Sustainability in large-scale water resources project planning

Large-scale water resources projects are essentially irreversible human interventions of nature usually requiring huge amount of public investment and affecting large segment of population. It is therefore imperative rather ethical that any such project proposal is thoroughly scrutinised before implementation.The universally accepted criteria for judging the suitability of a large-scale water resources project are economic development, social equity and environmental sustainability. Economic development focuses on monetized gains that the project would deliver, social equity ensures a fair share of water resources to each member of communities in project area, and environmental sustainability aims at preserving the vital components of the resources of the current generation for making these resources available for use by the future generation

Use of data mining techniques to identify crisis in dryland living

People living in drylands usually adopt their lifestyle to the prevailing harsh environment around them. Their rudimentary living conditions generally reflect that human lifestyle and environmental factors are intertwined. People in the arid region are used to some variability in their environment as is to be expected from people who live close to nature. However, when this variability extends to the level so as to cause stress to the population, it can be termed ‘crisis.’ The objective of this study has been to identify the critical values in hydrological, meteorological, environmental, and socio-economic factors that can trigger the onset of crisis. The study area is the interior drylands of New South Wales in Australia. The region has suffered a number of severe droughts in the last three decades. The amount of data available from direct measurements, remote sensing, secondary sources, and questionnaire survey is phenomenal. Since the volume of data to be dealt with is enormous, and a large part of it is unstructured in the form of textual data, application of data mining tools have been adopted in this study. The standard data mining strategies of classification, clustering, text mining, and association rule mining have been applied. Essentially, data mining is a black box approach that cannot be conceptualized, but it has found many applications where the problem is too complex or overwhelming with myriad of information. The findings of this study do not unveil any causal relationships as is typical with data mining techniques. Nevertheless, they provide some association of conditions that can forewarn an impending crisis for planning mitigating measures

Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and implications for water resources project planning and management

Purpose – To assess the extent of climate change likely to be manifested in the MENA region using statistical tools as well as outputs from physics-based General Circulation Models (GCMs). The application of two diverse approaches and their comparisons should develop greater confidence and understanding of the climate change process among water resources planners and practitioners to respond judiciously in adopting mitigation and adaptation measures. Design/methodology/approach – Atmospheric temperature and precipitation primarily capture climate change features and are considered the drivers of other manifestations of climate change such as rises in sea-level, tropical cyclone intensities, severe floods, prolonged droughts, and retreating ice. Data on atmospheric temperature and precipitation have been statistically analysed for trend, distribution and variability in this study. Long-range prediction is then made using time series analysis. Long-range projections have also been made by many investigators using physics-based GCMs and the Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC provides a summary. IPCC projections are not indisputable because of some inherent limitations of GCMs. A comparative study is made between statistical predictions and IPCC projections, as well as forecasts from some GCMs specifically applied to the region, to develop a more reliable forecast scenario. Water resources projects are quite vulnerable to changes in atmospheric temperature and precipitation amounts. The various aspects of planning, design and management of water resources projects which are likely to be influenced by climate change are discussed. Findings – There is considerable variability in atmospheric temperature and precipitation in recent observations but if the variability is filtered out and the underlying trend extrapolated it is found that there is in general an agreement between IPCC projections and statistical predictions. For rise in atmospheric temperature projections made from many GCMs applied to the region, as well as projections summarised in the Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC, appear to be good estimates to be included in design considerations. For precipitation, statistical predictions are perhaps a better choice because GCM projections are less reliable with precipitation since associated meteorological processes occur at a much smaller scale than the grid size of a GCM. For low-lying coastal regions sea-level rise and more frequent extreme climatic events such as tropical cyclones add to the dimensionality of design considerations especially for infrastructure design. Originality/value – This paper presents a comparative study of possible climate change in the long-term between physics-based model projections and statistical predictions. This should provide greater insight into climate change that is expected in MENA and reduce uncertainty, thereby instilling greater confidence in water resources planners and practitioners to incorporate climate change aspects into decision making. This research is believed to be particularly helpful because of scanty research work done on this part of the globe on climate change

Why did the road close for Traveston Crossing dam?

The paper explores the socio-political forces that prevented the construction of Australia's greenest dam, the Traveston Crossing Dam

Identification of e-commerce driving forces in MENA countries and their relevance in policy formulations

E-commerce has been the mainstay of e-economy with the advancement of internet. Worldwide growth of e-commerce has been around 13 percent since 2010. It is high time that MENA nations develop good policies on e-commerce, and review those dynamically due to rapidly changing digital landscape, taking into account the interplay of the driving forces. In broad terms, the driving forces in e-commerce comprise high quality services and social trust given the culture. Services include availability, reliability and performance of web services; infrastructure and institutional framework for prompt delivery of goods; and efficient online payment services across currencies, borders and languages. Social trust includes creditworthiness of the vendors and their marketing strategy alignment with the culture of the society encompassing traits, norms, habits, hedonic motivation, generation divide, etc. Thus, there are technological aspects as well as cultural aspects. In order to promote e-commerce in MENA countries, this study suggests that the technological aspects can be addressed using the theory of constraints as proposed by Goldratt in his book “The Goal”, and the cultural aspects imbue policy developments for online marketing, webpage design and communications. The cultural aspects of some MENA countries are captured through indices such as Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, Hall’s cultural patterns, and Trompenaars’ dimensions of culture. This study further investigates how cultural attributes can influence the adoption of e-commerce in MENA countries. Ultimately, there is the need to develop expressive trust motifs in webpages that can be assigned objective semantics which can substitute face-to-face cues to derive trust

Statistical forecasting of tropical cyclones for Bangladesh

Abstract – Bangladesh experiences devastating tropical cyclones (TCs) in pre-monsoon (May-June) and post-monsoon (October-November) periods. The devastation caused by the TCs can be appreciated from the fact that the country has on record 49 percent of the world’s total fatalities from this natural calamity. Recent scientific and technological advances have made it possible for the people to be forewarned about an impending TC, but the lead time is only a few days. Such a short lead time, though undoubtedly is saving many lives, is inadequate in view of the country’s infrastructure and socio-economic considerations. Short-term forecasts have been made reliable through numerical modelling, satellite imagery analysis, and synoptic methods but these forecasts cannot be extended to longer lead times because TCs grow from a state of non-existence to full strength within a few days. In such circumstances as in many branches of science statistical methods remain as the only viable option for long-term forecasts. This paper develops the framework upon which a statistical formulation of the prediction problem can be based.In statistical modelling, it is necessary to identify the dependent and independent variables which can come from physical considerations. A literature survey is made to identify the hydro-meteorological variables which can be possible candidates for independent variables. The cyclones that hit Bangladesh are almost all formed in the Bay of Bengal in the main development region (MDR) of 850E-950E and 50N-150N. After a cyclone is formed, two aspects that are important in Bangladesh context are its intensity and the track. These are the dependent variables. The intensity is captured through the energy of the cyclone and the prediction of tracks is limited to the prediction of possible recurvature. Bangladesh coast would directly be in the path of a TC formed in the Bay of Bengal only if recurvature occurs to its track. The forecasting model is first formulated as a linear regression model gradually build by stepwise regression up to the number of independent variables equal to the significant number of principal components. The usefulness of the series of models in prediction is then tested by the techniques of artificial intelligence, specifically by artificial neural networks and support vector machines. In model testing, data are split into 70% for training and 30% for testing which is the standard industrial practice. Finally, the model variables which have most predictive capability in the context of Bay of Bengal cyclones are identified. All the statistical analyses are done using the software package WEKA which is an open source free software product

Planning for a large dam project : the case of Traveston Crossing Dam

The approval for a large dam project proposal these days predominantly involves satisfying broadly the criteria of economic development, social equity, and environmental sustainability. It is justified that the criterion of economic development seeks full project cost recovery as well as significant contribution to economic growth of a region. Cost–benefit analysis is normally used as the yardstick for economic development but it has limitations and a better method is warranted. Social equity considerations should embody the need to address the concerns of all sections in communities to be impacted by a project and involve them in the decision-making process. The lapse of this aspect in project planning of the past has led, at least as being partly responsible, to disastrous consequences. Environmental sustainability should seek to ensure that the vital components of the environment are preserved such that the future generation can use the natural resources to their benefit at least as much as the current generation. Environmental sustainability is arguably the most contentious criteria among these. The vagueness in the concept of environmental sustainability and the tendency of the society to err on the safe side have caused many large dam project proposals not reach their fruition. An attempt is made in this paper to define environmental sustainability in a more meaningful way from an analytic viewpoint. The case of Traveston Crossing Dam project in southeast Queensland, Australia is presented as an illustrative example and to evaluate the performance and relevance of the three broad criteria in a real-world application. The case study is also an example of the fact that environmental awareness can lead to enormous level of socio-political forces which can create many hurdles to cross by a democratic government

Optimisation of average rainfall estimation using copulas

Average rainfall estimation over a watershed can be viewed as a multivariate problem. Multivariate distributions are difficult to work with for estimation and decision making especially when the individual variables do not have Gaussian distributions. The complexity of the problem can be considerably reduced by using the technique of copulas, whereby working with marginal distributions computations are simplified to the level of univariate case. In this paper the copula functions are explored and illustrated with a specific application to rainfall estimation of a small catchment in Western Australia

Implications of climate change in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the world; its vulnerability is due primarily to its high population density, its flat deltaic terrain, and its limited resources to tackle the adverse effects of climate change. The impact of climate change in Bangladesh is expected to be far more widespread than is commonly associated with global warming but the various impacts are interlinked. Statistical analyses of data collected from various sources in Bangladesh reveal that there are noticeable increases in temperature especially nighttime temperature, flood and drought disasters are manifesting increasing trends, and food production is positively correlated with global warming. Infant mortality rates and death rates of 70-plus aged population appear to be negatively correlated with global warming but outbreaks of certain diseases may proliferate. The worst effects may come from sea level rise which in recent years have been observed to be higher than any model prediction. Sea level rise would aggravate flood and tropical cyclone damages and reduce arable land revealing the fact that the faster pace of change of one factor (eg, sea level rise) can alter or even reverse the observed trend of another factor (eg, crop production)

Climate change trends in Bangladesh

A summary of climate change trends in some hydrologic aspects that have manifested so far in Bangladesh is presented and compared with the forecasts, especially as reported in the Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC (2007). Changes in distribution pattern of temperature are analysed with quantile regression. Precipitation in Bangladesh is abundant compared to many other parts of the world, but it is the temporal distribution of rainfall that can have more significant impact if changes do occur. Changes in temporal distribution can be captured through PCI (Ceballos-Barbancho et al, 2008). There are certain aspects of climate change attributable to global warming which is occurring outside the territorial boundaries of Bangladesh but will affect the nation nevertheless. One such aspect is the decline of accumulated snow in the Himalayas, which is a major source of freshwater in Bangladesh. Another aspect is sea-level rise. Sea level will continue to rise in this century and beyond even with emission control and mitigation measures. Bangladesh being a deltaic region is very vulnerable to sea-level rise