Search results for: emission scenarios

Authors: Jochen Nelles, Susanne Kohns, Julia Spies, Friederike Schmitz-Buhl, Roland Thietje, Christopher Brandl, Alexander Mertens, Christopher M. Schlick

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Industrial robots as part of highly automated manufacturing are recently developed to cooperative (light-weight) robots. This offers the opportunity of using them as assistance robots and to improve the participation in professional life of disabled or handicapped people such as tetraplegics. Robots under development are located within a cooperation area together with the working person at the same workplace. This cooperation area is an area where the robot and the working person can perform tasks at the same time. Thus, working people and robots are operating in the immediate proximity. Considering the physical restrictions and the limited mobility of tetraplegics, a hands-free robot control could be an appropriate approach for a cooperative assistance robot. To meet these requirements, the research project MeRoSy (human-robot synergy) develops methods for cooperative assistance robots based on the measurement of head movements of the working person. One research objective is to improve the participation in professional life of people with disabilities and, in particular, mobility impaired persons (e.g. wheelchair users or tetraplegics), whose participation in a self-determined working life is denied. This raises the research question, how a human-robot cooperation workplace can be designed for hands-free robot control. Here, the example of a library scenario is demonstrated. In this paper, an empirical study that focuses on the impact of head movement related stress is presented. 12 test subjects with tetraplegia participated in the study. Tetraplegia also known as quadriplegia is the worst type of spinal cord injury. In the experiment, three various basic head movements were examined. Data of the head posture were collected by a motion capture system; muscle activity was measured via surface electromyography and the subjective mental stress was assessed via a mental effort questionnaire. The muscle activity was measured for the sternocleidomastoid (SCM), the upper trapezius (UT) or trapezius pars descendens, and the splenius capitis (SPL) muscle. For this purpose, six non-invasive surface electromyography sensors were mounted on the head and neck area. An analysis of variance shows differentiated muscular strains depending on the type of head movement. Systematically investigating the influence of different basic head movements on the resulting strain is an important issue to relate the research results to other scenarios. At the end of this paper, a conclusion will be drawn and an outlook of future work will be presented.

Keywords: Assistance robot, human-robot-interaction, motion capture, stress-strain-concept, surface electromyography, tetraplegia.

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Authors: P. M. Natarajan, Shambhu Kallolikar, S. Ganesh

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By size and volume of water, Ganges River basin is the biggest among the fourteen major river basins in India. By Hindu’s faith, it is the main ‘holy river’ in this nation. But, of late, the pollution load, both domestic and industrial sources are deteriorating the surface and groundwater as well as land resources and hence the environment of the Ganges River basin is under threat. Seeing this scenario, the Indian government began to reclaim this river by two Ganges Action Plans I and II since 1986 by spending Rs. 2,747.52 crores ($457.92 million). But the result was no improvement in the water quality of the river and groundwater and environment even after almost three decades of reclamation, and hence now the New Indian Government is taking extra care to rejuvenate this river and allotted Rs. 2,037 cores ($339.50 million) in 2014 and Rs. 20,000 crores ($3,333.33 million) in 2015. The reasons for the poor water quality and stinking environment even after three decades of reclamation of the river are either no treatment/partial treatment of the sewage. Hence, now the authors are suggesting a tertiary level treatment standard of sewages of all sources and origins of the Ganges River basin and recycling the entire treated water for nondomestic uses. At 20million litres per day (MLD) capacity of each sewage treatment plant (STP), this basin needs about 2020 plants to treat the entire sewage load. Cost of the STPs is Rs. 3,43,400 million ($5,723.33 million) and the annual maintenance cost is Rs. 15,352 million ($255.87 million). The advantages of the proposed exercise are: we can produce a volume of 1,769.52 million m³ of biogas. Since biogas is energy, can be used as a fuel, for any heating purpose, such as cooking. It can also be used in a gas engine to convert the energy in the gas into electricity and heat. It is possible to generate about 3,539.04 million kilowatt electricity per annum from the biogas generated in the process of wastewater treatment in Ganges basin. The income generation from electricity works out to Rs 10,617.12million ($176.95million). This power can be used to bridge the supply and demand gap of energy in the power hungry villages where 300million people are without electricity in India even today, and to run these STPs as well. The 664.18 million tonnes of sludge generated by the treatment plants per annum can be used in agriculture as manure with suitable amendments. By arresting the pollution load the 187.42 cubic kilometer (km³) of groundwater potential of the Ganges River basin could be protected from deterioration. Since we can recycle the sewage for non-domestic purposes, about 14.75km³ of fresh water per annum can be conserved for future use. The total value of the water saving per annum is Rs.22,11,916million ($36,865.27million) and each citizen of Ganges River basin can save Rs. 4,423.83/ ($73.73) per annum and Rs. 12.12 ($0.202) per day by recycling the treated water for nondomestic uses. Further the environment of this basin could be kept clean by arresting the foul smell as well as the 3% of greenhouse gages emission from the stinking waterways and land. These are the ways to reclaim the waterways of Ganges River basin from deterioration.

Keywords: Holy Ganges River, lifeline of India, wastewater treatment and management, making Ganges permanently holy.

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Authors: Karishma Kashyap, Subha D. Parida

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Rapid population growth and urbanization is creating pressure throughout the world. This has a dramatic effect on a lot of elements which include water, food, transportation, energy, infrastructure etc. as few of the key services. Built environment sector is growing concurrently to meet the needs of urbanization. Due to such large scale development of buildings, there is a need for them to be monitored and managed efficiently. Along with appropriate management, climate adaptation is highly crucial as well because buildings are one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emission in their operation phase. Buildings to be adaptive need to provide a triple bottom approach to sustainability i.e., being socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. Hence, in order to deliver these sustainability outcomes, there is a growing understanding and thrive towards switching to green buildings or renovating new ones as per green standards wherever possible. Academic institutions in particular have been following this trend globally. This is highly significant as universities usually have high occupancy rates because they manage a large building portfolio. Also, as universities accommodate the future generation of architects, policy makers etc., they have the potential of setting themselves as a best industry practice model for research and innovation for the rest to follow. Hence their climate adaptation, sustainable growth and performance management becomes highly crucial in order to provide the best services to users. With the objective of evaluating appropriate management mechanisms within academic institutions, a feasibility study was carried out in a recent 5-Star Green Star rated university building (housing the School of Construction) in Victoria (south-eastern state of Australia). The key aim was to understand the behavioral and social aspect of the building users, management and the impact of their relationship on overall building sustainability. A survey was used to understand the building occupant’s response and reactions in terms of their work environment and management. A report was generated based on the survey results complemented with utility and performance data which were then used to evaluate the management structure of the university. Followed by the report, interviews were scheduled with the facility and asset managers in order to understand the approach they use to manage the different buildings in their university campuses (old, new, refurbished), respective building and parameters incorporated in maintaining the Green Star performance. The results aimed at closing the communication and feedback loop within the respective institutions and assist the facility managers to deliver appropriate stakeholder engagement. For the wider design community, analysis of the data highlights the applicability and significance of prioritizing key stakeholders, integrating desired engagement policies within an institution’s management structures and frameworks and their effect on building performance

Keywords: Building Optimization, Green Building, Post Occupancy Evaluation, Stakeholder Engagement.

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Authors: C. Silveira, A. Ascenso, J. Ferreira, A. I. Miranda, P. Tuccella, G. Curci

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Poor air quality is one of the main environmental causes of premature deaths worldwide, and mainly in cities, where the majority of the population lives. It is a consequence of successive land cover (LC) and use changes, as a result of the intensification of human activities. Knowing these landscape modifications in a comprehensive spatiotemporal dimension is, therefore, essential for understanding variations in air pollutant concentrations. In this sense, the use of air quality models is very useful to simulate the physical and chemical processes that affect the dispersion and reaction of chemical species into the atmosphere. However, the modelling performance should always be evaluated since the resolution of the input datasets largely dictates the reliability of the air quality outcomes. Among these data, the updated LC is an important parameter to be considered in atmospheric models, since it takes into account the Earth’s surface changes due to natural and anthropic actions, and regulates the exchanges of fluxes (emissions, heat, moisture, etc.) between the soil and the air. This work aims to evaluate the performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), when different LC classifications are used as an input. The influence of two LC classifications was tested: i) the 24-classes USGS (United States Geological Survey) LC database included by default in the model, and the ii) CLC (Corine Land Cover) and specific high-resolution LC data for Portugal, reclassified according to the new USGS nomenclature (33-classes). Two distinct WRF-Chem simulations were carried out to assess the influence of the LC on air quality over Europe and Portugal, as a case study, for the year 2015, using the nesting technique over three simulation domains (25 km², 5 km² and 1 km² horizontal resolution). Based on the 33-classes LC approach, particular emphasis was attributed to Portugal, given the detail and higher LC spatial resolution (100 m x 100 m) than the CLC data (5000 m x 5000 m). As regards to the air quality, only the LC impacts on tropospheric ozone concentrations were evaluated, because ozone pollution episodes typically occur in Portugal, in particular during the spring/summer, and there are few research works relating to this pollutant with LC changes. The WRF-Chem results were validated by season and station typology using background measurements from the Portuguese air quality monitoring network. As expected, a better model performance was achieved in rural stations: moderate correlation (0.4 – 0.7), BIAS (10 – 21µg.m^-3) and RMSE (20 – 30 µg.m^-3), and where higher average ozone concentrations were estimated. Comparing both simulations, small differences grounded on the Leaf Area Index and air temperature values were found, although the high-resolution LC approach shows a slight enhancement in the model evaluation. This highlights the role of the LC on the exchange of atmospheric fluxes, and stresses the need to consider a high-resolution LC characterization combined with other detailed model inputs, such as the emission inventory, to improve air quality assessment.

Keywords: Land cover, tropospheric ozone, WRF-Chem, air quality assessment.

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Authors: Siyamak Ziyaei, Siti Khalijah Mazlan, Petros Lappas

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Compressed natural gas (CNG) is primarily composed of methane (CH4), and has a lower carbon to hydrogen ratio than other hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline (C8H18) and diesel (C12H23). Consequently, it has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions compared to conventional fuels. Although Natural Gas (NG) has environmental advantages compared to other hydrocarbon fuels, its main component, CH4, burns at a slower rate compared to the conventional fuels. A higher pressure and leaner cylinder environment will unravel the slow burn characteristic of CH4. Lean combustion and high compression ratios are well-known methods for increasing the efficiency of internal combustion engines. In order to achieve successful a CNG lean combustion in Spark Ignition (SI) engines, a strong ignition system is essential to avoid engine misfires, especially in ultra-lean conditions. Turbulent Jet Ignition (TJI) is an ignition system that employs a pre-combustion chamber to ignite the lean fuel mixture in the main combustion chamber using a fraction of the total fuel per cycle. TJI enables ultra-lean combustion by providing distributed ignition sites through orifices. The fast burn rate provided by TJI enables the ordinary SI engine to be comparable to other combustion systems such as Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) or Controlled Auto-Ignition (CAI) in terms of thermal efficiency, through the increased levels of dilution without the need of sophisticated control systems. Due to the physical geometry of TJI, which contains small orifices that connect the pre-chamber to the main chamber, providing the right mixture of fuel and air has been identified as a key challenge due to the insufficient amount of air that is pushed into the pre-chamber during each compression stroke. There is also the problem of scavenging which contributed to the factors that reduces the TJI performance. Combustion residual gases such as CO2, CO and NOx from the previous combustion cycle dilute the pre-chamber fuel-air mixture preventing rapid combustion in the pre-chamber. An air-controlled active TJI is presented in this paper in order to address these issues. By supplying air into the pre-chamber at a sufficient pressure, residual gases are exhausted, and the air-fuel ratio is controlled within the pre-chamber, thereby improving the quality of the combustion. An investigation of the 3D combustion characteristics of a CNG-fueled SI engine using a direct injection fuelling strategy employing an air channel in the prechamber is presented in this paper. Experiments and simulations were performed at the Worldwide Mapping Point (WWMP) at 1500 revolutions per minute (rpm), 3.3 bar Indicated Mean Effective Pressure (IMEP), using only conventional spark plugs as a baseline. With a validated baseline engine simulation, the settings were set for all simulation scenarios at λ=1. Following that, the pre-chambers with and without an auxiliary fuel supply were simulated. In the study of (DI-CNG) SI engine, active TJI was observed to perform better than passive TJI and conventional  spark plug ignition. In conclusion, the active pre-chamber with an air channel demonstrated an improved thermal efficiency (ηth) over other counterparts and conventional spark ignition systems.

Keywords: Turbulent Jet Ignition, Active Air Control Turbulent Jet Ignition, Pre-chamber ignition system, Active and Passive Pre-chamber, thermal efficiency, methane combustion, internal combustion engine combustion emissions.

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Authors: Elizabeth J. Currie, Fernando Ortega Perez

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—‘MEDICINE’ is a new project funded under the EC Horizon 2020 Marie-Sklodowska Curie Actions, to determine concepts of health and healing from a culturally specific indigenous context, using a framework of interdisciplinary methods which integrates archaeological-historical, ethnographic and modern health sciences approaches. The study will generate new theoretical and methodological approaches to model how peoples survive and adapt their traditional belief systems in a context of alien cultural impacts. In the immediate wake of the conquest of Peru by invading Spanish armies and ideology, native Andeans responded by forming the Taki Onkoy millenarian movement, which rejected European philosophical and ontological teachings, claiming “you make us sick”. The study explores how people’s experience of their world and their health beliefs within it, is fundamentally shaped by their inherent beliefs about the nature of being and identity in relation to the wider cosmos. Cultural and health belief systems and related rituals or behaviors sustain a people’s sense of identity, wellbeing and integrity. In the event of dislocation and persecution these may change into devolved forms, which eventually inter-relate with ‘modern’ biomedical systems of health in as yet unidentified ways. The development of new conceptual frameworks that model this process will greatly expand our understanding of how people survive and adapt in response to cultural trauma. It will also demonstrate the continuing role, relevance and use of TM in present-day indigenous communities. Studies will first be made of relevant pre-Colombian material culture, and then of early colonial period ethnohistorical texts which document the health beliefs and ritual practices still employed by indigenous Andean societies at the advent of the 17^th century Jesuit campaigns of persecution - ‘Extirpación de las Idolatrías’. Core beliefs drawn from these baseline studies will then be used to construct a questionnaire about current health beliefs and practices to be taken into the study population of indigenous Quechua peoples in the northern Andean region of Ecuador. Their current systems of knowledge and medicine have evolved within complex historical contexts of both the conquest by invading Inca armies in the late 15^th century, followed a generation later by Spain, into new forms. A new model will be developed of contemporary  Andean concepts of health, illness and healing demonstrating  the way these have changed through time. With this, a ‘policy tool’ will be constructed as a bridhging facility into contemporary global scenarios relevant to other Indigenous, First Nations, and migrant peoples to provide a means through which their traditional health beliefs and current needs may be more appropriately understood and met. This paper presents findings from the first analytical phases of the work based upon the study of the literature and the archaeological records. The study offers a novel perspective and methods in the development policies sensitive to indigenous and minority people’s health needs.

Keywords: Andean ethnomedicine, andean health beliefs, health beliefs models, traditional medicine.

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Authors: Sujana Dhar, Asis Mazumdar

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The effects of global warming on India vary from the submergence of low-lying islands and coastal lands to the melting of glaciers in the Indian Himalayas, threatening the volumetric flow rate of many of the most important rivers of India and South Asia. In India, such effects are projected to impact millions of lives. As a result of ongoing climate change, the climate of India has become increasingly volatile over the past several decades; this trend is expected to continue. Climate change is one of the most important global environmental challenges, with implications for food production, water supply, health, energy, etc. Addressing climate change requires a good scientific understanding as well as coordinated action at national and global level. The climate change issue is part of the larger challenge of sustainable development. As a result, climate policies can be more effective when consistently embedded within broader strategies designed to make national and regional development paths more sustainable. The impact of climate variability and change, climate policy responses, and associated socio-economic development will affect the ability of countries to achieve sustainable development goals. A very well calibrated Soil and Water Assessment Tool (R2 = 0.9968, NSE = 0.91) was exercised over the Khatra sub basin of the Kangsabati River watershed in Bankura district of West Bengal, India, in order to evaluate projected parameters for agricultural activities. Evapotranspiration, Transmission Losses, Potential Evapotranspiration and Lateral Flow to reach are evaluated from the years 2041-2050 in order to generate a picture for sustainable development of the river basin and its inhabitants. India has a significant stake in scientific advancement as well as an international understanding to promote mitigation and adaptation. This requires improved scientific understanding, capacity building, networking and broad consultation processes. This paper is a commitment towards the planning, management and development of the water resources of the Kangsabati River by presenting detailed future scenarios of the Kangsabati river basin, Khatra sub basin, over the mentioned time period. India-s economy and societal infrastructures are finely tuned to the remarkable stability of the Indian monsoon, with the consequence that vulnerability to small changes in monsoon rainfall is very high. In 2002 the monsoon rains failed during July, causing profound loss of agricultural production with a drop of over 3% in India-s GDP. Neither the prolonged break in the monsoon nor the seasonal rainfall deficit was predicted. While the general features of monsoon variability and change are fairly well-documented, the causal mechanisms and the role of regional ecosystems in modulating the changes are still not clear. Current climate models are very poor at modelling the Asian monsoon: this is a challenging and critical region where the ocean, atmosphere, land surface and mountains all interact. The impact of climate change on regional ecosystems is likewise unknown. The potential for the monsoon to become more volatile has major implications for India itself and for economies worldwide. Knowledge of future variability of the monsoon system, particularly in the context of global climate change, is of great concern for regional water and food security. The major findings of this paper were that of all the chosen projected parameters, transmission losses, soil water content, potential evapotranspiration, evapotranspiration and lateral flow to reach, display an increasing trend over the time period of years 2041- 2050.

Keywords: Change, future water availability scenario, modeling, SWAT, global warming, sustainability.

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