Showing papers by "Guohe Huang published in 1998"

Trash-Flow Allocation: Planning Under Uncertainty

Abstract: The materials in trash, or municipal solid waste (MSW), may be recycled, composted, incinerated, or landfilled. Transporting these materials to waste-management facilities consumes part of the operating budget of a municipality. Many factors, the majority uncertain, may influence the planning of waste-flow allocation. MSW managers want to know (1) whether the existing pattern is close to the optimal, and (2) if not, what is the optimal? We used a gray linear-programming (GLP) model to address these questions for the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth, Ontario. This approach can effectively reflect the interactive relationships between uncertain system components. It can also bring uncertain information into the optimization process and resulting solutions, permitting feasible decision alternatives to be generated. The region's waste managers have used the results to verify or adjust the existing waste-flow allocation pattern. They may also be used to formulate related local policies.

Land resources adaptation planning under changing climate - a study for the Mackenzie Basin.

Abstract: In the last decade, climate change has been one of the major concerns with regard to the health of the earth’s ecosystem. The problem of a changing climate is related to not only climate, energy consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases, but also effects of such a change on the earth’s ecosystems, resources and human settlements, as well as the need to reduce or avoid these effects. In this study, an inexact-fuzzy multiobjective programming model was proposed for adaptation planning of land resources management in the Mackenzie Basin under changing climate. This integrated adaptation planning enables the inclusion of systems interaction and feedback mechanisms and can therefore yield insights that scattered information cannot offer. Many sectors were considered, including agriculture, forest, wildlife habitat preservation, wetland preservation, hunting, recreation, and soil conservation, as well as their interactive relationships. The results indicate that uncertain, multiobjective, dynamic and interactive features of the study system have been effectively reflected. Temporal variations of land characteristics and land-use activities exist due to changes in climatic, economic and environmental conditions. However, through effective systems analysis and planning, the desired land-use patterns for adapting to the changing climate and compromising objectives from different stakeholders could be obtained.