One of the most important natural phenomena that causes harmful damage around the world is the occurrence of sudden and severe floods. There are various solutions to deal with floods. Among the structural measures of flood risk management, we can mention the construction of levee, detention basin, channel modification, and a combination of the mentioned measures. Manafwa is a flood-prone area in Uganda currently protected by a 6.6 m high levee. Unfortunately, the existing levee does not have ideal performance, and the probability of failure is very high. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to compare seven flood management measures in the flood-prone area of Manafwa and to select the best flood risk management proposal. These management measures are: 1) construction of a levee with a height of 6.5 m, 2) construction of a levee with a height of 7 m, 3) construction of a levee with a height of 7.5 m, 4) construction of a levee with a height of 8 m, 5) channel modification, 6) detention basin and 7) a combination of structural measures of channel modification and detention basin. The results show that although building a levee with a height of 8 m is more expensive than other options, but it reduces the expected annual flood damage to about USD30.5 thous.

The paper concerns the validation of the selected issues related to the new ontology-based approach to the elaboration and management of evidences prepared by developers for the IT security evaluation process according to the Common Criteria standard. The evidences are implied by the claimed EAL (Evaluation Assurance Level) for a developed IT product or system, called TOE (Target of Evaluation). The evidences envisage the TOE features and its development environment. The validation and use of the author’s elaborated ontology are discussed, including: composing evidences for the given TOE and EAL, expressing details of evidences documents, issuing queries to get given information about model, etc. The paper also shows how the evidences are organized, developed and used. This work is aimed at the development of a prototype of a knowledge base, designed mainly for developers to allow them to compose and manage different kinds of evidences elaborated on the patterns basis. This knowledge base can be used by a software tool aiding developers who produce evaluation evidences.

The paper presents a new ontology-based approach to the elaboration and management of evidences prepared by developers for the IT security evaluation process according to the Common Criteria standard. The evidences concern the claimed EAL (Evaluation Assurance Level) for a developed IT product or system, called TOE (Target of Evaluation), and depend on the TOE features and its development environment. Evidences should be prepared for the broad range of IT products and systems requiring assurance. The selected issues concerning the author’s elaborated ontology are discussed, such as: ontology domain and scope definition, identification of terms within the domain, identification of the hierarchy of classes and their properties, creation of instances, and an ontology validation process. This work is aimed at the development of a prototype of a knowledge base representing patterns for evidences.

The Traffic Flow Description (TFD) option of the IP protocol is an experimental option, designed by the Authors and described by the IETF’s Internet Draft. This option was intended for signalling for QoS purposes. Knowledge about forthcoming traffic (such as the amount of data that will be transferred in a given period of time) is conveyed in the fields of the option between end-systems. TFD-capable routers on a path (or a multicast tree) between the sender and receiver(s) are able to read this information, process it and use it for bandwidth allocation. If the time horizons are short enough, bandwidth allocation will be performed dynamically. In the paper a performance evaluation of an HD video transmission QoS assured with the use of the TFD option is presented. The analysis was made for a variable number of video streams and a variable number of TCP flows that compete with the videos for the bandwidth of the shared link. Results show that the dynamic bandwidth allocation using the TFD option better assures the QoS of HD video than the classic solution, based on the RSVP protocol.

Geological and Mining Law enforced in Poland does not provide adequate regulations assuring financial means for a mine closure and mined land rehabilitation. The gradual accumulation of funds within a framework of a mine rehabilitation fund may not provide the full coverage of costs of all the necessary works in the event the exploitation is terminated before lifting all minable resources.

Regulations defining the duties of mining enterprises lack specific preclusions related to assurance of financial means for mine closures in the event a mining license is issued by a staroste (prefect). To address this problem a simplified estimation method for establishing closing costs is put forward in the first stage. This is based on unified indicators related to deposits’ reserves or acreage used for mining activities.

The equivalent of the closure costs established in this manner shall be paid to an escrow account on a similar basis as means of rehabilitation funds are put aside. However, paying the entire amount either in one (preferably) or two instalments is recommended. The introduction of this recommendation requires an amendment to the Geological and Mining Law as well as securing appropriate competences in staroste’s offices along with a convincing communication campaign.

Terminology is significant for professional communication and ipso facto for translation quality assurance (QA). To deliver a translation of high quality, it is crucial to have all new terms that occur in professional discourse collected, stored and managed properly by means of terminology databases (TDBs). In this paper I will try to define ‘quality’ in relation to TDBs and to determine the methodology and criteria that need to be considered by evaluating a TDB in the context of its reliability.

This research presents an experimental study carried out for the modeling and optimization of some technological parameters for the machining of metallic materials. Certain controllable factors were analyzed such as cutting speed, depth of cut, and feed per tooth. A dedicated research methodology was used to obtain a model which subsequently led to a process optimization by performing a required number of experiments utilizing the Minitab software application. The methodology was followed, and the optimal value of the surface roughness was obtained by the milling process for an aluminum alloy type 7136-T76511. A SECO cutting tool was used, which is standard in aluminum machining by milling. Experiments led to defining a cutting regime that was optimal and which shows that the cutting speed has a significant influence on the quality of the machined surface and the depth of cut and feed per tooth has a relatively small impact on the chosen ranges of process parameters.