Comprehensive water resources management : a concept paper

The world is entering a period of intense competition for limited supplies of water for alternative uses - in agriculture, in urban and industrial supplies, for recreation, by wildlife, for human consumption, and to maintain environmental quality. Manifestations of this competition and our current ability to deal with it can be observed in many parts of the world. A large irrigation project in India does not operate because water has been diverted to the rapidly growing city of Pune. In China, industries are reducing their production because of water shortages. In California, selenium salts leached by irrigation are killing wildlife. Bank irrigation projects in Algeria are now competing with Bank urban water supply projects for the same water. Many proposed irrigation projects and most hydro project proposals are on hold because of environmental concerns. Until recently, the approaches taken in water planning management by planners in the developing countries and by analysts at the funding agencies were, by and large, appropriate and adequate to the task at hand. The increased competition for water, however, makes most of the project-by-project planning methods inadequate. The author discusses new approaches that are needed to integrate water resource use among different users and across different economic sectors.Water and Industry,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions

Multi-Objective Calibration For Agent-Based Models

Agent-based modelling is already proving to be an immensely useful tool for scientific and industrial modelling applications. Whilst the building of such models will always be something between an art and a science, once a detailed model has been built, the process of parameter calibration should be performed as precisely as possible. This task is often made difficult by the proliferation of model parameters with non-linear interactions. In addition to this, these models generate a large number of outputs, and their ‘accuracy’ can be measured by many different, often conflicting, criteria. In this paper we demonstrate the use of multi-objective optimisation tools to calibrate just such an agent-based model. We use an agent-based model of a financial market as an exemplar and calibrate the model using a multi-objective genetic algorithm. The technique is automated and requires no explicit weighting of criteria prior to calibration. The final choice of parameter set can be made after calibration with the additional input of the domain expert

The origins and evolution of French costing systems

Includes bibliographical references (p.25-28)

Problems with Civil and Environmental Engineering Education in the U.S.

Engineering and Applied Science

Ermakov-Painlevé II Symmetry Reduction of a Korteweg Capillarity System

A class of nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equations involving a triad of power law terms together with a de Broglie-Bohm potential is shown to admit symmetry reduction to a hybrid Ermakov-Painlev\'{e} II equation which is linked, in turn, to the integrable Painlev\'{e} XXXIV equation. A nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger encapsulation of a Korteweg-type capillary system is thereby used in the isolation of such a Ermakov-Painlev\'{e} II reduction valid for a multi-parameter class of free energy functions. Iterated application of a B\"{a}cklund transformation then allows the construction of novel classes of exact solutions of the nonlinear capillarity system in terms of Yablonskii-Vorob'ev polynomials or classical Airy functions. A Painlev\'{e} XXXIV equation is derived for the density in the capillarity system and seen to correspond to the symmetry reduction of its Bernoulli integral of motion

Quitting the Boss? The Role of Manager Influence Tactics and Employee Emotional Engagement in Voluntary Turnover

Employees commonly cite their managers’ behavior as the primary reason for quitting their jobs. We sought to extend turnover research by investigating whether two commonly used influence tactics by managers affect their employees’ voluntary turnover and whether employees’ emotional engagement and job satisfaction mediate this relationship. We tested our hypotheses using survey data collected at two time points from a sample of financial services directors and objective lagged turnover data. Using multilevel path modeling, we found that managers’ use of pressure and inspirational appeals had opposite effects on employee voluntary turnover and that employees’ emotional engagement was a significant and unique mediating mechanism even when job satisfaction, the traditional attitudinal predictor of turnover, was also included in the path model. Our findings contribute to turnover research by demonstrating a relationship between specific managerial behaviors and employee turnover and shed light on a key mediating mechanism that explains these effects