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Considering there is a lack of research in determining the optimal levels of government guarantee and revenue cap, the objective of this research is to determine their optimal levels to achieve a reasonable financial risk allocation between governments and private investors while avoiding overly lucrative conditions for private investors.

Expanded net present value (NPV) analysis and bargaining game theory are employed to construct the core of the determination process. The risk gap between governments and private investors is assessed via an expanded NPV analysis to see if the financial risk has been shared reasonably, based on which the range of the government guarantee is decided. A bargaining model is then created to help locate the optimal level of the government guarantee. Finally, a revenue cap, often combined with the government guarantee in public–private partnership (PPP) agreements, will be determined if overly lucrative conditions for private investors are observed or governments suffer a risk spillover.

Referring to a real PPP project in Australia, Project BA is created to validate the applicability of the proposed determination process. The outcome shows that the proposed determination process in this paper is capable of determining the optimal levels of government guarantee and revenue cap. The government preferences towards risk allocation will influence the values of the optimal levels. Governments may also consider to alleviate the control over investors' net profits to mobilise private investors into PPP projects.

There is a potential possibility that the revenue cap fails to control the financial risk for governments or the overly lucrative condition for private investors. In other words, even though the revenue cap is set at the minimal level, the financial risk for governments still beyond their tolerance range or the overly lucrative condition for private investors still occurs. Future research may focus on other financial protective schemes which help to better control the financial risks for governments and profits for private investors.

Government guarantees are frequently used as an investment incentive to reduce the probabilities of suffering loss for private investors. Nevertheless, the financial risks for governments may increase after providing guarantees and, as a result, revenue cap is required by governments to avoid placing themselves in an unprotected situation. By recognising the importance of the two contractual parameters, many scholars dig into their option values. However, there are very rare research works focussing on the method of determining the specific levels of government guarantee and revenue cap. To overcome the limitations of existing models and enrich the methodology for government guarantee and revenue cap determination, this paper contributes to the body of knowledge by developing a government guarantee and revenue cap determination process which contributes to a reasonable allocation of financial risks between governments and private investors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine public–private partnership (PPP) approaches for the construction of rental retirement villages in Australia and to allocate the investment proportions under a certain project return rate among three investors which are the government, private sectors and pension funds. The apportionment will achieve a minimum overall investment risk for the project.

Capital structure, particularly determination of investment apportionment proportions, is one of the key factors affecting the success of PPP rental retirement villages. Markowitz mean-variance model was applied to examine the investment allocations with minimum project investment risks under a certain projected return rate among the PPP partners for the construction of rental retirement villages.

The research findings validate the feasibility of the inclusion of pension funds in the construction of PPP rental retirement villages and demonstrate the existence of relationships between the project return rate and the investment allocation proportions.

This paper provides a quantitative approach for determination of the investment proportions among PPP partners to enrich the theory of PPP in relation to the construction of rental retirement villages. This has implications for PPP partners and can help these stakeholders make vital contributions in developing intellectual wealth in the PPP investment area while providing them with a detailed guide to decision making and negotiation in relation to investment in PPP rental retirement villages.

Targeting public–private partnership (PPP) projects, the purpose of this paper is to help decision makers fairly allocate financial risk between governments and private investors through a properly designed length of concession period.

On the one hand, the length of the concession period should be long enough to help private investors to achieve their expected profits. On the other hand, the length of a concession period cannot be decided without agreeing on an upper limit, since an overlong concession period takes too much time for governments to recover their investment and leads to an overly lucrative condition for private investors. Following this logic, the concession period decision range is decided, which defines the lower and upper limits for the length of the concession period. The net present values (NPVs) for governments and private investors are estimated via Monte Carlo simulation to better reflect the uncertainties. To further decide on the optimal length of the concession period, the principle of fair risk allocation between governments and private investors is adopted. The concession period, as an important project parameter, should help to minimize the financial risk gap between governments and private investors.

The developed concession period determination process is validated using a numerical example of a PPP transportation project. The analysis outcomes show that the proposed methodology is capable of determining the length of the concession period so as to control private investors’ profit within a reasonable range while achieving a fair allocation of financial risk between governments and private investors. The outcomes also indicate that, before determining the optimal length for the concession period, governments may need to make a choice between better financial risk allocation or stringent profit control for private investors.

The determination process developed here may be inapplicable to social infrastructure PPPs where the income stream is less predictable. In addition, the data analysis targets a highway project with a capital subsidy provided by the government. To strengthen the effectiveness of the proposed determination process, further research should apply the model to PPPs with other kinds of government support.

The concession period for a PPP project is an important parameter and it is a common practice for governments to predetermine the length of the concession period before inviting tenders. The existing models for determining the concession period focus too much on the simulation of NPVs for project parties and neglect the importance of risk allocation in signing and maintaining a long-term contract. There is also a lack of research to evaluate the influence of governments’ preferences on the length of the concession period. To overcome the limitations of the existing models and enrich the methodology for concession period determination, this paper contributes to the body of knowledge by developing a concession period determination process which can help governments to make better decisions. The financial risk is expected to be more evenly shared between governments and private investors with the concession period derived from the proposed process. This determination process is also capable of evaluating the influence of governments’ preferences on the length of the concession period.

Targeting public–private partnership (PPP) rental retirement villages, the purpose of this paper is to bring forward the solution of insufficient research in a non-competitive guarantee (a restrictive agreement) towards the compensation and guarantee costs in consideration of benefit redistribution if the governments are unable to keep the promise on guarantee provision.

Real option principles are applied to assess the public–private investment proportions and the expected return rates of the private sector in a non-competitive guarantee and analyse their effects on the public–private benefit and risk allocations as well as the success of the project. Instead of granting direct capital support, this research accomplishes the compensation of non-competition guarantee by adjusting the project benefit distribution ratios between the government and the private sector to achieve the option value of the guarantee. An empirical example with alternative scales, which is developed from an existing rental village in Geelong, is used to numerically verify the research process.

The results illustrate that the option value of the non-competition guarantee plays an important role in supporting the implementation of the PPP rental retirement village projects. The option value of the non-competition guarantee has a close relationship with the guarantee level and the government guarantee cost, which is positively correlated with the guarantee level and negatively correlated with the government guarantee cost. To reduce the government guarantee cost, the government should carefully determine the public–private investment proportion, appropriately control the return rate of the private sector and approve the construction of the new project after the investment recovery of the private sector.

This research mainly focusses on the economic loss of the government due to the guarantee responsibility. Further research could be conducted to determine the guarantee level more precisely and take the social cost of the government guarantees into consideration.

This research is the first attempt to investigate the government compensation and costs of non-competition guarantee for PPP rental retirement village projects and will enhance the understanding of the nature of PPP applications. The evaluation process and the implementation of the compensation through the adjustment of benefit distribution provides a comprehensive method to analyse the non-competition guarantee of PPP projects and help the parties negotiate in good faith to agree on a method of redress.

This paper aims to first analyze the reasons of a brick-wooden building tilts in Yunnan province in China. Then, a jacking method which combines the stress release methods and the excavation of stress release trench were put forward.

This method uses the anchor static pile to guarantee the safety of the building in the process of rectifying.

The practice showed that the inclination rate of the building was stable in the process of jacking, which proved the efficiency of the proposed method.

It has a great value for similar rectification projects, and for the protection of cultural heritage and ancient buildings have a positive effect.

The purpose of this paper is to study the wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) method and path planning algorithm of truss structure parts, to realize the collision-free rapid prototyping of truss structures with complex characteristics.

First, a point-by-point stacking strategy is proposed based on the spot-welding mode of cold metal transfer welding technology. A force analysis model of the droplet is established, which can be used to adjust the posture of the welding torch and solve the collapse problem in the WAAM process of the truss structure. The collision detection model is developed to calculate the interference size between the truss structure and the welding torch, which is used to control the offset of the welding torch. Finally, the ant colony algorithm has been used to optimize the moving path of welding torch between truss with considering the algorithm efficiency and collision avoiding and the efficiency of the algorithm is improved by discretizing the three-dimensional workspace.

A series of experiments were conducted to prove the validity of the proposed methods. The results show that the wire feeding speed, welding speed are the important parameters for controlling the WAAM process of truss parts. The inclination angle of the welding torch has an important influence on the forming quality of the truss.

The force analysis model of truss structure in the WAAM process is established to ensure the forming quality and a collision-free path planning algorithm is proposed to improve forming efficiency.

Accurately judging the quality of marine economic development is the premise of grasping the level and status of marine economic development. In order to scientifically evaluate the development quality of regional marine economy, the purpose of this paper is to select the marine area of Qingdao as the research object, and construct a marine economic development quality evaluation index system with 16 indicators.

The raw data is normalized by the range conversion method, and the weight of the index is determined by the information entropy model. Further, the grey relational analysis (GRA) method is used to evaluate the quality of marine economic development of Qingdao from 2012 to 2017.

The results show that the marine economic development capacity of Qingdao is with the generally increasing trend, the total marine economy is with on the rising trend, the marine storage and transportation capacity, and marine ecological environment are first decreased, and then increased. The utilization of marine resources is generally decreasing, and the comprehensive management of oceans varies with the changes of environment and economy. Therefore, in view of the development capacity of marine economy, the coordinated development of economy and environment should be carried out.

This paper uses the GRA to evaluate the quality of marine economic development and provides a reference for the development of marine economy in Qingdao.

Large, influential and profitable young adults are being targeted for fast fashion that negatively impacts the environment. The transition from a fast to an environmentally friendly slow fashion is a challenging process and culturally dependent. The process starts with slow fashion idea adoption. Thus, the authors modified an information acceptance model (IACM) to examine information characteristics (idea/information quality, credibility, usefulness, source credibility) and consumer factors (need for idea and attitudes) impacting intentions to adopt the slow fashion idea in Canada, South Africa (individualists) and China (collectivists).

Cross-sectional data were collected from South African (n = 197), Chinese (n = 304) and Canadian (n = 227) young adults (18–35 years old) at universities in metropolitan cities. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The results show that while most information characteristics and consumer factors are vital for slow fashion attitudes and intention formation, information quality and trust in the sources were a problem in individualistic cultures as opposed to the collectivist culture. This finding confirms the greater tendency of collectivists to trust disseminated information on environmental issues. In all cultures, attitudes impacted idea adoption intentions. On testing IACM, the multigroup analyses showed no significant differences between young adults in the individualistic cultures. Attitudes mediated most relationships and were highly explained by IACM (South Africa, 49.6%; China, 74.5%; and Canada, 64.5%).

In emerging and developed markets, this study informs environmentalists and green fashion brands of information characteristics that can create positive attitudes and slow fashion idea adoption intentions among influential young adults.

With excellent mechanic properties and hydrogen embrittlement (HE) resistance, 12Cr2Mo1R(H) steel is suitable to make hot-wall hydrogenation reactors. However, longtime exposure to a harsh environment of high-pressure hydrogen at medium temperature in practical application would still induce severe hydrogen uptake and eventually damage the mechanical properties of the steel. The study aims to evaluate the HE resistance of the steel under different tensile strain rates after hydrogen charging and analyze the hydrogen effect from atomic level.

This research studied the HE properties of 12Cr2Mo1R(H) steel by slow strain rate tests. Meanwhile, the effect of hydrogen on the structures and the mechanical properties of the simplified models of the steel was also investigated by first-principle calculations.

Experimental results showed that after hydrogen pre-charging in this work, hydrogen had little effect on the microstructure of the steel. The elongations and reduction of cross-sectional area of the samples reduced a lot, by contrast, the yield and tensile strengths changed slightly. The 12Cr2Mo1R(H) steel was not very susceptible to HE with a maximum embrittlement index of about 20.00%. First principles calculation results showed that after H dissolution, lattice distortion occurred and interstitial H atoms would preferentially occupy the tetrahedral interstitial site in bcc-Fe crystal and increase the stability of the supercells. With the increase of H atoms added into the simplified model, the steel still possessed a good ductility and toughness at a low hydrogen concentration, while the material would become brittle as the concentration of hydrogen continued to increase.

These finds can provide valuable information for subsequent HE studies on this steel.

Urban water bodies play an important role in reducing summertime urban heat island (UHI) effects. Previous studies focused mainly on the impact of water bodies of large areas, and there is no analysis of the efficacy and scale effect of how small and medium-sized water bodies reduce the UHI effects. Hence, these studies could not provide theoretical support for the scientific planning and design of urban water bodies. This study aims to confirm, within different scale ranges, the efficacy of a water body in reducing the summertime UHI effects. We propose a scale sensitivity method to investigate the temporal and spatial relationship between urban water bodies and UHI. Based on the scale theory and geostatistical analysis method in landscape ecology, this study used the platforms of 3S, MATLAB, and SPSS to analyze the distance-decay law of water bodies in reducing summertime UHI effects, as well as the scale response at different water surface ratios. The results show that the influence of water surfaces on UHIs gradually decreases with increasing distance, and the temperature rises by 0.78 °C for every 100 m away from the water body. During daytime, there is a scaled sensitivity of how much water surfaces reduce the summertime UHI effects. The most sensitive radius from the water was found at the core water surface ratio of 200 m. A reduction of UHI intensity by 2.3 °C was observed for every 10% increase of the average core water surface ratio. This study provides a theoretical reference to the control of heat islands for the planning and design of urban water bodies.