New metrics for managing and sustaining the ocean's bounty

Policies are arising around the world, most recently in the United States, that mandate the implementation of marine spatial planning as a practical pathway towards ecosystem-based management. In the new United States ocean policy, and several other cases around the globe, ecosystem services are at the core of marine spatial planning, but there is little guidance on how ecosystem services should be measured, making it hard to implement this new approach. A new framework is shown here for practical, rigorous ecosystem service measurement that highlights contributions from both natural and social systems. The novel three-step framework addresses traditional shortcomings of an ecosystem services approach by giving managers and scientists the tools to assess and track: (1) the condition of the ecosystem (supply metrics), (2) the amount of ocean resources actually used or enjoyed by people (service metrics), and (3) people's preference for that level of service (value metrics). This framework will allow real world progress on marine spatial planning to happen quickly, and with a greater chance for success.     

A robust damage detection method developed for offshore jacket platforms using modified artificial immune system algorithm

Steel jacket-type platforms are the common kind of the offshore structures and health monitoring is an important issue in their safety assessment.In the present study,a new damage detection method is adopted for this kind of structures and inspected experimentally by use of a laboratory model.The method is investigated for developing the robust damage detection technique which is less sensitive to both measurement and analytical model uncertainties.For this purpose,incorporation of the artificial immune system with weighted attributes(AISWA) method into finite element(FE) model updating is proposed and compared with other methods for exploring its effectiveness in damage identification.Based on mimicking immune recognition,noise simulation and attributes weighting,the method offers important advantages and has high success rates.Therefore,it is proposed as a suitable method for the detection of the failures in the large civil engineering structures with complicated structural geometry,such as the considered case study.     

Towards the implementation of an integrated ecosystem fleet-based management of European fisheries

Using the Celtic Sea and the North Sea as case studies, the fleet-based approach is shown to be the pathway to implement an effective ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM) in European seas. First, a diagnostic on the health of each ecosystem is proposed based on the reconstruction of long time-series of catch, the analysis of mean indicators or stocks trajectories derived from ICES stock assessment results, and the analysis of ecosystem indicators. Then, a fleet-based synthesis is presented using indicators of both the ecological impact and the economic performances of the major fleets operating within each ecosystem. In particular, assessment diagrams show whether each fleet segment, on average, sustainably exploits the stocks. Although results are preliminary due to the poor quality of available data, the analysis shows that simple indicators can be estimated and clearly highlight contrasts between fleet segments. Such an approach contributes to the evolution from a stock-based to a fleet-based management, which reflects the ecological, economical and social pillars of the sustainable development of fisheries.     

Extended Kalman filter for material parameter estimation in nonlinear structural finite element models using direct differentiation method

This paper presents a novel nonlinear finite element (FE) model updating framework, in which advanced nonlinear structural FE modeling and analysis techniques are used jointly with the extended Kalman filter (EKF) to estimate time‐invariant parameters associated to the nonlinear material constitutive models used in the FE model of the structural system of interest. The EKF as a parameter estimation tool requires the computation of structural FE response sensitivities (total partial derivatives) with respect to the material parameters to be estimated. Employing the direct differentiation method, which is a well‐established procedure for FE response sensitivity analysis, facilitates the application of the EKF in the parameter estimation problem. To verify the proposed nonlinear FE model updating framework, two proof‐of‐concept examples are presented. For each example, the FE‐simulated response of a realistic prototype structure to a set of earthquake ground motions of varying intensity is polluted with artificial measurement noise and used as structural response measurement to estimate the assumed unknown material parameters using the proposed nonlinear FE model updating framework. The first example consists of a cantilever steel bridge column with three unknown material parameters, while a three‐story three‐bay moment resisting steel frame with six unknown material parameters is used as second example. Both examples demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed parameter estimation framework even in the presence of high measurement noise. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluation of ecosystem services: A case study in the middle reach of the Heihe River Basin,Northwest China

Ecosystem services evaluation aims at understanding the status of ecosystem services on different spatial and temporal scale. In this paper, we selected the middle reach of the Heihe River Basin (HRB), which is the second largest inland river basin in China, as one of the typical area to estimate the ecosystem services values (ESVs) corresponding to the land use changes. Based on the land use data and ecosystem service value coefficients, the total ecosystem services values (TESVs) of the middle reach of the HBR are quantitatively calculated, which were 9.244 × 108, 9.099 × 108, 9.131 × 108 and 9.146 × 108 USD in 1988, 2000, 2005 and 2008 respectively. During 1988–2008, the decrease of grassland, forest land, water area and unused land contributed 148.94%, 57.85%, 87.87% and 16.42% respectively to the net loss of TESVs, while the dramatic increase of cultivated land improved the TESVs with contribution of −211.08% to the net loss of TESVs. Expansion of cultivated land, which especially caused the loss of grassland and forest land, directly exerted negative impacts on the provision of ecosystem services in the study area. The findings of this research indicated that land use change was an important form of human activities, which had a strong impact on ecosystem services.     

广东高温热浪致人体健康风险区划

本文采用国际上通用的自然灾害风险概念和分析方法,从高温热浪致人体健康风险的构成出发,分别构建了广东省高温热浪危险性指数、暴露度指数和承灾体脆弱性指数（含敏感性指数和适应性指数）,在定量化的风险指数基础上尝试进行风险区划研究。结果表明：高危险性区域位于广东东北部、西北部以及中部偏西地区,低危险性区域主要分布在沿海地区;人体健康高敏感性区域主要位于粤北和粤西,珠三角及粤东南沿海地区敏感性相对较低;适应性较高区域主要分布在珠三角地区,其他地区适应性较低,粤东和西南部分地区适应性最低;风险较高区域主要集中在粤东、粤西北和中部偏西及雷州半岛南部地区,风险较低区域主要在珠江三角洲及其以西沿海地区。该风险指数能较好地反映广东省高温热浪致人体健康风险的分布状况。     

发达国家通勤影响个人健康的研究综述与展望

随着社会经济的不断发展,健康问题已经越来越受到大家的关注。通勤作为居民每日的重要出行活动,是时间利用中的重要组成部分。近些年,城市交通状况开始不断恶化,糟糕的通勤形势逐渐对个人的健康状况构成威胁。发达国家较早开始了对于该问题的关注,已取得丰富的研究成果。相较之下,国内关于通勤影响个人健康的文献则相对缺乏。本文主要从个人心理健康、客观健康、健康行为三个维度,对西方发达国家通勤时间、通勤距离、通勤方式等通勤行对个人健康影响的相关文献进行了系统梳理与评述,并对未来研究进行展望,以期能够为我国城市通勤领域的研究提供新的视角与借鉴。