ALBERT

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Herman van Os , Rien Herber , Bert Scholtens The decision-making process for subsurface activities in the Netherlands has been unable to cope with the driving forces related to social acceptance in several recently proposed subsurface activities. We therefore investigated the possibility to include the triangle of social acceptance in the decision-making process. Our conceptual model relates the stakeholders, their goals and the driving forces to each other. We developed a framework, which describes the interaction between eleven design criteria for a Decision Support System (DSS). This framework will enable us to design a better, from a social acceptance perspective, DSS for subsurface activities in the Netherlands. Since the goals addressed in the decision-making process are very broad and the stakeholders are quite diverse, a single uniform DSS is not able to provide a satisfactory solution. We therefore suggest to design a DSS that is matched with each class of social acceptance.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Yoshie Inada , Shinobu Izumi , Motoya Koga , Shigehito Matsubara We are developing a planning support system for welfare urban design. If we quantify the optimal route (the route that is the easiest to pass through) for challenged people, we will be able to select the areas that require adjustment in terms of accessibility with greater efficiency. In this paper we report on our development of the prototype system to present an optimal route for wheelchair users, and also, the two workshops we had for evaluating the accuracy of the resulted optimal route.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Erfaneh Allameh , Mohammadali Heidari , Bauke De Vries , Harry Timmermans , Mohammad Masoud , Farhang Mozaffar Almost everyone would agree that teleworking is increasingly growing; but beyond this broad statement, we know little about how people behave when they work at home and how they balance their work and life. User comfort and productivity cannot be addressed properly, without a deep understanding of usersʼ working behavior. This gap is even deeper when it comes to the domain of smart homes as new types of housing which aim to enhance working at home. Hence, more user-centered studies are needed to comprehend the interrelationships among housing, technology, daily life and the work activities. In this paper, we use the outputs of an experiment to model usersʼ work activities in a smart home. The experiment was conducted among 254 respondents, who were asked to explore a smart home in a virtual environment and then to arrange their daily activities including work related activities in the virtual smart home. A choice modeling approach, based on the Multinomial Logit Model (MNL), is applied to model how an individual works at a smart home given influential factors such as the individualsʼ socio-demographic profile and their current lifestyle. Two features of working in a smart home are covered in this paper, namely, “the integration of work activities with other daily activities” and “the location of work activities in the house”. The results give better insight into the future trends of working at home and the effects of smart homes on working behavior of people. The results can be used in further developments of both smart homes and teleworking.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Jinhee Kim , Soora Rasouli , Harry Timmermans Hybrid choice models have been developed as an extension of discrete choice models, particularly multinomial logit models, in an attempt to include attitudinal variables. The quintessence of hybrid choice models is that a model of attitude formation is estimated and the estimated attitudes are added to the commonly used set of attributes in discrete choice models: attributes of the choice alternatives and socio-demographic variables. The most commonly applied model is based on linear specifications, both for the attitude model and the utility function. In this review paper, we discuss the principles underlying the hybrid choice model, summarize the specifications used in previous applications of the model and then continue discussing recent progress that added social influence to the model specification and replaced the linear specification of the utility function with a nonlinear function.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Yountaik Leem , Sang Ho Lee , Jungho Yoon To overcome many difficulties in sustaining the satisfying quality of life for a large population 1 , urban spaces are evolving toward more efficient spaces by combination with ICTs (information and communication technologies) and raising the possibility to provide improved urban services which can enrich the quality of life of the citizen. In many cities over the world, a good number of public and private services in transportation, environment, urban safety from crime or disaster, health and other fields are designed and implemented with IT infrastructure. In spite of the expectation of cost-effective urban services based on the linkage between data and systems, obstructions in administrative and technical domains have made it difficult to be implemented. In this study, two advanced ICTs based urban services, which were developed by linkage and convergence of urban information and systems of Korea were introduced and analysed. The structural design of system convergence and data sharing scheme of Carbon Emission Monitoring System (CEMS) in Sejong City uses UIS (Urban Information System for local authorities), GIS data and other data provided by the public agencies, such as Korea Meteorological Administration for the monitoring and analysing the characteristics of the energy consumption of household 2 . Another system, Urban Integrated CCTV Control System (ICCS) in Anyang City, shows integrated CCTV networks for crime prevention, traffic control and public facility management to provide extended urban services, such as disaster prevention, police investigation and others. Qualitative and Quantitative effects analyses with technical and policy directions were suggested for the development and improvement of future urban services for a liveable city.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): N. Agya Utama , Andhy Muhammad Fathoni , Mandau A. Kristianto In the last couple of years and years to come Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia are having the highest GDP growth in ASEAN (South East Asia Nations) member countries; at present Indonesia has the highest GDP, it was $845 billion in 2011 and is predicted to grow up to $ 2,200 billion in 2030. In line with economic growth the countries energy demand also sharply increases, Indonesia primary energy demand has increased four folds in the past 30 years, while the region increase almost five folds. The main energy consumer in the country mainly coming from transportation sector, followed by industrial and residential sectors, while buildings combined (residential and commercial sector) accounted in more than 30% from the total energy consumption. The study focused on alternatives cooling appliances through passive method, where electricity and other source of energy are very limited to be used. The highest cooling appliances for middle class houses are either standing fan or ceiling fan, an alternatives design is developed and simulated by using CFD modeling tools with a tropical climate in Jakarta as the boundaries. The study shows that the passive method could reduce in more than 1800 kg CO2eq annually.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Muhammad Azzam Ismail , Fahanim Abdul Rashid In this paper, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Homes (LEED-H) rating method was tested on three existing Malaysian green homes (GH). This was to ascertain the amount of changes and modifications needed to configure LEED-H to suit the local context. The three GHs are Demonstration, Cool and Energy Efficient House (DCEEH), Smart and Cool Home (SCH) and CoolTek House (CTH). These are benchmark Malaysian GHs either due to their design, construction methods, building materials or operational procedures. It was found that all case studies did not comply with at least 12 mandatory prerequisites out of 23 as outlined in LEED-H.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Edward Endrianto Pandelaki , Wijayanti , Septana Bagus Pribadi This study concerns to the life of the elderly who live in the high-rise housing in urban areas. The aim of this study is to discover a conceptual model of high-rise housing which is capable to accommodate the activities of the elderly by conducting a comparative study between Indonesia and Japan. Qualitative method is used because it has explorative nature. Providing attention toward how to create a safe, comfortable, healthy, economical, self-reliant living environment, and how to encourage creation of social cohesion, are necessary for the life of the elderly who live in high-rise housing in urban areas.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Ratni Prima Lita , Sari Surya , M. Ma’ruf , Laura Syahrul Studies have shown the relationship between attitude, image, intention to visit and willingness to pay more for environmentally friendly services. With unique background of local tourist in West Sumatra Indonesia, this study aims to confirm the previous findings based on perspective of services marketing literatures. This explanatory study investigates causality among cross sectional data that was collected by following convenience sampling technique. The sample size is 200 local tourists, acquired with intercept approach in several main tourist destinations in West Sumatra. The data was analyzed by structural equation model. The results show that the effects of attitude toward green behavior on overall image are positive (0.446) and significant at the alpha of 0.08, with the t-statistic of 4.804. The overall image has positive impact on word of mouth (0.497) and significant at the alpha of 0.05, with the t-statistic of 4.569. The overall image also has positive impact on willingness to pay (0.523) significant at the alpha of 0.05, with the t-statistic of 5.683. These results indicate that attitude toward green behavior has significant influence on overall image of hotels and restaurants. Overall image has significant influence toward re-visit intention, positive word of mouth, and willingness to pay more for environmentally friendly hotels and restaurants. The management of the hotels and restaurants may consider this finding to improve service quality by adopting environmentally friendly practices.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Tye Ying Ying , Lee Keat Teong , Wan Nadiah Wan Abdullah , Leh Cheu Peng In this study, oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) and kenaf core fibers were converted into sugar for bioethanol production. Results of enzymatic hydrolysis showed that the untreated EFB and kenaf core fibers were hardly to be hydrolysed, in which yielded only 2.6% and 0.4% of reducing sugar (glucose), respectively. In consideration to environmentally friendliness, simple aqueous pre-treatments were carried out prior to hydrolysis aimed to increase sugar production. Based on the results obtained, it was interesting to note that by adopting merely water, acid and alkaline pre-treatments, the total glucose yields were increased to 34.9%, 34.2% and 27.9% for EFB fiber, while 19.3%, 11.7%, and 12.6% for kenaf core fiber, respectively. The results of chemical composition analysis of pre-treated fibers indicated the increase of the sugar production was highly related to the removal of hemicellulose and/or lignin in the fibers. Between the two fibers, pre-treated EFB fiber attained the highest total glucose yield in all the pre-treatments. This revealed that EFB fiber was more viable for sugar production than kenaf core fiber.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Sasa Sofyan Munawar , Bambang Subiyanto To utilize various potential agricultural residues, pellet making was performed and the pellets obtained were characterized in this study. Oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB), oil palm frond (OPF), oil palm shell (OPS) and oil palm mesocarp (OPM) were employed as feedstock. Biopellet production was started with material crushing to get uniform material and then continued with pellet forming. Pellet making was conducted using conventional pelletizer under temperatures of 150, 200 and 250 °C for 15 minutes. Some characteristics were measured to determine biopellet quality, i.e. moisture content, density, ash content and calorific value. Based on the water content, ash content, density and calorific value, OPM biopellets that pressed at 200 and 250 °C showed the best formula. The characteristics of this biopellet were moisture content of 1.7-1.9%, ash of 6.85-7.45%, and calorific value of 3,814-4,724 kcal/kg.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Priyono Suryanto , E.T.S. Putra , S. Kurniawan , B. Suwignyo , D.A.P. Sukirno This research was conducted to determine maize growth and yield at various agroforestry development levels, especially in Batur Agung area, Gunung Kidul District, Java, Indonesia. This experiment was conducted in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) single factor with three blocks as replication. Research factor was agroforestry development levels, namely, initial, intermediate, and advanced levels. Observations were done on maize growth and yield variables. Data then was analyzed by applying Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 5% level, and continued with the Duncan Multiple Range Test (DMRT) if significant.Maize physiological response on initial to intermediate and advanced agroforestry level demonstrated impairment tendency. This condition continued to maize production decline in line with shade level (initial AF, intermediate AF, and advanced AF). Traditional silvicultural developed with trees along border, alley cropping and mixer characteristics. Tree planting space was irregular with conventional stands management. Although the physiological response decreased in line with shade increase and so did maize production, farmers still continued to develop initial, intermediate, and advanced agroforestry models. Scheme developed to improve the productivity of agroforestry was constructing intensive agroforestry regimes (IAR). There are 3 IAR, namely, IAR-1 to hold initial agroforestry during the acceleration and management of initial agroforestry heading to intermediate and advanced. IAR-1 base is more intensive crown pruning and commercial thinning approach. Crop area was utilized during the management with C4 species. IAR-2 was designed to hold intermediate AF from traditional to intensive by applying intensive harvesting, with need based cutting and C3 species cultivation. IAR-3 was carried out for the development of advanced AF to initial AF with intensive need based cutting, pollarding, and intensive crop with C4 species.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Irma Isnafia Arief , Z. Wulandari , E.L. Aditia , M. Baihaqi , Noraimah , Hendrawan The research aims to evaluate physicochemical and microbiological properties of fermented lamb sausages elaborated with probiotic Lactobacillus. plantarum IIA-2C12 isolated from Indonesian local beef. The result showed that the addition probiotic L. plantarum IIA/2C12 (9 log cfu/ml) produced better quality of fermented lamb sausages than control (without probiotic). Physicochemichal analysis showed that fermented lamb sausage with L. plantarum IIA-2C12 has a considerebely soft texture and the final pH value and aw of fermented lamb sausage with L. plantarum were 4.13 and 0.88, respectively. Additionally, the pressence of L. plantarum IIA-2C12 significantly reduced the fat content (6.39% wb) and increased the protein content (19.26%wb). Microbiological analysis displayed high population of lactic acid bacteria (9 log cfu/g) on fermented lamb sausage with L. plantarum IIA-2C12 with low population of Escherichia coli (1 log cfu/g) and none of Salmonella spp was detected. Preference test revealed that fermented lamb sausage with L. plantarum IIA-2C12 is the most prefereable product.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Srikandi Novianti , M.K. Biddinika , Pandji Prawisudha , Kunio Yoshikawa In this research, the hydrothermal treatment (HT) was applied to treat a waste stream from the commercial production of palm oil. The investigation both lab-scale and pilot-scale reactors have been conducted. The hydrothermal products were characterized and their fuel qualities were evaluated. The results indicated that the fuel qualities of the products improved after HT; such as higher carbon content, higher energy density, and lower O/C and H/C ratios compared with the raw feedstock. The HT products derived from the lab-scale and pilot-scale reactors had similar chemical compositions and energy density which indicated the feasibility of an up-scale application for this technology.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Adrianus Amheka , Yoshiro Higano , Takeshi Mizunoya , Helmut Yabar The Kupang government's target of integrating a renewable energy technology system (RETs) and waste treatment plant system (WTPs) are under consideration to pursue the national target of reduction GHG emission between 26-41% (0.767-1.244) Gton CO 2 e from 2010 to 2020. This research considers the feasibility of developing RETs and WTPs in order to reduce GHG emission by a creating the framework, of an Input Output (IO) table of Kupang and its analysis, counting the amount of total coefficients of GHG and air pollutants for each sector in the form of NO x , SO x , CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O from social-economic activities in Kupang. The results show 27 sectors classified in a table, representing the gained coefficients pollutants which will enable the estimate of the total amount of CO 2 e emitted for the year 2010 and a framework for proposal to government. This study is the first research and main reference focusing on pollutant counts and emission coefficients emitted by activity economy on a regional level for Kupang city.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Shaza Rina Sahamir , Rozana Zakaria As Malaysia moves towards a sustainable lifestyles and development, the need to prepare for the change is imperative. Sustainability has become an important initiative discussed and undertaken not only by private buildings but also by public buildings dealing with residential, office, commercial as well as hospital. Building is known as human habitat. The way people design, construct and operate the building has a profound impact on people health and the environment. Compared to other building types, healthcare buildings have an especially large impact on the environment for the 24/7 use. Thus, the development of green hospital is important as it requires strict cleaning procedures and frequent air changes, which increase the already-high energy costs of the 24/7 operations and sophisticated medical equipment that make hospitals among the greatest energy consumers of any institution. The primary aim for this paper is to investigate green assessment criteria for public hospital building development in Malaysia. It compiles the essential criteria of existing green rating systems for healthcare buildings worldwide and presents the difference between each criteria compared to Malaysian green rating system. Existing tools and guidelines are reviewed, analysed and grouped according to the main criteria. The assessment criteria from each rating systems are divided into similar category covers all aspect of building design, construction and operation. Results from the analysis show the important assessment criteria of green public hospital building correspond to Malaysia. The research intended to produce initial guideline as a starting point for Malaysian public hospital in the most consistent and systematic way in practicing green.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Yuri Hermawan Prasetyo , Muhammad Nur Fajri Alfata , Anikmah Ridho Pasaribu Rumah Lontiok is one of the types of Malay traditional houses threatened to extinct since it have been abandoned by the local people. Located in Kampar–Riau, Rumah Lontiok has changed from its original form, particularly in using corrugated metal as rooftop material. The study aims to describe the Rumah Lontiok and its environment, and to investigate its thermal performance. Field experiment was carried out in this study. Thermal properties of material were measured by thermocouple and heat flux sensors, while surface temperature was gathered by thermocouple acquisitioned by datalogger. All thermal environment data were gathered for 24 hours. Data of site situation was documented by recording and sketching on the worksheet. The result of the study figured out the situation of Rumah Lontiok and its environments affecting the thermal performance. The in-situ measurement found out that wall has thermal conductivity of 0.21 W/m.K and the floor is 0.19 W/m.K. The study shows that indoor thermal environment did not quite different compared to the outdoor thermal environment. The roof material is hypothesized as major source of heat gain into inside the building. Even though there are many openings, they cannot remove heat gain effectively.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Sri Atmaja P. Rosyidi , Tjasa Bole-Rentel , Surya Budi Lesmana , Jazaul Ikhsan This paper briefly presents the experience of the Center for Regional Energy Management in the needs assessment, capacity building and adoption of household biogas plants in rural areas of Yogyakarta over the past five years. The biogas program has been designed to solve specific energy provision problems in rural areas, such as securing cooking fuel, as well as to promote ecological farming by using biogas digester as organic manure, thereby efficiently recycling locally available biomass waste. The paper also points that realizing these goals would require significant changes in funding and policy support for the successful implementations of biogas in developing countries. In addition, it highlights some of the key issues related to the implementation of rural energy programs and suggests a new approach and future strategies for initiatives that endeavor to address the issue of rural poverty and improve the living conditions of rural people.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Pannraphat Takolpuckdee In Thailand, Tarad Thai is one of the biggest and significant agricultural markets. Therefore, the problems from fresh waste disposals in this area are recognized as one of environmental significant concerns. In order to manage this problem, the conversion of those possible agricultural waste disposals to biochar soil amendments is studied. In this work, some parts of agricultural fruits waste are durian peel, mangosteen rind, corncob and banana peel. In addition, waste from fresh shrimp, shrimp shell, is also studied. Those previous waste materials are processed by viapyrolysis method to form biochar. The studies of chemical compositions, such as major and some minor nutrition, are analyzed using the Kjeldahl technique, UV-Visible spectrophotometer and Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) spectrometer. The heat of combustion and some chemical properties are also studied. The biochar derived from corncob, per gram, dominates the highest value of the heat of combustion (75.151 Kcal). In addition, the study of biocharuses as soil amendments is studied via the growth of swamp morning glory. By comparing the data from typical soil and biochar soil amendments by t-test, it is found that the growing length and number of leafs shows t cal >t crt which means that, for example, the use of the biochar soil amendments from agricultural market waste and shrimp shell as materials to grow the swamp morning glory displays the significance by comparing to typical soil.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Andhy Muhammad Fathoni , N. Agya Utama , Mandau A. Kristianto This paper presents a technical and economic potential of Solar Energy Application in Indonesia. Indonesia consists of thousands islands. Meanwhile, according to the latest data from the Department of Energy and Mineral Resources in 2012, Indonesia's electrification ratio is only around 74%. Renewable energy especially solar energy is one of the most potential energy sources as Indonesia lies in the equator line where the daylight is abundant and available throughout the year. The solar energy technologys is also eco-friendly and its application has the potential to reduce the greenhouse gas emission. A review of solar energy potential in Indonesia based on the solar resource data is presented. Estimation of solar resource in Indonesia was done using solar radiation data from NASA Surface Meteorology and Solar Energy (SSE). Retscreen software was used for all of the calculation in the study. It is found that the proposed system can generate electricity annually vary from 0.46 GWh/year in Denpasar to 217 GWh/year in Pontianak. This paper also calculates the economic viability through pre-tax IRR and simple payback indicator. It was observed that the highest IRR was observed in Makassar and the lowest IRR was observed in Banjarmasin. Meanwhile, it can be observed that Makassar got the shortest payback period for 11 years and Banjarmasin got the longest payback period of 17.6 years. From the side of environmental impact, the proposed system can reduce the GHG emission up to 243252 tons per year in particular selected location.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Nwe Ni Hlaing , Radzali Othman , Hirofumi Hinode , Winarto Kurniawan , Aye Aye Thant , Abdul Rahman Mohamed , Chris Salim , Srimala Sreekantan To capture carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), a major green house gas from flue gas, several kinds of adsorbents have been synthesized, characterized and tested. In this study, CaO-based adsorbents were synthesized via sol-gel-hydrothermal method and different hydrothermal temperatures (100, 120, 140 and 160 °C) have been investigated in order to verify their influence on the CaO-based adsorbents. Experimental results showed that the Ca(OH) 2 adsorbent with a mixture of CaCO 3 synthesized at 120 °C hydrothermal treatment possesses high CO2 adsorption capacity (0.52 g-CO2/g-sorbent) and at 160 °C hydrothermal treatment, CaC 2 O 4 .H 2 O adsorbent was observed and its CO 2 adsorption capacity was 0.46 g-CO 2 /g-sorbent for first carbonation/calcination cycle.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Benjamin C. McLellan , Yusuke Kishita , Go Yoshizawa , Yohei Yamaguchi , Kazumasu Aoki , Itsuki C. Handoh Understanding and assessing sustainable energy systems at various scales are a complex proposition. The task must take into account more than just the technical realm of energy, seeking to model the dynamic interplay between environmental, social and economic systems as they influence and are influenced by the technical energy system. Energy systems are often considered at a coarse level – at the scale of a nation – or at a relatively fine scale – at the technology end. However, scales of governance, institutions and the regional territory of electricity providers (for example) can make for useful scales of analysis. The current paper describes some of the important elements for undertaking co-design and assessment of energy systems for more resilient, desirable and sustainable energy futures. Key steps are described, among which is a novel model of the technical energy system that incorporates local environmental and planetary limitations. The initial model considerations and an analysis of enablers and barriers, as well as the interactions with the scenario development are presented.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Ratih Novi Listyawati , Christia Meidiana , Mustika Anggraeni The Energy Self-Sufficient Village is one of the Indonesian government programs where one of the criteria is that every village has to be able to fulfil minimum of 60% of energy needs with renewable source of potential owned. Tegalweru is a village that has potential of the livestock sector and there are 6 installations of biogas management to utilize manure waste. The evaluation of the energy self-sufficient village was conducted using emergy analysis. The emergy analysis is applied in two different scenarios. The first is baseline scenario where is only 37 cattle owned by ten households are treated to produce biogas. The second scenario is the scenario to fulfil the 60% target of energy self-sufficient. The emergy analysis is done to calculate the value of four emergy indices, which are, EYR to measure the comparison of yield and input added to biogas system, EIR to measure the emergy input needed to treat 1 kg of manure, ELR to measure the load of the manure treatment on environment, and ESI to measure the sustainability of biogas management. Analysis of emission reduction is also done in this research to find out the best scenario to be implemented in Tegalweru Village.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Kanae Ishimaru , Shigeo Kobayashi , Sayaka Yoshikawa Since 1980s, the settlement and occupancy into abandoned or non-cultivated land by poor peoples or landless peasantsbecame popular in Brazil. These people sometimes lack agricultural experiences to yieldsufficient production for livelihoods and it lead them to abandon the land and repeating forest clearance. Sufficient and sustainable agricultural production for subsistence and crop sale is important, especially during the early stage of immigration, in order to settlers to remain the land they had occupied. To elucidate the difference in crop selection tendencies between households with production sales and those without sales, we categorised the households within a single study area in Brazil into three types: (1) households with sales income from agricultural products (SA), and households without sales income in which the variety among cultivated crops was (2) low (NL) or (3) high (NH). The crops were divided into six types: (1) tubers and herbaceous crops that can be harvested within or around a year; tree crops that can be harvested within 3 years either (2) seasonally or (3) year-round; tree crops that can be harvested only after 4 years either (4) seasonally or (5) year-round; and (6) tree crops for timber, colouring, and oil use. Our survey results indicate that the SA households had a well-designed combination of crop species, including both commercial and subsistence crops, whereas the NH and NL households were lacking in short- and long-term sales. None of the NH had any sales income, even though they had the highest calculated number of calories coming from the consumption of agricultural products.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Tippabust Eksangsri , Thanon Jaiwang Water reuse for final cleaning process in electronic industry is evaluated. The target factory produces flexible printed circuit boards, which are washed with purified deep-well water as a final process before packaging. Survey of water consumption and its quality was conducted. Feasibility study aims to find the suitable schemes the factory can apply to the real practice when the water consumption rate for final cleaning process increases, with a few conditions that need to be concerned. Material flux analysis and economical evaluation are also performed. It is found that the water needs to be treated before reusing due to the conductivity and LPC that are too high. It is, therefore, suggested that the reused water recharged to both RO unit and ion- exchanger at a suitable ratio. The most attractive alternative in term of both technical and economical aspects is when the recharged ration is 30:70. Raw water consumption can be saved up to 19,760 m 3 per year and the investment can be paid off within 2 years.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): B.C. McLellan , G.D. Corder , A. Golev , S.H. Ali Rare Earths have been of considerable interest in recent years for a variety of reasons, in particular due to concerns over the security of supply for modern high efficiency electronics and energy technologies. Such concerns have placed them among the list of “critical” or “strategic” elements in countries such as the United States of America, the European Union, Japan and even in the largest producer and holder of reserves, China. Focus has been given to the environmental impacts of production, and on the distribution of reserves and politico-economic conflict over supply, but international academic work quantifying these impacts is lacking. Moreover, broader consideration of sustainability impacts and benefits in a systematic manner – particularly in regard to the social impacts of RE extraction, processing and utilisation – is not yet apparent. This paper undertakes a review of the literature and state-of-play of sustainability assessment of rare earth elements. Furthermore, the paper highlights areas of sustainability research considered by academic and industrial representatives to be essential for filling these gaps, and a pathway forward towards a more sustainable rare earths industry.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Fathonatu Anisa Khowatimy , Yoga Priastomo , Erna Febriyanti , Harkam Riyantoko , Wega Trisunaryanti The study of waste lubricant hydrocracking into gasoline and diesel fraction using the combination of Y-Zeolite and ZnO (Y-Zeolite/ZnO) catalyst has been conducted. The hydrocracking of waste lubricant was carried out in a semi-flow stainless steel reactor system (i.d = 3.78 cm; l = 30 cm) with hydrogen stream (20 mL/min) at 573, 623, and 673 K. The characterization of catalysts including crystallinity was analysed by X-Ray diffraction (XRD), the amount of total acid site was determined by gas sorption method, the surface area was measured by BET method, and the morphology of the catalyst was analyzed by Transmission Electron Micrograph (TEM). The activities of catalyst including total convertion, liquid and gas product (yield), and selectivity for gasoline and diesel fractions were evaluated. Total convertion was defined as (100–residue)%. The liquid product was collected and analyzed by gas chromatography (GC) and flame test. The characterization using XRD showed that ZnO could be rested upon the Y-Zeolite by wetblending. The amount of total acid sites of the Y-Zeolite/ZnO was higher than the constituent material. The highest total convertion of the lubricant using the Y-Zeolite/ZnO was 99.49 wt.% while the Y-Zeolite was 99.10 wt.% at 623 K and without catalyst (thermal hydrocracking) was 98.99 wt.% at 673 K. The highest liquid product at 623 K was achieved by the Y-Zeolite/ZnO catalyst (24.75 wt.%) with the selectivity for gasoline and diesel fractions was 25.92 and74.08%.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Danang Sudarwoko Adi , Lucky Risanto , Ratih Damayanti , Sri Rullyati , Listya M. Dewi , Ruliyana Susanti , Wahyu Dwianto , Euis Hermiati , Takashi Watanabe Fast growing wood species has become more promising as alternative wood sources to solve the gap between wood demand and supply. In this study, we focus on their fiber characteristicsand the wood density to determine their potential utilization. Thirty fast growing species were taken from secondary forest at PT Sari BumiKusuma, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Several hardwood and softwood species, which are commonly used in pulp and paper industries, were used as a comparison.The result showed that these species are low to high density (0.18-0.86). It is interesting to note that the fiber lengths of the 5 wood species were greater than commonly hardwoods, and similar with fiberlengths of softwoods. The fibers of the woods have good runkle ratio and the flexibility values. There were 7 potential species to be used as alternative wood material for pulp and paper: Endospermumdiadenum , Dillenia sp., Adinandradumosa , Adinandra sp., Naucleajunghuhnii , Neonaucleagigantea and Ficusfulva .

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): I. Nengah Suwastika , Ryosuke L. Ohniwa , Kunio Takeyasu , Takashi Shiina The Obg/Era proteins of P-loop GTPase superclass are conserved in various prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. Some of these proteins are critical regulators of many aspects of basic cellular processes, including ribosome biogenesis, translation and signal transduction. However, a genome-wide overview of the Obg/Era GTPase genes in plants is not available. Recent ly studies on comprehensive genomic analyses of Arabidopsis thaliana identified 11 Obg-Hflx like GTPase genes that are divided into nine families/subfamilies: Archaea -related Drg and Nog1 , and Eubacteria -related Obg, EngB, HflX, Era, TrmE, EngA , and EngD . In this study we found that Arabidopsis has 3 (three) Drg homologue proteins, namely AtDrg1-1 , AtDrg1-2 and AtDrg1-3 . Subcellular localization analysis of Arabidopsis Obg-Hflx homologues revealed that Archaea -derived Drg proteins are mainly targeted to cytoplasm, except Drg1-3 was detected not only in cytoplasm but also in nucleus. Furthermore, based on expression pattern profiling indicates that Drg1-1 and Drg1-2 were expressed constitutively trough plant development. On the other hand, Drg1-3 was detected in dry seed and under stress plant.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Erna Wati Ibnu Hajar , Ahmad Ziad Bin Sulaiman , A.M. Mimi Sakinah Stevia has become rather widespread over a wide range of climatic locations around the world and can apparently be successfully grown under different cultivation conditions. Heavy metal accumulation of Stevia extract is dependent on obtaining heavy metals from the soil and water. Heavy metals from plant sources may also vary from place to place because soil heavy metals content varies geographically, thus, they have become the subject of many research projects. Stevia plant is easily contaminated during growth, development and processing and for this, an extensive research is needed to explore the characteristics of the heavy metal produced by the plant. The heavy metals produced from the herb and its toxicity of Stevia plant is not well documented and scientific evidence is limited to establishing Stevia plant as a medicinal plant. The samples were collected from Malacca, Malaysia. The fresh leaves, stems and flowers of the Stevia rebaudiana plant were dried using oven equipment and were grinded until fine to make powder and then of each extracted using Microwave digester. The analysis of samples was carried out by using an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass-Spectrophotometer (ICP-MS) with different mode equipment to compare results of heavy metals in Stevia rebaudiana plant. Heavy metal accumulation in Stevia rebaudiana from leaves, stems, and flowers extraction is reported. Heavy metals in leaves, stems and flowers of Stevia rebaudiana presented variety of elements such as As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Pb, Se, Zn, Al, Ag, Co, Ca, Mn and Ni. The high tolerance to heavy metals in leaves, stems, and flowers of Stevia rebaudiana were presented at fifteen parameters below the permissible limit in plant and can be used as food product or therapeutic agent in traditional medicine.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 21 Author(s): R. Khanna , R. Cayumil , P.S. Mukherjee , V. Sahajwalla The recovery of materials from urban waste has become progressively more important with wastes providing a variety of resources. This study focuses on the recycling of electronic printed circuit boards (PCBs) from mobile phones, computers, TVs, white goods, and micro-processors etc. that contain significant amounts of hazardous/toxic components along with a variety of metals, ceramics and polymers. Both formal and informal sectors are engaged worldwide in recycling such e-waste to recover precious and other metals (upto 40-70% of value). However poor recycling techniques, especially in developing countries, generate high levels of environmental pollution that affects both the ecosystems and the people living within or near the main recycling areas. Various e-waste recycling methods used in the informal sector include manual dismantling, open burning of PCBs, plastic chipping and melting, burning wires to recover copper, acid & cyanide salt leaching, and inadequate metallurgical treatments. These activities release dust particles loaded with heavy metals and flame retardants into the atmosphere that may re-deposit near the emission site, or be transported over long distances depending on their size. Significant levels of environmental pollution are thus associated with recycling e-waste. This study presents an environmentally sustainable solution to e-waste management and reducing associated pollution during recycling. In this study, waste PCBs were heat treated in the temperature range 1150-1350 o C for periods of up to 20 minutes in an Argon atmosphere. Key metallic constituents namely Cu, Sn and Pb showed a tendency to segregate out in the form of copper rich and Sn rich metallic balls. Minor elements such as Al, Fe, Mg, Ni, Pd, Pt and Zn segregated along with metallic droplets. Such high temperatures led to the removal of hazardous lead and the recovery of highly concentrated copper alloys and precious metals. Pyrolysis of PCBs also generated a carbon rich residue containing traces of Sn and very low levels of copper. Various ceramic impurities present precipitated out as slag and did not interfere with metal recovery.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 21 Author(s): Luke Beesley Most people spend most of their time in densely populated areas, thus the quality of the environment in and surrounding these areas influences the health, wellbeing and happiness of vast swathes of the world's inhabitants. Cities are constantly migrating and metabolizing, leaving behind industrial legacy and environmental degradation to be remediated by future generations; legacies of toxic waste, polluted ground waters, sealed soils, powsy land and degraded ecosystems. Into new and virgin territories modern industries and commerce move and the following populations then pressurize local natural resources and produce new wastes; just as metallurgic and mining wastes were the products of previous heavy industries and prosperity, now knowledge economy based wastes, such as computers, phones and tablets form an emerging disposal challenge. Learning the lessons from the past our new environs should be ‘future proofed’ to cope with the demands placed upon them; for example innovative schemes for water re-use, traffic free zones to maintain air quality and soil protection measures to preserve this vital resource should be incorporated to planning and policy. Planning and policy must also take account of people's desire for self-sufficiency and provenance; for example urban agriculture, motivated by a need for food security and engaged localism needs a safe resource on which to produce food. But we must avoid becoming risk averse but be creative and free thinking in solutions to new environmental issues. Therefore into the future, risk assessment within the ever changing mosaic of urban land uses will provide vital predictive power on the impacts of people on the landscape, allowing ‘future proofing’. Contemporary construction and then deconstruction of urban fabric and consumer products will also be key to resource re-use and waste minimization to avoid an urban environmental pollution burden in the future greater than that which we are already dealing with. In this special issue a collection of papers presents review and experimental evidence of monitoring and potential solutions to emerging environmental issues in cities.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 21 Author(s): Ravindra Rajarao , Veena Sahajwalla , Romina Cayumil , Miles Park , Rita Khanna Rapid urbanization, a general improvement in living standards and increased consumption has resulted in the generation of unprecedented amounts of waste in recent years. Among different wastes, electronic wastes (e-waste) volumes are growing three times faster than any other forms of urban waste. It is estimated that 20 to 50 million tonnes of e-waste are generated worldwide every year. E-waste contains over 1000 different substances; some are toxic and hazardous, which cause serious problems to environment and on human health. Generation of waste residues during recovery of precious metals from e-waste, the presence of hazardous lead, waste plastics, secondary pollution caused by landfilling non-metallic residues are some of the problems associated with recycling e-waste. We report a novel approach to recover valuable materials from waste printed circuit boards; controlled pyrolysis of e-waste was carried out at high temperatures (750-1550 °C) in an argon atmosphere. Segregation of lead and other metals was investigated as a function of temperature and reaction products were analyzed using Inductively Coupled Plasma spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy. Temperatures above 1350 °C were required to completely remove lead and other metals from e-waste; waste residue that was left behind was predominantly composed of carbon. Further research was carried out on the utilization of lead free non-metallic residue as a carbon source in ironmaking application. Non-metallic residual waste from recycling PCB was found to be a promising reductant in ironmaking applications. This research has laid the foundations of a ‘Zero Waste’ approach for managing and recycling electronic waste.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 21 Author(s): Guangxue Wu , Xiaofeng Zhai , Bo Li , Chengai Jiang , Yuntao Guan Nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emission occurs during denitrification, such as in biological wastewater treatments, but few studies have focused on N 2 O emission during denitrification under endogenous conditions. In the present study denitrifiers were acclimated with acetate or methanol as the electron donor, and endogenous denitrification kinetics including denitrification rates and N 2 O emission were examined in batch experiments for the acclimated denitrifiers. Oxidized nitrogen was denitrified slowly during endogenous respiration for denitrifiers acclimated with acetate or methanol, with the denitrification rate of lower than 2 mg/g VSS h. When the nitrate was used as electron acceptor, a low N 2 O emission ratio (lower than 1%) was obtained, while a high emission ratio (above 10%) was observed with nitrite as electron acceptor for both organic carbon acclimated denitrifiers. More attention should be paid to N 2 O emission during denitrification under endogenous conditions (such as in the settlement tanks) especially for systems with short-cut biological nitrogen removal through nitrite or systems with a high nitrite accumulation.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 21 Author(s): George Thomas , A.P. Sherin , Shareekul Ansar , E.J. Zachariah Urban Heat Island (UHI), a measure of the near surface air temperature contrast between urbanised and adjoining rural areas, is the most pronounced effect of urbanisation. The definition of ‘urban’ varies in different contexts, which makes it difficult for direct comparison between cities in different regions. Local climate zone (LCZ) classification based method was adopted in Kochi in Southern India to study its UHI. Twelve mobile surveys were carried out from January 2011 to March 2013 to quantify UHI intensity. Pre-dawn UHI there was more intense than early night UHI, and its intensity in winter was stronger than in summer. UHI observed during winter were 4.6 ° C and 3.7 ° C in pre- dawn and early night respectively. The study area was classified into ten different local climate zones based on the standard zone properties. Thermal gradient between different zones and cooling rates observed in these zones were computed, which validates the LCZ classification. Maximum intensity was seen in Compact Midrise zones which cover the central part of the city. Most intense cooling was observed in openset and sparsely built regions in all seasons. Standard zone properties alone were inadequate to explain variation of UHI intensity of same classes with different surface area and diverse adjacent zones. Two more zone properties, radial distance to adjacent zone called Zone Boundary Distance, and the Nearest Adjacent Zone, are proposed here to overcome this. The use of these additional parameters gives a better understanding of the intra zone variation of UHI intensity of the same classes with different coverage area and diverse adjacent zones.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 21 Author(s): George Thomas , A.P. Sherin , E.J. Zachariah Industrialisation and urbanization leads to an increase in concentration of greenhouse gases, which eventually alters the radiation balance of the climate system. Urban regions are hotspots of greenhouse gas emissions which include CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O, etc. Methane emitting sources hosted by cities include fossil fuel combustion, municipal waste and sewage management, blocked drains and pools etc. Waste discharges from the residences, food wastes, market places etc., contribute to the methane production. Urban heat island causing warm nights in the city is also a suitable condition for the generation of methane. Ground level mixing ratio of methane in the tropical coastal city of Cochin in South India, during calm early morning periods was measured in this study. A mobile traverse method was employed from January 2011 to March 2013. Measurements were taken during both winter and summer seasons. It was observed that the ground level methane concentrations were significantly higher than the global average value. Intra-city variation in ground level mixing ratio was also significant. The maximum value of ground level methane in winter and summer were 3.85 ppm and 3.21 ppm respectively. The study reveals that the city acts as a source of atmospheric methane.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Yuri Queiroz Abreu Torres , Lucia Maria Sá Antunes Costa Over the last decade, new spatial means have been keenly developed on geo-social, location-based networking systems and more recently through mobile applications, with significant personalized digital content, full of cognitive and perceptive clues. Culling this information and having it as the main source of analysis, this study explores the cartography of the city of Rio de Janeiro, portraying some of its outdoors recreational activities that are partially invisible in the daily life, advocating the potentiality of this methodological and theoretical framework to disrupt traditional spatial paradigms and contributes to urban research, design, education and representation.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Motoya Koga , Shinobu Izumi , Shigehito Matsubara , Yoshie Inada , Daria Gaidar In this study, we proposed a method of a welfare town planning, and experimentally developed a support system for disabled persons. Our proposed method of welfare town planning is to make a town-maintenance plan to reflect wheelchair users’ opinions by preparing opportunities for them to directly take part in the town planning and actively express their opinions. Furthermore, in the field of town planning we used a function of support system for disabled persons to calculate quantitatively reduction of physical load for the wheelchair users. This support system has another function: to navigate the wheelchair users from one place to another. The suggested route is found by calculating the most comfortable path for the wheelchair user.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Yang Ding , Bauke de Vries , Qi Han Regional sustainability concerns a complex system that mainly consists of three subsystems, being the economy, society, and the environment. A complex system involves intensive interactions and correlations among its components. Therefore, the way how these components are organized to work together efficiently is of great significance to the development of a complex system. For that reason, measuring regional sustainability should not only focus on changes in each subsystem individually, but also consider the interactions and relationships among the subsystems. In this paper, we apply a modified method to assess coordinated development, which highlights the simultaneous promotions of economic grow, social well-being, and environment al conservation. By introducing the model of coordinated development, we evaluate the sustainable development of Hubei province which is a typical region in Central China. The result shows that Hubei performed poorly in coordinated development. Although the coordinated development index was consistently increasing, the speed was very slow. In a detailed analysis of the economic, societal, and environmental subsystems in Hubei, the shortage of an economic driving force was found the main cause of the poor development of Hubei Province.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Richard Laing , Marianthi Leon , Lamine Mahdjoubi , Jonathan Scott In recent years, there have been rapid developments in techniques available to capture three dimensional data with regards to the existing built environment. Such technologies support the collection of both large scale landscape and streetscape data, as well as information pertaining to building details such as sculpture and decorative features. During the past five years, there has also been a similar development in the software technologies available to support building information modelling (BIM). Whilst the emphasis in terms of initial introduction of BIM has been predominantly within the construction phase of new developments, there is clear potential to incorporate 3D data pertaining to the existing environment, with apparent value in terms of both the conceptual design phase and during detailed consideration of spatial layout and environmental analysis. This paper describes the processes involved in incorporating on-site collected 3D data within BIM, including modelling and analysis processes.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Eleonora Pantano , Harry Timmermans While the last decade has seen increasing interest in the smart city phenomenon from both scholars and practitioners, little attention has been paid to what extent retailing might be considered as part of smart cities, with benefits for all the actors involved in the process. In fact, retailing is subject to a radical innovation force that makes available several technologies that can be successfully applied. The extensive use of advanced systems gives rise to new questions concerning the smart use of technologies. Moreover, the application of advanced technologies is part of a trend towards the creation of smart cities for a better urban society. In this scenario, the idea of smartness goes beyond the concept of application of new technologies by also including more important dimensions, such as organizational structure. Hence, our work aims at identifying what can be considered smart for retailing, in terms of features of smart technology for retailing, and the challenges emerging from the adoption of such smart technologies.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Azarakhsh Rafiee , Eduardo Dias , Steven Fruijtier , Henk Scholten Data collection is moving towards more details and larger scales and efficient ways of interpreting the data and analysing it is of great importance. A Building Information Model (BIM) includes very detailed and accurate information of a construction. However, this information model is not necessarily geo located but uses a local coordinate system hampering environmental analysis. Transforming the BIM to its corresponding geo-located model helps answering many environmental questions efficiently. In this research, we have applied methods to automatically transform the geometric and semantic information of a BIM model to a geo-referenced model. Two analyses, namely view and shadow analysis, have been performed using the geometric and semantic information within the geo-referenced BIM model and other existing geospatial elements. These analyses demonstrate the value of integrating BIM and spatial data for e.g. spatial planning.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Kuo-Chung Wen , Shu-Shan Chang The Taipei subway transfer station is a busy space, has a variety of public transportation and also has multiple activities. If this creates an effective understanding of a traveller's dynamic, it can significantly reduce the area of potential danger. In order to ensure the security of personal data, our research uses the lowest-resolution image to record. We survey more than one thousand digital video records, including peak, off-peak and minor peak hours, to find the approximate spatial and temporal distribution of the crowd. Our study proposes a process for crowd investigation and through data analysis assesses the effectiveness of its methods and processes for flow investigation. Our study explores the potential risk of spatial and temporal distribution as the next stage of research for subway transfer station performance assessment.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Tao Feng , Harry J.P. Timmermans This paper presents an integrated approach to extracting activity-travel diaries from GPS data. The imputation involves a semi-automatic procedure of transportation mode and activity type recognition, and applies full and partial consistency principles to different trip episodes of a tour. Complementing earlier work on the evaluation of this approach at the epoch level, this paper investigates the performance of the integrated imputation at the episode level. The originally imputed data were used as reference to compare the superimposed data against validated data. Results indicate that the distribution of transportation modes and activity types are similar for these data sets. The new algorithm imputes diary data that are closer to the validated data that the results of the original algorithm.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Michele Campagna , Konstantin Ivanov , Pierangelo Massa Metaplanning can be considered as a necessary step for improving collaboration, transparency and accountability in sustainable and democratic spatial decision-making processes. This paper reports current findings on the operational implementation of the metaplanning concept developed by the authors relying on Business Process Management methods and techniques. Three solutions are presented which implement spatial planning process workflows thanks to the development of original spatial data and processing services connectors to a Business Process Management suite. These results can be considered as a first step towards the development of 2 nd generation Planning Support Systems.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Kwang Woo Nam , Eui Soo Cho , Il Hwa Kwon , Jung-Hun Yang This paper proposes a framework for identifying and predicting community deprivation, which includes the system of management and analysis. The management system focuses on the query modules for data analysis, such as geographic area, administrative region, and unit of measurement. The query module for geographic area addresses income, employment, health and disability, living conditions, and housing. The query module for administrative region focuses on levels of organization, such as district, dong, and tong in Korea. The query module for unit of measurement covers the values, rankings, and deciles used to present the data. The analytic system plays a key role in identifying and predicting deprivation. The identification process consists of two calculations: the area index and the index of multi-deprivation. The area index involves the allocation of weights, the calculation of ranks, and the transformation of the index distribution through factor analysis. The second step involves obtaining the area index, rankings, and geographic distribution of indices using the weights employed by the 2004 index of multi-deprivation in the UK. The community index of multi-deprivation is finally calculated after weighting the values for each area. The results of this study should help decision makers and planner actively respond to changes by identifying turning points in the growth and decline of communities.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Luc Wismans , Erik de Romph , Klaas Friso , Kobus Zantema Reliable and accurate short-term traffic state prediction can improve the performance of real-time traffic management systems significantly. Using this short-time prediction based on current measurements delivered by advanced surveillance systems will support decision-making processes on various control strategies and enhance the performance of the overall network. By taking proactive action deploying traffic management measures, congestion may be prevented or its effects limited. An approach of short-term traffic state prediction is presented and implemented in a real life case for the city of Assen in the Netherlands. This prediction is based on connecting online traffic measurements with a real time traffic model using the macroscopic dynamic traffic assignment model StreamLine in a rolling horizon implementation. Different monitoring data sources consisting of both fixed-point and floating car data are used. The advantage of the rolling horizon approach is that no warming-up period is needed for the dynamic traffic assignment taking less computation time while keeping results consistent. Further, the current traffic state estimation is done by combining model estimates of previous predictions and current measurements. The results of predictions made in the real life case are presented as well as several tested methods for improving the current state estimations showing promising results.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Marc Dankers , Floris van Geel , Nicole M. Segers During the lifecycle of a building, much more information is used and produced than can be contained inside a Building Information Model (BIM). The information outside the BIM is seldom connected to the BIM or connected across domains. Furthermore, information in BIM is only accessible to people with sufficient CAD or architectural background, and often expensive software is needed to edit and add data. This inefficient information management causes significant costs in practice. Our research contributes to the development of IFC based web applications in practice and demonstrates a way of linking machine to human readable data thus making the data accessible to non CAD users or architectural experts. In this paper we describe such a platform for the integration of model-based data and non-model based data. We tried to construct a mapping process from IFC properties to a national building element classification system, as a way of structuring the objects and information for use in our web platform. Since both the structure of IFC and most building element classification systems are based on semantic relations of building elements (i.e. holonym, meronym, hypernym), translations by means of a basic reasoning system should be feasible. We elaborate on several uses of this platform in applications for maintenance and reuse of building materials, buildings and built structures.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Yoora Kim , Jungeun Lee , Hyunsoo Lee Smart residential spaces designed for residents departs from simply providing conventional standardized services, to go beyond and provide personalized experiences that take individual circumstances into account. Such services play a key role in enhancing the residents’ quality of life. This study looks into such personalized services that reflect different characteristics of a diverse range of residents who have different behavior patterns. Such services can increase the satisfaction of the residents by providing flexible services that take into account the lifestyle and circumstances of each resident. A problem with offering customized services, however, is that there is a dearth of data on individuals. Sufficient amount of data must be collected in order to determine what a proper service for an individual is. As such, this study explains the life-log data and discusses its collection method. The life-log data collected serves as crucial grounds for decision-making. How decisions are made using the life log data is an intriguing research topic. This study proposes and discusses logics and processes of various decision-making methods that can be executed using the life log-data. In their homes, residents tend to regularly display certain behaviors in patterns, which allows for identifying the residents’ behavior patterns, as well as the predicting the residents’ future behavior. In this aspect, the residents’ location, needs, and current behavior must be recognized in order to provide personalized services. As such, this study proposes decision-making method by verifying in-house behavior of Korean elderly with companion dogs in symbiosis homes. Such dog's hair and foul smells cause indoor pollutions that damage elderly heath. This study proposes an automatic personalized window opening and closing service by using life-log data of the resident.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Toshihiro Osaragi A large number of subdivisions of building lots has been observed in established city areas. Subdivisions of standard lots into smaller parcels could cause serious problems in citywide disasters, such as a devastating earthquake, as well as environmental deterioration. Investigation of the mechanism of such subdivisions is thus imperative for discussing sustainable cities. In the present study, we construct stochastic models that describe the process of dividing building lots and forming smaller parcels. Unknown parameters of the models are estimated using GIS data compiled by a local government in Tokyo, and factors related to the subdivisions are examined. Numerical examples demonstrate that the possibility and probability of lot subdivisions mainly depend on the location and properties of lots.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Gamze Dane , Anna Grigolon , Soora Rasouli , Harry Timmermans As a result of the economic crisis in 2008, the price of petrol, goods and agricultural products has rapidly increased and cities all over the world started to suffer from high levels of unemployment and lower business survival rates. Due to the economic downturn, the Dutch housing market also started to weaken in 2008. Moreover, it became more difficult to obtain mortgages and loans from the banks. As a result of these processes, housing prices dropped substantially, the percentage depending on housing type, location and market. To better understand underlying processes, it is of interest to examine the effects of the economic crisis on housing choices, particularly because housing choices impact other long-term choices such as employment and short-term decisions such as where activities will take place in the city. In this paper, we discuss the results of a model of households’ intentions to move house, comparing the situation before and during the economic crisis. We investigate whether housing expenditures influenced the probability of the intention to move. For that purpose, we use the Dutch Housing Survey (WoningOnderzoek) from 2006, 2009 and 2012. This data contains information about households’ willingness to move within the next two years. We applied mixed binary logit analysis on the intention to move or not. The findings show that socio-demographics, house characteristics and the year of the questionnaire influence the intention to move. Moreover, income, housing expenditure and house ownership, which indicate economic constraints, affect the intention to move during the crisis.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Yanan Gao , Soora Rasouli , Harry Timmermans , Yuanqing Wang To better understand the reasons why households have no intention to buy a car, a sample of 980 respondents, living in Xian, China was asked to specify the reasons why they do not wish buy a car. A probit model was estimated to identify households who did not have the intention to buy a car, based on their socio-demographic profile and living conditions. Because only these respondents could give the reasons why they do not wish to buy a car, this selection model was linked with a multinomial logit model to estimate the probability that a particular reason for not buying a car mentioned. Results indicate that socio-demographic variables, type and size of the house and non-availability of parking space have significant effects on car purchase decisions. Main reasons for not buying a car are related to costs considerations, parking difficulties and congestion.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Ahmet Emre Dinçer , Gülen Çağdaş , Hakan Tong Mass housing designs have become increasingly important due to the reasons of protecting urban aesthetic, providing originality and meeting the growing user demands. Accordingly, the need of having alternatives of new design approaches for these buildings has emerged. This paper focuses on the contributions of digital tools as a decision-support tool in the production of these approaches. For this purpose, an interactive plug-in which is applied in different stages of mass housing design has been developed as a computational tool by scripts of 3Ds Max software. In this paper, development processes and an implementation of this plug-in are presented.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Léon van Berlo , Thomas Krijnen This paper describes the research and development of a server based BCF workflow and open source BCF server software. BCF is short for “BIM Collaboration Format” and is an open standard to communicate about the ‘issues’ of a BIM model during its design cycle. Essentially, a BCF issue holds a description of the issue, a status, links to a BIM model and objects, a picture of the issue and a camera orientation. The BCF standard is based on file exchange. BCF issues are packed into a ZIP file (.bcfzip) and sent to project partners. This paper, however, describes the use of the same BCF in a centralized online setting. An open source BCF server was developed, and integrated with an online 3D viewer and BIMserver. Through the BCF server it has been shown that project partners have been able to create issues, manage them online and evaluate them in context of the actual BIM model. Research questions investigated within this project included whether the BCF format is capable of describing the status of building objects in addition to merely describing their issues and to what extent the XML based BCF schema proved to be suitable for a more centralized online storage paradigm. A case study was conducted in order to investigate a suitable workflow for a collaborative design project that involved the online sharing of BIM data, issues, and status. This paper describes the project, the creation of the BCF server, the case study and reports on the results.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Takuya Oki , Toshihiro Osaragi In densely built-up wooden residential areas, buildings and streets must be improved so as to safeguard against high risks, which may occur during a major earthquake. In this paper, we evaluate an improvement project in terms of the difficulty of wide-area evacuation by using a multi-agent simulation model. Results show that despite an overall decrease in the average number of people who have difficulty in evacuating, some buildings along narrow and long streets still have high risk that residents cannot evacuate to any evacuation areas.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Zhong Zheng , Soora Rasouli , Harry Timmermans Taxi data are an underused source of travel information. A handful of research has been concerned with the processing of raw taxi GPS data to minimize random error. The study of methods that systematically detect erroneous data has, however, received less attention. Generally, an origin and a destination are identified when the taxi occupancy status (occupied/vacant) shifts. Information would be wrongly recorded if taxi drivers incorrectly operate their device or missed signals when the status of their taxi changes. It leads to extremely short trips or long trips. This study proposes a set of criteria to evaluate the accuracy of trips, imputed from taxi GPS data. In particular, attributes such as inaccurate signal, mismatch of movement and speed, abnormal average speed, and mismatch of trips length measured on maps and calculated from records are suggested. Taxi data should pass these tests if trips have been identified accurately. Using these suggested criteria, the accuracy of 150 million GPS records, collected in Guangzhou, China is evaluated.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Soora Rasouli , Harry Timmermans Rasouli & Timmermans 1 suggested a model of travel episode satisfaction that includes the degree and nature of multitasking, activity envelope, transport mode, travel party, duration and a set of contextual and socio-economic variables. In this sequel, the focus of attention shifts to the analysis of unobserved heterogeneity in the satisfaction ratings. To that end, some variables included in the original model are randomized, assuming normal distributed random effects The model is estimated using data of a sample of respondents, who judged their satisfaction of every travel episode they experienced during a multi-week data collection effort. GPS devices were used to record their travel and impute activity and travel episodes. A Web-based prompted recall instrument was used to verify and if needed rectify the imputed activity-travel agendas, provide information about the degree and nature of multitasking behavior whilst travelling, and judge the degree of satisfaction associated with the travel episodes. Results of the random parameters regression model evidence a substantial amount of unobserved heterogeneity in the travel episode satisfaction ratings.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Marianthi Leon , Richard Laing , Julian Malins , Huda Salman Effective collaboration and maximum effort from stakeholders during the feasibility and concept design stages in architecture provide the greatest potential for added value for the overall success of a building project, from the initial design through to construction and operation. What is more, design processes within different disciplines have been extensively mapped and they provide a valuable insight for managing the information between different conceptual stages. Based on that information, a pre-defined conceptual design protocol is established, tested and compared to the current paradigm of conceptual design. The aim of such a protocol is to enhance the conceptual design activities by guiding the multidisciplinary design team through the conceptual stage, highlight the importance of that stage and, eventually, provide the maximum information that will feed into later and more advanced design stages, aided by tangible user interfaces (TUIs) mediated collaboration. The initial results of the research are showcased and further research potentials are pointed out.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Kazuki Karashima , Akira Ohgai , Yui Saito In Japan, where the aging society is progressing due to depopulation and a high risk of natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, many actual urban master plans (MPs) do not consider the relation between countermeasures for future depopulation and disaster mitigation. Local governments do not regard long-term depopulation as a viable opportunity to establish land use policy that promotes reasonable land use by aggregating urban land use to areas with low risk. This paper proposes the development of a tool for the exploration of land use policy that realizes an intensive urban structure by considering future depopulation and urban vulnerability to natural disasters. The tool serves as a GIS-based database of information about disaster risk for floods and earthquakes, future populations, previous and existing urban land use conditions, urban structures. The following results are obtained from a case study. First, experts such as local government can distinguish areas with high risk by two types of areas: 1) areas characterized by a slow progression of depopulation and aging and 2) areas in which it is difficult to sustain the local community and provide public services due to the progression of depopulation and aging. The results of this study can confirm various data on urban structures, such as transportation infrastructure, and core urban areas that provide life services and land use history. Reasonable land use countermeasures for reducing disaster risk can be explored by considering previous and existing conditions of urban land use.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Dujuan Yang , Harry Timmermans It is crucial for urban planners to understand the effects of physical planning on individuals’ behavior. A well-designed built environment allows individuals to engage in activities at shorter travel distances, using environmentally friendly transport modes. This paper examines how individuals’ CO 2 footprints co-vary with urban form indicators. GPS technology was used to collect activity-travel data. The data for the analyses were collected between May 2012 and July 2013 covering more than 200 respondents from the Eindhoven and Rotterdam regions, the Netherlands. The data includes personal and household characteristics, detailed travel information, GPS traces and detailed car information, including brand, type and year of production. A Bayesian network was used to extract activity-travel diaries from the collected GPS traces, while a Web-based prompted recall survey instrument was used to validate the imputed data. To identify their living environment, respondents’ home coordinates were matched with map data from the municipality. A two-stage sample selection model was used to estimate the effects of physical planning on individual transport mode choice and daily CO 2 emissions.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Petr Aksenov , Astrid Kemperman , Theo Arentze This paper introduces the concept of “smart routing” as a recommender system for tourists that takes into account the dynamics of their personal user profiles. The concept relies on three levels of support: 1) programming the tour, i.e. selecting a set of relevant points of interests (POIs) to be included into the tour, 2) scheduling the tour, i.e. arranging the selected POIs into a sequence based on the cultural, recreational and situational value of each, and 3) determining the tour's travel route, i.e. generating a set of trips between the POIs that the tourist needs to perform in order to complete the tour. The “smart routing” approach intends to enhance the experience of tourists in a number of ways. The first advantage is the system's ability to reflect on the tourists’ dynamic preferences, for which an understanding of the influence of a tourist's affective state and dynamic needs on the preferred activities is required. Next, it arranges the POIs together in a way that creates a storyline that the tourist will be interested to follow, which adds to the tour's cultural value. Finally, the POIs are connected by a chain of multimodal trips that the tourist will have to make, also in accordance with the tourist's preferences and dynamic needs. As a result, each tour can be personalised in a “smart” way, from the perspective of both the cultural and the overall experience of taking it. We present the building blocks of the “smart routing” concept in detail and describe the data categories involved. We also report on the current status of our activities with respect to the inclusion of a tourist's affective state and dynamic needs into the preference measurement phase, as well as discuss relevant practical concerns in this regard.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Ahmed Mustafa , Ismaïl Saadi , Mario Cools , Jacques Teller Urban environments are complex dynamic systems whose prediction of the future states cannot exclusively rely on deterministic rules. Although several studies on urban growth were carried out using different modelling approaches, the measurement of uncertainties was commonly neglected in these studies. This paper investigates the effect of uncertainty in urban growth models by introducing a stochastic perturbation method. A cellular automaton is used to simulate predicted urban growth. The effect of stochastic perturbation is addressed by comparing series of urban growth simulations based on different degree of stochastic perturbation randomness with the original urban growth simulation, obtained with the sole cellular automata neighbouring effects. These simulations are evaluated using cell-to-cell location agreement and a number of spatial metrics. The model framework has been applied to the Ourthe river basin in Belgium. The results show that the accuracy of the model is increased by introducing a stochastic perturbation component with a limited degree of randomness, in the cellular automata urban growth model.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Kennedy Aduda , Tom Thomassen , Wim Zeiler , Timi Labeodan , Gert Boxem , Joep van der Velden , Jan-Willem Dubbeldam Electrical energy generation and its supply through electricity networks are mainly organized in a top-down, centralized manner. Energy consumption can be predicted quite accurately at a high level which enables to pre-scheduling of production by large power plants. Traditionally, only few actors are involved in the generation, trade, and transportation of electricity, but this is changing rapidly. The increasing share of decentralized renewable energy conversion in combination with new types of buyers and suppliers will drastically alter the operation of electricity infrastructure systems. It has to become smart: the Smart Grid or more general Smart Energy System. In order to minimize uncertainty in the balance between energy supply and demand it is necessary to develop realistic user demand, building and building services installations behavior and Smart Grid interaction. Monitoring the needs of individual users is necessary to predict future states of the demand for the SES (e.g. based on user behavior). The future consumer of energy can become a producer due to the decentralized renewable energy conversion. To control this dynamic and interactive prosumer process support is needed to optimize interaction between offices and Smart Grid. The article describes the first steps towards such system.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Wim Zeiler , Timi Labeodan , Gert Boxem , Rik Maaijen , Joep van der Velden , Jan-Willem Dubbeldam Building process control without including the occupant behaviour is a sub optimal solution. New developments are ongoing to develop energy efficient control strategies to include human behavior and especially occupancy in the process control of buildings. This paper presents a short overview of available technologies for integrating occupancy in building operations. Initial results from the implementation of one of these technologies in an office building are presented as well as the framework for the use of a more intelligent multi-agent based building energy and comfort management system to achieve worthwhile energy reduction.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Anna Grigolon , Gamze Dane , Soora Rasouli , Harry Timmermans Lifecycle events strongly influence the long term dynamics of activity-travel behavior. Moving house, as an example of a lifecycle event, triggers households to reconsider their activity-travel choices and possibly to adapt to the new house-job relationship. In turn, the decision to move house is a function of housing satisfaction, which depends on factors such as socio-demographic and economic characteristics of individuals, physical aspects of the dwellings, accessibility to different places in the city, etc. The main goal of this paper, which has been written as part of a project about residential mobility in Rotterdam, a metropolitan area in the Netherlands, is to understand some determinants of housing satisfaction. The model results represent the odds that a respondent with a particular profile is satisfied with his/her current housing situation. Differences in these odds are found to be associated with individuals’ profiles and housing characteristics. In general, these differences can be explained by household needs, constraints or preferences, which are strongly related to lifecycle phase. Satisfaction is found to decrease with increasing levels of urbanization, indicating that housing satisfaction is influenced by negative externalities such as pollution, congestion, noise, etc. Higher contact frequency with relatives, friends and club activities, has a positive effect on housing satisfaction. Finally, distance to work was found not significantly related to housing satisfaction.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Saleh Mohammadi , Bauke de Vries , Wim Schaefer A model for allocating PV panels and wind turbines in urban areas is developed. Firstly, it examines the spatial and technical requirements for the installation of PV panels and wind turbines and then evaluates their economic feasibilities in order to generate the cost effective electricity neutral plan. The model is applied on a residential district in the municipality of Eindhoven, the Netherlands and simulates the electricity generation of allocated renewable energy technologies to satisfy the demand of the area in hourly time-steps over a one year. The allocation model runs for different combinations of PV panels and wind turbines. Accordingly, four scenarios based on the different technical and economic assumptions are conducted and energy and economic indicators are compared. Results show that in the current situation without subsidies, PV panels are not economic, compared with wind turbines, but if appropriate subsidies are devised, they become comparable. The analyses also show that the allocation model help planners and policy makers to examine the influence of different energy policy tools for the promotion of renewable energy technologies in urban areas.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Hiroyuki Kaneko , Toshihiro Osaragi A pedestrian tracking system based on highly accurate laser scanners is an effective method for understanding the usage of the facility-spaces. However, it is difficult to apply them to the practical workplace, since horizontal laser scanners cannot detect workers while they are sitting. In this paper, a method for estimating the sitting-and-moving behavior and face-to-face communication of workers was proposed by utilizing the concept involving behavioral tags to trajectory data. By applying the proposed method to the real observation data taken from office-workers behavioral survey, we demonstrated the proposed model's usefulness.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Hyeonjeong Yang , Hyunsoo Lee Efficient energy consumption in homes is one of key elements of sustainable healthy residential living. This thesis deals with decision-making method and procedure for home energy use scheduling designed to boost energy efficiency. Home energy use scheduling is a complex task that combines various data for decision-making. To carry out the task, this study used the idea of utilizing ‘life log data,’ which is recording and storing daily routines. Life log data is recorded and stored in a metrics developed through a literature study and it contains 5W1H data (Who, When, Where, What, Why, How). Through the 5W1H data, lifestyle of residents can be analysed to determine the right services for them. The processes are as follows; House environments, Service determined, Similarity analysis, Data filtering, Smart service. As the life log data is developed by human's experience, this system makes it possible for one to one personalized service. And it can be possible personal energy savings at home. One of the key merits in relation to the utilization of the life-log data is that it can provide a customized one-on-one service reflecting the behavioural patterns and the lifestyles of a resident.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Tae-Heon Moon , Sun-Young Heo , Sang-Ho Lee Since crime has damaged citizens’ lives and properties, establishing a safe urban environment has been a crucial social issue. New approaches using big data and ICT prove to reduce crime rates. This study therefore reports the results of big data analyses, which includes not only real crime data, but also urban attributes such as land use, and pedestrian flows, etc. A ‘Ubiquitous Crime (U-Crime) prevention system (UCPS)’ operating on the web is proposed. The results can be used as a guideline for system development and a decision support system for establishing security policies.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 22 Author(s): Aloys Borgers , Harry Timmermans A number of indices to describe and compare sets of pedestrian routes in shopping environments will be introduced. The first set of indices is related to characteristics of the trajectories and the second set to visiting outlets. These statistics can be used to assess the performance of models predicting individual routes in shopping areas. Another application may be to compare pedestrian behaviour in different shopping environments. The latter will be done in this study. Routes observed in the downtown shopping area of Eindhoven will be compared with observed routes in the Maastricht downtown shopping area.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Dede Heri Yuli Yanto , Sanro Tachibana , Kazutaka Itoh A capacity of immobilized enzymes from Trametes versicolor U97 or Pestalotiopsis sp. NG007 to decolorize three textile dyes was investigated in a vertical bioreactor system. Immobilization was conducted using a double layer of alginate bead (1.5% w/w) and crude enzymes. The effect of mediators: Tween 80, 1-hydroxybenzotriazol (HBT), or 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-1-yl)oxyl (TEMPO) was investigated on decolorization rate. The results showed that application of immobilized enzymes in a vertical bioreactor enhanced the decolorization efficiency of dyes in the order LB16>RRV9>RRN4, respectively. The decolorization rate was accelerated when a mediator TEMPO was used in immobilized enzyme of U97 or a Tween 80 was used in NG007. Reaction with glutaraldehyde (0.6%) for 4 h maintained the longevity and reusability of the beads. The study suggests that double layer immobilized enzyme in a bioreactor system has a terrific potential strategy for treating the textile dye effluents.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Satria Fadil Persada , Mohammad Razif , Shu Chiang Lin , Reny Nadlifatin This paper investigates the possibility of transforming information distribution from printed to SMS based media on the implementation of EIA Public Announcement in Indonesia. Based on Indonesian Ministry of Environment Regulation, the implementation of Public Announcement requires project initiator to announce the information via Newspaper and Physical Notice Board. Expert interviews and questionnaires were conducted to extract the information from practitioner and citizens and a total of 106 respondents were collected. Analyzed results reveal that SMS based as information media is preferred, which supports the idea to implement SMS Gateway as a sustainable media to minimize the paper consumptions.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Gustan Pari , Saptadi Darmawan , Bambang Prihandoko The carbon materials exhibit various uses as part of the superior product. This research aimed to obtain activated carbon in sphere shape from cassava and tapioca flour through the hydrothermal carbonization and KOH activation. The condition of hydrothermal carbonization as employed was the maximum temperature at 250 °C kept for 8 hours. Based on results of proximate analysis, XRD, and SEM observation on the resulting hydrochar, its best properties were obtained using tapioca flour material. The hydrochar (Hc) as such was further activated into the activated carbon using KOH solution, with the ratio of Hc to KOH at 3:1, for one hour at 800 °C. The resulting activated carbon from the precursor of tapioca Hc appeared predominantly in sphere shape; and exhibited the BET area at 986 m 2 /g, total pore volume 0.57 cc/g, micropore volume 0.46 cc/g, pore diameter 1.6 nm, and electrical resistance lower than 0.01 ohm.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): M. Lutfi Firdaus , Wiwit Alwi , Ferli Trinoveldi , Iman Rahayu , Lena Rahmidar , Kancono Warsito Recent advance in digital imaging has made a high-resolution photo produced from digital camera more affordable. The use of digital images comprises current opportunity to develop fast and low-cost colorimetric detections for quantitative chemical analysis. The method employs prime color space RGB (red–green–blue) with individual values varying from 0 to 255. RGB data was extracted from a square-homogenous cropped digital images using Matlab software (Mathworks Inc., USA) to construct calibration curve in quantitative determination. We compare two different methods to determine the concentration of chromium (Cr) and iron (Fe). The first method is based on simple linear regression (SLR) of individual color R, G or B. The second method is based on partial least square (PLS) of all three colors R, G and B. Accuracy of the method was validated using UV-visible spectrophotometry as a reference method. We found that accuracy of the method was better than 2.5% with precision less than 1.4% for both chromium and iron.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Edgar Marko Trono , Maria Leonora Guico , Rollyn Labuguen , Andrei Navarro , Nathaniel Joseph Libatique , Gregory Tangonan This study is about the design and development of an integrated web-based system for tropical rainfall monitoring. The system gathers data using a network of low-cost, Android-based acoustic rainfall sensors, a nationwide infrastructure of 5 GHz wireless broadband links, and remote weather stations. The low-cost Android-based acoustic rainfall sensors are deployed at high densities over a local area and the 5 GHz wireless broadband sensors gather rainfall information on a nationwide scale. The sensor network provides information about spatial-variations that are characteristics of tropical rain rates, and complement data from the scarcely deployed remote weather stations. Gathered data is then processed and displayed on a web interface.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Hooman Farzaneh , Aki Suwa , Christopher N.H. Dolla , Jose Antonio Puppim de Oliveira The world rapidly urbanizing, and a majority of the global population will experience climate change in cities. Climate change will exacerbate the existing urban environmental management challenges in cities, in most cases making existing problems much worse. At the same time, cities are responsible for significant global greenhouse gas emissions, and given current demographic trends, this level will likely only increase over time. These challenges highlight the need for cities to rethink how assets are deployed and infrastructure investments are prioritized as well as how climate will affect long-term growth and development plans. Since responding to the complex challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation requires a knowledge-based approach, the present research is based on providing a tool for assessing the climate co-benefits of improving performance of the energy system at the city scale. This research aims to assess the expected co-benefits arising from different sub-sectors of the city-wide energy system. It will also address in some detail the role of executive policy targets support to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and air pollution in cities. The tool is initially tested using real data for the city of Yokohama, Japan and estimates that the city's envisioned Smart City Project could achieve GHG reduction of about 1.68Mt/yr.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Yulianus Rombe Pasalli , Adelhard Beni Rehiara Micro-hydro power plant is a type of renewable power plant that is environment friendly, easy to be operated and low operation cost. Hink River is a river in Manokwari, Indonesia. The result of initial survey shows that the river has hydraulic potency about 29.5 kW. According to the result, a micro-hydro power plant has been planned to this location. The power plant will use 25.2 kW of the hydraulic potency based on flow rate 0.3 m 3 /s and head height 8.6 m. Turbine for the power plant is cross flow turbine type T-14 D-300 and the turbine will be coupled with a 3 phases synchronous generator to produce electrical energy about 17.32 kW. The energy will be transferred via 3 phase distribution lines to some villages around the power plant in radius of 4 km. According to economic analysis, payback period of this power plant is about 17.32 years at benefit factor 1.94; therefore the power plant has feasibility to be built.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Supachet Chansarn This study utilizes Data Envelopment Analysis to assess the sustainable human development of 115 high and middle income countries which are divided into three groups based on their income, including 44 high income countries, 40 upper middle income countries and 31 lower middle income countries in 2008. Human development is measured by four indictors including gross national income per capita, life expectancy, mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling. In addition, the resources are measured by three indicators including carbon dioxide emission per capita, electric power consumption per capita and energy use per capita. The findings reveal that Croatia, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland can utilize the minimum resources to achieve their current human development level, give them the highest opportunity to achieve the sustainable human development among high income countries. Among upper middle income countries, Angola, Colombia, Gabon, Panama and Peru have the highest opportunity to achieve the sustainable human development due to their 100 percent efficiency in utilizing their resources. Finally, Albania, Cameroon, Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Zambia are more likely to achieve the sustainable human development than any other lower middle income countries.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Wahyu Sujatmiko , Hermawan K. Dipojono , F.X. Nugroho Soelami , Soegijanto This paper presented assessment of performance-based fire safety evacuation in RUSUNAMI (Prosperous Ownership Flats) with case studies BB RUSUNAMI Bandung (21 floors), which rely on natural ventilation. This concept is incompatible with the smoke-tight as stated in the life safety standard. The method used was a field study of evacuation experiment with 33 occupants and compare them with the results of the computer simulation model that compare the ASET(the available safe egress time) and RSET(the required safe egress time). The finding showed that to fulfill of life safety, the building needs additional appropriate fire protection systems.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): N. Agya Utama , Andhy M. Fathoni , Mandau A. Kristianto , Benjamin C. McLellan In the last ten years,the world has faced an uncertain oil prices, unlike during 1970 when the oil crisis occurred due to the Middle East political crisis. The problem now facing has more in the increases of oil demand when the developed countries are not the major consumers for oil and other major fossil fuel anymore. China, India, Brazil and South East Asia nations lead the increases of the energy demand inline with their economic growth and population domination. The energy demand in ASEAN is dominated by the countries in Malaya peninsula (cognate) such as Indonesia and Malaysia (225 million and 25 million population respectively), Singapore and Brunei lead the domination in the economics, which are also one of the variables of the increases of energy demand. The paper will estimate the future energy demand (includes fossil fuel) ASEAN by using bottom up approach and various variables such as economic development and population trend from references developed countries, the country's landscape and technological efficiency. It shows that the energy demand increase for the region is inevitable, the increases are followed by some consequences such as local fossil fuel scarcity, technological boundaries and infrastructure adjustment. The efficiency is most likely to be one of the keys for the region to be survived in the next 5 to 6 decades.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Agung Murti Nugroho This paper aims to investigate the thermal effects to provide reference for plant selection in vertical landscape. Temperature reduction experiments are carried out on two types of plants in Malang, in Indonesia. The passive cooling of various plants was investigated in Indonesian tropical houses. Thermal effect experiments were performed on two types of vegetables plants. Plants that grew well came from the families Amaranthus hybridus and Brassica juncea . During temperature reduction, effectiveness was measured in regard to plant type and vertical landscape gap. Amaranthus hybridus have better temperature reduction than Brassica juncea plants. The plants suggested in this study are suitable for regions with hot humid tropical climates. The results from this study show that plants suitable for vertical landscape which have the ability to reduce indoor temperature can effectively (maximum until 6.9 °C) objectify green building concepts such as ecological friendly and energy saving.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Suharman Hamzah , Sakti A. Adisasmita , Tri Harianto , M. Saleh Pallu The gap between rural/fringe area and urban, performance services of sea transportation (including inland waterways and ferry transport), and financial limitations are facing the port development project in Indonesia. The management (in this case: purely the goverment) should conceive the sustainable management of port facilities. Partnership management could advancing the aspects of port circumstances by involving of private sector with public private partnership (PPP) scheme. This paper focuses on suggestion of PPP project practices for port development such as: identifying policy related to port sector of PPP arrangement, PPP framework on port sector, parties involved in PPP implementation project, and also the financing process of PPP project implementation in Indonesia. Other related issues on PPP project port sector are advantage and disadvantage of PPP arrangement project in Indonesia, risks associated to the project sponsor during implementation of PPP project especially in port sector, concessionaire selection methods to get best concessionaire, and critical success factor of PPP project.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Yulianto P. Prihatmaji , Akihisa Kitamori , Kohei Komatsu Many Javanese traditional timber structures have been destroyed by major earthquake. A lot of them tend to be dismantled due to a high cost of reconstruction and a demand for more reliable structures. In order to preserve this disappearing building as valuable and tangible culture, a deeper understanding on these traditional timber structures is necessary. Especially the restoring force of the traditional joints, which are the major earthquake-resisting elements has to be investigated. The static characteristic of these structural components has been investigated experimentally. A total of 12 full-scale specimens of 2 types made from glued Acacia-mangium were tested. The specimen simulated joint at middle part, which is a joint of column-tie beams interlocked each other. The horizontal cyclic load was applied on the specimen placed in pin joint frame from two mutually perpendicular directions. The cyclic loading protocol consists of 7 increasing target deformations from 1/200 radian to 1/15 radian, and finally until failure. As the test result, failures were caused by embedment, crack, and split in beams parallel to the load direction. All crack of beam started from corner of beam mortise and resulted in the split. From the curve of load and rotational relationship, occurrence of initial slip leaded to the larger deformation. It revealed the importance of joint tightness against future earthquake.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Mandau A. Kristianto , N. Agya Utama , Andhy Muhammad Fathoni Raised floor can be found in many traditional buildings throughout Indonesia, however this element currently disappears from Indonesia modern architecture. One of possible reason is limited study conducted on raised floor house, therefore the benefits of raised floor element; especially its application in tropical climatic is never exposed. Minahasa Traditional House is a traditional raised floor house that still exists today. This paper will investigate thermal comfort conditions particularly wind velocity inside of Minahasa Traditional House using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis. Simulation on several variations of openings and stilts height is conducted to measure its effectiveness in creating thermal comfort. The result of the study will become a reference for modern architect to design modern house that incorporate design features from vernacular architecture.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Syahriah Bachok , Mariana Mohamed Osman , Mirahida Murad , Mansor Ibrahim Ideally, cities of developing countries and their public transportation services need to be sensitive to the quality of services rendered. In this context, this study assessed the commuters’ perceptions towards Women-Only Coach services by the KTM Komuter. KTM Komuter, is a suburban heavy rail service provided by the company Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB) in Klang Valley, Malaysia. This research centers around the experiences of users of Women-Only Coach, a segmented sub-service especially provided for the safety and comfort of female riders. An on-board survey was conducted among the commuters of Women Only Coach who regularly used the women coach only for travelling. A systematic cluster sample of 550 respondents was taken for data collection, 513 of which were analyzed following a data cleaning process. Descriptive and inferential analyses have been applied to the date. Based on the analyses, it was found that majority of the female commuters were aware about the provision of Women- Only Coach. Moreover, a significant number of respondents claimed that there was an absence of security personnel at Women- Only Coach to monitor the safety of the coach and the majority of these respondents also felt insecure in the presence of male passengers on-board Women-Only Coach. Findings also suggested that a significant number of respondents were not satisfied with the current capacity of Women-Only Coach. The research undertaken had also confirmed the persistence of three major problems related to Women-Only Coach which were (i) the lack of enforcement in Women-Only Coach, (ii) the insufficient capacity to accommodate increasing demand and (iii) the poor visual quality of the signs indicating and distinguishing Women-Only Coach from the other rail-cars. The research also recommended strategic and immediate areas warranting improvements on board Women- Only Coach so as to enhance the current safety and comfort levels during journey makings among the existing users.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Wiwin Sriningsih , Monica Garby Saerodji , Wega Trisunaryanti , Triyono , Ria Armunanto , Iip Izul Falah Hydrocracking of LDPE plastics into fuel over bi-functional catalysts was systematically studied. The natural zeolite from Sukabumi, Indonesia was refluxed in HCl 6N for 30 minutes and dried in an oven, then the activated natural zeolite (Z) was produced. This study found that natural zeolite obtained from Sukabumi which consists of the mordenite type crystalline. For bi- functional catalysts, Ni, Ni-Mo, Co and Co-Mo metals were loaded into the activated natural zeolite respectively to increase the activity and selectivity for hydrocracking process. The catalyst samples were heated in a microwave and done the reduction by hydrogen gas stream, produced Ni/Z, Ni-Mo/Z, Co/Z and Co-Mo/Z. Hydrocracking process was carried out effectively at 350 °C with 20 mL/minutes of hydrogen gas stream for 1 hour of reaction time. Conversion of LDPE plastic waste over Co-Mo/Z at 350 °C produced the higher selectivity of gasoline, reached 71.49%. Based on the GCMS data, liquid yield consisted of hydrocarbon compounds with atom chain of C 6 until C 19 that indicate fuel chemical structures, such as paraffins, olefins, and naphthenes. By using this technology, the conversion of plastic waste into fuel is expected to reduce the environmental pollution, support the use of soil, and increase the energy storage.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Raja Rafidah Raja Muhammad Rooshdi , Nurizan Ab Rahman , Nazurah Zahidah Umar Baki , Muhd Zaimi Abdul Majid , Faridah Ismail Sustainability has been widely debated in the construction industry in recent years. Though various assessments have previously been developed to help improving sustainability of construction projects, those assessments seem missed the base network for cities and buildings which are highways. Therefore, there is the need to select variety of design and construction activities criteria for green highway and determine the weightage factor for every criterion in order to categorize which criteria that most contribute to the green practices based on the priority. The aim of this paper is to explain the determination of weightage for criteria of design and construction activities. The methodology processes begin with data collection by using questionnaires distribution to the expertise who involve in highway development and also green issues. There were 140 respondents had been chosen to fill in the questionnaires survey. The data had been analysed using SPSS with factors analysis method. Results from the analysis show the evaluation of the criteria base on the important criteria in design and construction action of green highway.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Erni Setyowati Construction world is either directly or indirectly contributed to the environmental degradation that has resulted in global warming and climate change [1] . One of the examples is the use of cement in the construction of which has been accounted for the second largest CO2 emissions after electricity generation, which is around about 930 million tons/year or approximately 7% of the total CO2 emissions (data of Inter-Governmental Panel on climate Change/IPCC) [2] . In addressing this issue, the application of the sustainable development concept that is now known as green construction has been done with concrete constituent materials modification. Another issue about the rising price of oil has resulted in the construction material products including material such as clay bricks and a number of other construction materials. Therefore, research on Green-material products will meet the challenges of economical and environmental aspects. Industrial waste of Styrofoam is used in this study to generate concrete with a light weight and has a good resistance against seepage. While the use of fly ash in this study is intended as a cement substitute material, the use of cement in the concrete mix can be reduced. The use of fly ash from sugar mills Trangkil-Pati, Central Java, Indonesia in previous research is a proof to increase the compressive strength of lightweight concrete produced because it is similar to fly ash [3] . Then, the concept of Nano-technology development will improve the quality of foam-brick performance.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Evi Kurniati , Novi Arfarita , Tsuyoshi Imai Aspergillus flavus strain KRP1 isolated from tropical forest soil was examined for its potential use in degradation of mercury contaminant in soil. This fungal strain has shown its capability to grow best in 25 ppm mercury which contaminated Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) plate media compared with other strains. The preference pH for fungal growth was ranged from 5-7 and reached optimum on pH 6. The optimum temperature was found to be 27.5-35 °C. The growth expression of fungi to the presence of mercury contaminant in media was by showing the inhibitory on growth diameter compared to non-contaminated media. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of this fungal strain to mercury was at 100 ppm when there was no growth on the plate media while the growth on non-contaminated media reached maximum (5 day old). The fungal strain was also evaluated in vitro for the potential use in bioremediation of soil contaminated by mercury through observation of the growth profile and the mercury concentration in culture medium. The growth profiles of Aspergillus flavus strain KRP1 showed considerable growth in culture medium containing mercury. This result was supported by the decrease of mercury concentration which indicates a utilization process for mercury and might have mechanism for degradation. This indicates that this fungal strain has a potential use for areas where mercury contaminant is exist.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Muhammad Navis Rofii , Satomi Yumigeta , Yoichi Kojima , Shigehiko Suzuki The residues generated in the furniture industry have not yet been optimally used for panel production. One reason for this is that residues from the furniture industry contain high-density hardwood, which is not considered suitable as a raw material in panel production. In this study, the possibility of high-density hardwood species for panel production was investigated. Matoa, one of high-density hardwood species, was utilized for panel products targeted for interior application in flooring heating systems. Methylenediphenyldiisocyanate (MDI) resin was applied as adhesive in a rotating blending box at 6% based on oven dry weight. The mat panel was hot pressed for 5 minutes at a press temperature of 180 °C and an initial pressure of 3 MPa. This study showed that matoa can be used for panel products with limited purposes in non structural and interior uses. It has sufficient physical properties of thickness swell and moisture content, but low quality of water absorption. In term of mechanical properties, the boards manufactured had adequate bending properties and internal bonding which met the requirement of JIS type-8, except for particleboard made from planer shavings. It is known that particle shape and size significantly affect the panel properties of matoa.Hammer-milled matoa from mill residue can be an alternative for panel production in the future.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Tety Hartatik , T.S.M. Widi , S.D. Volkandari , D. Maharani , Sumadi The aim of this research was to assess the SRY-gene polymorphism in Madura cattle populations and the hybrids of Madura cow with Limousin bull. We investigated the specific markers of the paternally transmitted Y-chromosome for the direct detection of male-mediated introgression. We performed polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphisme (PCR– RFLP) to identify the polymorphism of Y-chromosomes in 17 Madura cattle from Pamekasan district, 4 conserved Madura cattle from Sapudi Island and 22 Limousin x Madura crossbred cattle from Pamekasan. A 211 bp PCR product were cut with PstI and BfaI restriction enzyme. The result showed all the Madura cattle types were identified by Pst I resrtiction enzyme performed into two fragments DNA. The polymorphisme of Y-chromosome was recognized by Bfa I restriction enzymes at the position 432 bp and 544 bp. Using BfaI restriction enzyme, this study identified 68.18% of Limousin x Madura crossbred cattle was in the sequence of Y-chromosome. The high numbers of Bfa I site restriction in the sequence of Y-chromosome due to the introduction Limousin bull by artificial insemination. For those, the preservation of pure Madura cattle as one of animal genetics resources in Indonesia should be a concern.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Nader Chalfoun This paper describes a method of greening university campus buildings that normally contribute to a large amount of energy and water consumption, air pollution, and resource depletions. The University of Arizona became engaged in the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment emphasizing those university campuses must exercise leadership in their communities and throughout society by modeling ways to minimize global warming emissions, and by providing their graduates the knowledge and education to achieve climate neutrality. The “House Energy Doctor” (HED) program is an education, research, and community outreach program at the University of Arizona's (UA) College of Architecture, planning and Landscape Architecture (CAPLA). During the last three years, and through a multiyear agreement between HED and the UA, Level III energy audits have been conducted on nine major campus buildings to identify energy efficiency opportunities that will contribute to the greening of campus. Some important findings focused on inefficient windows, external insulation, shading of critical building elements, energy-saving light fixtures, and envelope solar reflectance in summer. Strategies for mechanical systems propose changes to current thermostat set points, run periods, replacement of old components with higher efficiency units, and water harvesting of condensates for landscape use. The first three years of the “Greening of Campus” project demonstrated that the nine buildings total area of 1,081,512 ft 2 consumed an annual average 75,970,411 KBtu (70.2 KBtu/ft 2 ) at the cost of $2,186,264 per year. The implementation of the House Energy Doctor recommendations for the nine buildings will yield an annual energy savings of 9,542,106 KBtu and operating cost saving of $265,318 (12.1%). This energy saving will help the environment by a reduction of 2,915 Metric tons of CO2 emission. The campus will also be saving 10.9 million gallons of water. In addition, two of nine buildings “Arizona- Sonora” and “La Aldea” have been successfully certified for Energy Star Designation. The method can be replicated in different units around campus and as a model for implementation in other university campuses around the world.

Description: Publication date: 2014 Source: Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 20 Author(s): Haja Michel Rajaonarison This paper seeks to approach the paradigm of human security from the perspectives of food security, which brings in the discussions of the new patterns of policies adopted in six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It discusses about the emergence of a market-led food security, guided by market forces and incentives created by the G8 New Alliance project. The paper highlights the existing discourse on the need to scale-up agriculture in SSA where theories of development are interpreted differently to channel a transformation of a subsistence economy to a market oriented economy, but yet governed with a very corporatist leaning as part of the private sector development.