Pathways to sustainable grassland development in China: findings of three case studies

Grassland development serves as an important part of the national sustainable development strategy in China. This paper defines the strategic objectives of grassland development in China based on the national strategy, the current status of grassland development in China and the status of grassland development internationally. As China is at a transformational stage of implementing an ecological economic system in grassland development, top priorities should be given to enhance the values of grassland ecosystem services, reduce the pressures on the grasslands, and restructure the grassland industry. Case studies on three pasture areas in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia, which have distinct ecological and climatic features and are at different development stages, revealed that the core issue for sustainable development of grassland in China is in addressing the conflict between the people and grasslands. Improving the social security system and enhancing the capacity of the herders in implementing sustainable development are the recommended pathways for sustainable grassland development in China.Die Entwicklung von Steppengebieten ist ein wichtiges Element der Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie in der VR China. Dieses Papier erläutert die strategischen Ziele der Steppengebietsentwicklung im Rahmen der Strategie zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung in China und bettet diese in die internationalen Entwicklungen der Steppengebietspolitik ein. Zur Lösung der Armutsfalle der Herdenbesitzer in Steppengebieten wird eine Transformationsstrategie der integrierten ökologischen, ökonomischen und sozialen Nachhaltigkeit vorgeschlagen und programmatisch ausformuliert. Die Bewertung und Honorierung von Ökosystemdienstleistungen spielt darin eine zentrale Rolle wie auch die Verbesserung der Sozialversicherungssysteme für ländliche Räume. Drei Fallbeispiele aus Sichuan und der Inneren Mongolei zeigen die Machbarkeit und die verschiedenen Stufen dieser Strategie unter sehr unterschiedlichen klimatischen und sozioökonomischen Entwicklungsbedingungen

Belief rule-base expert system with multilayer tree structure for complex problems modeling

Belief rule-base (BRB) expert system is one of recognized and fast-growing approaches in the areas of complex problems modeling. However, the conventional BRB has to suffer from the combinatorial explosion problem since the number of rules in BRB expands exponentially with the number of attributes in complex problems, although many alternative techniques have been looked at with the purpose of downsizing BRB. Motivated by this challenge, in this paper, multilayer tree structure (MTS) is introduced for the first time to define hierarchical BRB, also known as MTS-BRB. MTS- BRB is able to overcome the combinatorial explosion problem of the conventional BRB. Thereafter, the additional modeling, inferencing, and learning procedures are proposed to create a self-organized MTS-BRB expert system. To demonstrate the development process and benefits of the MTS-BRB expert system, case studies including benchmark classification datasets and research and development (R&D) project risk assessment have been done. The comparative results showed that, in terms of modelling effectiveness and/or prediction accuracy, MTS-BRB expert system surpasses various existing, as well as traditional fuzzy system-related and machine learning-related methodologie

Development of online education and its applicationin Shanghai Maritime University

Online teaching is becoming an important alternative approach to maritime education, which traditionally relies on face-to-face instruction, particularly during the period when the COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on the educational system worldwide. On the base of the conceptualization of online education through a literature review, this study demonstrates the case of an innovative online teaching system developed and implemented by Shanghai Maritime University (SMU) that successfully allowed some 20,000 students to resume learning despite the COVID-19 disruption. To realize large-scale online teaching, four phases of development the SMU underwent are introduced. The whole process of planning, preparation, implementation as well as evaluation is elaborated. In addition to class teaching, other major activities delivered remotely are also introduced, including short-term training programs, graduation ceremony, online career fairs, online interviews for postgraduate admission. Difficulties and challenges in shifting to the new teaching method and how SMU developed effective strategies to solve these issues are addressed. This study provides a valuable example of an online teaching system realized in a maritime institution. Furthermore, it may serve as an inspirational reference to peer maritime institutions to adopt or improve their competence of online learning systems