This paper presents an inflow-forecasting model and a Piecewise Stochastic Dynamic Programming model (PSDP) to investigate the value of the Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts (QPFs) comprehensively. Recently medium-range quantitative precipitation forecasts are addressed to improve inflow...

Oliver Hart proved the impossibility of deriving general comparative static properties in portfolio weights. Instead, we derive new comparative statics for the distribution of payoffs: A is less risk averse than B iff Aʼs payoff is always distributed as Bʼs payoff plus a non-negative random...

In the northwestern Loess Plateau of China, low precipitation results in poor crop yields, with a great fluctuation from year to year. The adoption of gravel–sand mulching has shown improvements in the growth of crops such as watermelon. The ridge and furrow rainwater harvest system (RFRHS)...

In semi-arid areas, crop growth is greatly limited by water. Amount of available water in soil can be increased by surface mulching and other soil management practices. Field experiments were conducted in 2005 and 2006 at Gaolan, Gansu, China, to determine the influence of ridge and furrow...

Gravel and sand mulch is an effective practice in conserving soil and moisture. However, the proportion of different particle size in this kind of mulch layer is an important factor to be considered in order to obtain optimal results from this practice. From 2005 to 2007, a series of experiments...

Many scholars have used different metrics to quantify power grid vulnerability in the literature, but how correlated these metrics are is an interesting topic. This paper defines vulnerability as the performance drop of a power grid under a disruptive event, and selects six frequently used...

Many scholars have applied complex network based models to investigate power grid vulnerability, but how effective are these models to capture the real performance is an interesting topic. This paper selects two typical complex network based models, including a purely topological model (PTM) and...

Focusing on China’s medical insurance scheme which covers all employers and employees in urban areas, this research aims to assess the distributional impacts of medical insurance policies and to predict medical expenses by using microsimulation techniques. As an important part of the project,...

This paper investigates robust and fast consensus of multi-agent systems subject to external attacks. The strategy of connecting neighbor set is proposed to recover the connectivity of the resulting interconnected network, to improve the robustness against next external attacks, and to guarantee...