Coastal Erosion--Causes, Erosion Control Methods, Economic and Environmental Impacts, and Best Management Practices

Coastal erosion is an important and constant issue facing coastal areas all over the world today. The rate of coastal development over the years has increased, in turn requiring that action be taken to protect structures from the threat of erosion. A review of the causes of coastal erosion and the methods implemented to control it was conducted in order to determine the best course of action in response to coastal erosion issues. The potential positive and negative economic and environmental impacts are key concerns in determining whether or not to restore an eroding beach and which erosion control method(s) to implement. Results focus on providing a comparison of these concerns as well as recommendations for addressing coastal erosion issues.

The Global Carbon Pricing Policy Solution to Climate Change

While the topic of climate change is controversial, the world needs to take a precautionary approach to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. With growing populations and increasing energy demands, solutions to cleaner energy need to be developed and implemented. In order to successfully reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a global carbon pricing policy needs to be developed that includes all countries and allows each region to utilize the best clean energy technology options along with economic incentives that will be the most effective. The research conducted in this project validates the hypothesis that placing a monetary price on carbon will allow natural, technological, and financial resources to come together to implement a feasible energy solution that will reduce global carbon dioxide emissions.

Particle Swarm Optimization Based Reactive Power Dispatch for Power Networks with Distributed Generation

Reactive power is critical to the operation of the power networks on both safety aspects and economic aspects. Unreasonable distribution of the reactive power would severely affect the power quality of the power networks and increases the transmission loss. Currently, the most economical and practical approach to minimizing the real power loss remains using reactive power dispatch method. Reactive power dispatch problem is nonlinear and has both equality constraints and inequality constraints. In this thesis, PSO algorithm and MATPOWER 5.1 toolbox are applied to solve the reactive power dispatch problem. PSO is a global optimization technique that is equipped with excellent searching capability. The biggest advantage of PSO is that the efficiency of PSO is less sensitive to the complexity of the objective function. MATPOWER 5.1 is an open source MATLAB toolbox focusing on solving the power flow problems. The benefit of MATPOWER is that its code can be easily used and modified. The proposed method in this thesis minimizes the real power loss in a practical power system and determines the optimal placement of a new installed DG. IEEE 14 bus system is used to evaluate the performance. Test results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Recommendations for Creating and Implementing Climate Change Mitigation Strategies for Municipalities

The effects of climate change are beginning to show themselves globally and not enough is being done to counteract these changes. Institutional action is a necessity, and municipalities have an opportunity to fill this void by developing mitigation strategies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This report critically reviews the municipal climate action plans for Portland, Oregon; Boulder, Colorado; and Toronto, Ontario and provides recommendations for other municipalities who wish to create and implement climate change mitigation plans.