Taiwan has rich natural landscapes, but the sensitive geology and concentrated rainfall have resulted in frequent sediment hazards. Thus, various stream control works are established in watersheds to secure midstream and downstream citizens' lives and properties. Taking care of slope safety and natural landscapes has become a primary issue for soil and water conservation engineering. The scenic preference beauty estimation method (SBE) in psychophysics, which was proposed by Daniel and Boster in 1976, is utilized herein to evaluate the scenic aesthetics of stream control engineering in watersheds. It aims to discuss various landscape factors (water body, vegetation) in the aesthetic preference and differences of various artificial structures in a watershed under people's psychology. First, pictures and images related to soil and water conservation engineering are collected, and an in-situ investigation is performed to determine the pictures and images for discussion and design of the relevant questionnaire. The scenic aesthetics evaluation results are standardized with RMRATE, a computer program for analyzing rating judgments, of the United States Department of Agriculture, and then transformed into SBE values to compare the difference of various engineering structures in scenic aesthetics. The results reveal that flowing waterscape elements and the coverage of vegetation on the surrounding artificial structure volume in images present positive effects on the public overall scenic aesthetics. This study is expected to provide engineering designers with reference for considering a design integrating engineering structure with natural landscapes.
The purpose of this study is to model the flow movement in an idealized dam-break configuration. One-dimensional and two-dimensional motion of a shallow flow over a rigid inclined bed is considered. The resulting shallow water equations are solved by finite volumes using the Roe and HLL schemes. At first, the one-dimensional model is considered in the development process. With conservative finite volume method, splitting is applied to manage the combination of hyperbolic term and source term of the shallow water equation and then to promote 1D to 2D. The simulations are validated by the comparison with flume experiments. Unsteady dam-break flow movement is found to be reasonably well captured by the model. The proposed concept could be further developed to the numerical calculation of non-Newtonian fluid or multilayers fluid flow.
There is varied natural landscape in Taiwan. Erosion and sediment control engineering used to be a major strategy for watershed management and planning but ecological conservation in natural environments and industrial development, as well as the development of a sustainable watershed, have become priorities. This study established the factors that are used for landscape assessment for stream regulation works and their weights using a questionnaire survey of experts with different professional backgrounds in order to determine a method to assess the landscape. The factors, “texture and form”, “color”, and “ecology” were used to assess scenic beauty. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the analytic network process (ANP) were used initially and an expert questionnaire was used to determine the criteria and weights for landscape assessment for watershed stream regulation works. The questionnaire results showed that “integration with natural environment” was the most important factor for the assessment of landscape aesthetics for watershed stream regulation works, followed by “availability of greening and vegetation space”. To preserve scenic beauty after watershed stream regulation works, an expert landscape assessment was undertaken beforehand. This study established a means to integrate the design of engineering structures with the natural landscape. Landscape assessments, strategies for architecture, and landscape design were combined to give an aesthetic solution for soil and water conservation engineering in Taiwan.
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