Search

The Sino–U.S. Treaty of Tientsin (1858), for the first time in history, included an article to ensure the toleration of Protestantism in China, i.e., the Toleration Article. The man behind the article was S. Wells Williams (1812–1884), an interpreter of the U.S. Legation and a former missionary, who negotiated with Chinese officials directly. Williams produced the Chinese version of the clause and its official English translation which led to controversies, for it was deemed unfaithful and humiliating to the Christian communities. This paper revisits this important episode in the history of Protestantism in China. Using first-hand archival materials, it reveals how Williams was forced to "mistranslate" the article in order to satisfy both parties. It further discusses the reasons behind the missionaries' criticism, which placed Williams in the center of clashes between religious and political interests. Through Williams' case, the paper foregrounds the crucial roles and difficult situations of missionary translators in diplomatic incidents that shaped the history of Christianity in China. More importantly, it highlights the conflicting interests and ideas in early Sino–U.S. diplomacy and shows how missionary translators worked to mediate the dilemma between evangelism and politics in 19th-century China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution poses a grave threat to human health and everyday life. Accurate air-quality prediction plays a crucial role in effectively preventing and controlling air pollution. A multi-graph spatial-temporal attention network is proposed to predict the air quality in a given area by analyzing the interconnections between stations and the individual characteristics of each station. Firstly, this paper constructs multi-scale spatial-temporal graphs from spatial and temporal perspectives to effectively capture the interconnections between stations, thereby comprehensively understanding the spatial-temporal relationships among them. Secondly, incorporating the nonlinear temporal correlation of station data, this paper proposes a temporal multi-graph attention-fusion module to integrate information from both neighboring stations and the station itself. Finally, predictions are made using a spatial-temporal graph network. The experiments in this paper were based on air-quality data from Beijing and Tianjin, and the following experimental results were obtained. (1) The proposed model outperforms the baselines significantly in both single-step and multi-step prediction tasks. (2) The ablation study confirms that the graph constructed in this paper contributes to improving the performance of the model. (3) Comparing the performance of attention components, the proposed attention mechanism exhibits better performance than other attention mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the volatility of photovoltaic power generation, this paper proposes a short-term photovoltaic power generation prediction model (HWOA-MVMD-TPA-TCN) based on a Hybrid Whale Optimization Algorithm (HWOA), multivariate variational mode decomposition (MVMD), temporal pattern attention mechanism (TPA), and temporal convolutional network (TCN). In order to improve the accuracy of photovoltaic power generation forecasting, HWOA-MVMD is used for data decomposition, the Minimum Mode Overlap Component (MMOC) is used as the objective function, the photovoltaic power generation sequence is decomposed into finite Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) according to the optimal solution, and the training set is formed with key meteorological variable data such as total radiation (unit: W/m2), ambient temperature, and humidity. Then, the TPA-TCN model is used to train the sub-sequences, the final predicted values are obtained after superimposing the reconstruction of the prediction results, and finally the prediction error of the photovoltaic power generation data is studied. The proposed method is applied to real photovoltaic power generation data from a commercial center in Tianjin and is compared with HWOA-MVMD-BiLSTM, GWO-MVMD-TPA-TCN, and TPA-TCN prediction models. The simulation results demonstrate that the MAE value of the forecast method proposed in this paper is 1.95 MW and the RMSE value is 2.55 MW, which can be reduced by up to 33.74% and 38.85%, respectively. The HWOA-MVMD-TPA-TCN-based short-term photovoltaic power generation prediction model presented in this paper achieves higher prediction accuracy and superior performance, serving as a valuable reference for related research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are located in the Bohai Rim region of Northeast Asia, China. It is the region with the largest economic scale and strongest economic vitality in northern China. Due to historical development and administrative division, the economic strength of Beijing and Tianjin is strong, while the economic strength of Hebei Province is weak. The economic development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is severely uneven. The "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Development Strategy" is proposed and elevated to a national strategy in this context, aiming to explore the path of coordinated economic development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, promote economic cooperation, balance economic differences, and enhance the overall economic strength of the Beijing Tianjin Hebei region through national leadership. The economic collaborative development evaluation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is a classical multiple attribute decision making (MADM) problems. Recently, the TODIM and Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) method has been used to cope with MADM issues. The hesitant triangular fuzzy sets (HTFSs) are used as a tool for characterizing uncertain information during the economic collaborative development evaluation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. In this paper, the hesitant triangular fuzzy TODIM-EDAS (HTF-TODIM-EDAS) method is built to solve the MADM under HTFSs. In the end, a numerical case study for economic collaborative development evaluation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is given to validate the proposed method. The main contributions of this paper are summarized: (1) the HTF-TODIM-EDAS method is proposed under HTFSs. (2) The MADM method is designed based on the information entropy and HTF-TODIM-EDAS method under HTFSs. (3) A numerical case study for economic collaborative development evaluation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is given to validate the proposed method. (4) A comparison between proposed method and existing methods is carried out to check its effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of the multi-scale evaluation of port city's international trade goal is conducive to the sustainable development of port city's international trade. In order to make a more in-depth study on the realization ability of port city's international trade sustainable development goal, this paper proposes a new multi-scale evaluation method of port city's international trade goal. This method selects the evaluation indexes, uses the improved normalization method to process the indexes, uses the combination of AHP and factor analysis method to form the subjective and objective combination weighting method, brings the processed indexes into the least square optimization combination evaluation model, calculates the index weight, and uses the fuzzy evaluation method to carry out multi-scale index evaluation on the international trade of port cities to realize its multi-scale evaluation and analysis. The results show that the standardized index of Shanghai's foreign trade dependence is 0.0056, indicating its independence in international trade. In the comprehensive evaluation, the evaluation values of Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou are 92.56, 87.89, and 88.45, respectively, which are very close to the actual results, which shows that the accuracy of the evaluation method is high, and provides a theoretical basis for the sustainable development of international trade in port cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies when and under what conditions the actions undertaken by the power plants involved in China's emission trading scheme (ETS) pilot became cost effective. Based on unique plant-level panel data and the difference-in-differences strategy, we identify that an insignificant initial reduction in cost efficiency occurred at the announcement stage for power plants in the pilot provinces; however, the cost efficiency of the pilot plants increased significantly following formal policy implementation. Additionally, the by-stage treatment effects differed across the pilot provinces due to localized market and non-market variations. Localized conditions of higher marketization, stricter policy enforcement, and lower carbon dependence enhanced this positive effect. The synthetic control results confirmed this variation in the policy effects. The carbon trading pilots resulted in improved efficiency in power plants in Shanghai, Guangdong, and Tianjin during the period 2013--2017, with an associated total cost saving of approximately 29.75 million RMB. To enhance the efficacy of the ETS policy, our findings suggest that the design of the policy should consider localized external factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South-to-North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP) is believed to drive the next phase of sustainable productivity growth, meeting growing water demand, so as to address increasing environmental sustainability challenges. The Middle Route of SNWDP is regarded as an extremely large long-distance inter-basin water diversion project, which has benefited Henan, Hebei, Tianjin and Beijing since 2014 with great sustainable changes to the cities, groundwater, ecological environment, industrial structure and social development of the beneficiary areas. Taking the number of industrial enterprises above designated size (IEDS) in the water-receiving areas as the research object, this paper takes the year of policy implementation 2014 as the basic time point, evaluating the change of the number of IEDS in the beneficiary areas of the Middle Route of SNWDP through difference-in-difference model. The results show that: (1) The Middle Route of SNWDP promotes the additional growth of the number of IEDS in the beneficiary areas. (2) When the Middle Route of SNWDP promotes the growth of the number of IEDS in beneficiary areas, there is no regional difference for regions with different development levels. (3) The reasons why the Middle Route of SNWDP contributes to the additional growth of the number of IEDS are composed of promoting mixed ownership reform of enterprises in beneficiary areas, increasing water supply and increasing population. However, the Middle Route of SNWDP has not had a significant impact on the traditional total factor productivity or the components of production factors, technology and capital. From the final outcome, the South-to-North Water Diversion Project has played a facilitating role in the sustainable development of large-scale enterprises in the water-receiving areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let d-claw (or d-star) stand for K 1 , d , the complete bipartite graph with 1 and d ≥ 1 vertices on each part. The d-claw vertex deletion problem, d -claw-vd, asks for a given graph G and an integer k if one can delete at most k vertices from G such that the resulting graph has no d-claw as an induced subgraph. Thus, 1 -claw-vd and 2 -claw-vd are just the famous vertex cover problem and the cluster vertex deletion problem, respectively. In this paper, we strengthen a hardness result recently proved in Jena and Subramani (in: Du, Du, Wu, and Zhu (eds) Theory and applications of models of computation - 17th annual conference, TAMC 2022, Tianjin, China, September 16–18, 2022, Proceedings, 2022), by showing that cluster vertex deletion remains NP -complete even when restricted to planar bipartite graphs of maximum degree 3 and arbitrary large girth. Moreover, for every d ≥ 3 , we show that d -claw-vd is NP -complete even when restricted to planar bipartite graphs of maximum degree d. These hardness results are optimal with respect to degree constraint. By extending the hardness result in Bonomo-Braberman et al (in: Computing and combinatorics - 26th international conference, COCOON 2020, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12273, Springer, 2020, pp 14–26, 2020), we show that, for every d ≥ 3 , d -claw-vd is NP -complete even when restricted to split graphs without (d + 1) -claws, and split graphs of diameter 2. On the positive side, we prove that d -claw-vd is polynomially solvable on what we call d-block graphs, a class properly contains all block graphs. This result extends the polynomial-time algorithm in Cao et al (Theor Comput Sci, 2018) for 2 -claw-vd on block graphs to d -claw-vd for all d ≥ 2 and improves the polynomial-time algorithm proposed by Bonomo-Brabeman et al. for (unweighted) 3 -claw-vd on block graphs to 3-block graphs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a promising solution to superheat of stratospheric airship with radiative cooling envelope, which has no change in pneumatic profile, structural weight, and power consumption. In this study, a multilayer nanoparticle-polymer metamaterial (MNPM) is hierarchically designed to provide reflectivity across visible wavelength and emissivity in atmospheric window. In this paper, the specimens and ball models are firstly fabricated, the cooling performances of which are tested for ground experiments. The temperatures of MNPM and silica/Ag specimens are 6.7 °C and 10.8 °C at noon in Tianjin. The inner gas and surface temperatures of MNPM scale ball are 11.7 °C and 14.6 °C, lower than silica/Ag by 4.5 °C and 4.6 °C, respectively. Subsequently, the flight experiments verify the cooling performance of MNPM, the maximum temperature of which is lower than the control group by 15.4 °C in stratosphere. Finally, the FLUENT simulations illustrate the cooling performance of stratospheric balloon and airship equipped with solar panel. The MNPM has a better cooling capacity for the internal helium and top surface throughout the day and a weak warming capacity for the bottom surface at night. Considering solar panels, the MNPM reduces the helium temperature by 8.1 °C, and the day-night superheat of the helium temperature is only 19.8 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imbalanced classification is widely referred in many real-world applications and has been extensively studied. Most existing algorithms consider alleviating the imbalance by sampling or guiding ensemble learners with punishments. The combination of ensemble learning and sampling strategy at class level has achieved great progress. Actually, specific hard examples have little benefit for model learning and even degrade the performance. From the view of identifying classification difficulty of samples, one important motivation is to design algorithms to finely equip different samples with progressive learning. Unfortunately, how to perfectly configure the sampling and learning strategies under ensemble principles at the sample level remains a research gap. In this paper, we propose a new view from the sample level rather than class level in existing studies. We design an ensemble approach in pipe with sample-level gradient resampling, that is, balanced cascade with filters (BCWF). Before that, as a preliminary exploration, we first design a hard examples mining algorithm to explore the gradient distribution of classification difficulty of samples and identify the hard examples. Specifically, BCWF uses an under-sampling strategy and a boosting manner to train T predictive classifiers and reidentify hard examples. In BCWF, moreover, we design two types of filters: the first is assembled with a hard filter (BCWF_h), whereas the second is assembled with a soft filter (BCWF_s). In each round of boosting, BCWF_h strictly removes a gradient/set of the hardest examples from both classes, whereas BCWF_s removes a larger number of harder and easy examples simultaneously for final balanced-class retention. Consequently, the well-trained T predictive classifiers can be used with two ensemble voting strategies: average probability and majority vote. To evaluate the proposed approach, we conduct intensive experiments on 10 benchmark data sets and apply our algorithms to perform default user detection on a real-world peer to peer lending data set. The experimental results fully demonstrate the effectiveness and the managerial implications of our approach when compared with 11 competitive algorithms. History: Accepted by Ram Ramesh, Area Editor for Data Science & Machine Learning. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72101176, 71722005, and 72241432], the National Key R&D program of China [Grant 2020YFA0908600] and the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin City [Grant 18JCJQJC45900]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2023.1274) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0104) at (http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6360996). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic incidents pose substantial hazards to public safety and wellbeing, and accurately estimating their duration is pivotal for efficient resource allocation, emergency response, and traffic management. However, existing research often faces limitations in terms of limited datasets, and struggles to achieve satisfactory results in both prediction accuracy and interpretability. This paper established a novel prediction model of traffic incident duration by utilizing a tabular network-TabNet model, while also investigating its interpretability. The study incorporates various novel aspects. It encompasses an extensive temporal and spatial scope by incorporating six years of traffic safety big data from Tianjin, China. The TabNet model aligns well with the tabular incident data, and exhibits a robust predictive performance. The model achieves a mean absolute error (MAE) of 17.04 min and root mean squared error (RMSE) of 22.01 min, which outperforms other alternative models. Furthermore, by leveraging the interpretability of TabNet, the paper ranks the key factors that significantly influence incident duration and conducts further analysis. The findings emphasize that road type, casualties, weather conditions (particularly overcast), and the number of motor and non-motor vehicles are the most influential factors. The result provides valuable insights for traffic authorities, thus improving the efficiency and effectiveness of traffic management strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profound impacts of severe air pollution on human health, ecological balance, and economic stability are undeniable. Precise air quality forecasting stands as a crucial necessity, enabling governmental bodies and vulnerable communities to proactively take essential measures to reduce exposure to detrimental pollutants. Previous research has primarily focused on predicting air quality using only time-series data. However, the importance of remote-sensing image data has received limited attention. This paper proposes a new multi-modal deep-learning model, Res-GCN, which integrates high spatial resolution remote-sensing images and time-series air quality data from multiple stations to forecast future air quality. Res-GCN employs two deep-learning networks, one utilizing the residual network to extract hidden visual information from remote-sensing images, and another using a dynamic spatio-temporal graph convolution network to capture spatio-temporal information from time-series data. By extracting features from two different modalities, improved predictive performance can be achieved. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, experiments were conducted on two real-world datasets. The results show that the Res-GCN model effectively extracts multi-modal features, significantly enhancing the accuracy of multi-step predictions. Compared to the best-performing baseline model, the multi-step prediction's mean absolute error, root mean square error, and mean absolute percentage error increased by approximately 6%, 7%, and 7%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a vehicle track coupling dynamic model including bearing outer ring defects is built, the time history of the axle‐box vibration acceleration and the time history of the bearing roller‐outer raceway contact load under the condition of random track irregularity on the Beijing‐Tianjin line are obtained by simulation calculation. The results show that when the outer ring defect of the bearing occurs, the axle box will generate high‐frequency vibration at the resonance peak in the vertical and lateral directions. When the defect on the bearing outer ring is in the small width of 1 mm, the roller only imposes one impact when passing through the defect area. However, when the width exceeds 3 mm, the large defect causes the roller to impose a double impact on the lateral direction of the axle box, due to changes in bearing clearance in the passing‐through process. When the running speed of the train is about 250 km h−1, the width of bearing outer ring defects needs to be limited to within 1 mm, to minimize a series of problems such as structural fatigue caused by the increased bearing roller‐outer raceway contact load caused by bearing outer ring defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In deep excavations, pre-excavation dewatering (PED) usually causes notable diaphragm wall (D-wall) deformation and ground settlement. However, this problem has not attracted sufficient attention. In this paper, the mechanisms and control methods of settlement caused by PED in a deep excavation in Tianjin, China are analysed. A hydraulic connection between the soil inside and outside the excavation area due to aquifer leakage was observed during PED. Therefore, although the first level of struts had been installed before PED, the deformation of the D-wall and ground settlement reached 6·9 mm and 12·5 mm, approximately 29·0% and 73·5% of the maximum allowable values, respectively. The monitoring results demonstrated that leaky aquifers could reduce the deformation of the D-wall but increased the magnitude and extent of ground settlement. Based on the numerical simulations of D-wall deformation and groundwater change, in this case, the ground settlement within the area extending two times the depth of unloading (two times the depth of dewatering, 2Hd) from the excavation was found to be caused by both the deformation of the D-wall and the drawdown of the groundwater, whereas the noticeable settlement in the area beyond 2Hd was caused by only the drawdown of the groundwater. When hydraulic connections exist between the soil inside and outside the excavation area, artificial recharge should be used to control the noticeable settlement induced by groundwater drawdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rainstorm and waterlogging disasters of underground rail transit have recently become a vital safety problem. In this paper, a model of vulnerability assessment is established, and 14 indicators are selected to establish an indicator system for 109 stations in the central area of Tianjin. Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) and Entropy Weight Method (EWM) were used to determine the subjective and objective weights of indicators. A distance function was introduced to calculate the combined weights and improve the weights' rationality. The results show that there are 34 high and medium-high vulnerability stations, and 41 low and medium-low vulnerability stations. Except for Line 2, the vulnerability level of subway stations on the rail lines decreased from the edge to the centre. Nankai District had the most high-vulnerability stations (seven of the 20 high-vulnerability stations). The main influence factors were the waterproofing capacity of the subway, the digital elevation model, the station type, the height of the exit, and the entrance steps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of green solutions to address the shortage of freshwater shortage, energy crisis, and climate change. Tri-generation renewable systems are recently efficient approaches that can offer multiple energy outputs, such as heat, electricity, and distilled water. This paper presents a new hybrid freshwater production system driven by renewable energy for enhanced performance and waste heat recovery. This hybrid system proposes the utilization of reverse osmosis, an adsorption distillation system, and a solar dish Stirling engine (RO-ADS/SDSE). The cooperative concept is based on the re-desalination of the brine of the RO unit using an adsorption desalination system driven by the heat rejected from the SDSE, while the RO system is driven by the electrical energy produced by the Stirling engine. A mathematical model conducted in MATLAB coupled with EES package is developed to investigate the performance of the proposed RO-ADS/SDSE with and without pressure recovery (PR) mode at different salinity concentrations varying from 30000 to 50000 ppm at a constant feed pressure of 80 bar. The investigation is conducted based on the meteorological data of Tianjin, China. The results showed significant superiority in the performance of the proposed RO-ADS/SDSE system, as the annual freshwater production rate of the RO-ADS/SDSE with PR increased by up to 3000 m3 compared to 1700 m3 for the standalone RO system at a feed salinity of 45000 ppm and feed pressure of 80 bar. On a daily basis, the hourly permeating flow rate of the RO-ADS/SDSE with PR increased from 2.30 m3/h to 2.60 m3/h, and the permeate salinity decreased from 190 to 120 ppm. While the daily electricity consumption decreased from 5.20 to 4.40 kWh/m3. In conclusion, the proposed RO-ADS/SDSE system with PR can be considered a promising approach in maximizing the performance of desalination systems. [Display omitted] • Hybridization of a solar dish/Stirling engine with reverse osmosis/adsorption distillation (SDSE/RO-ADS) is studied. • RO-ADS/SDSE is simulated with and without pressure recovery at various salinity concentrations. • Freshwater product of SDSE/ RO-ADS is increased by up to 3000 m3/yr compared to 1700 m3 for RO system. • Daily specific electricity consumption is decreased from 5.20 to 4.40 kWh/m3. • Cost per liter of water of RO-ADS/SDSE reached 1.54 $/m3 with a reduction of 3.75% over RO system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determining whether the supply–demand matching (SDM) of urban public health resources is reasonable involves important issues such as health security and the rational use of resources. Using the central urban area of Tianjin as the research area, this paper used the Gaussian-based 2-step floating catchment area method (Ga2SFCA), combined with multi-source data, and comprehensively considered public medical, natural, and physical resources to evaluate the SDM of single-category and integrated public health resources in the research area. The results showed the following: (1) there was a good fit between supply and demand for public medical and natural health resources in Tianjin's central urban area. For public physical health resources, there was a poor fit between supply and demand; the population in the supply insufficient and scarce areas for 82.78% of the total and was mainly distributed in the marginal areas of the four districts around the city and the six districts of the inner city. (2) For integrated public health resources, the degree of SDM was generally good. It had a circular structure that gradually shrank from the core to the edge. In order to promote the supply–demand balance of urban public health resources, this paper proposed three strategies involving three aspects: the supply, accessibility, and demand of urban public health resources. These strategies involve the service supply level, urban traffic network and slow traffic, development intensity, and population scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, China has implemented several measures to improve air quality. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region is one area that has suffered from the most serious air pollution in China and has undergone huge changes in air quality in the past few years. How to scientifically assess these change processes remain the key issue in further improving the air quality over this region in the future. To evaluate the changes in major air pollutant emissions over this region, this paper employs ensemble Kalman filtering (EnKF) for integrating the national ground monitoring pollutant observation data and the Nested Air Quality Prediction Modeling System (NAQPMS) simulation data to inversely estimate the emission rates of SO2, NOX, CO, and primary PM2.5 over BTH region in February from 2014 to 2019. The results show that SO2, NOX, CO, and primary PM2.5 emissions in the BTH region decreased in February from 2014 to 2019 by 83%, 37%, 41%, and 42%, while decreases in Beijing during this period were 86%, 67%, 59%, and 65%, respectively. Compared with the prior emission inventory, the inversion emission inventory reduces the uncertainty of multi-pollutant simulation in the BTH region, with simulated root mean square errors of the monthly average concentrations of SO2, NOX, PM2.5, and CO reduced by 41%, 30%, 31%, and 22%, respectively. The average uncertainties of SO2, NOX, PM2.5, and CO inversion emissions in 2014–19 are ±14.03% yr−1, ±28.91% yr−1, ±126.15% yr−1, and ±43.58% yr−1. Compared with the uncertainty of MEIC emission, the uncertainties of all species changed by +2% yr−1, −2% yr−1, −26% yr−1, and −4% yr−1, respectively. The spatial distribution results illustrate that air pollutant emissions are mainly distributed over the eastern and southern BTH regions. The spatial gap between the inversion emissions and MEIC emissions was further closed in 2019 compared to 2014. The results of this paper can provide a new reference for assessing changes in air pollution emissions over the BTH region in recent years and validating a bottom-up emission inventory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how ideas and practices of elder-care may be changing for the new Chinese middle class. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with the members of different generations of ten middle class families in the Chinese city of Tianjin. It explores how increased resources but also increased pressure are affecting the care of older people and the expectations around elder-care. Thematic analysis of transcripts entered into NVIVO revealed three findings. Firstly, that the generation born in the 1950s and 1960s are often negotiating their care responsibilities between their parents and their grandchildren. Secondly, the only viable elder-care solution for many families is to buy in support from an unregulated market-based home care sector. Thirdly driven by an increasingly postmodern culture, filial piety may be changing from a normative expectation to a set of new practices based on familial reciprocity. The paper concludes by reflecting on the issues that will arise from the proposed raising of the retirement age in China, and the increasing geographic dispersal of generations. Flexible working policies as well as investment in a regulated home care sector are recommended as solutions to be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the launch of the "Channel Computing Resources from the East to the West" project, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as a national integrated big-data center system, has established a Zhangjiakou data center cluster and continuously optimized the regional computing power layout. Beijing has been accelerating the construction of a global digital economy benchmark city since 2021, committed to forming a collaborative development pattern of computing power integration, and achieving a globally leading density of data centers. The core industry of Beijing's digital economy has strong fundamental advantages, but as a high-energy consuming industry, data centers cannot fully meet real-time computing power needs solely relying on the local infrastructure construction in Beijing. Therefore, this paper explored the promoting role of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei national integrated big-data center system in the construction of a global digital economy benchmark city in Beijing through channels such as computing power resource sharing, green energy consumption support, and industrial development collaboration. Based on this, it analyzed the challenges that still exist in current regional collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since improvement of ultra-soft soil ground encounters the shortage of sand resources in Tianjin coastal area, non-sand blanket vacuum preloading method becomes an important substitute approach to solve the dilemma. Under such a background, DB/T 29-263—2019 Technical Standard of Non-sand Blanket Vacuum Preloading Method for Soft Soil Improvement in Tianjin was issued and implemented on July 1st in 2019. This paper compares the standard DB/T 29-263—2019 with the industrial standards, JTS 147—2017 Code for Foundation Design on Port and Waterway Engineering and JTS206—2017 Code for Foundation construction on Port and Waterway Engineering, and further analyzes the main differences in the design and construction with the conventional vacuum preloading method and the non-sand blanket vacuum preloading method for a purpose to help engineering practitioners better understand DB/T 29-263—2019 in the promotion of application of non-sand blanket vacuum preloading method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate is closely related to human life, food security and ecosystems. Forecasting future climate provides important information for agricultural production, water resources management and so on. In this paper, historical climate data from 1962–2001 was used at three sites in Tianjin Baodi, Tianjin and Tanggu districts as baseline and the model parameters were calibrated by the Long Ashton Research Station Weather Generator (LARS-WG). 2m-temperatures in 2011–2020 were verified under two scenarios, representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and RCP8.5 in different atmospheric circulation models with optimal minimum 2m-temperatures at the three sites. From 2031–2050, Tianjin will be using more moderate minimum 2m-temperatures in future simulations. Support vector machines (SVM) were used to optimize the simulated data to obtain more accurate future maximum and minimum 2m-temperatures for the three sites. The results showed that the determinant coefficient of LARS-WG simulation was 0.8 and SVM optimized determinant coefficient was 0.9 which greatly improved the prediction accuracy. The minimum and maximum future 2m-temperatures optimized under European Community Earth System Model (EC-EARTH) were relatively low and the same future 2m-temperatures optimized under Hadley Centre Global Environment Model Earth System (Had-GEM2-ES4) were high especially in the RCP8.5 scenario which simulated 2051–2070 climate. The SVM optimization showed that the maximum and minimum 2m-temperatures were in general agreement with the original simulation values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production connection is a crucial component of the Inter City Association. An urban network based on the enterprise perspective better reflects the structural characteristics of regional cities. Based on data gathered from the headquarters and branches of the listed manufacturing enterprises in 2020, this paper analyzes the county-level administrative units in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China. Using the subordinate connection model and the social network analysis method, this paper examines the spatial structural characteristics and factors of urban networks in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The results suggest that resource allocation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is unbalanced, with a significant difference in urban radiation and agglomeration capacity. As the administrative centers, Beijing, Tianjin, and Shijiazhuang show a strong ability to allocate resources within the network. The overall network density in the region was shown to be relatively low, with the main links being of low or medium level. The urban network is defined by the network connection led by Beijing and Tianjin with Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan and Beijing-Baoding-Shijiazhuang as the main axis. These cities exhibit a "dense southeast and sparse northwest" pattern. From a hierarchical perspective, high-level network connections are based mainly on spatial proximity. Analyzing the agglomerative subgroups, the study found that the inner and outer connections of the core subgroups were relatively high. Semi-marginal subgroups generally accepted the radiation of core subgroups, while marginal subgroups had little connection with other subgroups in the region. The results of the QAP analysis show that the administrative relationship, spatial distance, city size difference, economic development level difference, industrial structure difference, and labor cost difference have a significant influence on the urban network of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about the environment and renewable energy are growing. Improving the perception of renewable energy in urban and rural households is required to promote green development and to learn about consumer preferences for renewable energy based on the gradual reduction in financial subsidies for photovoltaic (PV) power generation. This paper aims to estimate the willingness of consumers to pay for a Household PV system and explores the factors that affect consumers' product selection, which is conducive to optimizing Household PV products and policies and is important for achieving the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. Using a discrete choice model, this paper surveyed 765 urban and rural residents without installing Household PV systems in Tianjin, China. Subsequently, the respondents' attribute preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for a Household PV system were analyzed using a logit regression analysis model. The influence of respondents' socio-economic characteristics on WTP was analyzed. The empirical results showed that (1) price significantly impacts consumers' PV adoption behaviors and consumers tend to choose cheaper PV products; (2) consumers are more willing to pay for the after-sales service (3959 USD/level) and traceable information (2176 USD/level), indicating their preference for these two attributes when considering options; (3) socio-economic variables, including gender and the number of minor children (i.e., children under the age of 18) at home, significantly impact consumers' PV adoption behaviors. Males and consumers without minor children at home will pay more attention when selecting the products. Our research findings will provide valuable insights into policy making and the wide-ranging use of Household PV systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An upsurge in Taiwan-based Mazu temple buildings has been observed in China (Tianjin, Kunshan, and Xiamen, etc.) recently. This paper applies qualitative research methods, including participatory observation and semi-structured interviews, to explore the development of Mazu temples in Tianjin, Kunshan, and Xiamen, China in terms of cross-regional connectivity, materiality, and cross-regional locality, to explore the process of transplantation and construction in the mainland. This paper finds that Mazu culture is a reproduction of the vision of "one race one culture" in the cultural space, and this spatial reproduction is realized through cross-strait religious and cultural exchanges. Informed by the perspective of the political and cultural context, three interconnected dimensions—cross-regional connectivity, materiality, and cross-regional locality—have influenced why, where, and how Taiwan Mazu temples have been transplanted and constructed. This kind of hybrid locality is an integration of urban space and religion, as well as an organic, complex process that integrates religious functions, local politics, and the cultural economy. With the ingenious localization efforts of Taiwanese businessmen, these new Mazu temples promote homogenization in the sacred space and create a unique mixed locality—a more-than-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Propose an adaptive compression algorithm involving multiple factors. • Develop a GPU parallel computing framework and a supportive compression method. • Design a new index for evaluating compression effectiveness. • Conduct comparative experiments using three substantial and representative datasets. Automatic Identification System (AIS) offers a wealth of vessel navigation data, which underpins research in maritime data mining, situational awareness, and knowledge discovery within the realm of intelligent transportation systems. The flourishing marine industry has prompted AIS satellites and base stations to generate massive amounts of vessel trajectory data, escalating both data storage and calculation costs. The conventional Douglas-Peucker (DP) algorithm used for trajectory compression sets a uniform threshold, which hampers effective compression. Additionally, compressing and accelerating the computation of large datasets poses a significant challenge in real-world applications. To address these limitations, this paper aims to develop a new Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) parallel computing and compression framework that enables the acceleration of the optimal threshold calculation for each trajectory automatically in maritime big data mining. It achieves this by incorporating a new Adaptive DP with Speed and Course (ADPSC) algorithm, which utilizes the dynamic navigation characteristics of different vessels. It can effectively solve the associated computational time cost concern when using the ADPSC algorithm to compress vast trajectory datasets in the real world. Additionally, this paper proposes a novel evaluation metric for assessing compression efficacy based on the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) method. Comprehensive experiments encompass vessel trajectory datasets from three representative research areas: Tianjin Port, Chengshan Jiao Promontory, and Caofeidian Port. The experimental results demonstrate that 1) the newly developed ADPSC method outperforms in terms of compression, and 2) the designed GPU parallel computing framework can significantly shorten the compression time for extensive datasets. The GPU-accelerated compression methodology not only minimizes storage and transmission costs for data from both manned and unmanned vessels but also enhances data processing speed, supporting real-time decision-making. From a theoretical perspective, it provides the key to the puzzle of realizing the real-time anti-collision of manned and unmanned ships, particularly in complex waters. It hence makes significant contributions to maritime safety in the autonomous shipping era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial upgrading and transfer is one of the three key areas in the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region. Meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) are important means of promoting industrial upgrading. Urban MICE industry, as an important carrier of event activities, become an important gripper for coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region. City exhibition space structure plays an dominant role in regional economic development, and it will greatly promote smooth implementation of the coordinated development strategy of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region. In this paper, 13 prefecture-level cities in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei were selected as research objects, and the data from 2012 to 2018 were selected to establish a gravity model of the attractiveness of MICE cities. With the help of UCINET software, the network density, centrality, cohesive subgroup and core-edge of nodes researches were obtained to analyze the spatial structure characteristics of the attractiveness of MICE cities in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region. The influencing factors of the spatial characteristics of MICE city attractiveness are analyzed by using geographically weighted regression model. The results show that: (1) Beijing, as the overall core area, act as a prominent role. Beijing strengthens the attraction to the superior resources of the surrounding areas, but the network of MICE cities tends to be unbalanced. (2) Overall space forms a subgroup from a single independent subgroup to a subgroup that is spatially separated from each other and acts as an intermediary channel to connect each other, and the core region decreases from 3 to 2. Langfang was removed from the list, leaving Beijing and Tianjin as the core. (3) The influence of supporting facilities, urban environment and population factors on the MICE city attractiveness of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region is increasing gradually. The influence of tourism development level on the MICE city attractiveness of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region is decreasing gradually. The influence of economic development level and Internet development level on the MICE city attractiveness of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region remains unchanged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saltpans extraction is vital for coastal resource utilization and production management. However, it is challenging to extract saltpans, even by visual inspection, because of their spatial and spectral similarities with aquaculture ponds. Saltpans are composed of crystallization and evaporation ponds. From the whole images, existing saltpans extraction algorithms could only extract part of the saltpans, i.e., crystallization ponds. Meanwhile, evaporation ponds could not be efficiently extracted by only spectral analysis, causing the degeneration of saltpans extraction. In addition, manual intervention was required. Thus, it is essential to study the automatic saltpans extraction algorithm of the whole image. As to the abovementioned problems, this paper proposed a novel method with an amendatory saltpan index (ASI) and local spatial parallel similarity (ASI-LSPS) for extracting coastal saltpans. To highlight saltpans and aquaculture ponds in coastal water, the Hessian matrix has been exploited. Then, a new amendatory saltpans index (ASI) is proposed to extract crystallization ponds to reduce the negative influence of turbid water and dams. Finally, a new local parallel similarity criterion is proposed to extract evaporation ponds. The Landsat-8 OLI images of Tianjin and Dongying, China, have been used in experiments. Experiments have shown that ASI can reach at least 70% in intersection over union (IOU) and 78% in Kappa for extraction of crystallization in saltpans. Moreover, experiments also demonstrate that ASI-LSPS can reach at least 82% in IOU and 89% in Kappa on saltpans extraction, at least 13% and 17% better than comparing algorithms in IOU and Kappa, respectively. Furthermore, the ASI-LSPS algorithm has the advantage of automaticity in the whole imagery. Thus, this study can provide help in coastal saltpans management and scientific utilization of coastal resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tianjin is a coastal city of China. However, the continuous rise of the relative sea-level has brought huge hidden danger to Tianjin's economic and social development. The land subsidence is the most important factor that influences relative sea-level rise. By analyzing the current situation of subsidence in Tianjin through PS-InSAR, it was found that the subsidence rate of the southern plain of Tianjin is slowing down as a whole. In addition, Wuqing and Jinghai sedimentary areas as well as other several subsidence centers have been formed. By establishing a regular grid of land subsidence and ground water to construct a geo-weighted regression model (GWR), it was found that Wuqing sedimentary area as a whole is positively correlated with TCA. According to the relative sea-level change, it can be predicted that the natural coastline of Tianjin will recede by about 87 km2 in 20 years. Based on the research results above, this paper, by using machine-learning method (XGBoost), has evaluated Tianjin's urban safety and analyzed high-risk areas and main contributing factors. Potential risks to urban safety brought about by relative sea-level rise have been analyzed, which will improve the resilience of coastal areas to disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The observation facts of trend and variability are estimated for a century‐long timescale, as well as some possible attributions affecting temperature extremes over Beijing‐Tianjin‐Hebei region. In this paper, the new constructed daily maximum and minimum temperature series during the last 100 years in situ stations of Beijing, Tianjin and Baoding city are used, and two 30‐year baseline climatology of 1961–1990 and 1980–2010 are both used in calculating extreme temperature events. The results indicate that there are long‐lasting, frequent and serious extreme warming over Beijing‐Tianjin‐Hebei region, especially for extreme low temperature, with larger declining trends (at 5% significance) from 1981 to 2010 baseline than those from 1961 to 1990 baseline. And from a statistical perspective, El Niño decay years and surface sea temperature (SST) anomalies at some typical ocean regions of the Arabian Sea and the Bengal Bay on the northern Indian Ocean, the Western Pacific and the Mid Atlantic, Southern Indian Ocean and around 45°–85°E, 68°–82°N on the southwest Arctic Ocean can be used as the warning signals denoting extreme warming over Beijing‐Tianjin‐Hebei region. Additionally, urbanization has a significant (at 5% significance) effect on extreme warming over Beijing‐Tianjin‐Hebei region since 1979, with 24.3% warming contribution for annual minimum temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking 13 cities in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei as the research objects, this paper constructed the urban smart development index system from three aspects: smart space construction, smart element allocation and smart welfare performance, measured the urban smart development level in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei from 2008 to 2018, and used ArcGIS software to realize the temporal and spatial measurement performance of smart development level. The obstacle degree model was used to reveal the criterion-level factors that hinder the smart development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei cities. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The smart development level in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei is low, the research period shows a weak fluctuation and downward trend, and there is room for improvement. (2) From the spatial difference of smart development level, the double core trend with Beijing and Tianjin as the high level is obvious, showing a downward trend from the center to the surrounding. (3) From the overall barrier performance of study area, smart welfare performance accounts for the largest proportion, smart space construction takes the second place, and smart factor allocation is the lowest. (4) The obstacles to smart development in different cities vary. The obstacles in Beijing and Tianjin are mainly focused on smart welfare performance. As the main core area to undertake Beijing's noncapital functions, smart space construction and smart element allocation are the obstacles in most cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Railway is a fundamental transportation mode for medium and long-distance travel in China. China's railway transport network (CRTN) has become increasingly complex. Clarifying the structure of the CRTN and its robustness to failures is important for ensuring safe operations. This paper uses train schedule data to construct a railway physical network (RPN) and a train service network (TSN), and proposes a method to simulate the CRTN change processes under different attack strategies, clarify its robustness, and identify its backbone. The results show: First, the RPN is a typical scale-free and small-world network, while the TSN presents a complex hierarchical structure; Second, the RPN is robust to random attacks but vulnerable to targeted attacks, and attacks based on the betweenness centrality as evaluated in the RPN is the most effective mode; Third, the backbone network consists 62 cities including Beijing, Tianjin, and Shijiazhuang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A short-time rainstorm exceeding the extreme historical rainfall occurred in the Jinnan District of Tianjin, China, on 3 July 2022. Due to the concentrated time period of precipitation, it caused serious water accumulation in the Jinnan District. The purpose of this paper is to study the weather mechanism of this extreme rainstorm in the Jinan District of Tianjin. By analyzing the fine observation facts, we can obtain the mesoscale weather characteristics and environmental conditions of the process. The results provide a reference for similar weather forecasting and warning in the future. Based on the 1 min interval precipitation observation data, the ERA5 reanalysis data, the CINRAD-SA radar reflectivity data of Tanggu, the cloud-top brightness temperature data of the Fengyun-4A satellite, and the Variational Doppler Radar Analysis System data, we comprehensively analyzed a record-breaking extreme rainfall process in Tianjin on 3 July 2022. The results show that the extreme rainfall process presents prominent mesoscale weather characteristics, with high precipitation intensity in a short-term period. This process is influenced by multi-scale weather systems, including the 500 hPa upper-level trough and the long-distance water vapor transport by Typhoon Chaba. The rainstorm event is caused by the combined actions of cold pool outflow produced by the upstream precipitation, the easterly disturbance in the boundary layer, the mesoscale temperature front, and the ground convergence line. Specifically, the ground convergence line is formed by the northerly wind of the cold pool outflow and the warm and moist southerly airflow from the ocean, and the temperature front is caused by the horizontal thermal difference of the underlying surface. Both the ground convergence line and temperature front contribute considerably to the triggering of mesoscale convection. The mesoscale secondary circulation is formed in the meridional direction by the meso-γ-scale convergence and its interaction with strong velocity in front of the trough, contributing to the development and maintenance of vertical motion in the Jinnan region of Tianjin and thereby leading to the occurrence and development of this extreme heavy rainfall process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background--As a significant ecological safeguard measure, the new round of returning farmland to forests project is of great ecological significance for ecological protection in Beijing and Tianjin. However, as a policy measure involving the withdrawal of farmers' cultivated land, whether it can guarantee the continuous in-crease of farmers' income and the stability of farmers' consumption is more worthy of discussion. (2) Methods--Based on the micro-panel data of 1115 farmers from 223 rural households in the "Beijing-Tianjin Sandstorm Source Treatment Project Monitoring" project from 2013 to 2017, this paper used the random effect model and the mediating effect model to study the impact of the new round of returning farmland to forests on the rural households' income and consumption and the effect mechanism on the rural households' consumption. (3) Results--The new round of returning farmland to forests significantly increased the total family income of the rural households, and had a significant positive impact on the total family income and operational income of the rural households at the level of 10%. However, the new round of returning farmland to forests did not improve the income structure of the rural households, and did not significantly affect the wage income, property income and transfer income of the rural households. The factors such as the farmers' education level and the number of migrant workers had a significant positive impact on the wage income. Overall, the income of the rural households was still dominated by operational income. The new round of returning farmland to forests significantly increased the total family consumption of the rural households, especially the basic consumption and productive consumption. However, there was no significant increase in children's education consumption, medical consumption and interpersonal communication consumption, which also indicated that the consumption structure of the rural households was still in basic consumption. The new round of returning farmland to forests had a positive impact on the rural households' consumption through the mediating variable of increasing the rural households' income, which verified the transmission mechanism that the farmers participated in the new round of returning farmland to forests to promote the increase of their income, and then affected their consumption. (4) Conclusions and Discussions--First, appropriately raise the subsidy standards and improve the compensation mechanism. Especially for areas prone to return to poverty and ecological functional areas, reasonable compensation standards can make up part of the losses caused by the farmers' participation in the project of returning farmland to forests. In addition, the government can implement a dynamic compensation mechanism according to the actual local situation, so that the subsidy standard is in line with the actual social and economic development situation. Second, actively promote the centralized utilization and circulation of the remaining finely fragmented land through the separation of the three rights of land. On one hand, the circulation of the fragmented land can improve the utilization rate of land, on the other hand, it can promote the flow of labor forces, so as to promote the increase of the rural households' income and the improvement of consumption structure. Third, actively implement the reform policy of forest rights, ensure clear rights to the rural households, and fully improve the promotion role of property rights income on the farmers' willingness to return farmland to forests. In addition, the farmers can also use forest rights as collateral to obtain loans to inject financial impetus into forestry production. Fourth, encourage the development of undergrowth economy and develop three-dimensional agriculture such as fruit industry, under-forest breeding industry, forage-grass planting industry, medicinal materials planting industry according to local conditions. However, while developing the corresponding undergrowth economy, we should also pay attention to the maintenance of forest nutrients, which is conducive to the sustainable and circular development of forestry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have shown that the rail corrugation on the small radius curve section of subway floating slab track is serious. And it seems to be different from the rail corrugation on the common track. The track structure must play an important role in the generation and development of rail corrugation. This paper measured a subway line in Tianjin, including 2 different track structures, and analyzed the measured data by using the international evaluation and acceptance indexes of rail corrugation. The results show that the inner rail of short sleeper monolithic track (SSMT) has poor smoothness in the wavelength range of 0-300 mm, and the overall smoothness of outer rail is good; the inner rail of steel spring floating slab track (SSFST) has poor smoothness in the wavelength range of 100-300 mm, and the outer rail has poor smoothness in the wavelength range of 300-1000 mm. Then the vehicle-track coupling model and wheel-rail wear calculation model is established. The calculation results show that in the existing rail corrugation, the short-wavelength rail corrugation of 20-25 mm will continue to appear or deteriorate, and the development of rail corrugation of other wavelengths will slow down or stop to varying degrees; with the increase of train passing times, the rail corrugation of SSFST with the wavelength of 315 mm develops the fastest, and the rail corrugation of SSMT with wavelengths of 20 mm and 160 mm develops the fastest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important carrier of multi-energy coupling of regional integrated energy system, the integrated energy station integrates a variety of energy coupling devices, which can fulfill interconnection and complementarity of energy between regions and enhance the economic and environmental benefits of energy use. In the planning of integrated energy stations, it is necessary to consider the characteristics of regional resource endowments and load energy consumption. In this paper geographic information system (GIS) is introduced into the site selection planning of integrated energy stations, and a location decision model is built based on GIS & improved TOPSIS. In order to verify this for the feasibility of the model, Tianjin, China is selected as a representative case for empirical research. First, according to Chinese national standards and local planning requirements, GIS is adopted to initially screen the distribution and area of exclusion areas and viable areas for construction in the study area. Secondly, a comprehensive evaluation index system is established for nature, economy and society, in which the AHP method is used for calculate the weight of each index to obtain the final optimal alternative with the integration of the GIS geographic layer overlay function. Finally, the improved TOPSIS model is used to rank the alternatives and obtain the ranking results. Sensitivity analysis and comparative analysis is conducted on the ranking results, indicating a higher priority of selecting sites A1, A4, A5 and A11. Analysis result effectively verifies that the improved TOPSIS method can improve the accuracy of the site selection decision for integrated energy stations. This paper can provide support for the site selection and layout of integrated energy stations, effectively improve the decision-making level and work efficiency of decision-makers, and enrich the application space of GIS methods in the energy field. •Introduction of GIS method into the site selection of integrated energy stations. •Identify the best location and construction area of the integrated energy stations. •Establish a MCDM index system for siting integrated energy stations. •Construction of "GIS-AHP-improved TOPSIS" siting decision model. •Meet the integrated energy stations current and future transformation needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy and electricity are the key area for China to achieve its dual-carbon goals. Precisely predicting future energy supply and demand and carbon emissions are beneficial for formulate a feasible path for low-carbon transition. The gray prediction model GM(1,1) is the most widely used dynamic prediction model in the field of energy forecasting, but it has higher requirements for original data and the model may fail when the development coefficient of GM(1,1) is large. On the other hand, another key parameter of GM(1,1), the gray effect u, directly determines the prediction accuracy of the model. If a better value of u can be found to be substituted into the model for prediction, the accuracy of the model will be significantly improved. Taking these into account problem, this paper introduced into the optimization process of the gray prediction model a novel swarm intelligence algorithm, namely the Monarch Butterfly Optimization (MBO) that performs well in actual optimization problems. The newly proposed gray-monarch butterfly prediction model can achieve accurate predictions of Tianjin's energy supply and demand and carbon emissions. Based on the prediction results, a low-carbon transition path for Tianjin's carbon peak in 2030 was formulated. Compared with existing classic literature methods and prediction data, the effectiveness and superiority of the grey-monarch butterfly optimized forecasting model proposed in this paper were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of 3D technology, based on the perspective of 3D video, this paper analyzes the principle of 3D video, establishes the perspective model of 3D video, and discusses the modeling process in detail. Then, from the perspective of 3D video, this paper studies the three-dimensional intervention model of public art in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Tianjin. Through the combination of public art and rural culture, the countryside can obtain vitality through art and popularize and promote rural culture and image. In general, this paper provides some ideas and experience for the research of public art in rural culture from the perspective of 3D video. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CO2 is the main greenhouse gas. Urban spatial development, land use, and so on may be affected by CO2 and climate change. The main questions studied in this paper are as follows: What are the drivers of CO2 emissions of expanding megacities? How can they be analyzed from different perspectives? Do the results differ for megacities at different stages of development? Based on the XGBoost model, this paper explored the complex factors affecting CO2 emissions by using data of four Chinese megacities, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing, from 2003 to 2017. The main findings are as follows: The XGBoost model has better applicability and accuracy in predicting carbon emissions of expanding megacities, with root mean square error (RMSE) as low as 0.036. Under the synergistic effect of multiple factors, population, land size, and gross domestic product are still the primary driving forces of CO2 emissions. Population density and population become more important in the single-factor analysis. The key drivers of CO2 emissions in megacities at respective developmental stages are different. This paper provides methods and tools for accurately predicting CO2 emissions and measuring the critical drivers. Furthermore, it could provide decision support for megacities to make targeted carbon-emission-reduction strategies based on their own developmental stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the industrial transfer path is of great significance to the distribution of the industrial relocators and receivers in the process of industrial transfer, how to measure the input–output relationship between industries is still unclear. Based on an adjusted input–output table, this paper attempts to measure the input–output relationship for transport equipment manufacturing industry in the Beijing‐Tianjin‐Hebei region. The interregional input–output model was used to realize the calculation of the single department transfer amount. Moreover, combining with the calculation results, the transfer path of the transportation equipment manufacturing was characterized. The results showed that the phenomenon of transfer over space in the transportation equipment manufacturing industry was distinct. The industrial transfer has shifted from the coastal areas to central and western regions. Sixteen provinces, mainly including Inner Mongolia, Henan, Shanxi, etc., had a net outflow of the transportation equipment manufacturing industry. The rest is net inflow provinces. Transportation equipment manufacturing industrial transfer is moving into Beijing and Tianjin. This paper will provide a reference for reasonable and orderly acceptance of industrial transfer from a quantitative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether the place-based industrial policy promotes regional economic growth is a hot issue in the field of regional industrial economic practice. As a major national strategy in China, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei industrial coordinated development policy has been implemented more than 8 years. Verifying its effect on regional economic growth and revealing the policy action path will help to further optimize the policy implementation process through feedback. In this paper, the policy effect and its differentiation are empirically studied from 'quality' and 'quantity' respectively by establishing a growth model using the Dual Differences method. The results show that the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei industrial coordinated development policy improves total factor productivity by 2.26% in terms of 'quality', and reduces GDP growth rate by 4.65% in terms of 'quantity'. For the different region, the GDP growth rate increased by 1.28%, while total factor productivity decreased by 2.63% in Beijing, the GDP growth rate decreased by 3.17% and total factor productivity increased by 0.87% in Tianjin, and the GDP growth rate increased by 2.56% and total factor productivity increased by 1.58% in Hebei. The policy is mainly realized by fixed asset investment, capital deepening degree and enterprise scale expansion, while the effect of labor input, R&D investment and enterprise number is not significant. The policy is to give full play to the driving role of fixed asset investment such as "new infrastructure", increase investment in labor and research and development in the region, strengthen the construction of a competitive market environment, and stabilize the 'quality' and 'quantity' to further release policy dividends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the accelerating urbanization process in China, the extensive economic growth model with high energy consumption and high pollution aggravates atmospheric environmental pollution and restricts the sustainable development of the social economy. The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region has the most severe haze pollution and the most acute contradiction between resources, environment and economic development. Based on the physical coupling theory, this paper constructs a coupling coordination degree model of the economy, environment and high haze pollution industries, such as the thermal power industry. Through literature analysis and expert investigation of the economic, industrial and environmental data of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region from 2006 to 2018, the coordinated development of the economy, environment and high haze pollution industries, such as the thermal power industry, in the above region, was dynamically monitored. The monitoring results show that the development level of the Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei region is significantly different, and the three subregions have not entered the stage of coordinated development. Moreover, since 2015, they have been in a bottleneck period of development and have not achieved a higher level of progress. The three subregions have different advantages and restraining factors. For example, the backward level of Hebei's economy and high haze pollution industries, such as the thermal power industry, restrict the coordinated development of the region as a whole. Only by accelerating the high-quality development of the Hebei economy can we break through the bottleneck of the development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To help related operators to allocate and dispatch the number of bike-sharing and provide good guidance for setting up electronic fences, this paper proposes a spatiotemporal graph convolution network prediction model (SGCNPM) with multiple factors to enhance the accuracy of predicting the demand for bike-sharing. First, we consider time, built environment, and weather. We use a multigraph convolution network (GCN) to model the built environment, utilize a long short-term memory (LSTM) network to extract temporal features, and utilize a fully connected network (FCN) to model weather influence. We construct SGCNPM which can effectively fuse GCN, LSTM, and FCN, thus creating a prediction method considering the influence of multiple factors. The results of the real case in Tianjin, China, show that the proposed model can perform well in improving prediction accuracy. Also, we analyze the influence of factors on model prediction results in different periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many free-floating bicycle-sharing (FFBS) operators in cold region cities will put bicycles in warehouses and suspend services in winter due to factors such as safety and maintenance costs, resulting in the corresponding travel demand no longer be met. Considering the short-distance and green travel characteristics of FFBS, the flexible bus, as a sustainable demand-responsive transit service, is a suitable alternative transportation mode. To operate such a flexible bus system, service area and operation time planning is a key stage, however, the planning methods in relevant studies are not suitable for this research scenario. In view of the above, this paper proposed a data-driven method to determine the service area and operation time of flexible buses based on FFBS data. Firstly, an FFBS trip path reconstruction algorithm consists of fine-grained road network modelling and trajectory matching is proposed. Then, in the defined time slice, incorporating the idea of ride-sharing routes generation, according to the density-based clustering principle and considering topology between trajectories, a path clustering algorithm PATHSCAN is developed to generate the one-day path clusters. After that, a frequent pattern mining algorithm is applied to the multiday path clusters, and frequent pattern results with spatio-temporal correlation will be merged into the final service area. The generated planning results will cover ride-matching trips and high-frequency riding paths. Detailed application analysis and verification are carried out by using the real data from Tianjin, China. Through the evaluation and verification under the relatively limited experimental data set, the proposed data-driven method shows ideal planning results. Flexible bus service can supplement the green short-distance travel mode after the suspension of FFBS and can avoid FFBS travel demands switched to unsustainable transportation modes to a large extent. This study will contribute to urban sustainable transportation development and improving greenness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of value-added trade, this paper divides the virtual water consumption and trade in different provinces of China into five major paths according to the input-output relationship. In 2012 and 2015, most provinces' water resources were implicitly used in the final products to meet the local demand. In addition, the volume of virtual water trade in the complex domestic value chain is greater than that in the traditional domestic trade value chain and the simple domestic trade value chain. In both years, judging from the sum of virtual water trade volumes in the three major value chains, there is virtual water net inflow in Beijing-Tianjin and the northern, eastern and southern coastal areas, and virtual water net outflow in the northeast, central and northwest areas. In the course of this research, the virtual water net outflow turned into net inflow in the southwestern area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex structure of gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) cable terminals leads to serious electric field concentration, which is a frequent fault position of a high-voltage cable system. At present, due to the differences in the frequency bands of sensors, various partial discharge detection technologies have certain differences in their scope of application and anti-interference performance, resulting in a low defect detection rate in GIS cable terminals. In this paper, a comprehensive diagnosis scheme is proposed, which integrates transient earth voltage (TEV), ultra-high frequency (UHF), high frequency (HF), and ultrasonic methods. Two abnormal discharge defects of GIS terminals in two 220 kV substations in Tianjin were tracked and monitored, and the joint diagnosis was carried out using the proposed scheme; the type of discharge defect and the phase sequence of the defect were determined, and the UHV was employed to precisely locate and analyze the defect source. Finally, through the disassembly analysis and electric field simulation of the GIS cable terminal, the accuracy and effectiveness of the discharge detection and location method were verified, providing a typical detection demonstration for the defect diagnosis of a GIS cable terminal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing number of private vehicles has caused severe traffic congestion and air pollution. As an innovative transportation mode, mobility services such as ridesharing have been considered as an alternative. However, it has been evidenced that most private vehicle owners would not switch from driving to using ridesharing because such options only attract those who never intend to own a car. Therefore, it is more meaningful for private vehicle owners to provide ridesharing services, also known as Hitch, which can improve urban traffic efficiency on the service supply side. This study outlines an empirical study which is conducted to assess drivers as a group, to examine the factors which influence their intention of ridesharing. A sample of 597 private vehicle owners in Tianjin, China, completed a questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is implemented to analyze the proposed model, specially explore the mediating role of trust and habit. The results indicate that habit is the most important factor, which is mainly influenced by extrinsic motivation (i.e., instrumental motive). Furthermore, habit can increase trust in ridesharing, another important factor, which is mainly affected by intrinsic motivation (i.e., affective motive and responsibility). Therefore, this shows the relationship between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. The findings in this paper have strong implications for both governments and platform developers, to promote the transition from solo driving to ridesharing to improve traffic condition and environmental pollution. • We test the factors leading private vehicle owners to share a ride, on the service supply side. • This study analyzes trust and habit as mediators bridging motivations. • Motivation theory and material possession theory (MPT) are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of China's economy, the contradiction of the mismatch between municipal solid waste disposal capacity and its growth has become increasingly prominent, and the need to develop alternative energy sources has become increasingly urgent. Municipal solid waste incineration plays an important role in waste management. In this study, the Grey Relation Analysis (GRA) and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) prediction model is constructed to achieve effective prediction of municipal solid waste generation by taking 11 influencing factors of municipal solid waste generation as input indicators in Tianjin. Meanwhile, this study predicts the power generation from municipal solid waste incineration and carbon emissions in Tianjin based on the prediction results. The experimental results show that the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) value of the combined GRA-LSTM model established in this study is 6.759 %, and this model outperforms the other five structural methods in terms of prediction performance. By 2025, the amount of MSW in Tianjin will reach 3.74 million metric tons, the power generation through incineration will be 20.02–39.47 GWh, and the CO 2 emission through incineration will be about 1.14 million metric tons. Finally, to cope with the growth of municipal solid waste generation and unbalanced power supply structure in the country's mega-cities, this paper puts forward relevant suggestions for achieving sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of the automobile industry, artificial intelligence, big data, 5G, and other technologies, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) industry has entered a stage of rapid development. In this paper, a pollutant diffusion model based on an artificial neural network is designed in the context of a vehicle network. The application of artificial neural networks in haze prediction is studied. This paper first analyzes the causes and influencing factors of haze and selects the most representative and relatively large meteorological factors from temperature, wind, relative humidity, and several pollutant factors. Through training and simulation, a haze prediction model in the Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei regions of China is established. Finally, according to the collected meteorological data, the pollutant diffusion model is established. The model is deduced by a standard mathematical formula, which makes the prediction results more accurate and rigorous, and the main conclusions and feasible scientific suggestions are obtained. The simulation results show that the method is effective. By strengthening the service system of the IoV, meteorological services can be more intelligent, and the information acquisition and service ability of the vehicle network can be effectively improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire emergency response of urban rail transit is a complex multiattribute risk decision-making problem. In emergency response analysis, it is necessary to consider the psychological behaviors of decision-makers such as reference dependence, loss aversion, and judge distortion. Applying different emergency plans can intervene the development and evolution of urban rail emergency fire and may even result in different levels of casualties and property losses. For this situation, this paper proposes an emergency response decision-making method based on prospect theory. First, according to the prospect theory, this paper quantitatively describes the comprehensive psychological perception of decision-makers for casualties and property losses in different situations. Then, the psychological perception of decision-makers for the important levels of different situations is calculated. Third, according to the situation comprehensive values, situation weights, and the cost inputs of emergency plans, the comprehensive prospect values of each emergency plan are calculated, and the fire emergency plans can be ranked based on comprehensive prospect value. At last, the fire emergency disposal of Tianjin rail transportation line 3 is considered as the background in this paper. The feasibility and effectiveness of the purposed method is illustrated through the case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]