A method for Bayesian estimation of the probability of local intensity for some cities in Japan

Seismic hazard in terms of probability of exceedance of a given intensity in a given time span,was assessed for 12 sites in Japan.The method does not use any attenuation law.Instead,the dependence of local intensity on epicentral intensity I 0 is calculated directly from the data,using a Bayesian model.According to this model (Meroni et al., 1994),local intensity follows the binomial distribution with parameters (I 0 ,p ).The parameter p is considered as a random variable following the Beta distribution.This manner of Bayesian estimates of p are assessed for various values of epicentral intensity and epicentral distance.In order to apply this model for the assessment of seismic hazard,the area under consideration is divided into seismic sources (zones)of known seismicity.The contribution of each source on the seismic hazard at every site is calculated according to the Bayesian model and the result is the combined effect of all the sources.High probabilities of exceedance were calculated for the sites that are in the central part of the country,with hazard decreasing slightly towards the north and the south parts

Environmental Effects and Externalities from the Transport Sector and Sustainable Transportation Planning – A Review

A literature review of the environmental effects and externalities of the transport sector and the concerns in sustainable transport planning is presented in this paper. The relation between air pollution and transport, considering that transport is an important air pollution emitter, is initially analyzed. The causal relationship between per capita GDP and individual consumption for transport, annual growth of global GDP and CO2 emissions and changes in CO2 emissions from fuel combustion by the various transport modes is then explained. Furthermore, energy consumption of transport modes for the EU countries is illustrated, as well as the relation between traffic flow and noise emissions and the implications of transport infrastructure to the landscape and environmental aesthetics. The increase in passenger mobility has caused traffic congestion, constituting an effect which is also quantified. Furthermore, the impact of accidents in terms of injuries, impairments and fatalities is a global social and public health issue. Moreover, the transport policies and the impact on economic and urban development, health, environmental protection and energy, focusing also on possible conflicts and convergence between safety and environmental policies are discussed. Finally, transport sector externalities, quantification in monetary units and possible effects of eventual internalization of these external costs are presented. Keywords: Environmental effects; Externalities; Internalization; Sustainable; Transportation planning JEL Classifications: H23; O44; Q53; R4

Coupling and Decoupling Relationships between Energy Consumption and Air Pollution from the Transport Sector and the Economic Activity

In the present paper an analysis of whether and under which conditions coupling or decoupling exists between growth rates (as reflecting in GDP rates) of the economy and energy consumption and air pollution from the transport sector. An extensive time period from 1995 to 2012 is surveyed and divided into two periods, from 1995 to 2008 (growth period) and from 2008 to 2012 (recession period). The analysis is conducted for the 28 European Union countries and illustrates, for most of these countries, a coupling phenomenon for the growth period and a decoupling phenomenon for the recession period. This finding may be essential for the further institutional steps to be undertaken, in view of the reduction of CO2 and of energy conservation. Keywords: Coupling; Decoupling; Transportation; Environment; Sustainability JEL Classifications: H23; O44; R4; Q53

Coarse-grained reconfigurable array architectures

Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Array (CGRA) architectures accelerate the same inner loops that benefit from the high ILP support in VLIW architectures. By executing non-loop code on other cores, however, CGRAs can focus on such loops to execute them more efficiently. This chapter discusses the basic principles of CGRAs, and the wide range of design options available to a CGRA designer, covering a large number of existing CGRA designs. The impact of different options on flexibility, performance, and power-efficiency is discussed, as well as the need for compiler support. The ADRES CGRA design template is studied in more detail as a use case to illustrate the need for design space exploration, for compiler support and for the manual fine-tuning of source code

Clustering and forecasting of dissolved oxygen concentration on a river basin

The aim of this contribution is to combine statistical methodologies to geographically classify homogeneous groups of water quality monitoring sites based on similarities in the temporal dynamics of the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration, in order to obtain accurate forecasts of this quality variable. Our methodology intends to classify the water quality monitoring sites into spatial homogeneous groups, based on the DO concentration, which has been selected and considered relevant to characterize the water quality. We apply clustering techniques based on Kullback Information, measures that are obtained in the state space modelling process. For each homogeneous group of water quality monitoring sites we model the DO concentration using linear and state space models, which incorporate tendency and seasonality components in different ways. Both approaches are compared by the mean squared error (MSE) of forecasts