Engineering facilities subjected to natural hazards(such as winds and earthquakes) will result in risk when any designed system(i.e.capacity) will not be able to meet the performance required(i.e.demand).Risk might be...Engineering facilities subjected to natural hazards(such as winds and earthquakes) will result in risk when any designed system(i.e.capacity) will not be able to meet the performance required(i.e.demand).Risk might be expressed either as a likelihood of damage or potential financial loss.Engineers tend to make use of the former(i.e.damage).Nevertheless,other non-technical stakeholders cannot get useful information from damage.However,if financial risk is expressed on the basis of probable monetary loss,it will be easily understood by all.Therefore,it is necessary to develop methodologies which communicate the system capacity and demand to financial risk,Incremental dynamic analysis(IDA) was applied in a performance-based earthquake engineering context to do hazard analysis,structural analysis,damage analysis and loss analysis of a reinforced concrete(RC) frame structure.And the financial implications of risk were expressed by expected annual loss(EAL).The quantitative risk analysis proposed is applicable to any engineering facilities and any natural hazards.It is shown that the results from the IDA can be used to assess the overall financial risk exposure to earthquake hazard for a given constructed facility.The computational IDA-EAL method will enable engineers to take into account the long-term financial implications in addition to the construction cost.Consequently,it will help stakeholders make decisions.展开更多
There has been a steady growth in demand for convenience and ready-cooked food has influenced the interest of poultry processors in developing value-added chicken products that meet consumers' demand/choice. A conjoi...There has been a steady growth in demand for convenience and ready-cooked food has influenced the interest of poultry processors in developing value-added chicken products that meet consumers' demand/choice. A conjoint analysis was done in this study on the survey of 975 chicken consumers in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, between March and September, 2014 to valuate consumers, preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for various chicken attributed parts, production method, processing method, storage method, the presence of flavor and cooking method. The estimates of consumers, WTP premium prices for various mixtures of value-added characteristics were ascertained. The consumers preferred chicken products refrigerated, from chicken produced under free-range management, chicken breast, chicken product that was addictive and flavor free, which could be oven-heated or pan heated. One half of the entire respondents were willing to pay about 25% more for value-added chicken product over the price for conventional products. On the whole, a premium for value-added chicken products was more likely to be paid for by young consumers, consumers who patronized farmers' markets and preferred free-range or organic chicken products. WTP by consumers was negatively affected by price of products. The poultry industry could utilize combined knowledge of consumers' WTP for value-added chicken product price as a guide of develop innovative value-added chicken products.展开更多
In order to apply the performance-based seismic design, an engineer must first find out whether the column is expected to fail in shear before or after flexural yielding. According to column failure characteristics an...In order to apply the performance-based seismic design, an engineer must first find out whether the column is expected to fail in shear before or after flexural yielding. According to column failure characteristics and failure mode of reinforced concrete column, the UW-PEER structure performance database was discussed and analyzed. In order to investigate the relevance of failure mode and factors such as longitudinal reinforcement ratio, transverse reinforcement ratio, hoop spacing to depth ratio, aspect ratio, shearing resistance demand to shear capacity ratio and axial load ratio, Fisher's discriminant analysis(FDA) of the above factors was carried out. A discriminant function was developed to identify column failure mode. Results show that three factors, i.e., Vp /Vn, hoop spacing to depth ratio and aspect ratio have important influence on the failure mode. The failure mode has less to do with longitudinal reinforcement ratio, transverse reinforcement ratio and axial load ratio. Through using these three factors and the model proposed, over 85.6% of the original grouped cases were correctly classified. The value of coefficient of Vp /Vn is the largest, which means that discriminant equation is most sensitive to the shearing resistance demand to shear capacity ratio.展开更多
基金Project(2011CB013804) supported by the National Basic Research Program of ChinaProject(50925828) supported by the National Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars of China
文摘Engineering facilities subjected to natural hazards(such as winds and earthquakes) will result in risk when any designed system(i.e.capacity) will not be able to meet the performance required(i.e.demand).Risk might be expressed either as a likelihood of damage or potential financial loss.Engineers tend to make use of the former(i.e.damage).Nevertheless,other non-technical stakeholders cannot get useful information from damage.However,if financial risk is expressed on the basis of probable monetary loss,it will be easily understood by all.Therefore,it is necessary to develop methodologies which communicate the system capacity and demand to financial risk,Incremental dynamic analysis(IDA) was applied in a performance-based earthquake engineering context to do hazard analysis,structural analysis,damage analysis and loss analysis of a reinforced concrete(RC) frame structure.And the financial implications of risk were expressed by expected annual loss(EAL).The quantitative risk analysis proposed is applicable to any engineering facilities and any natural hazards.It is shown that the results from the IDA can be used to assess the overall financial risk exposure to earthquake hazard for a given constructed facility.The computational IDA-EAL method will enable engineers to take into account the long-term financial implications in addition to the construction cost.Consequently,it will help stakeholders make decisions.
文摘There has been a steady growth in demand for convenience and ready-cooked food has influenced the interest of poultry processors in developing value-added chicken products that meet consumers' demand/choice. A conjoint analysis was done in this study on the survey of 975 chicken consumers in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, between March and September, 2014 to valuate consumers, preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for various chicken attributed parts, production method, processing method, storage method, the presence of flavor and cooking method. The estimates of consumers, WTP premium prices for various mixtures of value-added characteristics were ascertained. The consumers preferred chicken products refrigerated, from chicken produced under free-range management, chicken breast, chicken product that was addictive and flavor free, which could be oven-heated or pan heated. One half of the entire respondents were willing to pay about 25% more for value-added chicken product over the price for conventional products. On the whole, a premium for value-added chicken products was more likely to be paid for by young consumers, consumers who patronized farmers' markets and preferred free-range or organic chicken products. WTP by consumers was negatively affected by price of products. The poultry industry could utilize combined knowledge of consumers' WTP for value-added chicken product price as a guide of develop innovative value-added chicken products.
基金Project(2011ZA05) supported by the State Key Laboratory’s Autonomous Project of Subtropical Building Science in South China University of Technology
文摘In order to apply the performance-based seismic design, an engineer must first find out whether the column is expected to fail in shear before or after flexural yielding. According to column failure characteristics and failure mode of reinforced concrete column, the UW-PEER structure performance database was discussed and analyzed. In order to investigate the relevance of failure mode and factors such as longitudinal reinforcement ratio, transverse reinforcement ratio, hoop spacing to depth ratio, aspect ratio, shearing resistance demand to shear capacity ratio and axial load ratio, Fisher's discriminant analysis(FDA) of the above factors was carried out. A discriminant function was developed to identify column failure mode. Results show that three factors, i.e., Vp /Vn, hoop spacing to depth ratio and aspect ratio have important influence on the failure mode. The failure mode has less to do with longitudinal reinforcement ratio, transverse reinforcement ratio and axial load ratio. Through using these three factors and the model proposed, over 85.6% of the original grouped cases were correctly classified. The value of coefficient of Vp /Vn is the largest, which means that discriminant equation is most sensitive to the shearing resistance demand to shear capacity ratio.