Valuation of construction work on architectural heritage and its influence on project implementation decision

The article deals with the description of the methodology for determining the prices of construction work used most often in the reconstruction of historic buildings. The procedure is based on parametric estimating of buildings and on traditional tools and principles of pricing. The historic building is divided into structural parts and technological units. Structural elements are individually valued at the unit price, which was created on the basis of sub-budget. Very strict rules are set for the financing of cultural monuments and the method of valuation is based on the price systems’ methodology. The research also included an analysis of market prices and a subsequent comparison with indicative prices. Proper estimate of historic buildings’ reconstruction cost is also an important input for the decision-making process regarding the actual implementation of the project, its method of execution and its life cycle cost determination.

Materiality Assessment of Natural Capital Risks in Australian Forestry

Purpose of Review Natural capital is a term for the stocks of natural assets (e.g. natural resources and ecosystems) that yield flows of ecosystem services that benefit the economy and human well-being. Forestry is one of the industries with the greatest dependencies on natural capital, as well as having the potential for substantial positive or negative impacts on natural capital. These dependencies and impacts create direct risks to a forestry enterprise’s ongoing financial viability, which translate into indirect risks for investors and society. There are growing demands from a variety of stakeholders for more reliable information to assess such risks, but at present, these risks are not always well understood, assessed or communicated in a consistent and comparable way. This paper addresses this problem by applying a standardized methodology to develop the first systematic, evidence-based review and financial materiality assessment of natural capital risks for the Australian forestry sector. Recent Findings The vast potential scope of forestry impacts and dependencies on natural capital can be reduced to twenty key areas of relevance to Australian forestry, of which only seven to nine have been assessed as highly financially material for each of the sub-sectors of softwood plantations, hardwood plantations and native forestry. The majority of risks assessed as highly financially material are related to dependencies on natural capital. This is in part due to the fact that current regulations and certification schemes focus on managing impacts, but tend to overlook dependencies. Nearly all of the natural capital risks rated as highly material are likely to be exacerbated by climate change. Summary An improved understanding of natural capital risks is an important input to better decision-making by forestry enterprises, as well as their lenders and investors, forestry regulators and other relevant stakeholders. This paper contributes to the preparedness of the forestry industry and its stakeholders to address questions about vulnerability to future changes and declining trends in natural capital.

Use of Monitoring Approaches to Verify the Predictive Accuracy of the Modeling of Particle-Bound Solid Inputs to Surface Waters

For particle-bound substances such as phosphorus, erosion is an important input pathway to surface waters. Therefore, knowledge of soil erosion by water and sediment inputs to water bodies at high spatial resolution is essential to derive mitigation measures at the regional scale. Models are used to calculate soil erosion and associated sediment inputs to estimate the resulting loads. However, validation of these models is often not sufficiently possible. In this study, sediment input was modeled on a 10 × 10 m grid for a subcatchment of the Kraichbach river in Baden-Wuerttemberg (Germany). In parallel, large-volume samplers (LVS) were operated at the catchment outlet, which allowed a plausibility check of the modeled sediment inputs. The LVS produced long-term composite samples (2 to 4 weeks) over a period of 4 years. The comparison shows a very good agreement between the modeled and measured sediment loads. In addition, the monitoring concept of the LVS offers the possibility to identify the sources of the sediment inputs to the water body. In the case of the Kraichbach river, it was found that around 67% of the annual sediment load in the water body is contributed by rainfall events and up to 33% represents dry-weather load. This study shows that the modeling approaches for calculating the sediment input provide good results for the test area Kraichbach and the transfer for a German wide modeling will produce plausible values.

Structure of the Kakinada cyclone of 6 November 1996

Radar is a very powerful tool in determining the position, speed and direction of movement, horizontal and vertical extent of the cyclone. Besides, the radar observations can also be expected to provide more vital information on the shape, size and behaviour of the eye of a cyclone. These features are very important input information for cyclone forecasting, especially in assessing the intensity of the cyclone. An effort has been made here to document the above features of a cyclone that struck the east Godavari coast in November 1996. The cyclone formed over central Bay of Bengal in the afternoon of 5 November 1996 and intensified into a severe cyclonic storm with a core of hurricane winds next day. The cyclone was tracked by Cyclone Detection Radar (CDR) Visakhapatnam from the initial stage of its formation till it crossed the coast near Kakinada. In this paper, the radar track of the cyclone over sea, along with the size. shape and behaviour of the eye as observed on radar have been discussed. The variation of other parameters like eyewall width, radius of maximum reflectivity and wall cloud height and relationship between eyewall width and eye diameter have also been discussed.

The Influence of Different Lay-Up Parameters on the Fatigue Response of Carbon/Epoxy Laminates under Internal Multiaxial Stress States

The inherent anisotropy of composites complicates their damage response. The influence of multiaxiality, particularly in carbon-based composites, is not thoroughly understood due to obstacles related to damage monitoring during loading. In this study, the response of different carbon/epoxy laminates under fatigue is examined through dedicated in situ microscopic observations. By varying the orientation of off-axis layers, the impact of multiaxiality on the mechanical and damage response is evaluated. Furthermore, balanced and unbalanced laminates are compared, considering the limited information for the latter. The influence of the number of off-axis layers is finally assessed leading to important conclusions about optimal fatigue response. The fatigue response is evaluated in all cases considering both the mechanical properties and the damage characteristics. Significant conclusions are drawn, especially for the benefits of unbalanced laminates and the impact of shear stresses, allowing for the utilization of the obtained data as important input for the establishment of reliable fatigue damage models.

General overestimation of ERA5 precipitation in flow simulations for High Mountain Asia basins

Precipitation is one of the most important input to hydrological models, although obtaining sufficient precipitation observations and accurate precipitation estimates in High Mountain Asia (HMA) is challenging. ERA5 precipitation is the latest generation of reanalysis dataset that is attracting huge attention from various fields but it has not been evaluated in hydrological simulations in HMA. To remedy this gap, we first statistically evaluated ERA5 precipitation with observations from 584 gauges in HMA, and then investigated its potential in hydrological simulation in 11 HMA basins using the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model. The ERA5 precipitation generally captures the seasonal variations of gauge observations, and the broad spatial distributions of precipitation in both magnitude and trends in HMA. The ERA5 exhibits a reasonable flow simulation (RB of 5%–10%) at the Besham hydrological station of the UI basin when the contribution from glacier runoff is added to the simulated total runoff. But it overestimates the observations in other HMA basins by 33%–106% without considering glacier runoff, mostly due to the overestimates in the ERA5 precipitation inputs. Therefore, a bias correction is definitely needed before ERA5 precipitation is used for hydrological simulations in HMA basins.

The Symposium on Overcoming Modernity and Discourse in Wartime Japan

The symposium on overcoming modernity (kindai no chōkoku) that took place in Tokyo in 1942 has been much commented upon, but later critics have tended to over-emphasize the wartime political context and the ideological connection to Japanese ultra-nationalism. Closer examination shows that the background and the actual content of the discussion were more complicated. The idea of overcoming modernity had already appeared in debates among Japanese intellectuals before the war, and was always open to different interpretations; it could indicate Japanese ambitions to move beyond Western paradigms of modernity, but in other cases it referred to more radical visions of alternatives to modernity as such. Some versions linked up with Western critiques of existing modernity, including traditionalist as well as more future-oriented ones. These differentiations are evident in the symposium, and associated with diverse schools of thought. An important input came from representatives of the Kyoto school, the most distinctive current in twentieth-century Japanese philosophy. Despite the suppression of Marxist thought, the background influence of the unorthodox Marxist thinker Miki Kiyoshi was significant. Another major contribution came from the group known as the Japan Romantic School, active in literature and literary criticism. Other intellectuals of widely varying persuasions, from outspoken nationalists to Catholic theologians, also participated. The result was a rich but also thoroughly inconclusive discussion, from which no consensus on roads beyond modernity could emerge.

Characterization of vegetation fraction estimated using spot-vegetation NDVI data for regional climate modeling in India

lkj & ,e- ,e- 5 tSls eslksLdsy tyok;q fun’kksZa }kjk ouLifr ¼oh- ,Q-½ dh lwpuk nsus dk dk;Z egRoiw.kZ gSA fun’kZu ¼ekWMfyax½ esa lkekU; :Ik ls lcls vf/kd iz;qDr dh xbZ tyok;q laca/kh ekfld oh- ,Q- gSA oh- ,Q- dh lwpuk,¡ ,u- vks- ,- ,- & ,- oh- ,p- vkj- vkj- ,u- Mh- oh- vkbZ- HkweaMyh; vk¡dM+k lsVksa dk mi;ksx djrs gq, xqVesu vkSj bXukVkso ¼1988½ ¼th- vkbZ-½ }kjk rS;kj dh xbZ gSA bl 'kks/k&i= esa Hkkjrh; {ks= ds vizSy 1998 ls uoacj 2003 dh vof/k ds LikWV& ost+hVs’ku 10 fnolh; fefJr ,u- Mh- oh- vkbZ- ds mRiknksa dk mi;ksx djrs gq, 1 fd- eh- ds oh- ,Q- ds vk¡dM+k lsV rS;kj djus ds ckjs esa crk;k x;k gSA LikWV&osthVs’ku ds 0 % vkSj 100 % dh oh- ,Q- ls laca) ,u- Mh- oh- vkbZ- dh laosnd fof’k"V izHkkolhek,¡ th- vkbZ- ds 0-04 vkSj 0-52 dh rqyuk esa Øe’k: 0-04 vkSj 0-804 ikbZ xbZaA th- vkbZ- ds tyok;q laca/kh oh- ,Q ds lkFk izkIr fd, x, oh- ,Q ds vk¡dM+ksa dh rqyuk dh xbZ gSA rhu v{kka’kh; {ks=ksa ¼<16] 16&24] > 24½ ds fy, oh- ,Q- ds fo’ys"k.k ls th- vkbZ- ls 15 % rd dh fHkUurkvksa dk irk pyk gSA o"kkZ&vk/kkfjr Ñf"k okys {ks= esa mYys[kuh; fHkUurk dk irk pyk gSA oh- ,Q- ls izkIr fd, x, ekSleh vkSj o"kZ&izfro"kZ dh fHkUurkvksa ds ifj.kkeksa ij fopkj&foe’kZ fd;k x;k gSA Vegetation fraction (VF) is an important input in mesoscale climate models, such as MM5. The most commonly used VF inputs in modeling is the climatic monthly VF generated by Gutman and Ignatov (1998) (GI) using NOAA-AVHRR NDVI global data sets. This paper reports the generation of 1 km VF data set using SPOT-VEGETATION 10-day composite NDVI products from April 1998 to November 2003 for the Indian region. Sensor-specific thresholds of NDVI associated with 0% and 100% VF for SPOT-VEGETATION were found to be 0.04 and 0.804, respectively, in contrast to 0.04 and 0.52 of GI. Comparison of derived VF with climatic VF of GI was carried out. Analysis of VF for three latitudinal zones (<16, 16-24, >24) indicated the differences up to 15 percent from GI. Significant difference was observed for the area having rain-fed agriculture. Results of the seasonal and year-to-year variations of derived VF are discussed.

Vulnerability analysis of capture fisheries to climate change based on the Province Scale (exposure and sensitivity analysis)

Fisheries has a major contribution for the Indonesian economy both on a local and national scale. However, the phenomenon of climate change can threaten the sustainability of this sector. Therefore, a scientific approach is needed to determine the level of risk and adaptation strategies for fisheries, one of which is through vulnerability analysis. Vulnerability is the final analysis resulted from the analysis of sensitivity and exposure. Both of these analyses are important to determine the parameters that will affect the value of the fishery vulnerability to climate change. This research is focused on sensitivity and exposure analysis with the coverage limit is the province area to determine the sensitivity and exposure index that exists in the study area. The result will be important input in further research for the vulnerability of capture fisheries to climate change. Three provinces in Indonesia were selected through purposive sampling method. The source of data for indices variables were using recorded data in 2009-2020 from relevant sources. Result described that SST variability in the three provinces has the same pattern. In the exposure analysis, the SST is linked to the catch resulting in different exposure statuses in each province. It also illustrated those areas with a very high number of fishermen and catches will have very high sensitivity. The research will support in the sustainable management of capture fish at the province scale.

Physiological potential of soybean seeds produced in southern Brazil

Soy is the most economically important agricultural crop in the world. Achieving higher productivity has been a challenge in today's agriculture. Making the seed, surely, the most important input for agricultural development, because, as a living organism, it is depositary, directly or indirectly, of a large part of the technological advances developed by researchers over decades. Therefore, the successful implantation of a crop is in the use of seeds of high physiological quality, with a high percentage of germination and vigor. Thirty cultivars and 29 cities were used, totaling 131 samples from the three southern Brazilian states. Being evaluated the physiological quality, as well as its components, germination, accelerated aging at 41ºC for 48 hours, tetrazolium test, and mass of a thousand seeds. For the macronutrient tests, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), Calcium (Ca) and Molybdenum (Mo) were analyzed. At the end of this work, it can be concluded that the three states in the south of Brazil did not present differences regarding the physiological quality of the tested cultivars. However, the physiological potential comprises the set of skills that allows estimating the capacity of a batch of seeds to properly manifest their vital functions after sowing.