Environmental Experts Research Articles

The Nature of Glass: Technologies of Transparency, Materials on the Move

Scientific instruments such as telescopes and distillation columns have played a prominent role in the history of science, but the key material of which these instruments were made has received scant attention. Focusing on the glass used to make scientific instruments and on the supply chains on which its production relied—allows us to see that “glass” covers a variety of materials and that the nature of glass depends on the material knowledge and environmental expertise invested in its manufacture. Between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries, glassware moved back and forth between a dependence on processing locally sourced materials and reusing household items and a reliance on intraregional supply chains of specialty materials.

환경색채전문가의 자연경관이미지 평가 경험

The purpose of this study is to understand the experience of environmental color experts who participated in the quantitative research survey on the preference for natural scenery and under what context the evaluation was conducted. To this end, one environmental color expert was selected as a single case among 20 experts from the researcher

EXPERT FORENSIC ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOIL INVESTIGATION IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

The article analyses the problems of establishing factual circumstances of environmental violations against soils, presents examples from the judicial practice, shows the possibilities of using special knowledge when considering cases relating to negative anthropological impact on soil-geological objects. The following methods were used in the research: observation, analysis, synthesis, description, comparison. It is substantiated the need for wider application of results of forensic examination of geological evidence in the administration of justice. The most effective and science-based form of using special knowledge is forensic environmental examination and particularly geological evidence examination or forensic environmental and soil expertise. Such kind of examinations are actively carried out in FBE «Russian Federal Centre of Forensic Science of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation» and in FSPI «Forensic Expert Centre of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation». It is given an example of a complex forensic environmental examination. Proposals are presented to expand the range of persons conducting forensic environmental and soil examinations.

Numerical Evaluation of Wind Speed Influence on Accident Toxic Spill Consequences Scales

This study aims to evaluate numerically the influence of wind speed on scales of environmental harmful consequences caused by accidentally spilled toxic liquid evaporated from the surface of a free-form outlined spill spot. A coupled problem of the gas-dynamic movement of a toxic air-mixture cloud in the surface layer of the atmosphere under the influence of wind and a negative toxic inhalation impact on a human in an accident zone is solved by means of mathematical modelling and computer experiment. Physical processes of toxic liquid evaporation from the spill spot, formation of a mixture of toxic gas with the incoming air, and further dispersion of a hazardous gaseous chemical in the atmosphere under various wind speed conditions are investigated. A three-dimensional non-stationary mathematical model of the turbulent movement of a gas-air mixture is used for obtaining distribution of relative mass concentration of toxic gas impurities in time and space. The model takes into account the complex terrain, compressibility of the gas flow, three-dimensional and non-stationary nature of actual physical processes, different toxic properties of chemical substances, and arbitrary contour shape of the toxic spill spot. A probabilistic harmful impact model based on using a modernized probit analysis method is used to obtain fields of the conditional probability of a fatal human injury resulting from toxic gas inhalation. This model extracts relative mass concentration of toxic gas that could cause negative impact on humans at any control point during calculation time step exposition, collects integral toxic dose values from the multicomponent gas mixture dynamics model, calculates a value of the probit function for the corresponding toxic inhalation dose dangerous factor, and automatically assesses the human fatal injury conditional probability using partial cubic Hermitian spline. This technique allows environmental safety experts assessing the scale of considered type technogenic accident consequences numerically depending on wind speed conditions and elaborating the means to mitigate them to acceptable levels.

Strategies to Control Industrial Emissions: An Analytical Network Process Approach in East Java, Indonesia

This study identified the main agents, problems, solutions, and strategies for lowering industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the cement industry in East Java, Indonesia, by applying an analytical network process. Respondents included government officials, industrial representatives, and environmental experts. This study revealed that (1) regulators are the critical agents controlling emissions; (2) the three major problems faced when aiming to reduce industrial emissions are limited environmental knowledge, inadequate infrastructure, and unsound regulations; (3) the main solutions are education, socialization, and infrastructure improvement; and (4) the institutional approach is preferable to command-and-control and economic incentives. This suggests that policymakers should collaborate closely with regulators, firms, and communities to more effectively control emissions and encourage environmentally friendly industrial practices. Economic incentives are not preferable strategies, most likely because of insufficient environmental knowledge, market distortion due to subsidies, and low viability. However, the institutional approach incurs higher costs due to political, administrative, and legal processes. Parties may agree on achieving socioeconomic demands but not environmental output. The institutional approach also requires extra investment in education and socialization as well as government support for infrastructure development and a better regulatory framework.

Control of Dengue Epidemic in Lahore: A fortuitous application of One Health Approach

Abstract Pakistan, a developing country in South-east Asia, is experiencing disease outbreaks caused by human, animal, and environmental interactions. The One Health approach relies on intersectoral collaboration. This is now recognized as the key to controlling epidemics. Although Pakistan is still in the process of adopting the One Health approach, this case study highlights the effective control of the 2010–2011 dengue outbreak in Lahore and other cities of the Punjab province, This was the greatest achievement of the Punjab health sector. For the first time, administrative departments under the control of political government formed partnerships among human, animal, environmental, entomology, and microbiology experts to develop strategies. Other departments, such as transportation, solid waste management, fisheries, police, and education also participated in anti-dengue activities. This included the surveillance of larvicidal measures, elimination of potential breeding sites, and community mobilization campaigns. The general public was motivated to participate by volunteers, and the level of communication, coordination, and collaboration was at par with an ideal One Health project. The outcome was the effective control of the dengue epidemic, disproving projections, and bringing vector-borne menace to endemic levels. This case study demonstrates that the One Health approach is still possible even in developing countries with overburdened health systems and conventionally siloed departments. It serves as a cornerstone for advocating that the One Health approach, once tested in one of Pakistan’s largest provinces, should be adopted nationally in letter and spirit. Information © The Authors 2023

Modeling board governance, environmental expertise, and social engagement effects on firm environmental performance: Panel data evidence

Prior research establishes that board governance quality measures positively impact firm environmental performance. In this study, we propose an empirical model using structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore additional enhancements to board governance, namely board environmental expertise (BEE) and board social engagement (BSE) and show that they incrementally improve firm environmental performance (EN). Our proposed latent construct measure, BEE, goes beyond traditionally dichotomous measures used in the literature. BEE has a total effect on firm environmental performance that is over two thirds the size of effects arising from traditional governance quality measures (GOV). The second enhancement of our model is the focus on BSE, a novel construct to the CSR literature. In addition to possessing environmental knowledge enabling expertise, we demonstrate that a board with a deeper commitment to society will further improve firm environmental performance. Using SEM, we find that the indirect effects of GOV, BEE, and BSE on EN represent a substantial portion of the total effects on EN. Hence, ignoring these indirect effects would result in substantial understatement of the effects of improvements to governance on environmental performance.

PROCESSING OF MEDICAL MASK WASTE IN GORONTALO CITY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The disposal of disposable masks has raised concerns among environmentalists. Disposable medical mask waste is currently easy to find because people throw it away everywhere in intact condition. When people throw away masks carelessly, it is difficult to distinguish the use of shows by people with excellent or diseased health conditions. The problem in this research is the improper management of medical masks. This research method aims to analyze the frequency of using masks when leaving the house and the practice of processing medical mask waste used by the people of Gorontalo City. This type of research is quantitative with a cross-sectional design and analytic descriptive method. The population in this study were all people living in the City of Gorontalo in 2 sub-districts, namely Kota Timur and Kota Utara, with a sample size of 379 samples from the City of East and 377 representatives from the City of North. The results showed that the processing of medical masks in Gorontalo City during the Covid-19 Pandemic was not on target; this was evidenced by the processing of medical mask waste in Kota Timur District, which was disposed of carelessly as much as 36.5%, while medical mask waste was processed by cutting and 16.7% were burnt for the East Kota sub-district and 15.9% processed and reused. This study concluded that in the processing of medical masks in Gorontalo City during the Covid-19 pandemic for the East City District, many were still disposed of carelessly. In contrast, most medical mask users were washed and reused for the North City District. In comparison, for the North sub-district, it was 4.2%; even out of the 377 respondents surveyed, 361 medical mask users washed and reused. This is very worrying for environmental experts because the repeated use of medical masks will particularly impact oral health.Keywords: Processing; Waste; Medical mask.

ENVIRONMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE OF FOULING ON THE CRUDE OIL FLOW. A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW

Investigating important challenges to eliminate crude oil fouling in pipelines needs to be studied thoroughly. According to environmental and economic issues, fouling in pipelines increases the price of crude oil. According to chemical and environmental experts, the loss in heat required additional energy to compensate which meant higher fuel consumption and more carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The increase in fluid flow rate combined with a constant drop in pressure is dangerous for pipelines. In addition, the Iraqi crude oils block refinery preheat trains because they contain very little asphaltene. The fouling of a variety of these crude oils and their blends is examined in this paper. Fouling may be caused by four major processes: solid particles, corrosion, sedimentation, and chemical reaction.

Māori perspectives on justice for Pacific Islanders at risk of climate-induced displacement

Anthropogenic climate change is causing ocean acidification and sea levels to rise, threatening the economic, food and physical security of low-lying Pacific Islands. Debates ensue as to whether these effects will force islanders to migrate and, if so, how the international community should conceive of and provide justice for climate-induced displacees. These debates pivot around questions of causality, agency, justice and state security. By focusing on the Indigenous intercultural dynamics that permeate the South Pacific, especially with regard to Polynesian solidarity, this study aims to add further nuance to the debate on how to govern climate-induced migration in the Pacific. Māori environmental activists and experts were interviewed for their views on justice for at-risk Pacific Islanders. Analysis revealed that interviewees conceptualized justice through a holistic prism, accounting for short- and long-term spiritual, psychological and socio-economic impacts of displacement. Drawing on Māori genealogy and principles, interviewees expressed a strong preference and perceived obligation to assist Polynesian displacees. A three-pronged paradigm of justice for Pacific Island displacees emerged based on the concepts of whakapapa, whakamana and rangatiratanga, promoting empowerment, epistemological equity and sovereignty. Rooted in Māori philosophy, this paradigm departs from the state security logic currently dominating climate change and migration discourses.

Land-use change in a Nordic future towards bioeconomy: A methodological framework to compare and merge stakeholder and expert opinions on qualitative scenarios

Future development of bioeconomy is expected to change land use in the Nordic countries in agriculture and forestry. The changes are likely to affect water quality due to changes in nutrient run-off. To explore possible future land-use changes and their environmental impact, stakeholders and experts from four Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) were consulted. The methodological framework for the consultation was to identify a set of relevant land-use attributes for agriculture and forestry, e.g. tillage conservation effort, fertiliser use, animal husbandry, biogas production from manure, forestry management options, and implementation of mitigation measures, including protection of sensitive areas. The stakeholders and experts provided their opinions on how these attributes might change in terms of their environmental impacts on water quality given five Nordic bioeconomic scenarios (sustainability, business as usual, self-sufficiency, cities first and maximizing economic growth). A compilation methodology was developed to allow comparing and merging the stakeholder and expert opinions for each attribute and scenario. The compiled opinions for agriculture and forestry suggest that the business-as-usual scenario may slightly decrease the current environmental impact for most attributes due to new technologies, but that the sustainability scenario would be the only option to achieve a clear environmental improvement. In contrast, for the self-sufficiency scenario, as well as the maximum growth scenario, a deterioration of the environment and water quality was expected for most of the attributes. The results from the stakeholder consultations are used as inputs to models for estimating the impact of the land-use attributes and scenarios on nutrient run-off from catchments in the Nordic countries (as reported in other papers in this special issue). Furthermore, these results will facilitate policy level discussions concerning how to facilitate the shift to bioeconomy with increasing biomass exploitation without deteriorating water quality and ecological status in Nordic rivers and lakes.

A critical insight into occurrence and fate of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and their green remediation approaches

Over the last century, the tremendous growth in industrial activities particularly in the sectors of pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals and the reckless application of fertilizers and insecticides has raised the contamination of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) tremendously. For more than a decade, the main focus of environmental experts is to come up with management approaches for the clean-up of sites polluted with PAHs. These are ubiquitous in nature i.e., widely distributed in ecosystem ranging from soil, air and marine water. Most of the PAHs possess immunotoxicity, carcinogenicity and genotoxicity. Being highly soluble in lipids, they are readily absorbed into the mammalian gastro intestinal tract. They are widely distributed with marked tendency of getting localized into body fat in varied tissues. Several remediation technologies have been tested for the removal of these environmental contaminants, particularly bioremediation has turned out to be a hope as the safest and cost-effective option. Therefore, this review first discusses various sources of PAHs, their effect on human health and interactions of PAHs with soils and sediments. In this review, a holistic insight of current scenario of existing remediation technologies and how they can be improvised along with the hindrances in the path of these technologies are properly addressed.

Integrating land use management with trade-offs between ecosystem services: A framework and application

The trade-offs of ecosystem services (ES) are at the frontier of geographical and ecological studies. However, previous studies have focused on either supply-supply trade-off or supply–demand trade-off, while the integrated research of three trade-off types for ES (i.e. supply-supply trade-off, demand-demand trade-off, and supply–demand trade-off) needs to be further studied. This study integrated three trade-off types for ES to establish an analytical framework. This framework was then applied to a sub-watershed of the Yellow River in China (i.e., the Fenghe River watershed). Based on a quantitative assessment of both the supply and demand of ES, this study quantifies and displays these three trade-off types for ES in this sub-watershed. From the supply perspective, obvious trade-offs exist between food provision as well as water yield, carbon sequestration, and soil retention. From the demand perspective, there are weak conflicts between environmental experts and other stakeholders, and obvious trade-offs exist between soil retention as well as food provision, water yield, carbon sequestration, and eco-recreation. From the supply–demand match perspective, a deficit for food provision, water yield, and carbon sequestration exists in the northern urban areas, while a surplus exists in the southern areas. No deficit was found for soil retention and eco-recreation at the sub-watershed scale. Based on the spatial characteristics of these three trade-off types for ES, the Fenghe River watershed could be divided into 10 land use management zones. Finally, the corresponding measures and polices are proposed to optimize the matching of ES supply–demand. This study contributes to the optimization of the sustainability of ES from a novel perspective, and provides a scientific basis for land use management.

Frontloading in powertrain development involving hybrid (virtual and real) development environments

In order to reduce the powertrain development time in the context of increasing system complexity, hardware-related development steps are being shifted to early phases using virtual development environments (frontloading) and agile working methods are being introduced. However, implementation in industrial practice is often insufficient. The application of virtual development environments is often not well accepted, especially since accurate, validated simulation models are not available until late in the development process and the competences/expertise of experts in the development environments of different degrees of virtualisation are often insufficiently brought in jointly and in an agile approach during their development. This is where the publication steps in, introducing a development approach for the agile development, application and further development of validated simulation models and presenting its application and added value on the basis of two practice-relevant case studies (powertrain design, development of torque coordination). It is shown that how real and virtual development environments can be applied in an interconnected way so that frontloading in the real development process succeeds in an agile way. The resulting outcomes are discussed and summarised.

Exploring The Barriers to Global Trends in The Real Estate Development Industry: A Focus On Nigeria

This general review paper explores current global trends in the real estate development industry as well as identifies the barriers to the growth and development of these industry trends in Nigeria. This study adopts the desk research approach using secondary information sourced from diverse databases. Content analysis of the secondary data show that advanced and some emerging markets have made tremendous progress in sustainable real estate development, disruptive technologies application in real estate development, real estate transparency, and development laws and regulation compared to Nigeria an emerging market. Barriers to the growth and development of the global trends in Nigeria’s real estate development industry were identified and grouped into eight sub-categories. Understanding these barriers and means to address them by policymakers, built environment experts and developers will result to sustainable growth and expansion of Nigeria’s real estate development industry. Further quantitative survey should be conducted to rate these factors in their order of significance.

Adsorptions of phenol molecules by graphene-based nanostructures, modified with nitrogen and bromine, from petroleum wastewater using molecular dynamics simulation

Today, industrial wastewater treatment has attracted the attention of many governments and environmental experts. Basically, the pollution of these wastewaters is due to the presence of organic pollutants such as dyes, halogenated hydrocarbons, phenolic compounds, etc. Meanwhile, phenol is widely used in oil, petrochemical, coal production, and pharmaceutical industries. Several methods such as surface adsorption are used to remove phenol from water. In this work, the adsorption of phenol molecules by carbon nanostructures and carbon nanostructures modified with nitrogen and bromine has been investigated using Molecular Dynamics simulation. According to the obtained results, BCN-graphene has been introduced as the best nanostructure for the removal of phenol molecules from the aqueous environment, having the highest adsorption energy and greater adsorption stability. This work paves the way for the development of the use of bromine nitride structures in the treatment of petroleum wastewater.

Intelligent replacement analysis using picture fuzzy sets: Defender-challenger comparison application

Replacement analysis is based on the principle that it may be more economical to retirement of an equipment earlier than its physical life. This replacement time, called the economic life, is usually calculated by annual cash flow analysis. These calculations made with deterministic estimations in classical analyzes are not realistic because they do not take into account the uncertainties in their estimations. Picture fuzzy sets (PFSs) introduced to the literature in recent years can provide a more detailed estimation by using the yes, abstain, no, and refusal degrees of the estimations. In this paper, the economic lives of defender and challenger, which are two alternatives of replacement analysis, are calculated using PFSs and a replacement decision was made. Estimates are made by three experts in the PF environment, and these estimates are aggregated by using PF aggregation operators. The optimistic, normal, and pessimistic estimations made with PFSs are converted into ordinary triangular fuzzy sets in the further stages of the analysis, and the economic life is determined for both the defender and the challenger by defuzzification of the triangular fuzzy numbers obtained with the center of gravity method. It has been revealed that the proposed fuzzy replacement analysis can be used as a decision support model for managers under uncertainty. A multi-expert comprehensive example has shown that PFSs can be used successfully in a real replacement application. The robustness of the given decisions by the replacement analysis is confirmed by a sensitivity analysis.

RELATIONSHIP OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERTISE

This article discusses issues related to the procedures for assessing the impact on the environment, environmental expertise and strategic environmental expertise of the planned economic and other activities in national legislation and international documents. The actual problems of the lack of a specific range of objects of expertise and other mechanisms of environmental protection measures are determined.

Deep learning based carbon emissions forecasting and renewable energy's impact quantification

Global warming is one of the most challenging issues of the current era. Revolutions in industrial, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sectors significantly contribute in increasing global warming. Green House Gases (GHG) emissions from industrial, transportation, power and other sectors cause environmental pollution, which results in climate degradation. Environmental experts are well aware of the disastrous consequences of excessive global warming; therefore, several decarbonization strategies are developed and practiced in the recent past. A widely practiced decarbonization strategy is replacing fossil fuels by Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in the power systems. Electricity consumers are also encouraged to shift their consumption load to low carbon emissions' time periods. For accomplishing this task, an estimation of future carbon emissions is required. In this paper, power system's carbon emissions are predicted accurately with the help of a novel and an efficient forecasting model. The proposed model comprises of Spearman Correlation Analysis (SCA) and Improved Shallow Denoising Autoencoder (ISDAE) based feature engineering. Forecasting is performed through an Improved Particle Swarm Optimization (IPSO) based Deep Neural Network (DNN) forecaster. In addition, a comprehensive quantification analysis is also presented in this paper. The impacts of RES integration level on the electricity price, consumption cost and Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions are quantified descriptively and graphically. Performance of the proposed forecasting model is evaluated by Normalized Root Mean Square Error (NRMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Mean Square Error (MSE). Simulation results prove that the proposed model outperforms Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) based carbon emission forecasting models in terms of forecasting accuracy.

Balanced scorecard and eco‐innovation in the industrial sector: A strategic map for environmental innovation

AbstractIn recent years, companies in several industries have adhered to new initiatives, developed new technologies and industrial processes to help reduce pollution and address other factors that have negative impacts on the environment. However, there is a lack of practical methodologies to evaluate the environmental performance of an organization, and there is no appropriate methodology to help companies direct their investment strategies to achieve corporate sustainability. An eco‐innovation plan is an important tool to help industries become more environmentally friendly, but its implementation is difficult to achieve in the short term. To this end, this article offers a strategic eco‐innovation map based on the well‐known balanced scorecard (BSC) that aims to help companies mitigate environmental impacts and promote sustainable development without harming their development and growth. Based on a review of the relevant literature and a survey of 30 environmental experts using four dimensions and 38 indicators, the map provides a methodological path for the investment in environmental sustainability initiatives and programs with financial returns.