Search results for "SCENARIO"
showing 10 items of 158 documents
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF ITALIAN CITRUS BASED PRODUCTS. SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS AND IMPROVMENT SCENARIOS
2010
Though many studies concern the agro-food sector in the EU and Italy, and its environmental impacts, literature is quite lacking in works regarding LCA application on citrus products. This paper represents one of the first studies on the environmental impacts of citrus products in order to suggest feasible strategies and actions to improve their environmental performance. In particular, it is part of a research aimed to estimate environmental burdens associated with the production of the following citrus-based products: essential oil, natural juice and concentrated juice from oranges and lemons. The life cycle assessment of these products, published in a previous paper, had highlighted sign…
Applying a framework for landscape planning under climate change for the conservation of biodiversity in the Finnish boreal forest
2015
Conservation strategies are often established without consideration of the impact of climate change. However, this impact is expected to threaten species and ecosystem persistence and to have dramatic effects towards the end of the 21st century. Landscape suitability for species under climate change is determined by several interacting factors including dispersal and human land use. Designing effective conservation strategies at regional scales to improve landscape suitability requires measuring the vulnerabilities of specific regions to climate change and determining their conservation capacities. Although methods for defining vulnerability categories are available, methods for doing this …
Photovoltaic electricity scenario analysis in urban contests: an Italian case study
2012
Abstract This paper shows a methodology for the assessment of the photovoltaic potential in urban areas using Google Earth™ tool that provides either satellite images of the roofs of buildings or their number of floors by means of the Street View function. The applicability of the methodology has been tested on a selected urban area of the city of Palermo in the South of Italy. After classifying roofs according to the shape, orientation and pitch of buildings with different morphologies, the share of energy generated by the installable PV systems was evaluated with regard to the number of floors. Moreover the coverage of the electricity demand was investigated on the basis of the consumptio…
COVID-19, an opportunity for developing countries?
2020
The COVID-19 outbreak was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as global pandemic in March 2020. Considering the necessity to implement rapid response to control the pandemic and the fragility and the state of need of low income countries, it will be mandatory to develop a global approach in order to reduce the spread of infection and the creation of community viral reservoirs. So far, we could hypothesize a worst case scenario in which when the COVID-19 outbreak hits a peak in Africa and in low-income countries, the majority of such countries will be unprepared, with low resources allocated for affording the viral emergency and the consequences will be catastrophic with no lesso…
La importància de la vinculació educativa com a prevenció de la deliqüència juvenil
2011
L’accés al sistema educatiu i la trajectòria en aquest sistema són dos dels elements principals que configuren els factors de risc o de protecció en una societat precària i dualitzada com l’actual. La bibliografia científica considera fonamental analitzar la relació entre la trajectòria educativa i la vinculació amb la delinqüència juvenil. En aquesta investigació s’aprofundeix en la relació que hi ha entre el procés educatiu i la trajectòria delinqüencial dels adolescents en conflicte amb la llei. La nostra perspectiva parteix de les hipòtesis següents: a) el fracàs educatiu està relacionat amb la situació de vulnerabilitat i exclusió prèvia de les unitats familiars, com s’ha posat de mani…
Limits and Criticalities of Predictions and Forecasting in Complex Social and Economic Scenarios: A Cybernetics Key
2014
Predictions play a key role in assuring the status of “rationality” in decisions. Nevertheless, in the field of social sciences and economics, predictions fail to correctly depict the oncoming scenarios. Why is it so difficult to achieve quantitative prediction of social and economic systems? Can science provide reliable predictions of social and economic paths that can be used to implement effective interventions? As in the notorious “El Farol bar problem” depicted by Brian Arthur (Am Econ Rev 84:406–411, 1994), the validity of predictive models is more a social issue than a matter of good mathematics. Predictability in social systems is due to limited knowledge of society and human behavi…
A multi-scenario Decision Support System for real-time operation of over-year multi-reservoir system 2. DSS simulation
2019
A companion paper (Arena et al, 2019) has introduced the architecture of the DSS and has described its governing equations. In a real-time, dynamic decision-making context, it is a tool to support decisions at the current time step concerning water allocations to municipal demand centres and irrigation districts as well as additional intakes from costly water sources in a water resources system featuring reservoirs with over-year behaviour. The DSS is designed as a linearized MIP (mixed integer programming) optimization model and as such, it includes an objective function and constraints on 1) mass balances at system’s nodes, 2) systems’ topology, 3) component’s capacity, 4) spills, as well…
Energy saving in wastewater treatment plants: A plant-generic cooperative decision support system
2017
Abstract In Europe, the analysis of Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTPs) shows a significant energy efficiency potential (up to 25%). Optimistically, plant managers assess their plant efficiency once or twice per year. Consequently, the time gap between an inefficiency and its detection produces avoidable operational costs. Although the installation of multiple on-line sensors can provide detailed energy information, for a human operator it is unrealistic to analyse the produced data in a satisfactory time-scale. This paper proposes a cooperative tool for energy saving that remotely accesses and evaluates WWTP databases to produce daily energy assessment reports. The novelty of this decisio…
Applying data driven decision making to rank vocational and educational training programs with TOPSIS
2021
Abstract In this paper we present a multi-criteria classification of Vocational and Educational Programs in Extremadura (Spain) during the period 2009–2016. This ranking has been carried out through the integration into a complete database of the detailed information of individuals finishing such studies together with their labor data. The multicriteria method used is TOPSIS together with a new decision support method for assessing the influence of each criterion and its dependence on the weights assigned to them. This new method is based on a worst-best case scenario analysis and it is compared to a well known global sensitivity analysis technique based on the Pearson's correlation ratio.
Towards the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) for building renovation: Domain Mapping Matrix (DMM) for sustainability renovation criteri…
2018
Future building renovation concerns more holistic perspectives related to the sustainability seen in a wider range of objectives/criteria facilitated by the renovation scenarios. In this regard, based on the studies upon existing sustainability evaluation and assessment tools carried out in previous research works, a characteristic diagram including a value map for evaluating a holistic sustainable retrofitting was developed. Further, in present paper, by reviewing the relevant literature, looking into recent European renovation research projects, the Danish SIGMA database, and investigation of a real case, a comprehensive list of renovation approaches (i.e. insulation technologies, windows…