Search results for: environmental planning.

Authors: Javad Majrouhi Sardroud, Mukesh C. Limbachiya

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Construction projects generally take place in uncontrolled and dynamic environments where construction waste is a serious environmental problem in many large cities. The total amount of waste and carbon dioxide emissions from transportation vehicles are still out of control due to increasing construction projects, massive urban development projects and the lack of effective tools for minimizing adverse environmental impacts in construction. This research is about utilization of the integrated applications of automated advanced tracking and data storage technologies in the area of environmental management to monitor and control adverse environmental impacts such as construction waste and carbon dioxide emissions. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) integrated with the Global Position System (GPS) provides an opportunity to uniquely identify materials, components, and equipments and to locate and track them using minimal or no worker input. The transmission of data to the central database will be carried out with the help of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).

Keywords: Clear environment, Construction industry, RFID.

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Authors: Estela Macedo Alves

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This paper is an overview on public policy analysis focused on the study of Brazilian public policy making process. The methodology is based on the review of some theories on the subject, linking them to Brazilian reality. The study presents basic policy analysis concepts, such as policy, polity and politics. It is emphasized John Kingdon's Multiple Stream Model, because of its clarifying aspects concerning public policies formulation process in democratic countries. In this path it was possible to establish interpretations on environmental public policies in Brazil and understand its methods, instead of presenting only a case study. At the end, it is possible to connect theory with Brazilian reality, identifying negative and positive points of its political processes and structure.

Keywords: Brazilian policies, environmental public policy, multiple stream model, public policy analysis.

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Authors: Paula Ferreira, Filipa Vieira

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The use of wind energy for electricity generation is growing rapidly across the world and in Portugal. However, the geographical characteristics of the country along with the average wind regime and with the environmental restrictions imposed to these projects create limitations to the exploit of the onshore wind resource. The best onshore wind spots are already committed and the possibility of offshore wind farms in the Portuguese cost is now being considered. This paper aims to make a contribution to the evaluation of offshore wind power projects in Portugal. The technical restrictions are addressed and the strategic, environmental and financial interest of the project is analysed from the private company and public points of view. The results suggest that additional support schemes are required to ensure private investors interest for these projects. Assuming an approach of direct substitution of energy sources for electricity generation, the avoided CO2 equivalent emissions for an offshore wind power project were quantified. Based on the conclusions, future research is proposed to address the environmental and social impacts of these projects.

Keywords: Feed-in tariff, offshore wind power, project evaluation.

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Authors: Prateep Wajeetongratana

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This study investigates the management accountant’s roles that link with the creation of corporate shared value to enable more effective decision-making and improve the information needs of stakeholders. Mixed method is employed to collect using triangulation for credibility. A quantitative approach is employed to conduct a survey of 200 Thai companies providing annual reports in the Stock Exchange of Thailand. The results of the study reveal that environmental and social data incorporated in a corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure are based on the indicators of the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) at a statistically significant level of 0.01. Environmental and social indicators in CSR are associated with environmental and social data disclosed in the annual report to support stakeholders’ and the public’s interests that are addressed and show that a significant relationship between environmental and social in CSR disclosures and the information in annual reports is statistically significant at the 0.01 level.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, creating shared value, management accountant’s roles, stock exchange of Thailand.

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Authors: Patrick May Mukonki

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KOV pit (Kamoto Oliveira Virgule) is located 10 km from Kolwezi town, one of the mineral rich town in the Lualaba province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The KOV pit is currently operating under the Katanga Mining Limited (KML), a Glencore-Gecamines (a State Owned Company) join venture. Recently, the mine optimization process provided a life of mine of approximately 10 years withnice pushbacks using the Datamine NPV Scheduler software. In previous KOV pit studies, we recently outlined the impact of the accuracy of the geological information on a long-term mine plan for a big copper mine such as KOV pit. The approach taken, discussed three main scenarios and outlined some weaknesses on the geological information side, and now, in this paper that we are going to develop here, we are going to highlight, as an overview, those weaknesses, strengths and opportunities, in a global SWOT analysis. The approach we are taking here is essentially descriptive in terms of steps taken to optimize KOV pit and, at every step, we categorized the challenges we faced to have a better tradeoff between what we called strengths and what we called weaknesses. The same logic is applied in terms of the opportunities and threats. The SWOT analysis conducted in this paper demonstrates that, despite a general poor ore body definition, and very rude ground water conditions, there is room for improvement for such high grade ore body.

Keywords: Mine planning, mine optimization, mine scheduling, SWOT analysis.

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Authors: P. Harazin, Gy. Horváth

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There are four challenges of sustainable development and in corporate level sustainability management-s role is to answer for ecological sustainability challenge, social sustainability challenge, economic sustainability challenges to environment and social management and integration challenge of corporate sustainable challenges by the help of different concepts, methods, instruments, which are in the toolbox of sustainability management. These instruments, concepts have different relevance in these challenges, and according to different literatures environmental management is outside of social and integration challenge. Main aim of this paper is to represent the answer for the question that: is it true that social and integration point of view is outside of the concept environmental accounting? Using literature review and primer research at the end of the paper the answer will be confirmed.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, Environmentalaccounting, Integration, Sustainability management

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Authors: Ahmad Mansoor Stanikzai, Yoshitaka Kajita

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This research is a very essential towards transportation planning of Kabul New City. In this research, the travel demand of Kabul metropolitan area (Existing and Kabul New City) are evaluated for three different target years (2015, current, 2025, mid-term, 2040, long-term). The outcome of this study indicates that, though currently the vehicle volume is less the capacity of existing road networks, Kabul city is suffering from daily traffic congestions. This is mainly due to lack of transportation management, the absence of proper policies, improper public transportation system and violation of traffic rules and regulations by inhabitants. On the other hand, the observed result indicates that the current vehicle to capacity ratio (VCR) which is the most used index to judge traffic status in the city is around 0.79. This indicates the inappropriate traffic condition of the city. Moreover, by the growth of population in mid-term (2025) and long-term (2040) and in the case of no development in the road network and transportation system, the VCR value will dramatically increase to 1.40 (2025) and 2.5 (2040). This can be a critical situation for an urban area from an urban transportation perspective. Thus, by introducing high-capacity public transportation system and the development of road network in Kabul New City and integrating these links with the existing city road network, significant improvements were observed in the value of VCR.

Keywords: Afghanistan, Kabul New City, planning, policy, urban transportation.

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Authors: Saeedeh Shafiee Nahrkhalaji

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Metacognitive knowledge increases EFL students’ ability to be successful learners. Although this relationship has been investigated by a number of scholars, EFL teachers’ explicit awareness of their cognitive knowledge has not been sufficiently explored. The aim of this study was to examine the role of EFL teachers’ metacognitive knowledge in their pedagogical performance. Furthermore, the role played by years of their academic education and teaching experience was also studied. Fifty female EFL teachers were selected. They completed Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) that assessed six components of metacognition including procedural knowledge, declarative knowledge, conditional knowledge, planning, evaluating, and management strategies. Near the end of the academic semester, the students of each class filled in ‘the Language Teacher Characteristics Questionnaire’ to evaluate their teachers’ pedagogical performance. Four elements of MAI, declarative knowledge, planning, evaluating, and management strategies were found to be significantly correlated with EFL teachers’ pedagogical success. Significant correlation was also established between metacognitive knowledge and EFL teachers’ years of academic education and teaching experience. The findings obtained from this research have contributing implication for EFL teacher educators. The discussion concludes by setting out directions for future research.

Keywords: Metacognotive Knowledge, Pedagogical Performance, Language Teacher Characteristics Questionnaire, Metacognitive Awareness Inventory.

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Authors: Mehdi Fuladipanah, Mehdi Jorabloo

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Water flow management is one of the most important parts of river engineering. Non-uniformity distribution of rainfall and various flow demand with unreasonable flow management will be caused destroyed of river ecosystem. Then, it is very serious to determine ecosystem flow requirement. In this paper, Flow duration curve indices method which has hydrological based was used to evaluate environmental flow in Gharasou River, Ardabil, Iran. Using flow duration curve, Q90 and Q95 for different return periods were calculated. Their magnitude were determined as 1-day, 3-day, 7-day and 30 day. According the second method, hydraulic alteration indices often had low and medium range. In order to maintain river at an acceptable ecological condition, minimum daily discharge of index Q95 is 0.7 m3.s-1.

Keywords: Ardabil, Environmental flow, Flow Duration Curve, Gharasou River.

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Authors: Sagar Jajoo

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Urban planning is the need of the hour in a rapidly developing county like India. In essence, urban planning enhances the quality of land at a reasonable cost. Naya (New) Raipur is the new planned capital of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, and is one of India’s few planned cities. Over the next decade it will drastically change the landscape of the state of Chhattisgarh. This new planned development is quintessential in growing this backward region and providing for future infrastructure. Key questions that arise are: How are people living in the surrounding region of New Raipur affected by its development? Are the affected people satisfied with compensation and rehabilitation that has been provided by the New Raipur Development Authority? To answer these questions, field research study in the form of questionnaires, interviews and site visits was conducted. To summarize the findings, while a majority of the surveyed population was dissatisfied with the rehabilitation and compensation provided by the New Raipur Development Authority, they were very positive about the success of the new development. Most thought that the new city would help their careers, improve job opportunities, improve prospects for their future generations, and benefit society as a whole.

To improve rehabilitation schemes for the future, the reasons for the negative sentiment brewing amongst the villagers regarding the monetary compensation was investigated. Most villagers deemed the monetary compensation to be lacking as they had squandered their financial windfall already. With numerous interviews and site visits, it was discovered that the lump sum form of monetary compensation was to blame. With a huge sum of money received at once and a lack of financial education, many villagers squandered this newly gained money on unnecessary purchases such as alcohol and expensive vehicles without investing for the long run in farmland and education for their children. One recommendation proposed to the New Raipur Development Authority (NRDA) for future monetary compensation design in times of rehabilitating people was to provide payments in installments rather than lump sums and educate the people about investing the compensation money wisely. This would save them from wasting money they receive and the ensuing dissatisfaction of squandering that money.

Keywords: Compensation, Naya Raipur, Rehabilitation, Satisfaction Survey, Urban Planning.

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Authors: Yusuff Idowu Moshood, Sanni Mohammed

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Natural radiations such as ultraviolet (UV) radiation sourced from sun are known to be the main causes of skin cancer, sunburn, eye damage, premature aging of skin and other skin related diseases. Its percentage of radiation reaching the earth populace and its impacts are not well known. Its variability in near-surface relating to its impacts on populace depends on some atmospheric parameters. Hence, this work was embarked on to determine the variability in near-surface UV radiation and its dependency on some atmospheric parameters at different time of the day in Offa, Nigeria. The variability was determined using the data obtained from meteorological garden, Science Laboratory Technology Department, Federal Polytechnic Offa, Nigeria. The data obtained were solar UV radiation, solar radiation, temperature, humidity and pressure at 30 minutes interval. Relationships were determined and correlations were derived using SPSS Pearson Correlation tool. The results showed a significant level of correlation with p-value of 0.01 and 0.05 levels. Thus, the results revealed some good relationships between the solar UV radiation and other atmospheric parameters with significance level less than p-value obtained. Inferentially, interdependent relationships were found to exist. Therefore, the nature of relationship obtained could be a yardstick for decision making in short term environmental planning on solar UV radiation depending of some atmospheric parameters within Offa locality.

Keywords: Correlation, inferential, radiation, yardstick.

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Authors: A. Kourou, A. Ioakeimidou, V. Avramea

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Planning for natural disasters and emergencies is something every school or educational institution must consider, regardless of its size or location. Preparedness is the key to save lives if a disaster strikes. School disaster management mirrors individual and family disaster prevention, and wider community disaster prevention efforts. This paper presents the usage of E-PreS System as a helpful, managerial tool during the school earthquake drill, in order to support schools in developing effective disaster and emergency plans specific to their local needs. The project comes up with a holistic methodology using real-time evaluation involving different categories of actors, districts, steps and metrics. The main outcomes of E-PreS project are the development of E-PreS web platform that host the needed data of school emergency planning; the development of E-PreS System; the implementation of disaster drills using E-PreS System in educational premises and local schools; and the evaluation of E-PreS System. Taking into consideration that every disaster drill aims to test and valid school plan and procedures; clarify and train personnel in roles and responsibilities; improve interagency coordination; identify gaps in resources; improve individual performance; and identify opportunities for improvement, E-PreS Project was submitted and approved by the European Commission (EC).

Keywords: Disaster drills, earthquake preparedness, E-PreS system, school emergency plans.

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Authors: V. Anastasov, I.Khamis

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The paper presents an overview of environmental issues that may be expected with nuclear desalination. The analysis of coupling nuclear power with desalination plants indicates that adverse marine impacts can be mitigated with alternative intake designs or cooling systems. The atmospheric impact of desalination may be greatly reduced through the coupling with nuclear power, while maximizing the socio-economic benefit for both processes. The potential for tritium contamination of the desalinated water was reviewed. Experience with the systems and practices related to the radiological quality of the product water, shows no examples of cross-contamination. Furthermore, the indicators for the public acceptance of nuclear desalination, as one of the most important sustainability aspects of any such large project, show a positive trend. From the data collected, a conclusion is made that nuclear desalination should be supported by decision-makers.

Keywords: Environmental impacts, nuclear desalination, publicacceptance, tritium.

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Authors: Edelyn Alicar-Cadorna

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This study assessed the productivity and performance of the barangays in the Heritage City of Vigan in terms of the barangays- resource requirements, management of resources, produced goods and services, and outcomes of service delivery. The descriptive research design was used in the study employing the input-process-output-outcomes model. Findings of this study showed that the barangays were strong in terms of resource requirements which enabled them to produce goods and services. The barangays were also strong in terms of management of resources in development planning. They also showed great potential along fiscal administration, and had a moderately high capability in organization and management. However, the barangays appeared to be most wanting in the area of barangay legislation, but they were strong in community mobilization and they had strong linkages with POs, NGOs and educational institutions. In the delivery of social services, the barangays favored the maintenance of day care centers. However, the barangays seem to be weak in the delivery of economic services. They fared well along providing protective services such as in establishing a Barangay Disaster Coordinating Council and organizing a group of Barangay Tanod. In terms of environmental services, the barangays performed garbage collection and disposal; however, garbage still found their way in the streets in some barangays. The services delivered had effected an improved status of the barangays. However, the barangays are still facing some problems.

Keywords: Barangays, Performance and Productivity.

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Authors: Alia Al Rayssi, Mahra Al Marar, Alyazia Alkhaili, Reem Al Dhaheri, Shayma Alkobaisi, Hoda Amer

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We present in this paper a web-based system called “HelpMeBreathe” for managing asthma. The proposed system provides analytical tools, which allow better understanding of environmental triggers of asthma, hence better support of data-driven decision making. The developed system provides warning messages to a specific asthma patient if the weather in his/her area might cause any difficulty in breathing or could trigger an asthma attack. HelpMeBreathe collects, stores, and analyzes individuals’ moving trajectories and health conditions as well as environmental data. It then processes and displays the patients’ data through an analytical tool that leads to an effective decision making by physicians and other decision makers.

Keywords: Asthma, environmental triggers, map interface, peak flow, web-based system.

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Authors: M. Hajduk-Stelmachowicz

Abstract:

This paper presents results of empirical studies that were conducted in enterprises from Podkarpackie Voivodeship (Poland). It shows the experiences of those enterprises resulting from implementing and improving the eco-innovativeness management that is formal Environmental Management System (EMS). This study shows the expected and obtained internal benefits which are the effects of a functioning EMS. The aim of this paper is to determine whether the information included in international theoretical studies concerning the benefits of implementing, functioning and improving formal EMS (which is based on the international standard ISO 14001) are confirmed by the effects of the enterprises- activities.

Keywords: Eco-innovations, Environmental Management System (EMS), ISO 14001, Podkarpackie Voivodeship (Poland).

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Authors: Wayan F. Mahmudy, Romeo M. Marian, Lee H. S. Luong

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 This paper deals with modeling and optimization of two NP-hard problems in production planning of flexible manufacturing system (FMS), part type selection problem and loading problem. The part type selection problem and the loading problem are strongly related and heavily influence the system’s efficiency and productivity. These problems have been modeled and solved simultaneously by using real coded genetic algorithms (RCGA) which uses an array of real numbers as chromosome representation. The novel proposed chromosome representation produces only feasible solutions which minimize a computational time needed by GA to push its population toward feasible search space or repair infeasible chromosomes. The proposed RCGA improves the FMS performance by considering two objectives, maximizing system throughput and maintaining the balance of the system (minimizing system unbalance). The resulted objective values are compared to the optimum values produced by branch-and-bound method. The experiments show that the proposed RCGA could reach near optimum solutions in a reasonable amount of time.

Keywords: Flexible manufacturing system, production planning, part type selection problem, loading problem, real-coded genetic algorithm.

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Authors: A. Ali, V. Strezov, P. Davies, I. Wright, T. Kan

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The environmental impacts arising from mining activities affect the air, water, and soil quality. Impacts may result in unexpected and adverse environmental outcomes. This study reports on the impact of coal production on sediment in Sydney region of Australia. The sediment samples upstream and downstream from the discharge points from three mines were taken, and 80 parameters were tested. The results were assessed against sediment quality based on presence of metals. The study revealed the increment of metal content in the sediment downstream of the reference locations. In many cases, the sediment was above the Australia and New Zealand Environment Conservation Council and international sediment quality guidelines value (SQGV). The major outliers to the guidelines were nickel (Ni) and zinc (Zn).

Keywords: Coal mine, environmental impact, produced water, sediment quality guidelines value.

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Authors: Abdulrahman A. Bahaddad, Mohammed Beshir

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The objective of this paper is to demonstrate and describe eight different types of power generation technologies and to understand the history and future trends of each technology. In addition, a comparative analysis between these technologies will be presented with respect to their cost analysis and associated performance.

Keywords: Conventional power generation, economic analysis, environmental impact, renewable energy power generation.

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Authors: G. Petruzzelli, F. Pedron, M. Grifoni, M. Barbafieri, I. Rosellini, B. Pezzarossa

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As a result of diverse industrial activities, pollution from numerous contaminant affects both groundwater and soils. Many contaminated sites have been discovered in industrialized countries and their remediation is a priority in environmental legislations. The aim of this paper is to provide the evolution of remediation from consolidated invasive technologies to environmental friendly green strategies. Many clean-up technologies have been used. Nowadays the technologies selection is no longer exclusively based on eliminating the source of pollution, but the aim of remediation includes also the recovery of soil quality. “Green remediation”, a strategy based on “soft technologies”, appears the key to tackle the issue of remediation of contaminated sites with the greatest attention to environmental quality, including the preservation of soil functionality.

Keywords: Bioremediation, green remediation, phytoremediation, remediation technologies, soil.

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Authors: L. Heidari, M. Jalili Ghazizade

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This paper aims to determine the best environmental and economic scenario for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management of the Maku city by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The functional elements of this study are collection, transportation, and disposal of MSW in Maku city. Waste composition and density, as two key parameters of MSW, have been determined by field sampling, and then, the other important specifications of MSW like chemical formula, thermal energy and water content were calculated. These data beside other information related to collection and disposal facilities are used as a reliable source of data to assess the environmental impacts of different waste management options, including landfills, composting, recycling and energy recovery. The environmental impact of MSW management options has been investigated in 15 different scenarios by Integrated Waste Management (IWM) software. The photochemical smog, greenhouse gases, acid gases, toxic emissions, and energy consumption of each scenario are measured. Then, the environmental indices of each scenario are specified by weighting these parameters. Economic costs of scenarios have been also compared with each other based on literature. As final result, since the organic materials make more than 80% of the waste, compost can be a suitable method. Although the major part of the remaining 20% of waste can be recycled, due to the high cost of necessary equipment, the landfill option has been suggested. Therefore, the scenario with 80% composting and 20% landfilling is selected as superior environmental and economic scenario. This study shows that, to select a scenario with practical applications, simultaneously environmental and economic aspects of different scenarios must be considered.

Keywords: IWM software, life cycle assessment, Maku, municipal solid waste management.

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Authors: Collins C. Ngwakwe

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The objective of this paper is to establish a possible relationship between sustainable business practice and firm performance. Using a field survey methodology, a sample of sixty manufacturing companies in Nigeria was studied. The firms were categorised into two groups, environmentally 'responsible' and 'irresponsible' firms. An investigation was undertaken into the possible relationship between firm performance and three selected indicators of sustainable business practice: employee health and safety (EHS), waste management (WM), and community development (CD), common within the 30 'responsible' firms. Findings from empirical results reveal that the sustainable practices of the 'responsible' firms are significantly related with firm performance. In addition, sustainable practices are inversely related with fines and penalties. The paper concludes that, within the Nigerian setting at least, sustainability affects corporate performance and sustainability may be a possible tool for corporate conflict resolution as evidenced in the reduction of fines, penalties and compensations. The paper therefore recommends research into the relationship between sustainability and conflict management.

Keywords: Environmental responsibility, environmental investment, social responsibility, sustainable business, social ethics, environmental ethics.

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Authors: Kenneth M. Oba

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This study investigated factors affecting the price of cement in Nigeria, and developed a mathematical model that can predict future cement prices. Cement is key in the Nigerian construction industry. The changes in price caused by certain factors could affect economic and infrastructural development; hence there is need for proper proactive planning. Secondary data were collected from published information on cement between 2014 and 2019. In addition, questionnaires were sent to some domestic cement retailers in Port Harcourt in Nigeria, to obtain the actual prices of cement between the same periods. The study revealed that the most critical factors affecting the price of cement in Nigeria are inflation rate, population growth rate, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate. With the use of data from United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and Central Bank of Nigeria databases, amongst others, a Multiple Linear Regression model was formulated. The model was used to predict the price of cement for 2020-2025. The model was then tested with 95% confidence level, using a two-tailed t-test and an F-test, resulting in an R² of 0.8428 and R² (adj.) of 0.6069. The results of the tests and the correlation factors confirm the model to be fit and adequate. This study will equip researchers and stakeholders in the construction industry with information for planning, monitoring, and management of present and future construction projects that involve the use of cement.

Keywords: Cement price, multiple linear regression model, Nigerian Construction Industry, price prediction.

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Authors: Katsumi Hirata

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Certain systems can function well only if they recognize the sound environment as humans do. In this research, we focus on sound classification by adopting a convolutional neural network and aim to develop a method that automatically classifies various environmental sounds. Although the neural network is a powerful technique, the performance depends on the type of input data. Therefore, we propose an approach via a slice bispectrogram, which is a third-order spectrogram and is a slice version of the amplitude for the short-time bispectrum. This paper explains the slice bispectrogram and discusses the effectiveness of the derived method by evaluating the experimental results using the ESC‑50 sound dataset. As a result, the proposed scheme gives high accuracy and stability. Furthermore, some relationship between the accuracy and non-Gaussianity of sound signals was confirmed.

Keywords: Bispectrum, convolutional neural network, environmental sound, slice bispectrogram, spectrogram.

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Authors: M. C. Proença

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The tools described in this paper enable the location of burned areas where took place the annihilation of natural habitats and establishes a baseline for major changes in forest ecosystems during recovery. Moreover, the result allows the follow up of the surface fuel loading, allowing the evaluation and guidance of restoration measures to remote areas by phased time planning. This case study implements the evaluation of burned areas that suffered successive wildfires in Portugal mainland during the summer of 2017, killing more than 60 people. The goal is to show that this evaluation can be done with remote sense data free of charges in a simple laptop, with open-source software, describing the not-so-simple methodology step by step, to make it accessible for local workers in the areas attained, where the availability of information is essential for the immediate planning of mitigation measures, such as restoring road access, allocate funds for the recovery of human dwellings and assess further needs for restoration of the ecological system. Wildfires also devastate forest ecosystems having a direct impact on vegetation cover and killing or driving away the animal population, besides loss of all crops in rural areas that are essential as local resources. The economic interests are also attained, as the pinewood burned becomes useless for the noblest applications, so its value decreases, and resin extraction ends for several years.

Keywords: Image processing, remote sensing, wildfires, burned areas, SENTINEL-2.

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Authors: Johnson Adafin, James O. B. Rotimi, Suzanne Wilkinson, Abimbola O. Windapo

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An aspect of client expenditure management that requires attention is the level of accuracy achievable in design-stage elemental cost planning. This has been a major concern for construction clients and practitioners in New Zealand (NZ). Pre-tender estimating inaccuracies are significantly influenced by the level of risk information available to estimators. Proper cost planning activities should ensure the production of a project’s likely construction costs (initial and final), and subsequent cost control activities should prevent unpleasant consequences of cost overruns, disputes and project abandonment. If risks were properly identified and priced at the design stage, observed variance between design-stage elemental cost plans (ECPs) and final tender sums (FTS) (initial contract sums) could be reduced. This study investigates the variations between design-stage ECPs and FTS of construction projects, with a view to identifying risk factors that are responsible for the observed variance. Data were sourced through interviews, and risk factors were identified by using thematic analysis. Access was obtained to project files from the records of study participants (consultant quantity surveyors), and document analysis was employed in complementing the responses from the interviews. Study findings revealed the discrepancies between ECPs and FTS in the region of -14% and +16%. It is opined in this study that the identified risk factors were responsible for the variability observed. The values obtained from the analysis would enable greater accuracy in the forecast of FTS by Quantity Surveyors. Further, whilst inherent risks in construction project developments are observed globally, these findings have important ramifications for construction projects by expanding existing knowledge on what is needed for reasonable budgetary performance and successful delivery of construction projects. The findings contribute significantly to the study by providing quantitative confirmation to justify the theoretical conclusions generated in the literature from around the world. This therefore adds to and consolidates existing knowledge.

Keywords: Accuracy, design-stage, elemental cost plan, final tender sum, New Zealand.

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Authors: Seong-Ho Song, Ki-Seob Kim, Seop-Hyeong Park, Seon-Woo Lee

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In this paper, the data correction algorithm is suggested when the environmental air temperature varies. To correct the infrared data in this paper, the initial temperature or the initial infrared image data is used so that a target source system may not be necessary. The temperature data obtained from infrared detector show nonlinear property depending on the surface temperature. In order to handle this nonlinear property, Taylor series approach is adopted. It is shown that the proposed algorithm can reduce the influence of environmental temperature on the components in the board. The main advantage of this algorithm is to use only the initial temperature of the components on the board rather than using other reference device such as black body sources in order to get reference temperatures.

Keywords: Infrared camera, Temperature Data compensation, Environmental Ambient Temperature, Electric Component

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Authors: Mohamad Azmi Haniffa, Fakhruldin Mohd Hashim

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Pipeline infrastructures normally represent high cost of investment and the pipeline must be free from risks that could cause environmental hazard and potential threats to personnel safety. Pipeline integrity such monitoring and management become very crucial to provide unimpeded transportation and avoiding unnecessary production deferment. Thus proper cleaning and inspection is the key to safe and reliable pipeline operation and plays an important role in pipeline integrity management program and has become a standard industry procedure. In view of this, understanding the motion (dynamic behavior), prediction and control of the PIG speed is important in executing pigging operation as it offers significant benefits, such as estimating PIG arrival time at receiving station, planning for suitable pigging operation, and improves efficiency of pigging tasks. The objective of this paper is to review recent developments in speed control system of pipeline PIGs. The review carried out would serve as an industrial application in a form of quick reference of recent developments in pipeline PIG speed control system, and further initiate others to add-in/update the list in the future leading to knowledge based data, and would attract active interest of others to share their view points.

Keywords: Pipeline Inspection Gauge (PIG), In Line Inspection Tools (ILI), PIG motion, PIG speed control system

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Authors: Kwok W. Mui, Ling T. Wong, F. Xiao, Chin T. Cheung, Ho C. Yu

Abstract:

This study addresses a concept of the Sustainable Building Environmental Model (SBEM) developed to optimize energy consumption in air conditioning and ventilation (ACV) systems without any deterioration of indoor environmental quality (IEQ). The SBEM incorporates two main components: an adaptive comfort temperature control module (ACT) and a new carbon dioxide demand control module (nDCV). These two modules take an innovative approach to maintain satisfaction of the Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) with optimum energy consumption; they provide a rational basis of effective control. A total of 2133 sets of measurement data of indoor air temperature (Ta), relative humidity (Rh) and carbon dioxide concentration (CO2) were conducted in some Hong Kong offices to investigate the potential of integrating the SBEM. A simulation was used to evaluate the dynamic performance of the energy and air conditioning system with the integration of the SBEM in an air-conditioned building. It allows us make a clear picture of the control strategies and performed any pre-tuned of controllers before utilized in real systems. With the integration of SBEM, it was able to save up to 12.3% in simulation of overall electricity consumption, and maintain the average carbon dioxide concentration within 1000ppm and occupant dissatisfaction in 20%. 

Keywords: —Sustainable building environmental model (SBEM), adaptive comfort temperature (ACT), new demand control ventilation (nDCV), energy saving.

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Authors: Sanae Attioui, Said Najah

Abstract:

The Earth's surface is constantly changing through forces of nature and human activities. Reliable, accurate, and timely change detection is critical to environmental monitoring, resource management, and planning activities. Recently, interest in deep learning algorithms, especially convolutional neural networks, has increased in the field of image change detection due to their powerful ability to extract multi-level image features automatically. However, these networks are prone to drawbacks that limit their applications, which reside in their inability to capture spatial relationships between image instances, as this necessitates a large amount of training data. As an alternative, Capsule Network has been proposed to overcome these shortcomings. Although its effectiveness in remote sensing image analysis has been experimentally verified, its application in change detection tasks remains very sparse. Motivated by its greater robustness towards improved hierarchical object representation, this study aims to apply a capsule network for PolSAR image Change Detection. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed change detection method can yield a significantly higher detection rate compared to methods based on convolutional neural networks.

Keywords: Change detection, capsule network, deep network, Convolutional Neural Networks, polarimetric synthetic aperture radar images, PolSAR images.

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