Search results for " impact assessment"
showing 10 items of 193 documents
Quantifying the health impacts of outdoor air pollution: useful estimations for public health action
2013
According to WHO,1 health impact assessment (HIA) is A combination of procedures, methods and tools used to evaluate the potential health effects of a policy, programme or project. Using qualitative, quantitative and participatory techniques, HIA aims to produce recommendations that will help decision makers and other stakeholders make choices about alternatives and improvements to prevent disease/injury, and to actively promote health. The typical procedural steps in HIA include screening, scoping, assessment of health effects, recommending alternatives and mitigations, reporting and monitoring.2 Each step helps predict or foresee potential effects of policy decisions on a population's hea…
Urban Storm-Water Quality Management: Centralized versus Source Control
2010
The continuous growth of urban areas and the increasing public awareness of the environmental impacts of storm water have raised interest on the quality of the receiving water bodies. In the past two decades, many efforts have been directed at improving urban drainage systems by introducing mitigation measures to limit the negative environmental impacts of storm water. These mitigation measures are generally called best management practices (BMPs), sustainable urban drainage systems, or low impact developments, and they include practices such as infiltration and storage tanks that reduce the peak flow and retain some of the polluting materials. Choosing the best mitigation measure is still …
Cross-cultural adaptation and test-retest reliability of the spanish ROWAN foot pain assessment questionnaire (ROFPAQ-S)
2020
Background The ROWAN Foot Pain Assessment Questionnaire (ROFPAQ) may be considered as a self-reported health questionnaire with 45 items to measure foot health problems such as foot pain. To date, the ROFPAQ has only been validated into an English-language version. Objectives Therefore this study aim was to perform the cross-cultural adaptation and test-retest reliability of the Spanish ROFPAQ version (ROFPAQ-S). Study design A cross-sectional descriptive study. Settings Podiatry and physiotherapy clinical centers. Methods The recommended forward/backward translation protocol was applied for the procedure of translation and cross-cultural adaptation from United Kingdom to Spain. Results An …
Toward a holistic environmental impact assessment of marble quarrying and processing: proposal of a novel easy-to-use IPAT-based method.
2016
Marble is a natural dimension stone that is widely used in building due to its resistance and esthetic qualities. Unfortunately, some concerns have arisen regarding its production process because quarrying and processing activities demand significant amounts of energy and greatly affect the environment. Further, performing an environmental analysis of a production process such as that of marble requires the consideration of many environmental aspects (e.g., noise, vibrations, dust and waste production, energy consumption). Unfortunately, the current impact accounting tools do not seem to be capable of considering all of the major aspects of the (marble) production process that may affect th…
A life cycle scenario analysis of different pavement technologies for urban roads.
2019
In the past, lowest price was the award criterion, given that structural capacity and safety were assured. In the last years, environmental, energy, and long-term impacts have been introduced (climate change, resource depletion, energy consumption, generated solid waste, discharged water, and emissions). Unfortunately, the introduction of new pavement technologies and materials (i.e., waste plastics) affects maintenance and rehabilitation processes and call for accurate and timeliness studies and criteria. Consequently, this paper presents an energy and environmental assessment of an Italian urban road and considers different material-related scenarios that fully comply with emerging techno…
Behavioral reasoning theory (BRT) perspectives on E-waste recycling and management
2021
Abstract Each year, millions of tons of electronic waste (or e-waste) are generated worldwide, thus, fueling concerns among scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and governments about e-waste recycling and management. The past few years have witnessed a growing interest among scholars to examine the behavioral issues concerning e-waste recycling. However, most of the existing studies have focused on adopting e-waste recycling and related innovations. It is already known that ‘reasons for’ and ‘reasons against’ the adoption of any innovation are quantitatively different. The current study bridges this gap by utilizing a novel consumer behavior framework called behavioral reasoning theory (B…
Environmental performance of wood pellets' production through life cycle analysis
2016
Abstract Forests play a key role as the source of an essential renewable material and/or fuel: wood. The aim of this study was to evaluate the environmental impacts related to high-quality pellet production for domestic heating following the LCA (life cycle assessment) methodology and considering a cradle-to-gate perspective in the Tuscany region. This is representative and interesting for Italian pellet factories and for similar factories located in Central Europe, considering the Italian contribution to the production capacity of that area. All of the activities involved, from wood extraction in no-industrial forests to packed pellet production, ready for delivery to final users, were tak…
Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment of a dish-Stirling Concentrating Solar Power Plant in the Mediterranean area
2021
Abstract Among the different renewable energy sources, solar energy shows the highest exploitation potential to satisfy a substantial portion of the worlds’ future energy demand, guaranteeing at the same time lower emissions than conventional energy providers. Much of this potential is usable thanks to Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technologies, of which the dish-Stirling concentrator is the most efficient. Nevertheless, the production and installation phases of the dish-Stirling technology can have an environmental impact which motivated the assessment of the plant in the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, economic and social). The present publication evaluated an existin…
The Bisphenol A Experience: A Primer for the Analysis of Environmental Effects on Mammalian Reproduction1
2009
It is increasingly evident that environmental factors are a veritable Pandora's box from which new concerns and complications continue to emerge. Although previously considered the domain of toxicologists, it is now clear that an understanding of the effects of the environment on reproduction requires a far broader range of expertise and that, at least for endocrine-disrupting chemicals, many of the tenets of classical toxicology need to be revisited. Indeed, because of the wide range of reproductive effects induced by these chemicals, interest among reproductive biologists has grown rapidly: in 2000, the program for the annual Society for the Study of Reproduction meeting included a single…
The Origins of Environmental Assessment
2016
Looking back through the course of history, it is indeed possible to find many different forms of “environmental assessment” that relate to a clear, unifying philosophy: to consider the impact of such practices before they are implemented. The most important difference that is clearly prevalent in more recent instances is the consideration of the environmental component in the assessment process, which can be straightforwardly be attributed to an increasing awareness within the modern society of the ever-growing scarcity and the cost of natural resources combined with the resulting quality of life for current and future generations. Focusing on the origin of modern ecological assessment, th…