Commentary on Section 264 of ITAA 1936: commissioner may require information and evidence
Dabner, Justin
2007-01-01
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20 records were found.
The construction of fish passes has been a longstanding measure to improve
river ecosystem status by ensuring the passability of weirs, dams and other in-
channel structures for migratory fish. Many fish passes have a low biological
effectiveness because of unsuitable hydrodynamic conditions hindering fish to
rapidly detect the pass entrance. There has been a need for techniques to
quantify the hydrodynamics surrounding fish pass entrances in order to identify
those passes that require enhancement and to improve the design of new
passes. This PhD thesis presents the development of a methodology for the
rapid, spatially continuous quantification of near-pass hydrodynamics in the
field. The methodology involves moving-vessel Acoustic Doppler Current
Profiler (ADCP) measurements in order to quantify the 3-dimensional water
velocity distri...
Assessment of river rehabilitation and restoration projects, as well as the monitoring of morphological changes in rivers requires collection of hydromorphological
parameter data (i.e. depth, velocity and substrate). Field data collection is highly time and cost consuming and thus, effective and efficient monitoring programmes need to
be designed. Interpolation techniques are often used to predict values of the variables
under study at non measured locations. In this way, it is not necessary to collect
detailed data sets of information. The accuracy of these predictions depends upon (i)the method used for the interpolation and/or extrapolation procedure and (ii) the
sampling strategy applied for the collection of data. Even though the design of
effective sampling strategies are of crucial importance when applying interpolation
techniqu...
This report presents and discusses the results of the Survey of Irrigation of
Outdoor Crops in 2005 for England and Wales. The data includes areas irrigated
and volumes of water used, by crop category, as well as information on
irrigation scheduling, application methods, water sources and water resources.
The survey was sent to all registered agricultural holdings that irrigated at
least 1 hectare, as reported to the 2005 June Agricultural Survey. It is
estimated that responses were received for England from 21% of all irrigated
holdings, representing 27% of the total irrigated area. For Wales, which
contains less than 1% of the total irrigated area, the corresponding figures are
lower, at 12% of holdings and 17% of the total irrigated area. In addition, all
others who responded to the 2001 survey were surveyed, but are not included in...
The price volatility of recycled materials exposes many different organisations
to financial and regulatory risk. These risks can be partially mitigated by
improved understanding of price volatility using econometric models, although
these have tended to be sophisticated autoregressive models, beyond the
analytical capability or cost structure of the average market participant. In
this context, this study explores the use of a simple linearregression model to
understand the behaviour of prices for recycled plastic, recovered paper and
glass, based on the price of their primary inputs, with a specific focus on the
UK market. The results of the simple regression model are compared with a
wavelet analysis to determine what information is lost in the trade off with
simplicity. Both models found significant relationships between the price o...
Metal price forecasts support estimates of future profits from metal exploration and mining and inform purchasing, selling and other day-to-day activities in the metals industry. Past research has shown that cyclical behaviour is a dominant characteristic of metal prices. Wavelet analysis enables to capture this cyclicality by decomposing a time series into its frequency and time domain. This study assesses the usefulness of an improved combined wavelet-autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) approach for forecasting monthly prices of aluminium, copper, lead and zinc. The performance of ARIMA models in forecasting metal prices is demonstrated to be increased substantially through a wavelet- based multiresolution analysis (MRA) prior to ARIMA model fitting. The approach demonstrated in this paper is novel because it identifies ...
There has been an increasing interest in the use of Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) to characterise the hydraulic conditions near river engineering structures such as dams, fish passes and groins, as part of ecological and hydromorphological assessments. However, such ADCP applications can be limited by compass errors, obstructed view to navigation satellites, frequent loss of bottom tracking and spatially heterogeneous flow leading to erroneous water velocity measurements. This study addresses these limitations by (i) developing a heading sensor integration algorithm that corrects compass errors from magnetic interference, (ii) testing a Total Station based technique for spatial ADCP data referencing and (iii) evaluating a recently proposed data processing technique that reduces bias from spatial flow heterogeneity. The int...
Existing regulatory frameworks aiming to improve the quality of rivers place hydromorphology as a key factor in the assessment of hydrology, morphology and river continuity. The majority of available methods for hydromorphological characterisation rely on the identification of homogeneous areas (i.e., features) of flow, vegetation and substrate. For that purpose, aerial imagery is used to identify existing features through either visual observation or automated classification techniques. There is evidence to believe that the success in feature identification relies on the resolution of the imagery used. However, little effort has yet been made to quantify the uncertainty in feature identification associated with the resolution of the aerial imagery. This paper contributes to address this gap in knowledge by contrasting results in autom...
Coral reefs play a key role in coastal protection and habitat provision. They are also well known for their recreational value. Attempts to protect these ecosystems have not successfully stopped large-scale degradation. Significant efforts have been made by government and research organizations to ensure that coral reefs are monitored systematically to gain a deeper understanding of the causes, the effects and the extent of threats affecting coral reefs. However, further research is needed to fully understand the importance that sampling design has on coral reef characterization and assessment. This study examines the effect that sampling design has on the estimation of seascape metrics when coupling semi-autonomous underwater vehicles, structure-from-motion photogrammetry techniques and high resolution (0.4 cm) underwater imagery. For...
In England and Wales planning regulations require local governments to treat waste near its source. This policy principle alongside regional self-sufficiency and the logistical advantages of minimising distances for waste treatment mean that energy from waste incinerators have been built close to, or even within urban conurbations. There is a clear policy and research need to balance the benefits of energy production from waste incinerators against the negative externalities experienced by local residents. However, the monetary costs of nuisance emissions from incinerators are not immediately apparent. This study uses the Hedonic Pricing Method to estimate the monetary value of impacts associated with three incinerators in England. Once operational, the impact of the incinerators on local house prices ranged from approximately 0.4% to ...
Forecast; Wavelet analysis; Multiresolution analysis; Metal prices;
