This book examines real-time models and advanced online applications that enhance reliability and resilience of the grid in real-time and near real-time environments. It is written by Peak Reliability engineers who worked on the creation of the West Wide System Model (WSM) and the implementation of advanced real-time operation situational awareness tools for reliability coordination function. The book looks at how a single Reliability Coordinator for the Western Interconnection did its work under normal and emergency conditions, providing a unique perspective on best practices and lessons learned from Peak's modeling and coordination efforts to create, maintain, and improve state-of-art new technology and algorithms to improve real-time operation situational awareness and Bulk Electric System (BES) grid resilience. Coverage includes practical experience of implementing real-time Energy Management System (EMS) Network Application, real-time voltage stability analysis, online transient stability analysis, synchrophasor technology, Dispatcher Training Simulator and EMS Cybersecurity & Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol (ICCP) implementation experience in a Reliability Coordinator Control Room setting. Explains how to operate a "green" grid and prevent new blackouts against uncertain operation conditions; Written by Peak Reliability engineers who worked on the creation of the West Wide System Model (WWSM); All material verified in practical system operations, or validated by real system measures and system events.

'When Singapore became a sovereign state in 1965, the fledgling nation faced very similar problems as most other developing countries: high unemployment, low standard of living, and poor environmental conditions. In a scant four decades, it has become the 6th wealthiest country in the world in terms of per capita GDP and has managed its environment so well that it is now considered to be one of the best in the world. In this remarkable book, Tan Yong Soon authoritatively and objectively analyses how the environmental conditions were radically transformed within this period, and the enabling conditions which made this extraordinary transformation possible.This book will unquestionably make all Singaporeans proud of their environmental achievements, and at the same time enable other countries, both developed and developing, to learn many lessons from a most remarkable success story. This book is a must read for any individual interested in environment-development issues' - Prof Asit K. Biswas, President, Third World Centre for Water Management, Mexico and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore.

Coastal Zones: Solutions for the 21st Century bridges the gap between national and international efforts and the local needs for actions in communities where coastal zone challenges are faced daily. The solution-oriented approach covers issues of coastal zone management as well as responses to natural disasters. This work provides ideas on how to face the challenges, develop solutions, and localize management of common-pool resources. Coastal Zones targets academic stakeholders and coastal stakeholders who have local knowledge and experience but need a theoretical framework and a greater range of skills to make use of this experience.

Karst aquifers are important sources of drinking water worldwide. This volume presents a discussion of the current state of knowledge on karst science, advances in karst mapping and karst aquifer monitoring technologies, case studies of karst aquifer assessment, and regulatory perspectives on land use and water management in karst environments. It offers valuable reference material for researchers involved in karst science and environmental studies, as well as a guide for experts at governmental agencies, scientists, engineers and other professionals involved in karst aquifer protection and the design of land and water management systems in karst areas around the globe.

Over half of the world's population now lives in urban areas. Few who live in cities understand that cities, too, are ecosystems, as beholden to the laws and principles of ecology as are natural ecosystems. Understanding Urban Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach introduces students at the college undergraduate level, or those in advanced-standing college credit high school courses, to cities as ecosystems. For graduate students it provides an overview and rich literature base. Urban planners, educators, and decision makers can use this book to help in designing a more sustainable or "green" future. The authors use a systems approach to explore the complexity and interactions of different components of a city's ecology with an emphasis on the energy and materials required to maintain such concentrated centers of human activity and consumption. The book is written by seventeen specialized contributors and includes ten accompanying detailed field exercises to promote hands-on experience, observation, and quantification of urban ecosystem structure and function.The chapters describe one by one the different subsystems of the urban environment, their individual components and functions, and the interactions among them that create the social-ecological environments in which we live. The book's emphasis on social-ecological metabolism provides students with the knowledge and methods needed to evaluate proposed policies for urban sustainability in terms of ecosystem capacity, potential positive and negative feedbacks, the laws of thermo-dynamics, and socio-cultural perception and adaptability.

This book compiles examples of the most widely used tools in agricultural economics that have been developed and used to analyze the impact of global change in agricultural activity. The research papers on this topic are plenty but lack the methodology. The content of this book can be used by research students exploring additional methods in agricultural economics.

Water is vital to social and economic development whilst both arable land and water are scarce. Managing water is highly capital intensive, and capital is also scarce. Simultaneously, there are environmental consequences to any intervention in the water cycle whilst the economy depends on the environment. Therefore, for an integrated catchment, economic analyses must be undertaken on the analysis of the impacts of the proposed scheme upon the catchment as a whole.

This book starts with the Dublin declaration for defining sustainable water management and sets out the economic framework needed to support the implementation of its requirements. The book is divided into two parts: the theory and applications. The theory side sets out the nature of choice and decision-making, considering social and policy issues for water and resource management. The applications side provides the tools for the economic evaluation of water needs, the use of economic instruments and cost-benefit analysis.

Handbook of Water Economics: principles and practice:

• Adopts an integrated approach to managing land-water interactions.

• Includes good practice guidelines for each method along with a comparative summary of the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

• Illustrates techniques with real applications from projects in Egypt, South Africa, China and the United Kingdom.

• Includes case studies on water availability, sewerage and wastewater treatment, tradable permits, , flooding, and hydrometric data.

• Incorporates other aspects of water management, including law, sociology, psychology, development studies and market research.

• Is orientated to practical application.

For over 130 years, Imperial Oil dominated Canada's oil industry. Their 1947 discovery of crude oil in Leduc, Alberta transformed the industry and the country. But from 1899 onwards, two-thirds of the company was owned by an American giant, making Imperial Oil one of the largest foreign-controlled multinationals in Canada. Imperial Standard is the first full-scale history of Imperial Oil. It illuminates Imperial's longstanding connections to Standard Oil of New Jersey, also known as Exxon Mobil. Although this relationship was often beneficial to Imperial, allowing them access to technology and capital, it also came at a cost, causing Imperial to be assailed as the embodiment of foreign control of Canada's natural resources. Graham D. Taylor draws on an extensive collection of primary sources to explore the complex relationship between the two companies. This groundbreaking history provides unprecedented insight into one of Canada's most influential oil companies as it has grown and evolved with the industry itself.

For all peoples on all continents and for all times, water has been the blood of life. It is fitting then, that this book about the peoples of the Southwest be dedicated to an examination of water in a land that has historically been dry, making the need to locate water supplies essential. The Southwest became an important frontier for Spanish and then Anglo explorers and colonizers who battled with native occupants for strategic locations. Each one of these groups who made the Southwest their home were ethnically quite different. They represented diverse histories, cultures, nationalities, classes, religions and world views.

Beginning with discussion of innovative prehistoric land and water use, the book describes the ways in which early farmers learned how to harness the precious drops of water for their fields. The story then continues with views from the Pueblos and beyond as the living sacredness of earth's resource is described by native peoples. This emic view, however, is often in conflict with the various legal definitions of resources carved by federal, state and local officials and developers. The book goes on to examine the background of contemporary land conflicts and water litigation between numerous contestants: Indian, Hispanic, and Anglo. The book ends with articles that attest to the clever ways in which ethnicity is configured and boldly proclaimed in order to reclaim privilege.

Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology attempts to provide concise, critical reviews of timely advances, philosophy and significant areas of accomplished or needed endeavor in the total field of xenobiotics, in any segment of the environment, as well as toxicological implications.

The book describes methods of modeling, planning and implementing electric energy storage systems. Energy storage becomes an important issue when more and more electric power is generated by wind mills and photovoltaics systems, because green energy is more volatile. So energy storage is necessary to guarantee safe and secure electric energy supply.Market and power system oriented operations of electric energy storage require different planning methods and different algorithms for searching the optimal solution. These methods are described in detail for energy storage implementations in generation, transmission and distribution levels. Economic aspects are considered.For many years, the authors have been developing smart grid solutions as well as a methology of modeling and planning electric energy storage usage. The aim has been to increase the flexibility of the power system heading for an energy system which is completely generated by green energy.

This book provides the detail information about nanoparticles, their types, characterization techniques such as TEM, FESEM, AFM, XRD etc. nanogenotoxicity, metal and metal oxide nanoparticle's toxicity, physical and chemical characterization of nanomaterials, entry routes, cell-nano interaction studies, possible impacts to the human kind, and on the methods of evaluating the toxicity. It puts together comprehensive and up-to-date information about sustainable approaches in making an eco-friendly environment using advanced nanotechnologies. It educated readers about the new frontiers and scope of employing various state-of-art nano-technologies to clean-up and save our environment. This book will be of interest to teachers, researchers, environmental biotechnologists, capacity builders and policymakers. Also the book serves as additional reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture, environmental sciences, environmental engineering and biotechnology.

This book discusses various issues relating to water resources, climate change and sustainable development. Water is the main driving force behind three major pillars of sustainable development: environmental, social and economic. As stated in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, development of these pillars rests on the availability and management of resources to fulfill the demand for water. By identifying the various challenges in the context of water resources and climate change, the book offers insights into achieving a better and more sustainable future. It provides a unique forum for practitioners and academics to exchange ideas on emerging issues, approaches, and practices in the area of water resources, climate change, and sustainability, while also presenting valuable information for policymakers on the changing contours of water management and climate change mitigation. As such it is a useful resource for decision-makers at the local as well as the global level.

The content is focused on benthic communities showing how they play an in important role in the river ecosystems. Provides also information on taxonomy of river-inhabiting algal groups, including phylogeny, distribution, collection, preservation and description of the most representative genera of algae in river benthic algal communities. The book also approaches the ecology of river algae not to mention the ecological factors influencing abundance, distribution and diversity of river benthic algal communities and their use as bio-indicators, providing an up-to-date information on taxonomy, ecology, methodology and uses, and a great source of research to everyone interested in freshwater algae, limnology, water quality assessment and biodiversity in river ecosystems.

The future of Brazilian Amazonia, the world's largest remaining tropical rainforest, hangs in the balance. Two decades of destructive development have provoked violent struggles for control over the region's resources, with disastrous social and environmental consequences.;This multi-disciplinary collection reviews past experience but focusses on the latest phase of Amazonian settlement. Chapters by leading authorities examine such issues as colonization in the most recent frontier areas, multinational mining projects, hydro-electric schemes, and the military occupation of Brazil's borders. After demonstrating how new government and business activities have exacerbated social tensions and ecological destruction, the volume considers alternative, more substantial strategies.

This book pursues a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach in order to analyze the relationship between water and food security. It demonstrates that most of the world's economies lack sufficient water resources to secure their populations' food requirements and are thus virtual importers of water. One of the most inspiring cases, which this book is rooted in, is Italy: the third largest net virtual water importer on earth. The book also shows that the sustainability of water depends on the extent to which societies recognize and take into account its value and contribution to agricultural production. Due to the large volumes of water required for food production, water and food security are in fact inextricably linked. Contributions from leading international experts and scholars in the field use the concepts of virtual water and water footprints to explain this relationship, with an eye to the empirical examples of wine, tomato and pasta production in Italy. This book provides a valuable resource for all researchers, professionals, policymakers and everyone else interested in water and food security.

The effective and efficient management of water is a major problem, not just for economic growth and development in the Nile River basin, but also for the peaceful coexistence of the millions of people who live in the region. Of critical importance to the people of this part of Africa is the reasonable, equitable and sustainable management of the waters of the Nile River and its tributaries. Written by scholars trained in economics and law, and with significant experience in African political economy, this book explores new ways to deal with conflict over the allocation of the waters of the Nile River and its tributaries. The monograph provides policymakers in the Nile River riparian states and other stakeholders with practical and effective policy options for dealing with what has become a very contentious problem - the effective management of the waters of the Nile River. The analysis is quite rigorous but also extremely accessible.

It is widely held that private ownership is the preferred end state for all scarce resources. Those who hold this view have not looked closely enough at water in the American West, Barbanell contends. Because of water's special attributes, private ownership is an ineffective means for protecting individuals interests. Splitting the various rights of ownership between individual resources users and the community to which they belong can better protect those interests. Barbanell develops a conception of this form of common ownership, a common-property arrangement, and shows that it can function effectively for water in the West. More generally, he offers an expanded framework for analyzing right relationships and examining problems related to resource scarcity.

Some economists argue that John Locke's account of property justifies the private ownership of water in the West. Barbanell argues, however, that because Locke did not think carefully enough about the variable nature of resources, his account does not support that conclusion. Although economists recognize that private ownership may not be perfectly suited to all resources, they are nonetheless skeptical about common ownership alternatives. Barbanell shows that this skepticism is unwarranted. When the rights relationship among members of a resource community is based on mutual expectations of reciprocal behavior, then a common-property arrangement can function effectively to control the degradation and depletion of a scarce resource. Barbanell's argument that common ownership is a conceptually sound and politically viable alternative for water will be of particular interest to public policy makers, environmentalists, resource economists, and political philosophers.

This Handbook approaches sustainable development in higher education from an integrated perspective, addressing the dearth of publications on the subject. It offers a unique overview of what universities around the world are doing to implement sustainable development (i.e. via curriculum innovation, research, activities, or practical projects) and how their efforts relate to education for sustainable development at the university level. The Handbook gathers a wealth of information, ideas, best practices and lessons learned in the context of executing concrete projects, and assesses methodological approaches to integrating the topic of sustainable development in university curricula. Lastly, it documents and disseminates the veritable treasure trove of practical experience currently available on sustainability in higher education.

Enclosing Water is an environmental history of the Industrial Revolution, as inscribed on the Liri valley in Italy's Central Apennines. Amid forces of revolution and empire, and Enlightenment discourses of 'improvement' and political economy, the Liri's natural wealth - water-power - generated sweeping changes in its landscape and working and living environments. This book tells the story of how defining water as property - both materially and discursively - led to the emergence of an industrial riverscape, and of a concomitant new ecological consciousness; to heightened environmental risks and awareness of those risks. A dramatic century in the Liri's socio-environmental history, with its cast of new industrial bourgeoisie, engineers and civil servants, illuminates how material developments and ideological currents completely reshaped the relationship between society and nature at the periphery of 19th century Europe. By integrating Political Economy into the narrative of European environmental history, this pioneering book offers a critical new view of discourses of water disorder and environmental politics in the Mediterranean region.

This book examines the "oil-tourism interface", the broad range of direct and indirect contact points between offshore oil extraction and nature-based tourism. Offshore oil extraction and nature-based tourism are pursued as development paths across the North Atlantic region. Offshore oil promises economic benefits from employment and royalty payments to host societies, but is based on fossil fuel-intensive resource extraction. Nature-based tourism, instead, is based on experiencing natural environments and encountering wildlife, including whales, seals, or seabirds. They share social-ecological space, such as oceans, coastlines, cities and towns where tourism and offshore oil operations and offices are located. However, they rarely share cultural or political space, in terms of media coverage, public debate, or policy discussion that integrates both modes of development. Through a comparative analysis of Denmark, Iceland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Norway, and Scotland, this book offers important lessons for how coastal societies can better navigate relationships between resource extraction and nature-based tourism in the interests of social-ecological wellbeing.

An important contribution to the economic literature, this book provides a systematic analysis of the problems of economic growth and stability presented by the changing role of energy in modern economics. The result of a massive study by the author of the effects of energy and energy shocks on the world economy, the volume is organized around the theme that energy is an integral feature of the economy and that any interpretation of short-term movements in economic activity is likely to be seriously at fault if it neglects energy supply changes and their repercussions. The author takes both an historical and theoretical approach to the subject, providing students and scholars of energy economics and political economy with a logical framework within which key worldwide energy issues and problems can be analyzed.

Following an overview of the nature and roots of the energy crisis, Tsai examines the economic aspects of complex contemporary energy issues and problems. He provides a valuable introduction to the technological characteristics of energy, explores future prospects for world energy supply, and offers a synopsis of key elements of U.S. energy legislation. The theoretical and empirical underpinnings of energy-economy interactions and the application of microeconomic techniques to the analysis of energy resources also receive thorough treatment. With the knowledge gained from this book, the reader will be well-equipped to make sound economic judgments concerning energy issues.