Combining fishers’ knowledge and cost-effective monitoring tools in the management of marine recreational fisheries: A case study of the squid and cuttlefish fishery of the Ría of Vigo (NW Spain)

This paper is concerned with the socio-spatial and ethical politics of redistribution, specifically the allocation of natural resources rents from political and economic cores to the economic and geographical peripheries whence the resource originated. Based on a case study of the coal seam gas sector in Queensland's Surat Basin, this paper focuses on the operation of the Queensland State Government's regional development fund for mining and energy extraction-affected regions. Employing an environmental justice framework, we critically explore the operation of these funds in ostensibly helping constituent communities in becoming resilient to the worst effects of the ‘staples trap’. Drawing on secondary demographic and housing data for the region, as well as primary information collected from key respondents from mid-2018 to early 2019, we show that funds were distributed across all of the local government areas, and allocated to projects and places primarily on a perceived economic needs basis. However, concerns were raised with the probity of the funds’ administration. In terms of recognition justice, the participation of smaller and more remote towns and local Indigenous communities was hampered by their structural marginalisation. Procedurally, the funds were criticised for the lack of local consultation taken in the development and approval of projects. While spatially concentrated expenditure may be the most cost-effective use of public monies, we argue that grant application processes should be open, transparent and inclusive, and the outcomes cognisant of the developmental needs of smaller communities, together with the need to foster regional solidarity and coherence.

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A Method for Assessing Threats to the Economic Security of a Region: A Case Study of Public Procurement in Russia

Risks ◽

10.3390/risks9010010 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 10

Author(s):

Valentina Kravchenko ◽

Tatiana Kudryavtseva ◽

Yuriy Kuporov

Keyword(s):

Regression Models ◽

Public Procurement ◽

Ordinary Least Squares ◽

Economic Security ◽

Government Procurement ◽

Security Monitoring ◽

Significant Relationships ◽

Monitoring Tools ◽

Russian Region

The issue of economic security is becoming an increasingly urgent one. The purpose of this article is to develop a method for assessing threats to the economic security of the Russian region. This method is based on step-by-step actions: first of all, choosing an element of the region’s economic security system and collecting its descriptive indicators; then grouping indicators by admittance-process-result categories and building hypotheses about their influence; testing hypotheses using a statistical package and choosing the most significant connections, which can pose a threat to the economic security of the region; thereafter ranking regions by the level of threats and developing further recommendations. The importance of this method is that with the help of grouping regions (territory of a country) based on proposed method, it is possible to develop individual economic security monitoring tools. As a result, the efficiency of that country’s region can be higher. In this work, the proposed method was tested in the framework of public procurement in Russia. A total of 14 indicators of procurement activity were collected for each region of the Russian Federation for the period from 2014 to 2018. Regression models were built on the basis of the grouped indicators. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Estimation was used. As a result of pairwise regression models analysis, we have defined four significant relationships between public procurement indicators. There are positive connections between contracts that require collateral and the percentage of tolerances, between the number of bidders and the number of regular suppliers, between the number of bidders and the average price drop, and between the number of purchases made from a single supplier and the number of contracts concluded without reduction. It was determined that the greatest risks for the system were associated with the connection between competition and budget savings. It was proposed to rank analyzed regions into four groups: ineffective government procurement, effective government procurement, and government procurement that threatens the system of economic security of the region, that is, high competition with low savings and low competition with high savings. Based on these groups, individual economic security monitoring tools can be developed for each region.

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Toward Decentralised Sanitary Sewage Collection Systems: A Multiobjective Approach for Cost-Effective and Resilient Designs

Water ◽

10.3390/w13141886 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (14) ◽

pp. 1886

Author(s):

Arezoo Zahediasl ◽

Amin E. Bakhshipour ◽

Ulrich Dittmer ◽

Ali Haghighi

Keyword(s):

Treatment Plant ◽

Drainage System ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Optimization Approach ◽

Hydraulic Design ◽

Multiobjective Approach ◽

Layout Generation ◽

Plant Allocation ◽

Problem Solving Process

In recent years, the concept of a centralized drainage system that connect an entire city to one single treatment plant is increasingly being questioned in terms of the costs, reliability, and environmental impacts. This study introduces an optimization approach based on decentralization in order to develop a cost-effective and sustainable sewage collection system. For this purpose, a new algorithm based on the growing spanning tree algorithm is developed for decentralized layout generation and treatment plant allocation. The trade-off between construction and operation costs, resilience, and the degree of centralization is a multiobjective problem that consists of two subproblems: the layout of the networks and the hydraulic design. The innovative characteristics of the proposed framework are that layout and hydraulic designs are solved simultaneously, three objectives are optimized together, and the entire problem solving process is self-adaptive. The model is then applied to a real case study. The results show that finding an optimum degree of centralization could reduce not only the network’s costs by 17.3%, but could also increase its structural resilience significantly compared to fully centralized networks.

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An application of Austrian legal requirements for CSO emissions

Water Science & Technology ◽

10.2166/wst.2011.560 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 64 (5) ◽

pp. 1081-1088 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Manfred Kleidorfer ◽

Wolfgang Rauch

Keyword(s):

Model Calibration ◽

Model Building ◽

Treatment Plant ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Combined Sewer Overflows ◽

Sewer System ◽

Legal Requirements ◽

Innovative Methods ◽

Combined Sewer

The Austrian standard for designing combined sewer overflow (CSO) detention basins introduces the efficiency of the combined sewer overflows as an indicator for CSO pollution. Additionally criteria for the ambient water quality are defined, which comprehend six kinds of impacts. In this paper, the Austrian legal requirements are described and discussed by means of hydrological modelling. This is exemplified with the case study Innsbruck (Austria) including a description for model building and model calibration. Furthermore an example is shown in order to demonstrate how – in this case – the overall system performance could be improved by implementing a cost-effective rearrangement of the storage tanks already available at the inflow of the wastewater treatment plant. However, this guideline also allows more innovative methods for reducing CSO emissions as measures for better usage of storage volume or de-centralised treatment of stormwater runoff because it is based on a sewer system simulation.

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GPU-Enabled Serverless Workflows for Efficient Multimedia Processing

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app11041438 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 1438

Author(s):

Sebastián Risco ◽

Germán Moltó

Keyword(s):

Video Processing ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Multimedia Processing ◽

Computing Services ◽

Video Frames ◽

Open Source Framework ◽

Cloud Infrastructures ◽

Aws Lambda ◽

Runtime Environments

Serverless computing has introduced scalable event-driven processing in Cloud infrastructures. However, it is not trivial for multimedia processing to benefit from the elastic capabilities featured by serverless applications. To this aim, this paper introduces the evolution of a framework to support the execution of customized runtime environments in AWS Lambda in order to accommodate workloads that do not satisfy its strict computational requirements: increased execution times and the ability to use GPU-based resources. This has been achieved through the integration of AWS Batch, a managed service to deploy virtual elastic clusters for the execution of containerized jobs. In addition, a Functions Definition Language (FDL) is introduced for the description of data-driven workflows of functions. These workflows can simultaneously leverage both AWS Lambda for the highly-scalable execution of short jobs and AWS Batch, for the execution of compute-intensive jobs that can profit from GPU-based computing. To assess the developed open-source framework, we executed a case study for efficient serverless video processing. The workflow automatically generates subtitles based on the audio and applies GPU-based object recognition to the video frames, thus simultaneously harnessing different computing services. This allows for the creation of cost-effective highly-parallel scale-to-zero serverless workflows in AWS.

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The potential cost of environmental certification to vegetation management in plantation forests: a New Zealand case study

Canadian Journal of Forest Research ◽

10.1139/x11-022 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 41 (5) ◽

pp. 986-993 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Carol A. Rolando ◽

Michael S. Watt ◽

Jerzy A. Zabkiewicz

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Vegetation Management ◽

Rate Of Return ◽

Internal Rate Of Return ◽

Mechanical Control ◽

Vegetation Control ◽

High Productivity ◽

Plantation Forests

Plantation forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council have restrictions on herbicide use. Since certified plantations are dependant on herbicides for cost-effective vegetation management, compliance requires a shift from current chemical practices. Using New Zealand plantation forests as a case study, discounted cash flow analyses were used to estimate the cost of certification-compliant vegetation control regimes compared with current non-compliant methods. We examined methods that (i) reduce the quantity of herbicides by using spot control and (ii) avoid the use of herbicides by using weed mats, manual, and mechanical control. Cost analyses were undertaken for low-, medium-, and high-productivity sites. The internal rate of return of the non-compliant regime was between 5% and 5.8% across the productivity range. Spot control was cheaper than current non-compliant practice. However, spot control is limited by site suitability and the availability of labour. Non-chemical control methods were expensive relative to other regimes. Reductions in the internal rate of return varied across low- and high-productivity sites between 0.8% and 0.5% for manual control, 1.3% and 0.8% for mechanical control, and 1.7% and 1.0% for weed mats. Meeting the goals of certification while retaining cost-effective vegetation control presents a challenge to the plantation forestry sector.

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The Use of Photogrammetry in Piping Design

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part A Power and Process Engineering ◽

10.1243/pime_proc_1983_197_014_02 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 197 (2) ◽

pp. 125-138 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

P A Bracewell ◽

U R Klement

Keyword(s):

Information Retrieval ◽

Mathematical Formulation ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Process Industry ◽

Process Plant ◽

Definition Of ◽

High Degree ◽

Positional Data

Piping design for ‘revamp’ projects in the process industry requires the retrieval of large amounts of ‘as-built’ data from existing process plant installations. Positional data with a high degree of accuracy are required. Photogrammetry, the science of measurement from photographs, was identified in Imperial Chemical Industries plc (ICI) as a suitable tool for information retrieval. The mathematical formulation enabling the definition of three-dimensional positions from photographic information is described. The process of using ICI's photogrammetric system for the definition of complete objects such as structures and pipes is illustrated. The need for specialized photogrammetric software for design purposes is explained. A case study describing how the photogrammetric system has been applied is described and graphical outputs from this exercise are shown. It is concluded that this particular photogrammetric system has proved to be a cost effective and accurate tool for the retrieval of ‘as-built’ information.

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Montrose: A case study of innovative, cost effective field rejuvenation

10.2118/28836-ms ◽

1994 ◽

Author(s):

I.J. Andrews

Keyword(s):

Cost Effective ◽

Effective Field

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Tracking red deer population size using deterministic cohort analysis

Mammalian Biology ◽

10.1007/s42991-021-00128-z ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Valerio Donini ◽

Luca Corlatti ◽

Luca Pedrotti

Keyword(s):

Population Size ◽

Cervus Elaphus ◽

Red Deer ◽

Cohort Analysis ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Natural Mortality ◽

Relative Index ◽

Deer Population ◽

Monitoring Tools ◽

Over Time

AbstractReliable and cost-effective monitoring tools to track population size over time are of key importance for wildlife management and conservation. Deterministic cohort analysis may be used to this aim, especially in hunted populations, but it requires that all mortality events are recorded and that individual age at death is known exactly. In this study, we investigated the reliability of cohort analysis as a relative index to track over-time variation in red deer (Cervus elaphus) abundance, in the absence of exact information about natural mortality and age. Visual tooth inspection was used to age 18,390 individuals found dead or hunted between 1982 and 2020 within the Trentino sector of the Stelvio National Park and the Val di Sole hunting district (Central Italian Alps). Temporal trend of reconstructed population size was checked using spring spotlight counts as a benchmark, through the Buishand range test and a linear model. Our results showed a significant and positive relationship between reconstructed population size and spring spotlight counts between 1982 and 2013, suggesting that cohort analysis could reliably track red deer population trend up to 7 years in the past. With a relative error of + 1.1 (SD = 1.5) years in the estimation of age, and fairly stable hunting pressure, our results support the use of deterministic cohort analysis as a relative index of abundance for monitoring red deer over time, even in the absence of exact information about natural mortality. Under violation of assumptions, however, the performance of deterministic reconstruction should be carefully inspected at the management scale.

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