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A GIS-based method is proposed to identify critical links in urban road networks. This study utilizes a geographic information system (GIS) to evaluate the distribution of road infrastructure, road density, and network accessibility at the micro, meso, and macro levels. At the micro level, GIS is used to assess the distribution of public facilities along the roads. At the meso level, a city’s road density distribution is evaluated. At the macro level, a spatial barrier model and a transportation network model are constructed to assess the network accessibility. An inverse distance weighting method is employed to interpolate the accessibility. Furthermore, a network topology is established, and the entropy method is utilized to evaluate the sections comprehensively. The sections are ranked based on the evaluation results to identify the critical links in the urban road network. The road-network data and points of interest (POI) data from the Anning District in Lanzhou are selected for a case study, and the results indicate that the top five critical links have scores of 0.641, 0.571, 0.570, 0.519, and 0.508, respectively. Considering the three indicators enhances the accuracy of critical section identification, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method. Visualizing each indicator using GIS 10.7 provides a new approach to identifying critical links in urban road networks and offers essential theoretical support for urban planning.

This study uses the structured–pragmatics–situational case study approach to explore the intrinsic mechanism of enterprise digital enablement using affordance theory and how traditional enterprises enable customers to participate in value co-creation through information technology, then realize business model innovation and maintain continuous consumption. The study revealed the following: (1) Product affordance drives customers’ original willingness to engage in value co-creation in four dimensions: economy, reliability, uniqueness, and selectivity; (2) The visibility, convenience, association, and persistence of the platform affordance enhance users’ abilities to engage in value co-creation; (3) The interaction of affordance, structural enablement, and digital enablement drives the interaction of willingness and capability to engage in value co-creation; and (4) User participation behaviors in value co-creation can be divided into three dimensions (informational, actionable, and attitudinal participation)and four stages. The findings explain how traditional enterprises use IT enablement to promote business model innovation of customer participation in value co-creation and enrich the theories of digital enablement. The conclusions reveal the managerial implications of the ways, paths, and mechanism of business model innovation by IT enabling customers to participate in value co-creation.

The present study measured the relative efficiency of five major commercial ports in West Africa, using three different Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methods, the CCR, BCC, and Windows I-C methods over the years 2005-2016. Seven input variables and one output variable were used in the model analysis. The CCR and BCC methods were used to evaluate the technical and scale efficiency while the Windows I-C method provided a comprehensive ranking of the studied ports. The results showed that the scale efficiency score of 89.53% indicated that on average the production scale of the ports had deviated from the most productive scale size (MPSS) by 10.47%. These results revealed that the source of the overall inefficiency is due to scale rather than pure technical inefficiency. Hence, in order to improve the overall efficiency, the two scaled inefficient ports of Abidjan and Cotonou should adjust their scale of operations. Then, further investigations were conducted to detect correlations between various variables used in this study. The research found that the absence of any correlation for non-significant variables and negative correlation for the significant variables throughout time resulted from the fact that these variables were not fully utilized. Meaning that they were not efficiently used to boost the container throughput on a scale basis, the research also found that a pandemic or insecurity could easily impact seaports activities with the case of the Ebola outbreak which strucked the West African region from the year 2013 to 2016, or the terrorism threats which prevailed in the region around the year 2012. Thus, for ports to stand out in the present fiercely competitive environment, ports authorities ought to analyze their operational scale to identify whether or not the production size is fitting before further port capacity expansion.

Advanced airborne equipment liquid cooling system presents the development trend of multiple pumps in parallel, centralised heat dissipation and high efficiency circulation, but this type of system has the characteristics of many variable parameters and strong non-linearity, which makes the system operation and control become extraordinarily complex, posing a serious challenge to the system performance. Although some progress has been made in the current optimization of liquid cooling system performance, there are still gaps such as insufficient consideration of the multi-objective optimization problem and limited optimization effect. To fill this research gap, this study takes minimum specific energy consumption, minimum flow deviation and minimum impeller load as the optimization objectives, establishment of multi-objective optimization model for liquid-cooled power unit, the optimal solution set of the Pareto model is solved using the multi-objective grey wolf optimization algorithm (MOGWO), and the optimal solution set is substituted for the optimal solution, and the evaluation indexes are designed in combination with the actual working conditions to obtain the optimal schedule. By example analysis, the optimized system under variable operating conditions, the impeller load and specific energy consumption decreased by 16.88% and 3.64% respectively, while the rise in flow deviation was controlled within 0.76%. The newly established optimisation model effectively mitigates potential safety hazards during system operation. Finally, by combining all the indicators, three scheduling options are provided under variable operating conditions, focusing on reliability and economy, overall balance and high-precision flow, respectively, in order to adapt to the diversified requirements of different operating environments.

The vehicle will generate an amount of current while the electric vehicle just starting to regeneratively brake. In order to avoid the impact of high current on the traction battery, a novel electrohydraulic hybrid electric vehicle has been proposed. The main power source is supplied by the electric drive system, and the hydraulic system performs the auxiliary drive system that fully exerts the advantages of the electric drive system and the hydraulic drive system. A proper regenerative braking control strategy is presented, and the control parameters are determined by the fuzzy optimization algorithm. The simulation analysis built the model through the united simulation of AMESim and MATLAB/Simulink. The results illustrated that the optimized control strategy can reduce battery consumption by 1.22% under NEDC-operating conditions.

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which agricultural farms meet the requirements for sustainable agritourism in Zimbabwe. This study was motivated by the realisation that despite that the country is agro-based and has great potential to become an agritourism destination, the country is still lagging in agritourism development. The conceptual framework for understanding agritourism and the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach was applied. In-depth interviews were conducted with thirty-four (34) farmers who were purposively selected from the Manicaland and Mashonaland provinces of Zimbabwe. Data collection was conducted from October 2020 to June 2021. Thematic content analysis aided by Nvivo 12 software was used to analyse the data. The results revealed that the sampled farms meet at least one of the requirements for sustainable agritourism. However, there is a lack of diversity in both core and peripheral agritourism activities on the farms. The farmers are recommended to increase agritourism activities through sustainable utilization of the existing farm resources. The study provides the relevant stakeholders with information on areas of improvement for agritourism growth in the country and a baseline for future investigations into the prospects of agritourism in Zimbabwe. The main limitation of this study was the use of a framework for understanding agritourism that was developed in a developed world context. Development of a framework for understanding agritourism in a developing world context is recommended for future research.

Abstract Fractures along interfaces between host rock and wellbore cement have long been identified as potential CO2 leakage pathways from subsurface CO2 storage sites. As a consequence, cement alteration due to exposure to CO2 has been studied extensively to assess wellbore integrity. Previous studies have focused on the changes to either chemical or mechanical properties of cement upon exposure to CO2-enriched brine, but not on the effects of loading conditions. This paper aims to correct this deficit by considering the combined effects of the fracture pathway and changing effective stress on chemical and mechanical degradation at conditions relevant to geologic carbon storage. Flow-through experiments on fractured cores composed of cement and tight sandstone caprock halves were conducted to study the alteration of cement due to exposure to CO2-enriched brine at 3, 7, 9, and 12 MPa effective stress. We characterized relevant reactions via solution chemistry; fracture permeability via changes to differential pressure; mechanical changes via micro-hardness testing, and pore structure changes via x-ray tomography. This study showed that the nature and the rates of the chemical reactions between cement and CO2 were not affected by the effective stress. The differences in the permeability responses of the fractures were attributed to interactions among the geometry of the flow path, the porosity increase of the reacted cement, and the mechanical deformation of reacted asperities. The suite of observed chemical reactions contributed to change in cement mechanical properties. Compared to the unreacted cement, the average hardness of the amorphous silica and depleted layers was decreased while the hardness of the calcite layer was increased. Tomographic imaging showed that preferential flow paths formed in some of the core-flood experiments, which had a significant impact on the permeability response of the fractured samples. We interpreted the observed permeability responses in terms of competition between dissolution of cement phases (leading to enhanced permeability) and mechanical deformation of reacted regions (leading to reduced permeability).

AbstractThere is close relationship between science & technology inputs and economic growth. Based on the data of science & technology input and economic growth, the paper makes the econometric models analysis on the economic growth and science & technology input of the three major coastal economic regions of China. The paper analyzes and compares the contribution rate of science & technology inputs to economic growth of the three major economic regions.