Search results for: constrained resources

Authors: G. Gnanachandrasamy, Y. Zhou, S. Venkatramanan, T. Ramkumar, S. Wang

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The natural resources of groundwater are the most precious resources around the world that balances are shrinking day by day. In connection, there is an urgency need for demarcation of potential groundwater zone. For these rationale integration of geographical information system (GIS) and remote sensing techniques (RS) for the hydrological studies have become a dramatic change in the field of hydrological research. These techniques are provided to locate the potential zone of groundwater. This research has been made to indent groundwater potential zone in Ariyalur of the southern part of India with help of GIS and remote sensing techniques. To identify the groundwater potential zone used by different thematic layers of geology, geomorphology, drainage, drainage density, lineaments, lineaments density, soil and slope with inverse distance weighting (IDW) methods. From the overall result reveals that the potential zone of groundwater in the study area classified into five classes named as very good (12.18 %), good (22.74 %), moderate (32.28 %), poor (27.7 %) and very poor (5.08 %). This technique suggested that very good potential zone of groundwater occurred in patches of northern and central parts of Jayamkondam, Andimadam and Palur regions in Ariyalur district. The result exhibited that inverse distance weighting method offered in this research is an effective tool for interpreting groundwater potential zones for suitable development and management of groundwater resources in different hydrogeological environments.

Keywords: GIS, groundwater potential zone, hydrology, remote sensing

Procedia PDF Downloads 192

Authors: Sidiqat A. Aderinoye-Abdulwahab, Lateef L. Adefalu, Rashid S. Adisa, Felix O. Oladipo, Tawakalitu A. Dolapo

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This study investigates whether the rural women in Nigeria have access to productive resources such as land, livestock, and capital in order to determine their level of socio-economic empowerment. The study adopted a case study design while employing qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to identify 7 locations, where 88 women were selected based on simple random sampling technique. Focus group discussions and questionnaire were used to elicit information. Gender analysis framework was used to explore and analyse the data generated for the study. The study found that the rural women desire to engage in gainful economic activities. However, cultural barriers prevent them from adequately exploring livelihood-improving opportunities. It was established that ownership of productive resources such as land and livestock can enhance their livelihoods provided cultural and governance issues do not deter them from accessing the services. It was therefore recommended that appropriate policies that will favour the access and ownership of assets by women so as to empower them need to be in place. The study provides a nuanced perspective on the influence and relevance of possession of physical assets in enhancing women’s livelihood diversification and overall development of rural livelihoods.

Keywords: livelihoods, productivity, development, economic activities, socio-economic empowerment

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Authors: Zeki Oralhan, Mahmut Tokmakçı

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SSVEP based brain computer interface (BCI) systems have been preferred, because of high information transfer rate (ITR) and practical use. ITR is the parameter of BCI overall performance. For high ITR value, one of specification BCI system is that has high accuracy. In this study, we investigated to recognize SSVEP with shorter time and lower error rate. In the experiment, there were 8 flickers on light crystal display (LCD). Participants gazed to flicker which had 12 Hz frequency and 50% duty cycle ratio on the LCD during 10 seconds. During the experiment, EEG signals were acquired via EEG device. The EEG data was filtered in preprocessing session. After that Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA), Multiset CCA (MsetCCA), phase constrained CCA (PCCA), and Multiway CCA (MwayCCA) methods were applied on data. The highest average accuracy value was reached when MsetCCA was applied.

Keywords: brain computer interface, canonical correlation analysis, human computer interaction, SSVEP

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Authors: Rajendra Kumar Isaac, Monisha Isaac

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India, having a vast cultivable area and regional climatic variability, encounters water Resource Management Problems at various levels. The agricultural production of India needs to be increased to meet out projected population growth. Sustainable water resource is the only option to ensure food security, especially in northern Indian states, where the ground and surface water resources are fast depleting. Various tools and technologies available for management of scarce water resources have been discussed. It was concluded that multiple use of water, adopting latest water management options, identification of climate adoptable cropping and farming systems, can enhance water productivity and would encounter the fast growing water management and water shortage problems in Indian agriculture.

Keywords: water resource management, sustainable, water management technologies, water productivity, agriculture

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Authors: Amin Khamoosh, Hamed Faramarzifar

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In the capital of Iran, Tehran, numerous buildings constructed when extreme climates were not prevalent now face the need for rehabilitation, typically within their first decade. Our data delves into the performance metrics and economic advantages of sustainable rehabilitation practices compared to traditional methods. With a focus on the scarcity of water resources, we specifically scrutinize water-efficient techniques throughout construction, rehabilitation, and usage. Examining design elements that optimize natural light while efficiently managing heat transmission is crucial, given the reliance on water for cooling devices in this region. The data aims to present a comprehensive strategy, addressing immediate structural concerns while harmonizing with Iran's unique environmental conditions.

Keywords: sustainable rehabilitation, concrete buildings, iran, solar energy, water-efficient techniques

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Authors: Nana Bolashvili, Vakhtang Geladze, Tamazi Karalashvili, Nino Machavariani, George Geladze, Davit Kartvelishvili, Ana Karalashvili

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Fresh water is the major natural resource of Georgia. The average perennial sum of the rivers' runoff in Georgia is 52,77 km³, out of which 9,30 km³ inflows from abroad. The major volume of transit river runoff is ascribed to the Chorokhi river. Average perennial runoff in Western Georgia is 41,52 km³, in Eastern Georgia 11,25 km³. The indices of Eastern and Western Georgia were calculated with 50% and 90% river runoff respectively, while the same index calculation for other countries is based on a 50% river runoff. Out of total volume of resources, 133,2 m³/sec (4,21 km³) has been geologically prospected by the State Commission on Reserves and Acknowledged as reserves available for exploitation, 48% (2,02 km³) of which is in Western Georgia and 2,19 km³ in Eastern Georgia. Considering acknowledged water reserves of all categories per capita water resources accounts to 2,2 m³/day, whereas high industrial category -0. 88 m³ /day fresh drinking water. According to accepted norms, the possibility of using underground water reserves is 2,5 times higher than the long-term requirements of the country. The volume of abundant fresh-water reserves in Georgia is about 150 m³/sec (4,74 km³). Water in Georgia is consumed mostly in agriculture for irrigation purposes. It makes 66,4% around Georgia, in Eastern Georgia 72,4% and 38% in Western Georgia. According to the long-term forecast provision of population and the territory with water resources in Eastern Georgia will be quite normal. A bit different is the situation in the lower reaches of the Khrami and Iori rivers which could be easily overcome by corresponding financing. The present day irrigation system in Georgia does not meet the modern technical requirements. The overall efficiency of their majority varies between 0,4-0,6. Similar is the situation in the fresh water and public service water consumption. Organization of the mentioned systems, installation of water meters, introduction of new methods of irrigation without water loss will substantially increase efficiency of water use. Besides new irrigation norms developed from agro-climatic, geographical and hydrological angle will significantly reduce water waste. Taking all this into account we assume that for irrigation agricultural lands in Georgia is necessary 6,0 km³ water, 5,5 km³ of which goes to Eastern Georgia on irrigation arable areas. To increase water supply in Eastern Georgian territory and its population is possible by means of new water reservoirs as the runoff of every river considerably exceeds the consumption volume. In conclusion, we should say that fresh water resources by which Georgia is that rich could be significant source for barter exchange and investment attraction. Certain volume of fresh water can be exported from Western Georgia quite trouble free, without bringing any damage to population and hydroecosystems. The precise volume of exported water per region/time and method/place of water consumption should be defined after the estimation of different hydroecosystems and detailed analyses of water balance of the corresponding territories.

Keywords: GIS, management, rivers, water resources

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Authors: Robert Smith, Omar Espinoza, Anna Pitta

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In the United States, trees felled in urban areas and wood generated through construction and demolition are primarily disposed of as low-value resources, such as biomass for energy, landscaping mulch, composting, or landfilled. An emerging industry makes use of these underutilized resources to produce high value-added products, with associated benefits for the environment, the local economy, and consumers. For the circular economy to be successful, markets must be created for sustainable, reusable natural materials. Research was carried out to increase the understanding of the marketing practices of urban and reclaimed wood industries. This paper presents the results of a nationwide survey of these companies. The results indicate that a majority of companies in this industry are small firms, operating for less than 10 years, which produce mostly to order and sell their products at comparatively higher prices than competing products made from virgin natural resources. Promotional messages included quality, aesthetics, and customization, conveyed through company webpages, word of mouth, and social media. Distribution channels used include direct sales, online sales, and retail sales. Partnerships are critical for effective raw material procurement. Respondents indicated optimistic growth expectations, despite barriers associated with urban and reclaimed wood materials and production.

Keywords: urban and reclaimed wood, circular economy, marketing, wood products

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Authors: Minakshi Jain, I. P. Singh

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The mountain system makes the one fifth of the world’s landscape and is the home to the 600 million people. Though hills and mountains contain about 10 percent of the total population of the country, yet almost half of the country’s population living in or adjacent to the mountain areas depend directly or indirectly on the resources of the hills. Mountain environments are essential to the survival of the global ecosystems, as they sustain the economy of India through its perennial river system and precious forest wealth. Hill areas, with distinct climate, diverse vegetation and valuable flora & fauna are distinguished primarily by unique eco-system, rich both in bio-diversity and visual resources. These areas have special significance in terms of environment and economy. Still the irony is that these mountain ecosystems are fragile and highly susceptible to disturbance, with a low ability to rebound and heal after damage. Hills are home to endangered species, biological diversity and an essential part of the ecosystem. They are extremely sensitive to any human related development. Natural systems are the most ignored in the hills. The way the cities and towns have encroached them today has the serious repercussions on the climate. Amidst immense resources and constraints of nature, the town had a fantastic diversity of cultural and ethnic characteristics nurtured through ages along river basin and valley strung across the length and breadth of this Himalayan setting.

Keywords: eco-system, bio-diversity, urban sprawl, vernacular landscape

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Authors: Atiwat Khatpibunchai, Taweesak Kritjaroen

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A social enterprise is the innovative hybrid organizations where its ultimate goal is to generate revenue and use it as a fund to solve the social and environmental problem. Although the evidence shows the clear value of economic, social and environmental aspects, the limitations of most of the social enterprises are the expanding impact of social and environmental aspects through the normal market mechanism. This is because the major sources of revenues of social enterprises derive from the business advocates who merely wish to support society and environment by using products and services of social enterprises rather than expect the satisfaction and the distinctive advantage of products and services. Thus, social enterprises cannot reach the achievement as other businesses do. The relevant concepts from the literature review revealed that dynamic capability is the ability to sense, integrate and reconfigure internal resources and utilize external resources to adapt to changing environments, create innovation and achieve competitive advantage. The objective of this research is to study the influence of dynamic capability that affects competitive advantage and sustainable performance, as well as to determine important elements of dynamic capability. The researchers developed a conceptual model from the related concepts and theories of dynamic capability. A conceptual model will support and show the influence of dynamic capability on competitive advantage and sustainable performance of social enterprises. The 230 organizations in South-East Asia served as participants in this study. The results of the study were analyzed by the structural equation model (SEM) and it was indicated that research model is consistent with empirical research. The results also demonstrated that dynamic capability has a direct and indirect influence on competitive advantage and sustainable performance. Moreover, it can be summarized that dynamic capability consists of the five elements: 1) the ability to sense an opportunity; 2) the ability to seize an opportunity; 3) the ability to integrate resources; 4) the ability to absorb resources; 5) the ability to create innovation. The study recommends that related sectors can use this study as a guideline to support and promote social enterprises. The focus should be pointed to the important elements of dynamic capability that are the development of the ability to transform existing resources in the organization and the ability to seize opportunity from changing market.

Keywords: dynamic capability, social enterprise, sustainable competitive advantage, sustainable performance

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Authors: Adel Elomri

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The notion of carbon footprinting is ever more widespread as companies are becoming increasingly aware that tackling carbon emissions and being seen to do so is a key issue to face governments, customers and other stakeholders’ pressures towards delivering environmentally friendly services and activities. In this contest, many firms are taking self-initiatives to reduce their own carbon emissions while some other are constrained to obey to different regulations/policies (e.g. carbon tax or carbon Cap) designed by higher authorities targeting a low-carbon environment. Using buyer-vendor framework, this paper provides some insights on how effective are these self-initiatives and regulatory policies when only concerning firms at the individual level and not the whole supply chain they are part of. We show that when firms individually engage in reducing their direct carbon emissions either under self-initiatives or regulatory policy, an opposite expected outcome resulting in a higher global supply chain emission can occur. This effect is referred to as the carbon seesaw effect. Moreover, we show that coordinating or centralizing the supply chain -contrary to what one may think at first- is not often the appropriate solution to get rid of this effect.

Keywords: carbon emissions, supply chain coordination, EOQ, sustainable operations

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Authors: N. W. Paul, S. Michl

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In our globalized world we need to appreciate the fact that questions of health and justice need to be addressed on a global scale, too. The way in which diverse governmental and non-governmental initiatives are trying to answer the need for humanitarian medical aid has long since been a visible result of globalized responsibility. While the intention of humanitarian medical aids seems to be evident, the allocation of resources has become more and more an ethical and societal challenge. With a rising number and growing dimension of humanitarian catastrophes around the globe the search for ethically justifiable ways to decide who might benefit from limited resources has become a pressing question. Rooted in theories of justice (Rawls) and concepts of social welfare (Sen) we developed and implemented a model for an ethically sound distribution of a limited annual budget for humanitarian care in one of the largest medical universities of Germany. Based on our long lasting experience with civil casualties of war (Afghanistan) and civil war (Libya) as well as with under- and uninsured and/or stateless patients we are now facing the on-going refugee crisis as our most recent challenge in terms of global health and justice. Against this background, the paper strives to a) explain key issues of humanitarian medical aid in the 21st century, b) explore the problem of rationing from an ethical point of view, c) suggest a tool for the rational allocation of scarce resources in humanitarian medical aid, d) present actual cases of humanitarian care that have been managed with our toolbox, and e) discuss the international applicability of our model beyond local contexts.

Keywords: humanitarian care, medical ethics, allocation, rationing

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Authors: R. Nagarani

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An intrinsic property of software in a real-world environment is its need to evolve, which is usually accompanied by the increase of software complexity and deterioration of software quality, making software maintenance a tough problem. Refactoring is regarded as an effective way to address this problem. Many refactoring approaches at the method and class level have been proposed. But the extent of research on software refactoring at the package level is less. This work presents a novel approach to refactor the package structures of object oriented software using genetic algorithm based community detection. It uses software networks to represent classes and their dependencies. It uses a constrained community detection algorithm to obtain the optimized community structures in software networks, which also correspond to the optimized package structures. It finally provides a list of classes as refactoring candidates by comparing the optimized package structures with the real package structures.

Keywords: community detection, complex network, genetic algorithm, package, refactoring

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Authors: Elijah Cavan

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In Major League Sports (MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL), it is the Front Office Staff (FOS) who make decisions about who plays for their respective team. The FOS bear the brunt of the responsibility for acquiring players through drafting, trading and signing players in free agency while typically contesting with maximum roster salary constraints. The players themselves are volatile assets of these teams- their value fluctuates with age and performance. A simple comparison can be made when viewing players as assets. The problem here is similar to that of optimizing your investment portfolio. The The goal is ultimately to maximize your periodic returns while tolerating a fixed risk (degree of uncertainty/ potential loss). Each franchise may value assets differently, and some may only tolerate lower risk levels- these are examples of factors that introduce additional constraints into the model. In this talk, we will detail the mathematical formulation of this problem as a constrained optimization problem- which can be solved with classical machine learning methods but is also well posed as a problem to be solved on quantum computers

Keywords: optimization, financial mathematics, sports analytics, simulated annealing

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Authors: Melissa Houston

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Political pressures, financial restraints, and recent legislation has led to administrators’ at academic institutions to rely upon online education as a viable means for delivering education to students anytime and anywhere. Administrators at academic institutions have utilized online education as a way to ensure that academic continuity takes place while campuses are physically closed or are recovering from damages during and after disaster. There is a gap in the research as to how to best train faculty for academic continuity during and after disasters occur. The lack of available research regarding how faculty members at academic institutions prepared themselves prior to a disaster served as a major rationale for this study. The problem that was addressed in this phenomenological study was to identify the training needed by faculty to provide academic continuity during and after times of disaster. The purpose of the phenomenological study was to provide further knowledge and understanding of the training needed by faculty to provide academic continuity after a disaster. Data collection from this study will help human resource professionals as well as administrators of academic institutions to better prepare faculty to provide academic continuity in the future. Participants were recruited on LinkedIn and were qualified as having been faculty who taught traditional courses during or after a disaster. Faculty members were asked a series of open-ended questions to gain understanding of their experiences of how they acquired training for themselves for academic continuity during and after a disaster. The findings from this study showed that faculty members identified assistance needed including professional development in the form of training and support, communication, and technological resources in order to provide academic continuity. The first conclusion from this study was that academic institutions need to support their students, staff and faculty with disaster training and the resources needed to provide academic continuity during and after disasters. The second conclusion from this study is that while disasters and other academic institution incidents are occurring more frequently, limited funding and the push for online education has created limited resources for academic institutions. The need to create partnerships and consortiums with other academic institutions and communities is crucial for the success and sustainability of academic institutions. Through these partnerships and consortiums academic institutions can share resources, knowledge, and training.

Keywords: training, faculty, disaster, academic continuity

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Authors: Nicolae Bold, Daniel Nijloveanu

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The idea of cropping-system is a method used by farmers. It is an environmentally-friendly method, protecting the natural resources (soil, water, air, nutritive substances) and increase the production at the same time, taking into account some crop particularities. The combination of this powerful method with the concepts of genetic algorithms results into a possibility of generating sequences of crops in order to form a rotation. The usage of this type of algorithms has been efficient in solving problems related to optimization and their polynomial complexity allows them to be used at solving more difficult and various problems. In our case, the optimization consists in finding the most profitable rotation of cultures. One of the expected results is to optimize the usage of the resources, in order to minimize the costs and maximize the profit. In order to achieve these goals, a genetic algorithm was designed. This algorithm ensures the finding of several optimized solutions of cropping-systems possibilities which have the highest profit and, thus, which minimize the costs. The algorithm uses genetic-based methods (mutation, crossover) and structures (genes, chromosomes). A cropping-system possibility will be considered a chromosome and a crop within the rotation is a gene within a chromosome. Results about the efficiency of this method will be presented in a special section. The implementation of this method would bring benefits into the activity of the farmers by giving them hints and helping them to use the resources efficiently.

Keywords: chromosomes, cropping, genetic algorithm, genes

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Authors: Szu-Hua Wang

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Urban ecosystems, as complex coupled human-environment systems, contain abundant natural resources for breeding natural assets and, at the same time, attract urban assets and consume natural resources, triggered by urban development. Land use change illustrates the interaction between human activities and environments factually. However, IPCC (2014) announces that land use change and urbanization due to human activities are the major cause of climate change, leading to serious impacts on urban ecosystem resilience and risk. For this reason, risk assessment and resilience analysis are the keys for responding to climate change on urban ecosystems. Urban spatial planning can guide urban development by land use planning, transportation planning, and environmental planning and affect land use allocation and human activities by building major constructions and protecting important national land resources simultaneously. Urban spatial planning can aggravate climate change and, on the other hand, mitigate and adapt climate change. Research on effects of spatial planning on land use change and climate change is one of intense issues currently. Therefore, this research focuses on developing frameworks for risk assessment and resilience analysis from the aspect of ecosystem based on typhoon precipitation in Taipei area. The integrated method of risk assessment and resilience analysis will be also addressed for applying spatial planning practice and sustainable development.

Keywords: ecosystem, land use change, risk analysis, resilience

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Authors: E. Baltas, E. Feloni, G. Bariamis

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The operation of a network of hydrometeorological-hydrometric stations is basic infrastructure for the management of water resources, as well as, for flood protection. The assessment of water resources potential led to the necessity of adoption management practices including a multi-criteria analysis for the optimum design of the region’s station network. This research work aims at the optimisation of a new/existing network, using GIS methods. The planning of optimum network stations is based on the guidelines of international organizations such as World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The uniform spatial distribution of the stations, the drainage basin for the hydrometric stations and criteria concerning the low terrain slope, the accessibility to the stations and proximity to hydrological interest sites, were taken into consideration for its development. The abovementioned methodology has been implemented for two different areas the Florina municipality and the Argolis area in Greece, and comparison of the results has been conducted.

Keywords: GIS, hydrometeorological, hydrometric, network, optimisation

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Authors: Mika Kaufman

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Behavioral health in school-age children is a great concern. Negative behaviors can affect mental and physical health and, if ignored, can lead to further problems later in life. Rural communities often lack resources for counselors, social workers, and mental health care in the hopes of intervening with children who exhibit negative behaviors. Because of this, schools in rural communities are more likely to have children with behavioral issues. Prevention programs to recognize and address these behavioral concerns can educate teachers about mental health, different negative behaviors that students might exhibit, and how to manage those behaviors and engage with students in a positive way.

Keywords: prevention programs, behavioral health, resources for teachers, rural schools

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Authors: Rakesh Dubey, Vaishali Bahl, Dalveer Kaur

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The spiralling urge for high rate data transmission over wireless mediums needs intelligent use of electromagnetic resources considering restrictions like power ingestion, spectrum competence, robustness against multipath propagation and implementation intricacy. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a capable technique for next generation wireless communication systems. For such high rate data transfers there is requirement of proper allocation of resources like power and capacity amongst the sub channels. This paper illustrates various available methods of allocating power and the capacity requirement with the constraint of Shannon limit.

Keywords: Additive White Gaussian Noise, Multi-Carrier Modulation, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Water Filling

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Authors: B. Sanchez, D. Zambrana-Vasquez, J. Fresner, C. Krenn, F. Morea, L. Mercatelli

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Local administrations are facing established targets on sustainable development from different disciplines at the heart of different city departments. Nevertheless, some of these targets, such as CO₂ reduction, relate to two or more disciplines, as it is the case of sustainable mobility and energy plans (SUMP & SECAP/SEAP). This opens up the possibility to efficiently cooperate among different city departments and to create and develop harmonized spatial plans by using available resources and together achieving more ambitious goals in cities. The steps of the harmonization processes developed result in the identification of areas to achieve common strategic objectives. Harmonization, in other words, helps different departments in local authorities to work together and optimize the use or resources by sharing the same vision, involving key stakeholders, and promoting common data assessment to better optimize the resources. A methodology to promote resilient city planning via the harmonization of sustainable mobility and energy plans is presented in this paper. In order to validate the proposed methodology, a representative city engaged in an innovation process in efficient spatial planning is used as a case study. The harmonization process of sustainable mobility and energy plans covers identifying matching targets between different fields, developing different spatial plans with dual benefit and common indicators guaranteeing the continuous improvement of the harmonized plans. The proposed methodology supports local administrations in consistent spatial planning, considering both energy efficiency and sustainable mobility. Thus, municipalities can use their human and economic resources efficiently. This guarantees an efficient upgrade of land use plans integrating energy and mobility aspects in order to achieve sustainability targets, as well as to improve the wellbeing of its citizens.

Keywords: integrated multi-sector planning, spatial plans harmonization, sustainable energy and climate action plan, sustainable urban mobility plan

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Authors: Ana Maria De Azevedo

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We are living a remarkable period, responsible for the thriving of the human population to unprecedented levels. Still, it is empirically obvious that sustaining such a huge population puts a tremendous pressure on our planet. Once Land resources grow scarcer, there is a mounting pressure to find alternatives to support basic human needs elsewhere. Occupying most of our planet, it’s therefore natural that, is not a so distant future, humankind look for such basic subsistence means at the Ocean. Thus, once the Ocean becomes essential to Human subsistence, it is predictable it's moving to the foreground of Geopolitics. Both future technologies and uses of the Ocean, as bidding for the exploration of its resources away from the natural territory of influence of a Country, are susceptible of raising the risk of conflict between traditional political adversaries and/or the dilemma of having to balance economic interests, with various security and defense concerns. Those empirical observations suggest the need to further research on this perspective shift of the main Geopolitical axis to the Ocean, the new sources of conflict that can result thereon, and how to address them. The author suggests a systematic analysis of this problematic, to attain a political and legal international consensus, namely on what concerns updating of the 'United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea' of 10 December 1982, and/or its annexes. To proceed with the present research, the primary analysis was based on a quantitative observation, but reasoning thereon relied essentially on a qualitative process of prospective scenarios assessment.

Keywords: marine resources, ocean geopolitics, security and defense, sustainable development

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Authors: Idil Kanter Otcu

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Nowadays, due to the growing problems of energy supply and the drastic reduction of natural non-renewable resources, the development of new applications in the energy sector and steps towards greater efficiency in energy consumption are required. Since buildings account for a large share of energy consumption, increasing the structural density of buildings causes an increase in energy consumption. This increase in energy consumption means that energy efficiency approaches to building design and the integration of new systems using emerging technologies become necessary in order to curb this consumption. As new systems for productive usage of generated energy are developed, buildings that require less energy to operate, with rational use of resources, need to be developed. One solution for reducing the energy requirements of buildings is through landscape planning, design and application. Requirements such as heating, cooling and lighting can be met with lower energy consumption through planting design, which can help to achieve more efficient and rational use of resources. Within this context, rather than a planting design which considers only the ecological and aesthetic features of plants, these considerations should also extend to spatial organization whereby the relationship between the site and open spaces in the context of climatic elements and planting designs are taken into account. In this way, the planting design can serve an additional purpose. In this study, a landscape design which takes into consideration location, local climate morphology and solar angle will be illustrated on a sample building project.

Keywords: energy efficiency, landscape design, plant design, xeriscape landscape

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Authors: Simon R. Melchioly, Ibrahimu C. Mjemah, Isaac M. Marobhe

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The main objective of this research was to identify new potential sources of groundwater resources using geophysical methods and also to demarcate the saltwater - freshwater interface. Kilwa Kisiwani Island geologically is covered mostly by Quaternary alluvial sediments, sand, and gravel. The geophysical techniques employed during the research include Vertical Electrical Sounding (VES), Earth Resistivity Tomography (ERT), and Transient Electromagnetics (TEM). Two-dimensional interpolated geophysical results show that there exist freshwater lenses formations that are potential aquifers on the Island with resistivity values ranging from 11.68 Ωm to 46.71 Ωm. These freshwater lenses are underlain by formation with brackish water in which the resistivity values are varying between 3.89 Ωm and 1.6 Ωm. Saltwater with resistivity less than 1 Ωm is found at the bottom being overlaid by brackish saturated formation. VES resistivity results show that 89% (16 out of 18) of the VES sites are potential for groundwater resources drilling while TEM results indicate that 75% (12 out of 16) of TEM sites are potential for groundwater borehole drilling. The recommended drilling depths for potential sites in Kilwa Kisiwani Island show that the maximum depth is 25 m and the minimum being 10 m below ground surface. The aquifer structure in Kilwa Kisiwani Island is a shallow, unconfined freshwater lenses floating above the seawater and the maximum thickness of the aquifer is 25 m for few selected VES and TEM sites while the minimum thickness being 10 m.

Keywords: groundwater, hydrogeophysical, Kilwa Kisiwani, freshwater, saltwater, resistivity

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Authors: Yufen Qin

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Topic-to-Essay generation is a challenging task in Natural language processing, which aims to generate novel, diverse, and topic-related text based on user input. Previous research has overlooked the generation of articles under the constraints of event elements, resulting in issues such as incomplete event elements and logical inconsistencies in the generated results. To fill this gap, this paper proposes an event-constrained approach for a topic-to-essay generation that enforces the completeness of event elements during the generation process. Additionally, a language model is employed to verify the logical consistency of the generated results. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves a better BLEU-2 score and performs better than the baseline in terms of subjective evaluation on a real dataset, indicating its capability to generate higher-quality topic-related text.

Keywords: event element, language model, natural language processing, topic-to-essay generation.

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Authors: Feng Yin

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Clouds are inevitable contaminants in optical satellite imagery, and prevent the satellite imaging systems from acquiring clear view of the earth surface. The presence of clouds in satellite imagery bring negative influences for remote sensing land resources investigation. As a consequence, detecting the locations of clouds in satellite imagery is an essential preprocessing step, and further remove the existing clouds is crucial for the application of imagery. In this paper, a multi-temporal based satellite imagery cloud detection and removal method is proposed, which will be used for large-scale land resource investigation. The proposed method is mainly composed of four steps. First, cloud masks are generated for cloud contaminated images by single temporal cloud detection based on multiple spectral features. Then, a cloud-free reference image of target areas is synthesized by weighted averaging time-series images in which cloud pixels are ignored. Thirdly, the refined cloud detection results are acquired by multi-temporal analysis based on the reference image. Finally, detected clouds are removed via multi-temporal linear regression. The results of a case application in Hubei province indicate that the proposed multi-temporal cloud detection and removal method is effective and promising for large-scale land resource investigation.

Keywords: cloud detection, cloud remove, multi-temporal imagery, land resources investigation

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Authors: K. R. Balabiyev, A. O. Kaipbayeva

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The article discusses the legal framework of the government’s environmental function and analyzes the role of the national policy in protection of wetlands. The problem is of interest for it deals with the most important branch of economy–utilization of Kazakhstan’s natural resources, protection of health and environmental well being of the population. Development of a long-term environmental program addressing the protection of wetlands represents the final stage of the government’s environmental policy, and is a relatively new function for the public administration system. It appeared due to the environmental measures that require immediate decisions to be taken. It is an integral part of the effort in the field of management of state-owned natural resource, as well as of the measures aimed at efficient management of natural resources to avoid their early depletion or contamination.

Keywords: environmental focus, government’s environmental function, protection of wetlands, Kazakhstan

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Authors: Dimitri Golenko-Ginzburg

Abstract:

A CPM network project with deterministic activity durations, in which activities require homogenous resources with fixed capacities, is considered. The problem is to determine the optimal schedule of starting times for all network activities within their maximal allowable limits (in order not to exceed the network's critical time) to minimize the maximum required resources for the project at any point in time. In case when a non-critical activity may start only at discrete moments with the pregiven time span, the problem becomes NP-complete and an optimal solution may be obtained via a look-over algorithm. For the case when a look-over requires much computational time an approximate algorithm is suggested. The algorithm's performance ratio, i.e., the relative accuracy error, is determined. Experimentation has been undertaken to verify the suggested algorithm.

Keywords: resource smoothing problem, CPM network, lookover algorithm, lexicographical order, approximate algorithm, accuracy estimate

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Authors: Fahad Ahmed Qureshi

Abstract:

There were abundant renowned financial markets in Pre-Islamic Arabs. Most of those were patterned and settled during pre-particularized sunshine. Those markets were classified either as vernacular markets helping the neighboring clans, or habitual markets that people sojourned to from all articulations of the Arabian Peninsula, such as Okaz near Mecca. Some of those markets had leading significance due to their geographical positions, such as Prime market of Eden, because of their entanglement in international trade i.e. with the markets of Sub-Continent, Abyssinia, Persia and China. Other markets such as Market of Yamamah annex its gist from being situated on the caravan crossroads. Islamic worldview and Islamic epistemology base of Financial Market’s realistic theory, pragmatic model and operative approach is moderately constrained in terms of its growth. The existent situation only parasol the form of accommodative-modification and splendid-methodologies, which due to depleted and decorous endeavor in explaining Islamic financial market theoretically. This is the demand of time that particular studies should be conduct to magnify the devours in developing theoretical framework for Islamic Financial Market.

Keywords: Islam, financial market, history, research, product development

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Authors: Kholil Kholil, Aniwidayati

Abstract:

MDS (Multi-Dimensional Scaling) is one method that has been widely used to evaluate the use of natural resources. By using Raffish software tool, we will able to analyze sustainability level of the natural resources use. This paper will discuss the level of sustainability of the reservoir using MDS (Multi-Dimensional Scaling) based on five dimensions: (1) Ecology & Layout, (2) Economics, (3) Social & Culture, (4) Regulations & Institutional, and (5) Infrastructure and Technology. MDS analysis results show that the dimension of ecological and layout, institutional and the regulation are lack of sustainability due to the low index score of 45.76 and 42.24. While for the economic, social and culture, and infrastructure and technology dimension reach each score of 63.12, 64.42, and 68.64 (only the sufficient sustainability category). It means that the sustainability performance of Cirata Reservoir seriously threatened.

Keywords: MDS, cirata reservoir, carrying capacity, water quality, sustainable development, sedimentation, sustainability index

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Authors: F.I. Adeosun, A.A. Idowu, D.O. Odulate,

Abstract:

The aims of carrying out this experiment were to determine the water quality and to investigate if the various human and ecological activities around the river have any effect on the physico-chemical parameters of the river’s resources with a view to effectively utilizing these resources. Water samples were collected from two stations on the surface water of Lower Ogun River Akomoje biweekly for a period of 5 months (January to May, 2011). Results showed that temperature ranged between 24.0-30.7oC, transparency (0.53-1.00 m), depth (1.0-3.88 m), alkalinity (4.5-14.5 mg/l), nitrates (0.235-5.445 mg/l), electrical conductivity (140-190µS/cm), dissolved oxygen (4.12-5.32 mg/l), phosphates (0.02 mg/l-0.7 5 mg/l) and total dissolved solids (70-95).The parameters at the deep end (station A) accounted for the bulk of the highest values; there was however no significant differences between the stations at P˂0.05 with the exception of transparency, depth, total dissolved solids and electrical conductivity. The phosphate value was relatively low which accounted for the low productivity and high transparency. The results obtained from the physico-chemical parameters agreed with the limits set by both national and international bodies for drinking and fish growth. It was however observed that during the period of data collection, catch was low and this could be attributed to low level of primary productivity due to the quality of physico-chemical parameters of the water. It is recommended that the agencies involved in the management of the river should put the right policies in place that will effectively enhance proper exploitation of the water resources. More research should also be carried out on the physico-chemical parameters since this work only studied the water for five months.

Keywords: physical, chemical, parameters, water quality, Ogunriver

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