Impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita Le cause e le responsabilita dei cambiamenti climatici sono state trattate sul numero di ottobre della rivista Cda. Approfondiamo l’argomento presentando il documento: “Cambiamenti climatici 2007: impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita” votato ad aprile 2007 dal secondo gruppo di lavoro del Comitato Intergovernativo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Si tratta del secondo di tre documenti che compongono il quarto rapporto sui cambiamenti climatici.

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Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

Operations Research for Green Logistics – An Overview of Aspects, Issues, Contributions and Challenges

Biomass-to-bioenergy and biofuel supply chain optimization: Overview, key issues and challenges

Electric vehicles (EVs) have been proposed as a key technology to help cut down the massive greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Unfortunately, because of the limited capacity of batteries, typical EVs can only travel for about 100 miles on a single charge and require hours to be recharged. The industry has proposed a novel solution centered around the use of “swapping stations,” at which depleted batteries can be exchanged for recharged ones in the middle of long trips. The possible success of this solution hinges on the ability of the charging service provider to deploy a cost-effective infrastructure network, given only limited information regarding adoption rates. We develop robust optimization models that aid the planning process for deploying battery-swapping infrastructure. Using these models, we study the potential impacts of battery standardization and technology advancements on the optimal infrastructure deployment strategy. This paper was accepted by Dimitris Bertsimas, opti...

Infrastructure Planning for Electric Vehicles with Battery Swapping

Biofuels are identified as the potential solution for depleting fossil fuel reserves, increasing oil prices, and providing a clean, renewable energy source The major barrier preventing the commercialization of lignocellulosic biorefineries is the complex conversion process and their respective supply chain Efficient supply chain management of a lignocellulosic biomass is crucial for success of second generation biofuels This paper systematically describes energy needs, energy targets, biofuel feedstocks, conversion processes, and finally provides a comprehensive review of Biomass Supply Chain (BSC) design and modeling Specifically, the paper presents a detailed review of mathematical programming models developed for BSC and identifies key challenges and potential future work This review will provide readers with a starting point for understanding biomass feedstocks and biofuel production as well as detailed analysis of the BSC modeling and design

Biomass supply chain design and analysis: Basis, overview, modeling, challenges, and future

This research focuses on planning biofuel refinery locations where the total system cost for refinery investment, feedstock and product transportation and public travel is minimized. Shipment routing of both feedstock and product in the biofuel supply chain and the resulting traffic congestion impact are incorporated into the model to decide optimal locations of biofuel refineries. A Lagrangian relaxation based heuristic algorithm is introduced to obtain near-optimum feasible solutions efficiently. To further improve optimality, a branch-and-bound framework (with linear programming relaxation and Lagrangian relaxation bounding procedures) is developed. Numerical experiments with several testing examples demonstrate that the proposed algorithms solve the problem effectively. An empirical Illinois case study and a series of sensitivity analyses are conducted to show the effects of highway congestion on refinery location design and total system costs.

Biofuel refinery location and supply chain planning under traffic congestion

Biofuel supply chain design under competitive agricultural land use and feedstock market equilibrium

The rapid expansion of the biofuel industry diverts a large amount of agricultural crops as energy feedstocks, and in turn affects farm land allocation, feedstock market equilibrium, and agricultural economic development in local areas. In this paper, the authors propose game-theoretic models that incorporate farmers' decisions on land use and market choice into the biofuel manufacturers' supply chain design problem. A noncooperative bi-level Stackelberg leader-follower game model and a cooperative game model are developed respectively to address possible business partnership scenarios between feedstock suppliers and biofuel manufacturers. The models determine the optimal number and locations of biorefineries, the required prices for these refineries to compete for feedstock resources, as well as farmers' land use choices between food and energy. Using corn as an example of feedstock crops, spatial market equilibrium is utilized to model the relationship between corn supply and demand, and the associated price variations in local grain markets. With linear corn demand functions, the authors develop a solution approach that transforms the original discrete mathematical program with equilibrium constraints into to a solvable mixed integer quadratic programming problem based on Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions. The proposed methodology is illustrated using an empirical case study of the Illinois State. The computation results reveal interesting insights into optimal land use strategies and supply chain design for the emerging ``biofuel economy."

Biofuel Supply Chain Design Under Competitive Agricultural Land Use and Feedstock Market Equilibrium

Evaluation and governance of green development practice of port: A sea port case of China

Establishment of industry facilities often induces heavy vehicle traffic that exacerbates congestion and pavement deterioration in the neighboring highway network. While planning facility locations and land use developments, it is important to take into account the routing of freight vehicles, the impact on public traffic, as well as the planning of pavement rehabilitation. This paper presents an integrated facility location model that simultaneously considers traffic routing under congestion and pavement rehabilitation under deterioration. The objective is to minimize the total cost due to facility investment, transportation cost including traffic delay, and pavement life-cycle costs. Building upon analytical results on optimal pavement rehabilitation, the problem is formulated into a bi-level mixed-integer non-linear program (MINLP), with facility location, freight shipment routing and pavement rehabilitation decisions in the upper level and traffic equilibrium in the lower level. This problem is then reformulated into an equivalent single-level MINLP based on Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions and approximation by piece-wise linear functions. Numerical experiments on hypothetical and empirical network examples are conducted to show performance of the proposed algorithm and to draw managerial insights.

Yun Bai

Papers

Biofuel refinery location and supply chain planning under traffic congestion

Biofuel supply chain design under competitive agricultural land use and feedstock market equilibrium

Biofuel Supply Chain Design Under Competitive Agricultural Land Use and Feedstock Market Equilibrium

Evaluation and governance of green development practice of port: A sea port case of China

Joint optimization of freight facility location and pavement infrastructure rehabilitation under network traffic equilibrium