Competence-based and game-based capacity development for sustainable water management in Germany

Sustainable water management is one of humanity’s most important challenges—today and in the future. Germany does not face a significant water shortage problem, but it has three main challenges: protection of water quality, ensuring public water supply and public wastewater disposal, and protecting the public and infrastructure from floods. Capacity development is a key issue to overcome the challenges of water resources in any country including Germany. Engineers, technicians, and mechanics need to upgrade their knowledge on a regular basis to deal with the complex management and rapid technological developments. In order to create efficient training schemes, the Vocational Training Working Group of Global Water Partnership (GWP), part of the GWP Capacity Development Task Force, has worked on the definition of fundamental job profiles for the Water and Sanitation Sector (WASS). To cover all technical functions of the industrial water cycle, it was necessary to identify around thirty occupations. Then, a competence-based training approach was adopted. Additionally, an assessment approach was also developed based on comparing the level of competence of the workers to a standard level of competence for each job. The RWTH Aachen University with its partners have developed another game-based approach (SeCom2.0) based on serious gaming technology to enable water professionals dealing with flood risk management to be trained on different flood situations in a virtual environment. SeCom2.0 has three main components that are connected by a database layer. In addition to the serious games component, there is a collaboration component and a learning management system. For nearly 100 members from the flood competence centre (HochwasserKompetenzCentrum) in Cologne, Germany gave input to simulate the real flooding scenarios, and the learners will have to deal with a flood scenario by protecting the city in a given time and using a given resources and tools. This work concluded that both competence-based and game-based approaches could be significantly improved by blending both approaches. This will improve the process of training; for example, the competence-based approach can be enriched by using game-based simulation by introducing the trainees to a simulation of different technologies in water utilities. This can save resources and money and enrich the training. More importantly is modifying the game-based approach using the approach of competence-based to focus on specific competencies and to make use of the competence standards in its assessment component. The first section of this introduces and categorizes water challenges in Germany. In the second and third section, the two approaches are introduced in details. The competence-based approach is introduced to the WASS while the games-based to the flood risk management. Finally, a conclusion and recommendations are illustrated.     

The evolution of the martian elastic lithosphere and implications for crustal and mantle rheology

Estimates of the martian elastic lithosphere thickness Te imply that Te increased from around 20 km in the Noachian to about 70 km in the Amazonian period. A phase of rapid lithospheric growth is observed during the Hesperian and we propose that this elastic thickness history is a consequence of the martian crustal rheology and its thermal evolution. A wet crustal rheology is found to generate a mechanically incompetent layer in the lower crust during the early evolution and the rapid growth of Te during the Hesperian results from the disappearance of this layer due to planetary cooling. The incompetent layer and the related rapid lithospheric growth are absent for a dry basaltic crustal rheology, which is therefore incompatible with the observations. Furthermore, we find that the observed elastic thickness evolution is best compatible with a wet mantle rheology, although a dry mantle cannot be ruled out. It therefore seems likely that rheologically significant amounts of water were retained in the Martian crust and mantle after planetary accretion.     

A continuous phase gradient in a “monocrystalline” pyrrhotite

X-ray diffraction and microprobe analyses of pseudomonocrystalline fragments of pyrrhotite from Bodenmais, Bavaria, revealed continuous gradients in composition and phase distribution. The gradients extend from the well-developed (0001) cleavage surfaces 15–30 μm into the bulk of the crystals. The phase gradient is made up two low-temperature pyrrhotites with monoclinic (4C) and hexagonal (5C) symmetry. The fraction of monoclinic pyrrhotite, expressed on the basis of recorded X-ray intensities, I, decreases exponentially according to I _(mon)/[I _(hex)+I _(mon)] = EXP (aX+b) where a is a constant ranging from ?0.04 to ?0.25, X is the depth from the (0001) cleavage surface in μm, and b is a constant determined by the intensity ratios obtained from the untreated cleavage surfaces. The phase gradient developed during retrograde reactions from a continuous composition gradient. This primary gradient was caused by the extraction of iron from a disordered, high-temperature hexagonal pyrrhotite during oxidation of the cleavage surfaces at temperatures above 254° C (upper stability limit of 4C pyrrhotite), probably above 308° C. The length of the c axis of the monoclinic superstructure slightly increases with the increase in iron and decrease in vacancy content of the bulk. This expansion is probably due to a minor compositional variation of the monoclinic phase controlled by the availability of vacancies during the transition to low-temperature phases.     

The sea surface temperature deviation and the heat flow at the sea-air interface

The deviation of the sea surface temperature from the water temperature below is calculated as a function of the heat flow through the air-sea interface, using wind tunnel determinations of the effective thermal diffusivity in a boundary layer. The influence ofQ, shortwave radiation, andH, latent and sensible heat transfer plus effective back radiation, and U, wind speed, can be described by:T ₀ –T _w =C ₁ ·H/U +C ₂ ·Q/U. The calculated coefficients vary slightly with reference depth, Tables II and III. They are in good agreement with independent observations.On leave at Department of Oceanography, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon in 1969–70.     

Late Quaternary ice-rich permafrost sequences as a paleoenvironmental archive for the Laptev Sea Region in northern Siberia

Ice-rich permafrost sequences with large polygonal ice wedges represent excellent archives for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Such deposits contain numerous well-preserved records (ground ice, paleosols, peat beds, different types of fossils), which permit characterization of environmental conditions during a clearly defined period of the past 60 ka. Based on field investigations carried out within framework of the German-Russian project "Laptev Sea System 2000" on the Bykovsky Peninsula (SE of the Lena Delta) results from cryolithological studies, sedimentological analyses, as well as new radiocarbon data are presented. For the first time it is shown that the Ice Complex accumulated without significant interruptions from approximately 60 k.y. B.P. until the end of the Pleistocene. Geochemical data (total organic carbon, C/N, '¹³C_org) and the mass-specific magnetic susceptibility clearly show changing environmental conditions from stadial to interstadial times in the Late Pleistocene and during the transition to the Holocene. These results permit us to reconstruct the development of an Arctic periglacial landscape in the coastal lowland during Ice Complex formation in the Late Quaternary. This evolution coincided generally with the global environmental trend up to marine isotope stage 4.     

Secondary Ca–Al silicates in plutonic rocks: implications for their cooling history

Secondary Ca-Al silicates are used to constrain the P-T-x conditions of the very early post-magmatic stage of the intermediate to basic Hercynian plutonic complexes of Charroux-Civray (NW Massif Central, France) and Fichtelgebirge (NE Bavaria, Germany). The secondary Ca-Al silicates hydrogarnet, prehnite, pumpellyite, epidote and laumontite form lenses within unaltered or only slightly chloritized biotite. Hydrogarnet as the first occurring Ca-Al silicate phase crystallizes at temperatures above 340 °C. The common paragenesis prehnite + pumpellyite post-dates hydrogarnet and indicates rather narrow ranges of temperature (200-280 °C) and pressure (2-3 kbar). Laumontite is formed at the end of Ca-Al silicate crystallization (180-260 °C, 1-3 kbar), mostly in small fractures in association with prehnite and adularia. The observed crystallization sequence of the Ca-Al silicates and their stabilities define a retrograde alteration path for the plutonic rocks. The Ca-Al silicate assemblage results from an early pervasive alteration of the plutonic rocks by low X_CO2 fluids during post-magmatic cooling. Subsolidus cooling starts at about 4 kbar at solidus temperatures as indicated by magmatic epidote stability, hornblende barometry and fluid inclusion data, and continues under slightly decreasing pressure (uplift) down to 2-3 kbar at 200-280 °C (prehnite-pumpellyite paragenesis). This shows that Ca-Al silicate assemblages may be a unique tool to constrain the P-T conditions of the subsolidus cooling of intermediate to basic plutonic bodies.