Digital Commons Network^™

Modelling The Effect Of Information Feedback On The Spread Of The Ebola Virus, Bernadette O’Regan, Richard Moles

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper describes the application of the tools and techniques of the system dynamics method to the complex problem of understanding the spread of the Ebola virus. The main deliverable of this research is a computer simulation model in the system dynamics tradition. The essence of system dynamics is to act as a framework for formalising mental models of a problem. In this respect, the system dynamics simulation model presented here is a theory describing the structure of, and interrelationships between, the factors that impact an outbreak of the Ebola virus and the attempts to contain it. The model, comprising …

Environmental Assessment Integrated With Process Simulation For Process Design, I. Herrera, Marta Schuhmacher, Laureano Jiménez, F. Castells

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The decisions within design and renovation of processes have traditionally been based only on technical and economic aspects. The impacts that waste emissions have on the environment have been taken in consideration after setting the basic lines of the project and even after having fixed the layout. A new approach, involving all these issues at the same time, has been developed in order to make better use of natural resources. The aim of this work is to integrate both process design and environmental tools in order to develop a methodology that involves, simultaneously, environmental analysis and process modelling. This methodology …

Multi Criteria Evaluation Of Low Carbon Energy Technologies, S. Mandera, C. Gough

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Achieving a low carbon energy supply in a future society driven by the impacts of climate change will require huge technological changes. This paper compares the methodological implications of assessing two very different technological solutions – renewable energy and geological carbon sequestration. The UK has high renewable resources, in particular the highest wind resource in Europe. In contrast, atmospheric emissions from fossil fuels could be avoided by storing carbon dioxide in underground geological formations for which the UK has a huge potential capacity. These two technological approaches will have diverse and wide ranging impacts; both inspire views amongst stakeholders that …

Sensitivity Analysis Of Velfeem –Venice Lagoon Finite Element Ecological Model- To The Macro-Nutrient Input Regime, D. M. Canu, Cosimo Solidoro, Georg Umgiesser

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A sensitivity analysis of VELFEEM, the Finite Element Ecological Model for the lagoon of Venice, has been performed in order to test the responses of the model to changes in external input regimes. The model is obtained by internally coupling a hydrodynamic model, an energetic model, and an ecological model. The hydrodynamics are simulated using SHYFEM, a barotropic bi-dimensional model based on a finite element discretization of the spatial domain, which allows for a very good spatial resolution of the lagoon morphology while keeping at a low level the computational demand. Using a standard heat fluxes formulation, the energetic module …

The Economic Consequences Of Voluntary Environmental Information Disclosure, Nike O. Gozali, Janice C. Y. How, Peter Verhoeven

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A significant body of accounting and finance literature has witnessed an increase in the demandfor company’s environmental information over the past few decades. Using data of Australian companiesfrom 1998 to 2000, this study provides an analysis of environmental disclosure in companies’ annual reports.The evidence indicates that companies do respond to the increased demand for environmental disclosure byproviding more environmental-related information in their annual report. Although the requirement todisclose environmental information in annual reports has not kept pace with the legislative reform, there hasbeen a significant increase of these disclosures from 1998 to 2000. We also find that most of the …

M3 Project - Actor Based Simulation In Virtualworlds, Helge Rose, Torsten Asselmayer-Maluga, Peter Frank, Andreas Hoheisel, Walter Bertram

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

M3 Simulation is a simulation approach that actively involves real human actors in a virtual reality environment based on multidisciplinary simulation models. This actor based concept aims at integrated simulation of complex processes belonging to heterogeneous levels of reality, paying specific attention to real human behavior. The entities of the real system under consideration are represented in a consistent object-oriented way by agents simulated by environmental models. This distributed network-capable implementation of the M3 system combines environmental modeling with the intuitive graphic representation, complex communication and interaction structures of virtual worlds in order to support the process of investigation of …

Evaluating Management Strategies In Paraguacu River Basin By Analytic Hierarchy Process, B. Srdjevic, Y. Medeiros, Z. Srdjevic, M. Schaer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

An approach is proposed for evaluating water management strategies in river basins. Reasonably large sets of criterions and objectives are manipulated during a three-phase process by appropriate shrinking and enlarging related decision hierarchies. In the first phase an unrestricted set of management interests are grouped into (1) long-term, and (2) middle- and short-term decision context by creating decision hierarchies and evaluating them by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). After refining the hierarchies by deleting dominated elements, management plans are introduced at their fingertips and so enlarged hierarchies are repeatedly evaluated by AHP in the second phase. Only two bottom levels …

Montana Business Quarterly, Summer 2002, University Of Montana--Missoula. Bureau Of Business And Economic Research

Montana Business Quarterly, 1949-2021

This is an academic publication produced by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER) at the University of Montana’s College of Business. This is volume 40, number 2.

Spatial Correlation Analysis Of Nitrogen Dioxide Concentrations In The Area Of Milan, Italy, Grégoire Dubois, M. Saisana, A. Chaloulakou, N. Spyrellis

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Monitoring atmospheric pollution in urban areas frequently involves mapping techniques that assist the researcher and/or the decision-maker to describe and quantify the pollution at locations where no measurements are available. The preparation of these pollution maps is a complex task, which is only feasible if a spatial correlation of the variable of interest is identified. Furthermore, the spatial correlation may not only change in time and space, but also according to the pollution levels. To illustrate this point, this paper investigates the fractal dimension of the spatial correlation of different levels of annual nitrogen dioxide concentrations [NO2] in the greater …

On Line Simulation System For Industrial Accidents, R. Bellasio, R. Bianconi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Mathematical models are important tools to evaluate the consequences of possible industrialaccidents. These models are often difficult to apply because they require trained users, and graphical userinterfaces can be of great help. An on line simulation system has been developed and is installed as a serversideapplication on the internet at www.enviroware.it. The system currently contains two models, EXPSYSis suitable to carry out consequence analysis and allows the user to evaluate the area impacted by industrialaccidents such as explosions, fires and releases of toxic or flammable gases. TOXFLAM is an analytic modelsuitable for simulating the atmospheric dispersion of gases lighter than …

A Conceptual Approach To Multiple-Model Integration In Whole Site Risk Assessments, E. P. Albers, K. R. Dixon

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the past, models have focused on one environmental compartment, a single organism, or specific process. All of these topics are limited in scope and often fail to take into account the more complex interactions of the real world. We have endeavored to change this practice by combining environmental transport models with an animal movement model and a physiologically based toxicokinetics (PBTK) model that has an embedded effects model. The example we will depict consists of a hypothetical contaminant plume within a lake and the impacts on the channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus). We compared the PBTK output for the multiple-model …

A Neural Emission-Receptor Model For Ozone Reduction Planning, S. Barazzetta, G. Corani, Giorgio Guariso

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Ground level ozone pollution is a complex phenomenon heavily affecting industrialized and populated areas. Ozone is produced by a series of photochemical reactions, activated by the emissions of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds and may reach maximum concentrations at kilometers of distance form the precursors sources, depending on the meteorological conditions. Models to compute ozone concentrations are equally complex and cannot be directly used to optimize emission reduction policies. For this reason, a neural network has been trained on the results of a photochemical model (CALGRID) to represent the emission-receptor relationships in critical conditions. Such a network in then …

A Bayesian Network For Investigating The Decline In Fish Catch In Switzerland, M. E. Borsuk, Patricia Burkhardt-Holm, Peter Reichert

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Catches of brown trout have decreased about 50% in many rivers and streams in Switzerland in the past 15 years. Additionally, the health status of numerous brown trout populations has been assessed to be impaired. In order to evaluate the causes for these phenomena, a nationwide interdisciplinary project named “Fischnetz” was launched in 1999. Twelve hypotheses for the fish population declines were proposed and laboratory and field research projects were initiated to investigate these suggested causes. To apply the results of these investigations to the task of discerning the relative causal importance of each of the hypotheses, a Bayesian probability …

A Metadata-Based System For Urban Transportation Data Provision And Analysis, Vivian Salim, Gerardo Trinidad, Nariida Smith, Leorey Marquez

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Cities are presently faced with increasing pressure from population and activities leading tocongestion, pollution and degradation of the living environment. In order to assist decision-makers to assessthe changing state of important amenities in a city such as clean air, energy and transport, a metadata-basedsystem for automated data assembly along with a Web-based suite of applications is proposed. This wouldform the basis for identifying the most effective technology and practice requirements in line with changingneeds. Metadata can be defined as structured data, such as access and content details, about data sets.Metadata sets were designed to allow a more efficient use of …

Use Of Genetic Algorithms To Select Input Variables In Artificial Neural Network Models For The Prediction Of Benthic Macroinvertebrates, T. D’Heygere, Peter L. M. Goethals, N. De Pauw

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The first consideration in predictive ecological modelling is the selection of appropriate input variables. Numerous variables can however be involved and most of them cannot be omitted without a significant loss of information. The collection of field data on the other hand is both time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, rigorous methods are needed to detect which variables are essential and those which are not. Appropriate selection of input variables is not only important for modelling objectives as such, but also to ensure reliable decision-support in river management and policy-making. In this paper, the use of genetic algorithms is explored to automatically …

A Model For Urban Stormwater Improvement Conceptualisationq, T. H. F. Wong, D. Fletcher, H. P. Duncan, J. R. Coleman, G. A. Jenkins

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Catchment urbanisation leads to increased hydraulic and pollutant loadings into receiving waterbodies. Issues concerning pollution that endangers the sustainable utilisation of water resources have focused government authorities towards integrated catchment management, where both causes and effects of pollution are addressed. Recent research has provided a platform for improving urban stormwater management. The CRC for Catchment Hydrology (CRCCH) has recently developed a Model for Urban Stormwater Improvement Conceptualisation (MUSIC), which serves as a decision support system (DSS) that packages the results of many research activities undertaken at the CRCCH and other organisations into an easily used tool. MUSIC enables urban catchment …

Focus, Larry Burke (Editor)

FOCUS on Boise State

Boise state graduates ply their trades in virtually every sector of the Greater Boise work force. From the rank and file to the corporate higher-ups, alums play a vital role in keeping schools, businesses, health care, the arts and the community running smoothly. In this issue of FOCUS, we look at how their efforts help drive the local economy. Cover illustration by William Carman.

A Voice Of Reason: The Products Liability Scholarship Of Gary T. Schwartz, Joseph A. Page

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Products At The Millennium: Traversing A Transverse Section, Marshall Shapo

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unmasking The Presumption In Favor Of Preemption, Mary J. Davis

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Consumer Expectations, Jerry J. Phillips

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Products Liability In The United States Supreme Court: A Venture In Memory Of Gary Schwartz, Anita Bernstein

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bugs In Anglo-American Products Liability, Jane Stapleton

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sustaining Urban Green Spaces: Can Public Parks Be Protected Under The Public Trust Doctrine, Serena M. Williams

Southeastern Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fourth Circuit Elevates Likelihood Of Success On The Merits In Preliminary Injunction Analysis, Evander Whitehead

Southeastern Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

An Introduction To The Essential Fish Habitat (Efh) Consultation Process For The South Atlantic Region, Kim Diana Connolly

Southeastern Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Unmasking The Presumption In Favor Of Preemption, Mary J. Davis

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

It is inescapable: there is a presumption in favor of preemption. Historically, the Supreme Court has said differently-that, rather, there is a presumption against preemption. There is no such presumption any longer, if, indeed, there ever really was one. Preemption doctrine has been exceedingly puzzling in the last decade, but when one recognizes that the Court's doctrine not only favors preemption, but presumes it, preemption doctrine is not a puzzle at all.

This Article argues that the Supreme Court's recent preemption decisions compel the conclusion that the Court's preemption analysis has, in effect, created a presumption in favor of preemption, …

Economic Growth, Longevity, And The Epidemiological Transition, Olivier F. Morand

Economics Working Papers

This paper integrates investments in health to a standard growth model where physical and human capital investments are the combined engines of growth. It shows the existence of two distinct health regimes separated by an 'Epidemiological Transition'. The various patterns of the transition identified in the epidemiological literature can be mapped into the model. The model also leads to the important hypothesis that the epidemiological transition may induce an economy to switch to a modern growth regime.

Contradictions, Open Secrets And Feminist Faith In Enlightenment, Heather Lauren Hughes

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Many feminists target ignorance of domestic violence as the main reason for judicial resistance to decisions that would punish abusers and redress battered women's harms. But feminist demands to educate courts - to create, for example, a reformed tort law system in which courts understand and take into account the complex situation of battered women litigants - seek an epistemological grounding from which to adjudicate the intractable contradictions in both legal discourse and cultural discourse about women. Domestic violence continues to co-exist with public condemnation of such violence by feminists and some lawmakers. Domestic violence is an open secret in …

Why Are You Working At The Firm?, Wayne Eastman

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

No abstract provided.