Search results for "Sustainability."

Healthy but risky: A descriptive study on cyclists’ encouraging and discouraging factors for using bicycles, habits and safety outcomes

2019

Abstract Transportation is a necessary process that requires not only adequate means, but also individual choices. And apparently, the recent boom of alternative modes of transportation has substantially changed people’s perceptions of cycling, as well as the reasons why they decide to use a bike. Nevertheless, people identify some motives that encourage this use together with the perceived risks and the discouraging factors which affect the choice of using a bike, thus making it important to explore all these elements in the light of the empirical evidence. The objective of this study was to explore and describe the encouraging and discouraging reasons behind the use of bikes among cyclist…

Performance Study of Twisted Darrieus Hydrokinetic Turbine With Novel Blade Design

2021

Abstract Twisted Darrieus water turbine is receiving growing attention for small-scale hydropower generation. Accordingly, the need for raised water energy conversion incentivizes researchers to focus on the blade shape optimization of twisted Darrieus turbine. In view of this, experimental analysis has been performed to appraise the efficiency of a spiral Darrieus water rotor in the present work. To better the performance parameters of the studied water rotor with twisted blades, three novel blade shapes, namely U-shaped blade, V-shaped blade, and W-shaped blade, have been numerically tested using a computational fluid dynamics three-dimensional numerical model. The maximum power coefficie…

Thermal response test analysis for U-pipe vertical borehole heat exchangers under groundwater flow conditions

2021

[EN] Conventional models used in the analysis of thermal response test data only consider conduction as heat transfer mechanism. In cases where presence of groundwater is detected, convection heat transmission plays an important role, so its influence must be determined in the calculation of the effective thermal conductivity, usually overestimated in these situations, increasing its value the higher the power injected and the time elapsed. In this work, based on the data collected in a borehole located at UPV (Valencia) in which have been carried out three thermal response tests with different characteristics, has been implemented a variation of the finite line source model introducing an …

3-Phase grid-connected building integrated photovoltaic system with reactive power control capability

2020

Abstract Recently, a tendency in the growing of grid-connected building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems has been noticed in most countries. Hence, high penetration of PV power into the system network can be observed in many points in the network. This may cause severe problems on the distribution network due to the intermittent nature of PV systems. As a feasible solution, the reactive power capability of voltage source inverter in PV systems can be employed rather than approaching expensive grid infrastructures in the distribution network. The purpose of this study is to implement a 3-phase grid-connected (BIPV) system with reactive power control to regulate the system voltage and i…

Multifarious pretreatment strategies for the lignocellulosic substrates for the generation of renewable and sustainable biofuels: A review

2020

Abstract Currently major part of the world’s energy requirements is fulfilled by fossil resources. Severe economic and environmental problems along with their limited resources are still a major issue. Long-term environmental and commercial concern has focussed into huge research in the past decades to replace fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy. The main focus of energy research is lignocellulosic substrates, which seems to be the best for energy application due to easily availability, cost-effective and environment favourable production process. Therefore, lignocellulosic materials provide economical, environmental and energetic benefits with an alternative to traditional or hig…

Analysing the effects of power swing on wind farms using instantaneous impedances

2020

Abstract Most of the grid disturbances happen due to the presence of faults and power swing. This article focuses on power swing in view of the amount of penetration of renewable energy resources especially the wind farms. There are two sections. First section approached power swing by deriving a mathematical expression which would be able to track the locus of impedance in time domain and subsequently analyze resistance and reactance simultaneously with respect to time. It used a grid comprising of generator, transmission line and load. The derived expression was compared with a power swing generated using RTDS model and the results were analyzed in R-X plane. Second section analyses the i…

A Tool to Assess Architectural Education from the Sustainable Development Perspective and the Students' Viewpoint

2021

[EN] Architectural education plays a fundamental role in achieving sustainable development by training future professionals who can contribute to sustainability through their practice. Nevertheless, to ensure the introduction of sustainable development in the education of future architects, it is fundamental to understand what is being done and what could be improved. Despite this, a big gap has been detected in the assessment of architectural education in Spain and worldwide. Thus, a close-ended questionnaire for students has been designed based on the outcomes from a literature review, exploratory interviews with specialists, and the qualitative analysis of two schools of architecture. Ad…

Ethics in biodiversity conservation : The meaning and importance of pluralism

2022

Addressing the global extent of the current biodiversity crisis requires engaging with the existence of multiple equally legitimate values, but also with diverse ethical perspectives underpinning conceptions of right and wrong actions. However, western monist positions have mostly explicitly or implicitly directed conservation strategies by defining the space of legitimate arguments, overlooking solutions that do not fit neatly the chosen approaches. As ignoring diverse ethical positions leads to injustices and reduces the potential of conserving biodiversity, there is a need to recognise and navigate the ethical landscape. Ethical pluralism may provide opportunities to do so. However, the …

2020

AbstractForecasting crop yields is becoming increasingly important under the current context in which food security needs to be ensured despite the challenges brought by climate change, an expanding world population accompanied by rising incomes, increasing soil erosion, and decreasing water resources. Temperature, radiation, water availability and other environmental conditions influence crop growth, development, and final grain yield in a complex nonlinear manner. Machine learning (ML) techniques, and deep learning (DL) methods in particular, can account for such nonlinear relations between yield and its covariates. However, they typically lack transparency and interpretability, since the…

Land use intensification increasingly drives the spatiotemporal patterns of the global human appropriation of net primary production in the last cent…

2021

Land use has greatly transformed Earth's surface. While spatial reconstructions of how the extent of land cover and land-use types have changed during the last century are available, much less information exists about changes in land-use intensity. In particular, global reconstructions that consistently cover land-use intensity across land-use types and ecosystems are missing. We, therefore, lack understanding of how changes in land-use intensity interfere with the natural processes in land systems. To address this research gap, we map land-cover and land-use intensity changes between 1910 and 2010 for 9 points in time. We rely on the indicator framework of human appropriation of net primar…