A two-dimensional, non-isothermal model is presented for a small passive direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) in vertical operation. The effect of natural convection at the anode in the fuel reservoir is considered. The coupled heat and mass transport of the whole cell, along with the...

Assessment of social vulnerability has been recognized as a critical step to understand natural hazard risks and to enhance effective response capabilities. Although significant achievements have been made in social vulnerability researches, little is know about the comprehensive profile of...

The exploration of the characteristics of natural disasters (NDs) and their impacts have important implications for guiding disaster prevention and mitigation. This paper discussed the characteristics of the major NDs that occurred in mainland China between 1980 and 2011 based on the number of...

This paper gives a brief overview of China's family planning policy which, although recently relaxed, still controls a large swath of the population. Unofficially known as the ‘one-child policy’, it resulted from the social strife of the 1970s coupled with a Malthusian pessimism concerning...

Significant advancements have been made in examining the relationship between economic development and disaster losses at the global and national scales, but very little research has been done at the sub-national level, especially in China. Based on socioeconomic and disaster impact data from 31...

The paper proposes a factorial multi-stage stochastic programming (FMSP) approach to support water resources management under uncertainty. This approach was developed based on the conventional inexact multi-stage stochastic programming method. Five alternative inexact multi-stage stochastic...