Design and Evaluation of Ballast Water Management Systems using Modified and Hybridised Axiomatic Design Principles

There are two major motivations to this research. The first is based on the concerns raised at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) MEPC 67 and 68 meetings regarding the capacity of some type-approved Ballast Water Management (BWM) Systems to meet the performance standard (D-2) of the BWM Convention at-all-times and in all conditions. The second is based on the reluctance expressed by some ship- owners to install the system onboard their ships as a Lloyd\u27s list survey suggested. In this work, an attempt was made to address these issues and concerns using a set of criteria stipulated in Regulation D-5.2 of the BWM Convention which provides the framework for reviewing and evaluating the practical concepts of managing ballast water, developing a conceptual model for managing ballast water and minimizing the contributions of human-error to BWM System performance by analyzing the associated operational human factors. Firstly, the design of a conceptual model of managing ballast water and the evaluation of some established practical concepts of BWM were achieved by using a suitable technique (Axiomatic Design or AD) which was selected via a robust procedure. The two axioms of Axiomatic Design (information and independence) were used to evaluate four different concepts of managing ballast water as well as develop a BWM Convention-compliant conceptual design matrix model respectively. Based on data collected from ballast water management experts, Post-loading Onshore Ballast Water Management System was shown to be the most appropriate ballast water management concept with respect to the Regulation D-5.2 set of criteria. This presents a paradigm shift in expert preference from traditional shipboard systems to onshore systems with respect to the IMO-criteria. The pathway for improved performance of the Convention-compliant design matrix was subsequently determined and prioritised using Sufield model of Altshuler\u27s theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ). Lastly, a 5-step algorithm was developed to minimise operator errors in the BWM System’s operation. Fatigue and training were found to have the greatest impact on operator performance

Risk-based framework for ballast water safety management

Ballast water has been identified as a major vector for the translocation of Non- Indigenous Invasive Species (NIS) and pathogens across zoogeographical regions and subsequent discharged into recipient port states/regions. This is bound to increase given factors like the globalization of trade and the economy of scale of the ship size. Established NIS has posed significant threat to the human health, economy, finances and marine bio-diversity of recipient regions and port states. The risks associated with the discharged NIS are uncertain and difficult to assess due to the stochastic nature of species assemblages and dispersal mechanism. The safest control measure advocated by the IMO is the conduct of ballast water exchange at sea while appropriate and effective proto-type treatment technologies are being developed and approved for future application. This study has been conducted while recognizing the inability of probabilistic approaches applied in ballast water risk management to addressing uncertainty and inadequacy of data. A qualitative approach using powerful multi-criteria decision making techniques and the safety principles of the Formal Safety Assessment framework have been utilized in this research to develop three generic models for ballast water hazard estimation, risk evaluation and decision-making analysis respectively. The models are capable of being modified and utilized in the industry to address the problems of uncertainty and inadequacy of data in ballast water management. This is particularly useful as an interim measure for port states in developing economies (with insufficient data and technology) to developed robust ballast water management plans. While recognising the huge impact of ballast water pollution in recipient regions this study recommends that ballast water management programmes be given due recognition as an important element of sustainable development programmes at national and international levels. The non-availability of a benchmark based on previous research on which to fully validate the research outcome was identified as a major limitation of this research study. The models developed will therefore be subject to modifications as new data become available

Integrative geospatial modeling: combining local and indigenous knowledge with geospatial applications for adaptive governance of invasive species and ecosystem services

Includes bibliographical references.2015 Summer.With an unprecedented rate of global change, diverse anthropogenic disturbances present growing challenges for coupled social-ecological systems. Biological invasions are one such disturbance known to cause negative impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and an array of other natural processes and human activities. Maps facilitated by advanced geospatial applications play a major role in resource management and conservation planning. However, local and indigenous knowledge are overwhelmingly left out of these conversations, despite the wealth of observational data held by resource-dependent communities and the potential negative impacts biological invasions have on local livelihoods. My integrative geospatial modeling research applied adaptive governance mechanisms of knowledge integration and co-production processes in concert with species distribution modeling tools to explore the potential threat of invasive plants to community-defined ecosystem services. Knowledge integration at the landscape scale in Alaska provided an important opportunity for re-framing risk assessment mapping to include Native Alaskan community concerns, and revealed the growing potential threat posed by invasive aquatic Elodea spp. to Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and whitefish (Coregonus nelsonii) subsistence under current and future climate conditions. Knowledge integration and co-production at the local scale in northeastern Ethiopia facilitated shared learning between pastoral communities and researchers, leading to the discovery of invasive rubber vine (Cryptostegia grandiflora), which was previously unknown to my research team or a number of government and aid organizations working in the region, thus providing a potentially robust early detection and monitoring approach for an invasive plant that holds acute negative impacts on a number of endemic ecosystem service-providing trees. This work revealed knowledge integration and co-production processes and species distribution modeling tools to be complimentary, with invasive species acting as a useful boundary-spanning issue for bringing together diverse knowledge sources. Moreover, bridging and boundary-spanning organizations and individuals enhanced this rapid appraisal process by providing access to local and indigenous communities and fostered a level of built-in trust and legitimacy with them. Challenges to this work still remain, including effectively working at broad spatial and governance scales, sustaining iterative processes that involve communities in validating and critiquing model outputs, and addressing underlying power disparities between stakeholder groups. Top-down, discipline-specific approaches fail to adequately address the complexity of ecosystems or the needs of resource-dependent communities. My work lends evidence to the power of integrative geospatial modeling as a flexible transdisciplinary methodology for addressing conservation efforts in rural regions with mounting anthropogenic pressures at different spatial and governance scales

EXPLORING VOLUNTEERED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION WITH DATA QUALITY CONTROL FOR INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Epidemiology and control strategies applied to ash dieback and chestnut ink disease

Main goal of forest diseases’ management is to reduce economic, biological and aesthetic damages and biodiversity loss caused by plant parasites. The many strategies used can be grouped under two main actions, prevention (prophylaxis in some early writings) and therapy (treatment or cure). Prevention is limited primarily by the lack of knowledge of the organisms involved, including host plants. Mathematical models have been used to extend the understanding of plant disease epidemiology on a number of fronts, providing an opportunity for a more rational use of resources on expensive field trials and representing a step towards more sustainable control measures. From a curative point of view, current efforts by scientists have focused on developing diseases management (Pest Management = PM) concepts in order to balance the benefits of pesticides with the ecological concerns of their residues contaminating the environment. In this thesis, the two PM principles were applied from an innovative point of view on two case studies: ash dieback caused by Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, which can be considered the most serious disease for Fraxinus genus in Europe, and chestnut ink disease, caused by Phytophthora cambivora and P. cinnamomi. In the first part of the thesis, the two diseases are introduced, in order to permit the evaluation of similarities and differences (chapter I). Subsequently, from chapter II to chapter V, the experimental trials performed are described. In particular, in chapter II a study of the ecological niche of H. fraxineus, with the characterization of the environmental variables associated with naturally infected zones, is reported. This procedure was realized with Species Distribution Models (SDM), widely utilized in the ecological field and only recently applied to plant pathology. The presence of the pathogen was highly correlated to three summer predictors: abundant precipitation, high soil moisture and low air temperature, in comparison with the averages of the study area. The ensemble forecasting technique was then applied to obtain a prediction of the potential distribution of the pathogen at European scale, considering the distribution maps of Fraxinus excelsior and Fraxinus angustifolia, susceptible to the parasite. At last, an innovative method of network analysis permitted to identify the suitable areas that are not reachable by the pathogen with a natural spread. Chapter III reports a study conducted to evaluate six fungicides for their potential to control ash dieback. Initially, in vitro tests of the active ingredients against five different strains of the pathogen indicated thiabendazole, propiconazole and allicin as the most effective fungicides, with lower median lethal doses than procloraz. In contrast, copper sulphate and potassium phosphite were totally ineffective. Subsequently, the antifungal activities of the best three compounds were investigated in planta against H. fraxineus by trunk injection on European ashes inoculated with an indigenous strain. The test was preceded by preliminary trials to maximize the efficacy of injections; in the experimental conditions highest speed was reached with the addition of 1.2 % acetic acid to the aqueous solution and making treatments in early morning or late afternoon. Considering the results of in planta trial, thiabendazole and allicin significantly slowed down the growth of the necroses in the growing season, in contrast propiconazole injections were impracticable. The studies in chapters IV and V recall the methodologies applied to ash dieback, with application to chestnut ink disease complex. In particular, in chapter IV fuzzy logic theory was applied considering the environmental variables, such as minimum winter temperature, summer drought, slope's aspect, streams' distance and soil's permeability, that mainly can influence the development of the disease. The model was validated with a broad field survey conducted in a chestnut area in Treviso province. Moreover, uncertainty maps (regarding model structure, inputs and parameters) were produced for the correct interpretation of the prediction. Great part of the chestnut area in the study zone resulted as suitable for the development of ink disease, whereas only the 18.8 %, corresponding to higher elevation zones, presented inferior risks. In a second study (chapter V), a comparative efficacy trial on four potassium phosphite formulations by means of endotherapy against chestnut ink disease is performed. P. cinnamomi was isolated with baiting technique from symptomatic chestnuts and was inoculated on 50 asymptomatic trees. As a result of endotherapic treatments, the unique solution that significantly slowed down necroses' growth was potassium phosphite (35 %) with an addition of 0.1 % micronutrient solution. An additional endotherapic trial was conducted in a preliminary way in the chestnut where P. cinnamomi was isolated, with the main aim to evaluate growth stimulation of active growing callus next to the shape flame necroses by the injected solution of potassium phosphite 70 %. In this case, results did not highlight a significant difference between treated trees and water control ones, probably for the need of longer times for older trees. On the base of the achieved results, epidemiological modelling and endotherapic treatments, applied both to ash dieback and chestnut ink disease, can represent fundamental tools in the management of these important diseases and should be applied in an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach, together with appropriate cultural techniques to maximize benefits

The structure of global invasive assemblages and their relationship to regional habitat variables: converting scientifically relevant data into decision relevant information

Quantitative methods for pest risk assessment combine sound statistical tools with sound ecological theory to convert scientifically relevant data into decision-relevant information. This thesis investigated a quantitative method for pest risk assessment called pest profile analysis (PPA). PPA is a new methodology that is based on the premise that the risk of invasion by crop pests into new areas can be predicted by analysing regional insect pest assemblages (also known as pest profiles). Regional pest assemblages comprise the presence or absence of recognised pest species in each region of the world. The analysis involves clustering these regions based on similarities between their pest profiles. PPA assumes that co-occurrence of pest species in a region is the outcome of a non-random structured process driven by biotic and abiotic characteristics of the region. The most commonly used clustering technique for grouping regional pest assemblages is a self-organizing map (SOM), which is an artificial neural network algorithm. Two other clustering methods that have also been used for PPA are hierarchical clustering (HC) and k-means. The main aim of this thesis was to perform a thorough validation test of the PPA approach. To do so, I first analysed the sensitivity of SOM PPA to changes in the number of species used as input data. The results showed that SOM PPA outputs (weight values that are interpreted as risk indices) were quite sensitive to changes in the input data. However, when the risk indices were transformed into ranked lists of species, the ranks were significantly less sensitive and hence potentially more useful for pest risk assessment. I assessed the validity of the groups (clusters) of regions obtained from a SOM PPA by applying an external validation measure, the ζ diversity metric. The ζ metric was used to quantify similarities between pest profiles within clusters. The results showed it can be used for assessing the uncertainty associated with PPA outputs. I also conducted a temporal study of distributional changes of crop pests worldwide to measure the degree of biotic homogenization that had occurred in the regional pest profiles over 10 years. The major findings were that homogenization is certainly occurring, but it is in an inceptive stage and pest assemblages still remain strongly regionalized. I made a detailed comparison between the SOM, HC and k-means clustering methods to identify the one that produced the most accurate predictions. Unexpectedly, HC performed best. This appears to contradict the main hypothesis behind clustering world's regions according to their pest profiles because the expectations were that since SOM and k-means create a higher number of highly similar clusters, they would provide better predictions. The results of this research showed that PPA can help to prioritise risks of invasion by insect pests. It provided a new measure of uncertainty to improve communication of model results to decision makers. The results highlighted the urgent need for research to identify the determinants of insect pest species' distributions around the globe, and to implement that knowledge into PPA and biosecurity decision making

Evidence Contestation

This book examines the practices of contesting evidence in democratically constituted knowledge societies. It provides a multifaceted view of the processes and conditions of evidence criticism and how they determine the dynamics of de- and re-stabilization of evidence. Evidence is an essential resource for establishing claims of validity, resolving conflicts, and legitimizing decisions. In recent times, however, evidence is being contested with increasing frequency. Such contestations vary in form and severity – from questioning the interpretation of data or the methodological soundness of studies to accusations of evidence fabrication. The contributors to this volume explore which actors, for what reasons and to what effect, question evidence in fields such as the biological, environmental and health sciences. In addition to actors inside academia, they examine the roles of various other players, including citizen scientists, counter-experts, journalists, patients, consumers and activists. The contributors tackle questions of how disagreements are framed and how they are used to promote vested interests. By drawing on methodological and theoretical approaches from a wide range of fields, this book provides a much-needed perspective on how evidence criticism influences the development and state of knowledge societies and their political condition. Evidence Contestation will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, epistemology, bioethics, science and technology studies, the history of science and technology and science communication

Technology, Science, and Culture: A Global Vision

The aim of the Workshop: Technology, Science, and Culture - A Global Vision is to create a discussion forum on research related to the fields of Water Science, Food Science, Intelligent Systems, Molecular Biomedicine, and Creation and Theories of Culture. The workshop is intended to discuss research on current problems, relevant methodologies, and future research streams and to create an environment for the exchange of ideas and collaboration among participants