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Authors: Krystian Szczepanski, Sylwia Łaba

Abstract:

Production of fruit and vegetables, food cereals or oilseeds affects the natural environment via intake of nutrients being contained in the soil, use of the resources of water, fertilizers and food protection products, and energy. The limitation of the mentioned effects requires the introduction of techniques and methods for cultivation being friendly to the environment and counteracting losses and waste of agricultural raw materials as well as the appropriate management of food waste in every stage of the agri-food supply chain. The link to basic production includes obtaining a vegetal raw material and its storage in agricultural farm and transport to a collecting point. When the plants are ready to be harvested is the initial point; the stage before harvesting is not considered in the system of measuring and monitoring the food losses. The moment at which the raw material enters the stage of processing, i.e., its receipt at the gate of the processing plant, is considered as a final point of basic production. According to the Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2002, Art. 2, “food” means any substance or product, intended to be, or reasonably expected to be consumed by humans. For the needs of the studies and their analysis, it was determined when raw material is considered as food – the plants (fruit, vegetables, cereals, oilseeds), after being harvested, arrive at storehouses. The aim of the studies was to determine the reasons for loss generation and to analyze the directions of their management in basic vegetal production in Poland in the years 2017 and 2018. The studies on food losses and waste in basic vegetal production were carried out in three sectors – fruit and vegetables, cereals and oilseeds. The studies of the basic production were conducted during the period of March-May 2019 at the territory of the whole country on a representative trail of 250 farms in each sector. The surveys were carried out using the questionnaires by the PAP method; the pollsters conducted the direct questionnaire interviews. From the conducted studies, it is followed that in 19% of the examined farms, any losses were not recorded during preparation, loading, and transport of the raw material to the manufacturing plant. In the farms, where the losses were indicated, the main reason in production of fruit and vegetables was rotting and it constituted more than 20% of the reported reasons, while in the case of cereals and oilseeds’ production, the respondents identified damages, moisture and pests as the most frequent reason. The losses and waste, generated in vegetal production as well as in processing and trade of fruit and vegetables, or cereal products should be appropriately managed or recovered. The respondents indicated composting (more than 60%) as the main direction of waste management in all categories. Animal feed and landfill sites were the other indicated directions of management. Prevention and minimization of loss generation are important in every stage of production as well as in basic production. When possessing the knowledge on the reasons for loss generation, we may introduce the preventive measures, mainly connected with the appropriate conditions and methods of the storage. Production of fruit and vegetables, food cereals or oilseeds affects the natural environment via intake of nutrients being contained in the soil, use of the resources of water, fertilizers and food protection products, and energy. The limitation of the mentioned effects requires the introduction of techniques and methods for cultivation being friendly to the environment and counteracting losses and waste of agricultural raw materials as well as the appropriate management of food waste in every stage of the agri-food supply chain. The link to basic production includes obtaining a vegetal raw material and its storage in agricultural farm and transport to a collecting point. The starting point is when the plants are ready to be harvested; the stage before harvesting is not considered in the system of measuring and monitoring the food losses. The successive stage is the transport of the collected crops to the collecting point or its storage and transport. The moment, at which the raw material enters the stage of processing, i.e. its receipt at the gate of the processing plant, is considered as a final point of basic production. Processing is understood as the change of the raw material into food products. According to the Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2002, Art. 2, “food” means any substance or product, intended to be, or reasonably expected to be consumed by humans. It was determined (for the needs of the present studies) when raw material is considered as a food; it is the moment when the plants (fruit, vegetables, cereals, oilseeds), after being harvested, arrive at storehouses. The aim of the studies was to determine the reasons for loss generation and to analyze the directions of their management in basic vegetal production in Poland in the years 2017 and 2018. The studies on food losses and waste in basic vegetal production were carried out in three sectors – fruit and vegetables, cereals and oilseeds. The studies of the basic production were conducted during the period of March-May 2019 at the territory of the whole country on a representative trail of 250 farms in each sector. The surveys were carried out using the questionnaires by the PAPI (Paper & Pen Personal Interview) method; the pollsters conducted the direct questionnaire interviews. From the conducted studies, it is followed that in 19% of the examined farms, any losses were not recorded during preparation, loading, and transport of the raw material to the manufacturing plant. In the farms, where the losses were indicated, the main reason in production of fruit and vegetables was rotting and it constituted more than 20% of the reported reasons, while in the case of cereals and oilseeds’ production, the respondents identified damages, moisture, and pests as the most frequent reason. The losses and waste, generated in vegetal production as well as in processing and trade of fruit and vegetables, or cereal products should be appropriately managed or recovered. The respondents indicated composting (more than 60%) as the main direction of waste management in all categories. Animal feed and landfill sites were the other indicated directions of management. Prevention and minimization of loss generation are important in every stage of production as well as in basic production. When possessing the knowledge on the reasons for loss generation, we may introduce the preventive measures, mainly connected with the appropriate conditions and methods of the storage. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The article was prepared within the project: "Development of a waste food monitoring system and an effective program to rationalize losses and reduce food waste", acronym PROM implemented under the STRATEGIC SCIENTIFIC AND LEARNING PROGRAM - GOSPOSTRATEG financed by the National Center for Research and Development in accordance with the provisions of Gospostrateg1 / 385753/1/2018

Keywords: food losses, food waste, PAP method, vegetal production

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Authors: Murat Arıbaş, Uğur Özcan

Abstract:

Due to the increasing number of universities and academics, the fund of the universities for research activities and grants/supports given by government institutions have increased number and quality of academic research projects. Although every academic research project has a specific purpose and importance, limited resources (money, time, manpower etc.) require choosing the best ones from all (Amiri, 2010). It is a pretty hard process to compare and determine which project is better such that the projects serve different purposes. In addition, the evaluation process has become complicated since there are more than one evaluator and multiple criteria for the evaluation (Dodangeh, Mojahed and Yusuff, 2009). Mehrez and Sinuany-Stern (1983) determined project selection problem as a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem. If a decision problem involves multiple criteria and objectives, it is called as a Multi Attribute Decision Making problem (Ömürbek & Kınay, 2013). There are many MCDM methods in the literature for the solution of such problems. These methods are AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process), ANP (Analytic Network Process), TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution), PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation), UTADIS (Utilities Additives Discriminantes), ELECTRE (Elimination et Choix Traduisant la Realite), MAUT (Multiattribute Utility Theory), GRA (Grey Relational Analysis) etc. Teach method has some advantages compared with others (Ömürbek, Blacksmith & Akalın, 2013). Hence, to decide which MCDM method will be used for solution of the problem, factors like the nature of the problem, types of choices, measurement scales, type of uncertainty, dependency among the attributes, expectations of decision maker, and quantity and quality of the data should be considered (Tavana & Hatami-Marbini, 2011). By this study, it is aimed to develop a systematic decision process for the grant support applications that are expected to be evaluated according to their scientific adequacy by multiple evaluators under certain criteria. In this context, project evaluation process applied by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) the leading institutions in our country, was investigated. Firstly in the study, criteria that will be used on the project evaluation were decided. The main criteria were selected among TÜBİTAK evaluation criteria. These criteria were originality of project, methodology, project management/team and research opportunities and extensive impact of project. Moreover, for each main criteria, 2-4 sub criteria were defined, hence it was decided to evaluate projects over 13 sub-criterion in total. Due to superiority of determination criteria weights AHP method and provided opportunity ranking great number of alternatives TOPSIS method, they are used together. AHP method, developed by Saaty (1977), is based on selection by pairwise comparisons. Because of its simple structure and being easy to understand, AHP is the very popular method in the literature for determining criteria weights in MCDM problems. Besides, the TOPSIS method developed by Hwang and Yoon (1981) as a MCDM technique is an alternative to ELECTRE method and it is used in many areas. In the method, distance from each decision point to ideal and to negative ideal solution point was calculated by using Euclidian Distance Approach. In the study, main criteria and sub-criteria were compared on their own merits by using questionnaires that were developed based on an importance scale by four relative groups of people (i.e. TUBITAK specialists, TUBITAK managers, academics and individuals from business world ) After these pairwise comparisons, weight of the each main criteria and sub-criteria were calculated by using AHP method. Then these calculated criteria’ weights used as an input in TOPSİS method, a sample consisting 200 projects were ranked on their own merits. This new system supported to opportunity to get views of the people that take part of project process including preparation, evaluation and implementation on the evaluation of academic research projects. Moreover, instead of using four main criteria in equal weight to evaluate projects, by using weighted 13 sub-criteria and decision point’s distance from the ideal solution, systematic decision making process was developed. By this evaluation process, new approach was created to determine importance of academic research projects.

Keywords: Academic projects, Ahp method, Research projects evaluation, Topsis method.

Procedia PDF Downloads 577

Authors: Mariza Kaskara, Stella Girtsou, Maria Prodromou, Alexia Tsouni, Christodoulos Mettas, Stavroula Alatza, Kyriaki Fotiou, Marios Tzouvaras, Charalampos Kontoes, Diofantos Hadjimitsis

Abstract:

Natural hazard assessment and monitoring are crucial components in managing the risks associated with fires, floods, and geohazards, particularly in regions prone to these natural disasters, such as Greece and Cyprus. Recent advancements in technology led to the development of state-of-the-art systems for assessing and monitoring these hazards. These technologies, developed by the BEYOND Center of Excellence of the National Observatory of Athens, have been successfully applied in Greece and are now set to be transferred to Cyprus. The implementation of these advanced technologies in Greece has significantly improved the country's ability to respond to these natural hazards. Enhancing disaster resilience is crucial as it significantly improves our ability to predict, prepare for, and mitigate the impacts of natural disasters, ultimately saving lives and reducing economic losses. For wildfire risk assessment, a scalar wildfire occurrence risk index has been created based on the predictions of machine learning models. Our objective was to train an ML model that learns to derive a fire susceptibility score when given as input a vector of features assigned to certain spatiotemporal coordinates. Predicting fire danger is crucial for the sustainable management of forest fires as it provides essential information for designing effective prevention measures and facilitating response planning for potential fire incidents. For flood risk assessment, a multi-faceted approach has been employed, including the application of remote sensing techniques, the collection and processing of data from population, buildings, technical studies and field visits, as well as hydrological and hydraulic simulations. All input data are used to create precise flood hazard maps according to various flooding scenarios, detailed flood vulnerability and flood exposure maps, which finally produce the flood risk map. Critical points are identified, and mitigation measures are proposed for the worst-case scenario, namely, refuge areas are defined, and escape routes are designed. Flood risk maps can assist in raising awareness and save lives. For geohazards monitoring (e.g., landslides, subsidence), synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and optical satellite imagery have been combined with geomorphological and meteorological data and other landslide/ground deformation contributing factors. To monitor critical infrastructures, including dams, advanced InSAR (Interferometric SAR) methodologies are used for identifying surface movements through time. Monitoring these hazards provides valuable information for understanding processes and could lead to early warning systems to protect people and infrastructure. The success of these systems in Greece has paved the way for their transfer to Cyprus to enhance Cyprus's capabilities in natural hazard assessment and monitoring. This transfer is being made through knowledge transfer activities, fostering continuous collaboration between Greek and Cypriot experts. Furthermore, small demonstration actions are implemented to showcase the effectiveness of these technologies in real-world scenarios. In conclusion, the transfer of advanced natural hazard assessment technologies from Greece to Cyprus represents a significant step forward in enhancing the entire region's resilience to disasters. The EXCELSIOR project, funding this opportunity, is committed to empowering Cyprus with the tools and expertise needed to effectively manage and mitigate the risks associated with these natural hazards. Acknowledgment: Authors acknowledge the 'EXCELSIOR': ERATOSTHENES: Excellence Research Centre for Earth Surveillance and Space-Based Monitoring of the Environment H2020 Widespread Teaming project.

Keywords: earth observation, monitoring, natural hazards, remote sensing

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