Under the umbrella concepts of upscaling and emerging technology, a wide variety of phenomena related to technology development and deployment in society are examined to meet societal imperatives (e.g., environment, safety, social justice). The design literature does not provide an explicit common theoretical and practical framework to clarify the assessment method to handle “an” upscaling. In this nebulous context, designers are struggling to identify the characteristics to anticipate the consequences of emerging technology upscaling. This article therefore first proposes a structuring framework to analyze the literature in a wide range of industrial sectors (energy, chemistry, building, etc.). This characterization brought to light five prevalent archetypes clarifying the concepts of upscaling and emerging technology. Then, a synthesis of invariants and methodological requirements for designers is proposed to deal with upscaling assessment according to each archetype, based on a literature review of existing design methods. This literature review process showed a disparity in treatment for some archetypes, regarding the industrial sector. A discussion is consequently proposed in the conclusion to guide design practices.

Water-vapor sorption experiments were conducted to quantify bulk volume change of compacted expansive clay specimens resulting from interlayer hydration and dehydration in the crystalline swelling regime. Effects of interlayer cation type and pore fabric are examined by comparing results for natural Na+-smectite and Ca2+-smectite specimens compacted over a range of initial bulk densities. Transitions in interlayer hydration states are reflected in the general shape of the sorption isotherms and corresponding relationships between humidity and volume change. Hysteresis is observed in both the sorption and volume-change response. Volume change for Ca2+-smectite specimens is significantly greater than for Na+-smectite over the entire range of packing densities considered. Loosely compacted specimens result in less volume change for both clays. Results are interpreted in light of a conceptual framework based on previous SEM and TEM observations of particle and pore fabric for Na+ and Ca2+ smectite at high suctions. A pore-scale microstructural model is developed to quantitatively assess changes in interlayer and interparticle void volume during hydration. Modeling suggests that the relatively small volume changes observed for Na+-smectite are attributable to a reduction of interparticle void volume as expanding quasicrystals encroach into surrounding larger-scale pores. Volume change hysteresis is attributed to unrecovered alterations in interparticle fabric required to accommodate the swelling process. The results provide new insight to address volume change upscaling, hysteresis, and the general evolution of bi-modal pore fabric during crystalline swelling.

Policy piloting has become a popular form of organization in implementing public policies. However, the current literature surprisingly discusses little about its management. This study investigates how two policy-pilot attributes – ambiguity and compatibility – shape policy-pilot management. To accomplish this, we developed an analytic framework consisting of four management strategies: experimentation, refinement, upscaling, and institutionalization. We chose a representative policy pilot in Chinese health governance, the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme, to examine the adoption of these four strategies. Our finding that, at various junctures, the Chinese state adopted these four strategies to manage policy piloting demonstrates the applicability of the analytic framework constructed in this study. This study contributes to the existing public policy literature by providing new insights into policy implementation in temporary organizing settings.

Tree-ring chronologies encode interannual variability in forest growth rates over long time periods from decades to centuries or even millennia. However, each chronology is a highly localized measurement describing conditions at specific sites where wood samples have been collected. The question whether these local growth variabilites are representative for large geographical regions remains an open issue. To overcome the limitations of interpreting a sparse network of sites, we propose an upscaling approach for annual tree-ring indices that approximate forest growth variability and compute gridded data products that generalize the available information for multiple tree genera. Using regression approaches from machine learning, we predict tree-ring indices in space and time based on climate variables, but considering also species range maps as constraints for the upscaling. We compare various prediction strategies in cross-validation experiments to identify the best performing setup. Our estimated maps of tree-ring indices are the first data products that provide a dense view on forest growth variability at the continental level with 0.5° and 0.0083° spatial resolution covering the years 1902–2013. Furthermore, we find that different genera show very variable spatial patterns of anomalies. We have selected Europe as study region and focused on the six most prominent tree genera, but our approach is very generic and can easily be applied elsewhere. Overall, the study shows perspectives but also limitations for reconstructing spatiotemporal dynamics of complex biological processes. The data products are available at https://www.doi.org/10.17871/BACI.248.

In this paper we propose and analyze a localized orthogonal decomposition (LOD) methodfor solving semi-linear elliptic problems with heterogeneous and highly variablecoefficient functions. This Galerkin-type method is based on a generalized finite elementbasis that spans a low dimensional multiscale space. The basis is assembled by performinglocalized linear fine-scale computations on small patches that have a diameter of orderH | log (H)| where H is the coarse mesh size. Without any assumptions onthe type of the oscillations in the coefficients, we give a rigorous proof for a linearconvergence of the H1-error with respect to the coarse meshsize even for rough coefficients. To solve the corresponding system of algebraicequations, we propose an algorithm that is based on a damped Newton scheme in themultiscale space.

Cavities and fractures significantly affect the flow paths in carbonate reservoirs and should be accurately accounted for in numerical models. Herein, we consider the problem of computing the effective permeability of rock samples based on high-resolution 3D CT scans containing millions of voxels. We use the Stokes-Brinkman equations in the entire domain, covering regions of free flow governed by the Stokes equations, porous Darcy flow, and transitions between them. The presence of different length scales and large (ten orders of magnitude) contrasts in permeability leads to highly ill-conditioned linear systems of equations, which are difficult to solve. To obtain a problem that is computationally tractable, we first analyze the relative importance of the Stokes and Darcy terms for a set of idealized 2D models. We find that, in terms of effective permeability, the Stokes-Brinkman equations are only applicable for a special parameter set where the effective free-flow permeability is less than four orders of magnitude different from the matrix permeability. All other cases can be accurately modeled with either the Stokes or the Darcy end-member flows, depending on if there do or do not exist percolating free-flow regions. The insights obtained are used to perform a direct computation of the effective permeability of a rock sample model with more than 8 million cells.

A numerical procedure for the evaluation of equivalent permeability tensor for fractured vuggy porous media is presented. At first we proposed a new conceptual model, i.e., discrete fracture-vug network model, to model the realistic fluid flow in fractured vuggy porous medium on fine scale. This new model consists of three systems: rock matrix system, fractures system, and vugs system. The fractures and vugs are embedded in porous rock, and the isolated vugs could be connected via discrete fracture network. The flow in porous rock and fractures follows Darcy’s law, and the vugs system is free fluid region. Based on two-scale homogenization theory, we obtained an equivalent macroscopic Darcy’s law on coarse scale from fine-scale discrete fracture-vug network model. A finite element numerical formulation for homogenization equations is developed. The method is verified through application to a periodic model problem and then is applied to the calculation of equivalent permeability tensor of porous media with complex fracture-vug networks. The applicability and validity of the method for these more general fractured vuggy systems are assessed through a simple test of the coarse-scale model.