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The displacement and resettlement-associated poverty caused by water conservancy projects (WCP) is a worldwide issue. Re-settlers are often impoverished for extended periods due to loss, difficult re-establishment, and insufficient compensation. Addressing poverty has become a worldwide concern, and accurate measurements of poverty remain a fundamental issue. Before 2020, the Chinese government used the absolute income method to measure re-settler poverty. However, this method reflected neither the overall income gap nor potential benefits of social development and poverty alleviation policies. Therefore, we used the relative income and multidimensional methods alongside the absolute income poverty method to measure the poverty in recently resettled households. Based on survey data from over resettled 1000 households we conclude that: (1) The remaining poor measured by the absolute poverty line were mainly caused by serious diseases, disabilities and loss of labor ability, which means they have no ability to be lifted out of poverty except through the bottom line of local governments. As a result, the absolute poverty line loses its distinction to poverty. (2) Rural re-settlers were more resilient to forced majeure because land guarantees employment and food supply, allowing households to avoid secondary livelihood destruction. (3) Income derived measurement of re-settler poverty masks the benefits of poverty alleviation and other socioeconomic aid programs. A few households showed improvements in child school attendance, child mortality, nutrition, cooking fuel, asset ownership, and social insurance following resettlement. (4) To reduce the multidimensional gap, government aid programs should focus on years of schooling (including training), nutrition, household savings, and household labor force rather than simply providing monetary assistance. At the same time, we suggest that the government adopt a variety of compensation methods, such as: sharing the benefits of water conservancy projects, industrial support and improving the bottom line guarantee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those who have been forced to resettle by water conservancy projects (WCP) have always been a group that is characterised by high poverty and livelihood vulnerability, mainly due to insufficient compensation and the fragmentation of their social networks. In 2020, the Chinese government announced that China had achieved comprehensive poverty alleviation, implying that all WCP-induced resettlers, have been lifted out of poverty. However, China's current poverty line is based on the minimum subsistence standard, namely the absolute poverty line, which fails to objectively reflect China's uneven development and individuals' actual consumption needs. Therefore, in order to comprehensively analyse the poverty status of WCP-induced resettlers in contemporary China, this paper reassessed the poverty status of contemporary WCP-induced resettlers from the perspective of development-based poverty and consumption-based poverty. Based on survey data from over 1000 households who were forced to resettle due to China's 'Yangtze River to Huai River Inter-basin Water Diversion' project, this paper concludes that: (1) China's current absolute poverty line is outdated for contemporary WCP-induced resettlers, due to the fact they had basically been lifted out of absolute poverty by 2018, and those who remain poor need to be addressed through the bottom line guarantee of local governments; (2) the role of land as a form of basic insurance can alleviate income inequality and mitigate the risk of force majeure. Therefore, those resettled from rural areas have stronger income stability and greater resilience to risks; (3) the poverty status of contemporary WCP-induced resettlers is mainly consumption-based, and it is worse for resettlers from urban areas. Based on these conclusions, we suggest that the government should try to avoid large-scale relocation of WCP-induced resettlers to urban areas, and try to provide more insurances to them, such as providing arable land and sharing the benefits of water conservancy projects with the resettlers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green development is a significant concept that cannot be ignored in contemporary society. However, in the context of China's transition from high-speed growth to high-quality development, the complex impact of urban development has brought great challenges to the urban green environment. In this paper, the impact of urban development on green development efficiency (GDE) was studied. First and foremost, a Super-SBM model was introduced to measure the GDE of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta during 2009–2018. Moreover, a Tobit model was used to analyze the correlation between four urban development factors, including economic development and GDE. According to the results, the mean GDE of the Yangtze River Delta is 0.824, and the GDE in most cities there has shown a fluctuating growth trend in this decade. By comparison, the GDEs of coastal cities and cities in the southeast of the Yangtze River Delta were generally higher than those of cities in the north, indicating that the green development is geographically unbalanced, and there is spatial heterogeneity in the area studied. The study's results also suggest that the urban economic development, innovation level, and government planning play a significant role in stimulating urban green development, and that the expansion of urban construction area hinders the improvement of GDE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate assessment of wet aggregate stability is critical in evaluating soil quality. However, a few general models are used to assess it. In this work, we use the support vector machine to evaluate wet aggregate stability and compare it with a benchmark model based on artificial neural networks. One hundred thirty-four soil samples from various land uses, such as crops, grasslands, and bare land are adopted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method and confirm the valid input parameters. We select 107 samples for calibrating the prediction model and the rest for evaluation. Experiments show that organic carbon is the main control parameter of wet aggregate stability, although the most influential factors for different land use are various. Comparing the determination coefficient and the root mean square error, it proves that the support vector machine method is superior to the artificial neural network method. In addition, the relative importance analysis shows that contents of organic carbon, silt, and clay are the primary input parameters. Finally, the impact of land use and management types is evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seismic behavior of long circle tunnels is significantly influenced by the nature of input motion. This study, based on the 3D finite-element method (FEM), evaluates the effects of spatially varying seismic ground motions and uniform input seismic ground motions and their incident angles on the diameter strain rate and tensive/compressive principal stresses under different strata. It is found that (1) the spatially varying seismic ground motions induced larger diameter strain rate (radially deformation) than the uniform input seismic motion, (2) the spatially varying seismic ground motions had an asymmetric effect on the radial strain rate distributions, and (3) the rising incident angles changed the pure shear stress state into a complex stress state for tunnels under specified input motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-performance work systems are being increasingly used in organisational management. However, such system development over time has resulted in increasingly complex impacts on employee innovation behaviour. How to stimulate innovation in the technological talent pool of individuals at high-tech enterprises has gradually become a research hotspot. Based on an effective sample of 351 technological individuals from high-tech enterprises in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces, this paper discusses the mechanism and boundary conditions of a high-performance work system affecting the active innovation behaviour of such individuals based on self-determination theory. The empirical results show the following: (1) Informational practices and controlled practices in a high-performance work system have mutually exclusive effects on active innovation behaviour, with significant positive and negative effects. (2) The need for autonomy and competence play mediating roles between informational practices and active innovation behaviour; the need for autonomy plays a masking effect between controlled practices and active innovation behaviour. (3) The need for relatedness negatively moderates the effects of a high-performance work system which is focused on the needs for autonomy and competence. The findings reveal the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of high-performance work system influencing active innovation behaviour, which provides a reference for high-tech enterprises to encourage technical talents to innovate, and have important practical significance for improving the core competitiveness of high-tech enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to alleviate the problem of water shortage, the Ministry of Water Resources of China proposed a Water-Saving Contract (WSC) project management model in 2014, which is similar to the Energy Performance Contract (EPC). In this context, this research aims to explore the applicability of China's WSC projects by risk assessment, and to help promote WSC projects in China. Different from traditional risk assessment, this paper takes into account the uncertainty of the EPC project's risks, and adopts the multielement connection degree set pair analysis to evaluate both the level and trend of the risks. The results show: (1) the overall risk of China's WSC projects is low, so WSC projects are very suitable for promotion in China. However, the overall risk shows a trend of decelerated ascent, which shows that there are some potential high-risk factors in China's WSC projects; (2) among the many risks of the WSC projects, audit risk, financing risk, and payment risk are at a high-risk level; market competition risk is at a medium-risk level; the remaining risks are at a low-risk level; (3) among the medium and high risks, audit risk, financing risk, and market competition risk have a trend of accelerated ascent, while payment risk has a trend of decelerated decline; in low risks, inflation risk has a trend of decelerated ascent, while the remaining risks have a trend of accelerated decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Yangtze River to Huaihe River" project is another large-scale trans-basin water diversion project in China, following the South-to-North Water Division Project. The reservoir project is in the period of China's rapid development of modernization, informatization and marketization. During this period, reservoir-induced migrants have great differences in resource endowment and development opportunities, so they show different characteristics in the integration process. In order to clarify these characteristics and formulate corresponding policies based on these characteristics to help them integrate into the society of the resettlement area as soon as possible, this paper has completed two aspects of work: First, a method for identifying social integration is proposed. Second, the characteristics of social integration of different migrant groups in different time dimensions are analyzed. This study has two important findings: First, the extent of information sources and understanding of policies has a greater impact on the social integration of migrants. The wider the source of information and the more understanding of policies, the more it helps migrants to integrate into society. Second, the social network relationship established by the female migrant group in the maintenance activities will greatly promote their social integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strain-hardening cementitious composite (SHCC) is a kind of construction material that exhibits multiple cracking and strain-hardening behaviors. The partial replacement of cement with fly ash is beneficial to the formation of the tensile strain-hardening property of SHCC, the increase of environmental greenness, and the decrease of hydration heat, as well as the material cost. This study aimed to develop a sustainable construction material using a high dosage of fly ash (no less than 70% of the binder material by weight). Based on the micromechanics analysis and particle size distribution (PSD) optimization, six mixes with different fly ash to cement ratios (2.4–4.4) were designed. The mechanical properties of the developed high-volume fly ash SHCCs (HVFA-SHCCs) were investigated through tensile tests, compressive tests, and flexural tests. Test results showed that all specimens exhibited multiple cracking and strain-hardening behaviors under tension or bending, and the compressive strength of the designed mixes exceeded 30MPa at 28 days, which is suitable for structural applications. Fly ash proved to be beneficial in the improvement of tensile and flexural ductility, but an extremely high volume of fly ash can provide only limited improvement. The HVFA-SHCC mix FA3.2 (with fly ash to binder ratio of about 76% by weight) designed in this study is suggested for structural applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data obtained from a survey conducted in the Liang Huai coal mining area in Anhui Province, the author analyzed the risk perception of a group of affected persons (APs) regarding the reality of relocation and their willingness to move. The purpose was to test the scales created and analyze as a whole the most significant predictors found in the pervious literature. The results show that the individual characteristics of APs and the resettlement compensation model have a greater impact on the risk perception of resettlement. According to the analysis results of the four types of risk perception, the effects of various types of influencing factors on the risk perception of relocation are different. AP's perception of the risk of relocation is actually a complicated process. It is influenced by both subjective and non-subjective factors and by rational and irrational factors and is the result of multiple factors. The perceived risk of affected households is characterized by system complexity, multi-factor correlation, regional differences and particularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]