Efficiency Index System Research Articles

Spatial–temporal distribution and key factors of urban land use ecological efficiency in the Loess Plateau of China

Urban land use ecological efficiency is crucial to the urbanization process and urban ecosystem sustainability. Cities in ecologically sensitive zones with frequent natural disasters need more complex land use patterns and plans. Achieving the goal of harmonizing economy and ecosystem is key for sustainable development policy makers in these cities. Aiming to explore the urban land use ecological efficiency (LUEE) of ecologically sensitive areas, urban land use ecological efficiency index system of the Loess Plateau was constructed, the SBM-Tobit model was adopted to measure the LUEE and influencing factors from 2009 to 2018, and the characteristics of spatial–temporal evolution was discussed. The results indicated that there were significant spatial differences of LUEE in ecologically sensitive zone. The high-level cities of LUEE were located in the southwest areas, while low-level cities of LUEE were mostly situated in the northeast zones, and the temporal variation trend showed the characteristic of “W” curve. Additionally, the results of key factors identification demonstrated that science and technology expenditure and public transport development had positive effects on urban LUEE, while the land expansion, GDP growth, the second industry and real estate development will limit the improvement of urban LUEE. This study used the scientific evaluation index system and key factors identification method to explore the land use ecological efficiency in ecologically sensitive zones, aiming to provide a case study reference for urban land management and optimization in ecologically fragile areas.

Phosphorus Utilization Efficiency and Status of Phosphorus Reuse in China from 1990 to 2019

Phosphorus (P) is an essential element for supporting our life and is a non-renewable resource. This study applied dynamic material flow analysis to elucidate the phosphorus flow characteristics in China over the period from 1990–2019. Based on this, we developed a P resource efficiency index system and further explored the potential reasons for the changes in different areas by analyzing the inflow, outflow, and reuse of P in various modules. Results show that the phosphorus utilization efficiency (PUE) in crop planting increased from 63% in 1990 to 72% in 2019, while this figure in feeding livestock increased from 35% in 1990 to 42% in 2019 due to the utilization of straw. The figure in aquaculture remained low at 9% in 2019. The total P amount used for human consumption increased to 2562 Gg in 2019 due to changes in dietary habits, and the overall P recycling rate (PRR) for various human activities jumped to 58% in 2019. Based upon these results, several policy suggestions are proposed from governance, technology, and economic instruments perspectives.

Construction and Practice of Livelihood Efficiency Index System for Herders in Typical Steppe Area of Inner Mongolia Based on Super-Efficiency Slacks-Based Measure Model

Inner Mongolia is one of the main animal husbandry production bases in China, with herders being the main animal husbandry producers. A systematic analysis of the efficiency of herding households’ livelihoods and the influencing factors is of great importance to formulate effective policies to support herding households’ livelihoods, enhance their social adaptability, and alleviate the vulnerability of poor people in herding areas. This study used a typical steppe of Inner Mongolia as the research area. It used the interview data of herding households from 2021, constructed the evaluation index system of herding households’ livelihood efficiency, analyzed the redundancy of the inputs and outputs of herding households’ livelihoods, and examined the key factors affecting herding households’ livelihood efficiency. The results indicate that (1) the pure technical effectiveness of the livelihood efficiency of typical grassland herding households in Inner Mongolia is the highest; the comprehensive technical efficiency and scale efficiency are low. The scale return of most herders’ livelihoods shows a decreasing state. (2) According to the results of the model, under the premise of the output not being reduced, reducing the amount of social capital input can effectively save resources. Without increasing the input, the room for improvement in the living level is the most obvious. (3) The pasture area, the communication network, and the access to information have significant negative effects on the efficiency of herders’ livelihoods; infrastructure and water supply have significant positive impacts. In summary, we built a model for evaluating the livelihood efficiency of herders in typical grassland areas of Inner Mongolia, which can provide a reference for the revitalization work of pastoral areas and related research in the future.

Green packaging materials design and efficient packaging with Internet of Things

In our symbiotic society, managing waste in a sustainable manner presents a challenge. Green packaging design must follow the principles of sustainability, that is, reducing the consumption of packaging materials, refilling packaging containers, recycling and recycling packaging materials, and degrading packaging materials, but how to implement its basic ideas into conventional product design and development In order to form a practical overall pattern of the green packaging design process, it is the key to the universal acceptance and application of green packaging design. The goal of this study is to create a long-term solution for disposing of single-use food packaging waste. The Internet of Thing (IoT) technologies and alternative management techniques for throwaway food containers are the designed model for the suggested solution. The key to running cold chain logistics in a sustainable and low-carbon manner is proper optimization modeling, which also provides the required groundwork for creation of a data-driven modeling system. The final efficiency of the packaging throughout circulation is crucial for achieving constant loss minimization and efficient supply, as effective packaging is required for loss control. Therefore, it is crucial to figure out how to make use of these continually collected data and ways to develop a extra precise packing efficiency control mechanism in the cold chain for agri-products. By concentrating on the idea of data-driven assessment modeling as well as the dynamic creation mechanism of complete packaging efficiency, researchers continuously monitored the viability of this topic. The assessment of efficiency index system and approach for data-driven assessment described were evaluated using the packaging efficiency of cold chain for table grapes as an instance. The solution encourages the creation of regional socio-economic ecosystems for a circular economy.

Energy Efficiency Assessment of Industrial Users Based on Improved TOPSIS Grey Correlation Analysis

In order to improve the energy efficiency of industrial users and evaluate the energy efficiency level before optimizing the energy efficiency of enterprises, an energy efficiency evaluation method based on improved TOPSIS grey relational analysis was proposed to find the weak links in energy use. Firstly, three indexes of energy stability, energy consumption per unit output and carbon emission per unit output are selected to construct the energy efficiency index system. Secondly, the index weights are calculated by entropy weight method, and the energy efficiency levels of industrial users are classified, which can be used by the power grid to implement differentiated electricity prices for high-energy consumption enterprises. Last example city 10 typical energy-intensive enterprise users used improved TOPSIS grey correlation analysis method for evaluation of energy efficiency, energy consumption per unit output value is obtained by analysis of the index weight is the largest, the better the performance of the index, the higher the comprehensive evaluation results of energy efficiency, and finally the method compared with other evaluation methods to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in this paper.

Application of data elements in the coupling of finance and technology on the digital electronic platform

With the continuous development of Internet technology, all areas of social economy have undergone profound changes. The circulation and application of data elements can significantly promote the construction of infrastructure such as big data centers and mobile base stations, and stimulate the market demand for digital consumption such as digital production, e-commerce and digital trade. Data mining technology will provide sustainable impetus for economic development. There is a clearer analysis of the role of data elements in the platform economy, but there is a lack of research in macroeconomics, especially in the coupling of finance and technology. This paper developed a coupling coordination and a coupling efficiency index system, using different methods to measure outcomes and outline the path to achieving high "quantity" and "quality" of finance-technology coupling development. Based on the data mining technology in e-commerce, the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method is used to analyze the complex mechanisms and driving paths of data elements affecting the coordination degree and coupling efficiency of finance-technology coupling performance of China. We empirically document that data mining and data management are necessary to improve coupling coordination; in the absence of other conditions, data mining or data management can produce high coupling coordination, but not sufficient to improve coupling efficiency.

Persistent eutrophication and hypoxia in the coastal ocean

AbstractCoastal eutrophication and hypoxia remain a persistent environmental crisis despite the great efforts to reduce nutrient loading and mitigate associated environmental damages. Symptoms of this crisis have appeared to spread rapidly, reaching developing countries in Asia with emergences in Southern America and Africa. The pace of changes and the underlying drivers remain not so clear. To address the gap, we review the up-to-date status and mechanisms of eutrophication and hypoxia in global coastal oceans, upon which we examine the trajectories of changes over the 40 years or longer in six model coastal systems with varying socio-economic development statuses and different levels and histories of eutrophication. Although these coastal systems share common features of eutrophication, site-specific characteristics are also substantial, depending on the regional environmental setting and level of social-economic development along with policy implementation and management. Nevertheless, ecosystem recovery generally needs greater reduction in pressures compared to that initiated degradation and becomes less feasible to achieve past norms with a longer time anthropogenic pressures on the ecosystems. While the qualitative causality between drivers and consequences is well established, quantitative attribution of these drivers to eutrophication and hypoxia remains difficult especially when we consider the social economic drivers because the changes in coastal ecosystems are subject to multiple influences and the cause–effect relationship is often non-linear. Such relationships are further complicated by climate changes that have been accelerating over the past few decades. The knowledge gaps that limit our quantitative and mechanistic understanding of the human-coastal ocean nexus are identified, which is essential for science-based policy making. Recognizing lessons from past management practices, we advocate for a better, more efficient indexing system of coastal eutrophication and an advanced regional earth system modeling framework with optimal modules of human dimensions to facilitate the development and evaluation of effective policy and restoration actions.

A New Scheme for Ransomware Classification and Clustering Using Static Features

Ransomware is a strain of malware that disables access to the user’s resources after infiltrating a victim’s system. Ransomware is one of the most dangerous malware organizations face by blocking data access or publishing private data over the internet. The major challenge of any entity is how to decrypt the files encrypted by ransomware. Ransomware’s binary analysis can provide a means to characterize the relationships between different features used by ransomware families to track the ransomware encryption mechanism routine. In this paper, we compare the different ransomware detection approaches and techniques. We investigate the criteria, parameters, and tools used in the ransomware detection ecosystem. We present the main recommendations and best practices for ransomware mitigation. In addition, we propose an efficient ransomware indexing system that provides search functionalities, similarity checking, sample classification, and clustering. The new system scheme mainly targets native ransomware binaries, and the indexing engine depends on hybrid data from the static analyzer system. Our scheme tracks and classifies ransomware based on static features to find the similarity between different ransomware samples. This is done by calculating the absolute Jaccard index. Results have shown that Import Address Table (IAT) feature can be used to classify different ransomware more accurately than the Strings feature.

A Comprehensive Utilization Efficiency Evaluation of Iron Tailings based on the Differential — Benefit Evaluation

At present, in the evaluation of iron tailings resources, the single evaluation of a certain aspect is limited to the qualitative evaluation, and there is no uniform standard in either theory or method. In this paper, based on the grey group analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy mathematics as the analysis tool, the benefit of the iron tailings resources is analyzed, From resource benefit, economic benefit, environmental benefit and social benefit several aspects to build the differential - efficiency index system and established the differential-benefit evaluation model and the influence of iron tailings resource evaluation of the weight of each index distribution, is obtained by correlation analysis and the likelihood of benefit index influencing the size of the order, to a certain extent, verified the rationality of the index weight, provides a theoretical guidance for iron tailings resource utilization.

Energy efficiency evaluation of consumer based on fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method

Aiming at the problems of lack of complete evaluation index system and low evaluation accuracy, a consumer energy efficiency evaluation method based on fuzzy comprehensive fuzzy evaluation is proposed. Firstly, establish a consumer energy efficiency index system. Then the weight of the index is determined by the combination of analytic hierarchy process and entropy weight method. Finally, the energy efficiency of consumer is evaluated by fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. Through the analysis of experimental examples, it is verified that the proposed method can evaluate the level of electricity energy efficiency accurately, and improve the residential electricity efficiency effectively.

Energy Efficiency Evaluation and Optimization of Industrial Park Customers Based on PSR Model and Improved Grey-TOPSIS Method

Energy efficiency evaluation of industrial park customers is carried out to help customers develop optimization strategies and improve the energy efficiency level. The evaluation indexes are proposed based on pressure-state-response (PSR) model and the redundant indexes are selected by combining principal component analysis (PCA) and correlation analysis. Thus the dynamic energy efficiency index system is constructed. The weight of indexes is calculated by the entropy weight method (EWM). An energy efficiency evaluation model based on improved Grey-technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is proposed, which replaces the Euclidean distance by weighted grey correlation degree and can accurately evaluate customers’ energy efficiency level. An energy efficiency optimization model is proposed, which can maximize optimization benefits while improving energy efficiency. The validity of the evaluation and optimization models is verified by the case study of an industrial park.

Index Predigesting Method of ELINT System Based on MIBARK Algorithm

The effectiveness evaluation of the Electronic Information (ELINT) system, which plays an important role in guiding the theoretical research, equipment development, and practical application, is the key technology of the ELINT system. In practical applications, the effectiveness evaluation of ELINT system is mainly aimed at evaluation methods. However, the establishment of evaluation criteria and the construction of the index system are still two main challenges in this field, especially the optimization of the evaluation index system. In this paper, we aim at establishing the ELINT system index evaluation criteria and optimizing the ELINT system evaluation index system. Based on the principle structure of the ELINT system, we directly construct the original efficiency index system, establish specific evaluation criteria for each index, and quantify the indexes using the criteria. To optimize the proposed index system, we introduce the idea of rough set reduction and develop an index system reduction model based on the mutual information heuristic knowledge reduction (MIBARK) algorithm. Simulation analysis shows that the proposed evaluation criteria quantify each index scientifically, and the established indicator reduction model can eliminate the redundancy of the ELINT efficiency indicator system, making the indicator system more streamlined and reasonable.

Measurement and Comparison of Urban Haze Governance Level and Efficiency Based on the DPSIR Model: A Case Study of 31 Cities in North China

In the decisive stage of developing of a moderately prosperous society in all aspects, hazy weather has become a major obstacle to the further advancement of China. Therefore, improving the level and efficiency of haze governance has become essential. Based on the DPSIR model, this paper builds a haze governance level and efficiency index system using the entropy method and the super-efficiency data envelope-analysis (DEA) model to analyze the data for 31 cities in North China from 2007 to 2016. From the aspects of spatial differences and influence factors influencing the comparative analysis, the results are as follows. (1) During the investigation period, the level and efficiency of city haze governance in North China showed a trend of fluctuation and decline, with obvious stages in their characteristics. Haze governance efficiency is much higher than its level, and its mean value reaches the DEA level which indicates that it is effective. (2) A significant regional gradient difference occurs between these two aspects. The haze governance level presents a convex distribution pattern of “east low–middle high–west low”, while the haze governance efficiency presents a concave distribution pattern of “east high–middle low–west high”. (3) The regression results show that economic growth has a negative effect on both haze governance level and efficiency. By contrast, the industrial structure has a positive effect on haze governance level and efficiency, but the significance of its effect on these two is different. On this basis, policy suggestions are proposed for improving the level and efficiency of haze governance in various cities in North China.

The omics discovery REST interface.

The Omics Discovery Index is an open source platform that can be used to access, discover and disseminate omics datasets. OmicsDI integrates proteomics, genomics, metabolomics, models and transcriptomics datasets. Using an efficient indexing system, OmicsDI integrates different biological entities including genes, transcripts, proteins, metabolites and the corresponding publications from PubMed. In addition, it implements a group of pipelines to estimate the impact of each dataset by tracing the number of citations, reanalysis and biological entities reported by each dataset. Here, we present the OmicsDI REST interface (www.omicsdi.org/ws/) to enable programmatic access to any dataset in OmicsDI or all the datasets for a specific provider (database). Clients can perform queries on the API using different metadata information such as sample details (species, tissues, etc), instrumentation (mass spectrometer, sequencer), keywords and other provided annotations. In addition, we present two different libraries in R and Python to facilitate the development of tools that can programmatically interact with the OmicsDI REST interface.

Spatio-Temporal Distributions of the Land Use Efficiency Coupling Coordination Degree in Mining Cities of Western China

A high coupling coordination degree of urban land use efficiency promotes sustainable regional economic development. In this study, land use efficiency coupling coordination degrees were calculated for 36 mining cities of western China, with a focus on economic, social, and ecological benefits for land use efficiency. Four years (2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015) of data were selected. A land use efficiency index system was generated and the improved entropy method was used to calculate the index weights of land use efficiency for each year. The spatial distributions of the coupling coordination degree were assessed by the ArcGIS spatial analysis tool. Spatial correlation analysis was conducted for the coupling coordination degree. The following conclusions could be drawn: (1) According to the composite index results, urban land use efficiency could be divided into three stages and showed several different time patterns in mining cities of western China; (2) analysis of the spatial and temporal distributions of the land use efficiency coupling coordination degree identified a low level of coupling coordination and reluctant coupling coordination. An obvious core-periphery and gradual trickle-down trend was observed; (3) the land use efficiency of western mining cities presents negative and positive spatial autocorrelation characteristics. Shizuishan city, Ordos city, Jinchang city, and Wuhai city have significant aggregation types. Therefore, the western mining cities were subjected to different complex time and space characteristics.

Index system and method for the evaluation of highway ecological landscape quality: A case study of Nantong City, Jiangsu Province, China.

The construction of highway ecological landscape is an important part of highway entity and an iconic feature of scenic countryside and ecological garden city, which plays an important role in the process of achieving social and economic sustainable development. The efficient index system and method is a basic measurement for the assessment of the interior quality and its associated outer environment. By taking five arterial highways (G15, G228, G204, S334 and S335) in the territory of Nantong City, Jiangsu Province as the case, an evaluation system containing quantitative and qualitative indices was developed to deal with the ecological landscape quality. The system composed of 12 evaluation indices which were divided into three categories including ornamental value, ecological efficiency, and safety design. Based on the survey and calculation of the raw data, the variable matrix was established and analyzed with principal component (PC) analysis. The results showed that the equation of highway greening ecological evaluation score was H=0.694×PC1+0.191×PC2+0.115×PC3, and scores of 5 highways ranked in the ordination of G204 > G15 > S334 > G228 > S335. The results would provide methods and references for efficient evaluation of highway landscape.

Environmental regulatory efficiency and its influencing factors in China

The effectiveness of environmental regulations (ERs) has been examined carefully in the past time; however, the inputs of ERs have been neglected so far. In order to track the relationship between inputs and outputs of ERs, this paper first constructs an environmental regulatory efficiency (ERE) index system and develops an entropic slack-based model suitable for measuring China’s ERE during 2004–2014, which considers the entropic allocation of multiple inputs and desirable and undesirable outputs. The influencing factors of ERE were then explored by the panel Tobit model. Results have illustrated that in China, ERE is relatively low in general, with significant and narrowing geographical discrepancies, and ERs are becoming more and efficient from 2004 to 2014. From the regional view, the east has the highest ERE values, followed by the west, then northeast, and lastly the central regions with the lowest values. Furthermore, it has been discovered that the economic development level and population density both affected ERE positively, while technological innovation and industrialization level exerted a reverse effect. From the perspectives of the level of opening-up and urbanization, environmental pursuits, all three displayed no correlation with ERE. The conclusions may be helpful for the Chinese government to improve ERE.

A Fast and Efficient Image Indexing and Search System based on Color and Texture Features

Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) allows to automatically extracting target images according to objective visual contents of the image itself. Representation of visual features and similarity match are important issues in CBIR. Color, texture and shape information have been the primitive image descriptors in content-based image retrieval systems. This paper presents a fast and efficient image indexing and search system based on color and texture features. The color features are represented by combines 2-D histogram and statistical moments and texture features are represented by combines the direction measure and a gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM). The detailed experimental analysis is carried out using precision and recall ondataset Wang. The time analysis is also performed to compare processing speeds of the proposed method with the existing similar best. The experimental results demonstrated that proposed method achieved a better image recognition, and the accuracy of classification based on this method has been significantly improved. The performance is measured in terms of recall and precision; also the obtained performances are compared with several state-of-the-art algorithms and showed that our algorithm is simple, fast, and efficient in terms of results and memory. Keywords: Co-occurrence Matrix, Direction Measure, 2-D Histogram, Statistical Moments, CBIR, GLCM

Energy efficiency evaluation of a natural gas pipeline based on an analytic hierarchy process

A long-distance natural gas pipeline system consists of considerable equipment and many pipe segments, but the conventional energy efficiency index of a natural gas pipeline is considered as a whole. Because the specific energy consumption of each unit cannot be determined, the index system is not perfect, and evaluating the energy efficiency of a natural gas pipeline system is difficult. The energy efficiency evaluation model for a natural gas pipeline was established using the analytic hierarchy process. A judgment matrix was constructed based on the energy efficiency index system of a long-distance natural gas pipeline, and the weight coefficient was calculated using the characteristic root method. Then, the consistency of the established judgment matrix was verified. The energy efficiency evaluation model successfully quantified the qualitative factors that affect natural gas pipelines. The comprehensive energy efficiency coefficient G of the natural gas pipeline was obtained from the operational data of the natural gas pipeline; then, the equipment or pipe segments with high energy consumption can be identified. The energy efficiency evaluation program of the natural gas pipeline was developed using Visual Basic for Applications, which significantly reduced the evaluation workload. The natural gas pipeline energy efficiency evaluation model is used to evaluate the energy efficiency of a natural gas pipeline, to identify the high energy consumption equipment or pipe segments, and to propose measures to improve the energy efficiency. The results show that the gas pipeline energy efficiency evaluation model and evaluation procedures can identify high energy consumption equipment or pipe sections in complex natural gas pipelines.

Research on the Influencing Factors of Comprehensive Water Consumption by Impulse Response Function Analysis

Jiangsu is a major province located in the east of China, consuming a large amount of water resources. It is considered that improving the comprehensive water use efficiency has an important significance to achieve sustainable development of the economy in Jiangsu. Through extensive literature research and investigation of Jiangsu Province, this paper establishes comprehensive water use efficiency index system using water consumption per ten thousand dollar gross domestic product (WC/$104 GDP) as the research target. In the index system, resource factors such as surface water resources (SW), groundwater resources (GW), precipitation (PT), water resources per capita (PW), water consumption per capita (PC) and irrigation area per capita (PI) cannot be artificially altered. Furthermore, the variation amplitude of resource factors is very small. It shows that the linear regression model is not suitable to analyze the resource factors by changing the independent variables. In view of this situation, this paper introduces impulse response function on the basis of vector autoregressive model (VAR) to investigate the intrinsic link between resource factors and WC/$104 GDP in Jiangsu Province. The results show that resource factors have a great impact on WC/$104 GDP in Jiangsu, and the per capita water resources (PW) has the most significant impact.