Irrigation, collective action, and property rights

"Governments are now shifting their role from direct management of irrigation systems to regulation of the water sector, provision of support services to water user associations, and capacity building among water user associations and irrigation service providers.... International experience suggests that successful irrigation sector reform programs establish both a policy working group and a national secretariat that help to guide and coordinate the planning and implementation of the reform process. The process should include: strategic, participatory planning; research and stakeholder consultations; mobilization of political support; design and adoption of an appropriate policy, legal, institutional, and regulatory framework; strategy to coordinate lending and technical assistance; public awareness campaigns; and monitoring, evaluations, and course corrections." from Text.Collective action ,Poverty alleviation ,natural resources management ,Property rights ,

Irrigation management transfer in the Columbia Basin: lessons and international implications

Irrigation management, Farmer managed irrigation systems, Privatization, Irrigation efficiency, Irrigation effects, Project appraisal, Financing, Developing countries, Farm Management, Financial Economics,

Small dams and social capital in Yemen: how assistance strategies affect local investment and institutions

Dams / Investment / Development aid / Irrigated farming / Villages / Water delivery / Yemen

Modeling a hydraulic hybrid drivetrain : efficiency considerations

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on June 8, 2012).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Thesis advisor: Dr. Noah ManringIncludes bibliographical references.M. S. University of Missouri--Columbia 2011."December 2011"Increasing petroleum prices and environmental concerns have caused a demand for more fuel efficient vehicles. Hybrid vehicles provide a solution to this demand, and hydraulic hybrid vehicles are shown to have a cheaper cost of ownership compared to electric hybrid vehicles. A hybrid drivetrain with a hydraulic continuously variable transmission (CVT) is modeled to include efficiency information of the engine and hydraulic components. Since the expressions comprising the model can be set as functions of a control input, which is related to the swashplate angle of the hydraulic motor in the CVT, an optimization algorithm can determine a control input that maximizes the overall vehicle efficiency allowing the vehicle to increase its fuel economy. Simulations are conducted using two driving schedules: one to represent city driving and the other to represent highway driving. Based on the results of these simulations, the hybrid vehicle produces a 1.28% increase in fuel economy over a similar conventional vehicle in city driving and a 22.62% increase in fuel economy for highway driving

Foundations for Value-Driven Delegated Design with Human Decision Makers

Value-Driven Design is a paradigm that argues that the goal of the engineering design process is to create a system with maximum value. However, the design of large, complex systems undoubtedly requires the efforts of many individuals, and it is naive to think these individuals will act to maximize value if their own values are not maximized along the way. This research focuses on building the foundational knowledge for incentivizing the many individuals in large system design to make design decisions toward maximizing system value. Specifically, this dissertation uses the mathematical framework of normative decision making to formulate and evaluate incentives. We formulate two promising incentive structures: the Piece Rate–where a marginal increase in system value yields a marginal increase in reward an individual will receive– and the Variable Ratio–where a marginal increase in system value yields a marginal increase in the probability of a reward to the individual. These incentive structures are evaluated twofold: (1) by how well they motivate an engineer to provide effort to search for an optimal design solution and (2) by how well they motivate an engineer to collaborate with other engineers to yield an optimal system design solution. We derive mathematical models of effort and collaboration provision for incentive evaluation. Mathematical analysis suggests that which incentive structure motivates greater search effort or collaboration is contextual. The effectiveness of one incentive over the other for effort provision is dependent, in part, on the risk preferences of the engineer. The effectiveness of one incentive over the other for collaboration provision is dependent, in part, on how the incentive structures are scaled with respect to the feasible system alternative space. Therefore, the analysis in this dissertation suggests that the greater information a system-level manager has over the people in the design process and the general characteristics of the system design alternative space, the greater her ability for choose between the Piece Rate and Variable Ratio incentive structures to induce search effort and collaboration to maximize system value

An assessment of the Small-Scale Irrigation Management Turnover Program in Indonesia.

Irrigation management / Privatization / Small scale systems / Irrigation systems / Water distribution / Performance / Operations / Maintenance / Productivity / Crop yield / Economic impact / Costs / Indonesia

Reproducibility and Characterization of Head Kinematics During a Large Animal Acceleration Model of Traumatic Brain Injury

Acceleration parameters have been utilized for the last six decades to investigate pathology in both human and animal models of traumatic brain injury (TBI), design safety equipment, and develop injury thresholds. Previous large animal models have quantified acceleration from impulsive loading forces (i.e., machine/object kinematics) rather than directly measuring head kinematics. No study has evaluated the reproducibility of head kinematics in large animal models. Nine (five males) sexually mature Yucatan swine were exposed to head rotation at a targeted peak angular velocity of 250 rad/s in the coronal plane. The results indicated that the measured peak angular velocity of the skull was 51% of the impulsive load, was experienced over 91% longer duration, and was multi- rather than uni-planar. These findings were replicated in a second experiment with a smaller cohort (N = 4). The reproducibility of skull kinematics data was mostly within acceptable ranges based on published industry standards, although the coefficients of variation (8.9% for peak angular velocity or 12.3% for duration) were higher than the impulsive loading parameters produced by the machine (1.1 vs. 2.5%, respectively). Immunohistochemical markers of diffuse axonal injury and blood–brain barrier breach were not associated with variation in either skull or machine kinematics, suggesting that the observed levels of variance in skull kinematics may not be biologically meaningful with the current sample sizes. The findings highlight the reproducibility of a large animal acceleration model of TBI and the importance of direct measurements of skull kinematics to determine the magnitude of angular velocity, refine injury criteria, and determine critical thresholds

Lawson criterion for ignition exceeded in an inertial fusion experiment

For more than half a century, researchers around the world have been engaged in attempts to achieve fusion ignition as a proof of principle of various fusion concepts. Following the Lawson criterion, an ignited plasma is one where the fusion heating power is high enough to overcome all the physical processes that cool the fusion plasma, creating a positive thermodynamic feedback loop with rapidly increasing temperature. In inertially confined fusion, ignition is a state where the fusion plasma can begin "burn propagation" into surrounding cold fuel, enabling the possibility of high energy gain. While "scientific breakeven" (i.e., unity target gain) has not yet been achieved (here target gain is 0.72, 1.37 MJ of fusion for 1.92 MJ of laser energy), this Letter reports the first controlled fusion experiment, using laser indirect drive, on the National Ignition Facility to produce capsule gain (here 5.8) and reach ignition by nine different formulations of the Lawson criterion