Background:Much land is subject to damage by construction,development and exploitation with consequent loss of environmental function and services.How might the loss be recovered?Results:This article develops principl...Background:Much land is subject to damage by construction,development and exploitation with consequent loss of environmental function and services.How might the loss be recovered?Results:This article develops principles of environmental rehabilitation.Key issues include the following.Rehabilitation means restoring the previous condition.Whether or not to restore is not a technical but a value judgement.It is subject to adopting the sustainability ethic.If the ethic is followed under rule of law then rehabilitation must be done always to’the high standard’which means handing down unimpaired environmental function and no extra land management.The elements of the former condition that it is intended to restore must be specified.Restoring these in any given case is the purpose of that rehabilitation project.The specified restoration elements must be easily measurable with a few simple powerful metrics.Some land damage is not fixable so restraint must be exercised in what construction,development and exploitation are permitted.If sustainability is adopted then cost benefit analysis is not a valid form of project appraisal because trading off present benefits against future losses relies on subjectively decided discount rates,and because natural capital is hard to price,indispensable,irreplaceable and non-substitutable.Elements often to be restored include agricultural land capability,landscape form and environmental function.Land capability is a widely used convention and,with landscape form,encapsulate many key land factors,and are easily measurable.Restoring soil and thereby environmental function provides the necessary base for an ecological pyramid.Conclusions:The need for rehabilitation is not to be justified by cost-benefit or scientific and technological proof,but rests on a value judgement to sustain natural capital for present and future generations.Decision on what activities and projects to permit should be based on what is physically and financially fixable on current knowledge.Business and government must be proactive,develop rehabilitation standards,work out how to meet the standards,design simple powerful metrics to measure performance against the standards,embark on continuous improvement,and report.展开更多
The objective of this contribution is to consider guides to technical writing.Since the professional writes what he does and does what he writes,guides to how you execute the one relate to how you perform the other,so...The objective of this contribution is to consider guides to technical writing.Since the professional writes what he does and does what he writes,guides to how you execute the one relate to how you perform the other,so this article is about more than just writing.While there is need for idiosyncrasy and individualism,there are some rules.Documents must have an explicit purpose stated at the outset.By their nature,documents in the applied sciences and business address real-world problems,but elsewhere activity may be laissez faire for which the cost-effectiveness in yielding innovations is contestable.A hallmark of written science and technology is that every statement is capable of being tested and capable of being shown to be wrong,and that methods yield repeatable results.Caution should be observed in requiring authoritative referencing for every notion,partly because of the unsatisfying infinite regress in searching for ultimate sources,and partly to avoid squashing innovation.It is not only the content of messages that matters,but reliability too.Probability theory must be built into design to assure that strong inference can be drawn from outcomes.Research,business and infrastructure projects must substitute the frequent optimistic ’everything goes according to plan’(EGAP) with a more realistic ’most likely development’(MLD) and the risks of even that not happening.A cornerstone of science and technology is parsimony.No description,experiment,explanation,hypothesis,idea,instrument,machine,method,model,prediction,statement,technique,test or theory should be more elaborate than necessary to satisfy its purpose.Antifragility- the capacity to survive and benefit from shocks- must be designed into project and organizational structure and function by manipulating such factors as complexity and interdependent to evade failure in a turbulent and unpredictable world.The role of writing is to integrate these issues,and communicate them so that the stakeholders share a vision before,during and after the project.展开更多
This article considers threats to a project slipping on budget,schedule and fit-for-purpose.Threat is used here as the collective for risks（quantifiable bad things that can happen）and uncertainties（poorly or not qu...This article considers threats to a project slipping on budget,schedule and fit-for-purpose.Threat is used here as the collective for risks（quantifiable bad things that can happen）and uncertainties（poorly or not quantifiable bad possible events）.Based on experience with projects in developing countries this review considers that（a）project slippage is due to uncertainties rather than risks,（b）while eventuation of some bad things is beyond control,managed execution and oversight are stil the primary means to keeping within budget,on time and fit-for-purpose,（c）improving project delivery is less about bigger and more complex and more about coordinated focus,effectiveness and developing thought-out heuristics,and（d）projects take longer and cost more partly because threat identification is inaccurate,the scope of identified threats is too narrow,and the threat assessment product is not integrated into overall project decision-making and execution.Almost by definition,what is poorly known is likely to cause problems.Yet it is not just the unquantifiability and intangibility of uncertainties causing project slippage,but that they are insufficiently taken into account in project planning and execution that cause budget and time overruns.Improving project performance requires purpose-driven and managed deployment of scarce seasoned professionals.This can be aided with independent oversight by deeply experienced panelists who contribute technical insights and can potentially show that diligence is seen to be done.展开更多
Decision making to mitigate the effects of natural hazards is a complex undertaking fraught with uncertainty. Models to describe risks associated with natural hazards have proliferated in recent years. Concurrently, t...Decision making to mitigate the effects of natural hazards is a complex undertaking fraught with uncertainty. Models to describe risks associated with natural hazards have proliferated in recent years. Concurrently, there is a growing body of work focused on developing best practices for natural hazard modeling and to create structured evaluation criteria for complex environmental models. However, to our knowledge there has been less focus on the conditions where decision makers can confidently rely on results from these models. In this review we propose a preliminary set of conditions necessary for the appropriate application of modeled results to natural hazard decision making and provide relevant examples within US wildfire management programs.展开更多
文摘Background:Much land is subject to damage by construction,development and exploitation with consequent loss of environmental function and services.How might the loss be recovered?Results:This article develops principles of environmental rehabilitation.Key issues include the following.Rehabilitation means restoring the previous condition.Whether or not to restore is not a technical but a value judgement.It is subject to adopting the sustainability ethic.If the ethic is followed under rule of law then rehabilitation must be done always to’the high standard’which means handing down unimpaired environmental function and no extra land management.The elements of the former condition that it is intended to restore must be specified.Restoring these in any given case is the purpose of that rehabilitation project.The specified restoration elements must be easily measurable with a few simple powerful metrics.Some land damage is not fixable so restraint must be exercised in what construction,development and exploitation are permitted.If sustainability is adopted then cost benefit analysis is not a valid form of project appraisal because trading off present benefits against future losses relies on subjectively decided discount rates,and because natural capital is hard to price,indispensable,irreplaceable and non-substitutable.Elements often to be restored include agricultural land capability,landscape form and environmental function.Land capability is a widely used convention and,with landscape form,encapsulate many key land factors,and are easily measurable.Restoring soil and thereby environmental function provides the necessary base for an ecological pyramid.Conclusions:The need for rehabilitation is not to be justified by cost-benefit or scientific and technological proof,but rests on a value judgement to sustain natural capital for present and future generations.Decision on what activities and projects to permit should be based on what is physically and financially fixable on current knowledge.Business and government must be proactive,develop rehabilitation standards,work out how to meet the standards,design simple powerful metrics to measure performance against the standards,embark on continuous improvement,and report.
文摘The objective of this contribution is to consider guides to technical writing.Since the professional writes what he does and does what he writes,guides to how you execute the one relate to how you perform the other,so this article is about more than just writing.While there is need for idiosyncrasy and individualism,there are some rules.Documents must have an explicit purpose stated at the outset.By their nature,documents in the applied sciences and business address real-world problems,but elsewhere activity may be laissez faire for which the cost-effectiveness in yielding innovations is contestable.A hallmark of written science and technology is that every statement is capable of being tested and capable of being shown to be wrong,and that methods yield repeatable results.Caution should be observed in requiring authoritative referencing for every notion,partly because of the unsatisfying infinite regress in searching for ultimate sources,and partly to avoid squashing innovation.It is not only the content of messages that matters,but reliability too.Probability theory must be built into design to assure that strong inference can be drawn from outcomes.Research,business and infrastructure projects must substitute the frequent optimistic ’everything goes according to plan’(EGAP) with a more realistic ’most likely development’(MLD) and the risks of even that not happening.A cornerstone of science and technology is parsimony.No description,experiment,explanation,hypothesis,idea,instrument,machine,method,model,prediction,statement,technique,test or theory should be more elaborate than necessary to satisfy its purpose.Antifragility- the capacity to survive and benefit from shocks- must be designed into project and organizational structure and function by manipulating such factors as complexity and interdependent to evade failure in a turbulent and unpredictable world.The role of writing is to integrate these issues,and communicate them so that the stakeholders share a vision before,during and after the project.
文摘This article considers threats to a project slipping on budget,schedule and fit-for-purpose.Threat is used here as the collective for risks（quantifiable bad things that can happen）and uncertainties（poorly or not quantifiable bad possible events）.Based on experience with projects in developing countries this review considers that（a）project slippage is due to uncertainties rather than risks,（b）while eventuation of some bad things is beyond control,managed execution and oversight are stil the primary means to keeping within budget,on time and fit-for-purpose,（c）improving project delivery is less about bigger and more complex and more about coordinated focus,effectiveness and developing thought-out heuristics,and（d）projects take longer and cost more partly because threat identification is inaccurate,the scope of identified threats is too narrow,and the threat assessment product is not integrated into overall project decision-making and execution.Almost by definition,what is poorly known is likely to cause problems.Yet it is not just the unquantifiability and intangibility of uncertainties causing project slippage,but that they are insufficiently taken into account in project planning and execution that cause budget and time overruns.Improving project performance requires purpose-driven and managed deployment of scarce seasoned professionals.This can be aided with independent oversight by deeply experienced panelists who contribute technical insights and can potentially show that diligence is seen to be done.
文摘Decision making to mitigate the effects of natural hazards is a complex undertaking fraught with uncertainty. Models to describe risks associated with natural hazards have proliferated in recent years. Concurrently, there is a growing body of work focused on developing best practices for natural hazard modeling and to create structured evaluation criteria for complex environmental models. However, to our knowledge there has been less focus on the conditions where decision makers can confidently rely on results from these models. In this review we propose a preliminary set of conditions necessary for the appropriate application of modeled results to natural hazard decision making and provide relevant examples within US wildfire management programs.
