Australian baby boomers switched to more environment friendly modes of transport during the global financial crisis

The global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008 rocked economies around the world. Several intermediate outcomes of the GFC included loss of jobs and reduced income. Relatively little research has, however, examined the impacts of the GFC on individual level travel behaviour change. To address this shortcoming, HABITAT panel data were employed to estimate a multinomial logit model to examine mode switching behaviour between 2007 and 2009 of a baby boomers cohort in Brisbane, Australia—a city within a developed country that has been on many metrics the least affected by the GFC. In addition, a Poisson regression model was estimated to model the number of trips made by individuals in 2007, 2008, and 2009. The South East Queensland travel survey datasets were used to develop this model. Four linear regression models were estimated to assess the effects of the GFC on time allocated to travel during a day: one for each of the three travel modes including public transport, active transport, less environmentally friendly transport; and an overall travel time model irrespective of mode. The results reveal that the baby boomers switched to more environmentally friendly travel modes during the GFC.     

Temporal dynamics and spatial scales: Modeling deforestation in the southern Yucatán peninsular region

Two spatially explicit econometric land use change models are presented, focusing on tropical deforestation caused by agricultural expansion in the southern Yucatán peninsula, Mexico. The two models developed are both based on conceptually similar theoretical models of farmer behavior. However, there are different empirical specifications of this theoretical model according to the scale of the analysis as well as the availability of temporal data on the observation of deforestation. For both models, the unit of observation for the dependent variable of deforestation is the TM pixel from satellite data. However, the socio-economic explanatory variables are derived from different sources. The first econometric model links the satellite data for the entire study region with aggregate census data at the village level. This model is estimated using a discrete choice logit model over a single time period. The second econometric model uses individual household survey data for a small random sample of the region, linked to satellite data for the plots of each household over multiple time periods. This model is estimated using a dynamic hazard model that estimates the risk of a specific pixel converting from forest to agricultural use. Both estimated models are used to predict deforestation and the results of the two modeling approaches are compared.     

Consumer spatial choice strategies: A comparative study of some alternative behavioural spatial shopping models

The purpose of this paper is to outline a conceptual model of consumer spatial decision making and choice behaviour and to investigate the use of various combination rules of consumer's evaluations of attributes of shopping centres to predict spatial choice behaviour.The research findings indicate that the linear combination rules perform as well as the multiplicative rules and that both types of rules perform quite acceptably. The paper concludes by discussing some implications for future research on spatial decision making and choice.     

Constitutive modelling of a reinforced soil using hierarchical model

Drained triaxial tests are conducted on natural and reinforced sand under various stress paths. Direct shear tests and pull-out tests are conducted on soil–reinforcement interface and on reinforcement, respectively. The effects of two types of reinforcement, viz, woven and non-woven geotextile and number of layers of reinforcement are investigated. Hierarchical single surface model is used to depict the behaviour of natural and reinforced soil by treating the soil as a single composite material and by considering soil, reinforcement and interface as independent elements. It is shown that the material parameters are very much affected by the type and the number of layers of reinforcement. The hierarchical model provides satisfactory prediction for both natural and reinforced soil. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

大型地下停车库结构防漏施工技术

锦乡天第地下停车库是一个高等级的大型车库,位于高水位软土地基中,施工时处于高温季节,由于采取了有效的技术和措施,未产生任何裂缝和渗漏现象。     

青藏高原典型多年冻土区的一维水热过程模拟研究

了解多年冻土内部的水热过程对寒区工程规划和建设的辅助决策具有重要意义.冻土的水分迁移与温度变化密切相关,然而传统的经验模型局限性大,对水热物理过程考虑不足;陆面过程模型所需的驱动数据多且很难准确模拟深层土温,尽管数值模型在工程上应用的比较多,但很少应用到冻土的演化过程中.基于非饱和土壤渗流和热传导理论,实现了冻土水分场与温度场的水热耦合数值模拟.以唐古拉综合观测场为例,将数值模拟结果与观测数据进行对比,验证水热耦合数值模拟的有效性.结果表明：模型对土壤温度模拟效果较好,15 m以上R²在0.88以上,RMSE在1℃以内;水分模拟尚可,但仍存在一定误差,R²在0.7以上,RMSE在7.65%以内.模拟的活动层厚度约3.6 m,年平均地温所在的深度约为15 m,与实测值基本一致.该水热耦合模型可用于研究多年冻土区土壤水热变化规律.     

Potential for localized groundwater contamination in a porous pavement parking lot setting in Rhode Island

The control of polluted surface runoff and the assessment of possible impacts on groundwater is a concern at the local and regional scale. On this background, a study investigates possible impacts of organic and inorganic pollutants (including bacteria) originating from a permeable asphalt parking lot on the water quality immediately beneath it. The functioning of the permeable pavement, including clogging and restricted vertical percolation, was also evaluated. Four nested sample ports (shallow and deep) were installed below low- and high-traffic areas, including one port outside the parking lot. At least initially there was a good hydraulic connection between the parking surface and the shallow sample ports. The presence of a geotextile layer at the base of the parking lot structure, however, was identified in lab tests as one factor restricting vertical percolation to the deeper ports. Clogging of the permeable surface was most pronounced in heavy traffic areas and below snow pile storage areas. Corroborated by high electric conductivity and chloride measurements, sand brought in by cars during winter was the principal cause for clogging. No bacteria or BOD were found in percolating water. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) were present at concentrations near minimum detection limit. Nutrients (nitrate and phosphate) were being leached into the ground via the permeable parking lot surface at annual flux rates of 0.45–0.84 g/m²/year. A multi-species tracer test demonstrated a retention capacity of the permeable parking lot structure of >90% for metals and 27% for nutrients, respectively.     

Classifications of retail stores and shopping centres: some methodological issues

This paper reviews current methods used in classifying retail outlets and areas devoted to retailing, in the geographical and town planning literature. For retail outlets, classifications based upon types of goods sold, and types of shopping trip, are discussed. This is followed by an analysis of modern large store development which reflects property developers' and retailers' concerns. Areas devoted to retail uses are subdivided into unplanned ‘retail areas’ and planned ‘shopping centres’. Traditional classifications based upon central place theory are reviewed for both of these types, and found wanting in the light of recent changes in retail development practice and consumer behaviour. Classifications based upon physical development characteristics and type of shopping trip are recommended. Finally, classifications of urban retail location are examined. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Generalized plasticity and the modelling of soil behaviour

The paper outlines the theory of generalized plasticity in which yield and plastic potential surfaces need not be explicitly defined, and shows how a very effective general model describing the behaviour of sands and of clays under monotonic or transient loading can be developed. The model is currently one of the simplest and yet one of the most effective ones for describing the full range of behaviour. The hierarchical structure of the model limits the number of parameters which have to be experimentally determined for a given material to those strictly necessary for the problem at hand. A discussion of currently used models is included.     

Towards a hierarchical parametrization to address prior uncertainty in ensemble-based data assimilation

Ensemble-based methods are becoming popular assisted history matching techniques with a growing number of field applications. These methods use an ensemble of model realizations, typically constructed by means of geostatistics, to represent the prior uncertainty. The performance of the history matching is very dependent on the quality of the initial ensemble. However, there is a significant level of uncertainty in the parameters used to define the geostatistical model. From a Bayesian viewpoint, the uncertainty in the geostatistical modeling can be represented by a hyper-prior in a hierarchical formulation. This paper presents the first steps towards a general parametrization to address the problem of uncertainty in the prior modeling. The proposed parametrization is inspired in Gaussian mixtures, where the uncertainty in the prior mean and prior covariance is accounted by defining weights for combining multiple Gaussian ensembles, which are estimated during the data assimilation. The parametrization was successfully tested in a simple reservoir problem where the orientation of the major anisotropic direction of the permeability field was unknown.     

Estimation of components of variance for partially cross-classified data in a factorial arrangement of treatments

A procedure is presented for obtaining estimates of components of variance for the main effects and interaction in a two-way factorial arrangement of treatments with only partially cross-classified data (sometimes referred to as unbalanced data in a two-way crossed classification model with interaction). The procedure entails the use of two hierarchical analyses of variance in which each main effect is first treated as classes and then as subclasses. The estimation of the variance component for each main effect results from the solution of two simultaneous equations with values used obtained directly from the hierarchical analyses. The interaction component of variance can be obtained from the variance components for main effects. An example is presented for the purpose of illustrating the procedure. Interpretation of the interaction variance component estimated by the method is limited due to the absence of some of the subclasses.     

Atmospheric mesoscale conditions during the Boothbay meteotsunami: a numerical sensitivity study using a high-resolution mesoscale model

The article aims to test the sensitivity of high-resolution mesoscale atmospheric model to fairly reproduce atmospheric processes that were present during the Boothbay Harbor meteotsunami on 28 October 2008. The simulations were performed by the Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) model at 1-km horizontal grid spacing by varying initial conditions (ICs) and lateral boundary conditions (LBCs), nesting strategy, simulation lead time and microphysics and convective parameterizations. It seems that the simulations that used higher-resolution IC and LBC were more successful in reproduction of precipitation zone and surface pressure oscillations caused by internal gravity waves observed during the event. The results were very sensitive to the simulation lead time and to the choice of convective parameterization, while the choice of microphysics parameterization and the type of nesting strategy (one-way or two-way) was less important for reproducibility of the event. The success of the WRF model appears limited to very short-range forecasting, most advanced parameterizations, and very high-resolution grid spacing; therefore, the applicability of present atmospheric mesoscale models to future operational meteotsunami warning systems still has a lot of room for improvements.     

Explanation of land use in mountainous area,China: from field to village level

Few studies of land use change were particularly considered the hierarchical data structure originating from different scales and levels. Using interviewing data collected from 107 villages, 1,050 households and 4,780 fields between November 2003 and August 2005, the objective of this paper is to predict the occurrence of land use from field to village level in mountainous area, China, and to improve our understanding of the causes of land use. Household’s behavior in the choice of land use type is guided by multiple, often confiding, household objectives, subject to the available resources, possible productive activities, and external economic and biophysical constraints. For rice model, the household level variables cannot be substituted by village level aggregates. Aggregated variables at village level do not capture any of the variability at the household level. Village level variables can virtually be explained in virtue of the variables of field and household level. The households and the villages show significant clustering of the occurrence of rice, and they explain the 11.3 and 4.5% variance, respectively. For corn model, corn as dependent variable does not show any significant variance component. The variables of household and village level have lower effects on the occurrence of corn. There is a significant relation between slope of a field and the choice to cultivate corn and a significant random effect at the village level. However, cropland size, input–output, transportation cost, even family income in household level and road density and food market development in village level, at some extent, are controlled by slope. These variables do not influence corn cultivation significantly and that those are predominantly determined by slope. In a word, the household level can be crucial in explaining land use at the field level. Multilevel analysis can be applied to statistically model the occurrence of land use, and to explore a number of cross-scale propositions. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Numerical investigation of pile installation effects in sand using material point method

The installation of displacement piles in sand leads to severe changes in the stress state, density and soil properties around the pile tip and shaft, and therefore has a significant influence on the pile bearing capacity. Most current numerical methods predicting pile capacity do not take installation effects into account, as large deformations can lead to mesh distortion and non-converging solutions. In this study, the material point method (MPM) is applied to simulate the pile installation process and subsequent static pile loading tests. MPM is an extension of the finite element method (FEM), which is capable of modelling large deformations and soil-structure interactions. This study utilizes the moving mesh algorithm where a redefined computational mesh is applied in the convective phase. This allows a fine mesh to be maintained around the pile tip during the installation process and improves the accuracy of the numerical scheme, especially for contact formulation. For the analyses a hypoplastic constitutive model for sand is used, which takes into account density and stress dependent behaviour. The model performs well in situations with significant stress level changes because it accounts for very high stresses at the pile tip. Numerical results agree with centrifuge experiments at a gravitational level of 40 g. This analysis confirms the importance of pile installation effects in numerical simulations, as well as the proposed numerical approach’s ability to simulate installation and static load tests of jacked displacement piles.     

Two Markov Models and Their Application

Two different Markov models for cross-covariance and coregionalization modeling are proposed and compared in cokriging and stochastic simulation modes. The newly introduced Markov model 2 performs better in cases where the secondary data are defined on a larger support volume than the primary variable being estimated or simulated. Incorrect adoption of the more traditional Markov model 1 may result in cokriging estimated maps that are artificially too close to the secondary data map and in simulated realizations with too high nugget effect.     

Reliability of selected procedures of stress inversion and data separation for inhomogeneous populations of calcite twins and striated faults: insights from numerical experiments

In the course of numerical experiments selected algorithms for stress tensor inversion and separation of heterogeneous populations of calcite twins and striated faults were tested. Artificial data sets were created in a manner simulating natural processes. They were composed of data, dynamically compatible with one or two stress tensors and chaotic “noise” imitating natural imperfections. For calcite twins the classical inversion procedure is considered valid, with restrictions regarding a high proportion of chaotic data, when shape ratio of the stress tensor Φ is poorly constrained. The algorithm of Etchecopar (1984 fide Tourneret and Laurent in Tectonophysics 180:287–302, 1990) devised originally for calcite twins has been modified and applied to fault/slip data, facilitating a rejection of incompatible outliers. Two main classes of data separation procedures were tested: separation contemporary with inversion and separation prior to inversion, utilising hierarchical clustering. The separation contemporary with inversion performs moderately but often fails with complex calcite twin sets. The performance of hierarchical clustering is high, but only with a σ ₁ orientation as a similarity criterion—the new strategy introduced in this contribution. For fault/slip data the hierarchical clustering with the right-dihedra construction as the similarity criterion (Nemcok et al. 1999) is satisfactory. Additionally, a new approach is proposed for fault/slip data, utilising principles of the classical algorithm for heterogeneous populations of calcite twins. Validated algorithms for striated faults were successfully applied to a natural data set from the Holy Cross Mts (central Poland).     

The spatial shopping behaviour of the urban elderly: A review of the literature

The spatial shopping behaviour of the urban elderly has received increasing attention from researchers in a variety of disciplines including geography, marketing, city planning, and social gerontology. Relevant literature from these diverse sources is reviewed within an organizational framework based on two ‘behavioural’ approaches to retail geography: ‘empirical-behavioural’ and ‘cognitive-behavioural’. Overall, the research findings suggest that the elderly represent a distinctive consumer segment with special problems and needs. In particular, many older shoppers are subject to a wide variety of mobility constraints which ultimately restrict their access to shopping opportunities. However, some work has discovered important differences in the spatial behaviours of subgroups of elderly consumers defined on the basis of such characteristics as health, age, household composition, marital status, income level, and residential location. It is suggested that further research needs to explore more fully how these characteristics may impose variable personal and environmental constraints upon the shopping activities of the urban elderly.     

Floorspace to worker ratios in shopping centres: A note

The characteristics of employment within the retailing sector are still poorly understood. This short paper expands on a previously presented study of Canberra (Geoforum10, 407–425) by reporting on the systematic variation between the ratio of floorspace to employees and type of shopping centre, and the different relationships between floorspace per worker and size of store by type of shopping centre. The planning implications in terms of employment provision are briefly discussed.     

Computer application on evaluating beach sediment erosion and accretion from profile survey data

Handling and visualizing of beach profile data using visual programming provides better and more user-friendly effects to geologists, environmentalists, and policy makers. Several computer programs are available to visualize beach profile data. But in all programs, the raw field data cannot be used to calculate the sediment erosion and accretion. In this report, we describe the development of a simple piece of software BEACH using Visual Basic 6.0 that can store and analyze large volumes of profile survey data obtained from graduated pole or level surveys. The program precisely calculates the beach width, slope, and sediment volume above any user-specified datum. It also estimates the erosion and accretion made in a beach. This program is very useful for coastal zone management and environmental impact assessment studies.     

Estimating willingness to pay in order to prevent external intangible effects of dust in Yazd-Ardakan plain

Although intangible effects on natural environments are not visible and only become apparent over a long period of time, they may cause irreparable damages whose estimation is not always feasible. However, people’s willingness to pay (WTP) for the prevention of adverse environmental effects can be determined. The present study addresses the issue of the effect of dust in Yazd-Ardakan Plain. It aims at the valuation of local people’s WTP in order to prevent extra-regional intangible effects of dust in Yazd-Ardakan Plain in 2010. The study was based on data collected from 479 questionnaires completed by people in the affected area. Factors affecting local people’s WTP and their expected WTP were estimated by logit regression model. It was revealed that among the studied variables, income, education, and environment importance had significant positive effects, and that household size, type of residence, and bid had significant negative effects on people’s WTP. Also, the WTP for the conservation of the region was estimated as to be 93.4 billion Iranian Rials (IRR) per year. In other words, it is necessary to invest at least 93.4 billion IRR to prevent the adverse impacts of dust on the plain. Given the 183 billion IRR expenditure for stabilizing sand in the region and the estimated 93.4 billion IRR protection value for the plain, 50 % of expenses would be paid by people living in the region, which paves the way for the fulfillment of conservation programs by experts using public contributions.