درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Khorasan Razavi Province suffers from the most critical groundwater resources in Iran, i.e. the groundwater decline has reached 1 m; 34 out of 37 water plains are banned in Khorasan Razavi Province. Recently, Mashhad plain has been fighting with the crisis of drought and water scarcity. Illegal harvesting from groundwater resources and the warming trend caused by change in climate have exacerbated the crisis. Comprehensive water resources management, assuming the complicated nature of water-related issues, rapid growth of population, water requirement for a variety of purposes, and limited water resources, requires novel methods to stack up technical, economic, environmental, social, and logical perspectives in an integrated forum. One of the tools for comprehensive water resources management is utilizing hydro-economic models to simulate the present status of drainage basins and evaluate the impacts of different scenarios and policies. The current study used a hydro-economic model to simulate the hydrological status of Mashhad plain and evaluate the impacts of different scenarios. Then, the agent-based model (ABM) was used in order to reach an agreement with stakeholders on executing different conservation scenarios. The hydro-economic model results revealed that reducing the water demand of the agricultural sector and, as a result, surface and groundwater consumption is possible through following adaptation scenarios. Implementing various adaptation scenarios may alter the present cultivation pattern. Moreover, the ABM results showed a significant difference between the volume of available water, due to the execution of strategies, and water demand, bringing about the lack of farmers’ cooperation regarding the implementation of conservation scenarios. However, through applying some incentive policies, a number of representative farmers may agree to pursue adaptation scenarios.

Designation of incentive mechanisms to increase the speed of liquidity of receivables is one of the leading options for streamlining domestic resources in the field of oil and gas industry financing. The main objective of this research is to investigate and optimize the liquidity methods of gas sales receivables in line with the requirements of the National Iranian Gas Company. After a deep review of literature, we extract methods and legal platforms for receivables liquidation methods. The current research is an applied and descriptive-analytical research in terms of its purpose and methodology. The data analysis is a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and required data for this study including the amounts and duration of deferred receivables by different categories of subscribers of the NIGC during 2012 to 2018. Subsequently, in order to visualize the data in the form of heat tables, Microsoft's Business Intelligence software is applied to understand the process of creating and settlement of receivables, cluster receivables by the different categories of subscription and, finally, reveal the subscriber behavior patterns in disbursements. Finally, using theoretical foundations and experts' opinions, a set of optimal methods has been recommended to accelerate the process of collecting current receivables, depending on the behavior of different groups of subscribers. Based on the results of the interviews, NIGC should apply IT-based methods, incentive policies and deterrent (punitive) strategies to accelerate the liquidation of receivables in household and commercial subscription.