Identifying low risk climate change adaptation in catchment management while avoiding unintended consequences

Inherent in every adaptation measure are risks, costs and benefits. A challenge for decision-makers is how to choose adaptations that reduce risks from climate change impacts and provide overwhelmingly beneficial outcomes. This project focused on three catchments in the Murray-Darling Basin to test a method for more integrative climate change adaptation that increased resilience and avoided maladaptation. Water management under the highly variable Murray-Darling Basin climate has lessons and broad implications for climate policies, especially as some of the proposed climate change adaptation measures for ecosystems and water resources are overly narrow or maladaptive, and have a high risk of institutional failure. We brought together a range of experts and Catchment Management Authority (CMA) representatives from the Goulburn-Broken, Lachlan and NSW Murray catchments to synthesise and integrate the risks, costs and benefits of climate change adaptation measures and assess the extent to which they may represent maladaptation or contribute to adaptation and resilience. Specific methods included a literature review; a three-day technical workshop with representatives from the three CMAs as well as technical experts from academic institutions and government departments; three stakeholder workshops with the CMAs; and semi-structured interviews with 20 key stakeholder representatives in each case study. Limitations of this approach, mainly due to timing and financial constraints, included small sample sizes for the interviews, a CMA-only focus, reliance on expert opinion and limited opportunity to further test the results. By working with the CMAs, we: • showed how systemic climate change adaptation planning can better consider risks, costs and benefits to inform choice of measures • produced research data on climate change adaptation options in specific catchments in southern Australia • identified current stakeholder understanding of the complex issue of climate change adaptation at a catchment level • confirmed the usefulness of an ‘ecosystem-based approach’ for climate change adaptation • developed a ‘CCA Catchment Assessment Framework’ as a tool for regional management bodies in southern Australia to assess climate change adaptation. The key lessons that emerged from this research are presented below. First, there are many activities underway that, if extended and linked, would comprise a substantial ecosystem-based approach to adaptation. It is notable that many of these activities had not previously been considered in an adaptation context. Second, the research confirmed the need to look at a suite of complementary actions that spread risk rather than investing in one or two perceived best actions. Third, the adoption of an ecosystem-based approach is constrained by institutional complexity and socioeconomic considerations that should be included in assessments of climate change adaptation. Finally, adaptive management provides a basis for the implementation of an ecosystem-based approach to climate change adaptationInherent in every adaptation measure are risks, costs and benefits. A challenge for decision-makers is how to choose adaptations that reduce risks from climate change impacts and provide overwhelmingly beneficial outcomes. This project focused on three catchments in the Murray-Darling Basin to test a method for more integrative climate change adaptation that increased resilience and avoided maladaptation. Water management under the highly variable Murray-Darling Basin climate has lessons and broad implications for climate policies, especially as some of the proposed climate change adaptation measures for ecosystems and water resources are overly narrow or maladaptive, and have a high risk of institutional failure. We brought together a range of experts and Catchment Management Authority (CMA) representatives from the Goulburn-Broken, Lachlan and NSW Murray catchments to synthesise and integrate the risks, costs and benefits of climate change adaptation measures and assess the extent to which they may represent maladaptation or contribute to adaptation and resilience. Specific methods included a literature review; a three-day technical workshop with representatives from the three CMAs as well as technical experts from academic institutions and government departments; three stakeholder workshops with the CMAs; and semi-structured interviews with 20 key stakeholder representatives in each case study. Limitations of this approach, mainly due to timing and financial constraints, included small sample sizes for the interviews, a CMA-only focus, reliance on expert opinion and limited opportunity to further test the results. By working with the CMAs, we: • showed how systemic climate change adaptation planning can better consider risks, costs and benefits to inform choice of measures • produced research data on climate change adaptation options in specific catchments in southern Australia • identified current stakeholder understanding of the complex issue of climate change adaptation at a catchment level • confirmed the usefulness of an ‘ecosystem-based approach’ for climate change adaptation • developed a ‘CCA Catchment Assessment Framework’ as a tool for regional management bodies in southern Australia to assess climate change adaptation. The key lessons that emerged from this research are presented below. First, there are many activities underway that, if extended and linked, would comprise a substantial ecosystem-based approach to adaptation. It is notable that many of these activities had not previously been considered in an adaptation context. Second, the research confirmed the need to look at a suite of complementary actions that spread risk rather than investing in one or two perceived best actions. Third, the adoption of an ecosystem-based approach is constrained by institutional complexity and socioeconomic considerations that should be included in assessments of climate change adaptation. Finally, adaptive management provides a basis for the implementation of an ecosystem-based approach to climate change adaptatio

Complexity of Inconsistency-Tolerant Query Answering in Datalog+/- under Cardinality-Based Repairs

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) via the link in this recordQuerying inconsistent ontological knowledge bases is an important problem in practice, for which several inconsistencytolerant query answering semantics have been proposed, including query answering relative to all repairs, relative to the intersection of repairs, and relative to the intersection of closed repairs. In these semantics, one assumes that the input database is erroneous, and the notion of repair describes a maximally consistent subset of the input database, where different notions of maximality (such as subset and cardinality maximality) are considered. In this paper, we give a precise picture of the computational complexity of inconsistencytolerant (Boolean conjunctive) query answering in a wide range of Datalog± languages under the cardinality-based versions of the above three repair semantics.This work was supported by the Alan Turing Institute under the UK EPSRC grant EP/N510129/1, and by the EPSRC grants EP/R013667/1, EP/L012138/1, and EP/M025268/1

Fredkin Gates for Finite-valued Reversible and Conservative Logics

The basic principles and results of Conservative Logic introduced by Fredkin and Toffoli on the basis of a seminal paper of Landauer are extended to d-valued logics, with a special attention to three-valued logics. Different approaches to d-valued logics are examined in order to determine some possible universal sets of logic primitives. In particular, we consider the typical connectives of Lukasiewicz and Godel logics, as well as Chang's MV-algebras. As a result, some possible three-valued and d-valued universal gates are described which realize a functionally complete set of fundamental connectives.Comment: 57 pages, 10 figures, 16 tables, 2 diagram

Query Answer Explanations under Existential Rules

Ontology-mediated query answering is an extensively studied paradigm, which aims at improving query answers with the use of a logical theory. In this paper, we focus on ontology languages based on existential rules, and we carry out a thorough complexity analysis of the problem of explaining query answers in terms of minimal subsets of database facts and related task

Preferential query answering in the semantic web with possibilistic networks

In this paper, we explore how ontological knowledge expressed via existential rules can be combined with possibilistic networks (i) to represent qualitative preferences along with domain knowledge, and (ii) to realize preference-based answering of conjunctive queries (CQs). We call these combinations ontological possibilistic networks (OP-nets). We define skyline and k-rank answers to CQs under preferences and provide complexity (including data tractability) results for deciding consistency and CQ skyline membership for OP-nets. We show that our formalism has a lower complexity than a similar existing formalism

Antimicrobial Materials with Lime Oil and a Poly (3-hydroxyalkanoate) Produced via Valorisation of Sugar Cane Molasses

A medium chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) was produced by Pseudomonas mendocina CH50 using a cheap carbon substrate, sugarcane molasses. A PHA yield of 14.2% dry cell weight was achieved. Chemical analysis confirmed that the polymer produced was a medium chain-length PHA, a copolymer of 3-hydroxyoctanoate and 3-hydroxydecanoate, P(3HO-co-3HD). Lime oil, an essential oil with known antimicrobial activity, was used as an additive to P(3HO-co-3HD) to confer antibacterial properties to this biodegradable polymer. The incorporation of lime oil induced a slight decrease in crystallinity of P(3HO-co-3HD) films. The antibacterial properties of lime oil were investigated using ISO 20776 against Staphylococcus aureus 6538P and Escherichia coli 8739, showing a higher activity against the Gram-positive bacteria. The higher activity of the oil against S. aureus 6538P defined the higher efficiency of loaded polymer films against this strain. The effect of storage on the antimicrobial properties of the loaded films was investigated. After one-year storage, the content of lime oil in the films decreased, causing a reduction of the antimicrobial activity of the materials produced. However, the films still possessed antibacterial activity against S. aureus 6538P

Antimicrobial materials with lime oil and a poly(3-hydroxyalkanoate) produced via valorisation of sugar cane molasses

A medium chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) was produced by Pseudomonas mendocina CH50 using a cheap carbon substrate, sugarcane molasses. A PHA yield of 14.2% dry cell weight was achieved. Chemical analysis confirmed that the polymer produced was a medium chain-length PHA, a copolymer of 3-hydroxyoctanoate and 3-hydroxydecanoate, P(3HO-co-3HD). Lime oil, an essential oil with known antimicrobial activity, was used as an additive to P(3HO-co-3HD) to confer antibacterial properties to this biodegradable polymer. The incorporation of lime oil induced a slight decrease in crystallinity of P(3HO-co-3HD) films. The antibacterial properties of lime oil were investigated using ISO 20776 against Staphylococcus aureus 6538P and Escherichia coli 8739, showing a higher activity against the Gram-positive bacteria. The higher activity of the oil against S. aureus 6538P defined the higher efficiency of loaded polymer films against this strain. The effect of storage on the antimicrobial properties of the loaded films was investigated. After one-year storage, the content of lime oil in the films decreased, causing a reduction of the antimicrobial activity of the materials produced. However, the films still possessed antibacterial activity against S. aureus 6538P