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In order to deal with severe problems such as environmental pollution and climate change, the Chinese government has proposed the goal of carbon neutrality in 2030 and carbon peak in 2060. Strategic emerging industries have become key areas of high-quality growth of green economy. In order to solve the practical problems of insufficient funds and financing constraints, this paper empirically measures the financing efficiency of strategic emerging industries. Based on the Super Slack-Based Measure model, this paper selects the data analysis of listed companies in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei from 2011 to 2020. At the same time, this paper systematically combs the index system that affects financing efficiency based on grounded theory. Based on the binary relation and structural level of adjacent matrix and reachable matrix, the explanatory analysis is carried out. On this basis, a systematic GMM model is established to explore the significance of different factors influencing financing efficiency. The research shows that the strategic emerging industry is still in the initial stage, the financing efficiency is not high and the financing output is insufficient. The factors affecting financing efficiency can be divided into 6 dimensions, 20 indicators in total and 5 multipole hierarchical levels. Credit financing, equity financing, financing constraints, technological innovation and government support are the important factors affecting financing efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration plan rose to the status of a national-level strategy in 2014. This paper provides a deep analysis of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area's inter-city commuter big data. This research analyzed the overview of spatial structure, polycentric structure, hierarchical structure and clustering characteristics of the BTH based on network analysis methods. It reveals that the inter-city commuter network exhibits clear polycentric characteristics, with Beijing acting as the central hub. The degree of network correlation between cities in Tianjin and Hebei is notably low, indicating that the flow of people primarily revolves around Beijing, while interactions between other cities remain limited. Therefore, it is necessary to further decentralize Beijing's non-capital core functions. The level of connectedness among the areas surrounding the Bohai Rim is not very high, and it has not developed the coastal advantage. The cooperation could be strengthed among the cities within Bohai Rim. The polycentric structure has initially taken shape, but it exhibits obvious polarization characteristics. It is necessary to strengthen the interaction of talents between cities to form secondary central units in BTH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The 2022 Winter Olympics were held in the three competition zones of Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou, China. The venues of this Winter Olympics were scattered and the terrain was complex. Moreover, the medical resources of Hebei and Beijing were relatively unbalanced. In the medical security of major events, the connection between first aid and in-hospital processes is of the utmost importance to rescue quality. 5th generation mobile network (5G) applications in medical scenarios are on the rise. It would be of great relevance to fully use 5G's low-latency and high-speed features to share the process information of patients, ambulance personnel, and the destination hospital's rescue team at emergency scenes and in transportation, improving rescue efficiency. This paper proposes a system scheme of cross-institutional emergency health information sharing based on 5G and augmented reality wearable devices. It also integrates the construction method of monitoring and other sign data sharing, in addition to testing the proposed scheme's service quality in 5G environments. In the deployment area of the 5G emergency medical rescue information sharing scheme for the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, we selected two designated medical support institutions for testing. The test adopted a combination of fixed-point and driving tests to experiment on the service data, voice service, and streaming media indicators. The 5G signal's coverage rate was close to 100%, the standalone connection's success rate was 100%, and the drop rate was 0. The average downlink rate of multiple scenarios was 620mbps, and the average uplink rate of 5G was over 71.8mbps, which is higher than the average 5G level in China. The downlink rate was more than 20 times larger than the 4th generation mobile network (4G) rate. This study's proposed scheme demonstrates the importance of 5G applications in emergency response and support, in addition to providing a suitable scheme for the integration of 5G networks in the medical scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution in northern China is relatively serious during the winter heating period, which attracts the attention of the state and government, especially in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region. To further explore the issue of air pollutant emission and energy utilization in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei during the heating season, this paper establishes a panel data model which describes the long-term relationship between air pollutant emission, heating capacity, coal, and power consumption with the data from 2004 to 2017. Based on this, we draw the following conclusions: there is a positive relationship between winter heating capacity and air pollutant emissions, which indicates that the energy consumed by heating will produce atmospheric pollutants. However, the increase of electricity consumption does not necessarily reduce pollution, which means that replacing coal with electricity is not the best way to solve air pollution in heating season, but requires the coordination of multiple energy sources. In addition, there are obvious differences in the analysis results in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. For example, the impact of coal and electricity consumption on pollutant emissions in Beijing is quite different from that in Tianjin and Hebei. The local economic development and energy conditions should be fully taken into account when formulating policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a heterogeneity stochastic frontier model (HSFM), we empirically investigated the economic efficiency of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei from 2003 to 2016 and its influencing factors. The key findings of the paper lie in: 1) in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the overall economic and technological efficiency tended to increase in a wavelike manner, economic growth slowed down, and there was an obvious imbalance in economic efficiency between the different districts, counties and cities; 2) the heterogeneity stochastic frontier production functions (SFPFs) of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei were different from each other, and investment was still an important impetus of economic growth in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei; 3) economic efficiency was positively correlated with economic agglomeration, human capital, industrial structure, infrastructure, the informatization level, and institutional factors, but negatively correlated with the government role and economic opening. The following policy suggestions are offered: 1) to improve regional economic efficiency and reduce the economic gap in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, governments must reduce their intervention in economic activities, stimulate the potentials of labor and capital, optimize the structure of human resources, and foster new demographic incentives; 2) governments must guide economic factors that are reasonable throughout Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and strengthen infrastructure construction in underdeveloped regions, thus attaining sustainable economic development; 3) governments must plan overall economic growth factors of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and promote reasonable economic factors (e.g., labor, resources, and innovations) across different regions, thus attaining complementary advantages between Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The natural formation and development of urban agglomerations is a process in which core cities continue to unite their neighboring cities to enhance sustainability for their own sustainable development. The upgrade mechanism of sustainable development urban agglomeration is a nonlinear composite upgrade curve that is a function of time, increasing with the number of cities. In this paper, the sustainable upgrade function curve, upgrade rate, and upgrade speed of urban agglomerations were solved using a geometrical derivation, and the index system for measuring the upgrade capability of sustainable development of urban agglomerations was established. The dynamic change in economic sustainable upgrade capability, social sustainable upgrade capability, environmental sustainable upgrade capability, and comprehensive sustainable upgrade capability of a Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration from 2000 to 2015 was measured by technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution and a grey correlation method, and a comprehensive, intercity unite strength model and a unite threshold calculation method for urban agglomerations were established. The research shows that the economic sustainable upgrade capability, social sustainable upgrade capability, environmental sustainable upgrade capability, and comprehensive sustainable upgrade capability of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration all show a wave-like rising trend. The average annual upgrade speeds during 2000–2015 are, respectively, 2.4%. 1.67%, 1.1%, and 1.74%, with the intercity comprehensive unite strength of urban agglomerations maintaining a general increase; but there is a limit to the joint threshold. From 2000 to 2015, as the core city of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, Beijing, to enhance its sustainable upgrade capability, jointly developed with Tianjin, Langfang, and Baoding before 2000, Tangshan in 2002, Cangzhou in 2009, Zhangjiakou and Shijiazhuang in 2012, and Chengde in 2014. By 2015, the comprehensive unite strength between Beijing and four cities (Handan, Qinhuangdao, Hengshui, and Xingtai) was still lower than the unite threshold of 6.14. These four cities are relatively far from Beijing, and offer no substantial contribution to the sustainable upgrade capability of Beijing. Through multiple fittings of the upgrade curve using the long-term sequence index of the comprehensive sustainable upgrade capability of Beijing (the core city of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration) from 2000 to 2015, it was found that the simulated curve of the comprehensive sustainable upgrade function of the agglomeration was very similar to the curve of the comprehensive sustainable upgrade capability, which indicates that the simulation results are satisfactory. The future comprehensive sustainable upgrade capability of the agglomeration can be analyzed and predicted by the comprehensive sustainable upgrade function model. This study provides quantitative decision-supporting evidence for promoting the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration and provides theoretical guidance and algorithms for determining the number of cities joined with the sustainable development of national urban agglomerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of Internet data to carry out geographic study has become an academic hotspot in recent years. We referred to the "Zhongke Beauty Index" and crawled 530 thousand POIs (POI: Point of interest) to carry out regional construction evaluation in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The results showed that: (1) Geographic big data provided detailed information for fine-grained regional research, and the POI evolution tree model revealed the shortcomings of regional development. (2) The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei comprehensive beauty index in 2019 was 0.21, and Beijing and Tianjin are far ahead of Hebei in terms of ecology and culture. Specifically, the POI types of eco-environment construction of research area were single; the industrial development construction presented a trend of multi-center gathering; the social harmony construction has formed a gathering circle in Beijing; the eastern and central regions were the dominant regions in terms of institutional improvement construction; and the cultural inheritance construction was the shortest board in research area. (3) The evaluation ranking was sensitive to the population and the size of the area in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. When evaluating, the uncertainty caused by the characteristics of indicators and POIs should be fully considered. This article indicated the shortcomings in five dimensions of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and can provide reference for the evaluation of regional construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a politically and culturally important city cluster, the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region (BTH) has huge electricity and water consumption, while the local power generation capacity and water resources may not be sustainable long term according to the current power generation ratio. We introduced up-to-date strategic policies in China, carbon peaking and carbon neutrality (dual carbon goals), to assess their impact on environmental protection and economic development. Thus, we constructed a dynamic multi-regional computable general equilibrium model to simulate these changes in BTH. We designed four carbon reduction scenarios to explore the impact of policies including carbon taxes, investment, and renewable energy subsidies individually or combined. The findings reveal that implementing these policies together can increase the proportion of renewable energy in power generation to 17.2% (Beijing), 9.4% (Tianjin), and 33.2% (Hebei) by 2060. Under various policy scenarios, the Tax Scenario shows the largest water withdrawal savings, while the Investment Scenario shows the largest GDP growth by 2060. The combined implementation of these policies may minimize the negative impact on the economy while developing an environmentally friendly region. The results of the Combination Scenario are closest to carbon neutrality, narrowing the gap to 10.71%, 9.98%, and 9.85%, respectively. Conservation (water and electricity) and carbon reduction can provide significant support for carbon neutrality and sustainable development strategies. This study contributes to the evaluation of mitigation policies in BTH and provides a concrete policy option to achieve carbon neutrality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the data of gross domestic product (GDP), industrial added value and the proportion of industrial employees from 2000 to 2008, this paper studies the effect of industrial structure change on the regional economic growth of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region in China using the shift-share method. The results show that: 1) In the 21st century, the industrial output of three industries, namely, primary, secondary, and tertiary, and the GDP grew rapidly in the study period. The tertiary industry grew the fastest; it had the largest contribution to the GDP and meanwhile had become the most competitive industry in the metropolitan region. 2) The development of cities within the region was not balanced. Firstly, compared with Tianjin, Beijing, as one of the two core cities, was more rational in the industrial structure. Secondly, the surrounding eight cities, which are Shijiazhuang, Qinhuangdao, Tangshan, Langfang, Baoding, Cangzhou, Zhangjiakou, and Chengde, were all uncompetitive than the two core cities. 3) There was a great industrial gradient in the region (especially between the two core cities and the cities of Tangshan, Baoding, Zhangjiakou, Chengde, Cangzhou, and Langfang). As a result, it is foreseeable that the industry transfer in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region will be one of the trends in regional development, and the industry transfer is inevitably to promote the regional integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a main type of urban construction land, urban-industrial land is used to provide the judging criteria for construction land scale in the planning period when urban population, industrial development, investment scale, and other conditions are uncertain in China; however, research on expected indicator such as urban-industrial land in overall land use plan mainly focuses on qualitative analysis; quantitative analysis research has not yet been carried out. Using MATLAB R2016a software modeling tools to establish GM (1, 1) model and RBF neural network model, respectively, this paper predicted the demand of urban-industrial land in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. Comparing the predicated results with the actual value of urban-industrial land in Beijing, Tianjin, and 11 prefecture-level cities in Hebei Province, we determined the reasonable prediction model for urban-industrial land after testing the accuracy of the two prediction models. The results showed that the RBF neural network model was the more reasonable prediction model for urban-industrial land. Using the predicted results of the RBF neural network model, combining expected indicators of overall land use plan (2006–2020) in Beijing and Tianjin, as well as 11 prefecture-level cities in Hebei Province in the planning target year, determined remaining usable time of urban-industrial land. Finally, combined with the actual scale of urban-industrial land in 2015 and the predicated scale of urban-industrial land in 2020, the remaining usable time of each city's urban-industrial land was calculated in terms of the average annual growth rate of urban-industrial land from 2009 to 2015. According to the comparative relationship between the remaining usable time and the remaining time of the overall land use plan (5 years), urban-industrial lands were divided into three kinds of regulation zones: reasonable reduction zone, optimized adjustment zone, and core development zone. The policy implications for urban-industrial land in each regulation zone were also provided. This paper can provide reference for regulation zoning of urban-industrial land in developing countries and regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological security and sustainable utilization of water resources have become increasingly important focal areas in today's conversation about water resource management. Ecological footprint models of water resources are commonly used to analyze these factors; however, traditional models do not consider regional and interannual differences. Here, an improved model by calculating water resource equilibrium factors (γw) was used to simulate the water resources ecological footprint (EFw) and water resources ecological carrying capacity (ECw) of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. Ecological deficit and surplus (EDS), water load index (WRL), and ecological footprint of water resources per 104 Chinese yuan (WFG) were used to evaluate sustainable water usage. The findings reveal that γw is discrepant in across regions and years, as were EFw and ECw. Over the course of the study, EFw and ECw of Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei increased by > 25 and 46%, respectively. The sustainable utilization of water resources in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region was found to be poor, but the utilization efficiency had improved through time. Finally, an uncertainty analysis was performed to determine how to improve sustainable development of water resources in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei. Results suggested that reducing the discharge of sewage could reduce EFw and reducing the water consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP could reduce WRL. This study provides valuable support for the sustainable utilization of water resources and the protection of ecological security in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Projecting the future extreme high-temperature risk under the background of global warming and urbanization is essential to the collaborative development of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei (BTH). In this study, based on the global climate simulation data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) and the fine land-cover data, we use the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model coupled with the building effect parameterization (BEP) and building energy model (BEM) at 3-km grid spacing to project the changes in the intensity, frequency, and risk of extreme high temperature over the BTH urban agglomeration. The results show that under the future shared socioeconomic pathway scenario (SSP245), the average extreme high-temperature intensity (EHI) in the BTH will increase by 0.71 °C and 2.12 °C in the middle and late twenty-first century, respectively, compared with that in the reference period (2005–2014), which are 0.23 ℃ and 0.58 ℃ more than that only considering global warming, respectively. The average extreme high-temperature frequency (EHF) will increase by 99 h and 200 h, 53 h and 72 h more than that considering only climate change, respectively. The average high-temperature risk in the BTH for 20-year and 50-year return periods will increase by 1.9 times and 2.4 times in the middle twenty-first century, respectively, and expand to 8.0 times and 12.9 times in the late twenty-first century, respectively. Therefore, it is necessary to take adaptation approaches to reduce the future risk of extreme high-temperature events in the BTH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, road traffic carbon emissions and their share in total carbon emissions have significantly increased. In the context of double carbon, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the largest urban agglomeration in northern China, is receiving more and more attention. Due to the unbalanced development in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, this thesis presents three computational models to calculate road traffic carbon emissions for large, medium-sized, and small cities and intercity traffic arteries based on the road network. The results show that in 2019, Beijing has the highest road carbon emissions reaching 19.91 million t CO2 which is almost three times that of Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei province. Dwellers' commuting usually results in an increase of 2.9%, 3.3%, and 4.5% on weekdays compared with weekends for Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, and Beijing, respectively. As for the intercity road, the daily traffic flow is about 1.92 million vehicles, leading to total carbon emissions of 22.97 million t CO2. In addition, the reduction potential of carbon emissions in Beijing is evaluated. If the average road speed is increased to 0.9Vf (road design speed) during the morning rush hour in Beijing from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m., the road emission reduction could reach 57.85%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant improvement in wastewater treatment is the most effective way for eutrophication control, especially in semiarid regions. However, its effect on the nutrient status and stoichiometry of the receiving water body has remained poorly considered and understood at broad temporal scales. Taking Guanting Reservoir (GR) in Hebei-Beijing (P. R. China) as an example, we present a study that links a continuous monitoring dataset for GR with corresponding estimates of human-induced nutrient discharges in its watershed from the year 2006 to 2019. We find that current GR belongs to strict P limitation and the faster decrease of TP than TN concentrations and continuous increase of TN/TP mass ratios in GR are attributed to the water restoration investment-induced declining of nutrient loadings. The improved municipal wastewater treatment capacity is mainly responsible for these significant changes, due to the higher removal efficiency of TP than TN in municipal wastewater. Given the potential ecological impact on aquatic biodiversity as well as ecosystem function of changes in TN/TP ratios and higher retention rate of TP (97.4%) compared with TN (93.1%) in GR, our findings highlight that future strategy for water pollution control should not only concentrate on more nutrient reduction efficiencies but attach importance to their stoichiometric balance to reduce the potential risk of phytoplankton blooms and toxin production during the water quality recovery of lakes or reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the "Digital China" strategy and "Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality" goal, it is significant to explore the carbon reduction effect from the digital economy development in a multi-dimensional way. Based on the panel data of 13 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region from 2011 to 2019, this study uses mechanism test model, threshold effect model, and spatial Durbin model which empirically test the influence mechanism and spatial spillover effect of digital economy development on regional CEI. The research found that (1) the digital economy development in the BTH region can reduce regional CEI, and it passes the endogenous test; (2) the digital economy indexes of 13 cities in the BTH region have significantly increased with time evolution, but there is obvious spatial unevenness; the CEI of each city except Tianjin decreases significantly with time evolution, and Tianjin shows a trend of decreasing and then increasing; (3) digital economy has a positive spatial correlation, showing the characteristics of "H–H" and "L-L" clustering. Furthermore, the digital economy has a spatial spillover effect on the CEI of neighboring cities; (4) the digital economy development can promote the industrial structure rationalization and upgrade, improves the urban green innovation quantity and quality, then reduces the regional CEI through them; and (5) the impact strength of digital economy on CEI varies at different threshold intervals of the mechanism variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, with the capital Beijing as the core, carries a profound geo-culture and gathers numerous intangible cultural heritages. Studying the spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors of intangible cultural heritage can help to propose positive suggestions for protection and development from the perspective of sustainable development. Taking 329 national intangible cultural heritages in Beijing-Tianjin—Hebei as the research objects, and using ArcGIS spatial analysis technology, combined with methods such as kernel density analysis, standard deviation ellipse and geographical detector, to visualize the spatial distribution of intangible cultural heritages and explore the influencing factors of their distribution. The results show that: (1) the distribution of intangible cultural heritage in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei is not balanced, mainly concentrated in the central and southern regions, and three high-density core circles are formed in Beijing, Tianjin, and Handan-Xingtai in Hebei Province, showing large differences in spatial distribution density; (2) Traditional techniques, traditional arts, dramatic balladry, sports, music, and medicine show the characteristics of aggregated distribution. folkways, dance, and drama show the characteristics of random distribution. Folk literature shows the characteristics of uniform distribution; (3) The Cultural Development Period is an important evolutionary turning point in the spatial and temporal distribution of intangible cultural heritage in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, as well as an accelerating period in the development of intangible cultural heritage, and completes the transformation from decentralized distribution to localized aggregation distribution. In The Period of Regional Cultural Integration, the peak value is reached; (4) Economic development and social culture have the greatest influence on the spatial distribution of intangible cultural heritage in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, while the influence of physical environment is relatively small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the main form of the new urbanization strategy, urban agglomeration promotes inter-regional economic development, population flow, and industrial cooperation. It is not only an important platform for the country to participate in international competition, but also an important carrier to explore the multiple influencing factors of urbanization. Based on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, the temporal and spatial characteristics of its evolution from 1990 to 2020 are analyzed by using the models of urban evolution and industrial transfer. The results show that at the level of urban land use evolution intensity, Beijing > Tianjin > Hebei, and the evolution of urban land use showed an obvious pattern of concentration of resources in central cities (districts) and weak development in sub-central cities (counties). The overall level of urban sprawl showed a downward trend, and only 0.50% of districts and counties were in the stage of high sprawl. Before 2010, the urban sprawl of Beijing, Tangshan, and southern Hebei province remained at a high level, and after 2010, the urban sprawl of central Hebei province remained at a high level. In terms of comprehensive development, the index of cities decreased, including Beijing, Tianjin, and Tangshan, while the index of cities increased including Shijiazhuang, Handan, Xingtai, and Baoding. There is a trend of agglomeration and diffusion of regional industries in geographical space. Middle- and high-end manufacturing industry and service industry gather in the first city, and middle- and low-end processing industry, labor-intensive industry, and agriculture move to surrounding cities. The research results can provide policy suggestions for the coordinated development of regional integration in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the political and technological innovation center of China, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration (BTHUA) is an important engine of national economic development. However, the BTHUA is faced with uneven industrial development and environmental pollution problems. Energy efficiency of the industrial sector, critical to energy conservation and environmental protection, is the key to achieving green economic transformation. For this reason, this study adopts the parametric meta-frontier approach to measure the industrial total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) of the BTHUA, centering on the evaluation of regional technology gap ratio (TGR). Empirical results indicate that there are significant regional disparities of industrial TFEE in the BTHUA. In particular, industrial TFEE tends to be underestimated without considering technological heterogeneity in production technology. The TGRs of manufacturing cities, tourist cities, and the modernized metropolis (Beijing) are the highest among the region. On this basis, the influencing factors of industrial TFEE of the BTHUA are further accessed based on the fixed effects model and the Tobit model. This article verifies that the evaluation of TFEE in the BTHUA must take regional technological gap into account, and provides additional empirical evidence on how to promote coordinated regional industrial development and energy efficiency improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem services provided by river ecosystems rely on healthy ecosystem structure and ecological processes. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban is a typical water-deficient area. As an important part of the urban–rural integration construction, evaluating the health status of the Beiyun River Basin and discovering the weak links in the water environment are the basis for improving the health of the basin. In this study, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to establish an evaluation index system for the Beiyun River Basin from 5 aspects including water quality, biology, ecology, hydrology, and social functions, and the principal component analysis (PCA) was then used to assign weights to the index layer. The evaluation results showed that the health evaluation results of the Beiyun River Basin in 2019 are "sub-healthy," and the overall health status is getting worse from northwest to southeast. In the middle reaches of the region, the evaluation result is "healthy," followed by the upstream, and the downstream is the worst. The results showed that areas with less human interference or orderly intervention are in better health. High eutrophication level, low bio-diversity, and low vegetation coverage are the main indicators that leads to poor ecosystem health in the Beiyun River Basin. For the comprehensive management of the Beiyun River, the improvement of water quality and habitat ecological restoration are key actions to the health of the upstream ecosystem. The improvement of the health status of the downstream should focus on equal emphasis on water quality and quantity, restoration of biodiversity, and improvement of the quality of the riparian ecological environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial distribution of the urban agglomeration population has changed increasingly in rapid urbanization. It affects the urban economy, environment, transportation, and so on. Therefore, it is of great significance to understand the changes in the spatial distribution of population in urban agglomerations. This study used methods such as population center of gravity migration and Gini coefficient to explore changes in the spatial distribution of urban populations. The study found that the population center of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration first migrated toward Beijing and then away from Beijing. During this process, the Gini coefficient increased from 0.62 to 0.64 and then decreased to 0.58, indicating that the population balance of the urban agglomeration firstly increased and then decreased. This result is consistent with the conclusion that we have established a simulated urban agglomeration for theoretical derivation. That is: in the early stage of urban agglomeration development, the population migrated to the central city; as the population of the central city became saturated, the urban agglomeration developed to a mature stage, and the population began to migrate to the peripheral cities. In this process, the population distribution center of urban agglomeration gradually shifted from central towns to peripheral towns. The degree of equilibrium in the spatial distribution of population has undergone an inverted u-shaped transition from non-equilibrium to equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies indicate that the incidence of bacillary dysentery is closely related to meteorological factors. However, the impact of temperature and the spatial heterogeneity of the disease in regions of unbalanced socioeconomic development remains unclear. Therefore, this research collected data for 29,639 daily bacillary dysentery cases in children under 5 years of age, as well as the meteorological variables from China's Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, to analyze the spatial pattern of bacillary dysentery and reveal its nonlinear association with temperature. The SatScan method was employed first, to detect the spatial heterogeneity of the disease risk, and then the distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM) was used to analyze the relationships between the daily minimum, mean, and maximum temperatures and bacillary dysentery in the stratified heterogeneous regions. The results indicated that bacillary dysentery incidence presented statistically significant spatial heterogeneity. The area of highest risk was found to be Beijing and its neighboring regions, which have high population densities. There was also a positive association between bacillary dysentery and temperature. Hotter temperatures were accompanied by higher relative risks. In the most likely spatial cluster region, the excess risk (ER) values for a 1°C rise in minimum, mean, and maximum temperatures above the median were 4.65%, 11.30%, and 19.21%, respectively. The effect of temperature on bacillary dysentery peaked at a lag of 3 to 4 days. The findings of this study will aid risk assessments and early warning systems for bacillary dysentery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The risk of urban waterlogging is increasing with global climate change and rapid urbanization, especially for urban agglomeration like Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region. In this study, we obtain the urban waterlogging risk index of the BTH urban agglomeration and considering the hazard, exposure, and vulnerability factors, we assess waterlogging risks in the built-up area of the BTH for two periods (1961–1990 and 1991–2019). We analyze the economic and social data as well as the climate data from 149 meteorological observation stations in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei provinces. The results showed that for the two considered periods, the area with the lowest (level 1) waterlogging risk has decreased by nearly 50%, and the second-lowest (level 2) ones have increased by nearly 55%. Although the area higher risk has decreased by 17%, the difference among each city is quite large. Among them, the areas at level 3 have increased by 52% and 51% in Beijing and Handan, respectively. During the years 1991–2019, the areas with risks of level 3 and above are mainly found in Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Qinhuangdao, Handan, and Xingtai. Among them, Beijing has the highest waterlogging risk. In particular, the areas with risk of level 3 and above have increased by 76% in the past 30 years. The areas with the highest risk level (level 4) of waterlogging in Beijing were mostly found in the downtown areas (Haidian, Chaoyang, Dongcheng, and Xicheng districts). This study provides a scientific background for urban waterlogging risk management and implementation of the national and regional strategy for the development of the BTH region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joint prevention and control of air pollution (JPCAP) is an inevitable choice for controlling air pollution in the future. The existing air pollution prevention and control methods pay less attention to environmental justice, which results in poor treatment effects; hence, a more reasonable method is imperative. The innovation of this work is to construct a new method for dividing the scope and priorities of JPCAP by introducing environmental justice. First, we analyze the distribution and injustice of air pollution, and then divide JPCAP regions based on environmental justice using a clustering method. Finally, by selecting indicators from the characteristics of air pollution, natural conditions, and trade, the Entropy-TOPSIS method is employed to define the priorities of the JPCAP regions. Accordingly, we divided Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and its surrounding areas in China into four JPCAP regions. We also discovered key regions of air pollution control by determining the priorities of the four regions. The new method provides a practical guidance and a theoretical basis for regional joint control of air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Weather Research and Forecasting model and the Models-3 community multi-scale air quality model (WRF-CMAQ), this study analyzes the impacts of meteorological conditions and changes in air pollutant emissions on the heavy air pollution episode occurred over North China around the 2020 Spring Festival (January to Februray 2020). Regional reductions in air pollutant emissions required to eliminate the PM2.5 heavy pollution episode are also quantified. Our results found that meteorological conditions for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding "2+26" cities are the worst during the heavy pollution episode around the 2020 Spring Festival as compared with two other typical heavy pollution episodes that occurred after 2015. However, because of the substantial reductions in air pollutant emissions in the "2+26" cities in recent years, and the 32% extra reduction in emissions during January to February 2020 compared with the baseline emission levels of the autumn and winter of 2019 to 2020, the maximum PM2.5 level during this heavy pollution episode around the 2020 Spring Festival was much lower than that in the other two typical episodes. Yet, these emission reductions are still not enough to eliminate regional heavy pollution episodes. Compared with the actual emission levels during January to February 2020, a 20% extra reduction in air pollutant emissions in the "2+26" cities (or a 45% extra reduction compared with baseline emission levels of the autumn and winter of 2019 to 2020) could help to generally eliminate regionwide severe pollution episodes, and avoid heavy pollution episodes that last three or more consecutive days in Beijing; a 40% extra reduction in emissions (or a 60% extra reduction compared with baseline emission levels of the autumn and winter of 2019 to 2020) could help to generally eliminate regionwide and continuous heavy pollution episodes. Our analysis finds that during the clean period after the heavy pollution episode around the 2020 Spring Festival, the regionwide heavy pollution episode would only occur with at least a 10-fold increase in air pollutant emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Development Strategy (hereinafter the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy) was formally proposed as a major national strategy, providing an unprecedented opportunity for the overall development of Hebei. This article evaluates the treatment effects of the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy on Hebei's economy and environment. Employing a panel data program evaluation method developed by Hsiao et al. (2012), we construct hypothetical counterfactuals for the GDP growth rate, the percentage of tertiary industry in GDP, and the geographic mean PM2.5 concentrations for Hebei in the absence of the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy using the outcomes of selected untreated provinces. The results show that the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy increased the percentage of tertiary industry in GDP by an average of 2.53 percentage points per year between 2014 and 2018 and decreased the geographic mean PM2.5 concentrations by an average of 11.1 percentage points per year between 2014 and 2017. However, it does not appear to have had significant effects on Hebei's GDP growth rate. The leave-one-out method demonstrates the robustness of the above results. This article suggests that Hebei should speed up its economic growth and bridge the gap with Beijing and Tianjin while ensuring the quality of its economic development and a sound ecological environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is facing great challenges to balance its natural water resource use and eco-environment protection, especially in the north semi-arid region with large water consumption due to the rapid economic growth. This highlights the urgency to use water resource carrying capacity (WRCC) as a measure to maintain the sustainable development of the human and natural water system. Here, we used a coupled model based on the system dynamics and cellular automaton models to assess the WRCC under the critical value of water resource withdrawal ratio (40%) and its sustainability in the Yongding River watershed in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, where the water use highly depends on river flow and nonrenewable groundwater resources. The analytical results showed that the current regional WRCC is severely overloaded due to strong human activities. The predicted results based on four scenarios, i.e., existing development, water saving, industrial restructuring, and integrated development schemes, showed that although the improvement of water saving and water use efficiency has mitigated the regional water shortage, evidenced by the increased WRCC, the water shortage would continue due to the increased water demand. Under the integrated development scenario, it will need at least additional 7.1 × 108 m3 water per year (Beijing: 2.5 × 108 m3, Tianjin: 0.8 × 108 m3, Hebei: 3.8 × 108 m3) via the water transfer project to maintain the sustainability in the next decades. Our research provides recommendations for reasonable water utilization and supplementation under the severe water crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region experienced the most rainfall in 1994 and the least rainfall in 1997 during the last 20 years. Utilizing the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled with a single-layer urban canopy model (UCM), we investigate the possible effects of urbanization on summer precipitation under different climate backgrounds using the two extreme years. By comparing the results of control and sensitivity runs, we find totally different effects in the 2 years. In 1994, the rainfall and rainfall frequency decrease in most areas due to urbanization, and decreases in the rainfall intensity occur in urban areas of Beijing, Tangshan, and Shijiazhuang. In 1997, the rainfall, rainfall frequency, and intensity are reduced in southwest of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, while the change is opposite in northeast. Urbanization alters the diurnal distribution of rainfall, the energy budget, and the water vapor content in the atmosphere. Due to the decrease in city evaporation and transpiration, the surface latent heat flux is reduced. The water vapor mixing ratio in urban area decreases apparently from surface to 850 hPa, while it increases from 850 to 600 hPa. Overall, the reduction of water vapor mixing ratio in 1994 is more than that in 1997, which implies that the “dry island effect” caused by urbanization is stronger in the wet year than that in the dry year. Results also show that the inhibition (enhancement) of deep convection may explain the modification of precipitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of emissions from industry, power plant, transportation, residential, and biogenic sources on daily maximum surface ozone (O) over the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region in North China in the summer of 2007 were examined in a modeling study. The modeling system consisted of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the photochemical dispersion model, CAMx. The factor separation technique (FST) was used to quantify the effect of individual emission source types and the synergistic interactions among two or more types. Additionally, the effectiveness of emission reduction scenarios was explored. The industry, power plant, and transportation emission source types were found to be the most important in terms of their individual effects on ODM. The key contributor to high surface O was power plant emissions, with a peak individual effect of 40 ppbv in the southwestern BTH area. The individual effect from the biogenic emission category was quite low. The synergistic effects from the combinations of each pair of anthropogenic emission types suppressed O formation, while the synergistic effects for combinations of three were favorable for O formation when the industrial and power plant emission source types coexisted. The quadruple synergistic effects were positive only with the combination of power plant, transportation, residential, and biogenic sources, while the quintuple synergistic effect showed only minor impacts on O concentrations. A 30% reduction in industrial and transportation sources produced the most effective impacts on O concentrations, with a maximum decrease of 20 ppbv. These results suggested that the synergistic impacts among emission source types should be considered when formulating emission control strategies for O reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determining whether air temperatures recorded at meteorological stations have been contaminated by the urbanization process is still a controversial issue at the global scale. With support of historical remote sensing data, this study examined the impacts of urban expansion on the trends of air temperature at 69 meteorological stations in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province over the last three decades. There were significant positive relations between the two factors at all stations. Stronger warming was detected at the meteorological stations that experienced greater urbanization, i.e., those with a higher urbanization rate. While the total urban area affects the absolute temperature values, the change of the urban area (urbanization rate) likely affects the temperature trend. Increases of approximately 10% in urban area around the meteorological stations likely contributed to the 0.13°C rise in air temperature records in addition to regional climate warming. This study also provides a new approach to selecting reference stations based on remotely sensed urban fractions. Generally, the urbanization-induced warming contributed to approximately 44.1% of the overall warming trends in the plain region of study area during the past 30 years, and the regional climate warming was 0.30°C (10 yr) in the last three decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Quantifying CO2 emissions from cities is of great importance because cities contribute more than 70% of the global total CO2 emissions. As the largest urbanized megalopolis region in northern China, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji, JJJ) region (population: 112.7 million) is under considerable pressure to reduce carbon emissions. Despite the several emission inventories covering the JJJ region, a comprehensive evaluation of the CO2 emissions at the prefectural city scale in JJJ is still limited, and this information is crucial to implementing mitigation strategies. Results: Here, we collected and analyzed 8 published emission inventories to assess the emissions and uncertainty at the JJJ city level. The results showed that a large discrepancy existed in the JJJ emissions among downscaled country-level emission inventories, with total emissions ranging from 657 to 1132 Mt CO2 (or 849 ± 214 for mean ± standard deviation (SD)) in 2012, while emission estimates based on provincial-level data estimated emissions to be 1038 and 1056 Mt. Compared to the mean emissions of city-data-based inventories (989 Mt), provincial-data-based inventories were 6% higher, and national-data-based inventories were 14% lower. Emissions from national-data-based inventories were 53–75% lower in the high-emitting industrial cities of Tangshan and Handan, while they were 47–160% higher in Beijing and Tianjin than those from city-data-based inventories. Spatially, the emissions pattern was consistent with the distribution of urban areas, and urban emissions in Beijing contributed 50–70% of the total emissions. Higher emissions from Beijing and Tianjin resulted in lower estimates of prefectural cities in Hebei for some national inventories. Conclusions: National-level data-based emission inventories produce large differences in JJJ prefectural city-level emission estimates. The city-level statistics data-based inventories produced more consistent estimates. The consistent spatial distribution patterns recognized by these inventories (such as high emissions in southern Beijing, central Tianjin and Tangshan) potentially indicate areas with robust emission estimates. This result could be useful in the efficient deployment of monitoring instruments, and if proven by such measurements, it will increase our confidence in inventories and provide support for policy makers trying to reduce emissions in key regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]