Calendar of Future Meetings Involving IWRA

ABSTRACT

Irrigation-water-delivery systems are designed and managed to receive water from a source and to distribute it among farmers in order to meet their agricultural requirements. High system performance can be achieved through rehabilitation of deteriorating and inadequate physical facilities and through improved system management. Various design decisions must be made in order to rehabilitate or develop irrigation-water-delivery systems, including those related to specification of the characteristics of hydraulic structures used to convey regulate, or divert water

This study develops and applies a response surface methodology (RSM) for achieving optimal design for hydraulic structures in irrigation-water-delivery systems in canal networks. This approach provides a means of understanding system behavior through developing a response surface in terms of a mathematical expression representing system performance as affected by design decisions. Design decisions include pipe diameters for diversion and regulating structures. Simulation of steady spatially varied flow was incorporated into the response surface methodology to determine high-performance low-cost solutions.

Objectives of adequacy, efficiency dependability, and equity of water delivery were considered in defining water delivery performance. Fuzzy membership functions were used to address subjectivity associated with interpreting expected values of performance measures associated with each of the prescribed objectives.

This study is an extension of a previous study by Alshaikh [1]. That study reported the application of RSM on a single canal case while herein RSM was used for the case of a canal network. Though, in general, RSMs for large-scale branched systems are computationally intensive, this proposed methodology overcomes this drawback. The approach constitutes a significant easy-to-use step forward in the development of comprehensive systems-scale techniques for the design of structural components of irrigation-water-delivery systems.     

Palm Oil: A New Ethics of Visibility for the Production Landscape

The explosion of the palm oil industry in recent decades has transformed vast swathes of the Malaysian and Indonesian countryside. Milica Topalovic , Assistant Professor of Architecture and Territorial Planning at ETH Zurich, asserts that the resulting agro-industrial landscapes challenge the very concept of what is rural, and considers how such areas should be conceptualised.     

解读Louis I.Kahn的孟加拉首都政府建筑群

通过分析孟加拉首都政府建筑群来诠释路易斯·康的设计哲学理念及他将物质要素的功能性与精神性完美结合的设计手法。     

Civil Liabilities for Unsafe Foods in Bangladesh and Australia: A Comparative Perspective on Consumer Protection

The statutory laws concerning food safety, which allow the consumers affected by unsafe foods to claim compensation for their loss or damage in Bangladesh, are flawed in several respects. These flaws are argued to have harmful impacts on consumer protection. The ineffective legislation in the absence of application of the common law principles of negligence has left the consumers virtually helpless in securing remedies for their injuries. This article endeavors to critically examine the ambiguities and shortcomings in the Consumer Rights Protection Act 2009 (Bangladesh) looking through the prisms of the Australian Consumer Law 2010 and relevant case law from major common law jurisdictions. It discovers a number of weaknesses in the legislation of Bangladesh and provides specific suggestions for strengthening the civil liability provisions from the perspective of consumer protection by preventing their contraventions and providing adequate compensation.     

Indoor exposure to particulate matter and the incidence of acute lower respiratory infections among children: A birth cohort study in urban Bangladesh

Approximately half of all children under two years of age in Bangladesh suffer from an acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) each year. Exposure to indoor biomass smoke has been consistently associated with an increased risk of ALRI in young children. Our aim was to estimate the effect of indoor exposure to particulate matter (PM_2.5) on the incidence of ALRI among children in a low‐income, urban community in Bangladesh. We followed 257 children through two years of age to determine their frequency of ALRI and measured the PM_2.5 concentrations in their sleeping space. Poisson regression was used to estimate the association between ALRI and the number of hours per day that PM_2.5 concentrations exceeded 100 μg/m³, adjusting for known confounders. Each hour that PM_2.5 concentrations exceeded 100 μg/m³ was associated with a 7% increase in incidence of ALRI among children aged 0–11 months (adjusted incidence rate ratio (IRR) 1.07, 95% CI 1.01–1.14), but not in children 12–23 months old (adjusted IRR 1.00, 95% CI 0.92–1.09). Results from this study suggest that reducing indoor PM_2.5 exposure could decrease the frequency of ALRI among infants, the children at highest risk of death from these infections.     

Prospects for Traditional Jute Products

Abstract

The world jute production has been decreasing since the beginning of the 80s and is still declining. In such a situation it is necessary to reconsider the future prospects of the industry focusing especially on traditional jute products-sacks and bags, which production comprises 90% or more of the industry's current output.

In looking at future prospects it is usually a good idea to learn from the past. So the article will give a brief illustration of the past and present situation for the jute industry and traditional jute products.     

Summoning earth and fire: The energy development implications of Grameen Shakti (GS) in Bangladesh

Since its establishment in 1996, the nonprofit company Grameen Shakti (GS) has installed almost half a million solar home systems (SHS), 132,000 cookstoves, and 13,300 biogas plants among 3.1 million beneficiaries. They plan to ramp up their expansion so that by 2015, more than 1.5 million SHS are in place along with 100,000 biogas units and 5 million improved cookstoves. This article describes GS’s current activities, the contours of its programs, and likely reasons for its success. It also explores the remaining challenges facing GS and distils common lessons for other energy development assistance projects and programs around the world. After detailing research methods consisting primarily of research interviews and site visits, the article briefly explores the history of GS and summarizes its three most prominent programs. The article then identifies six distinct benefits to their programs—expansion of energy access, less deforestation and fewer greenhouse gas emissions, price savings, direct employment and income generation, improved public health, and better technology—before discussing challenges related to staff retention and organizational growth, living standards, technical obstacles, affordability, tension with other energy programs, political constraints, and awareness and cultural values.     

Subsurface iron and arsenic removal for shallow tube well drinking water supply in rural Bangladesh

Subsurface iron and arsenic removal has the potential to be a cost-effective technology to provide safe drinking water in rural decentralized applications, using existing shallow tube wells. A community-scale test facility in Bangladesh was constructed for injection of aerated water (∼1 m³) into an anoxic aquifer with elevated iron (0.27 mmol L⁻¹) and arsenic (0.27 μmol L⁻¹) concentrations. The injection (oxidation) and abstraction (adsorption) cycles were monitored at the test facility and simultaneously simulated in the laboratory with anoxic column experiments.Dimensionless retardation factors (R) were determined to represent the delayed arrival of iron or arsenic in the well compared to the original groundwater. At the test facility the iron removal efficacies increased after every injection-abstraction cycle, with retardation factors (R_Fe) up to 17. These high removal efficacies could not be explained by the theory of adsorptive-catalytic oxidation, and therefore other ((a)biotic or transport) processes have contributed to the system’s efficacy. This finding was confirmed in the anoxic column experiments, since the mechanism of adsorptive-catalytic oxidation dominated in the columns and iron removal efficacies did not increase with every cycle (stable at R_Fe = ∼8). R_As did not increase after multiple cycles, it remained stable around 2, illustrating that the process which is responsible for the effective iron removal did not promote the co-removal of arsenic. The columns showed that subsurface arsenic removal was an adsorptive process and only the freshly oxidized adsorbed iron was available for the co-adsorption of arsenic. This indicates that arsenic adsorption during subsurface treatment is controlled by the amount of adsorbed iron that is oxidized, and not by the amount of removed iron. For operational purposes this is an important finding, since apparently the oxygen concentration of the injection water does not control the subsurface arsenic removal, but rather the injection volume. Additionally, no relation has been observed in this study between the amount of removed arsenic at different molar Fe:As ratios (28, 63, and 103) of the groundwater. It is proposed that the removal of arsenic was limited by the presence of other anions, such as phosphate, competing for the same adsorption sites.     

Indoor air pollution and its impact on children under five years old in Bangladesh

Indoor air concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and dust particles were measured for 49 biomass and 46 fossil fuel users in urban slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The health impacts of these pollutants were assessed on 65 and 51 children under five years old from families who use biomass and fossil fuel as main source of energy, respectively. Mean concentrations of CO were found to be significantly higher in biomass fuel users (P = 0.010), while geometric mean concentrations of benzene, xylene, toluene, hexane, total VOCs, and NO2 were significantly higher (P < 0.01) in the fossil fuel users. Symptoms such as redness of eyes, itching of skin, nasal discharge, cough, shortness of breath, chest tightness, wheezing, or whistling chest were found to be associated with the choice of biomass fuel, with the odds ratio ranging from 4.0 to 6.3. No significant association of use of biomass fuel with respiratory diseases, eczema, diarrhea, or viral fever was observed after adjustment for potential confounders. These results suggest a significant association between the biomass fuel-using population and respiratory symptoms. These symptoms may not be due to the pollutants only, as some other underlying causes may be present. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The health of children under five years old in Bangladesh, especially those living in poor socioeconomic conditions, is considered to be worsening because of indoor air pollution. It is commonly suggested that biomass fuel should be replaced by fossil fuel, as pollution levels are believed to be higher with biomass fuel. Our findings, however, suggest that pollution can be higher with fossil fuels, and indicate that a switch in fuel from biomass to fossil does not necessarily improve the children's health. Awareness programs should therefore be undertaken to avoid the unnecessary use of gas. Clean fuels and clean stoves should also be ensured to reduce emissions of indoor air pollutants.     

A wind map of Bangladesh

Utilization of wind energy in Bangladesh has been slow mainly due to lack of quality wind data. Recent measurements in some places have shown significant wind energy potentials in Bangladesh. In this paper, a wind map is presented which incorporates several microscale features, such as terrain roughness, elevation etc. with a mesoscale model. Several meso-maps were obtained from global databases and a suitable model was chosen and modified for a 30-m elevation. Ground data from various sources were collected and modified for height and land condition adjustments based on local knowledge and GIS information. It was found that, the generated wind map and the modified ground data resemble. Annual average wind speed at 30 m height along the coastal belt is above 5 m/s. Wind speed in northeastern parts is above 4.5 m/s while inland wind speed is around 3.5 m/s for most part of Bangladesh. Small-scale wind turbines could be installed and tested in locations such as St. Martins Island, Cox’s Bazar, Patenga, Bhola, Barguna, Dinajpur, Thakurgaon and Panchagar.