Huibin Du

Groundwater remediation from the past to the future: A bibliometric analysis

Groundwater is an important component of terrestrial ecosystems and plays a role in geochemical cycling. Groundwater is also used for agricultural irrigation and for the domestic supply of drinking water in most nations. However, groundwater contamination has led to many research efforts on groundwater remediation technologies and strategies. This study evaluated a total of 5486 groundwater remediation-related publications from 1995 to 2015 using bibliometric technology and social network analysis, to provide a quantitative analysis and a global view on the current research trend and future research directions. Our results underline a strong research interest and an urgent need to remediate groundwater pollution due to the increasing number of both groundwater contamination and remediation publications. In the past two decades, the United States (U.S.) published 41.1% of the papers and it was the core country of the international collaboration network, cooperating with the other 19 most productive countries. Besides the active international collaboration, the funding agencies also played positive roles to foster the science and technology publications. With respect to the analysis of the distribution of funding agencies, the National Science Foundation of China sponsored most of the groundwater remediation research. We also identified the most productive journals, Environmental Science and Technology and Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, which published 334 and 259 scientific articles (including research articles and reviews) over the past 20 years, respectively. In addition to journal publications, a patent analysis was performed to show the impact of intellectual property protection on journal publications. Three major remediation technologies, including chemical oxidation, biodegradation and adsorption, have received increasing interest in both journal publication and patent development. Our results provide a valuable reference and global overview to identify the potential obstacles and opportunities for researchers who currently work on groundwater contamination, remediation and related topics.

Sustainable Construction Waste Management in Australia: A Motivation Perspective

Construction industry is one of the industries that generates and dumps heaps of waste to landfill. In Australia, about 40 % of the construction and demolition waste is disposed to landfill. Hence, state governments in Australia have initiated various strategies which aim to reduce construction waste. These include levy on construction waste and various proposals of zero waste strategies. Hence, some of the companies reduce, reuse and recycle the construction waste to reduce the amounts of landfill payment. Nevertheless, is monetary expenditure the only effective motivation factor which lead to a reduction in construction waste? Is there any other motivation factors which sucessfully power waste reduction? There are three major contributions in this chapter: (1) it perceives the idea of sustainable construction waste from whole building cycle perspective instead of construction and demolition stage alone. (2) It reviews the construction companies, contractors, government sectors and materials manufacturers’ sustainability issues in Australia’s construction industry from economics, social and environmental perspectives. (3) It examines the motivation of these companies in sustainable construction waste management under the lens of positive and negative incentive, goal setting and hierarchy of needs theory.

Reliability evaluation based on fuzzy fault tree

In conventional fault tree analysis (FTA), some complex and uncertain events such as human errors cannot be handled effectively. Fuzzy fault tree analysis (fuzzy FTA) integrating fuzzy set evaluation and probabilistic estimation is proposed to evaluate vague events. The reliability of water supply subsystem in fire protection systems is analyzed using the proposed approach and the results prove the validity of the fuzzy FTA.

Evaluation on competitiveness of service industry with non-equilibrium statistical mechanics

The paper applies non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to evaluating the competitiveness of service industry as an evolutionary complex system. And then the evolutionary patterns of eight cities in China are simulated by the SOM. The comprehensive competitiveness of each city is analyzed from the pattern values.

Building fire protection system reliability analysis based on GO method

The paper presents the application of GO method in the reliability analysis of fire protection system in buildings, and chooses eight reliability characteristic parameters from the aspects of reliability, maintainability and availability. The example of the water-spraying hydrant system of one building is given using the method proposed in the paper. The results show that the GO method is very simple and useful for the reliability analysis of repairable systems. Finally, the paper designs and develops the reliability evaluation software.

Evolution of Shanghai as an International Financial Centre with Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics

This paper, from the viewpoint of complex system, applies non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to analyze the development of Shanghai as an international finacial centre. And then the evolutionary patterns of Shanghai as an international finacial centre are simulated by SOM. The simulation results show that the achievement of financial industry relies heavily on Shanghai’s overall economy; however, financial markets, such as securities market, gold market, and futures market, actually don’t match such a rapid development of Shanghai’s overall economy.

Study of passenger transport price ratio based on the transport supply chain

The paper is a study of the passenger transport, focusing on an effort to find put the bottleneck in the passenger transport development in China through a scientific analysis of the pricing relationships among various modes of transport and further to show the pricing flexibility of the passenger traffic in accordance with the supply chain. Employing the analytic hierarchy process, the authors chose a number of different types of passenger transport in different routes and areas and made a comparison and analysis of their prices, which was subject to real demonstration tests. A conclusion is finally reached that by adjustment of pricing, the transport supply chains can be smoothly brought together in different transport areas.