Humanitarian response to hurricane disasters: Coordinating flood‐risk mitigation with fundraising and relief operations

To alleviate flooding, caused by hurricanes, governments build structural barriers called levees. In addition, relief providers such as the nongovernmental organizations and charities raise funds, and procure and deliver supplies (food, water, and medicines) for humanitarian relief. The strategy for managing disasters must, therefore, weigh the costs and benefits of building levees as well as procuring and delivering supplies. We use a three‐stage decision making framework to study how the investment in levee capacity can be integrated with supply procurements, fundraising, and rapid response. One of our major findings is that a large fundraising cost discourages postdisaster funding, implying relatively large investments in levee and prepositioned supplies. That notwithstanding, a large social value (of saving life) can tilt the balance in favor of postdisaster funding. If the levee capacity increases, funding for predisaster procurement is reduced without affecting postdisaster funding. For a sufficiently large increase in capacity, however, postdisaster response becomes superfluous. We also find that hurricane uncertainty motivates levees with large capacity. In contrast, levee‐failures motivate levees with small capacity.     

石墨烯作为水基半合成切削液添加剂的硬质合金-钢材料摩擦学特性分析

改善加工过程润滑条件是延缓刀具磨损的重要途径。将石墨烯作为3034水基半合成切削液的添加剂,研究石墨烯悬浮切削液的硬质合金-钢材料摩擦学性能,研究对象是由硬质合金YG8制备的金属球和由45#钢制备的圆盘形试件;采用球-盘摩擦副接触方式在摩擦磨损试验机上进行试验,测定了质量分数为0. 1%~0. 9%的石墨烯悬浮切削液的平均摩擦特性和摩擦系数;采用激光共聚焦显微镜对磨痕轮廓进行提取,并得出磨损定量评价指数,并用扫描电镜和拉曼光谱仪对磨痕进行磨损机理分析;进行切削实验来分析石墨烯悬浮切削液对切削性能指标的改善情况。实验分析结果表明:石墨烯悬浮切削液能明显改善硬质合金-45#钢之间的润滑条件,摩擦系数和磨损率显著下降,采用不同质量分数石墨烯悬浮切削液的平均摩擦系数较原半合成切削液下降12. 9%~57. 3%,磨损率下降33. 82%,同时切削合力较原半合成切削液下降18. 58%,加工后工件表面粗糙度下降7. 5%。     

细水雾抑制淬火油火灾的实验研究

由于淬火油的特殊理化性质,传统的水灭火方式不适用扑救淬火油火灾。迄今为止,虽然有人对淬火油的火灾防治进行了研究,但用细水雾扑灭淬火油这类粘度较大,热值较高的矿物油火的研究还不是非常深入。从淬火油的燃烧特性出发,通过模拟真实的火灾场景和对比实验,评估细水雾对此类火灾的控制、抑制和扑灭的过程。     

少数民族教育的经济学分析

少数民族教育是我国教育的重要组成部分。发展少数民族教育,提高民族素质具有重要意义。本文从经济学中的效率与公平、供给与需求、成本与效益三个方面理论来分析我国的少数民族教育,从而更好地发展少数民族教育。     

装备研发与制造一体化物资供应支持系统研究

首先分析了研发与制造一体化技术是适应武器装备柔性化制造需求的先进制造技术,然后介绍了装备研发与制造一体化技术的涵义和体系结构,分为以研发为中心的研发与制造一体化技术和以制造为中心的研发与制造一体化技术。最后详细研究了其中的物资供应支持系统及其体系结构。     

水源热泵机组的节能效果及环境影响分析

水源热泵机组由于具有较好的节能优势及环境效益,在国内外取得了较快的发展。但对于水源热泵机组全生命周期的环境影响定量化研究得较少。介绍了冷热源机组环境影响评价较为成功的等价温室效果评价方法,对评价过程所涉及的因素进行了分析说明,并应用该评价方法对重庆市某工程拟采用的3种冷热源方案进行了机组环境影响分析。结果表明采用水源热泵机组作为冷热源无论在夏季还是冬季不仅存在巨大的节能优势,最高节能量达到32．05％,而且在全生命周期内的温室气体CO2的排放量也较少,仅为方案2的67．40％,方案3的89．06％,具有良好的环境优势。     

自然元素在建筑设计中的创意与表达——水

水是建筑的灵魂,其"形"、"色"、"声"、"势"的不同特质,在建筑空间的性格营造中具有重要的地位和作用.通过探讨水这一自然元素在建筑创作中的抽象表达方式,展示其在文脉延续和场所精神创造中的重要意义.     

Clustered coverage orienteering problem of unmanned surface vehicles for water sampling

This study investigates a clustered coverage orienteering problem (CCOP), which is a generalization of the classical orienteering problem. The problem is widely motivated by the emerging unmanned techniques (eg, unmanned surface vehicles and drones) applied to environmental monitoring. Specifically, the unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) are used to monitor reservoir water quality by collecting samples. In the CCOP, the water sampling sites (ie, the nodes) are grouped into clusters, and a minimum number of nodes must be visited in each cluster. With each node representing a certain coverage area of the water, the objective of the CCOP is to monitor as much as possible the total coverage area in one tour of the USV, considering that overlapping areas provide no additional information. An integer programming model is first formulated through a linearization procedure that captures the overlapping feature. A two-stage exact algorithm is proposed to obtain an optimal solution to the problem. The efficiency and effectiveness of the two-stage exact algorithm are demonstrated through experiments on randomly generated instances. The algorithm can effectively solve instances with up to 60 sampling sites.     

Revenue sharing contracts in a supply chain with uncontractible actions

We consider a supplier–customer relationship where the customer faces a typical Newsvendor problem of determining perishable capacity to meet uncertain demand. The customer outsources a critical, demand‐enhancing service to an outside supplier, who receives a fixed share of the revenue from the customer. Given such a linear sharing contract, the customer chooses capacity and the service supplier chooses service effort level before demand is realized. We consider the two cases when these decisions are made simultaneously (simultaneous game) or sequentially (sequential game). For each game, we analyze how the equilibrium solutions vary with the parameters of the problem. We show that in the equilibrium, it is possible that either the customer's capacity increases or the service supplier's effort level decreases when the supplier receives a larger share of the revenue. We also show that given the same sharing contract, the sequential game always induces a higher capacity and more effort. For the case of additive effort effect and uniform demand distribution, we consider the customer's problem of designing the optimal contract with or without a fixed payment in the contract, and obtain sensitivity results on how the optimal contract depends on the problem parameters. For the case of fixed payment, it is optimal to allocate more revenue to the supplier to induce more service effort when the profit margin is higher, the cost of effort is lower, effort is more effective in stimulating demand, the variability of demand is smaller or the supplier makes the first move in the sequential game. For the case of no fixed payment, however, it is optimal to allocate more revenue to the supplier when the variability of demand is larger or its mean is smaller. Numerical examples are analyzed to validate the sensitivity results for the case of normal demand distribution and to provide more managerial insights. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008     

Scheduling and due‐date quotation in a make‐to‐order supply chain

We consider a manufacturer, served by a single supplier, who has to quote due dates to arriving customers in a make‐to‐order production environment. The manufacturer is penalized for long lead times and for missing due dates. To meet due dates, the manufacturer has to obtain components from a supplier. We model this manufacturer and supplier as a two‐machine flow shop, consider several variations of this problem, and design effective due‐date quotation and scheduling algorithms for centralized and decentralized versions of the model. We perform extensive computational testing to assess the effectiveness of our algorithms and to compare the centralized and decentralized models to quantify the value of centralized control in a make‐to‐order supply chain. Since complete information exchange and centralized control is not always practical or cost‐effective, we explore the value of partial information exchange for this system. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008