生态创新系统功能、过程和可持续评估

不同国家生态创新水平有高低,生态创新系统有差异。生态创新系统是由一系列参与者通过相互作用形成的网络,目的是推动有助于生态环境和社会经济协调发展的知识和技术的生产、传播和应用。为比较不同国家生态创新系统的发展状况和可持续性,分析不同国家生态创新系统的优势和不足,提出生态创新系统两步评估法和整体分析框架。把生态创新系统的功能和过程结合起来,对生态创新系统的发展水平进行评价。重点关注系统的长期发展,即系统可持续性。基于资本的角度,包括知识、经济、人力和社会资本,建立生态创新系统可持续评估模型,考察相关资本存量、流量和风险因素。根据创新系统理论、文献回顾和国际研究比较,遴选出30个关键指标,构建涵盖2个指标矩阵的综合评价指标体系。采用主成分分析和综合评价方法,对不同国家生态创新系统的功能-过程和可持续性分别进行评价。研究表明,法国、德国、韩国、西班牙和挪威生态创新系统的功能-过程表现最强,韩国、德国、奥地利、挪威、捷克生态创新系统的可持续性表现最强。根据生态创新系统的现状和可持续性,主要生态创新国家可以分为四种类型,据此采用不同发展策略。如韩国系统现状水平和可持续性都较高,属于生态创新先进国。...     

An aggregation framework to link indicators associated with multifunctional land use to the stakeholder evaluation of policy options

In the last decade efforts have been carried out by the scientific community aimed at building integrated frameworks to support the decision-making process when sustainability issues are addressed. This paper proposes a further advancement in integrated assessment procedures by setting up an operational multi-scale and transparent framework, which comprises the assessment of European regions in terms of sustainability, and the identification of the impact that policy options might have on the sustainability of these regions. The framework is designed for use in ex ante sustainability impact assessment of policy scenarios on multifunctionality of land use and integrates economic, environmental and social issues across a variety of sectors (agriculture, forestry, transport, tourism and energy). The proposed method provides a conceptual framework applicable at different scales (European, regional), and takes into account the great variability of European regions. The described methodology is based on linear additive models to weight and aggregate selected indicators to a set of land use functions identified to describe the goods and services provided by the different land uses that summarise the most relevant economic, environmental and social issues of a region. The framework is designed to allow the evaluation of impacts at an international scale (e.g. the European Union), or on selected regions.The aggregation framework can be used to evaluate the impact that policy options have on the sustainability of multifunctional land use systems with competing demands. A conceptual envelope, called the “trade-off evaluation space”, delineates all possible developments in the functions of the land. The sustainability limits identify the subset of ‘acceptable’ policy options within the trade-off evaluation space, so that the distance of each land use function from sustainability limits can be estimated and trade-offs between the different functions of the multifunctional land use system can be identified. The proposed methodology is adaptable to different contexts: if the assumption is taken that all land use functions are equally weighted the framework can be used to analyse policy cases and take decisions on policy options at the European or regional level. However, at the local-scale the framework can also be applied through a participatory approach and the distribution of weights can be rediscussed with local stakeholders. In both cases the proposed system can be used as a tool for discussion among all interested parties.     

Meta-performance evaluation of sustainability indicators

There are many different kinds of frameworks for evaluating environmental and sustainability performance at the organizational level (profit or not-for-profit, private or public), sectoral level (e.g. industry, transport, agriculture and tourism), and local, regional or country levels. Despite the diversity of methods and tools to measure sustainable development, indicators are one of the approaches most used. However, these tools do not usually include evaluation of the performance measurement instrument itself. The main objective of this research is to develop a conceptual framework to design and assess the effectiveness of the sustainability indicators themselves. To put the proposed tool into practice, a set of key good-practice factors and meta-performance evaluation indicators is proposed for adoption in a national case study—the national sustainable development indicators system, SIDS Portugal, and the usefulness of this methodology is demonstrated. This approach aims to evaluate how appropriate a set of sustainability indicators is and allow an evaluation of overall performance-monitoring activities and results. Stakeholder involvement is an essential component of the proposed framework. The tool developed could support continuous improvement in the performance of ongoing sustainability indicator initiatives, allowing greater guidance, objectivity and transparency in sustainability assessment processes.     

Integrating Human Health and Environmental Health into the DPSIR Framework: A Tool to Identify Research Opportunities for Sustainable and Healthy Communities

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recently realigned its research enterprise around the concept of sustainability. Scientists from across multiple disciplines have a role to play in contributing the information, methods, and tools needed to more fully understand the long-term impacts of decisions on the social and economic sustainability of communities. Success will depend on a shift in thinking to integrate, organize, and prioritize research within a systems context. We used the Driving forces–Pressures–State–Impact–Response (DPSIR) framework as a basis for integrating social, cultural, and economic aspects of environmental and human health into a single framework. To make the framework broadly applicable to sustainability research planning, we provide a hierarchical system of DPSIR keywords and guidelines for use as a communication tool. The applicability of the integrated framework was first tested on a public health issue (asthma disparities) for purposes of discussion. We then applied the framework at a science planning meeting to identify opportunities for sustainable and healthy communities research. We conclude that an integrated systems framework has many potential roles in science planning, including identifying key issues, visualizing interactions within the system, identifying research gaps, organizing information, developing computational models, and identifying indicators.     

生态社区评价指标体系研究进展

生态社区建设融合了建筑学、生态学、社会学等多学科原理,充分体现了人与自然和谐的理念,是符合可持续发展理念的社区发展模式。生态社区评价指标体系在一定的一级指标框架下,采用定性或定量的评价指标,评判社区的可持续发展水平。对生态社区的概念和内涵、形成与发展历程、国内外生态社区相关评价指标体系进行总结和归纳,在此基础上综述了生态社区评价指标体系的研究进展,包括评价主体、一级指标框架的构建、二三级指标使用的频度分析及指标权重的确定方法。最后总结分析了生态社区指标体系研究中对外环境关联、动态发展、参与性与适应性等方面的不足,提出将复杂性理论、生命周期分析方法和生态足迹分析引入生态社区评价指标体系的研究,以提高指标体系的系统性、科学性和参与性。     

Network Science Based Quantification of Resilience Demonstrated on the Indian Railways Network

The structure, interdependence, and fragility of systems ranging from power-grids and transportation to ecology, climate, biology and even human communities and the Internet have been examined through network science. While response to perturbations has been quantified, recovery strategies for perturbed networks have usually been either discussed conceptually or through anecdotal case studies. Here we develop a network science based quantitative framework for measuring, comparing and interpreting hazard responses as well as recovery strategies. The framework, motivated by the recently proposed temporal resilience paradigm, is demonstrated with the Indian Railways Network. Simulations inspired by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2012 North Indian blackout as well as a cyber-physical attack scenario illustrate hazard responses and effectiveness of proposed recovery strategies. Multiple metrics are used to generate various recovery strategies, which are simply sequences in which system components should be recovered after a disruption. Quantitative evaluation of these strategies suggests that faster and more efficient recovery is possible through network centrality measures. Optimal recovery strategies may be different per hazard, per community within a network, and for different measures of partial recovery. In addition, topological characterization provides a means for interpreting the comparative performance of proposed recovery strategies. The methods can be directly extended to other Large-Scale Critical Lifeline Infrastructure Networks including transportation, water, energy and communications systems that are threatened by natural or human-induced hazards, including cascading failures. Furthermore, the quantitative framework developed here can generalize across natural, engineered and human systems, offering an actionable and generalizable approach for emergency management in particular as well as for network resilience in general.     

Monitoring the sustainability and equity of socioeconomic development: A comparison of emergy indices using Macao, Italy and Sweden as examples

The concept of sustainability involves factors related to society, economy, and ecology. The modern context of sustainability also includes a requirement for equitable consumption of materials and energy to sustain the quality of life while still protecting the environment. To evaluate the environmental sustainability of socioeconomic activities, emergy (embodied energy) is an important tool because it can measure real wealth by accounting for both natural and socioeconomic flows using a common set of units. However, different emergy indices provide different insights, and not all are equally suitable for every situation. Using traditional emergy-based indices, an integrated environmental sustainability index (ESI), and two measures of emergy storage, we analyzed emergy flows and related indices for three typical human-influenced ecosystems: those of Macao, Italy, and Sweden. The performance of each ecosystem was compared using several emergy-based indices to assess their levels of sustainable development and demonstrate how different indices provide different insights. Based on the principle that equitability is an essential component of sustainability, we suggest that a positive and low net emergy ratio is desirable, since this means that the system does not capture excessive amounts of resources from external systems and thereby damage its external life-support systems.     

基于能值理论的循环复合农业生态系统发展评价——以福建省福清星源循环农业产业示范基地为例

循环农业是当前农业可持续发展理念的具体运作模式。对能值分析方法优化,使其更适合循环复合生态系统的应用上进行优化,并以福建省福清星源循环农业产业示范基地为例验证,评价复合生态系统的可持续发展程度和经济效益。结果表明改进的能值分析方法对循环复合农业生态系统的可持续发展评价更科学,复合系统的可持续发展指数比单纯的生猪养殖提高23.44%—33.86%,在4种组合的循环模式中以"生猪养殖-沼气工程-有机肥生产-种植业"循环复合生态系统整体效益最佳,其可持续发展指数最高,环境负载率最低,净能值产出率仅略低于"生猪养殖-沼气工程-种植业"复合系统。     

Comparison of two methods for quality assessment of macroalgae assemblages,under different pollution types

The selection of adequate methodologies for the assessment of different biological quality elements is urgently needed for the application of the water framework directive (WFD 2000/60/EEC). In the case of macroalgae in coastal waters of the North East Atlantic, two methodologies have been proposed: the reduced species list (RSL) index and the quality of rocky bottoms (CFR) index. Both methods use multimetric approaches to evaluate the quality of macroalgae assemblages, which are based on community characteristics (species/populations richness, cover, percentage of opportunistic species, ecological state groups ratio, etc.). In this paper the results of applying both indices on three different types of pollution gradients in the North coast of Spain (bay of Biscay) are presented, in order to test their usefulness and intercalibration possibilities. In general terms, the CFR index responded more accurately than the RSL index to the pollution gradients under study. With respect to the indicators used in the current evaluation, richness, opportunistic species and cover seemed to be the most accurate for quality assessment of macroalgal communities. While the first two indicators are taken into account in both indices, the latter (cover) is only considered in the CFR index, even though the abundance of macroalgae is one of the aspects to be included in the evaluation of this biological element, according to the WFD.     

EVALUATION OF WINE COMPETITION JUDGE PERFORMANCE USING PRINCIPAL COMPONENT SIMILARITY ANALYSIS

Principal component similarity (PCS) analysis was used to evaluate judge performance from a wine competition. Data were analyzed for five international judges and seven wine makers, for 42 white, 30 red and 25 specialty wines, using a 20-point quality scoring system. Principal similarity plots were used to group judges according to judging 'style' and to identify outliers, for each wine category. Judge groupings were consistent when three different references were used; however, the most interpretable PCS plot was obtained when the overall mean-judge-score was used as the reference. Results from PCS were compared to principal component analysis (PCA). PCS analysis allowed the information from all significant principal components to be graphically represented in two dimensions and was more successful in classifying judges than plots based on the first three principal components. The technique of PCS is an important complement to existing methodologies, and can provide wine competition coordinators with an objective technique for judge evaluation and selection.     

Outcome prediction based on microarray analysis: a critical perspective on methods

Background  

Information extraction from microarrays has not yet been widely used in diagnostic or prognostic decision-support systems, due to the diversity of results produced by the available techniques, their instability on different data sets and the inability to relate statistical significance with biological relevance. Thus, there is an urgent need to address the statistical framework of microarray analysis and identify its drawbacks and limitations, which will enable us to thoroughly compare methodologies under the same experimental set-up and associate results with confidence intervals meaningful to clinicians. In this study we consider gene-selection algorithms with the aim to reveal inefficiencies in performance evaluation and address aspects that can reduce uncertainty in algorithmic validation.     

Investigating the Role of Auditory and Tactile Modalities in Violin Quality Evaluation

The role of auditory and tactile modalities involved in violin playing and evaluation was investigated in an experiment employing a blind violin evaluation task under different conditions: i) normal playing conditions, ii) playing with auditory masking, and iii) playing with vibrotactile masking. Under each condition, 20 violinists evaluated five violins according to criteria related to violin playing and sound characteristics and rated their overall quality and relative preference. Results show that both auditory and vibrotactile feedback are important in the violinists’ evaluations but that their relative importance depends on the violinist, the violin and the type of evaluation (different criteria ratings or preference). In this way, the overall quality ratings were found to be accurately predicted by the rating criteria, which also proved to be perceptually relevant to violinists, but were poorly correlated with the preference ratings; this suggests that the two types of ratings (overall quality vs preference) may stem from different decision-making strategies. Furthermore, the experimental design confirmed that violinists agree more on the importance of criteria in their overall evaluation than on their actual ratings for different violins. In particular, greater agreement was found on the importance of criteria related to the sound of the violin. Nevertheless, this study reveals that there are fundamental differences in the way players interpret and evaluate each criterion, which may explain why correlating physical properties with perceptual properties has been challenging so far in the field of musical acoustics.     

Evaluating the sustainability of mine rehabilitation programs in China

Social, economic, and environmental restorations are important concerns in mine rehabilitation programs. Nonetheless, limited attention has been given to the social and economic evaluation of mine rehabilitation programs in developing countries with fast‐growing economies and large populations. To evaluate the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of mine communities before and after mine rehabilitation programs, we placed the study in China, which has experienced large‐scale mine closures resulting from resource depletion. By adopting an integrative model, sustainability cube, we evaluated social, economic, environmental, and overall sustainability (the combination of social, economic, and environmental) of its mine rehabilitation program—the national mine parks (reengineering closed mines as tourist parks, which constitutes the mine rehabilitation program) at the community level before and after the park establishment. Our results indicate that the implementation of national mine parks has improved the overall sustainability of local communities; the sustainability scores of the economic and environmental sectors increased significantly, while the sustainability score for the social sector decreased (mainly due to increased emigration after mine shutdown). We provide suggestions to improve social sector performance in mine rehabilitation programs, aiming to further enhance overall sustainability after mine closure.     

Inference of Gene Regulatory Networks Using Time-Series Data: A Survey

The advent of high-throughput technology like microarrays has provided the platform for studying how different cellular components work together, thus created an enormous interest in mathematically modeling biological network, particularly gene regulatory network (GRN). Of particular interest is the modeling and inference on time-series data, which capture a more thorough picture of the system than non-temporal data do. We have given an extensive review of methodologies that have been used on time-series data. In realizing that validation is an impartible part of the inference paradigm, we have also presented a discussion on the principles and challenges in performance evaluation of different methods. This survey gives a panoramic view on these topics, with anticipation that the readers will be inspired to improve and/or expand GRN inference and validation tool repository.     

Emergy evaluations of three aquaculture systems on wetlands surrounding the Pearl River Estuary,China

Emergy and economic analysis, accompanied by sensitivity analysis, were used to evaluate the ecological economic characteristics of three fish aquaculture systems on wetlands surrounding the Pearl River Estuary in China. The sustainability of these systems was compared to two aquaculture systems and two wetland systems, to provide reference conditions for the best use of limited wetland areas. We found that the three systems studied had similar emergy characteristics, despite their very different economic characteristics. Counter intuitively, the high economic input and output mode did not have higher environmental impact or lower sustainability compared with low economic input and output mode. Apparently, the sustainability of an intensive aquaculture system is determined mainly by how many natural renewable resources are exploited. The large differences in economic benefit and environmental impacts between the mangrove reserve and the aquaculture systems demonstrated the important role of nature reserves on preserving the sustainability of an estuary. Transformity (TR) and Emergy Yield Ratio (EYR) are both indicators of system efficiency, but from different points of view, and they produced opposite results in assessing the efficiency of the same system in this study. The ratio of EYR to TR might be used in addition to the EYR and transformity as a discreet perspective on overall system production efficiency.     

Modeling and measuring urban sustainability in multi-criteria based systems — A challenging issue

This paper addresses how urban sustainability is modeled and the ways criteria-based systems deal with its measurability for an effective and reliable assessment. Twelve sustainability models are reviewed and a subset is briefly presented. More importantly, this research work investigates five national rating systems of sustainable urban development compared with the newly developed CAMSUD system. The comparison focuses on the systems' structure, categorization, technical content and measurability. The main findings about the selected national rating systems thoroughly discussed in the paper are: (i) They all have a tree-like structure, (ii) their conceptualization and categorization follow three or four sustainability pillars models, sustainability topics or spatial scale; (iii) they use either planning-oriented or performance-oriented weighting approaches; (iv) the criteria are defined as sustainability goals, action measures or assignments to be fulfilled; (v) the sustainability items can hardly be juxtaposed since they are differently handled, (vi) overlapping criteria might occur, (vii) similar criteria can be categorized under different categories and this affects the emphasis put on these categories, (viii) all criteria are independently rated with no consideration of mutual interrelationships. In an attempt to solve some of these weaknesses, the newly developed CAMSUD system is introduced as alternative and relies on the following: (i) the system structure is considered as a network, (ii) the conceptualization and categorization is based on spatial scaling as well as on sustainability topics and pillars, (iii) many criteria are directly planning-relevant (23 of 40), (iv) the criteria are defined as sustainability goals rather than action measures and (v) the quantification of criteria is planned as to account for mutual interactions.     

An Index of Regional Sustainability: A GIS-based multiple criteria analysis decision support system for progressing sustainability

GIS (Geographical Information Systems) based decision support tools will be useful in helping guide regions to sustainability. These tools need to be simple but effective at identifying, for regional managers, areas most in need of initiatives to progress sustainability. Multiple criteria analysis (MCA) has been used as a decision support tool for a wide number of applications, as it provides a systematic framework for evaluating various options. It has the potential to be used as a tool for sustainability assessment, because it can bring together the sustainability criteria from all pillars, social, economic and environmental, to give an integrated assessment of sustainability. Furthermore, the use of GIS and MCA together is an emerging addition to conducting sustainability assessments.This paper further develops a sustainability assessment framework developed for the Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority region of Victoria, Australia by providing a GIS-based decision support system for regional agencies. This tool uses multiple criteria analysis in a GIS framework to assess the sustainability of sub-catchments in the Glenelg Hopkins Catchment. The multiple criteria analysis based on economic, social and environmental indicators developed in previous stages of this project was used as the basis to build a model in ArcGIS^®. The GIS-based multiple criteria analysis, called An Index of Regional Sustainability Spatial Decision Support System (AIRS SDSS), produced maps showing sub-catchment sustainability, and environmental, social and economic condition. As a result, this tool is able to highlight those sub-catchments most in need of assistance with achieving sustainability. It will also be a valuable tool for evaluation and monitoring of strategies for sustainability. This paper shows the usefulness of GIS-based multiple criteria analysis to enhance the monitoring and evaluation of sustainability at the regional to sub-catchment scale.     

Emergy evaluation of the impact of waste exchanges on the sustainability of industrial systems

Emergy evaluation provided global performance indicators that were used to assess the impact of waste exchanges on the sustainability of a sulfuric acid production system (SAPS) and a titanium dioxide production system (TDPS) in Pan-zhi-hua City, China. Impact of emissions was quantified in terms of emergy and integrated into the classic emergy-based indicators. Results show that waste exchanges improve the sustainability of the two systems, although the SAPS benefits more from the waste exchanges than the TDPS from an economic perspective however, the impact of emissions reduces their sustainability to some degree. This study creates awareness and brings new insight to the gains achieved with resource recovery from waste in the interrelated industrial systems, which is derived from the mutualism relationship existing in natural ecosystems. Finally, this paper puts forward some corresponding suggestions.     

基于系统演化视角的可持续性评价方法

可持续发展水平的衡量是可持续发展研究的重要内容,它可以为政府的可持续发展决策提供重要的科学依据。现有的可持续性评价方法可分为指标列举法、流量分析法和系统分析法。前两类方法应用广泛,但理论基础较为薄弱,在指标的选取、标准化和赋权等方面存在一定的缺陷。基于系统运行机理的系统分析法尚不多见,但能弥补前两种方法的部分不足,Ulanowicz于2009年提出的演化模型是此类方法的代表。该模型从系统演化角度出发,以网络流为研究对象,以信息论为手段,指出系统的可持续性是系统上升性(效率)和恢复力平衡的结果,并提出了可持续性评价指标R。回顾了现有研究方法的优缺点。介绍了从演化视角分析可持续性的原理和数学模型,可持续发展的阈值范围以及该方法的应用案例。总结了该方法的应用步骤及尚需解决的问题。