ALBERT

Description: The European Green Deal and its endeavors will make rapid and far-reaching decisions with major implications for the European cement industry in the short- and longer-term. Accordingly, new measures should be dealt with quickly and effectively to minimize the adverse impact on global warming and global climate change by this sector. The aim of this study is to show and assess the measures to be undertaken to reach carbon neutrality by the Spanish cement industry by 2050. They may be categorized into three broad types based on the main materials: clinker, cement, and concrete. The cement sector must implement breakthrough initiatives, inventions, and technologies regarding the clinker and cement production processes. Furthermore, carbon dioxide uptake by cement-based materials must be considered to achieve the carbon neutrality objective. Accordingly, two methodologies named simplified and advanced, consistent with Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories elaborated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), were selected to model the carbon offsetting by mortars and concretes. Finally, the existing climate change mitigation technologies available in Spain are insufficient to reach the net zero carbon footprint. Therefore, breakthrough technologies such as novel and efficient carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies should be implemented by the Spanish cement industry to achieve zero carbon dioxide emissions in 2050.

Description: An efficient means to map tree plantations is needed to detect tropical land use change and evaluate reforestation projects. To analyze recent tree plantation expansion in northeastern Costa Rica, we examined the potential of combining moderate-resolution hyperspectral imagery (2005 HyMap mosaic) with multitemporal, multispectral data (Landsat) to accurately classify (1) general forest types and (2) tree plantations by species composition. Following a linear discriminant analysis to reduce data dimensionality, we compared four Random Forest classification models: hyperspectral data (HD) alone; HD plus interannual spectral metrics; HD plus a multitemporal forest regrowth classification; and all three models combined. The fourth, combined model achieved overall accuracy of 88.5%. Adding multitemporal data significantly improved classification accuracy (p 〈 0.0001) of all forest types, although the effect on tree plantation accuracy was modest. The hyperspectral data alone classified six species of tree plantations with 75% to 93% producer’s accuracy; adding multitemporal spectral data increased accuracy only for two species with dense canopies. Non-native tree species had higher classification accuracy overall and made up the majority of tree plantations in this landscape. Our results indicate that combining occasionally acquired hyperspectral data with widely available multitemporal satellite imagery enhances mapping and monitoring of reforestation in tropical landscapes.

Description: The ongoing evolution of the power system to implement climate action policies is resulting in a continuous increase in the penetration of renewables and the necessity of strengthening the transmission grid to optimize the usage of those sources and contain operation costs. Reinforcing the transmission lines or building new ones is a process that is made difficult due to authorization issues related with environmental and public acceptance concerns. Developing innovative conductors for overhead lines with enhanced performances with respect to the traditional ones would bring benefits in terms of energy efficiency increases in transmission and distribution grids without requiring the substitution of the existing towers. The project CALAJOULE (the genesis of the acronym comes from the union of the Italian verb “calare”-to decrease-to the third person singular, namely “cala” i.e., decreases, and of Joule, obvious reference to the active losses), cofinanced by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development in the framework of the “Ricerca di Sistema” program, aims at proposing innovative solutions for overhead line conductors for the containment of Joule power losses. In this paper, starting from the state-of-the-art of the currently adopted conductors, the main innovative solutions resulting from the project are presented and compared with the traditional ones to evaluate the achievable reduction in Joule losses.

Description: Information technologies (IT) currently represent 2% of CO2 emissions. In recent years, a wide variety of IT solutions have been proposed, focused on increasing the energy efficiency of network data centers. Monitoring is one of the fundamental pillars of these systems, providing the information necessary for adequate decision making. However, today’s monitoring systems (MSs) are partial, specific and highly coupled solutions. This study proposes a model for monitoring data centers that serves as a basis for energy saving systems, offered as a value-added service embedded in a device with low cost and power consumption. The proposal is general in nature, comprehensive, scalable and focused on heterogeneous environments, and it allows quick adaptation to the needs of changing and dynamic environments. Further, a prototype of the system has been implemented in several devices, which has allowed validation of the proposal in addition to identification of the minimum hardware profile required to support the model.

Description: The use of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) as well as newer automated unmanned aerial vehicles is becoming a standard method in remote sensing studies requiring high spatial resolution (〈1 m) and very precise temporal data to capture phenological events. In this study we use a low cost rotorcraft to map Eriophorum vaginatum at Mer Bleue, an ombrotrophic bog located east of Ottawa, ON, Canada. We focus on E. vaginatum because this sedge plays an important role in methane (CH4) gas exchange in peatlands. Using the remote controlled rotorcraft we were able to record, process, and mosaic 11.1 hectares of 4.5 cm spatial resolution imagery extracted from individual frames of video recordings (post georegistration RMSE 4.90 ± 4.95 cm). Our results, based on a supervised classification (96% accuracy) of the red, green, blue image planes, indicate a total tussock cover of 2,417 m2. Because the basal area of the plant is more relevant for calculating its contribution to the CH4 flux, the tussock area was related to the basal area from field data (R2 = 0.88, p 〈 0.0001). Our final results indicate a total basal area of 1,786 ± 62.8 m2. Based on temporal measurements of CH4 flux from the peatland as a whole that vary over the growing season, we estimate the E. vaginatum contribution to range from 3.0% to 17.3% of that total. Overall, our low cost approach was an effective non-destructive way to derive E. vaginatum coverage and estimate CH4 exchange over the growing season.

Description: Fisheries surveys over broad spatial areas are crucial in defining and delineating appropriate fisheries management areas. Yet accurate mapping and tracking of fishing activities remain largely restricted to developed countries with sufficient resources to use automated identification systems and vessel monitoring systems. For many countries, the spatial extent and boundaries of fishing grounds are not completely known. We used satellite images at night to detect fishing grounds in the Philippines for fishing gears that use powerful lights to attract coastal pelagic fishes. We used nightly boat detection data, extracted by U.S. NOAA from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), for the Philippines from 2012 to 2016, covering 1713 nights, to examine spatio-temporal patterns of fishing activities in the country. Using density-based clustering, we identified 134 core fishing areas (CFAs) ranging in size from 6 to 23,215 km2 within the Philippines’ contiguous maritime zone. The CFAs had different seasonal patterns and range of intensities in total light output, possibly reflecting differences in multi-gear and multi-species signatures of fishing activities in each fishing ground. Using maximum entropy modeling, we identified bathymetry and chlorophyll as the main environmental predictors of spatial occurrence of these CFAs when analyzed together, highlighting the multi-gear nature of the CFAs. Applications of the model to specific CFAs identified different environmental drivers of fishing distribution, coinciding with known oceanographic associations for a CFA’s dominant target species. This case study highlights nighttime satellite images as a useful source of spatial fishing effort information for fisheries, especially in Southeast Asia.

Description: Substrate complexity is strongly related to biodiversity in aquatic habitats. We illustrate a novel framework, based on Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry (SfM) and Multi-View Stereo (MVS) photogrammetry, to quantify habitat complexity in freshwater ecosystems from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and underwater photography. We analysed sites in the Xingu river basin, Brazil, to reconstruct the 3D structure of the substrate and identify and map habitat classes important for maintaining fish assemblage biodiversity. From the digital models we calculated habitat complexity metrics including rugosity, slope and 3D fractal dimension. The UAV based SfM-MVS products were generated at a ground sampling distance (GSD) of 1.20–2.38 cm while the underwater photography produced a GSD of 1 mm. Our results show how these products provide spatially explicit complexity metrics, which are more comprehensive than conventional arbitrary cross sections. Shallow neural network classification of SfM-MVS products of substrate exposed in the dry season resulted in high accuracies across classes. UAV and underwater SfM-MVS is robust for quantifying freshwater habitat classes and complexity and should be chosen whenever possible over conventional methods (e.g., chain-and-tape) because of the repeatability, scalability and multi-dimensional nature of the products. The SfM-MVS products can be used to identify high priority freshwater sectors for conservation, species occurrences and diversity studies to provide a broader indication for overall fish species diversity and provide repeatability for monitoring change over time.

Description: This paper presents an efficient solution, based on a wearable mobile laser system (WMLS), for the digitalization and modelling of a complex cultural heritage building. A procedural pipeline is formalized for the data acquisition, processing and generation of cartographic products over a XV century palace located in Segovia, Spain. The complexity, represented by an intricate interior space and by the presence of important structural problems, prevents the use of standard protocols such as those based on terrestrial photogrammetry or terrestrial laser scanning, making the WMLS the most suitable and powerful solution for the design of restoration actions. The results obtained corroborate with the robustness and accuracy of the digitalization strategy, allowing for the generation of 3D models and 2D cartographic products with the required level of quality and time needed to digitalize the area by a terrestrial laser scanner.

Description: Plot-based sampling with ground measurements or photography is typically used to establish and maintain National Forest Inventories (NFI). The re-measurement phase of the Canadian NFI is an opportunity to develop novel methods for the estimation of forest attributes such as stand height, crown closure, volume, and aboveground biomass (AGB) from satellite, rather than, airborne imagery. Based on panchromatic Very High Spatial Resolution (VHSR) images and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data acquired in the Yukon Territory, Canada, we propose an approach for boreal forest stand attribute characterization. Stand and tree objects are delineated, followed by modeling of stand height, volume, and AGB using metrics derived from the stand and tree crown objects. The calibration and validation of the models are based on co-located LiDAR-derived estimates. A k-nearest neighbor approach provided the best accuracy for stand height estimation (R2 = 0.76, RMSE = 1.95 m). Linear regression models were the most efficient for estimating stand volume (R2 = 0.94, RMSE = 9.6 m3/ha) and AGB (R2 = 0.92, RMSE = 22.2 t/ha). This study was implemented for one Canadian ecozone and demonstrated the capacity of a methodology to produce forest inventory attributes with acceptable accuracies offering potential to be applied to other boreal regions.

Description: In this paper a methodology is proposed to elaborate landslide activity maps through the use of PS (Persistent Scatterer) data. This is illustrated through the case study of Tramuntana Range in the island of Majorca (Spain), where ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite) images have been processed through a Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) technique during the period of 2007–2010. The landslide activity map provides, for every monitored landslide, an assessment of the PS visibility according to the relief, land use, and satellite acquisition parameters. Landslide displacement measurements are projected along the steepest slope, in order to compare landslide velocities with different slope orientations. Additionally, a ground motion activity map is also generated, based on active PS clusters not included within any known landslide phenomenon, but even moving, potentially referred to unmapped landslides or triggered by other kinds of geomorphological processes. In the Tramuntana range, 42 landslides were identified as active, four as being potential to produce moderate damage, intersecting the road Ma-10, which represents the most important road of the island and, thus, the main element at risk. In order to attest the reliability of measured displacements to represent landslide dynamics, a confidence degree evaluation is proposed. In this test site, seven landslides exhibit a high confidence degree, medium for 93 of them, and low for 51. A low confidence degree was also attributed to 615 detected active clusters with a potential to cause moderate damage, as their mechanism of the triggering cause is unknown. From this total amount, 18 of them intersect the Ma-10, representing further potentially hazardous areas. The outcomes of this work reveal the usefulness of landslide activity maps for environmental planning activities, being exportable to other radar data and different geomorphological settings.