Search results for "Ecological model"
showing 10 items of 322 documents
Evaluation of antifungal activity of three essential oils against selected isolates of Penicillium, Purpureocillium and Acremonium
2018
Storage is a critical process of food production because incorrect conditions during this process lead to the growth of economic costs caused by material loss. It is important to maintain adequate microbiological purity of storage areas. The development of microbes present in warehouses may lead to secondary contamination of stored materials and reduce their quality. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of essential oils on the growth of Acremonium strictum , Penicillium citrinum, Penicillium expansum and Purpureocillium lilacinum . Fungal strains were isolated from the food warehouse. Studies on the influence of selected mix of phenolic substances were performed using three comm…
Species Composition and Structure of Beetle Associations in Caves of the Częstochowa Upland, Poland
2023
This paper presents the study’s results on beetles (Insecta: Coleoptera) inhabiting caves in the Częstochowa Upland, southern Poland. During two years of research, 2084 specimens, representing 105 species from 19 beetle families, were collected. The obtained results indicate that many beetle species choose to inhabit caves despite lacking specific adaptations for living in such environments. The cave entrance zone is the most attractive place for surface species to inhabit because its climatic conditions are more stable than outside the cave, some sunlight is present, and the availability of organic matter is high. In the deeper parts of the studied caves, the number of occurring species ra…
Eco-sustainable energy and environmental strategies in design for recycling: the software “ENDLESS”
2003
Abstract This paper describes a model, named “ENDLESS”, useful to address the design process towards more eco-compatible solutions. In particular, this tool can support the designer in the choice of the product with an higher recyclability potential from a set of different alternatives. The model takes into consideration a Multi-Attribute Decision-Making method and allows calculating a “Global Recycling Index” (GRI) starting from a set of energy, environmental, technical and economic indicators. A weight is assigned to each parameter following the experience of the designer; a sensitivity analysis is then performed to state how the different assumptions can affect the final results. The mod…
Well-Being without Employment? Promoting the Employability of Refugees
2020
There are more than 25 million refugees in the world. Many of them try to reach the Mediterranean in order to enter Europe. Spain is one of the countries that receive refugees and have to integrate them. Many refugees have experienced persecution in their countries, as well as forced migration, rape, diseases, etc. Their integration requires support and coordination from the government, health services, and social agents. The first step in achieving this integration is getting a job, which is currently an important issue. Thus, we aim to analyze the employability of a specific group of refugees in Spain and then develop and implement an intervention program to improve their employability. O…
Comparison of different uncertainty techniques in urban stormwater quantity and quality modelling
2011
Abstract Urban drainage models are important tools used by both practitioners and scientists in the field of stormwater management. These models are often conceptual and usually require calibration using local datasets. The quantification of the uncertainty associated with the models is a must, although it is rarely practiced. The International Working Group on Data and Models, which works under the IWA/IAHR Joint Committee on Urban Drainage, has been working on the development of a framework for defining and assessing uncertainties in the field of urban drainage modelling. A part of that work is the assessment and comparison of different techniques generally used in the uncertainty assessm…
Global sensitivity analysis in wastewater applications: A comprehensive comparison of different methods
2013
Three global sensitivity analysis (GSA) methods are applied and compared to assess the most relevant processes occurring in wastewater treatment systems. In particular, the Standardised Regression Coefficients, Morris Screening and Extended-FAST methods are applied to a complex integrated membrane bioreactor (MBR) model considering 21 model outputs and 79 model factors. The three methods are applied with numerical settings as suggested in literature. The main objective considered is to classify important factors (factors prioritisation) as well as non-influential factors (factors fixing). The performance is assessed by comparing the most reliable method (Extended-FAST), by means of proposed…
A systematic approach for fine-tuning of fuzzy controllers applied to WWTPs
2010
A systematic approach for fine-tuning fuzzy controllers has been developed and evaluated for an aeration control system implemented in a WWTP. The challenge with the application of fuzzy controllers to WWTPs is simply that they contain many parameters, which need to be adjusted for different WWTP applications. To this end, a methodology based on model simulations is used that employs three statistical methods: (i) Monte-Carlo procedure: to find proper initial conditions, (ii) Identifiability analysis: to find an identifiable parameter subset of the fuzzy controller and (iii) minimization algorithm: to fine-tune the identifiable parameter subset of the controller. Indeed, the initial locatio…
Including the environmental criteria when selecting a wastewater treatment plant
2014
Abstract Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology to generate environmental impact estimates associated with the life cycle stages of a product or process. The approach facilitates a more comprehensive outlook of the end-of-pipe process impacts, in which wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are included. Here we describe the implementation of the LCA methodology within a knowledge-based Decision support system (DSS) in order to include the environmental criteria to the decision making process when selecting the most appropriate process flow diagrams for specific scenarios. A sample group of 22 actual operating facilities in Spain, corresponding to five different typologies were assessed …
Wastewater treatment plant design and operation under multiple conflicting objective functions
2013
Wastewater treatment plant design and operation involve multiple objective functions, which are often in conflict with each other. Traditional optimization tools convert all objective functions to a single objective optimization problem (usually minimization of a total cost function by using weights for the objective functions), hiding the interdependencies between different objective functions. We present an interactive approach that is able to handle multiple objective functions simultaneously. As an illustration of our approach, we consider a case study of plant-wide operational optimization where we apply an interactive optimization tool. In this tool, a commercial wastewater treatment …
DATimeS: A machine learning time series GUI toolbox for gap-filling and vegetation phenology trends detection
2020
Abstract Optical remotely sensed data are typically discontinuous, with missing values due to cloud cover. Consequently, gap-filling solutions are needed for accurate crop phenology characterization. The here presented Decomposition and Analysis of Time Series software (DATimeS) expands established time series interpolation methods with a diversity of advanced machine learning fitting algorithms (e.g., Gaussian Process Regression: GPR) particularly effective for the reconstruction of multiple-seasons vegetation temporal patterns. DATimeS is freely available as a powerful image time series software that generates cloud-free composite maps and captures seasonal vegetation dynamics from regula…