As the world grapples with the profound impacts of climate change, water scarcity has become a pressing issue. However, there is a shortage of in-depth research on the trade-offs between water resource dependence and the economic, ecological, and social needs of arid and semi-arid regions like Lanzhou, China. Flower cultivation in Lanzhou relies heavily on the Yellow River, often overlooking the potential of natural rainfall. Here we first calibrated a water balance model through artificial precipitation experiments in a Soil and Water Conservation Demonstration Park in Lanzhou. We then developed a multi-objective optimization model to balance the cost-benefit considerations of various plausible measures across economic, ecological, and social dimensions in the searching for solutions that are more adaptable to climate change and local development needs. Model simulations show that the solutions we designed can effectively manage water-shortage days, significantly reduce Yellow River water extraction, and improve cost-effectiveness, meeting 66%–80% of water needs for flower cultivation in the studied park. The findings highlight the potential of rainwater collection and utilization solutions to mitigate water scarcity in arid and semi-arid cities, thereby enriching water resource management.

The emergence of electric vehicles (EV) presents new opportunities for transportation decarburization and sustainable transportation in cities worldwide. However, previous research has primarily focused on EV charging infrastructures within urban areas, with limited attention to those launched in expressway service areas. Addressing this gap is crucial in alleviating EV users’ range anxiety on expressway journeys. This study investigates the BEV users’ reuse behavior toward charging infrastructures on expressways. Focusing on the BEV users who had used the charging infrastructures on the expressway, the structural equation modeling and the multi-group analysis are employed to reveal the effect of psychological factors on BEV users’ reuse intention and explore the heterogeneity across different socio-demographic groups. Results reveal that Attitude and Subjective Norm drive the reuse intention. Perceived Risk has an indirect negative effect on reuse intention. Attitude has a more significant effect on reuse intention among elder users, high-frequency users, and low remaining State of Charge (SOC) users. This paper offers new insights for charging infrastructures’ planning and operation in expressway service areas.

In this paper, we discuss the mechanisms for discretionary lane-changing behavior in traffic flow. NGSIM video data are used to check the validity of different lane-changing rules, and 373 lane changes at 4 locations in US-101 highway are analyzed. We find that the classical lane-changing rules of rule-based model cannot explain many cases in the empirical dataset. Therefore, we propose one new decision rule, comparing the position after a time horizon of several seconds without a lane-change. This rule can be described as “to have a further position within 9 seconds”. The tests on NGSIM data show that this rule can explain most (76%) of the lane-changing cases. Besides, some data when lane changes do not occur are also studied. We find that most (81%) of non-lane-changing vehicles do not fulfill the new rule. Thus, it can be considered as one sufficient and necessary condition for discretionary lane-changing.