Water allocation plays an important role in water resources management. Faced with continuously rapid economic growth, as well as an accompanying, ever-increasing demand for water, harmonious water allocation is a new strategy to address existing water problems. In order to assess water allocation, this study proposes an index system that adopts 15 basic indicators from four dimensions (flexibility, efficiency, health and development) and a harmony index (HI) to measure the harmony level of water allocation. For the calculation of HI, a compound cloud model (CCM) that takes advantage of the features of the cloud model is presented and combined with a weight cloud module, a qualification cloud module and a comprehensive assessment module. The weight cloud module is employed to calculate the weights of the indicators and criteria. The qualification cloud module is used to transform the attribute values of the indicators to evaluation values. The comprehensive assessment module is used to integrate the overall performance to obtain the HI value. The CCM was applied to Nanjing city in China. The results showed that water allocation in Nanjing was in the improving stage between 2006 and 2013, increasing from grade III (generally harmonious) to grade IV (moderately harmonious); and that Nanjing performed noticeably well in the flexibility dimension, less well in the development dimension and worst in the health dimension. The CCM accounts for both randomness and fuzziness in the calculation of weights and the unification of attribute values of the indicators, and this model has been verified as feasible and effective by the results of the case study. A harmoniousness assessment of water allocation provides a support tool to give decision-makers a better sense of past water allocation strategies such they can adjust accordingly in the future.

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Glyphosate is a non‐selective, residue‐free herbicide that can pollute soil and water sources due to its extensive use and long‐term accumulation. The adsorption and release processes of glyphosate on corn microporous starch microspheres are studied. The results reveal that the adsorption capacities of glyphosate on native corn starch, corn microporous starch, and corn microporous starch with xanthan gum increase in turns. Further, the maximum adsorption capacity of the corn microporous starch with xanthan gum reaches 138.89 mg g−1 at 283 K. Moreover, the adsorption of glyphosate follows the Langmuir isothermal adsorption equation and quasi‐secondary adsorption kinetic model on the three corn starches, which are all spontaneous exothermic processes controlled by enthalpy change. In the desorption process, glyphosate is slowly released on corn microporous starch with the addition of 0.02% xanthan gum with a cumulative release of ≈61% ± 3.17% after 48 h. The release kinetics follows the Ritger–Peppas release model, which is consistent with the Fick diffusion mechanism. These results indicate that the corn microporous starch with 0.02% xanthan gum is a well controlled‐ and sustained‐release carrier of glyphosate. This study provides some useful insight into the development of glyphosate sustained‐release preparations with high loading and long sustained‐release performance.

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