An application of contingent valuation and decision tree analysis to water quality improvements

This paper applies contingent valuation and decision tree analysis to investigate public preferences for water quality improvements, and in particular reduced eutrophication. Such preferences are important given that the development of EU water quality legislation is imposing significant costs on European economies. Results are reported of a survey undertaken of residents of Århus County, Denmark for water quality improvements in the Randers Fjord. Results demonstrate strong public support for reduced eutrophication and identify key determinants of such support.     

An application of contingent valuation and decision tree analysis to water quality improvements

This paper applies contingent valuation and decision tree analysis to investigate public preferences for water quality improvements, and in particular reduced eutrophication. Such preferences are important given that the development of EU water quality legislation is imposing significant costs on European economies. Results are reported of a survey undertaken of residents of Arhus County, Denmark for water quality improvements in the Randers Fjord. Results demonstrate strong public support for reduced eutrophication and identify key determinants of such support.     

浅层反射波法在寻找某些基岩地下水中的应用

本文以实例介绍了用浅层反射波法杂找基岩地下水的地质效果，根据浅震勘察结果，在断层破碎带上布置钻孔，获得了满足需求的水质和水量。     

Effluent trading for water quality management: concept and application to the Chesapeake Bay watershed

This paper examines the present and potential role of effluent trading in water quality management. In particular, it focuses upon the case of the Chesapeake Bay on the east coast of the US, where the implementation of a trading system has been discussed and undertaken. Potential benefits of effluent trading include advantages such as the following: (1) With appropriate monitoring and enforcement, the total pollutant loadings can be kept at or below the prespecified level. (2) New and expanding dischargers can be accommodated, as long as they purchase credits. (3) Abatement costs of pollutants can be reduced. (4) Flexible regulations incorporating trading can reduce the incentive for industries to relocate to areas with less stringent water quality regulation. (5) Broader environmental goals can be addressed, such as wildlife habitat provision and endangered species protection. (6) Preliminary studies with a view to trading-system implementation encourage discussion and dialogue among stakeholders, and positively foster concerted, holistic solutions for maintenance of water bodies.     

Dynamic optimal ground water remediation including fixed and operation costs

In time-varying ground water remediation, the lack of an optimal control algorithm to simultaneously consider fixed costs and time-varying operating costs makes it nearly impossible to obtain an optimal solution. This study presents a novel algorithm that integrates a genetic algorithm (GA) and constrained differential dynamic programming (CDDP) to solve this time-varying ground water remediation problem. A GA can easily incorporate the fixed costs associated with the installation of wells. However, using a GA to solve for time-varying policies would dramatically increase the computational resources required. Therefore, the CDDP is used to handle the subproblems associated with time-varying operating costs. A hypothetical case study that incorporates fixed and time-varying operating costs is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results indicate that the fixed costs can significantly influence the number and locations of wells, and a notable total cost savings can be realized by applying the novel algorithm herein.     

A Kriging-based approach for locating a sampling site—in the assessment of air quality

Air quality assessment studies have either high sampling or analyses costs. In these studies the representation of a city by a single sampling point is still a serious problem, especially in the metropolitans of developing countries, because of the absence of equipments required for sampling at different locations. In this paper, the smoke data measurements of long years are used in the determination of the region for the representation of the city by drawing contours through the Kriging method. Then, the selection of the sampling site in this region is done on the basis of the criteria recommended by the EPA. By this way, the data taken from this sampling point are used for assessing the average city concentrations with lower sampling and analyses costs. This information is valuable for monitoring the air quality and defining environmental policies, although the local distribution and the extreme concentration values over the city are not measurable.     

Balancing costs and water quality in meeting EU directives (the Upper/Middle Odra case study in Poland)

This paper reports on a pilot study of water quality management strategies for the Upper and Middle Odra River basin in Poland. The study was undertaken to test an approach for setting targets for compliance with European Union directives in the water sector, focusing particularly on urban wastewater. These interim targets are important for the government and the EU to be able to monitor whether Poland is making adequate progress towards full compliance. The study shows clearly that an approach based solely on specifying effluent control standards and corresponding treatment technologies for various sources of pollution is extremely expensive relative to the amount of environmental improvement achieved. Applying least cost solution for meeting specific water quality standards in the Odra river costs significantly less. Adopting a least cost strategy for meeting specific water quality objectives therefore offers great potential for both reducing compliance costs in the interim period and accelerating the environmental benefits that will result.     

3‐D shallow‐water seismic survey evaluation and design using the focal‐beam method: a case study offshore Abu Dhabi

For 3‐D shallow‐water seismic surveys offshore Abu Dhabi, imaging the target reflectors requires high resolution. Characterization and monitoring of hydrocarbon reservoirs by seismic amplitude‐versus‐offset techniques demands high pre‐stack amplitude fidelity. In this region, however, it still was not clear how the survey parameters should be chosen to satisfy the required data quality. To answer this question, we applied the focal‐beam method to survey evaluation and design. This subsurface‐ and target‐oriented approach enables quantitative analysis of attributes such as the best achievable resolution and pre‐stack amplitude fidelity at a fixed grid point in the subsurface for a given acquisition geometry at the surface. This method offers an efficient way to optimize the acquisition geometry for maximum resolution and minimum amplitude‐versus‐offset imprint. We applied it to several acquisition geometries in order to understand the effects of survey parameters such as the four spatial sampling intervals and apertures of the template geometry. The results led to a good understanding of the relationship between the survey parameters and the resulting data quality and identification of the survey parameters for reflection imaging and amplitude‐versus‐offset applications.     

Land use scenario development and stakeholder involvement as tools for watershed management within the Havel River Basin

The implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) will address land use issues in river catchments in order to reduce diffuse pollution and work towards the aim of achieving good ecological status, or good ecological potential in surface water bodies. The WFD also requires the active involvement of all interested parties in developing the best approach to achieve its objectives. The paper demonstrates how scenario analysis can be applied to investigate the impacts of land use changes and how stakeholder interviews can be used to evaluate the results of the scenarios.The study was carried out in the Havel Basin in the northeast of Germany. ‘Landscape-ecological spatial units’ were derived from similar characteristics of soil and groundwater conditions, ground relief and inundation to enable spatial allocation of potential land use and link different scales when describing possible changes in land use. As a first step, in three sub-catchments of the Havel River (distinguished by different physical characteristics) detailed surveys were carried out to investigate the various interests of the stakeholders. The interviews were used to identify the key problems of each area with respect to water quality and quantity and facilitated stakeholder engagement with the catchment planning issues in the Havel River Basin. The information from the stakeholder interviews was used to determine the initial conditions for the land use scenarios which were developed to demonstrate possible changes to land use for achieving better water quality. The land use scenarios also were required as an input into the hydrological modelling of their effects on water quality and to calculate their socio-economic effects. In a second survey, the results of the scenarios and the hydrological modelling were presented to the stakeholders. The consultation process identified the priorities of the stakeholders which could then be taken into account when developing management options.     

Two-stage decision-making under uncertainty and stochasticity: Bayesian Programming

This paper develops a new method for decision-making under uncertainty. The method, Bayesian Programming (BP), addresses a class of two-stage decision problems with features that are common in environmental and water resources. BP is applicable to two-stage combinatorial problems characterized by uncertainty in unobservable parameters, only some of which is resolved upon observation of the outcome of the first-stage decision. The framework also naturally accommodates stochastic behavior, which has the effect of impeding uncertainty resolution. With the incorporation of systematic methods for decision search and Monte Carlo methods for Bayesian analysis, BP addresses limitations of other decision-analytic approaches for this class of problems, including conventional decision tree analysis and stochastic programming. The methodology is demonstrated with an illustrative problem of water quality pollution control. Its effectiveness for this problem is compared to alternative approaches, including a single-stage model in which expected costs are minimized and a deterministic model in which uncertain parameters are replaced by their mean values. A new term, the expected value of including uncertainty resolution, or EVIUR, is introduced and evaluated for the illustrative problem. It is a measure of the worth of incorporating the experimental value of decisions into an optimal decision-making framework. For the illustrative problem, the two-stage adaptive management framework extracted up to approximately 50% of the gains of perfect information. The strength and limitations of the method are discussed and conclusions are presented.     

Sampling Plan Optimization: A Data Review and Sampling Frequency Evaluation Process

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) uses a cost-effective sampling (CES) methodology to evaluate and review ground water contaminant data and optimize the site's ground water monitoring plan. The CES methodology is part of LLNL's regulatory approved compliance monitoring plan (Lamarre et al. 1996). It allows LLNL to adjust the ground water sampling plan every quarter in response to changing conditions at the site. Since the use of the CES methodology has been approved by the appropriate regulatory agencies, such adjustments do not need additional regulatory approval. This permits LLNL to respond more quickly to changing conditions. The CES methodology bases the sampling frequency for each location on trend, variability, and magnitude statistics describing the contaminants at that location, and on the input of the technical staff (hydrologists, chemists, statisticians, and project leaders). After initial setup is complete, each application of CES takes only a few days for as many as 400 wells. Effective use of the CES methodology requires sufficient data, an understanding of contaminant transport at the site, and an adequate number of monitoring wells downgradient of the contamination. The initial implementation of CES at LLNL in 1992 produced a 40% reduction in the required number of annual routine ground water samples at LLNL. This has saved LLNL $390,000 annually in sampling, analysis, and data management costs.     

Palaeoecology, reference conditions and classification of ecological status: the EU Water Framework Directive in practice

The European Union's Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires that all Member States within the European Union determine reference conditions for aquatic ecosystems to provide a baseline against which to measure the effects of past and present activities. Reference conditions are subsequently used to classify the ecological status of European waters. The decisions regarding environmental status will be important future elements in the management of European coastal waters. We have developed a number of classification scenarios for total nitrogen (TN) in the overlying waters of the southern part of Roskilde Fjord, Denmark, taking as our basis a palaeoecological reconstruction of fluctuations in TN between 1850 and 1995. We present a provisional classification scheme for the ecological status of Roskilde Fjord, sensu the WFD. Decision(s) regarding the deviation from reference conditions will give a wide range of apparent ecological status from good, through moderate and poor, to bad depending upon the definition of an acceptable deviation from reference conditions. The determination of an acceptable deviation will ultimately be a political decision, and will result in a wide range in the protection of coastal waters in Europe. There is still, however, an urgent need for a sound scientific documentation of the various scenarios for the implementation of the WFD.     

Rationales behind irrationality of decision making in groundwater quality management

This issue paper presents how certain policies regarding management of groundwater quality lead to unexpected and undesirable results, despite being backed by seemingly reasonable assumptions. This happened in part because the so-called reasonable decisions were not based on an integrative and quantitative methodology. The policies surveyed here are: (1) implementation of a program for aquifer restoration to pristine conditions followed, after failure, by leaving it to natural attenuation; (2) the "Forget About The Aquifer" (FATA) approach, while ignoring possible damage that contaminated groundwater can inflict on the other environmental systems; (3) groundwater recharge in municipal areas while neglecting the presence of contaminants in the unsaturated zone and conditions exerted by upper impervious surfaces; (4) the Soil Aquifer Treatment (SAT) practice considering aquifers to be "filters of infinite capacity"; and (5) focusing on well contamination vs. aquifer contamination to conveniently defer grappling with the problem of the aquifer as a whole. Possible reasons for the failure of these seemingly rational policies are: (1) the characteristic times of processes associated with groundwater that are usually orders of magnitude greater than the residence times of decision makers in their managerial position; (2) proliferation of improperly trained "groundwater experts" or policymakers with sectoral agendas alongside legitimate differences of opinion among groundwater scientists; (3) the neglect of the cyclic nature of natural phenomena; and (4) ignoring future long-term costs because of immediate costs.     

Lessons from the 2018 drought for management of local water supplies in upland areas: A tracer-based assessment

Climate change, combined with industrial growth and increasing demand, could result in serious future water shortages and related water quality and temperature issues, especially for upland and humid areas. The extreme 2018 drought that prevailed throughout Europe provided an opportunity to investigate conditions likely to become more frequent in the future. For an upland rural catchment utilised by the distilling industry in North-East Scotland, a tracer-based survey combined discharge, electrical conductivity, stable water isotopes and temperature measurements to understand the impacts of drought on dominant stream water and industry water sources, both in terms of water quantity and quality (temperature). Results showed that water types (groundwater, ephemeral stream water, perennial stream water and water from small dams) were spatially distinct and varied more in space than time. With regards to the drought conditions we found that streams were largely maintained by groundwater during low flows. This also buffered stream water temperatures. Water types with high young water fractions were less resilient, resulting in streams with an ephemeral nature. Although our results demonstrated the importance of groundwater for drought resilience, water balance data revealed these storage reserves were being depleted and only recovered towards the end of the following year because of above average rainfall in 2019. Increased storage depletion under continued trends of extreme drought and water abstraction could be addressed via informed (nature based) management strategies which focus on increasing recharge. This may improve resilience to droughts as well as floods, but site specific testing and modelling are required to understand their potential. Results could have implications for management of water volumes and temperature, particularly for the sustainability of an historic industry, balancing requirements of rural communities and the environment.     

A survey of geotechnical system identification techniques

Identification and inverse problem techniques play an important role in the characterization and modeling of geotechnical systems. These techniques have been used in estimation of system parameters, model development and calibration, as well as simulation of earthquake ground motions. The recent availability of high quality seismic records of sites equipped with downhole accelerometer arrays led to a burgeoning of identification and inverse problem studies involving geotechnical systems. This paper presents a survey of system identification techniques and analyses of full- and small-scale soil systems, with an emphasis on geotechnical earthquake engineering problems.     

Optimum combination of water drainage, water supply and eco-environment protection in coal-accumulated basin of North China

The conflict among water drainage, water supply and eco-environment protection is getting more and more serious due to the irrational drainage and exploitation of ground water resources in coal-accumulated basins of North China. Efficient solutions to the conflict are to maintain long-term dynamic balance between input and output of the ground water basins, and to try to improve resourcification of the mine water. All solutions must guarantee the eco-environment quality. This paper presents a new idea of optimum combination of water drainage, water supply and eco-environment protection so as to solve the problem of unstable mine water supply, which is caused by the changeable water drainage for the whole combination system. Both the management of hydraulic techniques and constraints in economy, society, ecology, environment, industrial structural adjustments and sustainable developments have been taken into account. Since the traditional and separate management of different departments of water drainage, water supply and eco-environment protection is broken up, these departments work together to avoid repeated geological survey and specific evaluation calculations so that large amount of national investment can be saved and precise calculation for the whole system can be obtained. In the light of the conflict of water drainage, water supply and eco-environment protection in a typical sector in Jiaozuo coal mine, a case study puts forward an optimum combination scheme, in which a maximum economic benefit objective is constrained by multiple factors. The scheme provides a very important scientific base for finding a sustainable development strategy.     

Predicting the ecological status of rivers and streams under different climatic and socioeconomic scenarios using Bayesian Belief Networks

Freshwater systems have increasingly been subjected to a multitude of human pressures and the re-establishment of their ecological integrity is currently a major worldwide challenge. Expected future climate and socioeconomic changes will most probably further exacerbate such challenges. Modelling techniques may provide useful tools to help facing these demands, but their use is still limited within ecological quality assessment of water resources due to its technical complexity.We developed a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) framework for modelling the ecological quality of rivers and streams in two European river basins located in two distinct European climatic regions: the Odense Fjord basin (Denmark) and the Sorraia basin (Portugal). This method enabled us to integrate different data sources into a single framework to model the effect of multiple stressors on several biological indicators of river water quality and, subsequently, on their ecological status. The BBN provided a simple interactive user interface with which we simulated combined climate and socioeconomic changes scenarios to assess their impacts on river ecological status.According to the resulting BBNs the scenarios demonstrated small impacts of climate and socioeconomic changes on the biological quality elements analysed. This yield a final ecological status similar to the baseline in the Odense case, and slightly worse in Sorraia. Since the present situation already depicts a high percentage of rivers and streams with moderate or worse ecological status in both basins, this means that many of them would not fulfil the Water Framework Directive target in the future. Results also showed that macrophytes and fish indices were mainly responsible for a non-desirable overall ecological status in Odense and Sorraia, respectively. The approach followed in this study is novel, since BBN modelling is used for the first time for assessing the ecological status of rivers and streams under future scenarios, using an ensemble of biological quality elements. An important advantage of this tool is that it may easily be updated with new knowledge on the nature of relationships already established in the BBN or even by introducing new causal links. By encompassing two case studies of very different characteristics, these BBN may be more easily adapted as decision-making tools for water management of other river basins.     

OPTIMAL MANAGEMENT OF THE SUBSURFACE ENVIRONMENT / L'aménagement optimal de l'environnement souterrain

Abstract

A mathematical model for the optimal, conjunctive management of a groundwater basin's quality and quantity resources is presented. The quality resource, the assimilative waste capacity, is the ability of the aquifer to degrade certain non-conservative constituents through the actions of molecular diffusion, hydrodynamic dispersion, adsorption, biochemical reactions and convective mass transport. The model is applicable to saturated, isothermal, porous media. The Galerkin method is used to express the spatial and temporal variations in hydraulic head and constituent concentrations as a function of possible recharge, pumping, and treatment decisions. The Galerkin procedure ensures that the constraint equations actually model the response characteristics (flow and mass transport) of the groundwater basin. In each planning period, the groundwater basin is required to meet an exogenous water demand while maintaining adequate water quality levels throughout the aquifer. The model, structured as a mathematical program, minimizes the sum of waste water treatment and pumping and recharge costs. The results indicate (1) the feasibility of conjunctive management of an aquifer's quality and quantity resources, and (2) that the assimilative waste capacity can function as a form of secondary or advanced waste water treatment.     

太湖流域地表水资源分质评价及水质型缺水形势分析

太湖流域水资源供需矛盾主要体现为"水质型缺水"问题,如何对"水质型缺水"进行定量描述,在太湖流域是一个难题.本文提出了"分质水资源量"的概念,以流域水资源四级分区为单元,以分区水质监测资料结合水资源量进行分析,分别统计分区分质水资源量.分析表明:太湖流域142×10⁸ m³的地表水资源量中,Ⅲ类以上的适合于饮用水源和一般工业用水的优质水为35.8×10⁸ m³,占25.2%;适合于电力冷却用水、农业灌溉的Ⅳ-Ⅴ类水为46.4×10⁸ m³,占32.6%;不可利用的劣Ⅴ类水有59.9×10⁸ m³,占42.2%.流域内优于Ⅴ类(含Ⅴ类)的地表水资源量为82.2×10⁸ m³,占地表水总资源量的57.8%.而浅层地下水己基本被污染.需要指出,Ⅰ-Ⅲ类优质水虽仍有35.8×10⁸ m³,但目前流域内对Ⅰ-Ⅲ类水的需求量己达60.6×10⁸ m³,如将此两数对比,则优质水缺额为24.8×10⁸ m³,但实际上,优质水的需求主要集中在流域中下游,而可供优质水水源则主要集中在流域上游地区山区水库和中游太湖湖心区、东部湖区和太浦河,供需两者的空间分布有较大出入,因此优质水资源缺额将更大,由此可见太湖流域水质型缺水形势十分严峻.     

Trends in water quality variations in the Odra River the day before implementation of the Water Framework Directive

This paper contains an account of UN/EEC-sponsored research on water quality monitoring and assessments in the catchments areas of Europe's 10 transboundary rivers. In this context, water quality assessments established on the basis of monitoring data for Poland's rivers are discussed. Consideration is also given to the water quality assessment methods recommended by the EU Directives. The problem has been exemplified by the analysis of water quality variations in the transboundary river Odra in the time span of 1973–2003. For the years 1993–2003, the trends in water quality variations are calculated and the rates of variation are analysed. The points in time when the water quality will have attained the second class purity values are predicted, taking into account the requirements specified in Polish, Czech and German standards. Analysis of the trends in the variations of pollution parameters has revealed that the achievability of good water quality depends on the limit values adopted for the assessment.