Science-based restoration monitoring of coastal habitats, Volume Two: Tools for monitoring coastal habitats

Healthy coastal habitats are not only important ecologically; they also support healthy coastal communities and improve the quality of people’s lives. Despite their many benefits and values, coastal habitats have been systematically modified, degraded, and destroyed throughout the United States and its protectorates beginning with European colonization in the 1600’s (Dahl 1990). As a result, many coastal habitats around the United States are in desperate need of restoration. The monitoring of restoration projects, the focus of this document, is necessary to ensure that restoration efforts are successful, to further the science, and to increase the efficiency of future restoration efforts

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen

Modelling construction client risk performance using organisation behaviour parameters

The role of client in inducing project risk has not been adequately covered and the construction industry. A focus on this aspect of risk should enable construction to square up the ‘risk circle’ for managing projects and contribute to the general development of risk management strategies for construction organisations. The thesis investigates the client role from an organisational behaviour perspective. The aim of the thesis is to determine whether organisational characteristics influence risk management behaviour for the client, and whether these characteristics affect the project risk performance positively or negatively. The objectives of the research that underpin the thesis were three­fold. First it was to explore the organisational characterisation of the construction client in the management of risk within the project environment. Second, it was to establish the effect of the client’s risk behaviour on the project. Third, to identify the dominant parameters which affect client risk management, and to investigate the interaction between the parameters and the client’s risk management practices and attributes. Establishing such interaction will show how the parameters explain the nature and extent of risk transfer from the organisational into the project. It also facilitate the provision of a guidance to define the client organisational attributes that are sensitive to project risk, or those attributes that are not. The study adopted a competing values framework on organisation behaviour that resulted in an elicitation instrument for testing the relationship between organisational characteristics and risk performance. Data was obtained by surveying a sample of client organisations who are actively engaged in procuring projects in the UK construction industry. The outcome of the research showed that the parameters that are represented in the competing values framework (namely, Open system, Rational model, Internal process, and Human resources) affected the risk practices and attributes of the client in different ways. The outcome specifically showed that the Rational Model has a significant positive influence on risk performance while the Internal Process has a significant negative influence on risk performance. Both the Open system and Human resources showed insignificant influence. This supports the notion that construction risk is part of a functional system that extends to the client risk performance and that the client organisational characteristics contribute to the risk behaviour within the construction project. The thesis offers two very significant contributions to the body of knowledge that underpins the management of risk in project and construction organisations: namely, the contribution to the level of risk made by the client organisations should form part of the considerations in any project appraisal; and the risk contributions by the client should address the Rational model and Internal process contexts of their organisation

1990-1995 Brock Campus News

A compilation of the administration newspaper, Brock Campus News, for the years 1990 through 1995. It had previously been titled The Blue Badger

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii