http://www.sciforum.net/conf/wsf2 The 2nd World Sustainability Forum The 2nd World Sustainability Forum http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1165 Various heat transfer models are reported for vertical ground heat exchangers, and several basic analytical and numerical models of vertical heat exchangers are described and compared, and recent developments are discussed. To examine the effect of temperature rise in the soil surrounding a vertical ground heat exchanger on the performance of the ground heat pump, the heat transfer model that represents the temperature rise and heat flows outside the borehole is often coupled to the models inside the borehole via the borehole wall temperature. This temperature is an important factor that affects the heat delivery/removal strength of the system to/from the ground. In the current study, the results of a semi-analytical model that couples a model outside the borehole with one inside the borehole taking into account the transient borehole wall temperature is described. The results of this model for a constant borehole wall temperature are compared with those for a transient one with a numerical model. It is shown that transient borehole wall temperature results in more accurate temperatures for the circulating fluid flowing to the heat pump. 2012-11-07 2012-11-07T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/961 The paper is aimed at illustrating a multidisciplinary research, which is funded by the Piedmont Region and involves several research units belonging to different institutions. Within this project, the Research Unit of Industrial Design of DAD (Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino) is carried out with the aim of outlining a multicriteria methodology for assessing the level of sustainability of food packaging. Usually packaging sustainability is evaluated by taking into account mainly environmental criteria, with very well-known indicators, such as Carbon Footprint, Embodied Energy, percentage of recycled materials and by forgetting others important aspects, such as functional, communicative and design (Shape, Colours, Material) criteria that have to be satisfy by a food packaging. On these assumptions, the research has been started with the analysis of three case studies: chocolate, alcoholic beverages, meat, representative of the principal agri-food chains in the Piedmont region, in order to identify the evaluation criteria on which outlines the POLIEDRO evaluation system of the packaging. The approach is based on several analysis according to the above mentioned four dimensions of packaging. The assessments are quantitative, such as Carbon Footprint, and qualitative referring to the degree of fulfilment of the various functional and communicative requirements. Moreover the specific analysis of Design is performed by/for assessing the innovation of packaging design. The final result is a set of indicators that shows the packaging sustainability linked to the other criteria in order to highlight mutual relations, e.g. how the improved environmental performance could negatively affect functionality, or how the design innovation could affect sustainability. As a result it will be possible to define a multi-criteria evaluation system, useful not only for assessing the functional, communicative, environmental and design criteria, but also for identifing the weakness of the food packaging that should be improve with a new design. 2012-11-05 2012-11-05T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1010 There exist two ordinary ways to obtain global energy efficiency. One way is to make improvements on the energy production and supply side, and the other way is, in general, to reduce the consume of energy in the society. This paper has focus on the latter and especially the consume of energy for heating up, and cooling down our houses. There is a huge energy saving potential on this area reducing both the World climate problems and economy challenges as well. Heating of buildings in Denmark counts for approximately 40% of the entire national energy consume. Of this reason a reduction of heat losses from building envelopes are of great impor­tance in order to reach the Bologna CO2-emission reduction goals. Energy renovation of buildings is a topic of huge focus around the world these years. Not only expenses for heating in the tempered and arctic regions are of importance, but also expenses to ACMV in the "warm countries" contribute to an enormous energy consumption and corresponding CO2 emission. In order to establish the best basis for energy renovation, it is important to have measures of the heat losses on a building façade, for optimizing the energy renovation. This paper will present a new method for measuring the heat loss by utilizing a so called U-value Meter [Sørensen 2010]. The U-value Meter is a heat loss measuring device and has been used in several energy renovation projects in tempered regions and is now planned to be utilized in the tropics for measuring the heat penetration through facades with the aim to reduce the costs to AC. The paper will introduce a common project between NUS (National University of Singapore), AAU (Aalborg University) and HT-Meter, the latter as the U-value Meter developer company. In the project we will measure the heat transfer in the unit W/Km2 through different facade elements, such as outer walls, entrance doors, windows and roofs on selected buildings. The results will be analysed as basic for improvements of the envelope. A developing of new energy renovation systems and energy renovation principles is expected to be the outcome of the project. Furthermore this paper present results from already conducted heat loss measurements in the tempered regions and discusses the U-value Meter device aiming for improvements. 2012-11-01 2012-11-01T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/892 Conceptually, water resources management means optimization of a goal function which integrates requirements and, and constraints, of, interconnected hydrological, ecological and economic aspects of the water resource management. Establishment of the goal function should allow combining of the economic activities, hydroecological studies and economic valuation within a holistic methodological framework. The set of the management measures allowing the optimization of the goal function under a pre-condition of conservation of the ecosystem services in some predefined reference/desirable state defines sustainable management policy.The examples of the natural waterbodies for which such a goal function has been established are extremely rare if at all they exist (unknown to us). In this presentation, we outlined a methodological framework for sustainable water resource management comprising of ecological monitoring, quantified water quality and an ecosystem model. We tested the proposed framework on the subtropical Lake Kinneret (Israel), a major national water resource. Methodologically, this study linked the economic activities in Lake Kinneret and its watershed (i.e. nutrient loads and water supply regimes) with lake water quality, sustaining of which was considered the management objective. Based on analysis of the monitoring data and model scenario simulations we established quantitative relationships between changes to lake water level and nutrient loading and water quality. We assessed a set of values of nutrient loads from the watershed and water levels that will allow conservation of the lake water quality within predefined limits thereby defining limits for a sustainable management policy for the lake water resources. The defined sustainable management policy is in good correspondence with the loads and permissible water level ranges estimated from lake-based monitoring . Our approach to assessment of the sustainable management policy was based on a single, hydroecological criterion: the necessity to sustain lake water quality within a desirable, reference state. However, in reality, the sustainable management policy should be focused on a social-ecological system and not an aquatic ecosystem per se. Therefore, water resources management should be based on multi-criteria; it should also account for the economic aspects (costs and benefits for society) of the problem. Establishment of the quantitative relationships between economic activities, water quality and total economic value of water resources is a challenging scientific problem. Its solution will be a pivotal step towards adaptive water resources management. 2012-11-01 2012-11-01T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/984 In Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902), Ebenezer Howard proposed a model of sustainable urban development, "garden cities." as an alternative to industrial urbanism. A forerunner of the urban green movement, he envisioned a type of galactic urbanism as an alternative to industrial urbanism. The model proposed tightly integrated networks of towns, each gravitating around a central public park, orbiting around a core town. Towns were linked by well-developed transportation and communication networks and the multi-centric form produced a more subtle gradient between urban and rural areas and coupled with well-developed transportation networks. Recent archaeology and indigenous history conducted in the Upper Xingu area has revealed small garden city-like clusters of settlements, composed of a central plaza settlement and four cardinally oriented satellite plaza settlements, tightly integrated by major roads and surrounded by mosaic countryside of fields, orchards, gardens, and forest. Far from stereotypical models of small tropical forest tribes, these patterns were carefully engineered to work with the forest and wetland ecologies in complex urbanized networks. Such multi-centric, networked forms were quite common, if not typical, in many parts of the pre-Industrial world, particularly major forest regions. This paper explores land-use and dynamic change in coupled human-natural systems, or bio-historical diversity, during the past millennium in the Upper Xingu. In particular, it examines how archaeology and historical memory not only provide means to consider what the Amazon was like 500 years ago but also have vital implications to urgent questions of sustainability and cultural heritage and rights in the face of rapid landscape change related to economic development in the southern Amazon, the "arc of deforestation." It promotes grounded or context-specific participatory approaches to sustainable development, which require robust collaboration between diverse stakeholders, each with very different social and cultural values and interests. 2012-11-01 2012-11-01T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/924 Renewable energy sources (RES) will certainly play a key role in moving towards sustainable development of economy. Talking about prospects of the use of solar energy, it is evident that the main market is the heating sector in the consumer's side. The main and most important problems, determining that the absorption process in the consumer's side is slow, are the lack of knowledge and organisation, large and deterrent amount of investments, and particularly differences of motivation between energy suppliers and consumers in the heating sector. The main purpose of the research is what conditions are required for heat energy that is produced by consumers based on solar technology and how this type of heat energy source would be able to compete with other energy sources. District heating (DH) may be an appropriate infrastructure for the implementation of RES technologies both in production and demand side. Conclusions were drawn concerning on what scale and under what assumptions the use of solar technologies may be competitive. 2012-11-01 2012-11-01T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/885 Over the past four decades, the leather processing activity migrated from developed to developing countries. This led to the uncontrolled and unplanned development of leather processing industries in the environmentally-stressed developing countries, such as Bangladesh. Although these industries are very important for the flourishing export oriented economy of the country, lack of basic environmental protection measures have been entailing serious threats to the environmental sustainability. In response, a relocation project was launched by the Bangladesh government for the industries in Hazaribag - the principle leather processing zone located in the capital Dhaka. The project planned the relocation of these industries to an upstream and outskirt location – Savar, with the target of mitigating the environmental pollution and ecological hazard. This paper reviewed the relocation project plan from the environmental economics and urban planning point of views. The concepts and methods applied for the review are the 'Willingness to Pay', 'Concept of Pigovian fees', 'Hedonic Pricing Method' and 'Social theory of Cities'. The results prove that the project's target of ensuring environmental sustainability will go in vain because launching and executing this project was merely a political decision, which did not take into account any of the scientific arguments. 82% of the surveyed leather industry owners is neither willing to move to the proposed location nor willing to pay for the relocation and effluent treatment sanctioning at the new location. 18% is willing to move under the conditions of subsidies, compensations and government provided effluent treatment facilities. The Bangladesh government has to pay BDT 5.93 billion as compensation and subsidy in addition to the actual project cost of BDT 5.45 billion, whereas the expense is only BDT 3.57 billion for redeveloping Hazaribag as a planned, controlled leather industry estate in the present location with adequate environmental protection measures. The proposed transformation plan of Hazaribag brown field to a residential area after industries' relocation, poses further threats to the human health. The upstream location of Savar risks the pollution of the entire surface water sources of Dhaka. Finally, the argument of relocating the leather industries to an outskirt location proves to be invalid in light of the historic growth trend of Dhaka. Considering the three consecutive failures to meet the relocation deadlines, these results claim that rather the redevelopment of Hazaribag industries in the present location by providing the environment friendly leather processing equipments will ensure environmental sustainability of the city. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1067 Mexico is constantly suffering the effects of natural events that turn into disasters, affecting people's livelihood and wellbeing. Just in 2011 and 2012 we have had floods in the South, drought in the North and Central parts of the country and earthquakes in the Pacific coast that have claimed lives, caused displacement of people and generated significant losses to the local economies. We look at four different types of disasters, i.e. floods, drought, frost and earthquakes. The frequency and intensity of the first three may be related to climate variability (and therefore associated to climate change). Using data on damages, frequency of natural events, geographical characteristics and meteorological data, as well as land use change and soil degradation, socioeconomic data, institutional capacity, and expected sensitivity to climate change, we estimate a State-level vulnerability index that allows us to (a) rank states depending on their vulnerability to a specific nature-related disaster, and (b) identify the main causes of relative vulnerability of a particular State to a specific disaster. This is certainly useful for policy making and can be reproduced at different scales of the subnational level, be it municipalities or communities or for more aggregated areas such as regions within a country. Our sensitivity analysis supports the robustness of the index we construct. Results show interesting patterns across disasters and help identify the type of policies that each State needs to reduce its vulnerability to different disasters. This type of analysis may lead to adaptation policies that help curb vulnerability of the most vulnerable communities. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/993 The power industry is the basic industry of the national economy, which can promote the economic development and enhance the living standard. Meanwhile, as the key energy consumption and energy-saving field, the power industry plays an important role in supporting the national economic and social sustainable development. In recent years, the power industry experienced rapid development in China. The report introduces the active efforts and contributions made by the Chinese power industry to the national economic and social sustainable development from multiple aspects and angles with data and examples: 1) With the optimization of power generation and grid structure, promotion of advanced energy-saving technology and enhancement of management level, the technical indicators such as net coal consumption rate, auxiliary power ratio, line loss rate, etc. have been continuously improved. For example, net coal consumption rate of supply reduces from 370tce/kWh in 2005 to 330tce/kWh in 2010, while line loss rate reduces from 7.21% to 6.53%, with a decrease of about 10% during a Five-year Period. The accumulatively 300 million tce of energy conservation has realized outstanding performance; 2) The cleanly energy generators have realized great development with increasing proportion from 23.3% in 2005 to 26.2% in 2010, in which the renewable energy generators gave the main contribution. There has been accumulatively 300 million tce of fossil energy conservation during the period; 3) Desulfurization equipment has developed with very high coverage rate. Fuel gas desulfurization unit was little in 2005, and accounts for 89% of the total coal installed capacity in 2010. The effect of emission reduction is obviously that the emission of sulfur dioxide per unit of thermal power output has decreased by over 60% compared with that in 2005; 4) The national cross-regional grid has come into being, the cross-regional electric energy transmission has been greatly increased and the power grid has played a more and more important role in the resource optimization and allocation, which satisfies the demand of the imbalance between the resource location and power demand focus; 5) The Energy Service Companies (ESCo) subject to power enterprises have been gradually established, that promotes the energy-saving and power Demand-side Management (DSM), brings notable effects from energy management and load management. With the higher influence of the developing concepts such as the low carbon and environmental-friendly in the social development, Chinese economy would realize the sustainable and great-leap-forward new industrialization in future. The power industry will make active contributions through the following measures: To keep on strengthening the power structure adjustment and increasing the proportion of the renewable energy in the power generation; To focus on the upgrade of energy-saving power generation technology, and the development of large-capacity, high-efficiency and high-parameter generators; To emphasize the upgrade of the power grid energy-saving technology and the development of the Ultra High-voltage (UHV) transmission technology, expand the trans-regional network establishment, and strengthen the power generation dispatching and the transaction of generation right; To carry out the renovation of the environmental protection technology, increase the coverage rate of the desulfurization equipment and denitration equipment, and research and apply the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology; To enhance the management level of energy conservation and emission reduction, and promote the power DSM. In 2020, the proportion of the installation capacity of the renewable-energy-source generators will increase very quickly, the proportion of the single capacity of 600 MW and above in the thermal power generation unit will be over 50%, the coverage rate of the desulfurization equipment will be over 95%, and the coverage rate of the denitration equipment will be about 80%. Calculated according to the Integrated Resource Strategy Planning (IRSP) model, the potential capacity of Efficiency Power Plant (EPP) would be 200 GW, accounting for about 10% of the conventional installed capacity. In the following decade, some indicators of power industry will be the international advanced level, which will promote the national economic and social sustainable development in the aspect of the technology and management, etc. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/883 It is nothing new that governments advance self interested policies during international policy negotiations and that the knowledge of policy experts reflects frameworks which are weaved into international policies. But it is unclear though if policy makers take deliberate steps to eliminate potential ineffective models when crafting international regulatory instruments. Using the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as a focus, this paper examines how an environmental regime's policies can build on sustainable institutional systems, enhance sustainable policy frameworks, save scarce resources, improve informed & effective community participation, and legitimise policy objectives. By examining whether multidisciplinary approach and knowledge can enhance the achievement of policy goals, as well as expose possible setbacks to achieving effective regime policies, this paper espouses multidisciplinary tools for understanding regime policy. It highlights potential topics for contemporary policy debates and themes for further research in the field of policy making. It is argued that debates about policy discourses in the 21st century ought to concern the degree of policy effectiveness: not policy ineffectiveness per se. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1000 When using the integrated approach, the solar systems become part of the general building design, In fact they are also often become regular building elements. This is due to the fact that integrating the solar systems in the building envelope often is a necessity if the systems are to be economically feasible. The solar elements cannot be separate elements that are added after the building, or at least the architectural design of it, is completed. They must rather replace other building elements, thereby serving dual functions and reducing total costs. Case studies represents a coming of age of building-integrated photovoltaics. The PV elements are specially designed for glass shading devices. The photovoltaics will serve as shading elements and use an area protected by the new system. The overhanging shading roof provides adequate shade in the summer and allows for useful solar heat gain in the winter. These factors combined should help to keep the building's running costs to a minimum. In conclusion, the simulations and testing at the design stage show that the overall environmental strategy will reduce the building's running costs while optimizing visual and thermal comfort. The PV integration into architectural design offers more than cost benefits, it allows to create environmentally design and energy efficient buildings. The systems will be realised with crystalline photovoltaic modules integrated with a semitransparent module and there is also an example with PV modules in thin films. The Pv integrated case studies described in this work are: Atrium of the Pediatric Meyer hospital in Florence (1), University Library and classrooms building (2) and Physics laboratory building in Sesto Fiorentino (3), Virtual Competence Centre ITC in Lucca (4) and University residential student building in Florence (5). 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/881 The coming peak of fossil fuels may cause shortages in the energy supply and major disturbances on the global economy. The forecasts for the future of our way of life are very divergent depending on the prediction used for the future human access to energy. Steady-state or collapse seems to be the two most probable scenarios for society after the fossil fuel peak and exhaustion of mineral resources that the new energetic mix will require. The LINEX production function, which is dependent on the energy input is used to model the gross domestic product (GDP) of a western economy in several different energetic scenarios after the fossil fuel peak. A future steady-state economy with zero population growth appears as the best possible scenario. Some of the implications and challenges derived from this steady-state economy are discussed. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/962 Starting from the 21st Century, the world has become increasingly concerned with the global environmental degradation issue, which appears to be in a state of irreversible crisis. It has been twenty years since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and humanity is still on the road to achieving a sustainable future. Although governments are eager to find a concrete solution for the global environmental emergency which jeopardizes the prospects of future generations; the global decision making process has found difficulties in achieving consensus. This paper will analyze the sustaining policies, which support and encourage the increase of renewable energy consumption and production in China. This country plays today a major role in the struggle against climate change due to the impact of its fast economic and demographic growth. In order to effectively highlight the policies and goals of renewable energy in China, wind energy will be analyzed as a case study. China is promoting renewable energy with the support of its policy, reaching diverse results on the consumption and the production availability of it. Indeed in 2010 China reached the first global position in production and consumption of renewable energy, where the production is much higher than the consumption. There is a gap between what the country produces and what it is able to use. As China has a big capacity on wind energy development; it is important to understand why China can't consume as much energy as produce. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/917 The paper focuses on evaluation of material compositions of residential building structures in terms of environmental sustainability and influence on energy performance. We calculate the most preferred environmental indicators such as embodied energy from non-renewable resources, Global Warming Potential and Acidification Potential of materials by methodology Life Cycle Assessment within boundary Cradle to Gate. Study of the environmental and energetic effectiveness of designed structures points to importance of suitable choice of materials. By improving the energy performance of building through used higher amount of materials and components is reflected in higher embodied energy and associated emissions. Plant materials compared with other materials prove huge advantage in terms of stored carbon and used clean solar energy. The results of multi-criteria analysis of structure alternatives shows that passive house from traditional nature plant materials with minimal modification require much lower energy used in manufacturing and result in lower emissions from fossil fuel than passive house of other materials. The case study would provide a new optimization method for building envelope design in Slovak climatic conditions tends to the lowest environmental impacts of building during construction phase and occupation phase. Sustainable building is one of the most significant challenges we face. Our responses to environmental issue will influence the quality of life for future generations. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/992 Sustainability and employment are not terms often used together. Sustainability is often treated as something that has mainly to do with environmental issues, and the protection of the environment is not necessarily seen as an important driver of higher employment. However, when we look more closely into the subject and try to leave the boundaries of the current paradigms, we realise how the interests of sustainability and stable employment are indeed intertwined. This paper attempts to show that as soon as we leave the comfortable realms of the current paradigms, we may find potential solutions to a multiple of questions and realise that sustainability and employment can indeed go hand in hand. In order to be able to find adequate supporting tools to "think out of the box", our paper focuses on a new methodological approach, namely backcasting, in relation with the topic of sustainable employment. The paper is divided into two main sections. In the first section we intend to illustrate the main relationships between employment and sustainability. In the second part, through the results of a concrete Hungarian backcasting experiment we demonstrate how the backcasting approach can be used to involve stakeholders creating a normative vision of the future and identifying the necessary policy steps to reach the set goals. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/855 As fuel costs increase, transportation modes are looking to railways as a cheaper, more efficient and environmentally friendly alternative. Because of railway transportation's immense advantages over road and air transportation, its use is expected to increase two-fold or more over the next 10 years in the US and Canada, and likely all of North America (NA). However, NA railways are still dependent on diesel-electric locomotives, while other countries in Europe and Asia have long ago switched to more efficient electric locomotive technology. Electric locomotives have significant benefits over diesel-electrics, such as increased efficiency and traction, a lower probability of failure, reduced noise and vibrations, potential for brake regeneration, and an overall reduced carbon footprint. Despite these advantages, electric locomotives can cost significantly more than diesel-electrics and require expensive infrastructure, such as catenary lines and electric substations. In 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency implemented new regulations on diesel-electric locomotives to reduce emission toxins such as particulate matter and NOX. These new regulations create immense health benefits, but come at a cost to railway organizations for more stringent manufacturing and remanufacturing requirements. This paper explored the potential costs associated with electrifying the railway network in NA rather than focusing on improving diesel-electrics. A Monte Carlo Simulation was conducted to compare these costs with converting current railway lines to catenary, or partial catenary with on-board storage systems. Factors such as research costs, noise reduction benefits, health benefits, fuel usage, and productivity were taken into consideration to determine the most suitable alternative for the future of NA's railway organizations, environment, and society. Results suggest that implementing ultracapacitor or battery hybrid locomotive technology would create significant positive net present worth between 2012 and 2040, estimated at $411 Billion for passenger rail and $15.7 Trillion for freight rail, due mainly to less overhead catenary infrastructure and energy costs required, while still gaining the social benefits of reduced noise and improved health. They would also be the quickest electrification technology options to implement in terms of manageable construction and business disruption logistics, which were not considered in this analysis and should be research if and when business case development occurs in pursuit of electrifying railways. Moreover, over 80% of this significant NPW would accrue to railway organizations, suggesting that business case development and investment planning should proceed post haste to electrify, and to phase out diesel electric locomotives at the end of their economic life. Regardless of which route is taken, electrification would have immense benefits to both railway organizations and society. Increased productivity, reduced energy requirements, decreased noise and improved health would all significantly contribute to cost savings and an improved quality of life for residents of North America. As such, there appears to be a strong business case for research into development of hybrid electric locomotives that can operate on- and off-grid. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1152 During the 20th century, with the advent of the industrial society and globalization, the language of planning changed according to the shifts in perception and use of physical space. By borrowing terms and spatial forms from biology and cybernetics, it increased their original semantic connotations. This paper outlines when the definition of architecture as connective-collective intelligence moved from cognitive sciences to urban design, where spontaneous and collective initiatives that redefined communication forms of urban life multiplied and intensified, both in developments and public space until it even affected the procedure of transmission of traditional knowledge. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/920 Abstract Sustainable rural environments in transitioning societies have been recently one of the key concerns of policy makers in Central and Eastern Europe. The opening of Polish public to the western influences followed by the subsequent reforms caused a socio-economic crisis in majority of rural areas. Accession to the EU structures had further impacts on how rural development is understood and implemented (McDonald et al., 2003; Smith & Hall, 2006). For example, introduction of the LEADER approach to rural development and the growing interest in nature-based tourism in Poland has provided a unique opportunity for rural community stakeholders to diversify income through tourism services (Marciszewska, 2006). Also, the beginnings of the NATURA 2000 reflected the ever changing approach to the structure and functioning of valuable rural landscapes in the Member States of the EU (Grodzińska-Jurczak et al., 2012). On the other hand, the increasing focus on biodiversity and nature while implementing the new conservation policy- NATURA 2000 program have led to conflicts and misunderstandings about the distribution of responsibilities and compensation for loss of economic benefits from other forms of rural development (Henle et al., 2008; Alphandéry, 2011). The reality of changes in Poland requires policy-makers to make a step forward, toward a more inclusive planning process. The proposed article seeks to identify the current features of decision-making in Poland as well as the quality of community empowerment in the EU context based on the example of the LEADER development framework and the NATURA 2000 program. In the case of both programs a more sustainable development of local socio-ecological systems could be realized through promoting community and meaningful participation in decision-making. The effective sustainability approach needs to facilitate community empowerment (Strzelecka & Wicks, 2010; Grodzińska-Jurczak & Cent, 2011; Grodzińska-Jurczak, et al., 2012). The discussion about the character of community participation and community empowerment is framed within the model of stakeholders' participation proposed by Arnstein (1969). This model identifies different stages of citizens' participation linked to their real impact on decision-making. At the bottom of the ladder are manipulation and therapy, which describe levels of "non-participation" which to external actors may appear as genuine participation. The real objective of these 'non-participatory' forms of decision-making would be to enable power-holders to "educate" participants. Higher levels of involvement (informing, consultation, placation) are defined as "tokenism" as they allow participants to be informed and to have a voice. However also under current conditions in Poland participants lack the power to ensure that the dominant leaders value their views. There is no assurance of changing the status quo. References Alphandéry, P. (2011). Fortier A. Can a Territorial Policy be Based on Science Alone? The System for Creating the Natura 2000 Network in France. Sociologia Ruralis 41(3), 311-328. Arnstein, S.R. (1969). A Ladder of Citizen Participation. JAIP 35, 216–224. McDonald, M., & Contributors (2003). European community tourism law and policy. Dublin: Blackhall Publishing. Marciszewska, B. (2006). Cultural tourism and socioeconomic development in Poland. In Smith, M., & Robinson, M. (Eds). Cultural tourism in a changing world: politics, participation and (Re)presentation. Channel View Publications, Clevedon. Grodzińska-Jurczak, M., Strzelecka, M., Kamal, S. & Gutowska, J. (2012). Effectiveness of Nature Conservation – a case of Natura 2000 sites in Poland. In: Protected Area Management. Red. Barbara Sladonja. InTech, Rijeka, 183-202, ISBN 980-953-307-448-6. Grodzińska-Jurczak M., Cent J. Expansion of Nature Conservation Areas: Problems with Natura 2000 Implementation in Poland? 2011. Environmental Management 47, 11-27. Grodzińska-Jurczak M., Cent J. 2011, Udział społeczny szansą dla realizacji programu Natura 2000 w Polsce. Public participatory approach- a Chance for Natura 2000 implementation in Poland. Chrońmy Przyrodę Ojczystą 66(5), 341-352. Henle K., Didier A.D., Clitherow J., Cobb P., Firbank L., Kull T., McCracken D., Moritz R.F.A., Niemela J., Rebane M., Wascher D., Watt A., Young J. 2008. Identifying and managing the conflicts between agriculture and biodiversity conservation in Europe–A review. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment,124 60–71. Strzelecka, M. & Wicks, B. (2010). Engaging residents in planning for sustainable rural-nature tourism in post-communist Polamd. Community Development 41 (3), 370-384 Smith, M., & Hall, D. (2006). Enlargement Implications for European Tourism. In Hall, D., Smith, M., & Marciszewska, B. (Eds), Tourism in the New Europe. The challenges and opportunities of EU enlargement (pp. 32-43). CAB International, Wallingford. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/910 Alternative fuels have numerous advantages compared to fossil fuels as they are renewable, biodegradable; provide energy security and foreign exchange savings besides addressing environmental concerns, and socio-economic issues. With regard to stringent emission legislation in the automotive sector and need to save fossil fuel for other developmental and research activities over the coming decades, this research work is directed at developing diesel engine-gasifier integrated systems to operate on renewable fuels such as Honge oil methyl ester [HOME] and Producer gas with specially designed carburetor [1-2, 5-6]. The raw Honge oil was obtained from Honge seeds and then it was subsequently converted into its respective biodiesel i.e., HOME. Further the branches of the Honge tree were used as the biomass feed stock in the downdraft gasifier for the producer gas generation. This work mainly aims at total substitution for fossil fuel by respective renewable fuels and is a step towards energy security and sustainability. The producer gas generated in the downdraft gasifier was then passed through a suitably fabricated carburetor supplying a mixture of producer gas and air at stoichiometric ratio. In this proposed research work different carburetor shapes were identified and developed to maximize the gasifier-engine performance. The developed producer gas carburetor was further analyzed for its mixing performance with a subsequent CFD modeling. The model is a mixing chamber having essential orifices for air and producer gas inlets to generate stoichiometric mixture at near to ambient conditions with required driving pressure differential for the flow. The carburetors were drawn from Y – shape, and with 30, 60, 900 gas entries as well as with parallel gas entry. The CFD -ICEM simulation package was then used to identify better carburetor. From the study it was found that parallel flow gas entry carburetor resulted in better mixing of air and producer gas. The diesel engine developing 3.7 kW was finally operated in dual fuel mode using HOME and producer gas with developed carburetors. The dual fuel engine provided with parallel flow gas entry carburetor showed 4 to 5% increased brake thermal efficiency with reduced smoke, HC and CO emissions. The experimental results were in good agreement with CFD analysis. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/909 The HIMA; as Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) System that promotes sustainable livelihood, resources conservation, and environmental protection, for the Human wellbeing is presented. The main feature of the new system is that it promotes sustainable development through set of governing principles. Hima's are traditionally ruled by the local communities through consensus and different groups held specific responsibilities such as collecting rainwater run-off and monitoring grazing. As the need for environmental protection represents a prime importance for the people whom depend on the natural resources for their survival, Hima is considered to be a relevant concept to contemporary natural resources dilemmas. One of the main features of the Hima system it achieves social justice; this is one of the main strengths "it provides an incentive for local communities to invest in the maintenance of their natural resources and to protect them from abuse". (Kilani, 1995). Modern day challenges have to be taken into consideration when setting up a Hima governance system such as growing population demands for more land for housing and to address the needs for small community farmers. These changes in society might lead to situation where grazing become uncontrolled and will lead to destruction to range land and eventually leads to desertification. These challenges were met by established environmental planning and management strategies which balanced the settlements' growth and natural resources uses according to Islamic Environmental Laws and the community self-government. Hima governance framework has been derived based on cultural heritage, environmental ethics and human development model of the community which is predominantly Islamic. Des Jardins (2001) defines environmental ethics as "a systematic account of the moral relations between human beings and their natural world". The community ethics are comparable to the modern version as defined above. Humans are considered to be trustees with responsibility for the environmental protection, and yet they are accountable. The central issue is that the ecosystem should be in harmonious and equilibrium state with a respect to its biodiversity. There should be no harm to nature and no excessive use. Forests and the wild should be protected from deliberate misuses, fire, or damages. Water as the central element should be protected from pollution, overuses and misuse. Finally, respect the role of law that promote these principles. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/957 Over the past two decades, evidence has mounted that the global climate is changing rapidly and natural disastrous events are increasing in number, intensity and severity. Gravity of the situation demands for a paradigm shift from reactive approach to proactive one: From response and recovery to disaster risk reduction (DRR). There are solid reasons for the linkage between climate change and DRR since the former is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of natural disastrous events and the later demands for appropriate actions to take for reducing disaster risks. Therefore, there has been a surge of interest in developing early warning systems (EWS) to cater to the needs of communities that are at high risk of hydro-metrological hazards. However, developing an effective EWS not only need a sound scientific and technical basis, but also a strong focus on the people exposed to risks is a challenging task. Pakistan, a natural hazards prone country, is in great need to have an effective and efficient multi-hazard EWS which uses scientific data to analyze the risk perspective of the hazardous events. For this it is important not only to develop a EWS that is suitable for Pakistan that meets the local conditions such as socio-cultural, political, technological and administrative but they are also essential investments that help saving lives, protecting property and livelihoods, contribute to the sustainability of development, and are far more cost-effective in strengthening coping mechanisms than is primary reliance on post-disaster response and recovery. However, lack of an appropriate and robust people-centred EWS and failure to warn people at risk in advance is one of the main causes for high levels of human, economic and environmental losses. In the natural hazards risk context, the EWS should be capable of automatically detecting, in accordance with specific thresholds, the areas where adverse hydro-metrological hazardous events are expected within the next few days – in case of forecasts – and within the next few weeks – in case of long term predictions - and subsequently should have the ability to issue relevant timely warnings – along with the required actions to be taken and ample information - to the specific communities that are at risk. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/919 The Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive has been for the first time published in 1996 (Council Directive 96/61/EC). It was amended in 2008 and now it has been replaced by the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) n.75/2010. The IPPC Directive represents one of the main important policy tool of European Union to manage the emissions of industrial activities and to achieve a higher level of protection of environment as a whole. The Directive asks to the Competent Authorities to issue an unique permit for the industrial installations where are included limits, monitoring frequencies and operational requirements referred to all environmental aspects (water emissions, air emissions, soil, etc.) In literature we can find several studies about policies assessment. In this framework we can observe that not so many authors have studied the IPPC Directive. In addition the papers related to the assessment of the IPPC Directive are referred mainly to discuss about the effectiveness of the Directive in the implementation of Best Available Techniques (BAT) and the improvement of environmental performance of the companies in the scope of the Directive. Besides the few papers or technical reports focused on the implementation of the IPPC Directive from a legislative and administrative perspective have never studied in depth the contents of the issued permits. The objective of our paper is to bridge this gap presenting the results of an empirical research carried out by the authors in the framework of an European project named MED IPPC NET. The authors investigated 62 IPPC permits of landfill sector issued in seven European Regions: Andalusia and Valencia (Spain), Tuscany, Piedmont and Sicily (Italy), West Macedonia (Greece) and Slovenia. The research aimed to identify the differences in the Emissions Limit Values, monitoring frequencies, operational requirements imposed to installations of the same sector but with permits issued in different Competent Authorities. The results demonstrate relevant disparities not always justifiable by the flexibility given by the Directive to the Member States and Competent Authorities to implement the Directive. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/887 Abstract: The importance of roof design to host solar panels is increasingly recognized. Orientation, roof pitch, roof type, and a variety of obstructions all work to either make a roof receptive to solar panels, or difficult for solar panels to be installed, or something in between. This paper proposes a roof property which might be called receptivity, to characterize the degree to which a roof is or is not well-suited for solar panels. The characteristics of a receptive roof are explored. A scoring system is proposed for this property of receptivity. A variety of roof types are evaluated with the proposed scoring system, and a number of real roof examples are scored and examined. Best practices to encourage roof receptivity are offered. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/959 The world is confronted with a multitude of crises, from food and fuel crises to climate and financial crises. Tackling these challenges would be greatly facilitated by a common language for sustainability and accountability that integrates all dimensions of sustainability. Experience with the development of sustainability and its implementation is still limited. The perception on what sustainability entails differs widely among stakeholders. FAO has developed Guidelines for the Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA), which are the result of three years of participatory development, together with practitioners from civil society and private sector. They are a first step into international harmonisation of the requirements which underpin sustainable production, manufacturing and retailing of food and agriculture products. SAFA defines what sustainable food and agriculture systems are, including environmental integrity, economic resilience, social well-being and good governance; it outlines a procedure for an integrated analysis of all dimensions of sustainability, including the selection of appropriate indicators and rating of sustainability performance (i.e. best, good, moderate or insufficient); and it describes sustainability themes, sub-themes and indicators. SAFA does not replace existing systems, but set a frame to which such systems can be related. Running a SAFA results in a "sustainability polygone" that presents the performance of each of the 20 themes that are crucial to sustainability. There is still a lot of work ahead until the final version of the SAFA Guidelines is released, however as of mid next year it can already be used. SAFA can become a huge step forward to sustainability, depending on its reception most importantly by food companies and retailers. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1163 Unsustainable human activities and practices are polluting water supplies and emitting to the atmosphere greenhouse gases as well as compounds that erode the earth's protective ozone layer. The potential impact on human health and economic costs associated with global warming have motivated scientists and engineers to seek sustainable technologies. One such technology is the wind turbine, which harnesses energy from the wind. However, a significant hindrance preventing the widespread use of wind turbines is the noise they produce. This study examines flow over an object and the consequent noise generation produced by this flow-structure interaction. Flow over a cylinder has been chosen as the benchmark. The aim of this study is to correlate three main characteristic parameters of the system, namely, the generated sound pressure level, the exergy destroyed, and the normal flow velocity). The main motivation for this work is to relate the exergy destruction to the noise generated in the flow to improve understanding and to provide a correlation can be utilized to reduce or minimize the noise of wind turbines. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/921 For reasons of sustainability, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy security, it becomes necessary to properly evaluate all of possible options for powering transportation fleet for a particular country. When doing this it is equally important to understand all the costs (economic, social, and environmental) and emissions during the fuel extraction, refining and distribution stages as well as the final combustion stage. All steps in the full pathway contribute to the final economic and environmental profile of any given fuel. The natural gas (NG) family of fuels has to be seriously considered as providing for large-scale transportation. From a combustion point of view, NG derivatives have a lower carbon-to-hydrogen ratio than oil-based fuels and should therefore be cleaner, but the upstream emissions of the fuels need to be properly understood. The supply pathways of gaseous fuels are more diverse than the oil-based fuels pathways, because the sources of gas are varied and can imply substantially different emissions profiles. It is therefore important to understand these various pathways for the country under consideration, so that profiles for each country can be documented and policy formulated accordingly. This preliminary study is conducted based on a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to evaluate potential sustainability of using gaseous fuels (CNG/LNG) for light commercial and passenger vehicles based on conditions in Australia and Ukraine, which are quite different, taking into account information on the production, distribution and use of gaseous fuel. Data for this study are mostly sourced from published literature. The results of the study reveal a significant opportunity for Australia, as well as for Ukraine to increase sustainability of the transport fleet if it takes gaseous fuels on as major source for transport vehicles. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/936 For sustainable development projects to be beneficial to the environment, society, and economy, awareness is key on all levels. I have dissected several sustainable development projects in Rio de Janeiro, in order to demonstrate the constraints forced on developing areas through Westernized ideologies and top-down approaches. It is key to focus on local members of the community and their needs before initiating a sustainable development project. Instead of the transference of ideas and projects from the Westernized nations, it is detrimental to embark upon the different cultural, social, environmental, political, and economical constraints that could produce undesirable consequences. Bottom-up approaches allow grassroots involvement and knowledge to maximize benefits of sustainable development, so that the local population and environment are at the heart of all projects. Urban sustainability is key in this growing industrial and capitalist phase of development, and the shift of focus to these different approaches will not only eliminate the conundrums in the city of Rio, but also create sustainability throughout the world as a whole. 2012-10-30 2012-10-30T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/858 The paper analyzes the people perception regarding climate change and adaptation in the arid region of Pakistan in terms of temperature and precipitation fluctuation, drought and desertification, food scarcity, impact on agriculture and surface water, as well as seasonal fluctuation. Due to decrease in precipitation of 0.6inches and increase in temperature of 1.6 0C (1960-2000), the flow of water sector in Pakistan shows a more vulnerable condition from 1937-2004 that will caused a drastic change in rabi as well as kharif cultivation and need adaptation on an urgent basis. The decline in flow of the water in Indus water system will be effected the agriculture growth and production in the irrigated areas of the arid region in lower Punjab and Sind Provinces. Therefore, a questionnaire survey has been conducted in the lower Punjab to know the public opinion about the on going climate change and its impact on social, economical, demographic, and agriculture sectors. The main purpose of the survey is to device a methodology in view of public opinion for the adaptation and mitigation of climate change in the arid region of Pakistan. The major questions are about temperature and precipitation fluctuation, deforestation, overgrazing, drought, desertification, change in the earth geography, wars, change in pressure pattern, population increase, construction of water reservoirs, water resources, current government policies etc. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/895 Every year, international design award giving bodies announce the winners of their design competitions, celebrating and promoting them to the public as exemplars of "good design" or "design excellence". Winners are commended on the basis of innovation, form, function, quality, safety, and ecological sustainability. This latter criterion questions if there is real need for the product, if it reduces environmental impact, has a long lifetime, is resource efficient, complies with environmental best practice, considers end-of-life issues, uses principles of design for disassembly and recyclability, ethical, and offers benefit to society, environment, culture and economy. This paper investigates the approaches by which design award winners and finalists claim to respond to the sustainability criterion. It also traces winners to as far as ten years back and checks whether they exhibit market longevity; that is, if they are still around or if they have already been discontinued or replaced by other products. The archives of the most popular awards in which most designers aim to be recognized in were consulted, and a content analysis was conducted against the definitions and conditions for sustainable product innovation. The study found that product design accolades do their job well in highlighting the excellent work of industrial designers and the manufacturers they work with. However, given the urgency of climate change and environmental disasters that are attributed to the impacts of not-so-responsible designs, it is sensible to rethink whether those in product development should continue pursuing the market oriented approach of offering consumers endless streams of award-winning material "stuff" to own. As the analyses show, designers and manufacturers are indeed capable of creating excellent solutions that are ecologically sustainable. While the proportion of such innovations is still low in comparison to the rest of the awarded products, it is promising to see growth in this area. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/932 New nanomaterials was developed in the field polymer-matrix nanocomposites. Because of incorporated nanoparticles these materials exhibit better phisico-chemical and mechanical properties compare to the appropriate pure polymer matrix. For this reason, these materials can be used for the production of components of anti hail system eg. for the production of large tubes. Nowadays, hail is the most common problem for growers. Current anti hail systems are rapidly destroyed corrosion and mechanical. Therefore, a new idea is to use nano-engineering to replace some elements of quite popular in Europe the anti hail systems. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/990 An enterprise as a core of any economic system has a great impact on sustainable development of a state or region.The operations and development of an enterprise as an economic entity depends on various factors, identification and evaluation of which is crucial for any enterprise. In the opinion of the authors the enterprise's performance is influenced by factors which can be grouped into three blocks: macroeconomic factors, demand factors and structure of industry sector. The authors present the conceptual model of factors influencing enterprise's performances and analyse factors' interactions and manifestations of their impact. In order to study an attitude of entrepreneurs towards influence of external environment factors, the authors carried out empiric research with an aim to assess influence of sixteen external environment factors on performance of the enterprise. Besides, the authors create a model of sustainable performing of SMEs on the base of the results obtained from qualitative and quantitative research. External and internal business environment factors influencing effective performance of the enterprise and performance indicators that are to be supervised principally, according to the enterprise life cycle phases are included in the model. The developed model of SME sustainable performing has been tested in the sector of printing in manufacturing industry. Calculations and data processing were carried out using Microsoft Excel and EViews software. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/898 Remote sensing is an important tool in determining the area and type of above-ground land-based biomass. Such information is required to compare supply and demand, determine the rate of deforestation and its causes, assess the store of carbon in biomass and the potential for increasing the store and use etc. The various types and uses of remote sensing are detailed together with their limitations, costs and benefits. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/877 Efforts and programs toward aiding sustainable development in less affluent countries are primarily driven by the moral imperative to relieve and to prevent suffering. This utilitarian principle has provided the moral basis for humanitarian intervention and development aid initiatives worldwide for the past decades. It takes a short term perspective which shapes the initiatives in characteristic ways. While most development aid programs succeed in their goals to relieve hunger and poverty in ad hoc situations, their success in the long term seems increasingly questionable, which throws doubt on the claims that such efforts qualify as sustainable development. This paper aims to test such shortfall and to find some explanations for it. We assessed the economic development in the world's ten least affluent countries (identified by per capita GDP, excluding fragile and failing states) by comparing their ecological footprints with their biocapacities. This ratio, and how it changes over time, indicates how sustainable the development of a country or region is, and whether it risks ecological overshoot. Our results confirm our earlier findings on South-East Asia, namely that poor countries tend to have the advantage of greater sustainability. We also examined the impact that the major development aid programs in those countries are likely to have on the ratio of footprint over capacity. Most development aid tends to increase that ratio, by boosting footprints without adequately increasing biocapacity. One conceptual explanation for this shortfall on sustainability lies in the Conventional Development Paradigm, an ideological construct that provides the rationales for most development aid programs. According to the literature, it rests on unjustified assumptions about economic growth and on the externalisation of losses in natural capital. It also rests on a simplistic version of utilitarianism, usually summed up in the principle of 'the greatest good for the greatest number'. We suggest that a more realistic interpretation of sustainability necessitates a revision of that principle to ' the minimum acceptable amount of good for the greatest sustainable number'. Under that perspective, promoting the transition to sustainability becomes a sine qua non condition for any form of 'development'. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/897 In this research, the perception of experts about factors that affect biodiversity sustainable management was examined. The research instrument was questionnaire and its validity, reliability was confirmed. Data was analyzed by using correlation coefficient and regression analysis. The results show that environmental, economical and policymaking explained about 68 percent of variance on perception of respondents about biodiversity sustainable management. Among factors that examined in this study, environmental factor contributed more in the biodiversity sustainable management. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/879 Residential homes consume 24% of total primary energy while commercial buildings use an additional 19%, totaling 43% of all energy consumption in the U.S. (United States Energy Information Administration [USEIA], 2011). Wall assemblies are a fundamental component of a building's construction and can make significant impacts on building performance. Wall assemblies impact the environment, the builder, and the homeowner in various ways. Depending on the assembly method used to construct walls, a builder may find it easier or more difficult to install, and will identify a labor cost accordingly. Homeowners desire a wall with an affordable cost and appropriate thermal performance. Environmental concerns include using rare or readily available materials or avoiding use of materials which require more energy to produce than they offset. Exploring these factors to discover the ideal wall assembly is critical to enhancing building construction and performance. The purpose of this study was to identify optimal wall assemblies from the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011 using a newly developed Sustainable Cost Benefit Assessment (SCBA). The wall assemblies were analyzed using cost per square foot, clear wall R-value, and embodied energy metrics as a means for comparison. Reviewing the entries to the Solar Decathlon 2011 it is clear that the structures incorporate unique wall assemblies, which have not yet been studied. The results of this study provide data showing which of these wall types may prove to offer the most energy efficient, affordable, and environmentally conscious options. In addition, it contributes data to suggest which methods should not be adopted for widespread use. The conclusions of this study help supply valuable information describing which wall types are the best options for reducing building energy consumption. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/835 Transportation of feedstock, product and energy is key to forming the links in any supply chain. In terms of the overall environmental impact the transportation stages can also be a significant contributor. With a particular focus on energy, water and emissions, this paper examines the use of transportation to minimize environmental impacts of the supply chain, using the example of primary aluminium production from bauxite. A "radius of reduction" methodology is demonstrated using transport distance to balance the potential benefit of relocating production or utilising alternative facilities that may have better energy, emissions or resource usage. This approach is shown to be a useful tool for supply chain planning, purchasing or sales strategy, and in a broader assessment of industry potential. The ability to reduce energy and emissions are shown to be highest, while the water usage and costs associated with a carbon tax are less avoidable through relocation. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/890 Australian government has been promoting the use of water conservation and recycling options through several campaigns and offering incentives/grants for such water saving ideas/innovations. One of several water conserving techniques is on-site grey-water recycling for non-drinking purposes. However, even with several awareness campaigns and financial incentives, there is a general reluctance to adopt any grey-water recycling measure. One of the reasons behind this is that people are not aware of the payback period for their initial investment. It is necessary to quantify the expected amount of potable water that can be saved through any particular recycling scheme. As such scheme requires on-site treatment; initial establishment costs are comparatively high. In many cases, developers are not aware of an accurate pay-back period for an initial investment. In this study, feasibility of grey-water recycling in multi-storey buildings in Melbourne was analysed and discussed. The study confirmed the significant potential for reducing the water demand and the benefits that the Melbourne population and water authorities can gain through adopting simple water conservation practices and greywater recycling in multi-story buildings. Usual amount of grey-water generation is much higher than the potential reuse amount. As such it is reasonable that the grey-water would not be collected from all the floors, rather grey-water collection from some floors would be enough to meet the demands of all the floors. The discussion was extended to proposing unique greywater recycling schemes for the Melbourne, involving partial greywater recycling from the higher floors of multi-storey buildings, and locating greywater treatment systems on the roofs of buildings. It is obvious that the cost recovery period of the grey-water treatment system would get shorter with the inclusion of higher number of floors for grey-water recycling. Finally, the effect of number of floors on cost recover periods has been presented. Also, effect of using water conserving devices with the grey-water recycling scheme on cost recovery period has been presented. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/907 Cities are becoming a power of human development and this has made a problem of optimal and sustainable use of city territory. In 1987 Gro Harlem Brundland commission suggested to make sure a better life quality for current and future generations and paradigm of sustainable and balanced development was aroused on this background. However urban planners do not have a solid attitude on which factors most influence the level of life quality in the cities. This is because factors of market, inertia of development and complexity of urban structure make negative environment to realization of sustainable and balanced development. Sustainable and balanced development can be reached only by regulative management. It is planned by establishing functions of city territories. Nevertheless in the most of countries mono-functional zoning is dominant, what makes set of a single function and this one-way use makes overuse of territory. Poly-functional zoning is an opportunity to follow principles of sustainable development, because withdrawal of zoning can establish all functions. This can impoverish territory in different cultural, environmental, economic, infrastructural aspects. Sustainable development studies are performed as indicators of pollution, energy, environment studies, but are mostly out of sight regulation of urban functions and management. Spatial integrity was dismissed as a part of mono-functional zoning. Therefore in this article we analyze city structure and zoning, which are influenced by permanent material stream. The analysis is based on the idea of metabolistical analysis of the city. In biology metabolism is a unit of chemical reaction in each cell. That let cells to grow, to multiple, to react to environment, to move. This some analogy is used in metabolistical research of the cities and lets us understand how to develop cities in a sustainable and balanced way. Cities transform energy (minerals, environment and information) to antropogenized system with human biomass and their ideas, and with formed unacceptable object (waste). This is the system of input, recast, storage and output, which is like a fusion of social, economic, technical and landscape processes. They form characteristic of functional zones and priorities of the sustainable use of the zone. We recommend that poly-functional zones can be show by territorial graphs methods. As an example of such methodological approach results of poly-functional zoning research in Kaunas city are presented. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/946 The emissions of NOx and SOx has given considerable attention in last few decades due to the severe problems associated such as acid rain which has harmful effect on aquatic animal life, plant and infrastructure. The topic is more concerned in coal combustion/gasification which contains high sulphur and nitrogen content. Biomass contains less sulphur and nitrogen content and thus threat to environment is less compared to coal. Power plants using biomass combustion and co firing of biomass with coal are of great concerned in the recent years to generate electricity. Moreover, the threat to the global warming due to the use of fossil fuel also encouraged biomass as the substitute source of energy. Therefore, the present study highlights the emissions of NO and SO2 from local biomass feedstock i.e. palm kernel shell under catalytic steam gasification with in situ CO2 adsorbent in pilot scale fluidized bed gasification system. Two important variables i.e. temperature and steam to biomass are considered. Temperature is varied from 600 °C to 750 °C while steam to biomass ratio is varied in the range of 1.5 to 2.5 (wt/wt). The lower reactor temperature (600 °C) contributes to the lower concentration of NO and SO2 i.e. < 70 ppm and < 120 ppm, respectively, at steam to biomass ratio of 2.0, adsorbent to biomass ratio of 1.0 and catalyst to biomass ratio of 0.1. By increasing steam to biomass ratio from 1.5 to 2.5, the NO and SO2 formation is decreased, and achieved the minimum concentration of 20 ppm and 100 ppm, respectively, at temperature of 675 °C, adsorbent to biomass ratio of 1.0 and catalyst to biomass ratio of 0.1. The results are then discussed and compared with commercial biomass power plants. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/923 The research is drawn on the main hypothesis that Latvia does not use its advantageous location effectively supported by the previous research results published this year in the book "Climate change and adaptation to it: Latvia" where the authors found the modern industrial real property market stock would not need any further growth and pointed on the local industrial real estate market misbalance. The research subject is the leading industrial multinational enterprises from the Baltic Sea Region working in Latvia. The survey is planned to be conducted in Latvia. A focus of the research is on finding out the key principles in those companies' choice on the most appropriate territory to the industrial objects and industrial location specifics. The Paper contains the questionnaire with the projected results, the analysis of other scientists' work results on the industrial location research and the model previously introduced. The worked out model is devoted to forecast stock of the modern industrial premises in Europe in the territory of the Republic of Latvia by the original approach of including the European climate change issue as a basis to assign the sustainable supply of the industrial premises, applying complex of the methods like logical approach and comparison, the system and dynamic row's analyses. The Paper is a message to professional critical view and assessment on the model and the questionnaire. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/908 The concepts of science, including concepts related to sustainability including exergy and embodied energy, were developed to describe our knowledge about aspects of the universe. A convincing example of the usefulness of embodied energy and exergy for analyzing systems which transform energy is the generator circuit-breaker (GCB) disconnection process. Nowadays, the electric connection circuits of power plants (based on fossil fuels as well as renewable sources) entail GCBs at the generator terminals, since the presence of that electric equipment offers many advantages related to the sustainability of a power plant. A classic circuit-breaker is an automatically electrical switch designed to protect against inherent operation faults, such as overload or short-circuit. A generator circuit-breaker is located between the generator and the main step-up transformer, this location influencing the operating conditions since GCBs are significantly more difficult to apply to some operating regimes than classical network circuit-breakers. Consequently, the electrical and mechanical performance required of a GCB exceeds the requirements of a standard distribution circuit-breaker. Generally, a circuit-breaker must detect a fault condition, and once a fault is detected, electric contacts within the circuit-breaker must open to interrupt the circuit. In an alternating current (a.c.) circuit the interruption of a short-circuit is performed by the circuit-breaker at the natural passing through zero of the short-circuit current. During the current interruption, an electric arc is generated between the opened contacts of the circuit-breaker. This arc must be cooled and extinguished in a controlled way. Since the synchronous generator stator can flow via high asymmetrical short-circuit currents, which will not pass through zero (at least on one phase) many time periods after the fault appearance, the phenomena which occur in the case of short-circuit currents interruption determine the main stresses of the generator circuit-breaker; the current interruption requirements of a GCB are significantly higher than for the distribution network circuit breakers. Although the phenomena produced in the electric arc at the terminals of the circuit-breaker are complicated and not completely explained, the concept of exergy is useful in understanding the physical phenomena. The electric arc study can prove that the limits between the microscopic and macroscopic phenomena are fragile and certain phenomena could be studied in related frames of work. The electric arc that occurs during the interruption processes in a circuit-breaker can be studied as a very high temperature continuous plasma discharge, and thermodynamic parameters must be taken into consideration; alternatively it could be seen as an electric conductor by a resistance depending on the current intensity (under a constant low voltage) and studied within the Faraday's macroscopic theory. Electric arc interruption is of great importance, because an uncontrolled electrical arc in the apparatus could become destructive since, once initiated, an arc will draw more and more current from a fixed voltage supply until the apparatus is destroyed. However, the appearance of an electric arc at the terminals of the circuit-breaker should not be necessarily seen as a damaging phenomenon since if the electric arc would not appear the network embedded magnetic energy would be converted to electric energy, leading further to high over-voltages. Consequently, during the conversion process of the system magnetic energy in the arc thermal energy, the exergy is not destroyed, and it must be taken into consideration as embodied energy, used further on in the interrupting process. Just after the short-circuit current interruption by the generator circuit-breaker (when the GCB has been subjected to a 50,000 degree plasma arc), between its opened contacts arises the transient recovery voltage (TRV) which constitutes the most important dielectric stress after the electric arc extinction. If the rising rate of TRV exceeds the rising rate of dielectric strength across the open gap within the extinction chamber of the GCB, the electric arc will rekindle (re-strike) and this time the electric arc exergy will be entirely used in a mechanical destructive process determined by the electrodynamics forces. Since the magnitude and shape of the TRV occurring across the generator circuit-breaker are critical parameters in the recovering gap after the current zero, in this paper, we model, for the case of the faults fed by the main step-up transformer, the equivalent configurations, with operational impedances, for the TRV calculation, taking into account the main transformer parameters, on the basis of the symmetrical components method. This study focuses on this fault location because the transformer-fed-fault currents can be very high since the full energy of the power system feeds the faults. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/839 In order to evaluate the effects of relay cropping on yield and yield components, growth length, light interception and solar radiation depreciation of 12 varieties of winter canola, an experiment was conducted in 2006-2007 at Isfahan Agricultural Research Station as a split plot layout within a randomized complete block design with three replications. Main plots were two planting dates (27 September was normal cropping and 27 October was relay cropping), subplots were inclusive of species B. napus (Option 500, Hyola 330, Hyola 401, Sargol, Modena, SLM 046, Opera, Zarfam and RGS003), two varieties of B. rapa (Echo and Park land) and one variety of B. juncea (Land race). The highest seed yield, biological yield, harvest index and oil yield was obtained by Zarfam and Opera at normal planting date and the maximum seed yield and oil yield was related to Slm046 at relay cropping. Oil yield in Zarfam, Opera and Slm046 was 1662, 1587 and 1578 kg/ha. Planting date also had significant effect on all experimental parameters, expect of the number of days from stem elongation to ripening. The effects of cultivars were significant on the number of days from planting date to stem elongation, the number of days from stem elongation to ripening, light interception, light depreciation and LAI. The interaction between planting date and cultivar had significant effects on the number of days from planting to stem elongation, light interception, light depreciation and LAI. The best cultivar in normal planting date were Zarfam and Opera and in relay cropping was SLM046 that these cultivars with suitable growth length, could provide appropriate conditions to intercept light. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/960 In this paper we expand our previous publications on the production of methane from methane hydrate (MH) submarine reservoirs via electrical heating and by hot water injection. Initially we calculated the primary energy balance (energy out / applied energy) for the possible production of methane from submarine deposits. In the case of low frequency electrical heaters located in the MH reservoir we determined that for optimal heaters lengths and location the EROI was 5/3 (1-2). We then considered the methane production via hot water injection – the scheme suggested in Japan for production in the Nankay trough (3). The reservoir considered was 500 meters long with a radius of 100 meters and an initial temperature of 2 C. A pipe located at the center of the reservoir carries hot water entering at different initial temperatures. In order to solve this problem we first modeled the heating via a standard second order finite difference heat transfer scheme in cylindrical coordinates. Since this scheme proved to be numerically unstable, we assumed as a first approximation that the temperature distribution along the length of the pipe was linear and the temperature at any point in the reservoir was determined using an enthalpy finite difference scheme. This scheme considered the change of phase of the solid methane hydrate into water and methane gas when the temperature of each volume element is greater than a melting temperature of 20 C. The energy produced is taken to be of the order of 6.1x109 joules for each cubic meter of methane hydrate, which dissociates into 160 cubic meters of gas at STP conditions (published data indicates a methane heat of combustion of 3.868 x 107 joules/m3 , in close agreement with reported methane energy content of 1000 BTU per cubic foot). The results obtained for an initial water temperature of 200 C, indicate an EROI [(Energy out) / (Primary energy in)] which varied from 25 as the production is started, to 2.5 after 50 years of production (4). The primary input energy 1) Callarotti R.C., Energy efficiency in the electrical heating of methane hydrate reservoirs. SPE paper 137585. In Proceedings of the Canadian Unconventional Resources and International Petroleum Conference, CURIPC 10, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 19–21 October 2010. Ed., Society of Petroleum Engineers: Houston, TX, USA 2) Callarotti R.C., Energy return on energy invested (EROI) for the electrical heating of methane hydrate reservoirs, Sustainability, 2011, 3, 2105-2114; doi:10.3390/su3112105 3) Yamakawa, T. , Ono S., Iwamoto A., Sugai Y., and Sasaki K.; A Gas Production System From Methane Hydrate Layers By Hot Water Injection And BHP Control With Radial Horizontal Wells. SPE paper 137801. In Proceedings of the Canadian Unconventional Resources and International Petroleum Conference, CURIPC 10, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 19–21 October 2010; Society of Petroleum Engineers: Houston, TX, USA. 4) Callarotti R.C., Energy efficiency in the heating of methane hydrate reservoirs by hot water injection", Heat Transfer 2012, 12th international conference on simulation and experiments on Heat Transfer and their applications, Split (Croatia), June 27-29, 2012 was determined as the sum of the kinetic energy of the water flow into a pipe of 1 m diameter with a 1 m/sec velocity and the thermal energy input to the reservoir. We now present results for the complete heat exchange problem for applied hot water, where the heat transfer is determined by solving the correct discretized equations both inside and outside the pipe, by application of Gauss theorem. This approach stabilized the numerical results in both regions (inside and outside the pipe) and we were able to obtain stable numerical solutions. The correct EROI is determined to be of the order of 30 at the beginning of the operation, and of the order 7 after 30 years of operation. We will also give a brief description of the problem of MH plug removal in ocean oil producing pipes, via the application of microwave energy from the surface. The calculation of the primary energy balance for MH proposed production schemes has been the motivation of our work. If these partial EROI had turned out to be less than 1, the discussion concerning the use of methane hydrates as a new source of non-renewable energy would have been irrelevant. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/838 In order to evaluate the influence of plant densities on LAI, solar radiation absorption, light transmission and yield components of three spring rape seed cultivars, this research was conducted on the basis of split plot layout with completely randomized block design with 3 replications. Plant densities in main plots were 40, 80 and 120 plants per m2, and rapeseed cultivars in secondary plots were Sarigol, RGS003 and Hyola401. This research was conducted at research farm, experimental research station, Shahrekord city, Shahrekord province, Iran. Plant density had significant influence on LAI, solar radiation absorption, light transmission, the number of pods per plant and seed yield. LAI, the number of pods per plant and the number of seed per pod was significantly influenced by cultivar. Plant density and cultivar interaction had significant effect on LAI. The highest LAI, solar radiation absorption, plant height was obtained in 120 plants per m2; however, 40 plants per m2 had obtained the maximum number of pods per plant and the number of seed per pod. 80 plants per m2 had obtained the maximum seed yield. The maximum light interception also obtained by this treatment. RGS 003 had obtained the highest LAI and solar radiation absorption. Although, the maximum number of pods per plant and number of seed per pod was related to Sarigol and Hyola 401, the maximum seed yield was obtained in RGS003. So, it seems that plantation of RGS003 and 80 plants per m2 was suitable to producing high seed yield. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/941 The concept and definition of sustainability, particularly of sustainable forestry from where the concept of sustainability has started from, has evolved over time in different fields and created different methods for assessing sustainability: in science, in industry and in policy. With that also different methods for assessing the state of sustainability or the impact different external drivers have on sustainability have been developed. In the forest-based sector, different methods have evolved, starting from a restricted aspect, such purely resource-based sustainability based on the non-depletion over time of standing volume of trees, and have broadened in covering additional aspects later. There are very strictly defined concepts, e.g. the sequestering of Carbon (Carbon footprint), while others are rather vague (e.g. Corporate Social Responsibility). This concept is a base for initiatives in standard development and subsequent certification (ISO, FSC, PEFC) and for international agreements or conventions serving the legislation. This means that the initiatives created voluntary and legally binding norms. These concepts and initiatives can be applied to/at different levels (regional, national, international agreements). Selected concepts even can be only applied at company level. This paper demonstrates a SWOT (Strength-Weakness-Opportunities-Threats) analysis for of assessing different aspects of sustainability. Each of them is compared against the other. Results highlight covered, overlapping and missing aspects for each concept and how they can support or reinforce each other. Special attention is given to current tools of impact assessment, particularly on their areas of application (companies, regional development, products, production practices, etc), if it is a voluntary or legally binding instrument and recommendations for supplementing it with sustainability impact assessment for regional development in Fenno-Scandinavian forests and their use. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/964 Perspectives on a water system and its management determine how problems are defined and which types of solutions are preferred. When developing strategies, it is therefore important to understand different perspectives that exist amongst actors. Additionally, perspectives may change over time. This implies that the dynamics of perspectives need to be considered to be able to meet the demands of the future. Building on Offermans (2012), we study perspectives in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta as a first step towards developing more sustainable water management strategies in this region. To gain insight in the perspectives, we studied the history of water management in Vietnam and conducted a survey amongst 55 government officials, farmers and students. Results show that water management focus has during colonial period mainly been on flood and salinity control and during liberated period on irrigation systems, both to increase food production. However, the transition from a colonial to a liberated regime and the destruction of water structures during the war, caused difficulties in developing a coherent water system today. The survey revealed stakeholders' preferences with hierarchical approaches. This holds particularly for government officials and farmers. Only students consider more egalitarian approaches. The reason is the long history of highly centralized management and the dominance of technocratic ideology with both the government and the international donors. However, for developing sustainable strategies that increase the systems' resilience, considering a broader range of approaches would be advisable. The study finalizes with an outlook of the applicability of a Dutch perspective-based game to the Vietnamese situation. Major challenges lie in the assumed openness to share perspectives and equality amongst players that enable negotiation processes. Reference: Offermans, A.G.E. (2012). The Perspectives Method; towards socially robust river management. Maastricht: Datawyse university press 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/965 The aim of this paper is to analyze the research in developing countries, in sustainable development and in security of the population. Today sustainable development strategies require further research and promote security in these countries. This paper provides a first temporal and content analysis of the available scientific research in developing countries The analysis identify research areas related to security of the population and associated with sustainable development, among which has a significant place the health area. The results show that research on developing countries remains low but has a growing trend over time. Furthermore, sustainable development has a low interest in research (4%) of these countries, while security studies are moderately important (17%). The research effort is insufficient and unbalanced in relation to its contents to fight poverty. Therefore the proposals of Agenda 21, World Bank and OMG can be prejudicated in relation to sustainable development and fight against global poverty. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/930 Protected area (PA) coverage is used as an indicator of biodiversity protection worldwide. The effectiveness of using PAs as indicators has been questioned due to the diversity of designations included in such measures, especially those PAs established for other purposes than biodiversity protection. Although international standards have been developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the policies on the ground have been developed independently of the IUCN categories. This makes the use of IUCN categories dubious measures of biodiversity conservation. The World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) developed a framework for the evaluation of management effectiveness of PAs, based on six stages (context, planning, inputs, process, outputs and outcomes). This evaluation method has often been confined to the study of outputs and outcomes. Generally, monitoring of populations and biodiversity has been the most commonly used approach for evaluation, but such evaluations are costly and do not always allow for comparisons of parks. A management plan is crucial for effective management of the parks and for guidance on how biodiversity should be prioritized against other goals. The evaluation of management plans using standardized coding schemes and content analysis is a useful tool that can be reproduced in other studies, allowing comparisons between different parks, regions and countries. In addition, it allows the detection of management weaknesses from the beginning of the protection process. We therefore analyzed the aims and the regulations in management plans of alpine PAs in Spain, as a first step for evaluating the conservation performance. We used content analysis and CAiv to assess how aims and regulations vary in relation to three explanatory factors: IUCN categories, Vegetation Zones and Autonomous Communities. We found the aims of many parks to be vague, without clear indication on how to prioritize biodiversity goals. Furthermore only 45% of the alpine PAs actually have a management plan, which strengthens our argument about unclear guidance of PA management. Although aims could partly be related to IUCN categories, the regulations showed no clear relationship to international policies, which reflects that aims are not necessarily implemented in practice. The overall weak correspondence in management practices among PAs indicated that management is influenced by other factors than international standards. Devolution to Autonomous Communities could be one explanation for the large variation in management practices among parks. The Spanish Constitution passed in 1978 allowed Autonomous Communities declaring and managing PAs and resulted in a sudden declaration of many PAs, and also in a large difference in the development of protection in different parts of the country. In addition, the lack of policies that have coordinated the PA management of central and local governments has probably contributed to the large variation of aims and regulations. We did not find any effect of the alpine versus Mediterranean mountain vegetation zones on management policies. The analysis of management plans shows that clearly defined aims are needed. Aims are, however, not sufficient. Management practices also need to correspond to the prioritizations made in management plans. Obviously there also need to be a management plan for each park to guide prioritizations among a diversity of aims. Information about aims and management practices is needed to apply protected areas coverage as a measure of biodiversity protection. Finally, such evaluations of management plans could not replace the analyses of impacts on biodiversity, but is an important first step in evaluating management effectiveness. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/933 In this paper will discuss the main source of light, their impact on work and human health. Sources of natural and artificial light can be classified in terms of spectral and photometric. For artificial lighting are also important determining the performance characteristics of the conversion of electricity into light. In addition to these classifications, the light sources differ from each photon generation process, as well as the influence of light on the human eye. Will discuss the effects on the human eye light from organic LEDs and to what result this technology aims. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/840 Appropriate cultivar and date of sowing are two of the most critical aspects of crop management in semi arid condition with low rainfall like Iran. An experiment was conducted in 2008–2009 in khaton Abad Agricultural Research Station of Islamic university of khorasgan branch, Esfahan, Iran. A split plot layout within randomized completely block design with 3 replications was used. Different planting date levels were in 3 levels including (22th October , 6th November, 2th December) as the main plot and cultivars were in 6 levels including [Kavir and Shiraz (with spring growth habit) , Alvand and Mahdavi (with facultative growth habit) , Gaskoghen and C81 – 14 line (with winter growth habit)] as the subplot. Planting date has significant effect on LAI, total dry matter, NAR, light interception and light extinction coefficient, the number of seed per spike, a thousand seed weight and seed yield. CGR was not affected by planting date, and no trend was found. The influence of cultivar of LAI, total dry matter, NAR, light interception, light extinction coefficient, a thousand seed weight and seed yield was significant. Planting date and cultivar interaction just had significant effect on LAI and light interception. Gaskogen had obtained the highest seed yield and the maximum a thousand seed weight was achieved in C81-14. C81-14 also had obtained the highest LAI, light interception and light extinction coefficient. Plantation on 22th Oct had obtained the maximum LAI, light interception, light extinction coefficient, the number of seed per spike, a thousand seed weight and seed yield. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/837 In order to determine the influence of different cereals as green manures on organic carbon and soil physical properties, an experiment was conducted in 2011 in Khaton Abad Agricultural Research Station of Islamic University (Khorasgan branch), Esfahan, Iran (latitude 32o 40/ N, longitude 51o 58/ E, and 1570 m elevation). A completely randomized block design with 3 replications was used. Green manures were included barley, rye, triticale and clover with two levels of farm yard manures namely, 30 and 60 ton/ha and one treatment of chemical fertilization as a control treatment and decomposition time of manures in two levels, the first one is one day after turning green manure to soil and the second one is 4 weeks after returning of them. Manure was mixed with soil immediately after spreading it. All crops were returned to the soil with mouldboard ploughing, before heading stage for cereal, and 10 percentage of flowering for clover, respectively. All experimental characteristics, namely, EC, pH, CaCO3, organic carbon (OC), P2O5, K2O, Zn, Mn, Fe and Cu significantly influenced by treatment. The highest EC, organic carbon, P2O5, K2O, Zn and Mn of the soil was related to application of 60 kg N/ha. The maximum pH and Fe content of soil was obtained in application of 30 kg N/ha and in a treatment in which rye was burning. The treatment in which clover was used as a green manure has obtained the highest Cu content of soil, which had significant difference with other treatments. There were no significant differences in CaCO3 among application of 30 kg N/ha, control treatment, rye as a green manure, triticale as green manure, and triticale as a green manure after four weeks. Control treatment had obtained the lowest EC, Organic carbon, P2O5, K2O, Zn, Fe and Cu of soil. Moreover, the maximum CaCO3 and Mn of soil were achieved in a treatment in which clover was used as a green manure. The treatment in which rye was used as a green manure had obtained the highest pH. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1146 VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has done research on different aspects of sustainable building since decades. There's a continuous stream of international research projects related with sustainability metrics and building performance, indoor climate and energy efficiency, product development, sustainability assessment and decision support tools. The focus is nowadays increasingly stretched towards sustainable neighbourhoods covering also infrastructure and economic and social assessment. VTT has 50 to 100 experts doing research on sustainable built environment. The number is bigger if the areas of water and waste management, transport, energy systems, etc. are also counted. Based on the wide expertise described, and building on recent experiences carried out in different parts of the world (China, Russia, Finland, Kenya) which can be somehow considered the origin of the new formulation of the concept developed by VTT in line with its Research and Innovation Vision 2020, EcoCities provides a framework for sustainable community and neighbourhood regeneration and development focusing mainly on developing countries and emerging economies. EcoCity Miaoufeng (China), EcoGrad in St. Petersburg (Russia), EcoDrive (Finland) or UN Gigiri in Nairobi (Kenya) are the main references prior to the launch of the EcoCities concept presented in this paper. Among the main challenges addressed by EcoCities are: climate mitigation and adaptation, sustainable urbanization and affordable housing, integrated planning and funding availability, capacity building for local solutions and services, citizen empowerment and participation, crucial cross-cutting themes like gender issues and poverty. To respond to these challenges, EcoCities is built around a strong collaboration with local partners in order to answer to local needs previously identified and discussed with them. The flexibility of EcoCities' approach allows the implementation of expert solutions depending on local conditions and customized to varying socio-economic realities worldwide. Ongoing projects in Egypt and Zambia, and planned activities in Libya, South Africa or Colombia will illustrate the main components of the concept. Both ongoing New Borg El-Arab EcoCity (Egypt) and EcoLusaka (Zambia) projects have a clear focus on capacity building. Another project currently under negotiation also in Zambia would include the construction of two sustainable demo houses. In South Africa and Colombia, VTT's local partners would be the municipalities. All projects within EcoCities framework cover the different aspects of sustainability (environmental, economic and socio-cultural). 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1021 Greywater (GW) recycling for non-potable uses such as toilet flushing is a management strategy to meet urban water demand with substantial water saving. This paper proposes a system that collects GW from residential buildings and recycles it for toilet flushing in both residential and office buildings. The total cost and water saving of standard sanitation technology were compared with 5 other options requiring less or no potable water use in toilets. Scenarios compare: no GW, individual GW, and shared GW systems with and without low-flush appliances. Typical residential and office buildings in urban mixed-use regeneration areas in the UK were used for these analyses. The results implied that constructed wetland treatment technology with standard appliances is more economically and environmentally viable than other scenarios. By increasing the water and wastewater price, shared GW systems with and without low-flush appliances were viable options within highly water efficient domestic and office buildings. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/972 The demand on other sources of energy especially renewable energy sources have significantly increased in the 21st century bringing to the forefront new problems. One of the main issues is that these energy sources provide intermittent renewable energy which acts as the main obstacle for their application; thus, different energy storage systems are viable to be used as an intermediate system between the generations of that energy to possible commercialization and supply of it. Consequently, energy storage systems are needed to meet all consumer demands periods i.e. base, intermediate and peak load demands. With such careful energy storage device usage, expanding the generation capacity by expanding the power plant is diminished as the supply and demand is met with surplus that is stored in these storage devices. Initially, the paper discusses the benefits of energy storage and its important role in power system operation, control and management. Additionally, the paper mentions briefly the main renewable energy sources i.e. wind, hydro, solar and geothermal power sources. The paper also discusses and assesses the different types of energy storage available for each of these renewable energy sources; Flywheel Storage, Pumped Hydro Storage, Compressed Air Energy Storage, Batteries Energy Storage Systems, Hydrogen Storage, Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage and Super-Capacitor Storage. Furthermore, the paper highlights the upcoming energy storage systems that are still being researched and compares them with the current ones in order to provide a technical aid on these imminent storage systems. The paper aims to not only educate people on the different storage options which are available for alternative energy systems but also to provide enough information so they can make an informed decision on which device to select to ensure that they obtain maximum performance from their renewable energy source. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/998 In the document "Arkitektur.nå. Norwegian architecture Politics ", published by the Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs in 2009, it is emphasized the following main challenges for architecture in Norway: • Environmental and energy solutions to characterize the architecture • Cities and towns will have to be developed with architecture of good quality • The State shall safeguard the cultural and architectural heritage This project tries to develop knowledge in integrated solutions that link energy and design of existing buildings. Centrally important is the dissemination of information about energy and environmental-and climate-friendly solutions in housing and building and sustainable living and building / architecture. Three different ones buildings were examined: • Linesøya school building • Fire station in Surnadalsøra • Rotvoll barn at Camp Hill / Steiner school in Trondheim By "research by design" explores and highlights the architectural students the opportunities associated with energy and environmental transformation of existing buildings, focusing on materials and energy, features, local communities and culture. The project includes largely cooperation with the local building industry and population, such as to contribute to the mutual knowledge and - dissemination. Continuously stricter building regulations make it necessary for architects to gain expertise in environmental design and careful resource use in architecture. There is great need for projects that show that more stringent requirements do not mean a reduction of architectural quality but also helps to produce good architecture. Students can, through their projects, help to explore and highlight the good opportunities, and question the established practice. Three challenges mentioned above are very much present in all three projects. The projects are well suited to explore how the ecological, economic, social and cultural perspective of the sustainability challenge can be integrated and operationalized to show a path to better architecture for the future. 2012-10-29 2012-10-29T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/948 Wolves (Canis lupus) have long been held as a symbol of the North American wilderness and figure prominently in United States frontier mythology. Currently the legal status of wolves is being hotly contested following their near extermination and then successful reintroduction in the North Rocky Mountain region. The opposing positions on the status of wolves very neatly conform to political party lines, with Democratic Party members supporting the protection of wolves and Republican Party members opposing it. Wolves are recognized on both sides as symbols: for Democrats, the wolf is a positive symbol representing not only environmental wholeness but also the power of positive social programs legislatively; for Republicans, the wolf is negative, representing the destructive influence of outside forces, especially that of the federal government. Because the protection of wolves does in fact require the implementation of legislature, these associations are not without merit. This paper will review existing literature on this subject, extending back to the enactment of the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s', and will contribute new research on the recent developments, including the "delisting" of wolves from the Endangered Species List in August of this year, in order to elucidate the idea that a truly viable plan for animal conservation must be socially sustainable. 2012-10-26 2012-10-26T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/989 This research addresses the role of tourists and tourism in protected area destinations under threat from climate change and other sustainability challenges. Specifically, the study looks at of the issue of a world heritage protected area of strong economic and cultural significant: the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (WHA). Enhancing the adaptive capacity of social systems in destinations vulnerable to climate change is an important social agenda, requiring concerted action by the multiple stakeholders of the destination. Visitors, including area and regionally based residents, plus domestic and international tourists are key stakeholders in the complex tourism system. Their knowledge, perceptions and expectations of these destination places and landscapes are vital to informing marketing, conservation and planning decisions. Yet, troubling gaps exist in studying visitor perceptions, interests and behaviors in the context of climate change and tourism (Gössling et al., 2011). Theoretical and methodological directions to tackle the complex eco-cultural and heritage landscapes that visitors perceive and experience are only just beginning to emerge in the context of climate change and tourism. The paper reports survey research results on visitor knowledge and action related to sustainability and climate change in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) WHA. Over the period 2007 to 2010, 4,672 self-completed surveys were collected from tourists in the departure lounge of the Cairns Domestic Airport, Cairns, Queensland. These addressed a range of issues including motivations and activities of visitors to the GBR WHA, recognition of GBR as a WHA, and willingness to contribute to carbon offsets during their travel. The current 2012 survey, also administered at the Cairns domestic airport, included questions on climate change and sustainability oriented choices made (e.g. choosing ecotourism certified reef operators). This paper discusses the results from the perspective of tourism and the social values of visitors, in the context of world heritage, climate change and sustainability at the Great Barrier Reef WHA. 2012-10-26 2012-10-26T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/834 Recent climate science studies reveal that limiting the world to 2ºC warming most likely requires peaking total global greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 followed by rapid reductions to near zero by 2050. Despite calls to immediately commence a rapid transformation of current fossil-fuelled energy into sustainable systems, responses from most governments remain weak and show no sense of urgency. In cases where transition plans are present, these assume that existing governance arrangements are sufficient for the transition. This paper argues that, for the transition to be rapid, inclusive, and efficient, a new governance paradigm is necessary. To elucidate such a paradigm, historical accounts of rapid institutional restructurings are examined. One of these comprises accounts of World War 2 mobilisations, where radical, rigorous and rapid institutional changes were conducted. While wartime experience suggests some potential strategies for rapid climate mitigation, the paper also argues that there are limitations in the use of this analogy. 2012-10-23 2012-10-23T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/963 The paper starts with a review of eco-efficiency definitions, measuring methods and indicators, and discusses their suitability for analyzing trade-offs between the economic and environmental components they are built of. Among the methods for measuring eco-efficiency, the production analysis techniques seem most promising for trade-off analysis, because they link production information with both the economic and the environmental outcomes. In particular one branch, i.e. the materials balance based (MBB) approaches, exploits the analytical power of treating the co-generation of economic added value and environmental burden as interlinked outcomes. In order to comply with thermodynamic laws, the materials balance condition is incorporated in the production function formulation. The paper shows how both the profit function and various emission functions can simultaneously be derived from the same physical production function. The consistency of environmental information with the physical production process and economic outcome allows for clarifying the conditions for pursuing economic-environmental win-wins and undergoing trade-offs. Win-wins are obtained when overall technical efficiency improves. Input substitutions lead to changes in allocative efficiency, which cause shifts from trade-offs to win-wins and vice versa. Starting from simple trade-off/win-win relationships, the operational difficulties to distinguish between trade-offs and win-wins are demonstrated when multiple environmental outcomes (and by extension also social outcomes) come into play. Traditional radial efficiency measures make differences between win-wins and trade-offs clear, but lack diagnostic power when the number of inputs and environmental outcomes increase. Trade-off analysis with alternative representations of the production function, such as the directional distance function, is suggested. Based on illustrations with a synthetic data set (that can also be made available on the Forum), the proposed MBB eco-efficiency measures are compared with current indicators and discussed in terms of their ability to bring a more differentiated trade-off analysis. The illustrative case treats the win-wins and trade-offs between profit , nutrient, energy and water efficiency in pig production. Operational models will be made available for verification and validation by Forum participants. 2012-10-23 2012-10-23T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/956 High dividend paying companies from emerging markets become good alternative to investing in developed markets due to current low interest rates environment. Dividend paying stocks provide certain stability of return, offer lower risk, attractive valuations. Besides, dividend paying firms usually have sustainable and predicted cash flows, which allow stable dividend payments. The present paper provides research results and discussion on dividend stability and sustainability in emerging markets of Central and Eastern European region. Though the emerging market companies do not have a robust history of rewarding their investors with dividends yet, the study results show that the payout ratios declined only slightly during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The share of dividend-paying companies during the recession did not drop below 50% threshold, while in peak years the share of dividend paying companies was about 63-65% of the analyzed sample of 117 CEE companies. The present paper provides also an insight into the earnings and dividend patterns and analyzes their correlation. Globally the power of dividends becomes substantial when it comes to their reinvestment, which is also studied in the present research in order to determine the role of dividend payments as a constituent of the total shareholder return. The authors test the hypothesis of whether high dividend paying stocks are able to generate sustainable market outperformance. 2012-10-23 2012-10-23T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/900 The new scientific discipline of GEOETHICS, in the course of development during the last 20 years, has made considerable progress. To the originally preferred problems of protecting and moderating consumption of non renewable mineral resources of the Earth the priorities have been added concerning unavoidable natural disasters in connection with their presently increasing intensity. These events need to focus the actual attention and orientation of responsible activities of Earth scientists because of possibilities for both forecasting and suggesting appropriate measures for minimizing any potential expected damage. Laision of these topics with concepts of sustainability is evident. It is necessary for human kind, as well as for any further progress of its scientific background, to bring into consideration the necessity of deepening contacts of the Earth sciences with other technical and humanistic scientific fields. Geoethics may have an important role in this process as well as in introducing other new scientific domains. At any responsible level of state authorities and self-government as well as in any context of international co-operation, geoethics might be able to help in paving a better way for the needed understanding of nature by human kind. - It is also necessary to find appropriate structures which would make it possible to incorporate geoethical principles in the optimal way into the consciousness and the daily life of the global society. All efforts of not only Earth and Planetary scientists, ecologists and pedagogues but also of managers, leaders, politicians and statesmen at any level should respect – in the sense of geoethics – their own responsibility for the fate of our planet and of all its inhabitants including the future generations. - As to the final social, cultural, economic and environmental consequences for sustainability it is necessary to seek new priorities emphasizing more and more the solidarity of human kind. The needed geoethical way of thinking should be based on generally accepted moral and ethical principles achieved by mankind by various ways and experiences (in spite of some current contrary trends). 2012-10-23 2012-10-23T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/904 The Central Himalaya is known world over for its rich and diverse natural bio- resources. In order to utilize these natural resources in a sustainable manner, it is important that resources be harnessed efficiently to meet the people's development aspirations without degrading them and therefore, urgent need for large scale establishment of technology resource centre was realized. Poor access to appropriate technologies due to difficult topographies and tough mountain conditions is one of the major causes of poverty, drudgery and natural resources degradation in the Central Himalaya. Technology change is an important instrument in the continuous process of socio-economic development. Of late, development planners have realized the importance of suitable or appropriate technologies and practices, and therefore, have stressed upon the need for a large scale demonstration, on-site training, capacity building and skill development of user groups in rural and marginal areas. In this regard, the Rural Technology Demonstration and Training Centre (RTDTC) established by Garhwal Unit of G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development have been perceived as a means of developing and disseminating improving technologies through action and participatory research. The new approach, on the one hand, may be able to diversify livelihood earning options for local communities and may also help conserve natural resources on which these options depend on the other. Rural technology is widely recognized as one of the major determinants of socio-economic development, and the idea that the simple and hill specific transfer of technology from lab or field lab to field/land will result in growth and thereby poverty is alleviating. As a result of these efforts, a number of farmers and other stakeholders, including NGOs have adopted some of the potential rural technologies at various levels. The programme facilitated regular interactions among scientists and primary stakeholders during the period 2004–2012, so as to ensure that farmers acquired all necessary knowledge related to a technology and entrepreneurship. It is hoped that the improved capacities of local farmers will help in the widespread adoption of rural technologies in Central Himalaya and other countries facing common problems/issues and having similar environmental and socio-economic conditions. 2012-10-23 2012-10-23T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/973 This paper discusses occupant's household energy use, behaviour and satisfaction in one of Toronto's rental high-rise multi-unit residential building (MURB). A survey was conducted between April 8 and May 5 2012 with a sample population of 49 residents. The survey consisted of 51 questions about occupant's characteristics, appliance and electrical types and usage, heating and cooling equipment, water use, lighting fixtures and usage, indoor environment, thermal comfort, and their lifestyle. Results show that the surveyed population's socio-demographics in this paper are similar to occupant predictor trends of household energy use behaviour found in literature. Amongst the surveyed households, for example, older-aged respondents were found to spend more time using their appliances per day and also owning older appliances/devices. Male respondents were found to own and use their appliances/electrical devices more than female respondents as well. Lastly, a similar trend was found for respondents with a longer residency in the building. A comparison analyses between the survey results and a Canadian national household energy use for high-rise apartment dwellings found in Natural Resources Canada's survey, SHEU 2007, were also conducted. This survey found that the surveyed respondents are well below the national average on ownership and usage of appliances and electrical devices. Lastly, a correlation analyses showed that seasonal temperature satisfaction within respondent's apartment unit is strongly correlated with respondent's thermal comfort; for example, satisfaction of the apartment unit temperatures during the summer and how the temperature enhances their thermal comfort was found to have a r= 0.86, p< 0.01. The survey also found that the respondents were dissatisfied with the summer temperatures of their apartment unit compared to the winter temperatures. These results suggest that specific demographics (e.g. males, older-aged, or longer residency respondents) own or use their appliances compared to other occupant characteristics. Furthermore, indoor environment satisfaction can be improved by temperature adjustments within respondent's apartment units during the summer. This survey identifies opportunities for improving resident's indoor environment satisfaction and household energy use. The concept of tenant engagement and education strategies can further facilitate similar analysis by comparing the energy use and behaviour before and after implemented strategies. Further analysis can also be conducted by assessing respondent's survey results to their energy consumption. 2012-10-23 2012-10-23T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/836 Responsible Innovation extends the scope of Responsible Care in Industry to the development of new technologies and products. In the upcoming EU HORIZON 2020 programme, Responsible Research & Innovation is expected to be an integral requirement for all EU funded projects. However, there are as yet few working instruments available for putting Responsible Innovation into practice. The presentation will review recent projects where the concept Responsible Innovation and tools for its implementation have been developed. In particular, results of the Dutch programme "Maatschappelijk Verantwoord Innoveren" of the funding council NWO and EU funded projects ObservatoryNano, NanoCode and EthicSchool will be discussed. The presentation will also cover the strategy for a follow-up project EthicSchool www.ethicschool.nl/english organising workshops and in-company training in Responsible Innovation. EthicSchool is an initiative taken by Malsch TechnoValuation, a consultancy in the area of Technology and Society: www.malsch.demon.nl. EthicSchool builds upon a former European project. This original project was funded by the European Union, contract nr. 036745, 01-09-2007-28-02-2009. Partners in this former project were Malsch TechnoValuation, University of Twente, Radboud University (NL) and TU Darmstadt, Germany. 2012-10-23 2012-10-23T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/953 Due to the arising internationally awareness of sustainable development, sustainability has become an ultimate goal for worldwide industries to pursue. To construct a sufficient method for assessing sustainability on the product level nowadays is an important issue but still a challenge. The mature approach, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), is used to evaluate the environmental burdens. Taking the economic and social dimensions into consideration for a comprehensive life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) is necessary and so far in its infancy. Therefore, developing the LCSA is essential and inevitable. To do so, there are two main aims of this study: first, combining LCA, life cycle costing (LCC) and social life cycle assessment (SLCA) on a case study of the bamboo bicycle and the aluminum bicycle, to emphasize on the theoretical development of an overall, scientifically and widely valid method for the integrated sustainability assessment. Second, the study takes the origin of raw materials for bamboo and bauxite from respectively China and Guinea, and bicycle manufacturing in Germany to administer the SLCA practically. The hot spot social life cycle database is used as a starting point for the practical analysis of the social situations of the countries. The study compares environmental impacts between the two bicycles. The overall LCA results indicates that the bamboo bicycle is more environmental advantageous than the aluminum one. If observing only the processes related to frame production, the outcome shows there are significant differences between the two bicycles in specific impact categories such as freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, marine eco-toxicity and human toxicity; however, while checking the results for the whole life-cycle of the bicycle, the mentioned differences are minor. Besides, this paper adopts LCC fitting best together with LCA boundary as a consistent pillar of sustainability assessment. In LCC, the study focuses on the two perspectives from the manufacturer and the user of the two bicycles. While probing social circumstance of developing countries deeply in the SLCA, the results reveal that in China, shortage of labor right, low average wage, and insufficient sanitation in urban area are the main issues. For Guinea, the critical topics are gender equity, child labor, long working time, low wage, lack of labor law and completed legal system, high dropout rate, less improved sanitation, and low living standard. 2012-10-21 2012-10-21T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/875 The economy has grown rapidly Indonesia in the last two decades. This growth has increased the ownership of passenger cars. The number of users of passenger cars is predicted to grow dramatically in Indonesia in the future. To reduce fuel consumption in the transport sector, the department of energy and department of transportation should consider implementing minimum fuel economy standards for passenger cars. This paper attempts to predict the potential mitigation of emissions through fuel economy standards for passenger cars. The calculations were based on the growth of passenger cars ownership data. The study found that the fuel economy standards for passenger cars would mitigate a significant amount of emissions in the country. 2012-10-21 2012-10-21T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/903 One of the most notable paradigms increases the productivity of the firms is managing the supply chains and supply chain management (SCM) has come to play a critical role as a key to optimize the business activities under recent agile improvement of network technology and economic globalization. One of the crucial challenges for purchasing department in SCM is supplier evaluation and selection. On the other hand, sustainable development has become a buzzword that received a lot of attentions by policy makers, the popular press, and journals in different scientific fields as an interdisciplinary issue. During the last two decades, sustainability issue has acquired a dominant place in SCM and now is being discussed seriously. Thereby, sustainable purchasing and sustainable supplier selection will be fertile areas for research. Since the Electrical & Electronic industry (E&E) is an important contributor to the economy of worldwide business, the supplier selection issue in E&E industry is considered in this work. First, among the extensive range of supplier selection literature in different industries, supplier selection papers in E&E industry is derived. Then, reviewing and going through these papers, a comprehensive framework for supplier selection criteria considering sustainability in E&E industry is proposed. Finally, the real case study from E&E industry of Malaysia is applied and the proposed framework is utilized to select the best suppliers in the mentioned company. It is worthy to note that, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach is applied in this case to rank the suppliers. 2012-10-21 2012-10-21T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/889 Current biodiesel technologies are not sustainable as they require government subsidies to be profitable by the producers and to be affordable by the public. This is mainly due to: 1) high feedstock cost and, 2) energy intensive process steps involved in their production. Sustainable biodiesel production needs to consider: a) utilizing low cost feedstock; b) utilizing energy-efficient, non-conventional heating and mixing technologies; c) increase net energy benefit of the process; and 4) utilize renewable raw material/energy sources. In order to reduce production costs and make it competitive with petroleum diesel, low cost feedstock, such as non- edible oils and waste frying oils could be used as raw materials. Net energy benefit can be increased by using high oil yielding renewable feedstock such as algae. Additionally, application of energy efficient non-conventional technologies such as ultrasonics and microwaves may reduce the energy footprint of the overall biodiesel production as shown in Figure 1. This presentation provides a perspective on sustainable biodiesel production using waste cooking oils, non-edible oils and algae as feedstock. Process optimization using novel heating and mixing techniques, net energy scenarios for different feedstock from sustainability view of the biodiesel production technologies will be discussed. 2012-10-21 2012-10-21T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/986 Statistical energy savings calculations are fundamentally rooted in how well energy data can be normalized against influencing factors. Attempts to predict monthly energy use in academic buildings based strictly on weather as a driver for energy fail because of variable monthly occupancy. A genetic based energy model is used to characterize monthly energy consumption in academic buildings or any other buildings with variable occupancy. Such a model is essential for both estimating savings when changes are made and for continuously commissioning the building. Monthly average outdoor air temperature is considered to reflect the weather driver on energy use. Monthly occupancy is modeled as an integer describing the number of days per month that the academic building is fully occupied. The multi-functional model developed is tested on both simulated and actual academic building energy data. The results demonstrate universally improved correlations. 2012-10-21 2012-10-21T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/884 This paper presents the implementation of a design tool, written in Pascal language, of a classic design method of wind turbines based on Blade Element Momentum Theory. The open source integrated development environment Lazarus was used. The software allows the user to visualize the changes in turbine geometry caused by the change in design parameters and the two design methodologies that are possible. Results that validate the algorithm according to the literature are shown. Characteristics of a wind turbine designed with a proper airfoil are also presented. The tool familiarizes the user with the open source philosophy and gives data to the construction of wind turbine models to experiments. 2012-10-21 2012-10-21T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1007 The transition from a fossil-fuel based system to a sustainable energy based system is required in order to counteract environmental problems and achieve a more sustainable future. The multi-level perspective (MLP) and the technological innovation systems (TIS) framework are used as analytical frameworks to describe, understand and analyze the changes associated with technological transitions. In both frameworks the heterogeneity of users is ill-considered. User requirements will differ among users in ways that are unknown to the provider of the innovation, at least initially. Users have functional needs and aspirations as humans. It is important to inquire into the needs, ways of thinking and cultural meaning of products, as they are an integral part of transition processes. Especially in the domain of adoption of sustainable energy technologies there is little scientific research from a user perspective. The adoption of sustainable energy technology is determined from the number of individuals or households that decide to adopt or reject that technology under a specific set of conditions. Instead of looking at what technology can do for people, this research puts user behavior into a daily context as a starting point in order to find out which kinds of people use the technology? Can groups of technology users be recognized that are for example 'green buyers' or 'materialists'? And what kind of people are they. The preference of individuals for example on climate change gives insight in factors that are likely to determine groups of users. In this research, we use a lifestyle perspective to analyze whether users of PV have similar personal values and lifestyles. We focus on PV as it is one of the most promising low carbon energy sources. While the worldwide application of PV is growing fast the Netherlands is lacking behind. So, the objective of this study is to identify a small number of relatively homogeneous groups of technological users, based on their adoption or rejection of a specific technological innovation. By taken into account different segmentation models of the Dutch population which are used in the building market in the Netherlands, we introduce a segmentation model which can be used for analyzing the diffusion of technological innovations, in particular PV. The introduced model allows us to answer the question whether adopters and non adopters consider the same or different attributes. 2012-10-20 2012-10-20T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/966 Decentralized approaches to urban stormwater management, whereby installations of green infrastructure (e.g., rain gardens, bioswales, constructed wetlands) are dispersed throughout a management area, are cost-effective solutions with co-benefits beyond just water abatement. Instead of investing in traditional approaches for managing stormwater, such as deep tunnels and high capacity treatment facilities (i.e., gray infrastructure), municipalities that invest in green approaches (i.e., natural capital) may reap multiple benefits from increased green space, ecosystem services, increased property values, and community engagement. To maximize the provision of these benefits, water managers should account for social and other human capitals in their management plans. In this presentation, we will highlight the role of human, social, and cultural capitals in the USEPA's groundbreaking study in the Shepherd Creek watershed (Cincinnati OH USA). The study investigated whether market-based mechanisms can be used to engage citizens to participate in voluntary stormwater management on their private property and would this lead to a sufficient number of green infrastructure installations to reduce storm flow volume. We invested in the human capital of the neighborhood in order to educate the residents on the urban stormwater problem and their potential role as private stormwater managers. Further, we quantified the role of social capital and found that as residents engaged in the program, their neighbors were significantly more likely to engage. This finding highlights the role of social networks in building trust in novel programs, especially those proposed by external agents. When a member of a social network engages in a program and shares his/her positive experience with members of his/her social network in order to get them to enroll, that initial participant appropriates social capital to influence the actions of others. As more residents of a neighborhood engage, perhaps the neighborhood will shift to a culture of private stormwater managers. If so, we expect to see increased green infrastructure on private land over time, and that may spread to other communities. Such a cultural shift would have profound implications on urban stormwater management. 2012-10-17 2012-10-17T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/970 The metabolism of cities bears important anomalies: high levels inflow of resources and large quantities outflow of (hazardous) wastes. In order to decrease cities' environmental footprint, Girardet (1996) and Rogers (1997) suggested making a transition from a linear to a circular urban metabolism. Even though the concept was coined a few decades ago, it still holds prominence among academics and practitioners (see for instance Newman and Jenning 2008; Lehman 2012; Beatley 2012, van Bueren et al 2012). However, few cities have made such a transition. This shows that creating a circular urban metabolism is complex and challenging. Research so far mainly considered the creation of a circular urban metabolism as a technical process. We would like to argue that organisational and institutional aspects of such process are also important for understanding why there are implementation gaps. However these have been understudied. This paper tries to bridge this gap by adopting a different conceptual approach. We consider that the creation of a circular urban metabolism passes through multiple innovation processes. Such processes happen in a systemic manner wherein, not only technical but organisational and institutional solutions and changes are adopted and adapted. In this paper we conceptualise the circular urban systems, as a robust concept to address the anomalies of the metabolism of cities. We discuss how this concept is different from existing one and why we think it can help in better grasping the challenges ahead. We also focus on the kind of insights that can be gained by adopting this new conceptual understanding and how this can open a new agenda for future research. 2012-10-17 2012-10-17T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/968 Increasing urbanisation and climate change belong to the greatest challenges of the 21st century. A high share of global greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to originate in urban areas (40 % to 78 % according to UN Habitat 2010). Therefore, low carbon city strategies and concepts implicate large greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potentials. At the same time, with high population and infrastructure densities as well as concentrated economic activities, cities are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and need to adapt. Scarce natural resources further constrain the leeway for long-term, sustainable urban development. The Low Carbon Future Cities (LCFC) project aims at tapping this three-dimensional challenge and will develop an integrated strategy / roadmap, balancing low carbon development, gains in resource efficiency and adaptation to climate change. The study focuses on two pilot regions - one in China (Wuxi) and one in Germany (Düsseldorf+) - and is conducted by a German-Chinese research team supported by the German Stiftung Mercator. The paper gives an overview of first outcomes of the analysis of the status quo and assessment of the most likely developments regarding GHG emissions, climate impacts and resource use in Wuxi. The project developed an emission inventory for Wuxi to identify key sectors for further analysis and low carbon scenarios. The future development of energy demand and related CO2 emissions in 2030 were simulated in the current policy scenario (CPS), using five different sub-models. Selected aspects of Wuxi's current material and water flows were analysed and modelled for energy transformation and the building sector. Current and future climate impacts and vulnerability were investigated. Recent climatic changes and resulting damages were analysed, expected changes in temperature and precipitation in the coming four decades were projected using ensembles of three General Circulation Models. Although Wuxi's government started a path to implement a low carbon plan, the first results show that more ambitious efforts are needed to overcome the challenges faced. 2012-10-17 2012-10-17T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/1136 Strategic Environmental Assessment has been introduced by EU legislation recognizing that spatial planning processes need to be supported by the evaluation of medium and long term effects of policies, plans or programs under investigation. The last two decades of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) practices highlighted some lack in comprehensiveness, especially in assessing drivers of different nature (infrastructure, industrial development, household consumption) and related impacts. In fact, household consumption plays a relevant role in the total share of local impacts in a given region or city. This requires to enlarge the perspective of the assessment in order to make it really useful for decision making and resolving possible conflicts between environmental protection and social and economic development objectives in a proficient way. The methodology presented in this paper is an attempt to enlarge the traditional perspective of SEA, centred on the environmental assessment as a picture of current and future situation: the assessment made by a set of single environmental indicators is combined with the evaluation made through the composite indicators Ecological Footprint & Biocapacity and Carbon balance. This evaluation methodology can help: i) to understand if the level of consumption of the local community exceeds the limits of natural resources of the area (in a perspective of self-sustainment at the local scale) or if there is an overshoot between the footprint and the biocapacity, i.e. if the local consumption the cause of excessive land use in other areas; ii) to identify the role of spatial planning choices in determining the sustainability of the entire system. The case study presented in this paper is the implementation of this approach in the Strategic Environmental Assessment of a spatial planning plan of four municipalities in Northern Italy. 2012-10-17 2012-10-17T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/988 For the majority of its short tenure, the Mt. Pleasant Plains Cemetery (1860-1890), served as the largest African American cemetery in the District of Columbia. However, no sooner than it was founded, local residents and city officials expressed animosity toward the cemetery and had it subsequently condemned and the land reappropriated. Largely succeeding in their efforts to remove the cemetery and the memory of those interred, the lives of more than 8,000 African Americans and several European Americans remain concealed underground for more than a century. In 2005, soil erosion revealed the remains of several burials and with it the memory of the historic cemetery resurfaced. Using data acquired from an on-going archival and archaeological survey, this paper will demonstrate how deliberate attempts to erasure the historic memory of the African American presence have coincided with the disenfranchisement of African Americans in the capital of the United States of America. Furthermore the case of Mt. Pleasant Plains Cemetery serves as an ardent reminder of importance of maintaining public memory in the face of urban development. 2012-10-17 2012-10-17T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/906 The current paper examines the impact of recent tourism-related official policy for rehabilitation of historical Cairo and for gentrification of surrounding inner city areas on urban poor's right to the city and their resistance actions against eviction. Despite the main objective of introducing sustainable -tourism principles by improving the environmental quality standards within Historical Cairo through pedestrianisation, urban landscaping and public parks, the overall government policy favoured business investments more than interests of urban population . This is evident in proposed plans for forced relocation of local residents from Bazaar area and for eviction of squatter tomb dwellers within northern cemeteries Cities of the Dead' to the eastern desert of Kattamiya (New Cairo City). Consequently land developers and investors intend to clear these sites and hold empty land for property speculations and tourism development projects . This could follow the precedent of the Agha Khan organisation's development of the Al-Azhar Urban Cultural Park, opened in 2004, and the associated upgrading along the Ayyubid Wall and Darb Al- Ahmar district fringing the eastern edge of historical Cairo. Combining information from interviews with primary stakeholders , local residents from Bazaar area and squatter tomb dwellers within Bab al-Nasr northern cemeteries (Cities of the Dead) , and with secondary stakeholders, NGO activists, policy-makers and urban planners, the paper examines the on-going struggle between advocates of urban poor's needs and business and real estate interests over the use of inner city areas for tourism related development. For a critical analysis of spatial contestation and sustainable tourism, the article attempts at weaving official urban policies with local peoples' narratives through historical Cairo's global tourism. Whilst historical Cairo is reinterpreted as a glocal venue for new claims and contestation between global heritage tourism investment and between local urban poor population, the current paper regards the Bazaar area and Cities of Dead as contested sites for collective memory and urban resistance, and for tourism consumption . The study emphasised the need to link the rehabilitation of historical Cairo to concepts of sustainable tourism process based upon the mainstream conservation-for-development perspective, whilst taking into account alternative environments and interpretations of conservation which are the product of socio-cultural, political and economic aspects of local communities. In conclusion therefore the study advocates radical policy action and collaborative planning in consolidating bottom up urban governance and in generating new opportunities for the (re)production of public sphere for sustainable tourism consumption. 2012-10-17 2012-10-17T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/943 Vertical cities growt is argument of discussion world-width. Population increases and better soil use is needed, in terms of efficiency and density, in many cities of the world. However, an excessive vertical growth seems to be dengerous, especially near the green areas of midtowns. In this paper the case of Antofagasta, Chile, is studied. Town of Antofagasta locates in the north desert coast of Chile, in a typical arid climate, latitude 23° South and longitude 70° West. Green areas are quite precious in arid climates, and have to be preserved by building overheating effect. In the last 20 years, in Antofagasta have been constructed almost 30 new towers, more than 70 meters high. At least 7 of these towers are negatively affecting nowadays the "Avenida Brasil" area, a green park of 70 meters large and one kilometer long, which is the principal green area of the city center. Paper studies two possible future evolutions: one following the actual trend, and other one proposing new building concept, limited in vertical dimension and integrated in the environment. Parameters analyzed are: temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind speed and direction in the green area. Results show the impact of building growth in terms of overheating and wind reduction on the ground area studied. Additionally, social impact of living in towers is also discussed in the paper, searching for better design in order to guarantee user's comfort, satisfaction and stimulation in their residences. Thermal, visual and acoustical effects produced by towers are considered in the critical evalaution of Antofagasta city evolution. Part of this work relates to architectural laboratory "energy and architecture" currently on-going at School of Architecture of the Northern Catholic University. 2012-10-17 2012-10-17T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/928 Human beings are a natural part of the environment and as such have influenced, changed and managed natural resources for millennia. The landscape reflects these impacts, and many, if not most, regions have changed dramatically due to human interactions with the environment. Until the last century, plant genetic resources were considered to be common heritage. The history of patent law in the Americas, however, demonstrates the evolution of the concept of private property rights as applied to living organisms such as plants. With the globalization and westernization of much of the world, the intellectual property rights of indigenous people have become a significant issue. This paper addresses the legal and policy implications related to agricultural plant biopiracy and indigenous rights under Peruvian and International law in light of the global governance of innovation. The first section of the paper addresses the laws that apply to agricultural plants and intellectual property. Indigenous rights are also addressed since globalization of agriculture and trade has unique effects on indigenous people and their culture. The second section of this paper provides an understanding of traditional knowledge systems. This discussion provides a basis for describing how traditional indigenous knowledge is cultural and imbedded in the concept of community, rather than individual rights or exploitation. 2012-10-16 2012-10-16T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/938 This paper analyzes the sustainable human development performance of Brazil, by giving a comprehensive account of what is faring well, as well as what areas are lacking in performance. Sustainable human development (SHD) is the ability to achieve development standards in the present that can be sustained for future generations. I have used a qualitative case study methodology, as well as a comparative analysis to explore the development context within economic, political, social, and environmental sectors that all contribute to SHD. Although Brazil exhibits economic strength, environmental factors continue to be a concern. However, political instability and inequality further impair development in these other areas. As a result, I have dissected the area of governance to display the negative impacts of corruption on SHD. Corruption affects the quality of life of society, and the majority of the poor pays the price because it increases inequality. Economic growth is reduced, while political instability is heightened as illegal investment activity is encouraged. This has created an entangled network of politicians, law enforcement officials, and drug traffickers that continues to cycle through corruption, violence, and money. Corruption has not lessened over the past decade, because punishment is not enforced on corrupt officials. Accountability reforms are needed to combat corruption. Congress immunity from prosecution must be eliminated, along with a reform of the Federal Accounting Court independent judicial system in order to create secure checks and balances on all branches of the government. Also, transparency in the areas of public service and law enforcement is detrimental for development because corruption leaks through all levels of society. Although institutional mechanisms exist, they are highly ineffective because bribes often supply a form of income stability and security for all who are involved, especially in the area of the illegal drug trade. The reduction of corruption is a vital component for sustainable human development to influence growth in all levels of society. 2012-10-16 2012-10-16T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/915 Heritage and nature are both prominent landscape features and resources for different forms of use. They could also be main assets for creating sustainable development, especially in rural and non-metropolitan communities. However, they are also contested areas, involving different groups of actors and interests. In this paper three contested areas, and suggestions for methods to move forward, will be discussed. The first ara may be labelled attractivity. Small municipalities in Sweden tend to experience demographic and economic downturns as many young people move out, and traditional industries close down. In order to turn the negative trends new ways of competeing for attractive citizens, not least the new creative class, and business are emerging. In this game heritage and nature are rendered new importance and new meanings. But these new meanings will probably enhance social stratification, as less attractive segments of citizens are excluded. The second area is (economic) growth. According to politicians from top to bottom, the economic future of rural and smaller non-metropolitan areas lay in tourism, albeit long histories of various forms of industries and production. But tourism does not go well with lifestyles and relationships with nature and heritage of most local inhantants. Also, so far most of the small scale nature and heritage business have problems of becoming profitable enough. The third area is the, by the authorities, increased demand for citizen participation in management of protected nature and heritage. Participation has so far mostly been a top-down affair, as the authorities have not been willing to step down from deciding which values that should be protected, only the work and costs for management. The retraction of the authorities is challenged by the citizens' demands for information and knowledge, that is, and increased presence of experts. Nature and heritage, and how these resources may contribute to a sustainable development, is thus contested. There is a need for new ways of working in order to turn contestion into inclusive strategies, and thereby enhance the strengths of the contribution from nature and heritge to sustainable development. In this paper the possibilities of living labs and the creation of innovative systems for sustainable development as means for turning nature and heritage into sources of socially inclusive, sustainable development will be put forward. 2012-10-16 2012-10-16T00:00:00Z http://www.sciforum.net/presentation/913 This study presents a systematic method for assessing aggregate sustainability of firms at sector, region or industry level. The proposed method is based on the generalized sustainable value; it allows to aggregate data of individual firms to any group of firms in a specific sector, specialization, region, or any other group. The method is illustrated by two empirical applications of the Finnish crop and dairy sectors, where the benchmark technology is estimated by data envelopment analysis. Our efficiency assessment shows that the representative crop farm achieves only about a half of its potential output. Efficiency of the representative dairy farm is somewhat higher. 2012-10-02 2012-10-02T00:00:00Z