Performance of Bridges with Damaged Elements in Extreme Flood Events

Recent floods in Southeast Queensland, Australia have caused detrimental impacts on the social, environmental and economic aspects of the country. Bridges are considered as critical infrastructure because in a time of a disaster and during its recovery stage, bridges provide access for emergency services to flood affected communities. A community has the potential to be isolated if a bridge crossing a river or creek is damaged by flooding. Therefore it is important to understand the impact that flooding has on bridges so that they can be made less vulnerable to damage from these extreme events. In order to analyse the effects of flooding, a finite element model of a case study bridge was created using the software package Strand7. The flood loads determined by the Australian Standards were applied to a case study bridge (Tenthill Creek Bridge near Gatton in the Lockyer Valley, Queensland). Damage to the bridge was also simulated by adding weakened elements to the main structural elements of the bridge. In order to compare different load cases and damage scenarios performance indicators were used to assess the vulnerability. It was found that a damaged girder subjected to log impact loading produced the maximum stress in the bridge

Precautionary Regulation in Europe and the United States: A Quantitative Comparison

Much attention has been addressed to the question of whether Europe or the United States adopts a more precautionary stance to the regulation of potential environmental, health, and safety risks. Some commentators suggest that Europe is more risk-averse and precautionary, whereas the US is seen as more risk-taking and optimistic about the prospects for new technology. Others suggest that the US is more precautionary because its regulatory process is more legalistic and adversarial, while Europe is more lax and corporatist in its regulations. The flip-flop hypothesis claims that the US was more precautionary than Europe in the 1970s and early 1980s, and that Europe has become more precautionary since then. We examine the levels and trends in regulation of environmental, health, and safety risks since 1970. Unlike previous research, which has studied only a small set of prominent cases selected non-randomly, we develop a comprehensive list of almost 3,000 risks and code the relative stringency of regulation in Europe and the US for each of 100 risks randomly selected from that list for each year from 1970 through 2004. Our results suggest that: (a) averaging over risks, there is no significant difference in relative precaution over the period, (b) weakly consistent with the flip-flop hypothesis, there is some evidence of a modest shift toward greater relative precaution of European regulation since about 1990, although (c) there is a diversity of trends across risks, of which the most common is no change in relative precaution (including cases where Europe and the US are equally precautionary and where Europe or the US has been consistently more precautionary). The overall finding is of a mixed and diverse pattern of relative transatlantic precaution over the period

Decision making and risk management in adventure sports coaching

Adventure sport coaches practice in environments that are dynamic and high in risk, both perceived and actual. The inherent risks associated with these activities, individuals’ responses and the optimal exploitation of both combine to make the processes of risk management more complex and hazardous than the traditional sports where risk management is focused almost exclusively on minimization. Pivotal to this process is the adventure sports coaches’ ability to make effective judgments regarding levels of risk, potential benefits and possible consequences. The exact nature of this decision making process should form the basis of coaching practice and coach education in this complex and dynamic field. This positional paper examines decision making by the adventure sports coach in these complex, challenging environments and seeks to stimulate debate whilst offering a basis for future research into this topic

Using Grizzly Bears to Assess Harvest-Ecosystem Tradeoffs in Salmon Fisheries

Using grizzly bears as surrogates for “salmon ecosystem” function, the authors develop a generalizable ecosystem-based management framework that enables decision-makers to quantify ecosystem-harvest tradeoffs between wild and human recipients of natural resources like fish

Transparent Meta-Analysis: Does Aging Spare Prospective Memory with Focal vs. Non-Focal Cues?

Background: Prospective memory (ProM) is the ability to become aware of a previously-formed plan at the right time and place. For over twenty years, researchers have been debating whether prospective memory declines with aging or whether it is spared by aging and, most recently, whether aging spares prospective memory with focal vs. non-focal cues. Two recent meta-analyses examining these claims did not include all relevant studies and ignored prevalent ceiling effects, age confounds, and did not distinguish between prospective memory subdomains (e.g., ProM proper, vigilance, habitual ProM) (see Uttl, 2008, PLoS ONE). The present meta-analysis focuses on the following questions: Does prospective memory decline with aging? Does prospective memory with focal vs. non-focal cues decline with aging? Does the size of age-related declines with focal vs. non-focal cues vary across ProM subdomains? And are age-related declines in ProM smaller than agerelated declines in retrospective memory? Methods and Findings: A meta-analysis of event-cued ProM using data visualization and modeling, robust count methods, and conventional meta-analysis techniques revealed that first, the size of age-related declines in ProM with both focal and non-focal cues are large. Second, age-related declines in ProM with focal cues are larger in ProM proper and smaller in vigilance. Third, age-related declines in ProM proper with focal cues are as large as age-related declines in recall measures of retrospective memory

Transparent Meta-Analysis of Prospective Memory and Aging

Prospective memory (ProM) refers to our ability to become aware of a previously formed plan at the right time and place. After two decades of research on prospective memory and aging, narrative reviews and summaries have arrived at widely different conclusions. One view is that prospective memory shows large age declines, larger than age declines on retrospective memory (RetM). Another view is that prospective memory is an exception to age declines and remains invariant across the adult lifespan. The present meta-analysis of over twenty years of research settles this controversy. It shows that prospective memory declines with aging and that the magnitude of age decline varies by prospective memory subdomain (vigilance, prospective memory proper, habitual prospective memory) as well as test setting (laboratory, natural). Moreover, this meta-analysis demonstrates that previous claims of no age declines in prospective memory are artifacts of methodological and conceptual issues afflicting prior research including widespread ceiling effects, low statistical power, age confounds, and failure to distinguish between various subdomains of prospective memory (e.g., vigilance and prospective memory proper)

Analyzing Stakeholder Water Source Preference Based upon Social Capital: a Case Study of the Fajr Jam Gas Refinery in Iran

Gas refineries are among the most water-intensive industries in the world. The Fajr Jam gas refinery is one such example, located in the southern Iran. The indiscriminate use of aquifer resources for this highly profitable industry creates tragedy of the commons effects, causing significant environmental controversy and threatening the long-term water security of the region. It behooves decision makers, therefore, to examine a broad range of adaptive water management strategies for this industry. The implementation of such strategies requires understanding the preferences and potential conflicts that may emerge among competing stakeholder interests. This quantitative social scientific study examines stakeholder preferences among water management options through the lens of social capital. Elite stakeholder representatives (including agricultural organizations, governmental organizations, the Water, and Power Authority, Department of Health, Bureau of Water and Wastewater) were canvassed through a survey instrument using paired comparisons. Data were analyzed using Expert Choice software and an analytic hierarchy process technique. The results show that accountability is the main criterion for selecting the best water sources and ranked first with the Eigenvector 0.62. Also, the results show that the least important criterion was social cohesion with the Eigenvalue 0.033. The criteria of partnership and trust ranked as two and three with Eigenvalues 0.215 and 0.133, respectively. The results indicate that the construction of salt water transmission from the sea (A = 0.240) is the preferred option among other alternatives, and this is confirmed by sensitivity analysis