Application of the honey-bees mating programming (HBMP) algorithm to sediment concentration modelling

Abstract

The honey-bees mating programming (HBMP) algorithm is introduced as a novel tool for predicting suspended sediment concentration for the Mad River catchment near Arcata, USA. The paper also applies gene expression programming (GEP) as a comparison and shows that these two approaches can the produce transparent, nonlinear relationships between the independent and dependent variables. Some modifications have been made to the HBMP algorithm to improve its capability and efficiency. The results achieved from this method and GEP are compared with two different sediment rating curves based on regression techniques. The findings show that the results from both the HBMP and GEP methods are promising and outperform the results obtained from the sediment rating curves.

Editor D. Koutsoyiannis; Associate editor L. See     

Malaysia's Three Major Ethnic Group Preferences in Creating a Malaysian Garden Identity

Malaysia has a complex multiracial population, predominantly defined by three major ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indian races, with diverse cultural backgrounds. Despite this, the country has a vision to be the most beautiful garden nation, and its National Landscape Policy (NLP) puts emphasis on creating a unique landscape and garden identity. Because of ethnic and cultural differences, there are differences between preferences for developing a garden identity for Malaysia. Hence, this study focused on the visual quality of gardens. Representative images of four well-established gardens of the world including Persian-Islamic, English, Japanese and Chinese gardens were presented to the study's respondents through preference photo surveys. Respondents from the three major ethnic groups in Malaysia were asked to rate their preferred garden types, elements and scenes that they would like to see in Malaysian gardens. The results pinpointed expectations of the visual quality of gardens. These highlighted some similarities and differences between the three major ethnic groups in their preferences for the scenes and elements that they sought in gardens. Diverse factors must be considered when creating Malaysian gardens that will be accepted by Malaysians of different ethnic groups. Garden development reveals preferences attached to visual qualities and emphasises cultural differences between garden users.     

Application of the FMEA in insurance of high-risk industries: a case study of Iran's gas refineries

The purpose of this paper is to categorize and analyze various risk factors in Irans gas refineries for insurance purposes. Using the failure modes and effects analysis method as a subset of probability risk assessment technique and gas refineries data for the period March 2011 till March 2012, risk priorities numbers are calculated from the perspectives of both the insured party (gas industries) and the insurer (insurance companies). Our empirical results indicate that various property damage risk factors embodied in gas refineries including fire, explosion, error and omission, and machinery breakdown are insurable risks. Risks of pressurized vessels defects are in safe category and can be tolerated by the industry owner. The policy implication of this paper for Iranian policy makers in the energy sector is that, gas refineries are insurable in the market with reasonable risk premium. Insuring gas refineries will definitely reduce capital losses which can otherwise be enormous for the economy in general and for oil and gas industries in particular.     

850hPa东高西低型低空环流与江西降水的关系

利用常规高空探测资料,分析了2000—2012年4—6月850 hPa层位势高度差异常(上海宝山或大陈岛站850 hPa层位势高度值比贵阳站大7 gpm或以上)形势下低空环流与江西降水的关系。结果表明,这种形势下,700 hPa高度层上均有西南低涡活动。近50%的个例江西省上空850 hPa层出现风速16 m/s以上的低空西南急流,约40%的个例有切变线活动;若去除850 hPa无切变线影响和切变线出现较晚的情形,江西省出现10站以上暴雨过程的比例为85.7%。     

System dynamics approach for simulating water resources of an urban water system with emphasis on sustainability of groundwater

Water resources management is an important driver in social and economic development. Water shortage is one of the most critical issues threatening human welfare, public health, and ecosystems. This issue has turned into a major challenge in many river basins all around the world due to the imbalance in water supply and demand. Use of simulation models can be effective tools in providing water managers with scientifically supported decisions in dealing with complex and uncertain water resource systems. System dynamics approach serves as a management tool and may play an important role in understanding the cause–effect in water resources systems. In the present study, system dynamics approach was applied to simulate management strategies dealing with Tehran metropolitan water resources systems. In the developed model, the trend of water storage in the next 30-year period and the effectiveness of water supply strategies were simulated. The results showed that, despite the growing shortage of the water resources, optimal use of existing resources under appropriate strategies could reduce water deficit within the next 30 years.     

Applicability of generalized additive model in groundwater potential modelling and comparison its performance by bivariate statistical methods

Groundwater is the most valuable natural resource in arid areas. Therefore, any attempt to investigate potential zones of groundwater for further management of water supply is necessary. Hence, many researchers have worked on this subject all around the world. On the other hand, the Generalized Additive Model (GAM) has been applied to environmental and ecological modelling, but its applicability to other kinds of predictive modelling such as groundwater potential mapping has not yet been investigated. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of GAM model and then its comparison with three popular GIS-based bivariate statistical methods, namely Frequency Ratio (FR), Statistical Index (SI) and Weight-of-Evidence (WOE) for producing groundwater spring potential map (GSPM) in Lorestan Province Iran. To achieve this, out of 6439 existed springs, 4291 spring locations were selected for training phase and the remaining 2147 springs for model evaluation. Next, the thematic layers of 12 effective spring parameters including altitude, plan curvature, slope angle, slope aspect, drainage density, distance from rivers, topographic wetness index, fault density, distance from fault, lithology, soil and land use/land cover were mapped and integrated using the ArcGIS 10.2 software to generate a groundwater prospect map using mentioned approaches. The produced GSPMs were then classified into four distinct groundwater potential zones, namely low, moderate, high and very high classes. The results of the analysis were finally validated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve technique. The results indicated that out of four models, SI is superior (prediction accuracy of 85.4%) following by FR, GAM and WOE, respectively (prediction accuracy of 83.7, 77 and 76.3%). The result of groundwater spring potential map is helpful as a guide for engineers in water resources management and land use planning in order to select suitable areas to implement development schemes and also government entities.     

Formation of pristane from α-tocopherol under simulated anoxic sedimentary conditions: A combination of biotic and abiotic degradative processes

Incubation of intact and oxidized α-tocopherol (vitamin E) in anaerobic sediment slurries allowed us to demonstrate that, as previously suggested by Goossens et al. (1984), the degradation of α-tocopherol in anoxic sediments results in the formation of pristane. The conversion of α-tocopherol to this isoprenoid alkane involves a combination of biotic and abiotic degradative processes, i.e. the anaerobic biodegradation (which seems to be mainly induced by denitrifying bacteria) of trimeric structures resulting from the abiotic oxidation of α-tocopherol. On the basis of the results obtained, it is proposed that in the marine environment most of the α-tocopherol present in phytoplanktonic cells should be quickly degraded within the water column and the oxic zone of sediments by way of aerobic biodegradation, photo- and autoxidation processes. Abiotic transformation of this compound mainly results in the production of trimeric oxidation products, sufficiently stable to be incorporated into anoxic sediments and whose subsequent anaerobic bacterial degradation affords pristane. These results confirm that the ratio pristane to phytane cannot be used as an indicator of the oxicity of the environment of deposition; in contrast, they support the use of PFI (Pristane Formation Index) as a proxy for the state of diagenesis of sedimentary organic matter.     

A Comparison of Stiff ODE Solvers for Astrochemical Kinetics Problems

The time dependent chemical rate equations arising from astrochemical kinetics problems are described by a system of stiff ordinary differential equations (ODEs). In this paper, using three astrochemical models of varying physical and computational complexity, and hence different degrees of stiffness, we present a comprehensive performance survey of a set of well-established ODE solver packages from the ODEPACK collection, namely LSODE, LSODES, VODE and VODPK. For completeness, we include results from the GEAR package in one of the test models. The results demonstrate that significant performance improvements can be obtained over GEAR which is still being used by many astrochemists by default. We show that a simple appropriate ordering of the species set results in a substantial improvement in the performance of the tested ODE solvers. The sparsity of the associated Jacobian matrix can be exploited and results using the sparse direct solver routine LSODES show an extensive reduction in CPU time without any loss in accuracy. We compare the performance and the computed abundances of one model with a 175 species set and a reduced set of 88 species, keeping all physical and chemical parameters identical with both sets.We found that the calculated abundances using two different size models agree quite well. However, with no extra computational effort and more reliable results, it is possible for the computation to be many times faster with the larger species set than the reduced set, depending on the use of solvers, the ordering and the chosen options. It is also shown that though a particular solver with certain chosen parameters may have severe difficulty or even fail to complete a run over the required integration time, another solver can easily complete the run with a wider range of control parameters and options. As a result of the superior performance of LSODES for the solution of astrochemical kinetics systems, we have tailor-made a sparse version of the VODE solver by replacing the full numerical matrix linear algebra component of the standard VODE solver with sparse matrix solver routines. The preliminary tests from the preconditioned iterative solver package VODPK indicate very good results for one of our test models, but not for all of the models.     

Comprehensive study of the biophysical parameters of agricultural crops based on assessing Landsat 8 OLI and Landsat 7 ETM+ vegetation indices

For three agricultural crop types, winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), and canola (Brassica napus L.), we estimated biophysical parameters including fresh and dry biomass, leaf area index (LAI), and vegetation water content, for which we found the equivalent water thickness (EWT), fuel moisture content per fresh weight (FMC_FW), and fuel moisture content per dry weight (FMC_DW). We performed these estimations using data from the newly launched Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensor, as well as its predecessor the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+). Progress in the design of the new sensor (i.e., Landsat 8), including narrower near-infrared (NIR) wavebands, higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and greater radiometric resolution highlights the necessity to investigate the biophysical parameters of agricultural crops, especially compared to data from its predecessor. This study aims to evaluate vegetation indices (VIs) derived from the Landsat 8 OLI and the Landsat 7 ETM+. Both the Landsat 8 OLI and Landsat 7 ETM+ VIs agreed well with in-situ data measurements. However, the Landsat 8 OLI-derived VIs were generally more consistent with in situ data than the Landsat 7 ETM+ VIs. We also note that the Landsat 8 OLI is better able to capture the small variability of the VIs because of its higher SNR and wider radiometric range; in addition, the saturation phenomenon occurred earlier for the Landsat 7 ETM+ than for the Landsat 8 OLI. This indicates that the new sensor is better able to estimate the biophysical parameters of crops.