Search results for "iot"
showing 10 items of 15002 documents
Financial winners and losers since the privatization of the English and Welsh water and sewerage industry: a profit decomposition approach
2020
Evaluating changes in profit, price and productivity over time can be of great importance for regulated water industries. We investigate the drivers of profit, price (capital, labour and other inputs) and productivity change (cost efficiency change, technical change and scale effect) and the recipients of productivity change (consumers, the business itself, employees and other resource suppliers) of the English and Welsh water and sewerage companies over the period of 1995–2016. The results indicate that the profit decreased over time due to the negative quantity effect, which offset the positive price effect. A further decomposition of the quantity effect illustrates the negative impact of…
A Systematic Review of the Hydrological, Environmental and Durability Performance of Permeable Pavement Systems
2021
Due to urbanization, large portions of vegetated territory have been replaced by waterproof surfaces. The consequences are greater outflows, lower infiltration, and lower evapotranspiration. Pavement systems made with permeable surfaces allow the infiltration of water, ensuring reduction of runoff volume. In this paper, the methods of analysis of the hydrological and environmental performance of the pavement systems are reviewed in the context of urban drainage and regarding their durability. The purpose is to present an overview of the studies published during the last decade in the field. The Pubmed and Web Science Core Collection electronic databases were used to conduct the scientific l…
The role of extracellular polymeric substances on aerobic granulation with stepwise increase of salinity
2018
Abstract A granular sequencing batch reactor (GSBR) worked for 164 days to study the effect of salinity on aerobic granulation. The feeding had an organic loading rate (OLR) of 1.6 kg COD⋅m −3 ⋅d −1 and a gradual increase of salinity (from 0.30 to 38 g NaCl − ⋅L −1 ) to promote a biological salt-adaptation. First aggregates (average diameter ≈ 0.4 mm) appeared after 14 days. Extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) analyses revealed that proteins were mainly higher than polysaccharides, and microorganisms metabolized EPSs as additional carbon source, mostly in feast phase, to face the energy demand for salinity adaptation. No significant worsening of organic matter removal was observed. Th…
Assessing Urban System Vulnerabilities to Flooding to Improve Resilience and Adaptation in Spatial Planning
2018
Fluvial, pluvial and coastal flooding are the most frequent and costly natural hazard. Cities are social hubs and life in cities is reliant on a number of services and functions such as housing, healthcare, education and other key daily facilities. Urban flooding can cause significant disruption to these services and wider impacts on the population. These impacts may be short or long with a variably spatial scale: urban systems are spatially distributed and the nature of this can have significant effects on flood impacts. From an urban-planning perspective, measuring this disruption and its consequences is fundamental in order to develop more resilient cities. Whereas the assessment of phys…
Improvement of lateral connectivity in a sector of River Hârtibaciu (Olt/Danube Basin)
2017
Abstract The Hârtibaciu River in the Alţâna area has a disturbed lateral connectivity owing to its lateral embankments, as a result of which fish communities in this river sector are negatively influenced. The method of obtaining the water supply for a new proposed wetland is by gravitation, and any excessive water supply to the wetland will be controled and directed to the Hârtibaciu River in a natural manner. A state-of-the-art man-made wetland should increase the quality of the habitat for local fish communities, especially for the Rhodeus sericeus population, which is a species of conservation interest.
The role of urban growth, climate change, and their interplay in altering runoff extremes
2018
Changes in climate and urban growth are the most influential factors affecting hydrological characteristics in urban and extra-urban contexts. The assessment of the impacts of these changes on the extreme rainfall–runoff events may have important implications on urban and extra-urban management policies against severe events, such as floods, and on the design of hydraulic infrastructures. Understanding the effects of the interaction between climate change and urban growth on the generation of runoff extremes is the main aim of this paper. We carried out a synthetic experiment on a river catchment of 64 km2to generate hourly runoff time series under different hypothetical scenarios. We impos…
Comparing two applicative criteria of the soil erosion physical model concept
2017
The physical model represented by a replicated plot has been suggested to be the best possible, unbiased, real world model to predict plot soil erosion. The aim of this investigation was to compare the original applicative criterion of the physical model concept proposed by Nearing with that later suggested by Bagarello et al. The comparison was performed by using three empirical soil erosion models (the Universal Soil Loss Equation [USLE], a modified USLE [USLE-MM], and the Central and Southern Italy [CSI] model) and plot soil loss data collected at the experimental station of Sparacia, in Sicily (southern Italy). The investigation showed that (i) the new criterion was generally more restr…
Analytical approach extending the Granier method to radial sap flow patterns
2020
Abstract The Granier thermal dissipation (TD) method is probably the most applied method to compute the transpiration flux of trees, due to its simplicity and effective compromise between theory and data availability. Starting from the heat transfer equations at the basis of Granier’s method, the objective of this paper is to derive an analytical solution for the transpiration flux to extend the sap flow equations to the radial domain. We adopted a flexible approach to cope with the differences in radial sapflow density (SFD) profile shapes that are known to occur in relation to wood anatomy (diffuse porous vs. ring- or non-porous xylem). With this purpose, we investigated the robustness of…
Soil conservation and sustainable development goals(SDGs) achievement in Europe and central Asia: Which role for the European soil partnership?
2021
Abstract Voluntary soil protection measures are not sufficient to achieve sustainable soil management at a global scale. Additionally, binding soil protection legislation at national and international levels has also proved to be insufficient for the effective protection of this non-renewable natural resource. In 2012, the FAO Members established the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) with the mission to facilitate and contribute exchange of knowledge and technologies related to soils, and develop dialogue and raise awareness for the need to establish a binding global agreement for sustainable soil management. Moreover, region-specific aspects of implementation are considered and strengthened th…
Determining hydraulic properties of a loam soil by alternative infiltrometer techniques
2015
Testing infiltrometer techniques to determine soil hydraulic properties is necessary for specific soils. For a loam soil, the water retention and hydraulic conductivity predicted by the BEST (Beerkan Estimation of Soil Transfer parameters) procedure of soil hydraulic characterization was compared with data collected by more standard laboratory and field techniques. Six infiltrometer techniques were also compared in terms of saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, Ks. BEST yielded water retention values statistically similar to those obtained in the laboratory and Ks values practically coinciding with those determined in the field with the pressure infiltrometer (PI). The unsaturated soil hyd…