Mainstreaming a Decade's Experiences in Watershed Management to Meet the Challenges of Environmental Change in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas

Like other mountain areas in the world, the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Ongoing climate change processes are projected to have a high impact on the HKH region, and accelerated warming has been reported in the Himalayas. These climate change impacts will be superimposed on a variety of other environmental and social stresses, adding to the complexity of the issues. The sustainable use of natural resources is crucial to the long-term stability of the fragile mountain ecosystems in the HKH and to sustain the socio-ecological resilience that forms the basis of sustainable livelihoods in the region. In order to be prepared for these challenges, it is important to take stock of previous research. The ‘People and Resource Dynamics Project’ (PARDYP), implemented by International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), provides a variety of participatory options for sustainable land management in the HKH region. The PARDYD project was a research for development project that operated in five middle mountain watersheds across the HKH – two in Nepal and one each in China, India, and Pakistan. The project ran from 1996 to 2006 and focused on addressing the marginalisation of mountain farmers, the use and availability of water, issues relating to land and forest degradation and declining soil fertility, the speed of regeneration of degraded land, and the ability of the natural environment to support the growing needs of the region’s increasing population. A key learning from the project was that the opinion of land users is crucial to the acceptance (and, therefore, successful application) of new technologies and approaches. A major challenge at the end of every project is to promote knowledge sharing and encourage the cross-fertilization of ideas (e.g., in the case of PARDYP, with other middle mountain inhabitants and practitioners in the region) and to share lessons learned with a wider audience. This paper will highlight how the PARDYP findings, including ways of addressing soil fertility and water scarcity, have been mainstreamed in the HKH region through capacity building (international, regional, and national training courses), networking, and the provision of backstopping services. In addition, in view of the challenges in watershed management in the HKH connected to environmental change, the lessons learned from the PARDYP are now being used by ICMOD to define and package climate change proof technology options to address climate change adaptation.

Resource-allocation capabilities of commercial project management software. An experimental analysis

When project managers determine schedules for resource-constrained projects, they commonly use commercial project management software packages. Which resource-allocation methods are implemented in these packages is proprietary information. The resource-allocation problem is in general computationally difficult to solve to optimality. Hence, the question arises if and how various project management software packages differ in quality with respect to their resource-allocation capabilities. None of the few existing papers on this subject uses a sizeable data set and recent versions of common software packages. We experimentally analyze the resource-allocation capabilities of Acos Plus.1, AdeptTracker Professional, CS Project Professional, Microsoft Office Project 2007, Primavera P6, Sciforma PS8, and Turbo Project Professional. Our analysis is based on 1560 instances of the precedence- and resource-constrained project scheduling problem RCPSP. The experiment shows that using the resource-allocation feature of these packages may lead to a project duration increase of almost 115% above the best known feasible schedule. The increase gets larger with increasing resource scarcity and with increasing number of activities. We investigate the impact of different complexity scenarios and priority rules on the project duration obtained by the software packages. We provide a decision table to support managers in selecting a software package and a priority rule.

Improving Management of Distributed Services Using Correlations and Predictions in SLA-Driven Cloud Computing Systems

Recent advancements in cloud computing have enabled the proliferation of distributed applications, which require management and control of multiple services. However, without an efficient mechanism for scaling services in response to changing environmental conditions and number of users, application performance might suffer, leading to Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations and inefficient use of hardware resources. We introduce a system for controlling the complexity of scaling applications composed of multiple services using mechanisms based on fulfillment of SLAs. We present how service monitoring information can be used in conjunction with service level objectives, predictions, and correlations between performance indicators for optimizing the allocation of services belonging to distributed applications. We validate our models using experiments and simulations involving a distributed enterprise information system. We show how discovering correlations between application performance indicators can be used as a basis for creating refined service level objectives, which can then be used for scaling the application and improving the overall application's performance under similar conditions.

Resource allocation with project management software

We present results of a benchmark test evaluating the resource allocation capabilities of the project management software packages Acos Plus.1 8.2, CA SuperProject 5.0a, CS Project Professional 3.0, MS Project 2000, and Scitor Project Scheduler 8.0.1. The tests are based on 1560 instances of precedence– and resource–constrained project scheduling problems. For different complexity scenarios, we analyze the deviation of the makespan obtained by the software packages from the best feasible makespan known. Among the tested software packages, Acos Plus.1 and Project Scheduler show the best resource allocation performance. Moreover, our numerical analysis reveals a considerable performance gap between the implemented methods and state–of–the–art project scheduling algorithms, especially for large–sized problems. Thus, there is still a significant potential for improving solutions to resource allocation problems in practice.

Temperate Mountain Forest Biodiversity under Climate Change: Compensating Negative Effects by Increasing Structural Complexity

Species adapted to cold-climatic mountain environments are expected to face a high risk of range contractions, if not local extinctions under climate change. Yet, the populations of many endothermic species may not be primarily affected by physiological constraints, but indirectly by climate-induced changes of habitat characteristics. In mountain forests, where vertebrate species largely depend on vegetation composition and structure, deteriorating habitat suitability may thus be mitigated or even compensated by habitat management aiming at compositional and structural enhancement. We tested this possibility using four cold-adapted bird species with complementary habitat requirements as model organisms. Based on species data and environmental information collected in 300 1-km2 grid cells distributed across four mountain ranges in central Europe, we investigated (1) how species’ occurrence is explained by climate, landscape, and vegetation, (2) to what extent climate change and climate-induced vegetation changes will affect habitat suitability, and (3) whether these changes could be compensated by adaptive habitat management. Species presence was modelled as a function of climate, landscape and vegetation variables under current climate; moreover, vegetation-climate relationships were assessed. The models were extrapolated to the climatic conditions of 2050, assuming the moderate IPCC-scenario A1B, and changes in species’ occurrence probability were quantified. Finally, we assessed the maximum increase in occurrence probability that could be achieved by modifying one or multiple vegetation variables under altered climate conditions. Climate variables contributed significantly to explaining species occurrence, and expected climatic changes, as well as climate-induced vegetation trends, decreased the occurrence probability of all four species, particularly at the low-altitudinal margins of their distribution. These effects could be partly compensated by modifying single vegetation factors, but full compensation would only be achieved if several factors were changed in concert. The results illustrate the possibilities and limitations of adaptive species conservation management under climate change.

Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling with Project Management Information Systems

Most commercial project management software packages include planning methods to devise schedules for resource-constrained projects. As it is proprietary information of the software vendors which planning methods are implemented, the question arises how the software packages differ in quality with respect to their resource-allocation capabilities. We experimentally evaluate the resource-allocation capabilities of eight recent software packages by using 1,560 instances with 30, 60, and 120 activities of the well-known PSPLIB library. In some of the analyzed packages, the user may influence the resource allocation by means of multi-level priority rules, whereas in other packages, only few options can be chosen. We study the impact of various complexity parameters and priority rules on the project duration obtained by the software packages. The results indicate that the resource-allocation capabilities of these packages differ significantly. In general, the relative gap between the packages gets larger with increasing resource scarcity and with increasing number of activities. Moreover, the selection of the priority rule has a considerable impact on the project duration. Surprisingly, when selecting a priority rule in the packages where it is possible, both the mean and the variance of the project duration are in general worse than for the packages which do not offer the selection of a priority rule.