Hasil untuk "Water supply for domestic and industrial purposes"

Fernando Reyes-González, Arturo Galvis-Spinola, Teresa Marcela Hernández-Mendoza et al.

La zonificación del área cafetera mexicana se realiza de forma geográfica, pero dada la diversidad climática de esta, dicha clasificación difícilmente capta la homogeneidad ambiental y no representa las condiciones adaptativas del cultivo. Con la evapotranspiración se pretende identificar la salida de humedad regional y, aunque es aceptada por la academia, es estimada y la calidad de la información generada depende de la capacidad predictiva del algoritmo o de la eficiencia del modelo empleados. Por ello, se propuso un indicador evaluativo del balance hídrico (BH) del área cafetera de Oaxaca, Puebla y Veracruz, con los periodos húmedos y secos definidos por su pluviosidad. Se colectaron datos mensuales de precipitación y evaporación del área estudiada (1921-2018), cuyo cociente se denominó “déficit de evaporación (DE)” (DE > 1.0: exceso, DE < 1.0: déficit). La estación húmeda (PH = junio: septiembre) y seca (PS = noviembre: abril) fueron delimitadas con PH; el mes más lluvioso anual se concretó con zonas con pluviosidad homogénea (PP6 = junio, PP7 = julio, PP8 = agosto, PP9 = septiembre); con el cálculo del DE y su modificación, el DEP1 (cociente del DE en PS vs. DE anual y su relación con el DE en enero) se delimitaron zonas con humedad homogénea, y se validó DEPH con la tendencia en PS y el cálculo del DE por mes y sitio específicos. DEP1 es un índice climático que detecta variaciones temporales y espaciales del BH de áreas cafeteras (R2 = 0.92), y contribuirá a gestionar los recursos hídricos y evaluar la adaptación ambiental del cultivo.

Philip Kaminsky, Rachitesh Kumar, Roger Lederman

The freight industry is undergoing a digital revolution, with an ever-growing volume of transactions being facilitated by digital marketplaces. A core capability of these marketplaces is the fulfillment of demand for truckload movements (loads) by procuring the services of carriers who execute them. Notably, these services are procured both through long-term contracts, where carriers commit capacity to execute loads (e.g., contracted fleet of drivers or lane-level commitments), and through short-term spot marketplaces, where carriers can agree to move individual loads for the offered price. This naturally couples two canonical problems of the transportation industry: contract assignment and spot pricing. In this work, we model and analyze the problem of coordinating long-term contract supply and short-term spot supply to minimize total procurement costs. We develop a Dual Frank Wolfe algorithm to compute shadow prices which allow the spot pricing policy to account for the committed contract capacity. We show that our algorithm achieves small relative regret against the optimal -- but intractable -- dynamic programming benchmark when the size of the market is large. Importantly, our Dual Frank Wolfe algorithm is computationally efficient, modular, and only requires oracle access to spot-pricing protocols, making it ideal for large-scale markets. Finally, we evaluate our algorithm on semi-synthetic data from a major Digital Freight Marketplace, and find that it yields significant savings ($\approx 10\%$) compared to a popular status-quo method.

Lázaro S. Elizondo, Alonso Aguilar-Ibarra, Robert H. Manson et al.

Este estudio presenta una evaluación sobre las percepciones y la disponibilidad a pagar (DAP) de agricultores empleando agua subterránea para irrigación de productos agrícolas en dos acuíferos del norte de Baja California, México. Se empleó el método de valuación contingente (VC) para medirla y asegurarse de la disponibilidad de agua en el futuro. Se combinaron datos de encuestas de 70 y 54 agricultores de los valles de Maneadero y Guadalupe, respectivamente, analizados usando regresión logística. La DAP de los agricultores es influenciada por las variables “escasez de agua actual para uso agrícola”, “nivel de educación”, “ingreso familiar”, “uso parcial de aguas residuales para irrigación”, “calidad del agua” y “cantidad a pagar”. Una DAP estimada de $0.13 dólares/m3, sugiere un costo ambiental de agotamiento de acuíferos de 17.4-24.9 millones de dólares para el acuífero de Guadalupe y $20.4 millones para el acuífero de Maneadero. Esta información puede servir como punto de partida para ayudar a tomadores de decisiones en el norte de México a diseñar políticas de precios más sostenibles, e invertir en la restauración de acuíferos a largo plazo.

Eber Risco, Waldo Lavado, Pedro Rau et al.

La precipitación representa uno de los elementos más importantes dentro del ciclo del agua para la representación de la oferta hídrica en cuencas hidrográficas. Debido a una inadecuada distribución de estaciones, seguridad, relieve, accesibilidad, etcétera, existe escasez de estos datos en cuencas andinas del Perú. Esto representa uno de los principales inconvenientes que afrontan los investigadores en ciencias de la tierra y ciencia del clima para la representación de manera espacial y temporal de la precipitación. En los últimos años, el avance de las tecnologías permite la estimación de las variables hidrológicas a partir de técnicas de sensoramiento remoto. Estos datos deben ser evaluados con observaciones meteorológicas. En esta investigación se evaluaron 11 productos de precipitación estimada por sensoramiento remoto (PPEDsr) que estiman la precipitación. La evaluación de los PPEDsr se realizó para el periodo 1981-2018 a paso de tiempo: diario, de diez días y mensual. Se utilizaron los estadísticos descriptivos: error medio (ME), correlación de Pearson (R), raíz del error medio cuadrático (RMSE), error absoluto medio (MAE) y BIAS relativo (BIAS). Además, de los estadísticos categóricos: probabilidad de detección (POD), tasa de falsas alarmas (FAR), índice de éxito crítico (CSI). Los productos MSWEP, CHIRPS, TRMM-3B42 y PERSIANN-CDR resultaron ser más eficientes para representar la variabilidad espacial de las precipitaciones diarias y acumuladas en la cuenca del Vilcanota. Los datos de sensoramiento remoto mostraron ser útiles para representar la variabilidad espacio-temporal de la precipitación la cuenca Vilcanota, los resultados sugieren que los datos de sensoramiento remoto podrían ser utilizados para simular el balance hidrológico en cuencas hidrográficas de montaña andinas con escasa información in-situ.

Sathish Nagaraj, Uma Shankar Masilamani

Abstract Geogenic contamination of fluoride severely impacts groundwater quality rather than industrial contamination. In this study, MODFLOW and MT3D applications are used to predict the groundwater flow and fluoride transport in Vaniyambadi and Ambur taluk in Tirupathur district. The conceptual model with three-layered aquifer system has been developed using visual MODFLOW flex v6.1 for an area of 955 km2, with each grid cell sized 1000 m × 1000 m (51 rows × 49 columns). The model was calibrated from 2021 to 2022 for 30 -day period. Calibration of groundwater flow simulation after 365 days indicates that R 2 value was 0.98; SEE, RMSE and NRMSE were 3.72 m, 27.87 m and 6.33%, respectively. MT3D simulation reveals that the value of R2 was 0.97, and RMSE and NRMSE were 0.23 m and 7.41%, respectively. The calculated fluoride concentration ranges between 0.3 and 3.49 mg/L; after 20 years of prediction, it was found to be 0.35–2.69 mg/L. The source of fluoride contamination is charnockite and granite-gneiss complex rock in Yelagiri Hill, which has 4 mg/L; after 20 years of simulation, the concentration was 9.91 mg/L and the plume extends up to 8 km towards the Palar River basin. Furthermore, HHRA has been used to evaluate the impact of fluoride on adults and children. According to the HHRA, hazard index (HI) was found to be more than one in many locations, causing serious health hazard. The results of these findings pave the way for further research on prevention of groundwater pollution due to geogenic migration.

Giacomo Zelbi, Leonardo Niccolò Ialongo, Stefan Thurner

The networked nature of supply chains makes them susceptible to systemic risk, where local firm failures can propagate through firm interdependencies that can lead to cascading supply chain disruptions. The systemic risk of supply chains can be quantified and is closely related to the topology and dynamics of supply chain networks (SCN). How different network properties contribute to this risk remains unclear. Here, we ask whether systemic risk can be significantly reduced by strategically rewiring supplier-customer links. In doing so, we understand the role of specific endogenously emerged network structures and to what extent the observed systemic risk is a result of fundamental properties of the dynamical system. We minimize systemic risk through rewiring by employing a method from statistical physics that respects firm-level constraints to production. Analyzing six specific subnetworks of the national SCNs of Ecuador and Hungary, we demonstrate that systemic risk can be considerably mitigated by 16-50% without reducing the production output of firms. A comparison of network properties before and after rewiring reveals that this risk reduction is achieved by changing the connectivity in non-trivial ways. These results suggest that actual SCN topologies carry unnecessarily high levels of systemic risk. We discuss the possibility of devising policies to reduce systemic risk through minimal, targeted interventions in supply chain networks through market-based incentives.

Diego Gosmar, Anna Chiara Pallotta, Giovanni Zenezini

This paper presents a comprehensive sustainability assessment framework for document intelligence within supply chain operations, centered on agentic artificial intelligence (AI). We address the dual objective of improving automation efficiency while providing measurable environmental performance in document-intensive workflows. The research compares three scenarios: fully manual (human-only), AI-assisted (human-in-the-loop, HITL), and an advanced multi-agent agentic AI workflow leveraging parsers and verifiers. Empirical results show that AI-assisted HITL and agentic AI scenarios achieve reductions of up to 70-90% in energy consumption, 90-97% in carbon dioxide emissions, and 89-98% in water usage compared to manual processes. Notably, full agentic configurations, combining advanced reasoning (thinking mode) and multi-agent validation, achieve substantial sustainability gains over human-only approaches, even when resource usage increases slightly versus simpler AI-assisted solutions. The framework integrates performance, energy, and emission indicators into a unified ESG-oriented methodology for assessing and governing AI-enabled supply chain solutions. The paper includes a complete replicability use case demonstrating the methodology's application to real-world document extraction tasks.

V. Schlünssen, D. Mandrioli, F. Pega et al.

BACKGROUND The World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) are developing joint estimates of the work-related burden of disease and injury (WHO/ILO Joint Estimates), with contributions from a large number of individual experts. Evidence from human, animal and mechanistic data suggests that occupational exposure to dusts and/or fibres (silica, asbestos and coal dust) causes pneumoconiosis. In this paper, we present a systematic review and meta-analysis of the prevalences and levels of occupational exposure to silica, asbestos and coal dust. These estimates of prevalences and levels will serve as input data for estimating (if feasible) the number of deaths and disability-adjusted life years that are attributable to occupational exposure to silica, asbestos and coal dust, for the development of the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates. OBJECTIVES We aimed to systematically review and meta-analyse estimates of the prevalences and levels of occupational exposure to silica, asbestos and coal dust among working-age (≥ 15 years) workers. DATA SOURCES We searched electronic academic databases for potentially relevant records from published and unpublished studies, including Ovid Medline, PubMed, EMBASE, and CISDOC. We also searched electronic grey literature databases, Internet search engines and organizational websites; hand-searched reference lists of previous systematic reviews and included study records; and consulted additional experts. STUDY ELIGIBILITY AND CRITERIA We included working-age (≥ 15 years) workers in the formal and informal economy in any WHO and/or ILO Member State but excluded children ( 2.4 million measurements covering 23 countries from all WHO regions (Africa, Americas, Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia, Europe, and Western Pacific). The target population in all 88 included studies was from major ISCO groups 3 (Technicians and Associate Professionals), 6 (Skilled Agricultural, Forestry and Fishery Workers), 7 (Craft and Related Trades Workers), 8 (Plant and Machine Operators and Assemblers), and 9 (Elementary Occupations), hereafter called manual workers. Most studies were performed in Construction, Manufacturing and Mining. For occupational exposure to silica, 65 studies (61 cross-sectional studies and 4 longitudinal studies) were included with > 2.3 million measurements collected in 22 countries in all six WHO regions. For occupational exposure to asbestos, 18 studies (17 cross-sectional studies and 1 longitudinal) were included with > 20,000 measurements collected in eight countries in five WHO regions (no data for Africa). For occupational exposure to coal dust, eight studies (all cross-sectional) were included comprising > 100,000 samples in six countries in five WHO regions (no data for Eastern Mediterranean). Occupational exposure to silica, asbestos and coal dust was assessed with personal or stationary active filter sampling; for silica and asbestos, gravimetric assessment was followed by technical analysis. Risk of bias profiles varied between the bodies of evidence looking at asbestos, silica and coal dust, as well as between industrial sectors. However, risk of bias was generally highest for the domain of selection of participants into the studies. The largest bodies of evidence for silica related to the industrial sectors of Construction (ISIC 41-43), Manufacturing (ISIC 20, 23-25, 27, 31-32) and Mining (ISIC 05, 07, 08). For Construction, the pooled prevalence estimate was 0.89 (95% CI 0.84 to 0.93, 17 studies, I2 91%, moderate quality of evidence) and the level estimate was rated as of very low quality of evidence. For Manufacturing, the pooled prevalence estimate was 0.85 (95% CI 0.78 to 0.91, 24 studies, I2 100%, moderate quality of evidence) and the pooled level estimate was rated as of very low quality of evidence. The pooled prevalence estimate for Mining was 0.75 (95% CI 0.68 to 0.82, 20 studies, I2 100%, moderate quality of evidence) and the pooled level estimate was 0.04 mg/m3 (95% CI 0.03 to 0.05, 17 studies, I2 100%, low quality of evidence). Smaller bodies of evidence were identified for Crop and animal production (ISIC 01; very low quality of evidence for both prevalence and level); Professional, scientific and technical activities (ISIC 71, 74; very low quality of evidence for both prevalence and level); and Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (ISIC 35; very low quality of evidence for both prevalence and level). For asbestos, the pooled prevalence estimate for Construction (ISIC 41, 43, 45,) was 0.77 (95% CI 0.65 to 0.87, six studies, I2 99%, low quality of evidence) and the level estimate was rated as of very low quality of evidence. For Manufacturing (ISIC 13, 23-24, 29-30), the pooled prevalence and level estimates were rated as being of very low quality of evidence. Smaller bodies of evidence were identified for Other mining and quarrying (ISIC 08; very low quality of evidence for both prevalence and level); Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (ISIC 35; very low quality of evidence for both prevalence and level); and Water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation (ISIC 37; very low quality of evidence for levels). For coal dust, the pooled prevalence estimate for Mining of coal and lignite (ISIC 05), was 1.00 (95% CI 1.00 to 1.00, six studies, I2 16%, moderate quality of evidence) and the pooled level estimate was 0.77 mg/m3 (95% CI 0.68 to 0.86, three studies, I2 100%, low quality of evidence). A small body of evidence was identified for Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (ISIC 35); with very low quality of evidence for prevalence, and the pooled level estimate being 0.60 mg/m3 (95% CI -6.95 to 8.14, one study, low quality of evidence). CONCLUSIONS Overall, we judged the bodies of evidence for occupational exposure to silica to vary by industrial sector between very low and moderate quality of evidence for prevalence, and very low and low for level. For occupational exposure to asbestos, the bodies of evidence varied by industrial sector between very low and low quality of evidence for prevalence and were of very low quality of evidence for level. For occupational exposure to coal dust, the bodies of evidence were of very low or moderate quality of evidence for prevalence, and low for level. None of the included studies were population-based studies (i.e., covered the entire workers' population in the industrial sector), which we judged to present serious concern for indirectness, except for occupational exposure to coal dust within the industrial sector of mining of coal and lignite. Selected estimates of the prevalences and levels of occupational exposure to silica by industrial sector are considered suitable as input data for the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates, and selected estimates of the prevalences and levels of occupational exposure to asbestos and coal dust may perhaps also be suitable for estimation purposes. Protocol identifier: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2018.06.005. PROSPERO registration number: CRD42018084131.

Izabela Zimoch, Jan Parafiński, Beata Filipek

Atef El Jery, Ayesha Noreen, Mubeen Isam et al.

Abstract By using microorganisms and the microalgae Chlorella vulgaris in conjunction with sequencing batch reactors (SBRs), the performance of a wastewater treatment facility was studied. For this purpose, the effect of pH, temperature, $${\mathrm{COD}}_{\mathrm{inlet}}$$ COD inlet , and air flowrate on COD removal rate and residual was investigated. A single-factorial optimization method is utilized to optimize the amount of COD removal, and the best result is obtained with a pH of 8, $${\mathrm{COD}}_{\mathrm{inlet}}=600\, \mathrm{mg}/\mathrm{l}$$ COD inlet = 600 mg / l , and an airflow rate of 55 l/min. Under optimal conditions, the amount of residual COD in the effluent reached 36  $$\mathrm{mg}/\mathrm{l}$$ mg / l , showing an augmentation in the efficiency of the desired system. Moreover, empirical correlations are proposed for double-factorial optimization of residual COD and COD removal. Also, a multilayer perceptron artificial neural network is proposed to model the process and predict the residual COD concentration. The useful technique of hyperparameter tuning is utilized to obtain the best result for the predictions. All the effective parameters, including the number of hidden layers, neurons, epochs, and batch size, are adjusted. Data from the experiments agreed well with the artificial neural network modeling results. For this modeling, the values of the correlation coefficient ( $${R}^{2}$$ R 2 ) and mean absolute error (MAE) were obtained as 0.98 and 2%, respectively.

Hassan M. Hussein Farh, Mohamed El Amine Ben Seghier, Ridwan Taiwo et al.

Abstract Corrosion is still the most common contributor to failures in Water Distribution Networks (WDNs), causing detrimental techno-socio-economic impacts. Although the corrosion process has been the subject of several studies, factors influencing this process remain a source of contention due to the complexity of the process and its influence by the surrounding environment. Considering the prior reviews, this comprehensive review is considered an early attempt to thoroughly cover the most influential corrosion factors in water pipelines. Corrosion factors have been classified into three main categories: 1) environmental factors; soil factors, external factors, and stray current factors; 2) pipe-related factors, and 3) operational factors. A fault tree analysis diagram was used to map, discuss, and analyze all significant corrosion causes of the buried water pipelines to facilitate easy visualization from basic factors to their intermediate and parent factors. Furthermore, the techno-socio-economic impacts of corrosion on water pipelines and beyond are appropriately addressed to demonstrate the issue’s multi-dimensional importance. The research is expanded to rank these factors using the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process to provide a better understanding of the currently focused research investigation and to enable the extraction of gaps and existing limitations in scholarly literature. The findings revealed that water quality is the most investigated factor, followed by electrical infrastructure and soil quality. Conversely, operational factors exhibit the greatest relative weight (0.428), followed by environmental factors (0.337). These findings highlight areas where further research is needed, and the article proposes potential directions for future studies to address these gaps.

Ehsan Behnamtalab, Vahidreza Maskani, Hamed Sarkardeh

Abstract The USBR VI stilling basin is one of the oldest basins designed to dissipate the energy at the outlet of pipes. In this study, the effect of two parameters including the Froude number (Fr) of inlet flow to the basin and the ratio of basin width to equivalent depth of the inlet flow (W/D) on the characteristics of mean and turbulent flow inside the USBR VI stilling basin were investigated, numerically. Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations were solved with Re-Normalization Group (RNG) k-ε turbulence model. Results showed that by increasing W⁄D, from 3.50 to 9.23, decreasing rate of the average velocity at the end of the basin to the average velocity of the inflow increases from 80 to 97% and decreasing rate of the maximum velocity at the end of the basin to the average velocity of the inflow increases from 40 to 87%. Also, by increasing W⁄D, from 3.50 to 9.23, the average turbulent dissipation rate in the whole basin increases to 4.5 times, moderately. Moreover, by increasing W⁄D, from 3.50 to 9.23, the dissipation of turbulent flow energy in the basin becomes four times. Therefore, to design a USBR VI stilling basin based on the existing conditions, W⁄D recommended to increase as much as possible until nearly 10.

Meera G Mohan, Akhilesh AR, Adarsh S et al.

Intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curve is one of the important hydrologic tools used for the design of hydraulic infrastructure. The static return period assumption of precipitation extremes is invalid in a changing climate environment, and the underestimation of rainfall intensity may lead to the failure of infrastructure in extreme events. This study first developed the non-stationary (NS) IDF curves for six selected locations in India based on sub-daily station data based on time-dependent estimates of five combinations of Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution parameters. Then, in order to identify the critical regions of rainfall non-stationarity, the IDF curves were developed for 357 grid points over India using the daily gridded data for the period 1951–2016 at 1° × 1° resolution. The comparison of spatial patterns of rainfall intensity estimates under stationary and non-stationary showed that about 23% of grids showed an overestimation of NS rainfall over their stationary counterparts by at least 15%. About 32 grid locations which showed at least 15% overestimation of rainfall under an NS case displayed a significantly increasing rainfall trend. The majority of the grids with larger deviation of non-stationary rainfall estimates over stationary values are located in India's eastern regions and coastal belts. HIGHLIGHTS Developed non-stationary IDF curves for the whole of India.; Variation in location and scale parameters governs the fitting of the best model of over 85% of grids.; About 23% of regions showed high non-stationarity of rainfall.; Higher levels of non-stationarity were observed in Coastal regions and Eastern parts.;

Kartik Venkataraman, Narayanan Kannan, Victoria Chraibi

In recognition of the unique hydrologic functions they serve, certain stream segments in Texas have been designated as ecologically significant. In this study, we evaluated low flow trends in seven hydrologically unique stream segments spanning three climatic divisions in Texas from 1970 to 2019. Despite increasing mean annual temperatures, there are no trends in low flows or other hydrologic variables in the East Fork of the San Jacinto River in the Upper Coast climatic division, likely due to local moisture surplus effects from the Gulf of Mexico. In the Edwards Plateau climatic division, annual low flows and annual baseflows are decreasing in the South Fork of the Guadalupe River, the Sabinal River and the Frio River. While increasing mean annual temperatures appear to have a role in the drying of all three of these stream segments, increasing annual potential evapotranspiration may be an additional driver in the Sabinal and Frio Rivers. Analysis of the Standardized Streamflow Index indicates that all seven stream segments experienced their worst streamflow droughts in the 2010s. As such, the watersheds draining to the gages on these stream segments have minimal anthropogenic impacts, suggesting the influence of climate on the observed stream drying.

Tewodros Eyob Ada, Kenate Nemera Nigussa, Cecil N. M. Ouma

The catalytic reduction of $\mathrm{CO_{2}/CO}$ is an appealing approach for reducing greenhouse gas concentrations while also producing renewable energy. We used two-dimensional transitional metal carbides known as Mxenes as the most promising catalysts for boosted water-gas-shift reaction for conversion of $\mathrm{CO_{2}}$ to chemical fuel and liquid hydrogen. Our findings reveal that the $\mathrm{Ti_{2}C}$ surface collects $\mathrm{CO_{2}}$ and converts it to reactive carbon mono oxide gas and oxygen termination. Surface catalytic reactions always start with $\mathrm{CO}$ hydrogenation, which is sustained by a continual supply of water at the optimum temperature. $\mathrm{Ti_{2}C}$ surface terminations are in charge of the formation of molecules, free radicals, and alcohols, and the conversion reaction is cycled frequently, producing methanol, methane, water, and hydrogen molecules with each cycle. Furthermore, once water is injected for system hydrogenation, the $\mathrm{Ti_{2}C}$ surface has the ability to hydrogenate itself, because water breaks down into its constituents $\mathrm{O}$ and $\mathrm{OH}$ in the presence of free radicals such as $\mathrm{H_{2}CO}$. Thus, self hydrogenation increases liquid hydrogen generation in addition to the usage of water for hydrogen supply.

Jayanthi Vajiram, Negha Senthil, Nean Adhith. P et al.

The rapid growth of air and space travel in recent years has resulted in an increased demand for legal regulation in the aviation and aerospace fields. This paper provides an overview of air and space law, including the topics of aircraft accident investigations, air traffic control, international borders and law, and the regulation of space activities. With the increasing complexity of air and space travel, it is important to understand the legal implications of these activities. This paper examines the various legal aspects of air and space law, including the roles of national governments, international organizations, and private entities. It also provides an overview of the legal frameworks that govern these activities and the implications of international law. Finally, it considers the potential for future developments in the field of air and space law. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the legal aspects of air and space travel and their implications for international and domestic travel, as well as for international business and other activities in the air and space domains.

Wan Wang, Haiyan Wang, Adam J. Sobey

Problem definition: Supply chains are constantly evolving networks. Reinforcement learning is increasingly proposed as a solution to provide optimal control of these networks. Academic/practical: However, learning in continuously varying environments remains a challenge in the reinforcement learning literature.Methodology: This paper therefore seeks to address whether agents can control varying supply chain problems, transferring learning between environments that require different strategies and avoiding catastrophic forgetting of tasks that have not been seen in a while. To evaluate this approach, two state-of-the-art Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are compared: an actor-critic learner, Proximal Policy Optimisation(PPO), and a Recurrent Proximal Policy Optimisation (RPPO), PPO with a Long Short-Term Memory(LSTM) layer, which is showing popularity in online learning environments. Results: First these methods are compared on six sets of environments with varying degrees of stochasticity. The results show that more lean strategies adopted in Batch environments are different from those adopted in Stochastic environments with varying products. The methods are also compared on various continuous supply chain scenarios, where the PPO agents are shown to be able to adapt through continuous learning when the tasks are similar but show more volatile performance when changing between the extreme tasks. However, the RPPO, with an ability to remember histories, is able to overcome this to some extent and takes on a more realistic strategy. Managerial implications: Our results provide a new perspective on the continuously varying supply chain, the cooperation and coordination of agents are crucial for improving the overall performance in uncertain and semi-continuous non-stationary supply chain environments without the need to retrain the environment as the demand changes.

Yuanzheng Li, Xinxin Long, Yang Li et al.

Industrial demand response (IDR) plays an important role in promoting the utilization of renewable energy (RE) in power systems. However, it will lead to power adjustments on the supply side, which is also a non-negligible factor in affecting RE utilization. To comprehensively analyze this impact while enhancing RE utilization, this paper proposes a power demand-supply cooperative response (PDSCR) strategy based on both day-ahead and intraday time scales. The day-ahead PDSCR determines a long-term scheme for responding to the predictable trends in RE supply. However, this long-term scheme may not be suitable when uncertain RE fluctuations occur on an intraday basis. Regarding intraday PDSCR, we formulate a profit-driven cooperation approach to address the issue of RE fluctuations. In this context, unreasonable profit distributions on the demand-supply side would lead to the conflict of interests and diminish the effectiveness of cooperative responses. To mitigate this issue, we derive multi-individual profit distribution marginal solutions (MIPDMSs) based on satisfactory profit distributions, which can also maximize cooperative profits. Case studies are conducted on an modified IEEE 24-bus system and an actual power system in China. The results verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy for enhancing RE utilization, via optimizing the coordination of IDR flexibility with generation resources.

Ana Clara da Rosa Santos, David McCormack

Abstract The aim of this work is to provide the necessary steps to acquire the total cost of water at industrial facilities. Therefore, the research was developed in three parts: literature review to identify the available tools related to water management; a case study in the context of the dairy industry; and an analysis and discussion of results achieved. Water applications for process and utility end-users in the manufacturing context require pre- and post-treatment – these are interconnected assets that increase the cost of water, and introduce system inefficiencies, thus, they represent a challenge faced by companies and energy/utility managers. A meta-analysis approach was used to examine data from several independent studies of water management, in order to determine overall trends. The sources utilized during the study were water-related scientific publications, Master theses, books, companies, and standards’ websites. The results of the study highlight that auditing can be used to investigate water flows within productive processes entirely, as well as within individual process units and operations. The present study incorporates water-related thinking about supply and demand costs, opportunities, and strategies, promoting energy systems thinking and providing an internationally replicable solution to calculate the true cost of water.

Д.С. Сапаргалиев, Е.Ж. Муртазин, В.А. Смоляр et al.

В статье представлен анализ изученности месторождений подземных вод меловых отложений Жемского бассейна пластовых и блоково-пластовых вод второго порядка, относящегося к Прикаспийской системе пластовых вод артезианского бассейна первого порядка в пределах Актюбинской области. Приведены актуальные сведения об эксплуатационных запасах и прогнозных ресурсах подземных вод, степени их изученности и освоения. Выделены наиболее перспективные для целей хозяйственно-питьевого водоснабжения населенных пунктов и промышленных объектов пресные и слабосолоноватые воды, приуроченные к альбским отложениям нижнего мела, распространенные в пределах Жемского артезианского бассейна практически повсеместно. Приведены перспективы освоения пресных подземных вод меловых отложений Жемского артезианского бассейна, в том числе за счет их переброски в вододефицитные регионы. The article presents an analysis of the study of groundwater deposits study in the Cretaceous sites of the Zhem basin of the second order formation and block-formation waters, related to the Caspian system of formation waters of the first order artesian basin within the Aktobe region. Up-to-date information about operational reserves and forecast resources of groundwater, the degree of their study and development are given. Fresh and slightly brackish waters confined to the Albian deposits of the Lower Cretaceous distributed almost everywhere within the Zhem artesian basin and are singled out as the most promising for the purposes of domestic and drinking water supply of settlements and industrial facilities. The prospects for the development of fresh groundwater from the Cretaceous sites of the Zhem artesian basin, including their transfer to water-deficient regions, are presented.