Effect of dispersion on impulsive waves

The generation and propagation of surface waves resulting from suddenly created disturbances over water surfaces is investigated. The initial boundary conditions defining the disturbance are given either by a velocity of the free surface, an initial elevation of the free surface or a pressure impulsively applied on the free surface. It is shown that the corresponding three forms of solutions are related by a simple time derivative. Linear solutions are obtained in the cases where the wave motion is assumed to be nondispersive, mildly dispersive and fully dispersive, as well as in the case where the motion is given by the method of stationary phase. Criteria are established to indicate the limit of validity of each method.     

Towards a rapid assessment of highway slope disasters by using multidisciplinary techniques

Mega-earthquakes and extreme climate events accompanied by intrinsic fragile geology lead to numerous landslides along mountain highways in Taiwan, causing enormous life and economic losses. In this study, a system for rapid slope disaster information integration and assessment is proposed with the aim of providing information on landslide occurrence, failure mechanisms, and subsequent landslide-affected areas to the highway authority rapidly. The functionality of the proposed system is deployed into three units: (1) geohazard rapid report (GeoPORT I), (2) multidisciplinary geological survey report (GeoPORT II), and (3) site-specific landslide simulation report (GeoPORT III). After landslide occurrence, the seismology-based monitoring network rapidly provides the initial slope disaster information, including preliminary location, event magnitude, earthquake activity, and source dynamics, within an hour. Within 3 days of the landslide, a multidisciplinary geological survey is conducted to collect high-precision topographical, geological, and remote-sensing data to determine the possible failure mechanism. After integrating the aforementioned information, a full-scale three-dimensional landslide simulation based on the discrete element method is performed within 10 days to reveal the failure process and to identify the areas potentially affected by subsequent disasters through scenario modeling. Overall, the proposed system can promptly provide comprehensive and objective information to relevant authorities after the event occurrence for hazard assessment. The proposed system was validated using a landslide event in the Central Cross-Island Highway of Taiwan.

     

Who are the resident stakeholders in a flood project? A spatial analysis of resident stakeholders

The importance of public participation has been discussed and well understood for some time, and many people have moved beyond the development of ideas to putting them into practice. During the past few years, stakeholder theory, one of the most popular theories originating from the field of business management, has been attracting immense attention due to its utility in raising representativeness in government. For instance, Hemmati (Multi-stakeholder process for governance and sustainability: beyond deadlock and conflict. Earthscan, London, 2002) argued that multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) might be effective methods toward generating better policy options under the current democratic paradigm. In real life, however, stakeholder theory often has not been appropriately adopted in the field of environmental management. Sometimes, planners, prompted by the difficulty of identifying stakes, have used the term “stakeholders” as roughly synonymous with “participants”, thus impairing the content of stakeholder theory. Different from previous work in the field of flood management, we propose an original approach, the spatial analysis of a flood project for resident stakeholders (SAFPRS), to identify resident stakeholders in a flood project, rather than merely improving the weakness of stakeholder identification. Hopefully, this approach might ameliorate the current situation in Taiwan, where some important stakeholders have been too easily excluded in the execution of flood projects.     

台湾地区湖泊水库沉积速率初步探讨

对1989－1991年期间，在台湾地区采集的5个湖泊的沉积物岩芯和22个湖泊水库的表层沉积物，进行了沉积物超量210Pb活性的分析，以探讨其沉积速率。其中，小鬼湖沉积物岩芯取部分样品进行14C定年，以与210Pb所得结果比较。结果表明，数千年来，台湾高山湖泊、次高山湖泊的沉积速率相当稳定，除万里池外，大多介于0．06－0．16cm／a之间。火山湖的210Pb活性较一般湖泊高，这是由于火山湖当地安山岩及地下水释出较多的210Pb所致，但这并不意味其沉积速率慢。所以应用210Pb对火山湖沉积物定年时，须作特别修正。平地湖泊目前沉积速率，除了大埔水库高达6．42cm／a外，大多介于0．5—3、2cm／a之间，比高山湖泊的沉积速率高约10－20倍。另外，由水库淤沙资料显示1），历年平均沉积速率都比目前的沉积速率快数倍，其中以石门、白河、乌山头、阿公店4个水库的平均沉积速率较快。