Recently, online dominant retailers have provided installment sales (IS) to their consumers to alleviate their financing pressure. Meanwhile, the upstream suppliers need financing to fulfill the ...procurement from their retailers. In this paper, we consider an online dominant retailer as an intermediation, that helps her suppliers get financing from banks, and provides installment payments to consumers simultaneously. In particular, we describe customer's willingness to buy through both consumer's preserved value and income level. By constructing game-theoretical models, we discuss the equilibrium strategies of both commercial loan only scheme(CL) and commercial loan with installment payment scheme. Under information asymmetry between supplier and bank, we find that the interest rate of the supplier's loan decision under CL will be higher than the risk-free interest rate. The retailer under CL will offer a higher wholesale price with IS than without IS due to larger sales under IS. Numerical experiment shows installment payments mode can improve supply chain performance by increasing both supplier's and retailer's profit. And the retailer's profit distribution growth from IS is far greater than that of the supplier.
Increasing dryness conditions under global warming are posing severe threats to water resources management in China. Projecting river basin responses to dryness conditions is beneficial to ...effectively managing water resources. However, existing studies have seldom considered the impact of multiple dryness conditions on future river basin health under global warming. Therefore, we combine the 3- and 12-month standard precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) and reliability-resilience-vulnerability framework (RRV) to map future river basin health based on the responses of basins across China to different dryness conditions from 2021 to 2050. The calculation is based on downscaled outputs of 10 models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) for three future emission scenarios (i.e., RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The results show that water deficits are projected to occur in most areas of China and significantly increase in the basins located in the northern part of China in the next 30 years due to global warming effects. The conditions in parts of the basins located in the northern part of China (especially in the Northwest River basins and Yellow River basin) are projected to be unhealthy and deteriorate significantly in the future, while the basins located in the southern part of China are projected to be moderate. The health status is anticipated to be worse under the RCP8.5 scenario than the RCP2.6 and RCP4.5 scenarios. Integrated results from the three thresholds indicated that normal dryness is applicable to most areas of northeastern, northern and southern China, while abnormal dryness is applicable to the remaining areas. Our findings could help reduce the impact of future dryness conditions on water resources and provide insights into risk planning and management for river basins in China under global warming.
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•We combine the SPEI3/SPEI12 and RRV for future health assessments across China.•Three dryness conditions are used as the thresholds for the health assessments.•NWR and YR are projected to be unhealthy and deteriorate significantly.•Normal dryness and abnormal dryness are suitable as thresholds for China.
The primary pollutants and pollution levels of surface water present spatial and temporal changes. This study quantified the grey water footprint (GWF) and surface water pollution level (WPL) in ...China from 2003 to 2018 based on four pollutants: chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP). Additionally, the spatiotemporal distribution of the primary water pollutant (PWP) and driving forces of the GWF were analyzed based on the WPLs and the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) decomposition method. The results showed that the GWF in China decreased by 13% from 2003 to 2018 and the WPL decreased from 1.11 in 2003 to 0.94 in 2018. An analysis of regional GWFs with multiple pollutants could prevent the underestimation of GWFs and WPLs caused by changes in the PWPs. The GWF spatial distribution was high in the southeast and low in the northwest, while the provinces with larger WPLs were mainly concentrated in northern China. The PWP changed from COD to TN in 2007 because of the increase in nitrogen application in China, the low TN reduction capacity of wastewater treatment plants and the improved comprehensive utilization rate of livestock and poultry manure. The driving force analysis results showed that water efficiency and technological and industrial structural effects promoted the reduced GWF. Our research conclusions and policy suggestions could provide references for reducing the GWF and improving the water quality in China.
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•Grey water footprint (GWF) of China was calculated based on multiple pollutants.•Variation of primary water pollutant (PWP) and influencing factors were analyzed.•The total amount of GWF in China showed a downward trend.•The PWP in China was changed from COD to TN in 2007.•Water efficiency and technical effect were the main factors for the decline of GWF.
To accommodate temperature changes, typical black level correction methods utilize black pixels to obtain the black level value instead of using a fixed corrected value. However, this type of method ...is susceptible to bad pixels. Although some sorting-based algorithms can correct these bad pixels, the corresponding storage and computation overheads are large. To solve this problem, this brief proposes a new black-level correction method: the Iterative Median-Averaged Adaptive Black-Level Correction Method (IMA-BLC). The proposed method can remove the effect of bad pixels by shifting the filter window and obtaining median values in consecutive intervals with low hardware overhead. The average of all median values is then calculated to provide the statistically significant black level value. We have implemented the IMA-BLC framework on the FPGA platform. The proposed method has the lowest hardware cost and power consumption compared to some common black level correction methods with bad pixel correction capability.
Understanding the complexity of catchment-scale human activities, natural factors, and stream water quality is particularly important for basin water resources management. Thorough investigations on ...how multiple environmental factors quantitatively and simultaneously affect water quality are limited. This study employed Spearman’s correlation and ridge regression analysis (RRA) to disentangle the hydraulic geometry and land use contributions to water quality variables (WQVs). Nine and six indicators were used to describe the hydraulic geometry and land use characteristics, respectively, in the Taihu Basin. The results revealed significant correlations between the land use, hydraulic geometry, and stream water quality. Built-up land and cropland negatively impacted the stream water quality, while woodland had the opposite trend. The structure and morphological connectivity of the river network were associated with most WQVs. The hydrologic connectivity characteristics strongly influenced ammonia–nitrogen (NH
3
-N), permanganate index (COD
Mn
), and dissolved oxygen (DO). Six equations that estimated the stream water quality were established through RRA. Human factors impose a greater impact on the stream water quality than natural factors in the Taihu Basin. Our findings provide quantitative insights to mitigate water pollution via reasonable management and control of the river structure and connectivity and land-use patterns.
•Anthropogenic heat emissions are applied to heat sensitivity calculation.•Accessibility of blue-green spaces is applied to heat adaptability calculation.•Heat-related environmental justice is ...discussed in a megacity in China.•City center have the most severe social inequalities in heat-related health risks.•Residents of nontoilet/old housing are the most overexposed vulnerable groups.
Previous heat-related environmental justice studies have mainly concentrated on heat exposure, with few studies focusing on other aspects of heat-related health risks. However, increasing anthropogenic heat emissions (AHEs) and social disparities in the distribution of public resources due to rapid urbanization can exacerbate social inequalities in sensitivity and adaptability to heat-related health risks, respectively. This study proposes a new heat vulnerability framework by quantifying the AHEs and the public resources accessibility to assess heat-related health risks of central Shanghai, and the environmental justice in the assessment results are detected by SOM-Kmeans and a geographically weighted regression model. Results show that the AHEs and the accessibility of blue-green space and pharmaceutical resources dominate the increasing heat sensitivity and decreasing heat adaptability from the city center to the periphery. The city center has 42% higher health risks than the periphery and the highest social inequalities. Residents living in nontoilet/old housing have significant inequalities in exposure, adaptability, and vulnerability to heat-related health risks. Furthermore, elderly people and ethnic minorities have the poorest adaptability. Our findings can help improve social inequalities in urban thermal environment, thereby promoting equitably resilient urban planning.
Climate change-intensified urban warming has brought attention to urban parks’ spatial allocation due to their cooling effects. However, conventional accessibility assessments of park cooling effects ...consider temperature and size, overlooking critical factors such as thermal comfort and supply and demand differences in thermal environments, which more accurately represent public thermal stress. We developed a multimode Gaussian-based Huff three-step floating catchment area method based on thermal stress differences between population locations and parks. This method integrates thermal comfort and cellular population data to assess the spatial mismatch between the supply and demand for park cooling services in Shanghai. Our findings show that most central and developing urban areas have excellent park cooling accessibility. However, considering population demand, central Shanghai requires improved internal park planning to enhance the cooling supply. In contrast, Shanghai's suburban areas exhibit significant supply-demand imbalances, especially in the south and southeast; they require an enhanced cooling supply through planning interventions. Incorporating thermal comfort differences into calculations shifts the highest per capita cooling supply area from the outer suburbs to the suburbs, substantially reducing areas with high demand but low supply. Our novel analytical approach to assessing park cooling accessibility can assist policymakers in developing precise climate adaptation strategies.
•A new index was developed to assess park cooling accessibility.•Background heat stress for cooling supply is thermal comfort, not temperature.•Thermal comfort gap between supply and demand defines effective cooling supply.•Urbanrural variation in cooling accessibility is contrary to park accessibility.•Low cooling supply-high demand areas are mainly clustered in central Shanghai.
Increasing anthropogenic global warming has emerged as a significant challenge to human health in China, as extreme heat hazards increasingly threaten outdoor-exposed populations. Differences in ...thermal comfort, outdoor activity duration, and social vulnerability between females and males may exacerbate gender inequalities in heat-related health risks, which have been overlooked by previous studies. Here, we combine three heat hazards and outdoor activity duration to identify the spatiotemporal variation in gender-specific heat risk in China during 1991–2020. We found that females' heat risk tends to be higher than that of males. Gender disparities in heat risk decrease in southern regions, while those in northern regions remain severe. Males are prone to overheating in highly urbanized areas, while females in low urbanized areas. Males' overheating risk is mainly attributed to population clustering associated with prolonged outdoor activity time and skewed social resource allocation. In contrast, females' overheating risk is primarily affected by social inequalities. Our findings suggest that China needs to further diminish gender disparities and accelerate climate adaptation planning.
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•Heat risk hotspot clusters gradually expand in southeastern China during 1991–2020.•Outdoor activity times reveal spatial variation in gender-based heat risk.•Gender heat risk gaps narrow in south China during 1991–2020, vice versa in the north.•Male is more subject to overheating than female in highly urbanized regions.
Global warming will exacerbate the damages and losses caused by drought and significantly affect human society and economic development. Future drought outlook is of vital importance for ...policy-making to combat drought risk and water crises over the long term. Here, 3- and 12-month standardized precipitation evapotranspiration indices, which can aid short- and long-term drought monitoring, respectively, are coupled with the SOM-Kmeans two-stage clustering technique to map the future drought conditions in China for the future period (2021–2050) relative to the baseline period (1976–2005). The calculation is based on downscaled outputs of 10 models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) under two representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The temperature increases by 0.5–2.0 °C and 1.0–2.5 °C under the selected RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. The results show that the differences between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration are projected to increase throughout China. Most parts of China are projected to experience more severe, more frequent and longer duration droughts in the next three decades compared with the baseline period. Global warming is projected to have a serious impact on future droughts in the basins located in the northern part of China. The drought conditions in the northwest region of the “Hu Huanyong Line” in China are projected to be serious and complex in the future, while the opposite is true in the southeastern region. Drought conditions in northern China are more complex under high temperature changes (1.0–2.5 °C) than under low changes (0.5–2.0 °C). The results of this study provide insights on future drought planning and management in China and demonstrate that SOM-Kmeans can be used for the classification of drought conditions.
•3- and 12-month SPEIs are used for future drought monitoring in China.•SOM-Kmeans is used to classify future drought conditions across China.•The future droughts of northern China are greatly affected by global warming.•The most severe drought conditions are bounded by the “Hu Huanyong line”.•Drought conditions of northwestern China are projected to be complex and severe.
Rainwater harvesting systems (RWHs) are vital to alleviate water shortages, especially in arid regions. However, research on the application of RWHs in humid regions is necessary because they may ...also face the challenges of water supply shortages, urban flooding, runoff pollution, and heat island phenomena. Public acceptance plays a key role in the reuse of water resources. This study takes Shanghai, China, as an example and explores the public intention and motivation to use RWHs in humid regions by adding six psychological factors to the technology acceptance model (TAM). The results indicate that social influence, subjective knowledge, and the technological environment are direct drivers. Other psychological factors influence the intention to use through the moderation of perceived usefulness and attitude. The total effect of social influence, subjective knowledge, and social trust are essential for RWHs implementation. However, the technical environment and perceived risk may be psychological barriers to accepting RWHs. In addition, there is no significant effect of the perceived cost. The findings provide critical insights for policymakers to understand the public's attitudes and intrinsic motivations to address the challenges of rainwater harvesting in a humid region.
•The public acceptance of rainwater harvesting systems in humid regions is explored.•Six psychological factors are added to modify Technology Acceptance Model.•Social influence, subjective knowledge, social trust are vital to RWHs acceptance.•The public is less concerned about the cost of RWHs.
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