Current Issue : October - December Volume : 2019 Issue Number : 4 Articles : 5 Articles
Old city centers are often protected against the introduction of new architectural elements\nand require site-specific and respectful solutions for sustainable water management. Revitalizing\npart of ancient water systems matches more than one sustainable development goal. Ancient water\nmanagement tools may be reinterpreted and innovated to preserve environmental resources,\ncultural heritage, and tradition, leading to new valuable heritage-based solutions (HBSs). The\nrealization of rain water harvesting and reuse (RWHR) systems incorporating ancient elements of\nold water distribution systems, is proposed as an HBS for sustainable water management in old city\ncenters. The case of Venice ancient cisterns (veras) is examined and discussed....
Sustainability has recently been acknowledged as a crucial issue in infrastructure projects. Developing a model to evaluate project\nsustainability according to sustainability indicators plays a major role in promoting the sustainable development of water\nenvironment treatment public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Traditional sustainability assessments are mostly based on the\ntriple bottom line (economic, social, and environmental) and lack a more integrated indicator system. To connect the research gap,\nthis paper identifies 27 factors that affect the sustainability of water environment treatment PPP projects from five dimensions:\neconomy, society, resources and environment, engineering, and project management using exploratory factor analysis. )e fitting\ndegree between the model and original data is verified by confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that the fitting was\nsuccessful. This paper makes two contributions: first, it provides a comprehensive sustainability evaluation indicator system from\nfive aspects, laying a foundation for the evaluation of project sustainability. Second, this study defines a methodology to evaluate\nand rank factors, identifies the indicators that show the most significant impact on project sustainability in the five dimensions,\nwhich provide a reliable reference for the public and private sector to take appropriate measures to improve the sustainability level\nof water environment treatment public-private partnership projects....
Natural hazards are indeed counted as the most critical challenges facing our world, represented in floods, earthquakes, volcanoes,\nhurricanes, and forest fires. Among these natural hazards, the flash flood is regarded the most frequent. In this work, we utilized\ntwo Sentinel-2 satellite images, before and after the flash flood, SRTM and photos captured by using a helicopter. This paper aims\nat three prime objectives. Firstly, the flood influence is determined on the city of Ras Ghareb, Egypt, based on analyzing free\nsatellite data (Sentinel-2 images). Secondly, fuzzy the analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) method and a geographical information\nsystem (GIS) are integrated for flood risk analysis and evaluation in the flood-prone area. Finally, such a flood vulnerability map is\nused as an index to assist the decision-makers prepare for probable flooding. FAHP is preferable as it can cater to the uncertainties\nin data and analysis. As a result, FAHP is appropriate to determine the flood-vulnerable area in cities especially due to the\nmatching with the most destroyed areas identified by the change detection between the two Sentinel-2 images. Then, the decision maker\ncan depend on Sentinel-2 images to estimate the flood influence through a regional scale or applying the FAHP on cities\nsusceptible to flash floods in case of unavailable satellite images to contribute in establishing an early warning system enough to the\nevacuation of the risky areas....
Air pollution has become a global environmental problem, because it has a great adverse\nimpact on human health and the climate. One way to explore this problem is to monitor and predict\nair quality index in an economical way. Accurate monitoring and prediction of air quality index (AQI),\ne.g., PM2.5 concentration, is a challenging task. In order to accurately predict the PM2.5 time series,\nwe propose a supplementary leaky integrator echo state network (SLI-ESN) in this paper. It adds the\nhistorical state term of the historical moment to the calculation of leaky integrator reservoir, which\nimproves the influence of historical evolution state on the current state. Considering the redundancy\nand correlation between multivariable time series, minimum redundancy maximum relevance\n(mRMR) feature selection method is introduced to reduce redundant and irrelevant information,\nand increase computation speed. A variety of evaluation indicators are used to assess the overall\nperformance of the proposed method. The effectiveness of the proposed model is verified by the\nexperiment of Beijing PM2.5 time series prediction. The comparison of learning time also shows the\nefficiency of the algorithm....
Many analytical techniques have limited sensitivity to quantify multi-walled carbon\nnanotubes (MWCNTs) at environmentally relevant exposure concentrations in wastewaters. We found\nthat trace metals (e.g., Y, Co, Fe) used in MWCNT synthesis correlated with MWCNT concentrations.\nBecause of low background yttrium (Y) concentrations in wastewater, Y was used to track MWCNT\nremoval by wastewater biomass. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging and dissolution\nstudies indicated that the residual trace metals were strongly embedded within the MWCNTs. For our\nspecific MWCNT, Y concentration in MWCNTs was 76 microg g^-1, and single particle mode inductively\ncoupled plasma mass spectrometry (spICP-MS) was shown viable to detect Y-associated MWCNTs.\nThe detection limit of the specific MWCNTs was 0.82 micro g L^-1 using Y as a surrogate, compared with\n>100 micro g L^-1 for other techniques applied for MWCNT quantification in wastewater biomass. MWCNT\nremoval at wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) was assessed by dosing MWCNTs (100 micro g L^-1) in\nwater containing a range of biomass concentrations obtained from wastewater return activated sludge\n(RAS) collected from a local WWTP. Using high volume to surface area reactors (to limit artifacts of\nMWCNT loss due to adsorption to vessel walls) and adding 5 g L^-1 of total suspended solids (TSS)\nof RAS (3-h mixing) reduced the MWCNT concentrations from 100 microg L^-1 to 2 micro g L^-1. The results\nprovide an environmentally relevant insight into the fate of MWCNTs across their end of life cycle\nand aid in regulatory permits that require estimates of engineered nanomaterial removal at WWTPs\nupon accidental release into sewers from manufacturing facilities....
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