Upgrading irrigation infrastructure in the Murray Darling Basin: is it worth it?
Infrastructure upgrades appear superficially to be a politically acceptable way of increasing environmental flows in the Murray-Darling Basin. From an economic perspective, their costs and benefits should be compared with other policy instruments. We do so using TERM-H2O, a dynamic regional CGE model with considerable basin detail. Voluntary and fully compensated buybacks are much less costly than upgrades as a means of obtaining a target volume of environmental water. Even during drought, when highly secure water created by infrastructure upgrades is more valuable, the upgrades remain too costly. As an instrument of regional economic management, infrastructure upgrades are inferior to public spending on health, education and other services in the basin. For each job created from upgrades, the money spent on services could create between three and four jobs in the basin.
Double Trouble: The Importance of Accounting for and Defining Water Entitlements Consistent with Hydrological Realities
When water entitlement and water sharing systems are mis-specified, that is specified in a manner that lacks hydrological integrity, inefficient investment and water use is the result. Using Australia's Murray Darling Basin as an example, this paper attempts to reveal the economic consequences of entitlement mis-specification. Options for specification of entitlement and allocation systems in a way that has hydrological integrity are presented. It is reasoned, that if entitlement and allocation system were set up in this manner the result would be an efficient allocation regime that would autonomously adjust to climatic shifts, changes in prices and changes in technology whilst maintaining environmental integrity.
A Review on Simulated Micro-Gravity Experiment Systems of Space Robot
The characteristics of the simulated micro-gravity experiment system (SMGES) are introduced and the key problems are summarized.Six main realization methods for SMGES are introduced,including the experiment systems based on free falling objects,parabolic flight,air-bearing table,neutral buoyancy,suspension system and hardware-in-loop (HIL) simulator.The application scopes,advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed and compared.Then we propose two realization concepts based on dynamic emulation and kinematic equivalence,and set up an experiment system to test and evaluate the key algorithms for path planning and control of space robot.