Effective Mitigation Solution Research Articles

Looking for the ecological transition of Mediterranean small ruminant sector. Characterization and main drivers of environmental performance of the Sardinian sheep farming systems

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study was carried out to assess the environmental profile of the main Sardinian dairy sheep farming systems, with the scope to provide a detailed and robust baseline for the identification of effective mitigation solutions at farm level and to develop environmental strategies at regional scale. Both product- and area-based functional units (FUs) were adopted, considering sixteen impact categories and soil carbon sequestration estimates as well. Water Use, Climate Change, Land Use, Ecotoxicity Freshwater, Marine Eutrophication and Fossils Resource Use resulted the main impact categories, cumulatively contributing over 80% of the total environmental impact (single score). Environmental performances significantly varied according to the geo-pedological traits of the different sheep milk production areas and were driven by the farming systems’ structure and production level. The group of farms located in less fertile areas showed significantly worse environmental performance per kg of normalized milk for the impact categories Climate Change and Land Use, whereas no significant differences were observed for the remaining main impact categories. Considering the area-based FU, this farm group resulted less impacting for all main categories compared to the group of farms located in more plain and productive soils, with a significantly lower impact observed for Marine Eutrophication and Fossils Resource Use. Regardless of the FU used, feed supply management represented a key area of improvement, and soil carbon sequestration impact compensated the high GHG emission intensity of grassland-based farms despite the limited nutritional value of natural pasture. Regional strategies should be based on ecosystem services optimization and eco-innovative solutions tailored according to both the specific geo-pedological conditions and the production level of each farming system.

A Framework Analyzing Climate Change, Air Quality and Greenery to Unveil Environmental Stress Risk Hotspots

Rapid urbanization has resulted in increased environmental challenges, compounding worries about deteriorating air quality and rising temperatures. As cities become hubs of human activity, understanding the complex interplay of numerous environmental elements is critical for developing effective mitigation solutions. Recognizing this urgency, a framework to highlight the hotspots with critical environmental issues emerges as a comprehensive approach that incorporates key criteria such as the surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII), heat index (HI) and air quality index (AQI) to assess and address the complex web of environmental stressors that grip urban landscapes. Employing the multicriteria decision analysis approach, the proposed framework, named the environmental risk hotspot mapping framework (ERHMF), innovatively applies the analytic hierarchy process at a sub-criteria level, considering long-term heat island trends with recent fluctuations in the HI and AQI. Climate change impact has been symbolized through rising temperatures, as reflected by surface urban heat island intensity trends over two decades. The robustness and correctness of the weights have been assessed by computing the consistency ratio, which came out as 0.046, 0.065 and 0.044 for the sub-criteria of the SUHII, AQI and HI, respectively. Furthermore, the framework delves into the nexus between environmental stressors and vegetation cover, elucidating the role of green spaces in mitigating urban environmental risks. Augmented by spatial and demographic data, the ERHMF adeptly discerns high-risk areas where environmental stress converges with urban development, vulnerable population concentrations and critical vegetation status, thereby facilitating targeted risk management interventions. The framework’s effectiveness has been demonstrated in a regional case study in Italy, underscoring its ability to pinpoint risk hotspots and inform specific policy interventions. The quantitative study undertaken at the sub-administrative level revealed that approximately 6,000,000 m2 of land in Bologna are classified as being under high to extremely high environmental stress, with over 4,000,000 m2 lying only within the extremely high stress group (90–100). Similarly, 1,000,000 m2 of land in Piacenza and Modena have high levels of environmental stress (80–90). In conclusion, the ERHMF presents a holistic methodology for delineating high-risk urban hotspots, providing essential insights for policymakers, urban planners and stakeholders, with the potential to enhance overall urban resilience and foster sustainable development efforts.

Investigating and Reducing the Architectural Impact of Transient Faults in Special Function Units for GPUs

Ensuring the reliability of GPUs and their internal components is paramount, especially in safety-critical domains like autonomous machines and self-driving cars. These cutting-edge applications heavily rely on GPUs to implement complex algorithms due to their implicit programming flexibility and parallelism, which is crucial for efficient operation. However, as integration technologies advance, there is a growing concern regarding the potential increase in fault sensitivity of the internal components of current GPU generations. In particular, Special Function Unit (SFU) cores inside GPUs are used in multimedia, High-Performance Computing, and neural network training. Despite their frequent usage and critical role in several domains, reliability evaluations on SFUs and the development of effective mitigation solutions have yet to be studied and remain unexplored. This work evaluates the impact of transient faults in the main hardware structures of SFUs in GPUs. In addition, we analyze the main overhead costs and benefits of developing selective-hardening mechanisms for SFUs. We focus on evaluating and analyzing two SFU architectures for GPUs (’fused’ and ’modular’) and their relations to energy, area, and reliability impact on parallel applications. The experiments resort to fine-grain fault injection campaigns on an RTL GPU model (FlexGripPlus) instrumented with both SFUs. The results on both SFU architectures indicate that fused SFUs (in commercial-grade devices) require lower area overhead (about 27%) for their integration in GPUs but are more vulnerable to transient faults (in up to 47% for the analyzed cases) and less power efficient (in up to 36.6%) than modular SFUs. Moreover, the reliability estimation shows that Modular SFUs are structurally more resilient than Fused ones in up to one order of magnitude. Similarly, selective-hardening mechanism based on Triple-Modular Redundancy (TMR) shows that coarse-grain strategies might increase the reliability of the overall SFUs under feasible overhead costs.

Assessing elevated home slab retrofitting method for residential coastal buildings under hurricane loads

With an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes in the United States, effective mitigation solutions should be considered by individuals and governments. This paper investigates the slab elevation retrofit method as a mitigation strategy for residential timber buildings to reduce structural damage and associated economic losses due to hurricane loads. More specifically, a holistic assessment was performed to compare the structural response for typical coastal residential buildings with and without slab elevation incorporated and assess the impact of this retrofitting scheme on the overall building performance. A detailed finite element model was generated for a typical archetype and was used to conduct dynamic analyses for various wind and flood load conditions. The results of the progressive failure analyses were then used to perform loss assessments based on the methodology of the HAZUS hurricane manual. Based on the results of this study, when implementing the slab elevation retrofit method, the damage and associated economic losses due to hurricane-induced loads were reduced. It was observed for all analysis cases that damage due to flood loading dominated the response and economic losses. A noticeable reduction in the recovery time (in days) was also obtained for the considered elevated structures.

Shark and odontocete depredation on the catch of the tuna longline fishery in New Caledonia (South Pacific Ocean)

Abstract Large marine predators feeding on fish caught on fishing gear, referred to as ‘depredation’, occur in a wide range of fisheries worldwide. Depredation can result in negative ecological and socio-economic impacts, leading to conflict between fishers and depredating species. However, depredation remains understudied in many fisheries, and this hampers the development of effective mitigation solutions. In this study, 21 years of fishing data (2002–2022) were used to assess shark and odontocete depredation in the pelagic tuna longline fishery of New Caledonia. Using generalized linear models, the year, season, effort, soaking time, and vessel were identified as variables significantly influencing the probability of depredation to occur. Results showed that while shark depredation occurred more frequently than odontocete depredation (58.5% vs. 9.2% of the longline sets), they damaged a lower proportion of fish (3.9% vs. 12.3%) over the study period. Unlike sharks, odontocetes selectively depredate tuna, with their highest occurrence during periods of high tuna catch rates, suggesting a co-occurrence with fishing activities. Together, these results indicate that depredation in the New Caledonian fishery is high compared to other regions and provide essential information on the dynamics and impacts of the issue as a basis for considering management and mitigation options.

Automatic Transformation Search Against Deep Leakage From Gradients.

Collaborative learning has gained great popularity due to its benefit of data privacy protection: participants can jointly train a Deep Learning model without sharing their training sets. However, recent works discovered that an adversary can fully recover the sensitive training samples from the shared gradients. Such reconstruction attacks pose severe threats to collaborative learning. Hence, effective mitigation solutions are urgently desired. In this paper, we systematically analyze existing reconstruction attacks and propose to leverage data augmentation to defeat these attacks: by preprocessing sensitive images with carefully-selected transformation policies, it becomes infeasible for the adversary to extract training samples from the corresponding gradients. We first design two new metrics to quantify the impacts of transformations on data privacy and model usability. With the two metrics, we design a novel search method to automatically discover qualified policies from a given data augmentation library. Our defense method can be further combined with existing collaborative training systems without modifying the training protocols. We conduct comprehensive experiments on various system settings. Evaluation results demonstrate that the policies discovered by our method can defeat state-of-the-art reconstruction attacks in collaborative learning, with high efficiency and negligible impact on the model performance.

Assessing seed and breeding interventions for organic farming using a multiagent value chain approach

According to the EU’s organic regulation, the use of organic seed is generally binding in organic farming. Because of an organic seed shortage, derogations to use nonorganic seed can be obtained. By 2036, the EU plans to phase out these derogations and achieve 100% organic seed use. Previous attempts at achieving this, though, have failed. Ensuring organic seed supply is of particular EU-wide importance to meet EU policy goals, such as the farm-to-fork strategy. To assess the impact of measures to smooth this transition, we developed the VAL-MAS model (VALue chain Multi-Agent System). VAL-MAS is a multiagent model based on a heterogeneous agent population and mathematical programming that can provide insights into the performance of different seed system interventions. We selected organic fresh market carrots in Germany for their importance in the national and European organic sector as an example case. Our model suggests that the end of the derogation system poses a challenge to the seed value chain in terms of seed supply and farm incomes. The most effective mitigation solution is an investment in improved pest control during seed multiplication, accompanied by a stepwise phasing out of derogations for the use of nonorganic seed.

The Autobot-WQ: A portable, low-cost autosampler to provide new insight into urban spatio-temporal water quality dynamics

Urbanization and the increase in urban land cover are growing concerns associated with numerous negative impacts on surface water quality. Currently, many emerging contaminants are difficult to measure with no field deployable sensors currently available. Hence, discrete grab samples are required for subsequent laboratory analysis. To capture the spatiotemporal variability in pollution pulses, autosamplers can be used, but commercial offerings are both expensive and have a large footprint. This can be problematic in urban environments where there is a high density of point source inputs and risk of vandalism or theft. Here, we present a small and robust low-cost autosampler that is ideally suited for deployment in urban environments. The design is based on “off the shelf” open-source hardware components and software and requires no prior engineering, electronics, or computer programming experience to build. The autosampler uses a small peristaltic pump to enable collection of 14 small volume samples (50 mL) and is housed in a small footprint camera case. To illustrate the technology, we present two use cases for rapid sampling of stormwater pulses of: 1) an urban river channel and 2) green roof runoff. When compared with a commercial autosampler, our device showed comparable results and enabled us to capture temporal dynamics in key water quality parameters (e.g., dissolved organic matter) following rain events in an urban stream. Water quality differences associated with differing green roof design/maintenance regimes (managed and unmanaged vegetation) were captured using the autosampler, highlighting how unmanaged vegetation has a greater potential for mitigating the rapid runoff and peaked pollutant inputs associated with impervious surfaces. These two case studies show that our portable autosampler provides capacity to improve understanding of the impact of urban design and infrastructure on water quality and can lead to the development of more effective mitigation solutions. Finally, we discuss opportunities for further technical refinement of our autosampler and applications to improve environmental monitoring. We propose a holistic monitoring approach to address some of the outstanding challenges in urban areas and enable monitoring to shift from discrete point sources towards characterization of catchment or network scale dynamics.

Using empirical science education in schools to improve climate change literacy

Providing children with a clear understanding of climate change drivers and their mitigation is crucial for their roles as future earth stewards. To achieve this, it will be necessary to reverse the declining interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education in schools in the UK and other countries, as STEM skills will be critical when designing effective mitigation solutions for climate change. The ‘Heat-Cool Initiative’ was co-designed and successfully implemented in five primary/secondary UK schools, as a playful learning tool to unleash student interest in STEM subjects. 103 students from two cohorts (years 5–6 and 7–9) participated in five Heat-Cool activity sessions where they used infrared cameras to explore the issue of urban heat. Their learning was evaluated using a multi-functional quantitative assessment, including pre- and post-session quizzes. Climate change literacy increased by 9.4% in primary school children and by 4.5% in secondary school children. Analyses of >2000 infrared images taken by students, categorised into 13 common themes, revealed age-related differences in children's cognitive development. At primary school age, images of the ‘self’ dominated; secondary school children engaged more with their physical environment. This novel approach demonstrated the importance of developing tailored technology-enhanced STEM education programmes for different age cohorts, leading to a high capacity for improving learning outcomes regarding climate change. Such programmes, embedded in school curricula nationally and internationally, could become a much-needed positive contribution to reaching the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goals 4 (Quality Education) and 13 (Climate Action).

Coronavirus Disease 2019 and Airborne Transmission: Science Rejected, Lives Lost. Can Society Do Better?

This is an account that should be heard of an important struggle: the struggle of a large group of experts who came together at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to warn the world about the risk of airborne transmission and the consequences of ignoring it. We alerted the World Health Organization about the potential significance of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the urgent need to control it, but our concerns were dismissed. Here we describe how this happened and the consequences. We hope that by reporting this story we can raise awareness of the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and the need to be open to new evidence, and to prevent it from happening again. Acknowledgement of an issue, and the emergence of new evidence related to it, is the first necessary step towards finding effective mitigation solutions.

Evaluating Preventive Measures for Flooding from Groundwater: A Case Study

Groundwater (GW) flooding mechanisms differ from river flooding, both spatially and temporally, and preventative methods against groundwater flooding must take this into account. Although groundwater flooding caused by a rise of river water seldom occurs, it can occasionally become severe and last for a long time if the river is significantly flooded. In the southwest portion of the research domain, Friedrichshafen, Germany, with a few urban communities, the level of the groundwater table was discovered to be roughly 1 m below the surface. In the study region, it is typical for the bottom level of the foundation of a single-story building to extend up to a depth of about 1.5 m. Therefore, flood mitigation methods are taken into account for the southwest portion of the study region. In this study, FEFLOW is used to explore the preventative methods for groundwater flooding caused by river water increase in urban settings, the spread of contamination, and the strategizing of effective mitigation solutions for flooding. The installation of a pumping well, drainage, and a barrier in the affected area are three different flood control strategies that are taken into consideration for the study area. Pumping well installation, reducing up to 1.5 m of hydraulic head, was found to be the most effective flood control measure locally in a small region. By contrast, removing groundwater by building drainage and barriers was shown to be ineffective for lowering the groundwater table over an extended region, and was significantly more expensive than the installation of wells. Additionally, when river flooding is taken into account, compared to the default scenario where no intake of water from the river is included along the western border of the study area, it was discovered that the spread of pollution (nitrate concentration) is significantly greater.

Salinization Increase due to Climate Change Will Have Substantial Negative Effects on Inland Waters: A Call for Multifaceted Research at the Local and Global Scale

Salinization Increase due to Climate Change Will Have Substantial Negative Effects on Inland Waters: A Call for Multifaceted Research at the Local and Global Scale

Short-Term Electromagnetic Interference on a Buried Gas Pipeline Caused by Critical Fault Events of a Wind Park: A Realistic Case Study

Short-term electromagnetic interference (EMI) pertains to the total result produced by the occurrence of intermittent, inductive, and conductive couplings on a buried pipeline system. For example, this type of EMI takes place when considering the fault conditions of a single ac power line, acting in the nearby vicinity of a pipeline system. In the context of this article, the effect of the short-term EMI is unfolded through a real case study. This case study involves a 20.7-MW wind park (WP) with extended underground power cable connections, which are laid nearby a high-pressure gas pipeline system. In particular, the impact of critical fault events, associated with the WP's power cables, on the pipeline system is comprehensively assessed. The assessment is achieved by the concurrent use of two powerful software tools that are respectively eligible for the accurate short-circuit analysis of the electrical circuit of the WP and for EMI evaluation on the pipeline. To this extent, the simulation results are thoroughly discussed and an effective mitigation solution is evidently presented.

Shelf life extension as solution for environmental impact mitigation: A case study for bakery products

Over the last years, increasing attention has been paid to environmental concerns related to food production and potential solutions to this issue. Among the different strategies being considered to reduce the impact food production has on the environment, only moderate has been paid to the extension of shelf life; a longer shelf life can reduce food losses as well as the economic and environmental impacts of the distribution logistics.The aim of this study is to assess the environmental performance of whole-wheat breadsticks with extended shelf lives and to evaluate whether the shelf-life extension is an effective mitigation solution from an environmental point of view. To this purpose, the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was applied from a “cradle-to-grave” perspective. Rosmarinic acid was used as an antioxidant to extend the shelf life.To test the robustness of the results and to investigate the influence of the choices made in the modelling phase, a sensitivity and uncertainty analysis were carried out.The achieved results highlighted how, for 10 of the 12 evaluated impact categories, the shelf-life extension is a proper mitigation solution, and its effectiveness depends on the magnitude of product loss reduction that is achieved. The shelf-life extension doesn't allow for the reduction of environmental impact in the categories of human toxicity, cancer effects and freshwater eutrophication.

Meta-analyses, Metrics and Motivation: Mixed Messages in the Fish Passage Debate

Over recent years, there has been increasing challenge to the accepted wisdom that the environmental impacts of river engineering can be adequately mitigated through the installation of infrastructure, such as fish passes. This has led to a debate on the value of fish passage with some arguing that increased research and development will advance solutions for a variety of structures that are suitable for multiple species and transferable to different regions. Others suggest that policies and management strategies should reflect the realization that current mitigation technology frequently fails and can itself have negative impacts. Meta-analyses of the results of studies on fish passage effectiveness have led to the challenge of conventional views by highlighting lower than expected efficiencies, wide variation between and within fish pass designs, and bias towards consideration of a limited number of commercially important species mainly from northern temperate regions. Results of meta-analyses can also be controversial, and difficulties can arise when nuances associated with individual studies are lost and when metrics used are not standardized. Intrinsic variation in fish passage efficiency between and within species due to differences in patterns of movement and motivation may not be considered, and in many situations, current metrics are not appropriate. Quantification of variation in trends in fish passage efficiency over time and with spatial scale is lacking and should be the focus of future reviews. It is time to accept that fish passage does not provide a universally effective mitigation solution, particularly when designs and strategies are transferred to other regions and species for which they were not originally designed. Admitting to cases of failure is an essential first step to advancing water resources planning and regulation based on well-informed decision-making processes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Climate change impacts of power generation from residual biomass

The European Union relies largely on bioenergy to achieve its climate and energy targets for 2020 and beyond.We assess, using Attributional Life Cycle Assessment (A-LCA), the climate change mitigation potential of three bioenergy power plants fuelled by residual biomass compared to a fossil system based on the European power generation mix. We study forest residues, cereal straws and cattle slurry.Our A-LCA methodology includes: i) supply chains and biogenic-CO2 flows; ii) explicit treatment of time of emissions; iii) instantaneous and time-integrated climate metrics.Power generation from cereal straws and cattle slurry can provide significant global warming mitigation by 2100 compared to current European electricity mix in all of the conditions considered.The mitigation potential of forest residues depends on the decay rate considered. Power generation from forest logging residues is an effective mitigation solution compared to the current EU mix only in conditions of decay rates above 5.2% a−1. Even with faster-decomposing feedstocks, bioenergy temporarily causes a STR(i) and STR(c) higher than the fossil system.The mitigation potential of bioenergy technologies is overestimated when biogenic-CO2 flows are excluded. Results based solely on supply-chain emissions can only be interpreted as an estimation of the long-term (>100 years) mitigation potential of bioenergy systems interrupted at the end of the lifetime of the plant and whose carbon stock is allowed to accumulate back.Strategies for bioenergy deployment should take into account possible increases in global warming rate and possible temporary increases in temperature anomaly as well as of cumulative radiative forcing.

Building the evidence base for ecological impact assessment and mitigation

Building the evidence base for ecological impact assessment and mitigation

Emulsifier content and side effects of oil-based adjuvant vaccine in swine

Side effects caused by the excessive emulsifier in oil-based adjuvant vaccine were examined practically in swine using one oil-in-water type adjuvant vaccine against swine pleuropneumonia. The vaccine was prepared from cell-free-antigen of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, liquid paraffin, and several polyoxyethylenesorbitan and sorbitan oleates. Based on findings about safety in mice and emulsion stability, 2 vaccines containing either 11.25% or 6.25% emulsifier content were injected intramuscularly twice in swine, as the highest and lowest limits, respectively, within the practical range. All pigs showed temporary fever and malaise with anorexia for several days after each injection. The fever of the higher emulsifier content group took significantly longer to recover than the lower. Malaise also showed a similar tendency. On the other hand, antibody response was sufficiently induced with no significant difference between the 2 groups. Lowering the emulsifier content is a very simple but effective solution for mitigation of side effects without the reduction of adjuvanticity. For safe and high-quality oil-based adjuvant vaccines, not only antigen and base-oil, but emulsifier content must be optimized.