Search results for "Life cycle"

Environmental Sustainability Approaches and Positive Energy Districts: A Literature Review

2021

During the last decade, increasing attention has been paid to the emerging concept of Positive Energy Districts (PED) with the aim of pushing the transition to clean energy, but further research efforts are needed to identify design approaches optimized from the point of view of sustainable development. In this context, this literature review is placed, with a specific focus on environmental sustainability within innovative and eco-sustainable districts. The findings show that some sustainability aspects such as sustainable food, urban heat islands mitigation and co-impacts, e.g., green gentrification, are not adequately assessed, while fragmented thinking limits the potential of circularit…

A Life Cycle Environmental Impact Comparison between Traditional, Hybrid, and Electric Vehicles in the European Context

2021

Global warming (GW) and urban pollution focused a great interest on hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as cleaner alternatives to traditional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). The environmental impact related to the use of both ICEV and HEV mainly depends on the fossil fuel used by the thermal engines, while, in the case of the BEV, depends on the energy sources employed to produce electricity. Moreover, the production phase of each vehicle may also have a relevant environmental impact, due to the manufacturing processes and the materials employed. Starting from these considerations, the authors carried out a fair comparison of the environmental …

GDF15: an emerging modulator of immunity and a strategy in COVID-19 in association with iron metabolism

2021

International audience; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a pandemic of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). SARS-CoV-2 encodes the structural proteins spike (S), envelope (E), membrane (M), and nucleocapsid (N). The receptor-binding domain on the surface subunit S1 is responsible for attachment of the virus to angiotensin (Ang)-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), which is highly expressed in host cells. The cytokine storm observed in patients with COVID-19 contributes to the endothelial vascular dysfunction, which can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome, multiorgan failure, alteration in iron homeostasi…

Assessing eco-efficiency: A metafrontier directional distance function approach using life cycle analysis

2017

Sustainability analysis requires a joint assessment of environmental, social and economic aspects of production processes. Here we propose the use of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), a metafrontier (MF) directional distance function (DDF) approach, and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), to assess technological and managerial differences in eco-efficiency between production systems. We use LCA to compute six environmental and health impacts associated with the production processes of nearly 200 Spanish citrus farms belonging to organic and conventional farming systems. DEA is then employed to obtain joint economic-environmental farm's scores that we refer to as eco-efficiency. DDF allows us to deter…

Evaluating the Environmental Performance of Green Roofs by a Life Cycle Approach: an Application of the LCA Method on a Case Study in Italy

2011

Climate warming and disease risks in temperate regions – Argulus coregoni and Diplostomum spathaceum as case studies

2006

AbstractThe link between climate changes and disease risks from various pathogens has been increasingly recognized. The effect of climatic factors on host–parasite population dynamics is particularly evident in northern latitudes where the occurrence and transmission of parasites are strongly regulated by seasonality-driven changes in environmental temperatures. Shortened winter periods would increase growth potential of many parasite populations. The ways in which climate warming could affect life history dynamics of the directly transmitted crustacean ectoparasite Argulus coregoni and complex life cycle trematode Diplostomum spathaceum, which frequently cause problems in northern fish far…

AMCAS: Advanced Methods for the Co-Design of Complex Adaptive Systems

2006

Abstract This work proposes a new approximation to design and program Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), these systems comprise neural network, intelligent agents, genetic algorithms, support vector machines and artificial intelligence systems in general. Due to the complexity of such systems, it is necessary to build a design environment able to ease the design work, allowing reusability and easy migration to hardware and/or software. Ptolemy II is used as the base system to simulate and evaluate the designs with different Models of Computation so that an optimum decision about the hardware or software implementation platform can be taken.

SUP&R DST: SUstainable pavement & railways decision support tool

2018

6th International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering, IALCCE 2018; Ghent; Belgium; 28 October 2018 through 31 October 2018, GHENT, BELGIQUE, 28-/10/2018 - 31/10/2018; In order to help the decisions makers to efficiently address eco-design for transport infrastructure technologies, a decision support toll (DST) was developed in the scope of the training-through-research programme Sustainable Pavements & Railways Initial Training Network (www.superitn.eu). It consists of a computational platform that implements a conceptual framework developed to quantify sustainability. It comes with a set of sustainability indicators tailored to both road and railway systems as well as several ob…

Economic and environmental sustainability of submerged anaerobic MBR-based (AnMBR-based) technology as compared to aerobic-based technologies for mod…

2015

[EN] The objective of this study was to assess the economic and environmental sustainability of submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs) in comparison with aerobic-based technologies for moderate-/high-loaded urban wastewater (UWW) treatment. To this aim, a combined approach of steady-state performance modelling, life cycle analysis (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) was used, in which AnMBR (coupled with an aerobic-based post-treatment) was compared to aerobic membrane bioreactor (AeMBR) and conventional activated sludge (CAS). AnMBR with CAS-based post-treatment for nutrient removal was identified as a sustainable option for moderate-/high-loaded UWW treatment: low energy consump…

Environmental impact of submerged anaerobic MBR (SAnMBR) technology used to treat urban wastewater at different temperatures

2013

[EN] The objective of this study was to assess the environmental impact of a submerged anaerobic MBR (SAnMBR) system in the treatment of urban wastewater at different temperatures: ambient temperature (20 and 33 degrees C), and a controlled temperature (33 degrees C). To this end, an overall energy balance (OEB) and life cycle assessment (LCA), both based on real process data, were carried out. Four factors were considered in this study; (1) energy consumption during wastewater treatment; (2) energy recovered from biogas capture; (3) potential recovery of nutrients from the final effluent; and (4) sludge disposal. The OEB and LCA showed SAnMBR to be a promising technology for treating urban…