Emergy as embodied energy based assessment for local sustainability of a constructed wetland in Beijing

Ecological treatment engineering has been widely accepted as an artificially designed work to deal with the deteriorating ecological environment with low energy and resource consumption. To measure the energy and resource consumption and environmental support contained in the constructed wetland as a kind of ecological treatment engineering, emergy as embodied solar energy based assessment is performed and relative emergy-based indices including emergy yield ratio (EYR), emergy load ratio (ELR), emergy sustainability index (ESI), net economic benefit index (Np), and renewable percentage index (Pr), are also modified to evaluate the local sustainability of the constructed wetland in this paper. A case study on Longdao River constructed wetland compared with those of some earlier conventional treatment systems indicate that more local renewable resources and less ecological cost are involved, thus promoting the economic benefit due to less energy and resource consumption and simultaneously lowering the environmental stress of the treatment system on the local areas.     

Emergy-based ecological account for the Chinese economy in 2004

This paper provides an integrated study on the ecological account for the Chinese economy in 2004 based on emergy synthesis theory. The detailed flows of the Chinese economy is diagramed, accounted and analyzed in categories using the biophysically based ecological accounting. Through calculating environmental and economic inputs within and outside the Chinese economy, this paper discusses the Chinese international exchange, describes the resource structure, and assesses its sustainability as a whole. Also, the comparison of systematic indicators, such as emergy/dollar ratio, environmental load ratio, and emergy self-support ratio, with those of the other countries is tabled and explored to illustrate the general status of the Chinese economy in the world. Take, for example, the environmental load ratio, which was 9.29 in China 2004, it reveals that the Chinese economy put high pressure on the local environment compared with those of the environment-benign countries, such as Brazil (0.75), Australia (0.86) and New Zealand (0.81). In addition, in this paper, the accounting method of tourism is adjusted based on the previous researches.     

Emergy-based energy and material metabolism of the Yellow River basin

The Yellow River basin is an opening ecosystem exchanging energy and materials with the surrounding environment. Based on emergy as embodied solar energy, the social energy and materials metabolism of the Yellow River basin is aggregated into emergetic equivalent to assess the level of resource depletion, environmental impact and local sustainability. A set of emergy indices are also established to manifest the ecological status of the total river basin ecosystem.     

Comparison of typical mega cities in China using emergy synthesis

An emergy-based comparison analysis is conducted for three typical mega cities in China, i.e., Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, from 1990 to 2005 in four perspectives including emergy intensity, resource structure, environmental pressure and resource use efficiency. A new index of non-renewable emergy/money ratio is established to indicate the utilization efficiency of the non-renewable resources. The results show that for the three mega urban systems, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the total emergy inputs were 3.76E+23, 3.54E+23, 2.52E+23 sej in 2005, of which 64.88%, 91.45% and 72.28% were imported from the outsides, respectively. As to the indicators of emergy intensity involving the total emergy use, emergy density and emergy use per cap, three cities exhibited similar overall increase trends with annual fluctuations from 1990 to 2005. Shanghai achieved the highest level of economic development and non-renewable resource use efficiency, and meanwhile, lower proportion of renewable resource use and higher environmental pressure compared to those of Beijing and Guangzhou. Guangzhou has long term sustainability considering an amount of local renewable resources used, per capita emergy used, energy consumption per unit GDP and the ratio of waste to renewable emergy. It can be concluded that different emergy-based evaluation results arise from different geographical locations, resources endowments, industrial structures and urban orientations of the concerned mega cities.     

Emergy-based analysis of Beijing–Tianjin–Tangshan region in China

An emergy-based analysis was conducted for the Beijing–Tianjin–Tangshan urban agglomeration district from perspectives of emergy density, resource structure, environmental pressure and resource use efficiency during the period of 1991–2005. The results showed that Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan as contiguous regions shared similar characters and evolving trends in certain aspects as emergy intensity and proportion of local renewable resources on the whole. As for the local resources availability, process efficiency and environmental pressure, however, these three cities have significant differences. With comparison of the other cities in China, it is shown that Beijing–Tianjin–Tangshan region has higher environment loading and lower sustainability level though enjoying rapid urbanization process and economic development. This study also suggests that the first priority on economic development competition within urban agglomeration regions may lead to the wasting of resources and redundant construction, while cooperative and rational selection for development pattern are the proper choice for coordinate regional development and long term sustainability to overcome resource restrictions.     

乡村产业振兴“基地+农户”同创共享绿色供应链反馈仿真分析

针对养殖企业沼气沼肥供应链不可持续,产生二次污染严重影响生态环境,且农民增收乏力,乡村产业振兴难以推进现状,本文围绕生猪养殖业,并以南昌大学系统工程科研教学基地明鑫农场及周边亟待振兴的农户为例,提出构建"基地+农户"同创共享绿色供应链系统,运用系统动力学方法建立仿真模型,计算反馈环个数;然后结合仿真、反馈环及延迟三组合分析法,从社会效益、环境效益和经济效益三方面对该绿色供应链系统的振兴效益进行反馈仿真分析,并提出相应管理对策,为我国乡村产业振兴提供实践道路.     

Cosmic emergy based ecological systems modelling

Ecological systems modelling based on the unified biophysical measure of cosmic emergy in terms of embodied cosmic exergy is illustrated in this paper with ecological accounting, simulation and scenario analysis, by a case study for the regional socio-economic ecosystem associated with the municipality of Beijing. An urbanized regional ecosystem model with eight subsystems of natural support, agriculture, urban production, population, finance, land area, potential environmental impact, and culture is representatively presented in exergy circuit language with 12 state variables governing by corresponding ecodynamic equations, and 60 flows and auxiliary variables. To characterize the regional socio-economy as an ecosystem, a series of ecological indicators based on cosmic emergy are devised. For a systematic ecological account, cosmic exergy transformities are provided for various dimensions including climate flows, natural resources, industrial products, cultural products, population with educational hierarchy, and environmental emissions. For the urban ecosystem of Beijing in the period from 1990 to 2005, ecological accounting is carried out and characterized in full details. Taking 2000 as the starting point, systems modelling is realized to predict the urban evolution in a one hundred time horizon. For systems regulation, scenario analyses with essential policy-making implications are made to illustrate the long term systems effects of the expected water diversion and rise in energy price.     

Ecological evaluation of Beijing economy based on emergy indices

An integrated ecological evaluation of the Beijing economy was presented in the paper based on the emergy accounting with the data in 2004. Through calculating environmental and economic inputs within and outside the Beijing economy, this paper discusses the Beijing’s resource structure, economic situation and trade status based on a series of emergy indicators. Through the comparison of the systematic indicators of Beijing with those of the selected Chinese cities, the general status of the Beijing economy in China is identified. The results also show that most indicators of Beijing are located at middle levels among the selected Chinese cities. Particularly, the environmental impacts, expressed by the ratio of waste to the renewable emergy, and the ratio of waste to the total emergy use, are 84.2 and 0.26, respectively in Beijing in 2004, which indicate that the Beijing economy is greatly reliant on the imported intensive fuels, goods and services with high empower density and environmental loading.     

Emergy evaluations for constructed wetland and conventional wastewater treatments

Based on emergy synthesis, this study presents a comparative study on constructed wetland (CW) and conventional wastewater treatments with three representative cases in Beijing. Accounting the environmental and economic inputs and treated wastewater output based on emergy, different characteristics of two kinds of wastewater treatments are revealed. The results show that CWs are environment-benign, less energy-intensive despite the relatively low ecological waste removal efficiency (EWRE), and less cost in construction, operation and maintenance compared with the conventional wastewater treatment plants. In addition, manifested by the emergy analysis, the cyclic activated sludge system (CASS) has the merit of higher ecological waste elimination efficiency.     

Challenges of operations research practice in agricultural value chains

Operations research (OR) methodologies in optimization have been extensivelyapplied to problems in different agricultural value chains in recent years. Wetake a critical stock take of such applications to date, and reflect on theircontribution to value chain sustainability and resilience. The stock take showsthat the rate of industry or policy adoption has been limited, partly due to thecomplex interactions across the segments of agricultural value chains, and themathematical representation being different to the way the decision makerunderstands the problem. OR practice in agriculture is also being asked to covergreater spatial scales and engage more stakeholders, and is required to embraceresilience and sustainability objectives. A single-minded focus on optimizingparts of these complex systems without considering the whole system is no longeradequate, and new methods and approaches are required. Complex systems sciencemethods are being applied to analyse the dynamics of complexsocial–ecological systems, and are starting to find a home in industrialsupply chain analysis. We demonstrate how three complex system methods,agent-based modelling, dynamical systems modelling and network analysis, can beapplied to agricultural value chains as a means of gaining insights into systemdynamics under different and dynamic conditions. The relevance and utility of ORin ensuring the success of agricultural value chains into the future willrequire practitioners to understand and model value chains as complex adaptivesystems.     

Improve efficiency of biogas feedback supply chain in rural china

Feedback supply chain is a key structure in the supply chain system, and the development of feedback supply chain for biogas biomass energy is one of the important ways of the rural ecological civilization construction. Presently, the efficiency problem of biogas supply chain in rural China has been restricting the development of biogas biomass energy business. This article, on the basis of combination of regulation parameters, describes the dynamic changes in the system, using differential equations integrated with simulation to reveal the rules of regulation parameters to investigate the efficiency problem in the biogas supply chain. First of all, on the basis of the actual situation, the flow level and flow rate system structure model and simulation equation set are established for the biogas energy feedback supply chain from a scale livestock farm to peasant households; On the basis of the differentiability of the simulation equation a third order inhomogeneous differential equation with constant coefficients containing regulative parameters is established for the quantity of biogas stored in the feedback supply chain. A theorem and its corollaries are established for the operating efficiency of supply chain to reveal the change law of the quantity of biogas, the quantity of biogas consumed daily by peasant households and its standard-reaching rate as well as other variables.     

房地产项目整体定位与经济评价

在市场经济条件下我国房地产业进人快速、稳定的发展阶段，新世纪中国房地产行业面临极为难得的发展机遇，如何在竞争日趋激烈的情况下规避风险，提高利润率，实现项目的利润最大化，是我国房地产业能否持续、健康、稳定发展的重大问题之一。房地产项目策划能有效整合房地产项目资源，探索解决企业发展中的问题，增强企业的管理创新能力。本文为了实现项目经济效益、社会效益、环境效益的目标设定，科学地运用了房地产项目策划理论体系，探讨了房地产项目策划的作用、方体体系和运作程序，并运用于合肥某项目的工程实践中，得到房地产项目策划的一些经验和结论，为以后相关方面的理论研究和实践活动提供了借鉴和参考。     

Innovation as a policy strategy for natural resource protection

Growing global food demands place major strains on water resources, including quality impairments and increased water scarcity. Drawing on the largely separate bodies of literature on externalities and technological innovation, this article develops a dynamic framework to explore the long‐term impacts of alternative policy approaches to the agricultural impacts on water resources. Environmental policies, which focus on correcting environmental externalities, lead to an overall gain because costs to farmers are more than offset by reduced environmental damages. Technology policies, which direct public investments into agricultural eco‐innovations, lead to benefits for farmers as well as the environment. Joint implementation of both types of policies leads to the largest overall gain. In principle, a technology policy alone could have greater environmental benefits than an environmental policy alone. This outcome is most likely in cases where the productivity effect of new technology is large and the cost of research is low. Recommendations for research managers

• As an alternative to traditional environmental policy, investments in research can provide win–win solutions that benefit the environment and agricultural producers.
• Conceivably, eco‐innovations could lead to environmental conditions that are better than those achieved by environmental policy alone.
• Adding research investments to existing environmental policy would lead to further improvements in environmental quality while also benefitting farmers.
• Unlike environmental policies that are perceived to impose costs on agriculture, technology policies impart benefits to farmers and are less likely to face political opposition from industry.
• Technology policies are likely to be the most effective when eco‐innovation leads to technologies that meaningfully reduce environmental impacts and also raise farm productivity.

     

Resources use and greenhouse gas emissions in urban economy: Ecological input–output modeling for Beijing 2002

The embodiment of natural resources and greenhouse gas emissions for the urban economy of Beijing economy 2002 by a physical balance modeling is carried out based on an extension of the economic input–output table into an ecological one integrating the economy with its various environmental driving forces. Included resources and greenhouse gas emissions belong to six categories as energy resources in terms of primary energy and secondary energy; water resource; emissions of CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O; exergy in terms of energy sources, biological resources and minerals; and solar emergy and cosmic emergy in terms of climate resources, soil, energy sources, and minerals.     

A model describing pressure buildup in rough surfaces with partially filled gaps

Because of an ecological and economical need to reduce the application of lubricants, the tribological regime of starved lubrication in the field of mechanical engineering has gained importance during the last decades. In order to describe the respective processes properly, models should consider that the gap between the bodies is not fully but only partially filled with a fluid. Recently, the authors introduced a model which explicitly describes the fluid flow and its interaction with the buildup of pressures under these conditions [1]. This paper points out that the correlation between the filling ratio and a time- and space-averaged pressure value is highly nonlinear. This is due to the fact that the system's load bearing character changes from being a local effect to a global effect, in particular near the fully filled regime. (© 2014 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

NSGA-II算法在农业水保措施配置优化中的应用

农业水保措施的配置要考虑其生态效益和经济效益.不同水保措施组合方案有其相应的生态和经济效益,如何配置使综合效益最佳是一个最优化问题.分析了农业水保措施配置最优化需要考虑的两个目标,并将其公式化,建立了水保措施配置优化模型,并应用NSGA-II多目标遗传算法求解该模型.最后,以甘肃天水市罗玉沟流域的水保措施配置为例,进行了初步应用.结果表明,采用NSGA-II算法在水保措施配置优化模型求解时,计算效率较高,优化结果稳定,具有一定的应用价值.     

Increasing engineering students' awareness to environment through innovative teaching of mathematical modelling

This article presents the results of two studies on using aninnovative pedagogical strategy in teaching mathematical modellingand applications to engineering students. Both studies are dealingwith introducing non-traditional contexts for engineering studentsin teaching/learning of mathematical modelling and applications:environment and ecology. The aims of using these contexts were:to introduce students to some of the techniques, methodologiesand principles of mathematical modelling for ecological andenvironmental systems; to involve the students in solving real-lifeproblems adjusted to their region emphasizing the aspects ofboth survival (short term) and sustainability (long term); toencourage students to pay attention to environmental issues.On one hand, the contexts are not directly related to engineering.On the other hand, the chances are that many graduates of engineeringwill deal with mathematical modelling of environmental systemsin one way or another in their future work because nearly everyengineering activity has an impact on the environment. The firststudy is a parallel study conducted in New Zealand and Germanysimultaneously with first-year students studying engineeringmathematics. The second study is a case study of the experimentalcourse Mathematical Modelling of Survival and Sustainabilitytaught to a mixture of year 2–5 engineering students inGermany by a visiting lecturer from New Zealand. The modelsused with the students from both studies had several specialfeatures. Analysis of students’ responses to questionnaires,their comments and attitudes towards the innovative approachin teaching are presented in the article.     

Convergence of ecological footprint and emergy analysis as a sustainability indicator of countries: Peru as case study

In the last decade, two scientific tools have been extensively used worldwide to measure the human impact on nature: ecological footprint (EF) and emergy analysis (EA). Papers trying to combine the strong points of EF and EA, and obtain more accurate results have appeared in scientific literature, in which Zhao’s et al. (2005) [61] approach is an important one. Unfortunately, some weak points of the original methods still remain on the new approaches proposed. The aim of this present work is to discuss some weak points found in Zhao’s approach, trying to overcome them through a new approach called emergetic ecological footprint (EEF). The main difference between Zhao’s approach and EEF is that the last one accounted for the internal storage of capital natural in the biocapacity calculation. Besides that, soil loss and water for human consume were considered as additional categories in the footprint calculation. After discussing it through comparisons with other approaches, EEF was used to assess Peru as a case study, resulting in a biocapacity of 51.76 gha capita⁻¹ and a footprint of 12.23 gha capita⁻¹, with 2004 data; that resulted in an ecological surplus of 39.53 gha capita⁻¹. The load capacity factor obtained was 4.23, meaning that Peru can support a population 4.23 times bigger considering the life style of 2004. The main limitations of the EEF are: (i) it is impossible to make comparisons between the biocapacity and footprint for each category; (ii) a need for a handbook with emergy intensity factors with good quality. On the other hand, the main positive points are: (i) its easiness of application in global and national scales; (ii) its final indicators account for all the previous energy (or emergy) used to make something; (iii) internal natural capital storage was accounted for in the biocapacity calculation, which can be a valid step towards the evaluation and assess of services provided by nature.     

基于QFDE的可持续产品设计研究

为了提高可持续产品设计的效率,提出以QFDE(Quality Function Deployment for Environment,面向环境的质量功能展开)为依据的可持续产品设计流程,共有五个阶段.第一阶段将顾客需求展开,建立需求与工程特性矩阵;第二阶段建立工程特性与零件矩阵;基于前两个阶段,分析提高产品可持续性存在的矛盾,运用TRIZ(Theory of Inventive problem solving,发明问题解决理论)提出解决方案;第三阶段计算解决方案对于工程特性的提高率;第四阶段计算顾客需求提高率;第五阶段计算产品零件的可持续性.以净水机为例,验证可持续产品设计流程的有效性.     

农机配套服务的系统分析和协调优化模型研究

在界定农机配套服务的基础上,首先系统分析了农机配套服务的影响因素,以黑龙江垦区51个农场近10年农机和粮食产量等数据为例,采用相关分析、建立最优模型等方法知目前黑龙江垦区农机配套比与粮食单产相关系数的绝对值存在逐年减少趋势.再以七星农场近10年数据为例知小型农机具配套比与粮食产量相关性最密切,而利用建立最优回归模型揭示大中型拖拉机配套农机具对粮食产量起到显著作用.最后建立和分析农机配套服务的协调优化模型,确定了决策变量的满足条件,为推进农机配套服务具有重要意义.