The science of assessment : identifying and predicting environmental impacts

The historical challenge of environmental impact assessment (EIA) has been to predict project-based impacts accurately. Both EIA legislation and the practice of EIA have evolved over the last three decades in Canada, and the development of the discipline and science of environmental assessment has improved how we apply environmental assessment to complex projects. The practice of environmental assessment integrates the social and natural sciences and relies on an eclectic knowledge base from a wide range of sources. EIA methods and tools provide a means to structure and integrate knowledge in order to evaluate and predict environmental impacts.----- This Chapter will provide a brief overview of how impacts are identified and predicted. How do we determine what aspect of the natural and social environment will be affected when a mine is excavated? How does the practitioner determine the range of potential impacts, assess whether they are significant, and predict the consequences? There are no standard answers to these questions, but there are established methods to provide a foundation for scoping and predicting the potential impacts of a project.----- Of course, the community and publics play an important role in this process, and this will be discussed in subsequent chapters. In the first part of this chapter, we will deal with impact identification, which involves appplying scoping to critical issues and determining impact significance, baseline ecosystem evaluation techniques, and how to communicate environmental impacts. In the second part of the chapter, we discuss the prediction of impacts in relation to the complexity of the environment, ecological risk assessment, and modelling.

Particle and gaseous emissions from commercial aircraft at each stage of the landing and takeoff cycle

A novel technique was used to measure emission factors for commonly used commercial aircraft including a range of Boeing and Airbus airframes under real world conditions. Engine exhaust emission factors for particles in terms of particle number and mass (PM2.5), along with those for CO2, and NOx were measured for over 280 individual aircraft during the various modes of landing/takeoff (LTO) cycle. Results from this study show that particle number, and NOx emission factors are dependant on aircraft engine thrust level. Minimum and maximum emissions factors for particle number, PM2.5, and NOx emissions were found to be in the range of 4.16×1015-5.42×1016 kg-1, 0.03-0.72 g.kg-1, and 3.25-37.94 g.kg-1 respectively for all measured airframes and LTO cycle modes. Number size distributions of emitted particles for the naturally diluted aircraft plumes in each mode of LTO cycle showed that particles were predominantly in the range of 4 to 100 nm in diameter in all cases. In general, size distributions exhibit similar modality during all phases of the LTO cycle. A very distinct nucleation mode was observed in all particle size distributions, except for taxiing and landing of A320 aircraft. Accumulation modes were also observed in all particle size distributions. Analysis of aircraft engine emissions during LTO cycle showed that aircraft thrust level is considerably higher during taxiing than idling suggesting that International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards need to be modified as the thrust levels for taxi and idle are considered to be the same (7% of total thrust) [1].

The use of technology-based self-service on assessments of consumer satisfaction and consumer commitment

Technology-based self-service (TBSS) enables consumers to complete services themselves using a technological interface. As evaluations of consumer satisfaction and commitment have typically focused on interpersonal interactions, the effect of TBSS on these is under researched . This paper explores the impact of TBSS on consumer satisfaction and on a multidimensional measure of consumer commitment.Data are collected from 241 hotel guests. The results suggest personal-service is more important for satisfaction and commitment. This has implications for marketing as the benefits of adopting TBSS are not clear. Multi-dimensional commitment provides some interesting findings and suggests the need for further research into TBSS and commitment.