Indicator-based urban sustainability-A review

Sustainability has emerged as one of the important planning concepts from its beginnings in economics and ecological thinking, and has widely been applied to assessing urban development. Different methods, techniques and instruments for urban sustainability assessment that help determine how cities can become more sustainable have emerged over a period of time. Among these, indicator-based approaches contribute to building of sustainable self-regulated systems that integrate development and environment protection. Hence, these provide a solid foundation for decision-making at all levels and are being increasingly used. The present paper builds on the background of the available literature and suggests the need for benchmarking indicator-based approach in a given urban area and incorporating various local issues, thus enhancing the long-term sustainability of cities which can be developed by introducing sustainability indicators into the urban planning process. (C) 2013 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Assimilation of endmember variability in spectral for urban land cover extraction mixture analysis

Variable Endmember Constrained Least Square (VECLS) technique is proposed to account endmember variability in the linear mixture model by incorporating the variance for each class, the signals of which varies from pixel to pixel due to change in urban land cover (LC) structures. VECLS is first tested with a computer simulated three class endmember considering four bands having small, medium and large variability with three different spatial resolutions. The technique is next validated with real datasets of IKONOS, Landsat ETM+ and MODIS. The results show that correlation between actual and estimated proportion is higher by an average of 0.25 for the artificial datasets compared to a situation where variability is not considered. With IKONOS, Landsat ETM+ and MODIS data, the average correlation increased by 0.15 for 2 and 3 classes and by 0.19 for 4 classes, when compared to single endmember per class. (C) 2013 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Flexibility in Food Extraction Techniques in Urban Free-Ranging Bonnet Macaques, Macaca radiata

Non-human primate populations, other than responding appropriately to naturally occurring challenges, also need to cope with anthropogenic factors such as environmental pollution, resource depletion, and habitat destruction. Populations and individuals are likely to show considerable variations in food extraction abilities, with some populations and individuals more efficient than others at exploiting a set of resources. In this study, we examined among urban free-ranging bonnet macaques, Macaca radiata (a) local differences in food extraction abilities, (b) between-individual variation and within-individual consistency in problem-solving success and the underlying problem-solving characteristics, and (c) behavioral patterns associated with higher efficiency in food extraction. When presented with novel food extraction tasks, the urban macaques having more frequent exposure to novel physical objects in their surroundings, extracted food material from PET bottles and also solved another food extraction task (i.e., extracting an orange from a wire mesh box), more often than those living under more natural conditions. Adults solved the tasks more frequently than juveniles, and females more frequently than males. Both solution-technique and problem-solving characteristics varied across individuals but remained consistent within each individual across the successive presentations of PET bottles. The macaques that solved the tasks showed lesser within-individual variation in their food extraction behavior as compared to those that failed to solve the tasks. A few macaques appropriately modified their problem-solving behavior in accordance with the task requirements and solved the modified versions of the tasks without trial-and-error learning. These observations are ecologically relevant - they demonstrate considerable local differences in food extraction abilities, between-individual variation and within-individual consistency in food extraction techniques among free-ranging bonnet macaques, possibly affecting the species' local adaptability and resilience to environmental changes.

Regional flood frequency analysis using kernel- based fuzzy clustering approach

Regionalization approaches are widely used in water resources engineering to identify hydrologically homogeneous groups of watersheds that are referred to as regions. Pooled information from sites (depicting watersheds) in a region forms the basis to estimate quantiles associated with hydrological extreme events at ungauged/sparsely gauged sites in the region. Conventional regionalization approaches can be effective when watersheds (data points) corresponding to different regions can be separated using straight lines or linear planes in the space of watershed related attributes. In this paper, a kernel-based Fuzzy c-means (KFCM) clustering approach is presented for use in situations where such linear separation of regions cannot be accomplished. The approach uses kernel-based functions to map the data points from the attribute space to a higher-dimensional space where they can be separated into regions by linear planes. A procedure to determine optimal number of regions with the KFCM approach is suggested. Further, formulations to estimate flood quantiles at ungauged sites with the approach are developed. Effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated through Monte-Carlo simulation experiments and a case study on watersheds in United States. Comparison of results with those based on conventional Fuzzy c-means clustering, Region-of-influence approach and a prior study indicate that KFCM approach outperforms the other approaches in forming regions that are closer to being statistically homogeneous and in estimating flood quantiles at ungauged sites. Key Points Kernel-based regionalization approach is presented for flood frequency analysis Kernel procedure to estimate flood quantiles at ungauged sites is developed A set of fuzzy regions is delineated in Ohio, USA

Diurnal and seasonal variation of mixing ratio and delta C-13 of air CO2 observed at an urban station Bangalore, India

We present here observations on diurnal and seasonal variation of mixing ratio and delta C-13 of air CO2, from an urban station-Bangalore (BLR), India, monitored between October 2008 and December 2011. On a diurnal scale, higher mixing ratio with depleted delta C-13 of air CO2 was found for the samples collected during early morning compared to the samples collected during late afternoon. On a seasonal scale, mixing ratio was found to be higher for dry summer months (April-May) and lower for southwest monsoon months (June-July). The maximum enrichment in delta C-13 of air CO2 (-8.04 +/- 0.02aEuro degrees) was seen in October, then delta C-13 started depleting and maximum depletion (-9.31 +/- 0.07aEuro degrees) was observed during dry summer months. Immediately after that an increasing trend in delta C-13 was monitored coincidental with the advancement of southwest monsoon months and maximum enrichment was seen again in October. Although a similar pattern in seasonal variation was observed for the three consecutive years, the dry summer months of 2011 captured distinctly lower amplitude in both the mixing ratio and delta C-13 of air CO2 compared to the dry summer months of 2009 and 2010. This was explained with reduced biomass burning and increased productivity associated with prominent La Nina condition. While compared with the observations from the nearest coastal and open ocean stations-Cabo de Rama (CRI) and Seychelles (SEY), BLR being located within an urban region captured higher amplitude of seasonal variation. The average delta C-13 value of the end member source CO2 was identified based on both diurnal and seasonal scale variation. The delta C-13 value of source CO2 (-24.9 +/- 3aEuro degrees) determined based on diurnal variation was found to differ drastically from the source value (-14.6 +/- 0.7aEuro degrees) identified based on seasonal scale variation. The source CO2 identified based on diurnal variation incorporated both early morning and late afternoon sample; whereas, the source CO2 identified based on seasonal variation included only afternoon samples. Thus, it is evident from the study that sampling timing is one of the important factors while characterizing the composition of end member source CO2 for a particular station. The difference in delta C-13 value of source CO2 obtained based on both diurnal and seasonal variation might be due to possible contribution from cement industry along with fossil fuel / biomass burning as predominant sources for the station along with differential meteorological conditions prevailed.

A recursive multi-scaling approach to regional flood frequency analysis

Scaling approaches are widely used by hydrologists for Regional Frequency Analysis (RFA) of floods at ungauged/sparsely gauged site(s) in river basins. This paper proposes a Recursive Multi-scaling (RMS) approach to RFA that overcomes limitations of conventional simple- and multi-scaling approaches. The approach involves identification of a separate set of attributes corresponding to each of the sites (being considered in the study area/region) in a recursive manner according to their importance, and utilizing those attributes to construct effective regional regression relationships to estimate statistical raw moments (SMs) of peak flows. The SMs are then utilized to arrive at parameters of flood frequency distribution and quantile estimate(s) corresponding to target return period(s). Effectiveness of the RMS approach in arriving at flood quantile estimates for ungauged sites is demonstrated through leave-one-out cross-validation experiment on watersheds in Indiana State, USA. Results indicate that the approach outperforms index-flood based Region-of-Influence approach, simple- and multi-scaling approaches and a multiple linear regression method. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Design for sustainability: case of designing an urban household organic waste management system

Beyond product design, if the notion of product `lifecycle design' enforces the consideration of requirements from all the lifecycle phases of products, design for sustainability enforces the consideration of lifecycle design in the context of the lifecycles of other products, processes, institutions and their design. Consequently, sustainability requirements that need to be met by design are very diverse. In this article, we portray the nature of design process to address sustainability requirements. This is done taking an example of designing a urban household organic waste management system that requires less water and reclaims the nutrients.

Evaluation of the Index-Flood Approach Related Regional Frequency Analysis Procedures

Index-flood related regional frequency analysis (RFA) procedures are in use by hydrologists to estimate design quantiles of hydrological extreme events at data sparse/ungauged locations in river basins. There is a dearth of attempts to establish which among those procedures is better for RFA in the L-moment framework. This paper evaluates the performance of the conventional index flood (CIF), the logarithmic index flood (LIF), and two variants of the population index flood (PIF) procedures in estimating flood quantiles for ungauged locations by Monte Carlo simulation experiments and a case study on watersheds in Indiana in the U.S. To evaluate the PIF procedure, L-moment formulations are developed for implementing the procedure in situations where the regional frequency distribution (RFD) is the generalized logistic (GLO), generalized Pareto (GPA), generalized normal (GNO) or Pearson type III (PE3), as those formulations are unavailable. Results indicate that one of the variants of the PIF procedure, which utilizes the regional information on the first two L-moments is more effective than the CIF and LIF procedures. The improvement in quantile estimation using the variant of PIF procedure as compared with the CIF procedure is significant when the RFD is a generalized extreme value, GLO, GNO, or PE3, and marginal when it is GPA. (C) 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Investigations of aerosol black carbon from a semi-urban site in the Indo-Gangetic Plain region

Long-term (2009-2012) data from ground-based measurements of aerosol black carbon (BC) from a semi-urban site, Pantnagar (29.0 degrees N, 79.5 degrees E, 231 m amsl), in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) near the Himalayan foothills are analyzed to study the regional characterization. Large variations are seen in BC at both diurnal and seasonal scales, associated with the mesoscale and synoptic meteorological processes, and local/regional anthropogenic activities. BC diurnal variations show two peaks (morning and evening) arising from the combined effects of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) dynamics and local emissions. The diurnal amplitudes as well as the rates of diurnal evolution are the highest in winter season, followed by autumn, and the lowest in summer-monsoon. BC exhibits nearly an inverse relation with mixing layer depth in all seasons; being strongest in winter (R-2 = 0.89) and weakest (R-2 = 0.33) in monsoon (July-August). Unlike BC, co-located aerosol optical depths (AOD) and aerosol absorption are highest in spring over IGP, probably due to the presence of higher abundances of aerosols (including dust) above the ABL (in the free troposphere). AOD (500 nm) showed annual peak (>0.6) in May-June, dominated by coarse mode, while fine mode aerosols dominated in late autumn and early winter. Aerosols profiles from CALIPSO show highest values close to the surface in winter/autumn, similar to the feature seen in surface BC, whereas at altitudes > 2 km, the extinction is maximum in spring/summer. WRF-Chem model is used to simulate BC temporal variations and then compared with observed BC. The model captures most of the important features of the diurnal and seasonal variations but significantly underestimated the observed BC levels, suggesting improvements in diurnal and seasonal varying BC emissions apart from the boundary layer processes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Embodied and operational energy of urban residential buildings in India

Globally, buildings consume nearly half of the total energy produced, and consequently responsible for a large share of CO2 emissions. A building's life cycle energy (LCE) comprises its embodied energy (EE) and operational energy (OE). The building design, prevalent climatic conditions and occupant behaviour primarily determines its LCE. Thus, for the identification of appropriate emission-reduction strategies, studies into building LCE are crucial. While OE reflects the energy utilized in operating a, EE comprises the initial capital energy involved in its construction (material and burden associated with material consumption in buildings. Assessment of EE and OE in buildings is crucial towards identifying appropriate design and operational strategies for reduction of the building's life cycle energy. This paper discusses EE and OE assessment of a few residential buildings in different climatic locations in India. The study shows that share of OE and EE in LCE greatly depends upon the types of materials used in construction and extent of space conditioning adopted. In some cases EE can exceed life cycle OE. Buildings with reinforced concrete frame and monolithic reinforced concrete walls have very high EE. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Flood Routing Models in Confluent and Dividing Channels

By introducing a water depth connecting formula, the hydraulic equations in the dividing channel system were coupled and the relation of discharge distribution between the branches of the dividing channels can be yielded. In this manner, a numerical model for the confluent channels was established to study the variation of backwater effects with the parameters in the channel junction. The meeting of flood peaks in the mainstream and tributary can be analyzed with this model. The flood peak meeting is found to be a major factor for the extremely high water level in the mainstream during the 1998 Yangtze River flood. Subsequently the variations of discharge distribution and water level with channel parameters between each branch in this system were studied as well. As a result, flood evolution caused by Jingjiang River shortcut and sediment deposition in the entrance of dividing channels of the Yangtze River may be qualitatively elucidated. It is suggested to be an effective measure for flood mitigation to enhance regulation capability of reservoirs available upstream of the tributaries and harness branch entrance channels.

Two-Dimensional Flood Simulation of the Lower Yellow River from Huayuankou to Jiahetan

黄河下游花园口至夹河滩河段系典型的游荡型河段.在该河段,黄河大堤内范围宽广,一般洪水频率年份,水流主要限制在主槽内,因此大堤内分布有不少居民点以及纵横交错的保护居民点的生产堤和不少高于地面的灌溉渠堤和公路,使洪水行洪范围受到了很大的限制.当洪峰流量很大时,洪水将造成生产堤溃决,极大地危害滩区居民的生活.因此,设计模拟模型计算网格时需要考虑大堤、生产堤、明显高于地面的道路等阻水建筑物的影响,使这些堤及公路成为计算格网的边.不规则四边形网格能够很好地拟合黄河这种复杂的计算域.数值模拟时采用有限体积法,为确保通量的单向性,文中使用Osher格式计算通量.通过对1982年洪水的模拟,模拟结果表明了模型的合理性.