Lifting industrial ecology modeling to a new level of quality and transparency: a call for more transparent publications and a collaborative open source software framework

Industrial ecology (IE) is a maturing scientific discipline. The field is becoming more data and computation intensive, which requires IE researchers to develop scientific software to tackle novel research questions. We review the current state of software programming and use in our field and find challenges regarding transparency, reproducibility, reusability, and ease of collaboration. Our response to that problem is fourfold: First, we propose how existing general principles for the development of good scientific software could be implemented in IE and related fields. Second, we argue that collaborating on open source software could make IE research more productive and increase its quality, and we present guidelines for the development and distribution of such software. Third, we call for stricter requirements regarding general access to the source code used to produce research results and scientific claims published in the IE literature. Fourth, we describe a set of open source modules for standard IE modeling tasks that represent our first attempt at turning our recommendations into practice. We introduce a Python toolbox for IE that includes the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework Brightway2, the ecospold2matrix module that parses unallocated data in ecospold format, the pySUT and pymrio modules for building and analyzing multiregion input-output models and supply and use tables, and the dynamic_stock_model class for dynamic stock modeling. Widespread use of open access software can, at the same time, increase quality, transparency, and reproducibility of IE research.FWN – Publicaties zonder aanstelling Universiteit Leide

Convergent Surface Water Distributions in U.S. Cities

Earth's surface is rapidly urbanizing, resulting in dramatic changes in the abundance, distribution and character of surface water features in urban landscapes. However, the scope and consequences of surface water redistribution at broad spatial scales are not well understood. We hypothesized that urbanization would lead to convergent surface water abundance and distribution: in other words, cities will gain or lose water such that they become more similar to each other than are their surrounding natural landscapes. Using a database of more than 1 million water bodies and 1 million km of streams, we compared the surface water of 100 US cities with their surrounding undeveloped land. We evaluated differences in areal (A WB) and numeric densities (N WB) of water bodies (lakes, wetlands, and so on), the morphological characteristics of water bodies (size), and the density (D C) of surface flow channels (that is, streams and rivers). The variance of urban A WB, N WB, and D C across the 100 MSAs decreased, by 89, 25, and 71%, respectively, compared to undeveloped land. These data show that many cities are surface water poor relative to undeveloped land; however, in drier landscapes urbanization increases the occurrence of surface water. This convergence pattern strengthened with development intensity, such that high intensity urban development had an areal water body density 98% less than undeveloped lands. Urbanization appears to drive the convergence of hydrological features across the US, such that surface water distributions of cities are more similar to each other than to their surrounding landscapes. © 2014 The Author(s)

The implementation flat tax in Czech Republic

The work is dedicated to analyse concept of the implementation flat tax in the Czech Republic. Theoretical part is based on the Tax theory, there are also described basic characteristics of tax systems, their functions and generally accepted fundamentals, which should proper tax system fulfil. Further theoretical part discuss tax theories development and their impact on practical questions about taxation during human history. The last part of the theoretical part is aimed straight at the flat tax. Characterize original concept of the flat tax and brings wider economic society opinions, which are completed by practical experience from the countries, where have been flat tax already implemented. Finally there are some alternatives to the flat tax mentioned, which were in case of the Czech Republic proposed. In practical part there are two tax systems compared, mainly focused on individual groups of tax payers, which differ in gross income and number of family members. I set up six groups of gross income in the way that best fits in the Czech circumstances. Aim is to compare tax burden for individual income groups in both tax systems. Analysis of the impact of the implementation flat tax for the specific income groups of inhabitants together with possible macroeconomic impact on the whole economy shows, whether the flat tax system in the Czech Republic is contibution or not