Search results for: centralized collaborative transportation

Authors: Ali Mohammed Ali Lmbash

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The global refugee crisis points to the vital need for sustainable and resistant solutions to different kinds of problems for displaced persons all over the world. Among the myriads of sustainable concerns, however, there are diverse considerations including energy consumption, waste management, water access, and resiliency of structures. Our research aims to develop distinct ideas for sustainable architecture given the exigent problems in disaster-threatened areas starting with the Hatay Refugee camp in Turkey where the majority of the camp dwellers are Syrian refugees. Commencing community-based participatory research which focuses on the socio-environmental issues of displaced populations, this study will apply two approaches with a specific focus on the Hatay region. The initial experiment uses Richter's predictive model and simulations to forecast earthquake outcomes in refugee campers. The result could be useful in implementing architectural design tactics that enhance structural reliability and ensure the security and safety of shelters through earthquakes. In the second experiment a model is generated which helps us in predicting the quality of the existing water sources and since we understand how greatly water is vital for the well-being of humans, we do it. This research aims to enable camp administrators to employ forward-looking practices while managing water resources and thus minimizing health risks as well as building resilience of the refugees in the Hatay area. On the other side, this research assesses other sustainability problems of Hatay Refugee Camp as well. As energy consumption becomes the major issue, housing developers are required to consider energy-efficient designs as well as feasible integration of renewable energy technologies to minimize the environmental impact and improve the long-term sustainability of housing projects. Waste management is given special attention in this case by imposing recycling initiatives and waste reduction measures to reduce the pace of environmental degradation in the camp's land area. As well, study gives an insight into the social and economic reality of the camp, investigating the contribution of initiatives such as urban agriculture or vocational training to the enhancement of livelihood and community empowerment. In a similar fashion, this study combines the latest research with practical experience in order to contribute to the continuing discussion on sustainable architecture during disaster relief, providing recommendations and info that can be adapted on every scale worldwide. Through collaborative efforts and a dedicated sustainability approach, we can jointly get to the root of the cause and work towards a far more robust and equitable society.

Keywords: smart architecture, Hatay Camp, sustainability, machine learning.

Procedia PDF Downloads 58

Authors: Trishita Ray, Ashok Perka, Arnab Karani, M. Shome, Saurabh Kundu

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Line pipe steels are used for long distance transportation of crude oil and gas under extreme environmental conditions. Welding is necessary to lay large scale pipelines. Coarse Grain Heat Affected Zone (CGHAZ) of a welded joint exhibits worst toughness because of excessive grain growth and brittle microstructures like bainite and martensite, leading to early failure. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate microstructures and properties of the CGHAZ for different welding heat inputs. In the present study, CGHAZ for two heat inputs of 10 kJ/cm and 50 kJ/cm were simulated in Gleeble 3800, and the microstructures were investigated in detail by means of Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Electron Backscattered Diffraction (EBSD). Charpy Impact Tests were also done to evaluate the impact properties. High heat input was characterized with very low toughness and massive prior austenite grains. With the crystallographic information from EBSD, the area of a single prior austenite grain was traced out for both the welding conditions. Analysis of the prior austenite grains showed the formation of high angle boundaries between the crystallographic packets. Effect of these packet boundaries on secondary cleavage crack propagation was discussed. It was observed that in the low heat input condition, formation of finer packets with a criss-cross morphology inside prior austenite grains was effective in crack arrest whereas, in the high heat input condition, formation of larger packets with higher volume of low angle boundaries failed to resist crack propagation resulting in a brittle fracture. Thus, the characteristics in a crystallographic packet and impact properties are related and should be controlled to obtain optimum properties.

Keywords: coarse grain heat affected zone, crystallographic packet, toughness, line pipe steel

Procedia PDF Downloads 245

Authors: Liliana Gomez Cardona, Echo Parent-Racine, Joy Outerbridge, Arlene Laliberté, Outi Linnaranta

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Suicide rates among Inuit in Nunavik are six to eleven times larger than the Canadian average. The colonization, religious missions, residential schools as well as economic and political marginalization are factors that have challenged the well-being and mental health of these populations. In psychiatry, screening for mental illness is often done using questionnaires with which the patient is expected to respond how often he/she has certain symptoms. However, the Indigenous view of mental wellbeing may not fit well with this approach. Moreover, biomedical treatments do not always meet the needs of Indigenous peoples because they do not understand the culture and traditional healing methods that persist in many communities. Assess whether the questionnaires used to measure symptoms, commonly used in psychiatry are appropriate and culturally safe for the Inuit in Quebec. Identify the most appropriate tool to assess and promote wellbeing and follow the process necessary to improve its cultural sensitivity and safety for the Inuit population. Qualitative, collaborative, and participatory action research project which respects First Nations and Inuit protocols and the principles of ownership, control, access, and possession (OCAP). Data collection based on five focus groups with stakeholders working with these populations and members of Indigenous communities. Thematic analysis of the data collected and emerging through an advisory group that led a revision of the content, use, and cultural and conceptual relevance of the instruments. The questionnaires measuring psychiatric symptoms face significant limitations in the local indigenous context. We present the factors that make these tools not relevant among Inuit. Although the scale called Growth and Empowerment Measure (GEM) was originally developed among Indigenous in Australia, the Inuit in Quebec found that this tool comprehends critical aspects of their mental health and wellbeing more respectfully and accurately than questionnaires focused on measuring symptoms. We document the process of cultural adaptation of this tool which was supported by community members to create a culturally safe tool that helps in resilience and empowerment. The cultural adaptation of the GEM provides valuable information about the factors affecting wellbeing and contributes to mental health promotion. This process improves mental health services by giving health care providers useful information about the Inuit population and their clients. We believe that integrating this tool in interventions can help create a bridge to improve communication between the Indigenous cultural perspective of the patient and the biomedical view of health care providers. Further work is needed to confirm the clinical utility of this tool in psychological and psychiatric intervention along with social and community services.

Keywords: cultural adaptation, cultural safety, empowerment, Inuit, mental health, Nunavik, resiliency

Procedia PDF Downloads 119

Authors: Mokhlisur Rahman

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Consumers' understanding of the products depends on what levels of information the advertisement contains. Consumers' attitudes vary widely depending on factors such as their level of environmental awareness, their perception of the company's motives, and the perceived effectiveness of the advertising campaign. Considering the growing eco-consciousness among consumers and their concern for the environment, strategies for green advertising have become equally significant for companies to attract new consumers. It is important to understand consumers' habits of purchasing, knowledge, and attitudes regarding eco-friendly products depending on promotion because of the limitless options of the products in the market. Additionally, encouraging consumers to buy sustainable products requires a platform that can message the world that being a stakeholder in sustainability is possible if consumers show eco-friendly behavior on a larger scale. Social media platforms provide an excellent atmosphere to promote companies' sustainable efforts to be connected engagingly with their potential consumers. The unique strategies of green advertising use techniques to carry information and rewards for the consumers. This study aims to understand the consumer behavior and effectiveness of green advertising by experimenting in collaboration with three companies in promoting their eco-friendly products using green designs on the products. The experiment uses three sustainable personalized offerings, Nike shoes, H&M t-shirts, and Patagonia school bags. The experiment uses a pretest and posttest design. 300 randomly selected participants take part in this experiment and survey through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Nike, H&M, and Patagonia share the post of the experiment on their social media homepages with a video advertisement for the three products. The consumers participate in a pre-experiment online survey before making a purchase decision to assess their attitudes and behavior toward eco-friendly products. The audio-only feature explains the product's information, like their use of recycled materials, their manufacturing methods, sustainable packaging, and their impact on the environment during the purchase while the consumer watches the product video. After making a purchase, consumers take a post-experiment survey to know their perception and behavior toward eco-friendly products. For the data analysis, descriptive statistical tools mean, standard deviation, and frequencies measure the pre- and post-experiment survey data. The inferential statistical tool paired sample t-test measures the difference in consumers' behavior and attitudes between pre-purchase and post-experiment survey results. This experiment provides consumers ample time to consider many aspects rather than impulses. This research provides valuable insights into how companies can adopt sustainable and eco-friendly products. The result set a target for the companies to achieve a sustainable production goal that ultimately supports companies' profit-making and promotes consumers' well-being. This empowers consumers to make informed choices about the products they purchase and support their companies of interest.

Keywords: green-advertising, sustainability, consumer-behavior, social media

Procedia PDF Downloads 87

Authors: Akhil Teja Kambhampati, Mark A. Hoffman

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In the realm of infectious disease research, airborne viral transmission stands as a paramount concern due to its pivotal role in propagating pathogens within densely populated regions. However, amidst this landscape, the phenomenon of hygroscopic growth within respiratory bioaerosols remains relatively underexplored. Unlike pure water aerosols, the unique composition of respiratory bioaerosols leads to varied evaporation rates and hygroscopic growth patterns, influenced by factors such as ambient humidity, temperature, and airflow. This study addresses this gap by focusing on the behaviors of single respiratory bioaerosol utilizing salinity to induce saliva-like hygroscopic behavior. By employing mass, momentum, and energy equations, the study unveils the intricate interplay between evaporation and hygroscopic growth over time. The numerical model enables temporal analysis of bioaerosol characteristics, including size, temperature, and trajectory. The analysis reveals that due to evaporation, there is a reduction in initial size, which shortens the lifetime and distance traveled. However, when hygroscopic growth begins to influence the bioaerosol size, the rate of size reduction slows significantly. The interplay between evaporation and hygroscopic growth results in bioaerosol size within the inhalation range of humans and prolongs the traveling distance. Findings procured from the analysis are crucial for understanding the spread of infectious diseases, especially in high-risk environments such as healthcare facilities and public transportation systems. By elucidating the nuanced behaviors of respiratory bioaerosols, this study seeks to inform the development of more effective preventative strategies against pathogens propagation in the air, thereby contributing to public health efforts on a global scale.

Keywords: airborne viral transmission, high-risk environments, hygroscopic growth, evaporation, numerical modeling, pathogen propagation, preventative strategies, public health, respiratory bioaerosols

Procedia PDF Downloads 41

Authors: Quentin Lobbe, David Chavalarias, Alexandre Delanoe

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The ICT revolution has given birth to an unprecedented world of digital traces and has impacted a wide number of knowledge-driven domains such as science, education or policy making. Nowadays, we are daily fueled by unlimited flows of articles, blogs, messages, tweets, etc. The internet itself can thus be considered as an unsteady hyper-textual environment where websites emerge and expand every day. But there are structures inside knowledge. A given text can always be studied in relation to others or in light of a specific socio-cultural context. By way of their textual traces, human beings are calling each other out: hypertext citations, retweets, vocabulary similarity, etc. We are in fact the architects of a giant web of elements of knowledge whose structures and shapes convey their own information. The global shapes of these digital traces represent a source of collective knowledge and the question of their visualization remains an opened challenge. How can we explore, browse and interact with such shapes? In order to navigate across these growing constellations of words and texts, interdisciplinary innovations are emerging at the crossroad between fields of social and computational sciences. In particular, complex systems approaches make it now possible to reconstruct the hidden structures of textual knowledge by means of multi-scale objects of research such as semantic maps and phylomemies. The phylomemy reconstruction is a generic method related to the co-word analysis framework. Phylomemies aim to reveal the temporal dynamics of large corpora of textual contents by performing inter-temporal matching on extracted knowledge domains in order to identify their conceptual lineages. This study aims to address the question of visualizing the global shapes of online political discussions related to the French presidential and legislative elections of 2017. We aim to build phylomemies on top of a dedicated collection of thousands of French political tweets enriched with archived contemporary news web articles. Our goal is to reconstruct the temporal evolution of online debates fueled by each political community during the elections. To that end, we want to introduce an iterative data exploration methodology implemented and tested within the free software Gargantext. There we combine synchronic and diachronic axis of visualization to reveal the dynamics of our corpora of tweets and web pages as well as their inner syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships. In doing so, we aim to provide researchers with innovative methodological means to explore online semantic landscapes in a collaborative and reflective way.

Keywords: online political debate, French election, hyper-text, phylomemy

Procedia PDF Downloads 186

Authors: C. Nathanailides, P. Logothetis, G. Kanlis S. Anastasiou, L. Kokokiris, P. Mpeza

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Farmed Red porgy (Pagrus pagrus) is one of the “new candidate fish species” for the diversification of Mediterranean aquaculture which is predomintly based on the cultivation of the European sea bass, (Dicenfrarchus labrax), and the gilthead sea bream, (Sparus aurata). The quality of farmed red porgy (Pagrus pagrus) was investigated with samples obtained from the local fish market in the region of Igoumenitsa, NW Greece. Sample of the fish (ungutted and with scales) were purchased from three local fish mongers and transported to the laboratory within few minutes in foamed polystyrene boxes in ice. The average weight of whole fish ranged between 271-289g. A sample of the fish flesh taken from the upper epaxial region was transferred aseptically to a stomacher bag containing sterile Buffered Peptone Water solution (0.1%) and homogenized. After serial dilutions in 0.1% peptone water, the homogenates were spread on the surface of agar plates. Total viable counts (TVC) were determined using plate count agar after incubation at 30 oC for 3 days. The quality attributes monitored during the present work included bacterial load (total mesophilic) and the pH of the flesh. There was a marginal increase in the price of fresh red porgy sold during the summer time, with prices ranging, over a period of four seasons, from 5.85 to 7.5 per kilo. The results of the microbiological analysis indicate that with the exception of summer samples (which exhibited 5.23 (±0.13) log cfu/g), the bacterial load remained well below the legal limits and was around 3.1 log cfu/g. The pH values varied between 6.54 and 6.69. The results indicate a possible influence of season on the bacterial load of fish sold in the market. Nevertheless, the parameters investigated in the present work indicate that the bacteria load was well below the legal limit and that fish were sold within few days after harvesting. The peak of bacterial load in the summer samples may be a result of a post-harvesting contamination of the farmed fish and temperature fluctuations during handling and transportation.

Keywords: fish quality, marketing, aquaculture, Pagrus pagrus

Procedia PDF Downloads 683

Authors: Zimu Li, Zheng Wan

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The Suez Canal plays an important role in global shipping networks and is one of the most frequently used waterways in the world. The 2021 canal obstruction by ship Ever Given in March 2021, however, completed blocked the Suez Canal for a week and caused significant disruption to world trade. Therefore, it is very important to quantitatively analyze the impact of the accident on the robustness of the global shipping network. However, the current research on maritime transportation networks is usually limited to local or small-scale networks in a certain region. Based on the complex network theory, this study establishes a global shipping complex network covering 2713 nodes and 137830 edges by using the real trajectory data of the global marine transport ship automatic identification system in 2018. At the same time, two attack modes, deliberate (Suez Canal Blocking) and random, are defined to calculate the changes in network node degree, eccentricity, clustering coefficient, network density, network isolated nodes, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality under the two attack modes, and quantitatively analyze the actual impact of Suez Canal Blocking on the robustness of global shipping network. The results of the network robustness analysis show that Suez Canal blocking was more destructive to the shipping network than random attacks of the same scale. The network connectivity and accessibility decreased significantly, and the decline decreased with the distance between the port and the canal, showing the phenomenon of distance attenuation. This study further analyzes the impact of the blocking of the Suez Canal on Chinese ports and finds that the blocking of the Suez Canal significantly interferes withChina's shipping network and seriously affects China's normal trade activities. Finally, the impact of the global supply chain is analyzed, and it is found that blocking the canal will seriously damage the normal operation of the global supply chain.

Keywords: global shipping networks, ship AIS trajectory data, main channel, complex network, eigenvalue change

Procedia PDF Downloads 184

Authors: Djeddi Khaled, Houssou Hind, Miloudi Abdelatif, Rabah Siham

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Camels play a vital role as multipurpose animals, providing milk meat and serving as a means of transportation. They serve as a financial reserve for pastoralists and hold significant cultural and social value. Camel milk, known for its exceptional nutritional properties, is considered a valuable substitute for human milk. However, udder infections, particularly mastitis, pose significant challenges to camel farming. Clinical and subclinical mastitis can lead to substantial economic losses. Mastitis, especially the subclinical form, is a persistent and prevalent condition affecting milk hygiene and quality in dairy camels. This review offers insights into the prevalence and risk factors associated with subclinical mastitis in camels. The prevalence of subclinical mastitis in dairy camels was found to range from 9.28% to 87.78%. Major pathogens responsible for camel mastitis include Staphylococcus aureus, Coagulase-negative Staphylococcus, Streptococcus agalactiae, Streptococcus dysgalactiae, Escherichia coli, Micrococcus spp, Pasteurella haemolytica and Corynebacterium spp. The study outlines key risk factors contributing to camel mastitis, emphasizing factors such as severe tick infestation, age, stage of lactation, parity, body condition score, skin lesion on the teats or udders, anti-suckling devices, previous history of the udder, conformation of the udder, breed, unhygienic milking practices, production system, amongst others have been reported to be important in the prevalence of subclinical mastitis. This comprehensive overview provides valuable insights into the multifaceted aspects of camel mastitis, encompassing prevalent bacterial pathogens and diverse risk factors. The findings underscore the importance of holistic management practices, emphasizing hygiene, health monitoring, and targeted interventions to ensure the well-being and productivity of camels in various agro-pastoral contexts.

Keywords: bacterial pathogens, camel, mastitis, risk factors

Procedia PDF Downloads 83

Authors: Sara S. Fouad, Omneya Messallam

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In 1818, a seventy-five kilometer long canal was dug (called the Mahmoudiyah canal) connecting between Alexandria city in Egypt and the western branch of the Nile. It was a productive resource and vital to its environment, context, transportation, and recreation. It played a significant role in people’s lives and Alexandria city’s shape. The canal, which was the main vein of goods’ transporting from Alexandria’s seaport to the different parts of Egypt, was still in use today as a major source of clear water in the city. But nowadays, Mahmoudiyah canal is converting into ‘dead waterway’. The canal became sources of pollution as a result of solid and industrial waste thus causing many diseases, destroying communities and biodiversity, with urban invasion, the loss of community aesthetic value and healthy environment. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an urban strategy, as a solution to revive the forgotten canal, through recreating a cultural promenade on its shore. The main aim of this research is to formulate decent quality of life, unpolluted space, an area gathering the city space for nature, tourism and investments. As a case study, this paper investigates Mahmoudiyah canal through urban and ecological analyses, aiming to design an urban strategy for reviving it by creating a cultural promenade enriched with public spaces and green areas, which can most probably enhance the quality of life, city re-living and development. Community participation is also considered as vital and intrinsic implementation stage. The empirical research involved using several data assembly methods such as interviews, mental mapping, structural observations and questionnaires. The paper ends with a set of conclusions leading to proposals for the Mahmoudiyah canal revitalization considering the complex challenges and processes of sustainable regeneration focusing on city’s rehabilitation and lost identity.

Keywords: Mahmoudiyah canal, community aesthetic value, city re-living, cultural promenade

Procedia PDF Downloads 133

Authors: Shaurya Chauhan, Sagar Gupta

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Prominent urbanizing centres across the globe like Delhi, Dhaka, or Manila have exhibited that development often faces a challenge in bridging the gap among the top-down collective requirements of the city and the bottom-up individual aspirations of the ever-diversifying population. When this exclusion is intertwined with rapid urbanization and diversifying urban demography: unplanned sprawl, poor planning, and low-density development emerge as automated responses. In parallel, new ideas and methods of densification and public participation are being widely adopted as sustainable alternatives for the future of urban development. This research advocates a collaborative design method for future development: one that allows rapid application with its prototypical nature and an inclusive approach with mediation between the 'user' and the 'urban', purely with the use of empirical tools. Building upon the concepts and principles of 'open-sourcing' in design, the research establishes a design framework that serves the current user requirements while allowing for future citizen-driven modifications. This is synthesized as a 3-tiered model: user needs – design ideology – adaptive details. The research culminates into a context-responsive 'open source project development framework' (hereinafter, referred to as OSPDF) that can be used for on-ground field applications. To bring forward specifics, the research looks at a 300-acre redevelopment in the core of a rapidly urbanizing city as a case encompassing extreme physical, demographic, and economic diversity. The suggestive measures also integrate the region’s cultural identity and social character with the diverse citizen aspirations, using architecture and urban design tools, and references from recognized literature. This framework, based on a vision – feedback – execution loop, is used for hypothetical development at the five prevalent scales in design: master planning, urban design, architecture, tectonics, and modularity, in a chronological manner. At each of these scales, the possible approaches and avenues for open- sourcing are identified and validated, through hit-and-trial, and subsequently recorded. The research attempts to re-calibrate the architectural design process and make it more responsive and people-centric. Analytical tools such as Space, Event, and Movement by Bernard Tschumi and Five-Point Mental Map by Kevin Lynch, among others, are deep rooted in the research process. Over the five-part OSPDF, a two-part subsidiary process is also suggested after each cycle of application, for a continued appraisal and refinement of the framework and urban fabric with time. The research is an exploration – of the possibilities for an architect – to adopt the new role of a 'mediator' in development of the contemporary urbanity.

Keywords: open source, public participation, urbanization, urban development

Procedia PDF Downloads 152

Authors: Majid Aldalbahi

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In 2009, over 3.4 billion people in the world resided in urban areas as a result of rapid urban growth. This figure is estimated to increase to 6.5 billion by 2050. This urban growth phenomenon has raised challenges for many countries in both the developing and developed worlds. Urban growth is a complicated process involving the spatiotemporal changes of all socio-economic and physical components at different scales. The socio-economic components of urban growth are related to urban population growth and economic growth, while physical components of urban growth and economic growth are related to spatial expansion, land cover change and land use change which are the focus of this research. The interactions between these components are complex and no-linear. Several factors and forces cause these complex interactions including transportation and communication, internal and international migrations, public policies, high natural growth rates of urban populations and public policies. Urban growth has positive and negative consequences. The positive effects relates to planned and orderly urban growth, while negative effects relate to unplanned and scattered growth, which is called sprawl. Although urban growth is considered as necessary for sustainable urbanization, uncontrolled and rapid growth cause various problems including consumption of precious rural land resources at urban fringe, landscape alteration, traffic congestion, infrastructure pressure, and neighborhood conflicts. Traditional urban planning approaches in fast growing cities cannot accommodate the negative consequences of rapid urban growth. Microsimulation programme, and modelling techniques are effective means to provide new urban development, management and planning methods and approaches. This paper aims to use these techniques to understand and analyse the complex interactions for the case study of Riyadh city, a fast growing city in Saudi Arabia.

Keywords: policy implications, urban planning, traffic congestion, urban growth, Suadi Arabia, Riyadh

Procedia PDF Downloads 485

Authors: Kumudini Apsara Munasinghe, Devin Gregory Lissau, Ryan Thomas Wade

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Fresh fruits and vegetables are rich in vitamins, minerals, and fibers and help maintain a healthy weight over high-calorie food. Eating fruits and vegetables protects us from free radicals produced by metabolic reactions and safeguards us from cardiovascular disease and cancer. However, there has been an increased concern about foodborne diseases tied to contaminated farmers’ market produce. In addition, very little information is available about the contribution of eating raw fruits and vegetables to human exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This research aims to identify bacteria isolated from farmers’ market fruits and vegetables and understand their antibiotic resistance. Vegetables and fruits were collected from farmers’ markets around Frostburg and Cumberland areas in Maryland and transported to the microbiology lab at Frostburg State University for the isolation of bacteria. Bacteria were extracted from tomatoes, cucumber, strawberry, and lettuce using Tryptic soy broth overnight at 37°C, and Tryptic Soy agar was used for the streak plate technique to isolate bacteria. Pure cultures were used to identify bacteria using biochemical reactions after conducting Gram staining technique. The research used many biochemical reactions, including Mannitol Salt agar, MacConkey agar, and Eosin Methylene blue agar, for identification. Antibiotic sensitivity was tested for many different types of antibiotics, including amoxicillin, penicillin, tetracycline, ampicillin, and erythromycin. Most prevalent bacteria in the isolates were Staphylococcus, Bacillus, Micrococcus, Enterococcus, Enterobacter, Citrobacter, and other bacteria from the family Enterobacteriaceae. The data obtained from this research will be useful to educate and train farmers and individuals involved in post-harvest processes such as transportation and selling in farmers’ markets. Further results for bacterial antibiotic resistance will be obtained, and unculturable bacteria will be identified by next-generation DNA sequencing.

Keywords: antibiotic resistance, farmers markets, fruits, bacteria, vegetables

Procedia PDF Downloads 69

Authors: Yuko Hiramatsu, Fumihiro Sato, Atsushi Ito, Hiroyuki Hatano, Mie Sato, Yu Watanabe, Akira Sasaki

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This paper presents a mobile phone application developed for sightseeing in Nikko, one of the cultural world heritages in Japan, using the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacon. Based on our pre-research, we decided to design our application for young people who walk around the area actively, but know little about the tradition and culture of Nikko. One solution is to construct many information boards to explain; however, it is difficult to construct new guide plates in cultural world heritage sites. The smartphone is a good solution to send such information to such visitors. This application was designed using a combination of the smartphone and beacons, set in the area, so that when a tourist passes near a beacon, the application displays information about the area including a map, historical or cultural information about the temples and shrines, and local shops nearby as well as a bus timetable. It is useful for foreigners, too. In addition, we developed quizzes relating to the culture and tradition of Nikko to provide information based on the Zeigarnik effect, a psychological effect. According to the results of our trials, tourists positively evaluated the basic information and young people who used the quiz function were able to learn the historical and cultural points. This application helped young visitors at Nikko to understand the cultural elements of the site. In addition, this application has a function to send notifications. This function is designed to provide information about the local community such as shops, local transportation companies and information office. The application hopes to also encourage people living in the area, and such cooperation from the local people will make this application vivid and inspire young visitors to feel that the cultural heritage site is still alive today. This is a gateway for young people to learn about a traditional place and understand the gravity of preserving such areas.

Keywords: BLE beacon, smartphone application, Zeigarnik effect, world heritage site, school trip

Procedia PDF Downloads 326

Authors: Rojan Dahal

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One Health refers to a collaborative effort between multiple disciplines - locally, nationally, and globally - to attain optimal health. Although there were unprecedented intersectoral alliances between the animal and human health sectors during the avian influenza outbreak, there are different views and perceptions concerning institutionalizing One Health in South Asia. It is likely a structural barrier between the relevant professionals working in different entities or ministries when it comes to collaborating on One Health actions regarding zoonotic diseases. Politicians and the public will likely need to invest large amounts of money, demonstrate political will, and understand how One Health works to overcome these barriers. One Health might be hard to invest in South Asian countries, where the benefits are based primarily on models and projections and where numerous issues related to development and health need urgent attention. The other potential barrier to enabling the One Health concept in responding to zoonotic diseases is a failure to represent One Health in zoonotic disease control and prevention measures in the national health policy, which is a critical component of institutionalizing the One Health concept. One Health cannot be institutionalized without acknowledging the linkages between animal, human, and environmental sectors in dealing with zoonotic diseases. Efforts have been made in the past to prepare a preparedness plan for One Health implementation, but little has been done to establish a policy environment to institutionalize One Health. It is often assumed that health policy refers specifically to medical care issues and health care services. When drafting, reviewing, and redrafting the policy, it is important to engage a wide range of stakeholders. One Health institutionalization may also be hindered by the interplay between One Health professionals and bureaucratic inertia in defining the priorities of diseases due to competing interests on limited budgets. There is a possibility that policymakers do not recognize the importance of veterinary professionals in preventing human diseases originating in animals. Compared to veterinary medicine, the human health sector has produced most of the investment and research outputs related to zoonotic diseases. The public health profession may consider itself superior to the veterinary profession. Zoonotic diseases might not be recognized as threats to human health, impeding integrated policies. The effort of One Health institutionalization remained only among the donor agencies and multi-sectoral organizations. There is a need for strong political will and state capacity to overcome the existing institutional, financial, and professional barriers for its effective implementation. There is a need to assess the structural challenges, policy challenges, and the attitude of the professional working in the multiple disciplines related to One Health. Limited research has been conducted to identify the reasons behind the barriers to institutionalizing the One Health concept in South Asia. Institutionalizing One Health in responding to zoonotic diseases breaks down silos and integrates animals, humans, and the environment.

Keywords: one health, institutionalization, South Asia, institutionalizations

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Authors: Nahid Hassanshahi, Ayoub Karimi-Jashni, Nasser Talebbeydokhti

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Due to the economic and environmental benefits of producing less waste, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduces source reduction as one of the most important means to deal with the problems caused by increased landfills and pollution. Waste reduction involves all waste management methods, including source reduction, recycling, and composting, which reduce waste flow to landfills or other disposal facilities. Source reduction of waste can be studied from two perspectives: avoiding waste production, or reducing per capita waste production, and waste deviation that indicates the reduction of waste transfer to landfills. The present paper has investigated home composting as a managerial solution for reduction of waste transfer to landfills. Home composting has many benefits. The use of household waste for the production of compost will result in a much smaller amount of waste being sent to landfills, which in turn will reduce the costs of waste collection, transportation and burial. Reducing the volume of waste for disposal and using them for the production of compost and plant fertilizer might help to recycle the material in a shorter time and to use them effectively in order to preserve the environment and reduce contamination. Producing compost in a home-based manner requires very small piece of land for preparation and recycling compared with other methods. The final product of home-made compost is valuable and helps to grow crops and garden plants. It is also used for modifying the soil structure and maintaining its moisture. The food that is transferred to landfills will spoil and produce leachate after a while. It will also release methane and greenhouse gases. But, composting these materials at home is the best way to manage degradable materials, use them efficiently and reduce environmental pollution. Studies have shown that the benefits of the sale of produced compost and the reduced costs of collecting, transporting, and burying waste can well be responsive to the costs of purchasing home compost machine and the cost of related trainings. Moreover, the process of producing home compost may be profitable within 4 to 5 years and as a result, it will have a major role in reducing waste management.

Keywords: compost, home compost, reducing waste, waste management

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Authors: Buket Celik Ünal, Onur Ünal

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Communication is the most challenging part of maintenance operations. Communication between expert and fieldworker is crucial for effective maintenance and this also affects the safety of the fieldworkers. To support a machine user in a remote collaborative physical task, both, a mobile and a stationary device are needed. Such a system is called a shared vision system and the system supports two people to solve a problem from different places. This system reduces the errors and provides a reliable support for qualified and less qualified users. Through this research, it was aimed to validate the effectiveness of using a shared vision system to facilitate communication between on-site workers and those issuing instructions regarding maintenance or inspection works over long distances. The system is designed with head-worn display which is called a shared vision system. As a part of this study, a substitute system is used and implemented by using a shared vision system for maintenance operation. The benefits of the use of a shared vision system are analyzed and results are adapted to the wind turbines to improve the occupational safety and health for maintenance technicians. The motivation for the research effort in this study can be summarized in the following research questions: -How can expert support technician over long distances during maintenance operation? -What are the advantages of using a shared vision system? Experience from the experiment shows that using a shared vision system is an advantage for both electrical and mechanical system failures. Results support that the shared vision system can be used for wind turbine maintenance and repair tasks. Because wind turbine generator/gearbox and the substitute system have similar failures. Electrical failures, such as voltage irregularities, wiring failures and mechanical failures, such as alignment, vibration, over-speed conditions are the common and similar failures for both. Furthermore, it was analyzed the effectiveness of the shared vision system by using a smart glasses in connection with the maintenance task performed by a substitute system under four different circumstances, namely by using a shared vision system, an audio communication, a smartphone and by yourself condition. A suitable method for determining dependencies between factors measured in Chi Square Test, and Chi Square Test for Independence measured for determining a relationship between two qualitative variables and finally Mann Whitney U Test is used to compare any two data sets. While based on this experiment, no relation was found between the results and the gender. Participants` responses confirmed that the shared vision system is efficient and helpful for maintenance operations. From the results of the research, there was a statistically significant difference in the average time taken by subjects on works using a shared vision system under the other conditions. Additionally, this study confirmed that a shared vision system provides reduction in time to diagnose and resolve maintenance issues, reduction in diagnosis errors, reduced travel costs for experts, and increased reliability in service.

Keywords: communication support, maintenance and inspection tasks, occupational health and safety, shared vision system

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Authors: Marco Ranzato, Maguelone Vignes

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The co-design process recently run by the trans-disciplinary urban laboratory Metrolab Brussels for outlining the architecture of a future integrated health centre in Brussels (Belgium) has highlighted that a buffer place open to the local community is the appropriate cornerstone around which organizing a space where diverse professionals and patients are together. In the context of the migrants 'crisis' in Europe, the growing number of vulnerable people in Brussels and the increasing complexity of the health and welfare systems, the NGO Doctors of the World (DoW) has launched a project funded by The European Regional Development Fund, and aiming to create a new community centre combining social and health services in a poor but changing neighborhood of Brussels. Willing not to make a 'ghetto' of this new integrated service, the NGO looks at hosting different publics in order to make the poorest, marginal and most vulnerable people access to a regular kind of service. As a trans-disciplinary urban research group, Metrolab has been involved in the process of co-designing the architecture of the future centre with a set of various health professionals, social workers, and patients’ representatives. Metrolab drawn on the participants’ practice experiences and knowledge of hosting different kinds of publics and professions in a same structure in order to imagine what rooms should fit into the centre, what atmosphere they should convey, how should they be interrelated and organized, and, concurrently, how the building should fit into the urban frame of its neighborhood. The result is that, in order for an integrated health centre framed in the landscape of a disadvantaged neighborhood to function, it has to work as social community centre offering accessibility and conviviality to diverse social groups. This paper outlines the methodology that Metrolab used to design and conduct, in close collaboration with DoW, a series of 3 workshops. Through sketching and paper modeling, the methodology made participants talk about their experience by projecting them into a situation. It included a combination of individual and collective work in order to sharp participants’ eyes on architectural forms, explicit their thoughts and experience through inter-subjectivity and imagine solutions to the challenges they raised. Such a collaborative method encompasses several challenges about patients’ participation and representation, replicability of the conditions of success and the plurality of the research findings communication formats. This paper underlines how this participatory process has contributed to build knowledge on the few-documented topic of the architecture of community health centres. More importantly, the contribution builds on this participatory process to discuss the importance of adapting the architecture of the new integrated health centre to the changing population of Brussels and to the issues of its specific neighborhood.

Keywords: co-design, health, social innovation, urban lab

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Authors: Xiaowei Zhang, Min Xu, Saeid Habibi, Fengjun Yan, Ryan Ahmed

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Recently, Electric Vehicles (EVs) have received extensive consideration since they offer a more sustainable and greener transportation alternative compared to fossil-fuel propelled vehicles. Lithium-Ion (Li-ion) batteries are increasingly being deployed in EVs because of their high energy density, high cell-level voltage, and low rate of self-discharge. Since Li-ion batteries represent the most expensive component in the EV powertrain, accurate monitoring and control strategies must be executed to ensure their prolonged lifespan. The Battery Management System (BMS) has to accurately estimate parameters such as the battery State-of-Charge (SOC), State-of-Health (SOH), and Remaining Useful Life (RUL). In order for the BMS to estimate these parameters, an accurate and control-oriented battery model has to work collaboratively with a robust state and parameter estimation strategy. Since battery physical parameters, such as the internal resistance and diffusion coefficient change depending on the battery state-of-life (SOL), the BMS has to be adaptive to accommodate for this change. In this paper, an extensive battery aging study has been conducted over 12-months period on 5.4 Ah, 3.7 V Lithium polymer cells. Instead of using fixed charging/discharging aging cycles at fixed C-rate, a set of real-world driving scenarios have been used to age the cells. The test has been interrupted every 5% capacity degradation by a set of reference performance tests to assess the battery degradation and track model parameters. As battery ages, the combined model parameters are optimized and tracked in an offline mode over the entire batteries lifespan. Based on the optimized model, a state and parameter estimation strategy based on the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and the relatively new Smooth Variable Structure Filter (SVSF) have been applied to estimate the SOC at various states of life.

Keywords: lithium-ion batteries, genetic algorithm optimization, battery aging test, parameter identification

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Authors: Chia-Hsun Chang

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Background: Combination of drug treatment, dietary management, and regular exercise can effectively control type II diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Performing daily physical activities other than structured exercise is much easier and whether daily physical activities including work, walking, housework, gardening, leisure exercise, or transportation have a similar effect on diabetes control is not well studied.Aims and Objectives: This study aims to determine whether daily physical activity undertaken by patients with T2DM is associated with their diabetes control. Design: A correlation study with prospective design. Methods: Purposive sampling of 206 patients with T2DM was recruited from a medical center in Central Taiwan. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire was used to assess daily levels of physical activities, and the Diabetes Compliance Questionnaire was used to assess medication and dietary compliance. Data of diabetes control (hemoglobin A1c, HbA1c)were followed up every three months for one year after recruitment. Results: In this study, the average age of the participants was 62.5 years (±10.4 years), and the average duration of diabetes since diagnosis was 13.2 years (±7.8), 112 of the participants were women (54.4%) and 94 of the participants were men (45.6%). The mean HbA1c level was 7.8% (±1.4), and 78.2% of the participants presented with unsatisfactory diabetes control. Because the participants were distributed across a wide age range, and their physical health, activity levels, and comorbidities might have varied with age, the participants were divided into two groups: 121 participants who were younger than 65 years (58.7%) and 85 participants who were older than 65 years (41.3%). Both younger (< 65 years) and older (> 65 years) patients with diabetes engaged in more moderate and low levels of physical activity (89.3% and 87%, respectively). Results showed that the levels of daily physical activity were not significantly associated with diabetes control after adjustment for medication and dietary compliance in both groups. Conclusion: Performing daily physical activity is not significantly correlated with diabetes control. Daily physical activity cannot completely replace exercise. Relevance to Clinical Practice: Health personnel must encourage patients to engage in exercise that is planned, structured, and repetitive for improving diabetes control.

Keywords: daily physical activity, diabetes control, international physical activity questionnaire (IPAQ), type II diabetes mellitus (T2DM)

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Authors: Parastoo Kazemiyan

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Over the past 80 years, in compliance with the advent of modernity in Iran and Turkey, the presence of women in economic and social arenas has creates serious challenges in the capacity of urban spaces to respond to their presence and transport because urban spaces up until then were based on masculine criteria and therefore, women could use such spaces in the company of their fathers or husbands. However, as modernity expanded by Reza Shah and Ataturk, women found the opportunity to work and be present in urban spaces alongside men and their presence in economic and social domains resulted in their presence in these spaces in the early and late hours of the day. Therefore, the city had to be transformed in structural, social, and environmental terms to accommodate women's activities and presence in various urban arenas, which was a huge step in transition from a masculine man-based culture to an all-inclusive human-based culture in these two countries. However, the optimization of urban space was subject to political changes in the two countries, leading to significant differences in designing urban spaces in Tehran and Istanbul. What shows the importance and novelty of the present study lie in the differences in urban planning and optimization in the two capital cities, which gave rise to different outcomes in desirability and quality of living in these two capital cities. Due to the importance of the topic, one of the most significant factors in desirability and acceptability of urban space for women was examined using a descriptive-analytic method based on qualitative methodology in Tehran and Istanbul. The results showed that the infrastructural factors in Istanbul, including safety of access, variety, and number of public transport modes, transparency, and supervision over public spaces have provided women with a safer and more constant presence compared to Tehran. It seems that challenges involved in providing access to urban spaces in Tehran in terms of infrastructure and function have made Tehran unable to respond to the most basic needs of its female citizens.

Keywords: gender differences, urban space security, access to transportation systems, women's challenges

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Authors: Muhammad Jum’at Dasuki

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This study investigates the ethical implications of post-fuel subsidy removal support initiatives in Kwara State, Nigeria, with a focus on the application of Islamic principles. The contentious issue of subsidy removal carries significant social and economic consequences, emphasizing the crucial role of ethical considerations in policy implementation. The research provides a comprehensive background on fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria and its implications. Examining post-fuel subsidy removal palliative measures in Kwara State, the study focuses on design and implementation challenges, ethical considerations, transparency, equity, and public trust. Utilizing a case study approach offers insights and best practices. The methodology includes primary sources through in-depth oral interviews and secondary sources like textbooks and journals, aiming for a holistic understanding of the ethical dimensions of support initiatives within the context of Islamic principles in Kwara State. The objective is to contribute to policy decisions and community development. The study recommends an ethically sound implementation of post-fuel subsidy removal support initiatives, emphasizing transparency, accountability, and inclusivity. It advocates for the inclusiveness of governmental palliatives, reaching both civil servants and common individuals in the state. Continuous distribution during fuel subsidy removal challenges is deemed vital. Additionally, extending free or subsidized transportation beyond higher institutions to the general populace is suggested. Consideration should also be given to reducing governmental hospital bills or providing free health services. The study underscores the importance of Islamic ethics in Nigerian governance and employs a case study approach to assess palliative measures in Kwara State, offering practical insights for policymakers and stakeholders.

Keywords: considerations, ethical, palliative, post-fuel subsidy removal

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Authors: Ran Goldblatt, Nicholas Jones, Jennifer Mannix, Brad Bottoms

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Accurate, complete, and up-to-date geospatial information is the foundation of successful disaster management. When the 2010 Haiti Earthquake struck, accurate and timely information on the distribution of critical infrastructure was essential for the disaster response community for effective search and rescue operations. Existing geospatial datasets such as Google Maps did not have comprehensive coverage of these features. In the days following the earthquake, many organizations released high-resolution satellite imagery, catalyzing a worldwide effort to map Haiti and support the recovery operations. Of these organizations, OpenStreetMap (OSM), a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world, used the imagery to support volunteers to digitize roads, buildings, and other features, creating the most detailed map of Haiti in existence in just a few weeks. However, large portions of the island are still not fully covered by OSM. There is an increasing need for a tool to automatically identify which areas in Haiti, as well as in other countries vulnerable to disasters, that are not fully mapped. The objective of this project is to leverage different types of remote sensing measurements, together with machine learning approaches, in order to identify geographical areas where OSM coverage of building footprints is incomplete. Several remote sensing measures and derived products were assessed as potential predictors of OSM building footprints coverage, including: intensity of light emitted at night (based on VIIRS measurements), spectral indices derived from Sentinel-2 satellite (normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), normalized difference built-up index (NDBI), soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), urban index (UI)), surface texture (based on Sentinel-1 SAR measurements)), elevation and slope. Additional remote sensing derived products, such as Hansen Global Forest Change, DLR`s Global Urban Footprint (GUF), and World Settlement Footprint (WSF), were also evaluated as predictors, as well as OSM street and road network (including junctions). Using a supervised classification with a random forest classifier resulted in the prediction of 89% of the variation of OSM building footprint area in a given cell. These predictions allowed for the identification of cells that are predicted to be covered but are actually not mapped yet. With these results, this methodology could be adapted to any location to assist with preparing for future disastrous events and assure that essential geospatial information is available to support the response and recovery efforts during and following major disasters.

Keywords: disaster management, Haiti, machine learning, OpenStreetMap, remote sensing

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Authors: Hyuk-Jin Lee

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Even though 23 years have passed in the 21st century, nation-state and nationality-centered cultural identities are still the sentiments and ideologies that dominate the world. Nevertheless, as seen in many cases in Europe, a new perspective is needed to recognize mutual exchanges and influences and to view them as natural cultural exchanges between countries. The situation in East Asia is completely different from Europe. This is presumed to be from the long tradition of having an ethnocentric state concept for at least hundreds of years, quite different from Europe, where the concept of a nation-state was established relatively recently. In other words, unlike Europe, where active exchanges took place, the problem stems from the unique characteristics of East Asia, which has a strong tradition of finding its identity in 'difference'. Thus, it would not be hard to find cultural studies or news of the three East Asian countries emphasizing differences among one another. This applies to all cultural areas, including traditional architecture. For example, in the Korean traditional architecture field, buildings with effects from neighboring countries tend to be ignored, even if they are traditional Korean architecture. In addition to this, in the case of Korea, there seems to be one more cultural harmful aftereffect caused by the 36 years of Japanese colonial rule in the early 20th century; the obsessive filtering concept of 'it must be different from Japan'. In other words, the implicit ideological coercion that the definition of 'Korean cultural heritage' should not be influenced by exchanges with Japan may be found throughout Korean studies. The architectural and cultural aspects of the vast period of time, from the Three Kingdoms era to the beginning of Joseon, which was a period in which cultural influence exchanges with neighboring countries were relatively strong compared to the late Joseon Dynasty, also reflect the 'distorted filtering' caused by finding a repulsive identity against the Japanese colonial period. It is important to look the cultural heritage and traditions as they are inductively, not deductively. If not, we may often ignore or limit our own precious cultural heritage. Conversely, If Baekje, the ancient Korean Kingdom, helped Japan in construction and craftsmen played a big role in building the ancient temple, it would be a healthier perspective to view it as a cultural exchange rather than proudly seeing it as a cultural owner's perspective because this point of view is a proper reconstruction of our ancient and medieval Asian culture (strictly speaking, the color common to East Asia at the time). In particular, this study will examine this topic by giving specific examples from each field of Korean cultural studies. In the search for cultural identity, it would be more helpful for healthy relations between countries and collaborative research in the sensitive part of the interpretation of historical facts as well as cultural circles to minimize excessive meanings on originality and difference.

Keywords: cultural heritage identity, cultural ideology, East Asia, Korea

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Authors: Majed A. Alsalem

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In our contemporary world, literacy is an essential skill that enables students to increase their efficiency in managing the many assignments they receive that require understanding and knowledge of the world around them. In addition, literacy enhances student participation in society improving their ability to learn about the world and interact with others and facilitating the exchange of ideas and sharing of knowledge. Therefore, literacy needs to be studied and understood in its full range of contexts. It should be seen as social and cultural practices with historical, political, and economic implications. This study aims to rebuild and reorganize the instructional designs that have been used for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students to improve their literacy level. The most critical part of this process is the teachers; therefore, teachers will be the center focus of this study. Teachers’ main job is to increase students’ performance by fostering strategies through collaborative teamwork, higher-order thinking, and effective use of new information technologies. Teachers, as primary leaders in the learning process, should be aware of new strategies, approaches, methods, and frameworks of teaching in order to apply them to their instruction. Literacy from a wider view means acquisition of adequate and relevant reading skills that enable progression in one’s career and lifestyle while keeping up with current and emerging innovations and trends. Moreover, the nature of literacy is changing rapidly. The notion of new literacy changed the traditional meaning of literacy, which is the ability to read and write. New literacy refers to the ability to effectively and critically navigate, evaluate, and create information using a range of digital technologies. The term new literacy has received a lot of attention in the education field over the last few years. New literacy provides multiple ways of engagement, especially to those with disabilities and other diverse learning needs. For example, using a number of online tools in the classroom provides students with disabilities new ways to engage with the content, take in information, and express their understanding of this content. This study will provide teachers with the highest quality of training sessions to meet the needs of DHH students so as to increase their literacy levels. This study will build a platform between regular instructional designs and digital materials that students can interact with. The intervention that will be applied in this study will be to train teachers of DHH to base their instructional designs on the notion of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) theory. Based on the power analysis that has been done for this study, 98 teachers are needed to be included in this study. This study will choose teachers randomly to increase internal and external validity and to provide a representative sample from the population that this study aims to measure and provide the base for future and further studies. This study is still in process and the initial results are promising by showing how students have engaged with digital books.

Keywords: deaf and hard of hearing, digital books, literacy, technology

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Authors: Miao Li, Mengyuan Xu

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As a low-carbon travel mode, bicycling has drawn increasing political interest in the contemporary Chinese urban context, and the public sharing bikes have become the most popular ways of bike usage in China now. This research aims to explore the spatial-temporal relationship between sharing bike usage and different characteristics of the urban street built environment. In the research, street segments were used as the analytic unit of the street built environment defined by street intersections. The sharing bike usage data in the research include a total of 2.64 million samples that are the entire sharing bike distribution data recorded in two days in 2018 within a neighborhood of 185.4 hectares in the city of Wuhan, China. And these data are assigned to the 97 urban street segments in this area based on their geographic location. The built environment variables used in this research are categorized into three sections: 1) street design characteristics, such as street width, street greenery, types of bicycle lanes; 2) condition of other public transportation, such as the availability of metro station; 3) Street function characteristics that are described by the categories and density of the point of interest (POI) along the segments. Spatial Lag Models (SLM) were used in order to reveal the relationships of specific urban streets built environment characteristics and the likelihood of sharing bicycling usage in whole and different periods a day. The results show: 1) there is spatial autocorrelation among sharing bicycling usage of urban streets in case area in general, non-working day, working day and each period of a day, which presents a clustering pattern in the street space; 2) a statistically strong association between bike sharing usage and several different built environment characteristics such as POI density, types of bicycle lanes and street width; 3) the pattern that bike sharing usage is influenced by built environment characteristics depends on the period within a day. These findings could be useful for policymakers and urban designers to better understand the factors affecting bike sharing system and thus propose guidance and strategy for urban street planning and design in order to promote the use of sharing bikes.

Keywords: big data, sharing bike usage, spatial statistics, urban street built environment

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Authors: Ntachobazi bosco

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Tourism Development and Planning in Rwanda: Rwanda, a small landlocked country located in the heart of Africa, has experienced significant growth in its tourism industry in recent years. The country’s stunning natural beauty, rich cultural heritage, and warm hospitality have made it an attractive destination for travelers from around the world. However, to ensure sustainable tourism development and planning, the Rwandan government has implemented various strategies and policies to promote responsible tourism practices. Infrastructure Development: To support the growth of the tourism industry, the Rwandan government has invested heavily in infrastructure development. This includes the construction of new hotels, resorts, and lodges, as well as the upgrading of existing facilities. The government has also improved the country’s transportation network, including the construction of new airports and the upgrading of existing ones. Conservation Efforts: Rwanda is home to several national parks and reserves, including the famous Volcanoes National Park, which is known for its mountain gorilla populations. To protect these natural wonders, the Rwandan government has implemented conservation efforts, such as the establishment of protected areas and the development of sustainable tourism practices. Community-Based Tourism: Community-based tourism is a key component of Rwanda’s tourism development strategy. The government has established several community-based tourism programs, which aim to involve local communities in the tourism industry and provide them with economic benefits. These programs include homestays, village tours, and cultural performances. Sustainable Tourism Practices: To promote sustainable tourism practices, the Rwandan government has implemented several initiatives, such as the use of eco-friendly accommodations and the promotion of responsible wildlife viewing practices. The government has also established the Rwanda Tourism Board, which is responsible for promoting and regulating the tourism industry. Challenges and Opportunities: Despite the growth of the tourism industry in Rwanda, several challenges need to be addressed, such as the lack of skilled labor and the need for more infrastructure development. However, there are also several opportunities for the industry, such as the potential for ecotourism and the growth of the meetings, incentives, conventions, and exhibitions (MICE) market.

Keywords: tourism, in rwanda, developent, in africa

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Authors: Chen Liu, Dawit Negussey

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EPS (Expanded Polystyrene) geofoam as light-weight material in geotechnical applications are made of pre-expanded resin beads that form fused cellular micro-structures. The strength and deformation properties of geofoam blocks are determined by unconfined compression of small test samples between rigid loading plates. Applied loads are presumed to be supported uniformly over the entire mating end areas. Predictions of field performance on the basis of such laboratory tests widely over-estimate actual post-construction settlements and exaggerate predictions of long-term creep deformations. This investigation examined the development of contact pressures at a large number of discrete points at low and large strain levels for different densities of geofoam. Development of pressure patterns for fine and coarse interface material textures as well as for molding skin and hot wire cut geofoam surfaces were examined. The lab testing showed that I-Scan tactile sensors are useful for detailed observation of contact pressures at a large number of discrete points simultaneously. At low strain level (1%), the lower density EPS block presents low variations in localized stress distribution compared to higher density EPS. At high strain level (10%), the dense geofoam reached the sensor cut-off limit. The imprint and pressure patterns for different interface textures can be distinguished with tactile sensing. The pressure sensing system can be used in many fields with real-time pressure detection. The research findings provide a better understanding of EPS geofoam behavior for improvement of design methods and performance prediction of critical infrastructures, which will be anticipated to guide future improvements in design and rapid construction of critical transportation infrastructures with geofoam in geotechnical applications.

Keywords: geofoam, pressure distribution, tactile pressure sensors, interface

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Authors: Stanzin Gawa, Nalini Ranjan Kumar, Gohar Bilal Wani, Vinay Maruti Hatte, A. Vinay

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Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and Brown trout (Salmo trutta fario) are the two species of trout which were once introduced by British in waters of Kashmir has well adapted to favorable climatic conditions. Cold water fisheries are one of the emerging sectors in Kashmir valley and trout holds an important place Jammu and Kashmir fisheries. Realizing the immense potential of trout culture in Kashmir region, the state fisheries department started privatizing trout culture under the centrally funded scheme of RKVY in which they provide 80 percent subsidy for raceway construction and supply of feed and seed for the first year since 2009-10 and at present there are 362 private trout farms. To cater the growing demand for trout in the valley, it is important to understand the bottlenecks faced in the propagation of trout culture. Value chain analysis provides a generic framework to understand the various activities and processes, mapping and studying linkages is first step that needs to be done in any value chain analysis. In Kashmir, it is found that trout hatcheries play a crucial role in insuring the continuous supply of trout seed in valley. Feed is most limiting factor in trout culture and the farmer has to incur high cost in payment and in the transportation of feed from the feed mill to farm. Lack of aqua clinic in the Kashmir valley needs to be addressed. Brood stock maintenance, breeding and seed production, technical assistance to private farmer, extension services have to be strengthened and there is need to development healthier environment for new entrepreneurs. It was found that trout farmers do not avail credit facility as there is no well define credit scheme for fisheries in the state. The study showed weak institutional linkages. Research and development should focus more on applied science rather than basic science.

Keywords: trout, Kashmir, value chain, linkages, culture

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Authors: Ziwen Fang, Jianran Wang, Hongtao Liu, Weiguo Kong, Kefei Wang, Qi Luo, Haifeng Hong

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A 4-stage crash energy management (CEM) system for subway rail vehicles used by Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) in the USA is developed in this paper. The 4 stages of this new CEM system include 1) energy absorbing coupler (draft gear and shear bolts), 2) primary energy absorbers (aluminum honeycomb structured box), 3) secondary energy absorbers (crush tube), and 4) collision post and corner post. A sliding anti-climber and a fixed anti-climber are designed at the front of the vehicle cooperating with the 4-stage CEM to maximize the energy to be absorbed and minimize the damage to passengers and crews. In order to investigate the effectiveness of this CEM system, both finite element (FE) methods and crashworthiness test have been employed. The whole vehicle consists of 3 married pairs, i.e., six cars. In the FE approach, full-scale railway car models are developed and different collision cases such as a single moving car impacting a rigid wall, two moving cars into a rigid wall, two moving cars into two stationary cars, six moving cars into six stationary cars and so on are investigated. The FE analysis results show that the railway vehicle incorporating this CEM system has a superior crashworthiness performance. In the crashworthiness test, a simplified vehicle front end including the sliding anti-climber, the fixed anti-climber, the primary energy absorbers, the secondary energy absorber, the collision post and the corner post is built and impacted to a rigid wall. The same test model is also analyzed in the FE and the results such as crushing force, stress, and strain of critical components, acceleration and velocity curves are compared and studied. FE results show very good comparison to the test results.

Keywords: railway vehicle collision, crash energy management design, finite element method, crashworthiness test

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