HM TOWER OF LONDON: SCIENCE OUTREACH LEARNING ZONE AT THE ROYAL ARMOURIES

This report, prepared for the Royal Armouries Material Science Learning Zone at HM Tower of London, details the design, creation, and evaluation of a loan box outreach program focusing on the material science of polymers. Hands-on learning activities have been shown to increase the amount of information students retained, thus the loan box will primarily contain this type of activities supplemented by literature and lecture materials. The project intends to spark interest in materials science in students at the Key Stage 3 level as part of an initiative to address a much larger issue; namely, a declining interest in the sciences in the UK

Fractally-organized Connectionist Networks: Conjectures and Preliminary Results

A strict interpretation of connectionism mandates complex networks of simple components. The question here is, is this simplicity to be interpreted in absolute terms? I conjecture that absolute simplicity might not be an essential attribute of connectionism, and that it may be effectively exchanged with a requirement for relative simplicity, namely simplicity with respect to the current organizational level. In this paper I provide some elements to the analysis of the above question. In particular I conjecture that fractally organized connectionist networks may provide a convenient means to achive what Leibniz calls an "art of complication", namely an effective way to encapsulate complexity and practically extend the applicability of connectionism to domains such as sociotechnical system modeling and design. Preliminary evidence to my claim is brought by considering the design of the software architecture designed for the telemonitoring service of Flemish project "Little Sister".Comment: Draft of an invited paper for PEWET (1st Workshop on PErvasive WEb Technologies, trends and challenges), http://www.irpps.cnr.it/en/events/call-for-papers-pewet-pervasive-web-technologies-trends-and-challenge

Integrated modeling for assessing water-energy-land nexus - Application of a hydrological and hydro-economic modeling framework for the Zambezi basin

Water demands for agricultural, industry, domestic and environmental uses in arid and semiarid regions continue to grow, while available surface and ground water resources remains the same or could even decline because of climate change. Decision makers need tools to support the implementation of sustainable water management policies. Hydro-economic modeling could be used for this task, because of its capacity to integrate key biophysical and socio economic components within a unified framework. However, linking a hydro-economic model with a high-resolution hydrological model is needed in order to incorporate an adequate representation of present and future elements of the water balance. Here we show the coupling of the Extended Continental-scale Hydro-economic Optimization model(ECHO), an integrated economic-technological modeling tool for application to long-term transboundary river basin planning with the Community Water Model (CWATM), a high-resolution global hydrological model. The trajectories of run-off and baseflow are simulated at high resolution (5’, daily) with CWATM and processed to define average inflow scenarios (monthly) for the sub-basin units represented in ECHO. Estimates of industrial, domestic and agricultural water withdrawals, return flows and environmental flow requirements are also taken from the hydrological simulations. Based on this, the ECHO model assesses the cost-effective combination of solutions that could address water scarcity at basin level. Solutions in this context represent transformative policies, basin-wide infrastructure configurations, and investment strategies that enable sustainable development. As an example the novel framework is applied to the Zambezi basin, the largest river basin in Southern Africa, covering 1.4 million square km across eight countries and home to about 40 million people. CWATM provides projections of water availability and demand till 2050 at high spatial resolution under alternative socio-economic and climatic scenarios, while ECHO provides information on the least-cost combination of water management options that can satisfy those water demands subject to available water resources at basin level

Water Futures and Solution - Fast Track Initiative (Final Report)

The Water Futures and Solutions Initiative (WFaS) is a cross-sector, collaborative global water project. Its objective is to apply systems analysis, develop scientific evidence and identify water-related policies and management practices, working together consistently across scales and sectors to improve human well-being through water security. The approach is a stakeholder-informed, scenario-based assessment of water resources and water demand that employs ensembles of state-of-the-art socio-economic and hydrological models, examines possible futures and tests the feasibility, sustainability and robustness of options that can be implemented today and can be sustainable and robust across a range of possible futures and associated uncertainties. This report aims at assessing the global current and future water situation

Multi-model and multi-scenario assessments of Asian water futures: the Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) initiative

This paper presents one of the first quantitative scenario assessments for future water supply and demand in Asia to 2050. The assessment, developed by the Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) initiative, uses the latest set of global climate change and socioeconomic scenarios and state-of-the-art global hydrological models. In Asia, water demand for irrigation, industry and households is projected to increase substantially in the coming decades (30-40% by 2050 compared to 2010). These changes are expected to exacerbate water stress, especially in the current hotspots such as north India and Pakistan, and north China. By 2050, 20% of the land area in the Asia-Pacific region, with a population of 1.6-2 billion, is projected to experience severe water stress. We find that socioeconomic changes are the main drivers of worsening water scarcity in Asia, with climate change impacts further increasing the challenge into the 21st century. Moreover, a detailed basin-level analysis of the hydro-economic conditions of 40 Asian basins shows that although the coping capacity of all basins is expected to improve due to GDP growth, some basins continuously face severe water challenges. These basins will potentially be home to up to 1.6 billion people by mid-21st century