Search Results (46,688)

Transforming irrigation practices is essential to address aquifer depletion and food security in Mediterranean regions facing climate change and water scarcity. Developing local and national resilience to climate change requires capacity building to boost soil health and adaptation to drought. Recent attempts undertaken by the SEALACOM Project reduced irrigation rates in protected agriculture. The purpose of this work is to enhance traditional farmer’s practices and promote the potential of advanced fertigation of field crops (i.e., potato and zucchini) cultivated under two different pedo-climatic conditions to improve water and nutrient use efficiency. Results showed the yield of zucchini and potato on SEALACOM plots with continuous fertigation was 22% and 17.8%, respectively, which was higher than the yield with traditional irrigation and fertilization practices. Elite potato tuber size was 40% higher in SEALACOM plots (p < 0.05). The farmer applied 359 L of water to produce 1 kg of fresh zucchini compared to 225 L by the SEALACOM Project, indicating a significant, 60% water saving in the SEALACOM practice. Compared to farmer’s practices of potato production, the SEALACOM Project achieved more than 50% higher water productivity. In zucchini production, farmers applied 19.5% more nitrogen and 19.6% more phosphorus fertilizers. Compared to 58 kg of N applied by the farmers, the SEALACOM Project applied 38 kg of N to produce 1 ton of Zucchini, showing a 34% saving in major nutrient application. To cultivate 1 kg of fresh potato tubers, SEALACOM utilized 4.06 g of nitrogen and 1.34 g of phosphorus, compared to the traditional practice, which required 13.2 g of nitrogen and 2.25 g of phosphorus. Water and nutrient saving and higher productivity and commerciality of the final product have a high positive impact on the farmer’s income and positive attitude towards the adoption of modern, sustainable practices. Full article

Current circular economy discourse is largely shaped by metaphors similar to the ones used for a linear economy: the machine metaphor, competitive metaphor and the journey metaphor. Metaphors influence patterns of thought, what ideas and solutions are valued (and which are not). Therefore, if a radical economic change is desired, it is important to explore which radically different metaphors could inform this thinking. This study explores the use of the forest as a source domain to enrich circular economy discourse. First, through a qualitative enquiry, intuitive knowledge about a forest is mapped out. Then, circular economy experts were asked to project these insights onto circular economy discourse. The results are presented as practical subdomains that can be applied within design, business and educational contexts. The findings show rich insights related to dealing with wholeness, the importance of relationship, and response to change. The Results section presents concrete prompts for activating these source domains and applying these as a prompt for ideation. This research contributes to circular economy education by using metaphors derived from nature as a tool for reflection and novel circular economy conceptualisations. Full article

The current article seeks to present and discuss the research results as part of the ‘Magenta’ Project, which focuses on mapping whether and how nationality has been an impact factor in the context of domestic work in Portugal during the COVID-19 pandemic. This quantitative study sought to compile and organize statistical data showing the effects of COVID-19 on domestic workers in the mainland and island regions of Portugal throughout 2021. Due to the extent of the research, this article focuses only on analyzing the results that show statistically significant associations between the pandemic and the variables of different nationalities in domestic work in Portugal. Full article

The civil engineering sector operates within a complex ecosystem of stakeholders, requiring efficient management and maintenance of structural and infrastructural assets. In this context, there is an increasing need for robust tools to track critical events (e.g., alerts, unusual behaviors) and support decision-making processes related to maintenance and interventions. At the same time, ensuring secure and prompt payments is essential for timely and effective responses. This paper investigated the potential of smart contracts, integrated with blockchain technology, to automate and optimize asset management and maintenance processes. The proposed framework examines how these technologies can enhance operational efficiency, security, and event traceability, providing a structured approach for both routine operations and emergency interventions. Although smart contracts have been widely applied in the construction phase of infrastructure projects, their use in long-term asset management remains largely unexplored. As a conceptual study, this work does not present a quantitative analysis but instead lays the groundwork for future research and real-world applications of blockchain-based smart contracts in infrastructure management and safety procedures. Full article

In recent years, many studies have been carried out regarding the benefits that nature could bring to people’s well-being. The research presented here applies the Delphi methodology to design a survey aimed at assessing the links between the natural environment, well-being and leisure, enriching the existing body of knowledge. Eighteen experts participated in this study with an integrated approach to sustainability terms. Two rounds of queries were put to the panel of experts between February and July 2021. In the first round, the experts identified the key aspects to be considered when studying the perception of natural environments related to well-being through outdoor activities. In the second query, the experts assessed the importance, relevance and clarity of the questions to be included in the survey. The survey was designed based on the results of these two rounds of queries. This methodology aims to gain a better understanding of the interrelation between people and the natural environment in order to determine the mechanisms by which a relationship with nature can improve people’s health, well-being and sustainable behaviours. The Delphi method could be employed for global research to validate this survey. Full article

Old Cairo, also known as Islamic Cairo, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site representing a rich tapestry of history and culture. Today, among various significant aspects, its cultural heritage necessitates the elaboration of a proactive conservation strategy, which should take advantage of the intrinsic support provided by the efforts documented in the literature that have been made in several scientific fields, disciplines, and directions over the years. Most historic religious monumental buildings in Old Cairo, in particular, not only face the effects of local seismic hazards, which are emphasized by damage by past earthquakes, but also suffer the consequences of several influencing parameters that are unique to the Cairo city context. In this sense, it is known that the structural retrofitting of these monumental buildings requires sound knowledge of technical details and criticalities, based on inspections, numerical simulations, the in-field integration of technologies, and laboratory tests. Many other gaps should also be addressed, and a sound conservation strategy should be elaborated on the basis of a multi-target approach, which could account for the structural engineering perspective but also contextualize the retrofit within the state of the art and the evolution of past events. This is the target of the contemporary “Particular Relevance” bilateral Italy–Egypt “CoReng” project, seeking to define a multidisciplinary strategy for conserving Old Cairo’s cultural heritage and focusing primarily on the case study of the Religions Complex. To this end, a review analysis of major oversights and challenges relating to historic monuments in Old Cairo is presented in this paper. Learning from past accidents and experiences is, in fact, the primary supporting basis for elaborating new operational steps and efficient approaches to mitigating challenges and minimizing the consequences of emergency events. As such, this review contribution specifically focuses on the structural vulnerability of historic monumental buildings in Old Cairo, reporting on past efforts, past strategy proposals, research experiences, and trends. Full article

Different countries face significant challenges in managing water-related natural hazards, such as floods and shortages, while ensuring adequate water quality and quantity to satisfy human needs and preserve ecosystems. Climate change projections exacerbate this situation by intensifying the hydrological cycle, resulting in substantial changes in precipitation patterns, evapotranspiration, and groundwater storage. This study reviews water security challenges across 43 countries, drawing on 128 articles obtained from databases including EBSCOHOST, Scopus and ResearchGate, as well as specific journals. Key search terms included “water security”, “water security and climate change”, “water scarcity”, “water risk index”, “water balance”, “water assessment”, and “land use and land cover change”. The analysis reveals the main water security issues present in 43 countries (flash floods, drought and water quality), and the response measures identified these challenges to water security. All the countries studied face one or more critical water-related effects. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and Mexico were identified as the most severely affected, dealing with a combination of water scarcity, flooding, and water pollution. The most suggested strategies for improving water security include sustainable urban planning, improving consumption efficiency, strategic land-use planning, applying technologies to predict availability of water resources and planning according to variations in resource availability over time. In addition, other general actions include enhancing water storage infrastructure, improving consumption efficiency and adopting sustainable urban planning. Full article

This paper introduces a new self-locking-unlockable modular building with an inter-module connection, and its seismic performance is investigated. The new connection can realize fast connection and unlocking during construction through exceptional design. In this paper, taking the Tianjin Binhai Apartment project as the background, for the actual force situation of the new connection, considering the influence of corrugated steel plate stiffness, a simplified model of the connection is constructed by using multi-fold elastic connection, and the corrugated steel plate stiffness is simulated with equivalent support. In the MIDAS Gen 2021 software , the five-story and six-story structural models using traditional rigid connections and new connections were established, respectively, and reaction spectrum analysis was carried out. Meanwhile, seismic waves that comply with codes were selected for dynamic time course analysis. The results show that the stress ratios of all components of the new connection model and the traditional rigid model are less than 1. Among them, the maximum stress ratios of both floor beams are 0.745 and 0.725, respectively; the maximum stress ratios of the modular columns are 0.655 and 0.494, respectively; the stress ratios of the ceiling beams are all less than 0.5; and the two models show good strength and stiffness reserves, following the design principle of strong columns and weak beams and verifying the reliability of the new connection model. Meanwhile, it is found that the inter-story displacement angle of the six-story structure with the new connections is less than the normative value under the action of rare earthquakes, and the difference in top displacement is about 18% compared with that of the rigid structure, so it is suggested that the new connections can be applied within the height of six stories. Full article

The prerequisite for the fusion processing of heterogeneous SAR images lies in high-precision image matching, which can be widely applied in areas such as geometric localization, scene matching navigation, and target recognition. This study proposes a method for high-precision matching of heterogeneous SAR images based on the combination of the single-scale ratio of an exponentially weighted averages (ROEWA) operator and angle-weighted gradient (RAWG). The method consists of the following three main steps: feature point extraction, feature description, and feature matching. The algorithm utilizes the block-based SAR-Harris operator to extract feature points from the reference SAR image, effectively combating the interference of coherent speckle noise and improving the uniformity of feature point distribution. By employing the single-scale ROEWA operator in conjunction with angle-weighted gradient projection, the construction of a 3D dense feature descriptor is achieved, enhancing the consistency of gradient features in heterogeneous SAR images and smoothing the search surface. Through the optimal feature construction strategy and frequency domain SSD algorithm, fast template matching is realized. Experimental comparisons with other mainstream matching methods demonstrate that the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of our method is reduced by 47.5% compared with CFOG, and compared with HOPES, the error is reduced by 15.4% and the matching time is reduced by 34.3%. The proposed approach effectively addresses the nonlinear intensity differences, geometric disparities, and interference of coherent speckle noise in heterogeneous SAR images. It exhibits robustness, high precision, and efficiency as its prominent advantages. Full article

In October 2021, a mural painting was discovered in the crypt of Parma Cathedral (Italy). It was covered by a wall, erasing it form historical memory. The painting, presumably from the 15th–16th century, depicts the Madonna and Child enthroned in the center, between Saints Peter and John. Before the restoration project, investigations were conducted with different techniques to identify the pigments and binders used, the nature of the surface finish and the efflorescence. Micro-Raman spectroscopy detected numerous pigments compatible with the presumed age. An interesting result concerns the presence of crocoite (lead chromate), an unusual and rare pigment for this period. These pigments were confirmed through investigation by means of Scanning Electron Microscopy coupled to Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT–IR) and Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectroscopy (GC/MS) were used to identify the binder and the type of wax used in the finish layer. The rather widespread presence of egg, used to spread the paint, allows us to affirm that this mural painting was created as a fresco, with substantial parts a secco. Full article

The construction industry has traditionally relied on labor-intensive methods, often resulting in inefficiencies, cost overruns, and extended project timelines. Despite advancements in automation and robotics, the potential of programmable construction to address these challenges remains underexplored, particularly in the context of small to medium-scale projects. This study investigates the impact of programmable construction on time, cost, and sustainability, using a detailed case study of a residential project in Italy. This research adopts a comparative approach, analyzing traditional construction techniques versus automated construction systems. Production rates from previous research and real-world applications are used to develop alternative schedules that reflect the efficiencies of these advanced technologies. The findings demonstrate that programmable construction can reduce project timelines by up to 82.6% and achieve cost savings of approximately 40.6%. Automated systems also offer significant environmental advantages, including a 70.25% reduction in carbon emissions and a 70% decrease in energy consumption in several tasks such as soil treatment. This study suggested that programmable construction sites can significantly shorten project timelines and reduce costs. The precision and speed of AI and robotics minimize reliance on human labor, streamline construction processes, and enhance project performance and work quality by reducing human error while promoting sustainability through reduced resource consumption and lower environmental impact. Full article

Invasive species negatively affect ecosystems, economies, and human health by outcompeting native species and altering habitats. Ailanthus altissima, also known as the tree of heaven, an invasive species native to China that has spread to North America and Europe. Commonly found in urban areas and forestland, these invasive plants cause ecological and economic damage to local ecosystems; they are also the preferred host of other invasive species. Ecological stability refers to the balance and harmony in species populations. Invasive species like A. altissima disrupt this stability by outcompeting native species, leading to imbalances, and there was a lack of research and data on the tree of heaven. To address this issue, this study leveraged deep learning and satellite imagery recognition to generate reliable and comprehensive prediction maps in the USA. Four deep learning models were trained to recognize satellite images obtained from Google Earth, with A. altissima data obtained from the Life Alta Murgia project, LIFE12 BIO/IT/000213. The best performing fine-tuned model using binary classification achieved an AUC score of 90%. This model was saved locally and used to predict the density and probability of A. altissima in the USA. Additionally, multi-class classification methods corroborated the findings, demonstrating similar observational outcomes. The production of these predictive distribution maps is a novel method which offers an innovative and cost-effective alternative for extensive field surveys, providing reliable data for concurrent and future research on the environmental impact of A. altissima. Full article

Kazakhstan’s pasture, as a spatially extended agricultural resource for sustainable animal husbandry, requires effective monitoring with connected rational uses. Ranking number nine globally in terms of land size, Kazakhstan, with an area of about three million square km, requires proper assessment technologies for climate change and anthropogenic impact to track the pasture lands’ degradation. Remote sensing (RS)-based adaptive approaches for assessing pasture load, combined with field cross-checking of pastures, have been applied to evaluate the quality of vegetation cover, economic potential, service function, regenerative capacity, pasture productivity, and changes in plant species composition for five pilot regions in Kazakhstan. The current stages of these efforts are presented in this project report. The pasture lands in five regions, including Pavlodar (8,340,064 ha), North Kazakhstan (2,871,248 ha), Akmola (5,783,503 ha), Kostanay (11,762,318 ha), Karaganda (19,709,128 ha), and Ulytau (18,260,865 ha), were evaluated. Combined RS data were processed and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction of Vegetation Cover (FCover), Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR), Canopy Chlorophyll Content (CCC), and Canopy Water Content (CWC) indices were determined, in relation to the herbage of pastures and their growth and development, for field biophysical analysis. The highest values of LAI, FCOVER, and FARAR were recorded in the Akmola region, with index values of 18.5, 126.42, and 53.9, and the North Kazakhstan region, with index values of 17.89, 143.45, and 57.91, respectively. The massive 2024 spring floods, which occurred in the Akmola, North Kazakhstan, Kostanay, and Karaganda regions, caused many problems, particularly to civil constructions and buildings; however, these same floods had a very positive impact on pasture areas as they increased soil moisture. Further detailed investigations are ongoing to update the flood zones, wetlands, and swamp areas. The mapping of proper flood zones is required in Kazakhstan for pasture activities, rather than civil building construction. The related sustainable permissible grazing husbandry pasture loads are required to develop also. Recommendations for these preparation efforts are in the works. Full article

The humanities are often criticised for lacking a way through from the complexity they reveal to the challenges they might hope to address. In the face of the accelerating biodiversity crisis, we present two projects that aim to respond to the limitations and lack of interdisciplinary conversations in conservation and in humanities research. At field sites in Finnish Lapland and the French Pyrenees, we document how conservation humanities research can be used to develop a more pragmatic and integrated transdisciplinary approach to conservation in remote and fragile landscapes. Firstly, we show how sound and soundscapes are important subjects of study in both conservation biology and the humanities. We also highlight their importance to conservation planners and policy makers seeking to preserve biodiversity and landscape characteristics, as well as our social values thereof, which, together, are critical to their survival. Secondly, we demonstrate how integrated conservation humanities methods can lead to rich local-level insights on key conservation themes that can then be scaled via existing large-scale acoustic monitoring and spatial datasets to support decision making across much larger areas. Finally, we highlight how the participatory mapping approach at the core of our integrated methodology shows potential to generate change in the real world and meet the classic operationalisation challenge that academia faces. Full article

Avocado cultivation is displacing traditional coffee production in Veracruz, Mexico. This change modifies the floristic composition and agronomic management (AM), both of which are affected by socioeconomic factors and generate variation in edaphic conditions. The objective of this research was to identify the socioeconomic variables that modify the characteristics of the AM of avocado and coffee systems and have repercussions on the carbon and nitrogen pools. Four case studies were analyzed: a renovated coffee polyculture (SRC), severely cleaned coffee polyculture (IPC), avocado–coffee system (ACS), and conventional avocado orchard (CAO). A socioeconomic analysis was carried out with a 30-year economic projection and 56 variables. Three plots were installed where vegetal biomass carbon (VBC) was evaluated; soil samples were taken in theses plots at three depths (in triplicate) to determine soil organic carbon (SOC) and total soil nitrogen (TSN) in each case. A principal component analysis (PCA) was performed. Four economic variables explain 50.9% of the variation in agronomic management and five social variables 50.2%, in both cases where the component is considered. In all systems, the variation in VBC is explained by the agronomic management, while the reported SOC presents an inverse relationship with AM. The ACS presents the higher values in total C in the system, and SOC and TSN pools, while the CAO shows negative impacts concerning soil organic matter quality. The ACS is sensitive to investment, market diversity, education, and external organic residue addition, explaining the variations in AM and the TSN pools. Full article