Quantifying the multifunctionality of fjord and mountain agriculture by means of sociocultural and economic valuation of ecosystem services

The objective of this study was to define the value of the main market and nonmarket functions of fjord and mountain agroecosystems in Nordic countries by means of the ecosystem services framework. First, we used qualitative methods (interviews of farmers and other stakeholders in the area of study) to identify sociocultural perceptions of multifunctional agriculture. Next, we used survey-based stated-preference methods to rank and value in economic terms the most important functions (corresponding to the four types of ecosystem services) according to the local (residents of the study area) and the general (residents of a nearby area) populations. The sociocultural perceptions of multifunctionality among local stakeholders were similar, but differences in the relative importance of the functions reflected particular interests (agriculture compared with tourism). Both the local and the general populations attached great importance to the production and availability of quality foods. The general population showed very homogeneous preferences among ecosystem services, but local people rated them very differently. Local people ranked a more agricultural landscape very high. The total economic value of fjord and mountain agroecosystem was 850 € per person per year. The willingness to pay for the provision of ecosystem services under a policy scenario of further development of multifunctional agriculture clearly exceeded the current level of public support. The welfare loss that society would experience in a scenario of further abandonment of agriculture was even greater. We discuss the establishment of payments for ecosystem services for addressing the undersupply of nonmarket functions of agriculture.     

Coupling urban expansion models and hydrological models: How important are spatial patterns?

It is well known that urban expansion has a severe impact on the surface water balance by transforming vegetated covers into sealed surfaces. This transformation causes changing fluxes of evapotranspiration, surface runoff and groundwater recharge. In order to estimate the impact of land cover changes on the surface hydrology, hydrological models are often coupled with different types of land cover change models. It is, however, not clear to what extent spatially-explicit urban expansion scenarios provide an added value in comparison with non-spatial urban expansion models at different scale levels. The objective of this paper is to acquire a better insight in the importance of scale effects involved in the coupling of urban expansion scenarios and hydrological models. The relative importance of using different projections of both (i) quantity and (ii) spatial patterns of urban expansion was analysed at four different scale levels. The highly urbanised Flanders–Brussels region was taken as an example application. Twelve different urban expansion scenarios for 2025 and 2050 were developed and subsequently used as an input in a spatially-distributed water balance model. The results obtained suggest that at the level of the Flanders–Brussels region, an accurate estimation of the quantity of urban expansion should get priority over an accurate projection of the spatial patterns. However, the importance of using accurate projections of the spatial pattern of urban expansion increases systematically at local scale levels. A uniform strategy for coupling urban expansion models and hydrological models thus seems inappropriate. These findings are highly relevant for water management and spatial planning policymakers that typically operate at different administrative levels.     

A socio-technical framework for cyber-infrastructure design : Implication for Korean cyber-infrastructure vision

This study presents a practical case application of socio-technical framework to assess and predict the development of cyber-infrastructure (CI) in Korea. Applying a socio-technical system approach to CI, this paper attempts to gain a clear understanding of how CI will evolve and stabilize in the cyber environment. It investigates the complex interaction between social and technical aspects of CI by highlighting the co-evolving nature, diversity, and interface which constitute the next generation network environment. It describes the challenges in developing, deploying, and maintaining the diverse components of CI and provides a snapshot of Korea's current approach to supporting members in meeting this challenge. The purpose of this study is to provide insight into these challenges and opportunities by offering a socio-technical analysis of CI development involving the social dynamics and organizational, policy, management, and administration decisions inherent in the design and development of CI.     

SCENARIO GENERATION FOR OPERATIONAL RISK

Operational risk is an increasingly important area of risk management. Scenarios are an important modelling tool in operational risk management as alternative viable methods may not exist. This can be due to challenging modelling, data and implementation issues, and other methods fail to take into account expert information. The use of scenarios has been recommended by regulators; however, scenarios can be unreliable, unrealistic and fail to take into account quantitative data. These problems have also been identified by regulators such as Basel, and presently little literature exists on addressing the problem of generating scenarios for operational risk. In this paper we propose a method for generating operational risk scenarios. We employ the method of cluster analysis to generate scenarios that enable one to combine expert opinion scenarios with quantitative operational risk data. We show that this scenario generation method leads to significantly improved scenarios and significant advantages for operational risk applications. In particular for operational risk modelling, our method leads to resolving the key problem of combining two sources of information without eliminating the information content gained from expert opinions, tractable computational implementation for operational risk modelling, improved stress testing, what‐if analyses and the ability to apply our method to a wide range of quantitative operational risk data (including multivariate distributions). We conduct numerical experiments on our method to demonstrate and validate its performance and compare it against scenarios generated from statistical property matching for comparison. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Systematic Assessment of the Environmental Impacts of Transport Policy

This paper presents an integrated urbanpassenger transport model system for evaluatingthe impact of a large number of interrelatedpolicy instruments on urban travel behaviourand the environment. The model system has fourintegrated modules defining household locationand automobile choices, commuter workplace andcommuting travel choices, non-commuting travelactivity, and worker distributed workpractices. The demand model system, estimatedas a set of discrete and continuous choicemodels, is combined with a set of equilibratingcriteria in each of the location, automobileand commuting markets to predict overall demandfor passenger travel in various socio-economicsegments, automobile classes and geographiclocations. We illustrate the diversity of thesystem by applying the integrated system toPerth (Western Australia), in the context ofassessing their impacts on greenhouse gasemissions. The model system is embedded withina decision support system to make it anattractive suite of tools for practitioners.     

新能源汽车产业的社会技术系统研究

在能源紧缺和环境污染两座大山下,新能源汽车被国际社会公认为在不久的将来将替代现有的内燃机汽车,成为主流的交通工具。我国更是希望借此机遇实现国内汽车产业的“弯道超车”。新能源汽车的研发与推广不是单纯的技术进步能推动,而需要广泛的社会技术系统（包括市场、政治、文化等）的创新。本文利用社会技术系统创新理论,以浙江省为例,来分析我国新能源汽车推广的现状,并提出有助于新能源汽车创新与扩散的建议。     

A multi-level perspective on the introduction of hydrogen and battery-electric vehicles

Alternative vehicles powered by electricity or hydrogen hold the potential to solve a number of challenges that relate to automobile use, such as climate change, deterioration of local air quality, security of energy supply, and high fuel prices. This article addresses the question as to how a transition to vehicles powered by hydrogen or electricity could take place. Recognizing that transitions result from joint development of technology and society, a co-evolutionary, multi-level perspective is adopted. The perspective is used to analyze the dynamics of the relationship between car manufacturers and consumers and developments that put pressure on this relationship. Building on the analysis, two sets of scenarios for a transition to battery-electric and fuel cell vehicles are identified. In one set of scenarios, tightening emissions regulation stimulates carmakers to scale up experiments with alternative vehicles, moving them into the commercialization phase. In the other set, rising fuel prices prompt carmakers to first extend their current product line-up with plug-in versions, and later with battery-electric and fuel cell vehicles. The two scenarios have different implications for the actors involved and for the requisite supporting infrastructure.     

需求不确定情况下的服务站截流选址分配问题研究

主要研究当每条道路的顾客流量在不同情形下,流量不同条件下,如何设立服务站的FIP问题。根据截得的流量最小值最大和遗憾度最小目标准则建立了在需求不确定条件下的两个FIP模型,并给出了相应的启发式算法,最后通过启发式算法和分支定界法对一个算例计算比较。     

旅游宣传片的说服效应——基于危机情境的纵向跟踪实验研究

旅游宣传片是旅游目的地危机管理的重要营销工具,目前关于旅游宣传片说服效应的纵向跟踪研究缺乏。文章基于巴厘岛阿贡火山连续爆发事件,采用情境实验法探究不同类型旅游宣传片对潜在市场群体的说服效应。研究发现:全景综述型旅游宣传片的短期说服效应更好,危机主题导向型旅游宣传片的长期说服效应更好。在短期说服效应上,全景综述型旅游宣传片正向显著影响认知形象中的自然环境、娱乐活动、宗教氛围、旅游基础设施、感知安全、情感形象和行为意愿;危机主题导向型旅游宣传片正向显著影响认知形象中的宗教氛围、感知安全、情感形象和行为意愿。在长期说服效应上,危机主题导向型旅游宣传片正向显著影响认知形象中的宗教氛围、感知安全和行为意愿;全景综述型旅游宣传片正向显著影响认知形象中的宗教氛围和感知安全。文章为进一步了解旅游宣传片说服效应的时间效度提供了理论依据,也为危机情境中旅游目的地营销组织在旅游宣传片的营销与建设上提供了实践指导。