Search results for " indicator"
showing 10 items of 613 documents
Ecological and economic indicators for the evaluation of almond (Prunus dulcis l.) orchard renewal in sicily
2020
Globally, almond production is experiencing a growing trend thanks to a strong interest in the health, gastronomic, and industrial properties that are linked to the fruits and their derivatives. After a constant and marked decline in the second half of the last century, the Mediterranean Basin is thoroughly reassessing this crop, which provides significant results with a modern orchard management. The opportunity determined by the transition from traditional to modern systems have increased the interest in evaluating the different environmental impacts of the two cultivation models that still coexist today. In this work, through the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and an econ…
Scientific Journals as Platforms to Publish Research of Excellence in Education - Strategies to Attract Researchers
2014
This article helps to reflect on the most relevant characteristics of research journals of excellence, on those quality editorial management traits that facilitate the work of disseminating the findings of researchers in education so that they can contribute, along with all international researchers, to the central knowledge of science
The Low Dimensionality of Development
2020
AbstractThe World Bank routinely publishes over 1500 “World Development Indicators” to track the socioeconomic development at the country level. A range of indices has been proposed to interpret this information. For instance, the “Human Development Index” was designed to specifically capture development in terms of life expectancy, education, and standard of living. However, the general question which independent dimensions are essential to capture all aspects of development still remains open. Using a nonlinear dimensionality reduction approach we aim to extract the core dimensions of development in a highly efficient way. We find that more than 90% of variance in the WDIs can be represen…
Statistical methods for the evaluation of university systems
2011
Palliative care quality indicators in Italy. What do we evaluate?
2012
Purpose In recent years, the number of palliative service providers has increased significantly. This expansion necessitates an evaluation in order to provide the basis for quality improvement of the care. Policymakers, managers of palliative care programs, and others committed to the improvement of end-of-life care need methods and criteria to measure and evaluate the care delivered. As quality measurement is expensive and difficult to undertake, it is fundamental that quality measures evaluate the right things. Quality evaluation in Italy is supported by health authorities who have developed some indicators of palliative care. The aims of this study were to give an overview of these indic…
A Top-Down Approach Based on the Circularity Potential to Increase the Use of Reclaimed Asphalt
2023
Resource depletion and climate change, amongst others, are increasingly worrying environmental challenges for which the road engineering sector is a major contributor. Globally, viable solutions that comply with the principles of circular economy (CE) are being investigated that can replace conventional asphalt mixtures in a post-fossil fuel society. The use of reclaimed asphalt (RA) is a widely used and well-established method to reduce the environmental and economic impacts of asphalt mixtures while increasing their circularity. However, RA’s market supply and demand have not yet been systematically analyzed and established. Moreover, the actual circularity potential and the opportu…
Mapping a-priori defined plant associations using remotely sensed vegetation characteristics
2014
Abstract Incorporation of a priori defined plant associations into remote sensing products is a major challenge that has only recently been confronted by the remote sensing community. We present an approach to map the spatial distribution of such associations by using plant indicator values (IVs) for salinity, moisture and nutrients as an intermediate between spectral reflectance and association occurrences. For a 12 km 2 study site in the Netherlands, the relations between observed IVs at local vegetation plots and visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) airborne reflectance data were modelled using Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) (R 2 0.73, 0.64 and 0.76 for sali…
A multi-input, single-inductor power system for multisource energy harvesting
2013
Today, energy harvesting is drawing a great deal of attention due to modern trends in energy saving and sustainable development purposes. Among renewable energy sources fuel cells and photovoltaic arrays are the most promising for a wide variety of applications, ranging from few mWatts of wireless sensor networks to kWatts for household appliances. Coupling several harvesters and renewable sources is the winning strategy to ensure a proper supply overcoming the uncertainty and limited availability of common harvesters and renewable sources. Multisource energy harvesting is actually an open research topic involving several pressing and often conflicting requirements. System cost, complexity,…
The sustainability report in the the NPOs. An innovative model
2014
The growing attention toward sustainability report pushed companies, private and public as well, to adopt instruments able to rate sustainability and environmental impact. Many tools can be used to evaluate social communication but the sustainability report is the most complete to explore, measure, understand and communicate the results under this aspect. Through the sustainability report is possible to supply a balanced vision of the sustainability performance of an organization and to understand all the positive and negative effects generated running the activity. To report the activity NPOs as well, has to disclose results and their connection with the surrounding community as social, en…
Strategic Environmental Analysis (SEA) of the building Sector: an Annotated List of Indicators and a Simple Methodology
2003
With respect to the SEA of the town planning scheme of the Sicilian region, we will analyse through the paper the most commonly adopted indicators of sustainability and we will select the most promising of them for the purpose. Moreover, a simplified approach will be introduced for the assessment of the SEA by utilising both simple and aggregate indicators: simple indicators (selected among those proposed in the literature) will lead to the “technical” assessment of the SEA, while aggregate indicators (built up by properly grouping the simple ones) will lead to the “political” assessment of the Sicilian urbanistic sector. Simple indicators will refer to official data, essentially concerning…