Enhanced Water Quality Control Based on Predictive Optimization for Smart Fish Farming

The requirement for high-quality seafood is a global challenge in today’s world due to climate change and natural resource limitations. Internet of Things (IoT) based Modern fish farming systems can significantly optimize seafood production by minimizing resource utilization and improving healthy fish production. This objective requires intensive monitoring, prediction, and control by optimizing leading factors that impact fish growth, including temperature, the potential of hydrogen (pH), water level, and feeding rate. This paper proposes the IoT based predictive optimization approach for efficient control and energy utilization in smart fish farming. The proposed fish farm control mechanism has a predictive optimization to deal with water quality control and efficient energy consumption problems. Fish farm indoor and outdoor values are applied to predict the water quality parameters, whereas a novel objective function is proposed to achieve an optimal fish growth environment based on predicted parameters. Fuzzy logic control is utilized to calculate control parameters for IoT actuators based on predictive optimal water quality parameters by minimizing energy consumption. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed system, the overall approach has been deployed to the fish tank as a case study, and a number of experiments have been carried out. The results show that the predictive optimization module allowed the water quality parameters to be maintained at the optimal level with nearly 30% of energy efficiency at the maximum actuator control rate compared with other control levels.     

Understanding the impact of climate change on pavements with CMIP5, system dynamics and simulation

There is an increasing awareness regarding the impact of climate change on performance and durability of pavements. The objective of this paper is to present a framework of using the global climate forecasts, system dynamics and Monte Carlo analyses to evaluate the rate of change in climate change parameters and understand the impact of climate change on pavements. Changes in maximum air temperature and annual precipitation levels were determined for seven cities across the US, for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios, using downscaled CMIP5 model output. A system dynamics model was utilised to link the changes in climate change-related parameters to deterioration and life of pavements. Percent of roads that need rehabilitation at different times, up to a time span of 100 years were predicted with simulations of the system dynamics model. Using regression equations developed on the basis of the output data, Monte Carlo analyses were then conducted to obtain distribution and 90% confidence intervals for percent of roads requiring rehabilitation at 50 and 100 years, for no climate change, climate change and climate change with different mitigation scenarios. The results clearly show the significant increase in deterioration of roads as a result of predicted climate change, compared to a ‘no climate change’ scenario. The conclusions are that the CMIP5 model output can be utilised successfully to obtain statistical data regarding climate change parameters that are relevant for pavement design and that a sequential use of the tool, system dynamic and Monte Carlo simulation can be utilised by public agencies to estimate climate change-related parameters for different scenarios, the risk of negative impact of such change on pavement lives and evaluate the effectiveness of various mitigation approaches. This can help them in making justifiable decisions regarding the consideration of climate changes in design of pavements.     

Challenges in using probabilistic climate change information for impact assessments: an example from the water sector

Climate change impacts and adaptation assessments have traditionally adopted a scenario-based approach, which precludes an assessment of the relative risks of particular adaptation options. Probabilistic impact assessments, especially if based on a thorough analysis of the uncertainty in an impact forecast system, enable adoption of a risk-based assessment framework. However, probabilistic impacts information is conditional and will change over time. We explore the implications of a probabilistic end-to-end risk-based framework for climate impacts assessment, using the example of water resources in the Thames River, UK. We show that a probabilistic approach provides more informative results that enable the potential risk of impacts to be quantified, but that details of the risks are dependent on the approach used in the analysis.     

Klimakonstruktionen

Constructing Climate. From Classical Climatology to Modern Climate Research Both climate researchers and historians of climate science have conceived climate as a stable and well defined category. This article argues that such a conception is flawed. In the course of the 19th and 20th century the very concept of climate changed considerably. Scientists came up with different definitions and concepts of climate, which implied different understandings, interests, and research approaches. Understanding climate shifted from a timeless, spatial concept at the end of the 19th century to a spaceless, temporal concept at the end of the 20th. Climatologists in the 19th and early 20th centuries considered climate as a set of atmospheric characteristics associated with specific places or regions. In this context, while the weather was subject to change, climate remained largely stable. Of particular interest was the impact of climate on human beings and the environment. In modern climate research at the close of the 20th century, the concept of climate lost its temporal stability. Instead, climate change has become a core feature of the understanding of climate and a focus of research interests. Climate has also lost its immediate association with specific geographical places and become global. The interest is now focused on the impact of human beings on climate. The paper attempts to investigate these conceptual shifts and their origins and impacts in order to provide a more comprehensive perspective on the history of climate research.     

Consideration and influence of climate change in environmental assessment: an analysis of British Columbia’s liquid natural gas sector

This paper examines the consideration of climate change in environmental assessment (EA) in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector, British Columbia, Canada. Based on an analysis of recent EA applications, results show that climate change is considered, to some extent, in all phases of EA for most LNG projects. However, stakeholders indicate a dissatisfaction with practice – often based on expectations about EA that exceed what it can deliver as a project-based tool, and sometimes based on an incomplete understanding of existing climate change legislation and targets. Results also indicate inconsistent application of existing climate change requirements across project EAs. Notwithstanding proponents often addressing climate change in their EA applications, climate change tends to receive little attention in project decision and approval conditions. The paper concludes with recommendations for better practice climate change consideration in EA that is commensurate with the scope and scale of project-level issues, complemented by more strategic EA and economic instruments.     

Quantifying community resilience based on fluctuations in visits to points-of-interest derived from digital trace data

This research establishes a methodological framework for quantifying community resilience based on fluctuations in a population''s activity during a natural disaster. Visits to points-of-interests (POIs) over time serve as a proxy for activities to capture the combined effects of perturbations in lifestyles, the built environment and the status of business. This study used digital trace data related to unique visits to POIs in the Houston metropolitan area during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Resilience metrics in the form of systemic impact, duration of impact, and general resilience (GR) values were examined for the region along with their spatial distributions. The results show that certain categories, such as religious organizations and building material and supplies dealers had better resilience metrics—low systemic impact, short duration of impact, and high GR. Other categories such as medical facilities and entertainment had worse resilience metrics—high systemic impact, long duration of impact and low GR. Spatial analyses revealed that areas in the community with lower levels of resilience metrics also experienced extensive flooding. This insight demonstrates the validity of the approach proposed in this study for quantifying and analysing data for community resilience patterns using digital trace/location-intelligence data related to population activities. While this study focused on the Houston metropolitan area and only analysed one natural hazard, the same approach could be applied to other communities and disaster contexts. Such resilience metrics bring valuable insight into prioritizing resource allocation in the recovery process.     

中国地区气溶胶气候效应研究进展

为了概述中国地区气溶胶气候效应的研究进展,通过阅读近5年(2004—2008)发表的关于中国地区不同种类气溶胶气候效应的论文,并选取其中有代表性的文献进行分析,得出结论:近5年来,中国地区气溶胶气候效应的研究主要集中在硫酸盐气溶胶、沙尘气溶胶和黑碳气溶胶,研究方法主要是用中尺度模式或区域气候模式模拟气溶胶对气候变化的影响。     

Range and severity of a plant disease increased by global warming.

Climate change affects plants in natural and agricultural ecosystems throughout the world but little work has been done on the effects of climate change on plant disease epidemics. To illustrate such effects, a weather-based disease forecasting model was combined with a climate change model predicting UK temperature and rainfall under high- and low-carbon emissions for the 2020s and 2050s. Multi-site data collected over a 15-year period were used to develop and validate a weather-based model forecasting severity of phoma stem canker epidemics on oilseed rape across the UK. This was combined with climate change scenarios to predict that epidemics will not only increase in severity but also spread northwards by the 2020s. These results provide a stimulus to develop models to predict the effects of climate change on other plant diseases, especially in delicately balanced agricultural or natural ecosystems. Such predictions can be used to guide policy and practice in adapting to effects of climate change on food security and wildlife.     

Abrupt climate change: can society cope?

Consideration of abrupt climate change has generally been incorporated neither in analyses of climate-change impacts nor in the design of climate adaptation strategies. Yet the possibility of abrupt climate change triggered by human perturbation of the climate system is used to support the position of both those who urge stronger and earlier mitigative action than is currently being contemplated and those who argue that the unknowns in the Earth system are too large to justify such early action. This paper explores the question of abrupt climate change in terms of its potential implications for society, focusing on the UK and northwest Europe in particular. The nature of abrupt climate change and the different ways in which it has been defined and perceived are examined. Using the example of the collapse of the thermohaline circulation (THC), the suggested implications for society of abrupt climate change are reviewed; previous work has been largely speculative and has generally considered the implications only from economic and ecological perspectives. Some observations about the implications from a more social and behavioural science perspective are made. If abrupt climate change simply implies changes in the occurrence or intensity of extreme weather events, or an accelerated unidirectional change in climate, the design of adaptation to climate change can proceed within the existing paradigm, with appropriate adjustments. Limits to adaptation in some sectors or regions may be reached, and the costs of appropriate adaptive behaviour may be large, but strategy can develop on the basis of a predicted long-term unidirectional change in climate. It would be more challenging, however, if abrupt climate change implied a directional change in climate, as, for example, may well occur in northwest Europe following a collapse of the THC. There are two fundamental problems for society associated with such an outcome: first, the future changes in climate currently being anticipated and prepared for may reverse and, second, the probability of such a scenario occurring remains fundamentally unknown. The implications of both problems for climate policy and for decision making have not been researched. It is premature to argue therefore that abrupt climate change - in the sense referred to here - imposes unacceptable costs on society or the world economy, represents a catastrophic impact of climate change or constitutes a dangerous change in climate that should be avoided at all reasonable cost. We conclude by examining the implications of this contention for future research and policy formation.     

Rethinking investment planning and optimizing net zero emission buildings

Increased awareness of climate change has precipitated more stringent mitigation targets. Public sector institutions in Canada are committed to becoming carbon neutral to attain a leadership position in climate change mitigation-related initiatives. Recent statistics reveal that buildings account for the majority of the corporate carbon footprint of public sector institutions. Hence, there is an increasing interest towards developing net zero energy and net zero emission buildings to comply with climate action targets. With limited financial resources, public sector institutions must optimize investments into building energy retrofits by considering lifecycle cost (LCC), overall energy performance, and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. The aim of this paper is to develop an investment planning approach for net zero emission buildings (NZEB). First, an investment planning approach for NZEB is proposed. A typical recreational centre building in British Columbia, Canada, was used as the archetype to demonstrate the concept. Second, innovative and proven building energy retrofits were analysed using energy simulation software to assess the impact on energy consumption reduction, GHG emissions, and LCC. Third, impacts of geographical location, tariff regimes, and grid emission factors on energy retrofits were studied by locating the same building in other provinces of Canada. This study revealed that net zero energy investment has a strong correlation to the grid emission factor. The proposed approach in this paper will assist building managers and owners in retrofitting and budget planning.     

Failure analysis of historical buildings due to climate change

Historic buildings have a high resilience in time due to the fact that they were designed by taking into consideration the environment and all the local conditions. However, nowadays not only their environment is changing fast. According to a current climatic change analysis, the climate all over the world has already suffered a severe change and, unfortunately, future scenarios indicate an even worse situation. The main effects of the climate change are as follows: high and long lasting temperatures during summer, precipitation pattern change, intensification of the local winds. To which we can add more intense or even frequent extreme events, such as: drought, abundant precipitation, snowfalls and hailstorms. All these changes have a heavily impact not only on the historic buildings, but also on the economy and society. The main purpose of this study to analyse the climatic change on different types of historic buildings, the way in which natural factors increase the degradation and the failure of the building structures/historic architectural details and how it can affect the aesthetics of the historic urban centres. The subject of the research was a small town in Romania, Oravita, which was chosen due to its diversity of its historical heritage and its special climatic condition. The study focused on simple buildings as well as on archaeological sites, railroads, bridges and dams.     

Building strategic agility through user-driven innovation: the case of the Finnish public service sector

This paper investigates how to build strategic agility through the lens of user-driven innovation. Drawing on survey data collected in the public service sector in Finland, our study suggests that the strategic rigidity of public service organisations, assessed according to their strategic sensitivity, resource fluidity and leadership unity, can hamper their effective adoption of the user-driven innovation approach to build strategic agility. We propose a 4C model of building strategic agility through user-driven innovation, addressing the need of taking actions in four areas: commitment, competences, communications and climate. Our research highlights that actions in the four dimensions, which are closely interlinked and reinforce each other, should involve actors at different levels both internally and externally.     

Environmental Data Acquisition,Elaboration and Integration: Preliminary Application to a Vulnerable Mountain Landscape and Village (Novalesa,NW Italy)

Climate conditions play a crucial role in the survival of mountain communities, whose survival already critically depends on socioeconomic factors. In the case of montane areas that are prone to natural hazards, such as alpine slope failure and debris flows, climatic factors exert a major influence that should be considered when creating appropriate sustainable scenarios. In fact, it has been shown that climate change alters the availability of ecosystem services (ES), thus increasing the risks of declining soil fertility and reduced water availability, as well as the loss of grassland, potential shifts in regulatory services (e.g., protection from natural hazards), and cultural services. This study offers a preliminary discussion on a case study of a region in the Italian Alps that is experiencing increased extreme precipitation and erosion, and where an isolated and historically resilient community directly depends on a natural resource economy. Preliminary results show that economic factors have influenced past population trends of the Novalesa community in the Piemonte Region in northwest Italy. However, the increasing number of rock fall and debris flow events, which are triggered by meteo-climatic factors, may further influence the livelihood and wellbeing of this community, and of other similar communities around the world. Therefore, environmental monitoring and data analysis will be important means of detecting trends in landscape and climate change and choosing appropriate planning options. Such analysis, in turn, would ensure the survival of about 10% of the global population, and would also represent a possibility for future economic development in critical areas prone to poverty conditions.     

Climate change and interdisciplinarity: a co-citation analysis of IPCC Third Assessment Report

This study addresses whether interdisciplinarity is a prominent feature of climate research by means of a co-citation analysis of the IPCC Third Assessment Report. The debate on interdisciplinarity and bibliometric measures is reviewed to operationalize the contested notion of interdisciplinarity. The results, based on 6417 references of the 96 most frequently used journals, demonstrate that the IPCC assessment of climate change is best characterized by its multidisciplinarity where the physical, biological, bodily and societal dimensions are clearly separated. Although a few fields and journals integrate a wide variety of disciplines, integration occurs mainly between related disciplines (narrow interdisciplinarity) which indicate an overall disciplinary basis of climate research. It is concluded that interdisciplinarity is not a prominent feature of climate research. The significance of this finding is explored, given that the problem scope of climate change necessitates interdisciplinarity. Ways to promote interdisciplinarity are suggested by way of conclusion.     

一种汽车空调用环保制冷剂—CO2

近几年来气候的变化对人类生存环境的影响越来越大,给世界很多国家都造成过了巨大的经济损失,为保护臭氧层并减缓温室效应对气候变化的影响,对汽车空调用环保制冷剂又有了新的要求。本文介绍一种无污染的自然制冷剂—CO2(R744)。     

Vertical glaciology: The second discovery of the third dimension in climate research

The history of climate research in the 20th century has been characterised by a crucial shift from a geography-oriented, two-dimensional approach towards a physics-based, three-dimensional concept of climate. In the 1930s, the introduction of new technology, such as radiosondes, enabled climatologists to investigate the high atmosphere, which had previously been out of reach. This “conquest of the third dimension” challenged the surface-oriented, geographical notion of climate patterns and opened up climatology to a three-dimensional approach, which deeply changed the character of climate research. Two decades later, by drilling deep into polar glaciers and using the downward vertical dimension as an archive of the earth's history, ice core scientists began to reconstruct past climates layer by layer. The data retrieved in deep glacial layers contributed crucially to a temporal expansion of climate history far beyond human timescales. However, the inaccessibility of glaciers and the practical challenges of bringing fragile fragments of ice into transnational networks of scientific exchange meant that this vertical extension of climate knowledge production proceeded through a range of new scientific practices, and was shaped by new forms of international collaboration. Furthermore, this vertical approach to glaciers also asked for a new understanding of glacier volume. Drawing on archival and printed sources, I argue that ice core research represented a second discovery of the third dimension, this time downwards into the depth of the earth's surface, but again with decisive consequences for the research practice, for collaboration politics, and for understandings of climate, spatially as well as temporally.     

生物质增强聚乙烯醇在食品包装领域的应用研究进展

目的 研究定制猫眼彩盒的生产对环境的影响,为此类型包装材料对环境的影响评估以及生产工艺改进提供参考。方法 采用生命周期评价(LCA)方法定性、定量分析其对环境(9个环境因素)的影响,在e-Footprint软件上,在线完成全部生命周期评价,包括建模、计算分析、数据质量评估和LCA结果发布。结果 该类型产品对初级能源消耗、水资源消耗和气候变化的影响较大。每个彩盒消耗0.71 MJ初级能源和0.35 kg水,排放0.05 kg影响气候变化的气体。其中,白卡纸和定制猫眼膜的初级能源消耗占比分别为37%和35%,水资源消耗的79%来自白卡纸生产,影响气候变化气体的排放占比分别为29%和25%。结论 通过优化白卡纸和定制猫眼膜材料、结构以及生产工艺流程,可降低定制猫眼彩盒的能源消耗(含初级能源和水资源),减少温室效应气体的排放。     

Spatio-temporal simulation of permafrost geothermal response to climate change scenarios in a building environment

Significant climate warming, as observed over the past decades and projected by global climate models, would inevitably cause permafrost degradation in the Arctic regions. Several studies have been conducted to assess geothermal response to climate change in natural conditions; no study, however, has been observed yet to examine the potential response of the permafrost geothermal regime in a building environment. This paper presents a methodology and the results of a case study in the community of Inuvik, Canada of the spatio-temporal dynamics simulation of the geothermal regime under climate change scenarios in a building environment. A process-based, surface-coupled, 3-dimensional geothermal model was used for the simulation. The results suggest that the permafrost under the study would deteriorate under all the three climate change scenarios assessed, and the rate of the deterioration would depend on geotechnical properties of subsurface materials and climate change scenarios. Two patterns of the geothermal dynamics were revealed from the simulation results: spatially, there are significant differences in the rate of increase in active layer thickness underneath vs. around a building; and temporally, there is an abrupt rise in the active layer thickness around the middle of this century.     

CDLSTM: A Novel Model for Climate Change Forecasting

Water received in rainfall is a crucial natural resource for agriculture, the hydrological cycle, and municipal purposes. The changing rainfall pattern is an essential aspect of assessing the impact of climate change on water resources planning and management. Climate change affected the entire world, specifically India’s fragile Himalayan mountain region, which has high significance due to being a climatic indicator. The water coming from Himalayan rivers is essential for 1.4 billion people living downstream. Earlier studies either modeled temperature or rainfall for the Himalayan area; however, the combined influence of both in a long-term analysis was not performed utilizing Deep Learning (DL). The present investigation attempted to analyze the time series and correlation of temperature (1796–2013) and rainfall changes (1901–2015) over the Himalayan states in India. The Climate Deep Long Short-Term Memory (CDLSTM) model was developed and optimized to forecast all Himalayan states’ temperature and rainfall values. Facebook’s Prophet (FB-Prophet) model was implemented to forecast and assess the performance of the developed CDLSTM model. The performance of both models was assessed based on various performance metrics and shown significantly higher accuracies and low error rates.