offsets for ozone precursors on a case-by-case basis in California, but IPT has been approached with caution because of the difficulties in assessing the adequacy and uncertainty of trading ratios between oxides of nitrogen (NO _x ) and volatile organic compound (VOC) sources and in resolving fundamental environmental policy and equity concerns. This study examines trading of NO _x and VOC emissions in Houston, Texas. Houston annually experiences ozone concentrations that are among the highest in the United States. The region has a large population base as well as numerous petrochemical facilities that emit large amounts of VOCs, including highly reactive VOCs such as ethylene, propylene, and 1,3-butadiene. IPT ratios can be defined as tons of VOC emissions equivalent to a ton of NO _x , given an impact index such as maximum ozone concentration, area exceeding a threshold ozone concentration, or population exposure. IPT ratios for Houston exhibit variability due to a combination of large spatial gradients in emissions and meteorological conditions across the region. NO _x disbenefits have a particularly important influence on the variability in IPT ratios between source categories and metrics on some episode days. IPT ratios based on different impact indices, notably, maximum daily 8-h ozone concentration and population exposure, in Houston correlated poorly with each other, which increases the complexity of trading program design. The results suggest the importance of careful assessment and design of IPT programs.

On- and offshore prepositioning and delivery mechanism for humanitarian relief operations

Traditionally, international humanitarian organisations have used on-demand dispatch of disaster relief goods from regional logistics units (RLUs) for sudden onset disaster response. This paper investigates the improvements in efficiency and resilience of disaster relief operations by combining the existing method of onshore prepositioning of relief items in RLUs with offshore prepositioning of relief items on-board vessels and at seaport terminals. The problem is formulated as a linear programming model that incorporates different logistical costs, including inventory cost, replenishment cost, and transportation cost, to find the best combination of disaster relief methods. At the tactical level, the model determines how much and where disaster relief items need to be prepositioned. At the operational level, the model addresses how much and by which mode of transport the disaster relief items need to be transported to disaster points. The model is tested on 16 major disasters in Southeast Asia. The main finding is that offshore prepositioning can contribute to cost reduction and resilience without compromising on the speed or the scale of the response. The results also suggest that the benefits depend on the duration of the disaster emergency period and the ratio of offshore storage cost to onshore storage cost.     

#Psychology: a bibliometric analysis of psychological literature in the online media

Online media and especially social media are becoming more and more relevant to our everyday life. Reflecting this tendency in the scientific community, alternative metrics for measuring scholarly impact on the web are increasingly proposed, extending (or even replacing) traditional metrics (e.g., citations, journal impact factor, etc.). This paper explores the relationship between traditional metrics and alternative metrics for psychological research in the years from 2010 to 2012. Traditional publication metrics (e.g., number of citations, impact factor) and alternative metrics (collected from Altmetric, a website that collects and counts references as they appear in Wikipedia, public policy documents, research blogs, mainstream media, or social networks) were extracted and compared, using a dataset of over 245,000 publications from the Web of Science. Results show positive, small to medium, correlations on the level of individual publications, and frequently medium to high correlations on the level of research fields of Psychology. The more accumulated the level of analysis, the higher the correlations. These findings are fairly robust over time and comparable to findings from research areas other than Psychology. Additionally, a new metric, the Score Factor, is proposed as a useful alternative metric to assess a journal’s impact in the online media.     

Open manufacturing: a design-for-resilience approach

Open systems have been of interest to the research and industrial community for decades, e.g. software development, telecommunication, and innovation. The presence of open manufacturing enterprises in a cloud calls for broadly interpretable models. Though there is no global standard for representation of digital models of processes and systems in a cloud, the existing process modelling methodologies and languages are of interest to the manufacturing cloud. The models residing in the cloud need to be configured and reconfigured to meet different objectives, including complexity reduction and interpretability which coincide with the resilience requirements. Digitisation, greater openness, and growing service orientation of manufacturing offer opportunities to address resilience at the design rather than the operations stage. An algorithm is presented for complexity reduction of digital models. The complexity reduction algorithm decomposes complex structures and enhances interpretability and visibility of their components. The same algorithm and its variants could serve other known concepts supporting resilience such as modularity of products and processes as well as delayed product differentiation. The ideas introduced in the paper and the complexity reduction algorithm of digital models are illustrated with examples. Properties of the graph and matrix representations produced by the algorithm are discussed.     

Scheduling of recovery actions in the supply chain with resilience analysis considerations

Supply chain engineering models with resilience considerations have been mostly focused on disruption impact quantification within one analysis layer, such as supply chain design or planning. Performance impact of disruptions has been typically analysed without scheduling of recovery actions. Taking into account schedule recovery actions and their duration times, this study extends the existing literature to supply chain scheduling and resilience analysis by an explicit integration of the optimal schedule recovery policy and supply chain resilience. In particular, we compute a schedule optimal control policy and analyse the performance of this policy by varying the perturbation vector and representing the outcomes of variations in the form of an attainable set. We propose a scheduling model that considers the coordination of recovery actions in the supply chain. Further, we suggest a resilience index by using the notion of attainable sets. The attainable sets are known in control theory; their calculation is based on the schedule control model results and the minimax regret approach for continuous time parameters given by intervals. We show that the proposed indicator can be used to estimate the impact of disruption and recovery dynamics on the achievement of planned performance in the supply chain.     

Blur-metric-based resolution enhancement of computationally reconstructed integral images

A computational integral imaging reconstruction technique can reconstruct a set of plane images of three-dimensional (3-D) objects along the output plane, in which only the plane object image (POI) reconstructed on the right planes where the objects were positioned is highly focused, whereas the other POIs reconstructed away from these planes are unfocused and blurred. In fact, these blurred POIs act as additional noises to other object images reconstructed on different output planes, so that the resolution of reconstructed object images should be considerably deteriorated. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to effectively reduce the blurred images occurring in the focused POIs by employing a blur metric. From the estimated blur metric of each reconstructed POI, the right output planes where the objects were located can be detected. In addition, with an estimated blur metric, focused POIs can be adaptively eroded by a simple gray level erosion operation because it reduces regional expansion caused by the blur effect. The gray values of the eroded POIs are then finally remapped by referencing the original POIs. Some experiments revealed an average increase of 1.95 dB in the peak signal-to-noise ratio in the remapped POIs compared with that of the originally reconstructed POIs, and that the original forms of the object images in the remapped POIs could be preserved even after they had gone through an erosion operation. This feasibility test of the proposed scheme finally suggests a possibility of its application to robust detection and recognition of 3-D objects in a scene.     

Fostering emergent resilience: the complex adaptive supply network of disaster relief

The frequency and intensity of disasters continue to increase. Following large-scale and catastrophic disasters, local organisations integrate with other responding organisations to form hastily disaster relief supply chain networks. Such supply networks are infrequently activated in a single location, generate unparalleled uncertainty, change quickly, and are driven by the urgency of saving lives and restoring livelihoods. Unfortunately, even where sound supply chain management practices are used, supply networks have encountered diverse levels of resilience and adequate disaster relief performance has remained elusive. In this paper, several unique characteristics that disaster relief efforts exhibit are examined as compared with demand-driven, steady-state supply chains. Important differences in the flows of resource, money, and information are identified. A complex adaptive supply network (CASN) lens is used to frame what existing literature has uncovered regarding disaster relief efforts, showing how relief organisations, their interactions, and their environmental context help determine the level of resilience that supply networks experience following disasters. This CASN characterisation is leveraged to help explain why traditional supply chain management practices lead to varied results in disaster relief. Finally, complexity science theory is drawn on to set forth eight testable propositions that may help to enhance supply network resilience.     

Trapezoidal fuzzy DEMATEL method to analyze and correct for relations between variables in a composite indicator for disaster resilience

Indicator systems of disaster vulnerability are important for monitoring and increasing the capacity in risk management. Various composite indicators have been developed to operationalize social vulnerability at national and sub-national level. Problems with relations between the sub-indicators of the composite indicator are a common phenomenon. The fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method analyzes the structure of complex cause-effect relationships between the sub-indicators based on perceived direct influences. The results provide insight into the composite indicators and can be used to correct the sub-indicator weighting for relations between the sub-indicators and allow the identification of cause- and effect-group sub-indicators which is an important information for selecting mitigation measures in risk management. The fuzzy DEMATEL method is generalized to take into account trapezoidal membership functions. A composite indicator originally developed to determine the disaster resilience in US counties is adapted, operationalized and used to assess the resilience of Germany at county level using corrected weights. Resilience is highest in urban areas and in southern Germany and lowest in rural areas, in particular in eastern Germany.     

Improved resilience measure for component recovery priority in power grids

Given the complexity of power grids, the failure of any component may cause large-scale economic losses. Consequently, the quick recovery of power grids after disasters has become a new research direction. Considering the severity of power grid disasters, an improved power grid resilience measure and its corresponding importance measures are proposed. The recovery priority of failed components after a disaster is determined according to the influence of the failed components on the power grid resilience. Finally, based on the data from the 2019 Power Yearbook of each city in Shandong Province, China, the power grid resilience after a disaster is analyzed for two situations, namely, partial components failure and failure of all components. Result shows that the recovery priorities of components with different importance measures vary. The resilience evaluations under different repair conditions prove the feasibility of the proposed method.     

Nanoflow gradient generator for capillary high-performance liquid chromatography

A novel method of generating a nanoflow gradient elution for a capillary high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system has been developed. An important feature of this system is that any gradient (GR) profile generated by a conventional microflow GR pump can be asymptotically traced and converted as a corresponding nanoflow GR profile simply by using a 10-port switching valve with two injection loops installed. Consequently, it has been called an "asymptotic trace 10-port valve" (AT10PV) nanoflow GR generator. Performance of the AT10PV nanoflow GR generator was tested in the range of flow rates from 50 to 500 nL/min. The test demonstrated that the AT10PV nanoflow GR generator can asymptotically trace the original gradient profile with good reproducibility. A capillary HPLC system using the AT10PV nanoflow GR generator provides reasonably good repeatability of peak retention times on the chromatogram of the tryptic digest of a BSA sample, RSD of less than 0.3% at a flow rate of 200 nL/min. It also enables sequential running of a series of sample injections in the same manner as conventional analysis at microflow rates.     

Is there a fallacy of composition of external R&D? An empirical assessment of the impact of quasi-internal,external and offshored R&D

Empirical studies at the individual firm level often find a positive impact of external R&D on innovation. However, external R&D sourcing might produce an impoverishment of the local knowledge base and thus damage innovation production at the regional level. To address this possible fallacy of composition, we first review the various forms of ‘external’ R&D. We then use the French R&D survey to assess the impact of four different ways of transacting or collaborating on R&D: onshore affiliate external R&D, offshore affiliate external R&D, onshore non-affiliate and offshore non-affiliate external R&D. We then estimate knowledge production functions on the 94 metropolitan French NUTS3 regions observed between 1997 and 2008, differentiating internal R&D and these categories of external R&D. We obtain that the impact of onshore non-affiliate external R&D is significantly negative. The other external R&D categories are non-significant and we do not detect any complementarity between internal and external R&D.     

Impact evaluation of the voluntary early retirement policy on research and technology outputs of the faculties of science in Morocco

Scientometric indicators or science metrics, conventional and derived ones, are used in ex-post evaluating of a government policy with impact on research system. Publications, citations, h-index, Glänzel model, and patents are applied in both micro and meso levels. This provides useful insight into the impact of the voluntary early retirement policy on research and technological outputs of the faculties of science in Morocco and consequently on the overall Morocco??s research system. The use of these metrics showed that the effect of the initiative was quite limited by affecting an average of 8% of the professor staffs of these institutions. Furthermore, each professor benefiting from this initiative had produced an average of 3.7 publications indexed in SCI in all his (her) career. The few number of the publications attributed to these professors had been gradually decreasing even 6 years before the initiative. No specific scientific field had intensively been struck. The findings also support that these professors were in general more ??author?? than ??inventor??. Inventor-professor institutions were likely more affected by the initiative. By means of these metrics, even if the initiative had not contributed to rejuvenate the professor-staffs of the faculties of science in Morocco, would nevertheless be a stimulus of their research system with respect to their scientometric indicators.     

Semantic software metrics computed from natural language design specifications

An approach using semantic metrics to provide insight into software quality early in the design phase of software development by automatically analysing natural language (NL) design specifications for object-oriented systems is presented. Semantic metrics are based on the meaning of software within the problem domain. In this paper, we extend semantic metrics to analyse design specifications. Since semantic metrics can now be calculated from early in design through software maintenance, they provide a consistent and seamless type of metric that can be collected through the entire lifecycle. We discuss our semMet system, an NL-based program comprehension tool we have expanded to calculate semantic metrics from design specifications. To validate semantic metrics from design specifications and to illustrate their seamless nature across the software lifecycle, we compare semantic metrics from different phases of the lifecycle, and we also compare them to syntactically oriented metrics calculated from the source code. Results indicate semantic metrics calculated from design specifications can give insight into the quality of the source code based on that design. Also, these results illustrate that semantic metrics provide a consistent and seamless type of metric that can be collected through the entire lifecycle.     

Managing rumor,looting, and suicide not as breaking news but as community disaster culture

Abstract

Not many have realized the close relationship between rumor, looting, and suicide and disaster management, although some researchers have discussed each issue separately. The purpose of this paper is to understand better the nature of these three issues by mainly analyzing them in the context of distinguished models, ‘breaking news’ and the community’s culture when it comes to disaster management. As the key finding, the field of disaster management must not manage rumor, looting, and suicide only as breaking news. Instead, these three issues should be managed under the community’s disaster culture to dispel rumors and provide facts through the mass media and public information officers, penalize cases of looting coupled with education, and support and intervene in cases of suicide.     

Profiling citation impact: A new methodology

A methodology for creating bibliometric impact profiles is described. The advantages of such profiles as a management tool to supplement the reporting power of traditional average impact metrics are discussed. The impact profile for the UK as a whole reveals the extent to which the median and modal UK impact values differ from and are significantly below average impact. Only one-third of UK output for 1995-2004 is above world average impact although the UK’s average world-normalised impact is 1.24. Time-categorised impact profiles are used to test hypotheses about changing impact and confirm that the increase in average UK impact is due to real improvement rather than a reduction in low impact outputs. The impact profile methodology has been applied across disciplines as well as years and is shown to work well in all subject categories. It reveals substantial variations in performance between disciplines. The value of calculating the profile median and mode as well as the average impact are demonstrated. Finally, the methodology is applied to a specific data-set to compare the impact profile of the elite Laboratory of Molecular Biology (Cambridge) with the relevant UK average. This demonstrates an application of the methodology by identifying where the institute’s exceptional performance is located. The value of impact profiles lies in their role as an interpretive aid for non-specialists, not as a technical transformation of the data for scientometricians.