Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS)

About: Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Life-cycle assessment & Sustainability. The organization has 167 authors who have published 318 publications receiving 6738 citations.

Vulnerability of forests in the Himalayan region to climate change impacts and anthropogenic disturbances: a systematic review

Abstract: The Himalayan region is not only threatened by rapid changes in anthropogenic activities but also by global climate change. Given the uncertainties of magnitude and characteristics of climate change, prior knowledge of long-term changing distribution pattern of forests is of crucial importance. Owing to the heterogeneity of the Himalayan mountain system, knowledge on potential impacts on forests makes it a paramount concern in this region. Therefore, to understand vulnerability as a prerequisite for forest management, we systematically review and synthesize peer-reviewed literature on climate change impacts of the Himalayan forests (n = 118). Of the reviewed articles, 91.5% were published after 2009. Our findings emphasize that due to a wide variety of disciplinary domains, the conceptual, methodological, and subsequent findings (observed and predicted) vary greatly given the complexity of the theme of the review. Most assessments addressing climate change vulnerability of forests and forest-dependent people fail to acknowledge the importance of scalar and temporal aspects of vulnerability. In addition, despite the brevity of the phenomena, much lesser is known about adaptation potentials, planning and policy initiatives, and coordinated multi-disciplinary decision making for managing forest resources and dependent livelihood options under different climate change scenarios. This insufficiency of knowledge requires identification of more prioritized focused research efforts. Given the substantial debate surrounding research management and policy-making, we highlight the urgent need to deal with ecological and societal implications of climate change impacts on the Himalayan forests.

Assessment of policies and detection of unintended effects: Guiding principles for the consideration of methods and tools in policy-packaging

Abstract: Single policies or entire policy packages are often assessed using different methods aiming at a quantification of effects as well as the detection of undesired outcomes. The knowledge of potential impacts is essential to take informed policy actions. Hence, there is a constant need for efficient assessment approaches to support policy decision-making. A broad range of such assessment methods is used in policymaking. Some of them are using quantitative data; others are characterized by qualitative information, observations or opinions. Practical experiences with transport policy prove that these methods all have their pros and cons, but none of them are able to detect the full range of effects. This leads to important questions this article deals with, such as what are the strengths and limitations of the different tools and methods for assessing impacts, and how should different approaches be integrated into the policymaking processes? We analyze the ability of assessment methods to detect different kinds of intended and unintended effects, and introduce the concepts of structurally open (mainly qualitative) and structurally closed (mainly quantitative) methods. It is argued that these concepts support making the pros and cons of the tools and methods more explicit and, thus, allow integrating the different tools and methods into the process of policy packaging. Based on a policy package example, we provide practical recommendations on how to integrate different assessment methods adequately and show that both quantitative and qualitative tools should be used in different phases of the process. The main recommendation is to alternate the application of assessment methods with structurally open methods used in the beginning and the end of the policymaking process and applying structurally closed methods in between.

Solving security constrained optimal power flow problems: a hybrid evolutionary approach

Abstract: A hybrid population-based metaheuristic, Hybrid Canonical Differential Evolutionary Particle Swarm Optimization (hC-DEEPSO), is applied to solve Security Constrained Optimal Power Flow (SCOPF) problems. Despite the inherent difficulties of tackling these real-world problems, they must be solved several times a day taking into account operation and security conditions. A combination of the C-DEEPSO metaheuristic coupled with a multipoint search operator is proposed to better exploit the search space in the vicinity of the best solution found so far by the current population in the first stages of the search process. A simple diversity mechanism is also applied to avoid premature convergence and to escape from local optima. A experimental design is devised to fine-tune the parameters of the proposed algorithm for each instance of the SCOPF problem. The effectiveness of the proposed hC-DEEPSO is tested on the IEEE 57-bus, IEEE 118-bus and IEEE 300-bus standard systems. The numerical results obtained by hC-DEEPSO are compared with other evolutionary methods reported in the literature to prove the potential and capability of the proposed hC-DEEPSO for solving the SCOPF at acceptable economical and technical levels.