Search

Permeable Pavement (PP) represents a good solution to solve stormwater management problems. In this way, the potential removal efficiency of a PP in treating dissolved metals was assessed by perfor...

Between 2014 and 2016, Rio de Janeiro hosted two mega sport events – the Federation Internationale de Football Association World Cup and the Olympic Games – which generated changes in the city. This study sought to analyse Rio residents’ perceptions in the lead-up to the latter games. A quantitative survey was conducted face-to-face with a sample of 404 residents, exactly one year before the Olympics. The data indicated that the residents found the pre-game period troubling because of uncertainties regarding the city’s desired Olympic legacy. Residents’ routines were impacted by either traffic issues or media reports that generated expectations and apprehension. The pre-Olympic period was marked by protests, concerns about overspending, construction delays and fears about the mega-events’ success. However, residents’ perceptions included clear expectations regarding the event legacy’s implications for tourism businesses and the destination’s visibility, as well as lasting improvements affecting tourism and sport activities.

Conventional green roofs, although having numerous advantages, could place water resources under pressure in dry periods due to irrigation requirements. Moreover, the thermal efficiency of green roofs could decrease without irrigation, and the plants could get damaged. Therefore, this study aims to improve the efficiency of conventional green roofs by proposing a new multipurpose green roof combined with fog and dew harvesting systems. The analysis determined that the average water use of green roofs in the summer (in humid regions) is about 3.7 L/m2/day, in the Mediterranean regions about 4.5 L/m2/day, and in arid regions about 2.7 L/m2/day. During the dry season, the average fog potential in humid regions is 1.2 to 15.6 L/m2/day, Mediterranean regions between 1.6 and 4.6 L/m2/day, and arid regions between 1.8 and 11.8 L/m2/day. The average dew potential during the dry season in humid regions is 0.1 to 0.3 L/m2/day, in the Mediterranean regions is 0.2 to 0.3 L/m2/day, and in the arid regions is 0.5 to 0.7 L/m2/day. The analysis of the suggested multipurpose green roof combined with fog/dew harvesting systems, in the summer, in three different climates, show that fog harvesting could provide the total water requirement of the green roofs, and that dew harvesting by PV (photo-voltaic) panels could provide 15 to 26% of the water requirements. Moreover, it could show a higher thermal impact on the building, higher efficiency in stormwater management, less dependence on the urban water network, and greater efficiency in decreasing urban air, water, and noise pollution. Finally, the novel green roof system could consume less water due to the shaded area by mesh and solar PVs and maximize the utilization of the roof area, as solar panels could be applied on the same green roof.

The advantages of low-impact development approaches, such as green walls in an urban environment, are numerous. These systems can be applied for managing stormwater, saving energy consumption, decreasing noise pollution, improving runoff quality, improving life quality, and so forth. Besides, atmospheric water harvesting methods are considered a nonconventional water source. There are many studies about the analysis and advantages of green walls and atmospheric water harvesting conducted separately. However, the use of a combined system that uses fog harvesting in the irrigation of green walls has received less attention in previous studies, and therefore in this research, the feasibility of a novel green wall platform was investigated. At first, the potential of using green walls and atmospheric water harvesting in different climates was analyzed. Then a new combined system was proposed and explained. The study results determined that atmospheric water harvesting can be applied as a source of irrigation for green facilities, particularly in the dry season and in periods with lower precipitation. In the Mediterranean climate, summer fog harvesting yields 1.4&ndash, 4.6 L/m2/day, and the water consumption of green walls is about 4&ndash, 8 L/day/m2. This can improve one issue of green walls in an urban environment, which is irrigation in summer. Furthermore, the novel system would protect plants from severe conditions, improve buildings&rsquo, thermal behavior by decreasing direct sunlight, and increase conventional green walls&rsquo, efficiency and advantages.

At the outlet of the Vermicelli catchment&mdash, a peri-urban area located in the campus of University of Calabria (Cosenza, Southern Italy)&mdash, a sedimentation tank is located, aiming at collecting the basin surface runoff and improve its quality. First, experimental results of the treatment effects are here presented and analyzed. In addition, a monitoring campaign was conducted in order to characterize the particles transported by surface runoff and to determine the treatment efficiency of the tank. The analysis showed the presence of a pollutant load in the surface runoff of the Vermicelli basin and provided information on its particle-size distribution (PSD). Results were considered in terms of the treatment efficiency of the sedimentation tank, showing a good overall removal efficiency value, together with a high variability of the removal sedimentation efficiency. This variability is mainly due to the different grain size of the suspended solids and the characteristics of the rainfall event.

The role of the industrial sector in total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource consumption is well-known, and many industrial activities may have a negative environmental impact. The solution to decreasing the negative effects cannot be effective without the consideration of sustainable development. There are several methods for sustainability evaluation, such as tools based on products, processes, or plants besides supply chain or life cycle analysis, and there are different rating systems suggesting 80, 140, or more indicators for assessment. The critical point is the limits such as required techniques and budget in using all indicators for all factories in the beginning. Moreover, the weight of each indicator might change based on the selected alternative that it is not a fixed value and could change in a new case study. In this regard, to determine the impact and weight of different indicators in sustainable factories, a multi-layer Triangular Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (TFAHP) approach was developed, and the application of the method was described and verified. The defined layers are six, for each layer, the pairwise comparison matrix was developed, and the total aggregated score concerning the sustainability goal for each alternative was calculated that shows the Relative Importance Coefficient (RIC). The method is formulated in a way that allows adding the new indicators in all layers as the verification shows, and thus, there are no limits for using any green rating systems. Therefore, the presented approach by TFAHP would provide an additional tool toward the sustainable development of factories.

Urbanization affects ecosystem health and downstream communities by changing the natural flow regime. In this context, Low Impact Development (LID) systems are important tools in sustainable development. There are many aspects in design and operation of LID systems and the choice of the selected LID and its location in the basin can affect the results. In this regard, the Mathematical Optimization Approaches can be an ideal method to optimize LIDs use. Here we consider the application of TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and Rough Set theory (multiple attributes decision-making method). An advantage of using the Rough Set method in LID systems is that the selected decisions are explicit, and the method is not limited by restrictive assumptions. This new mathematical optimization approach for LID systems improves previous studies on this subject. Moreover, it provides an additional tool for the analysis of essential attributes to select and optimize the best LID system for a project.

The real-time control (RTC) system is a valid and cost-effective solution for urban stormwater management. This paper aims to evaluate the beneficial effect on urban flooding risk mitigation produced by applying RTC techniques to an urban drainage network by considering different control configuration scenarios. To achieve the aim, a distributed real-time system, validated in previous studies, was considered. This approach uses a smart moveable gates system, controlled by software agents, managed by a swarm intelligence algorithm. By running the different scenarios by a customized version of the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM), the findings obtained show a redistribution of conduits filling degrees, exploiting the whole system storage capacity, with a significant reduction of node flooding and total flood volume.

The aim of this study is to investigate the use of different global sensitivity analysis techniques in conjunction with a mechanistic model in the numerical analysis of a permeable pavement installed at the University of Calabria. The Morris method and the variance-based E-FAST procedure are applied to investigate the influence of soil hydraulic parameters on the pavement’s behavior. The analysis reveals that the Morris method represents a reliable computationally cheap alternative to variance-based procedures for screening important factors and provides the first inspection of the model. The study is completed by a combined GSA-GLUE uncertainty analysis used to evaluate the model accuracy.

Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) have been proven to effectively mitigate and solve resource depletion and climate-related challenges in urban areas. The COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action CA17133 entitled “Implementing nature-based solutions (NBS) for building a resourceful circular city” has established seven urban circularity challenges (UCC) that can be addressed effectively with NBS. This paper presents the outcomes of five elucidation workshops with more than 20 European experts from different backgrounds. These international workshops were used to examine the effectiveness of NBS to address UCC and foster NBS implementation towards circular urban water management. A major outcome was the identification of the two most relevant challenges for water resources in urban areas: ‘Restoring and maintaining the water cycle’ (UCC1) and ‘Water and waste treatment, recovery, and reuse’ (UCC2). s Moreover, significant synergies with ‘Nutrient recovery and reuse’, ‘Material recovery and reuse’, ‘Food and biomass production’, ‘Energy efficiency and recovery’, and ‘Building system recovery’ were identified. Additionally, the paper presents real-life case studies to demonstrate how different NBS and supporting units can contribute to the UCC. Finally, a case-based semi-quantitative assessment of the presented NBS was performed. Most notably, this paper identifies the most typically employed NBS that enable processes for UCC1 and UCC2. While current consensus is well established by experts in individual NBS, we presently highlight the potential to address UCC by combining different NBS and synergize enabling processes. This study presents a new paradigm and aims to enhance awareness on the ability of NBS to solve multiple urban circularity issues.

An adequate hydrological description of water flow in permeable pavement systems relies heavily on the knowledge of the unsaturated hydraulic properties of the construction materials. Although several modeling tools and many laboratory methods already exist in the literature to determine the hydraulic properties of soils, the importance of an accurate materials hydraulic description of the permeable pavement system, is increasingly recognized in the fields of urban hydrology. Thus, the aim of this study is to propose techniques/procedures on how to interpret water flow through the construction system using the HYDRUS model. The overall analysis includes experimental and mathematical procedures for model calibration and validation to assess the suitability of the HYDRUS-2D model to interpret the hydraulic behaviour of a lab-scale permeable pavement system. The system consists of three porous materials: a wear layer of porous concrete blocks, a bedding layers of fine gravel, and a sub-base layer of coarse gravel. The water regime in this system, i.e. outflow at the bottom and water contents in the middle of the bedding layer, was monitored during ten irrigation events of various durations and intensities. The hydraulic properties of porous concrete blocks and fine gravel described by the van Genuchten functions were measured using the clay tank and the multistep outflow experiments, respectively. Coarse gravel properties were set at literature values. In addition, some of the parameters (Ks of the concrete blocks layer, and α, n and Ks of the bedding layer) were optimized with the HYDRUS-2D model from water fluxes and soil water contents measured during irrigation events. The measured and modeled hydrographs were compared using the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) index (varied between 0.95 and 0.99) while the coefficient of determination R2 was used to assess the measured water content versus the modelled water content in the bedding layer ( R 2 = 0.81 ÷ 0.87 ) . The parameters were validated using the remaining sets of measurements resulting in NSE values greater than 0.90 ( 0.91 ÷ 0.99 ) and R2 between 0.63 and 0.91. Results have confirmed the applicability of HYDRUS-2D to describe correctly the hydraulic behaviour of the lab-scale system.

The purpose of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are to create optimum thermal comfort and appropriate indoor air quality (IAQ) for occupants. Air ventilation systems can significantly affect the health risk in indoor environments, especially those by contaminated aerosols. Therefore, the main goal of the study is to analyze the indoor airflow patterns in the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and the impact of outlets/windows. The other goal of this study is to simulate the trajectory of the aerosols from a human sneeze, investigate the impact of opening windows on the number of air changes per hour (ACH) and exhibit the role of dead zones with poor ventilation. The final goal is to show the application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation in improving the HVAC design, such as outlet locations or airflow rate, in addition to the placement of occupants. In this regard, an extensive literature review has been combined with the CFD method to analyze the indoor airflow patterns, ACH, and the role of windows. The airflow pattern analysis shows the critical impact of inflow/outflow and windows. The results show that the CFD model simulation could exhibit optimal placement and safer locations for the occupants to decrease the health risk. The results of the discrete phase simulation determined that the actual ACH could be different from the theoretical ACH as the short circuit and dead zones affect the ACH.

The simulation of the ventilation and the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems of vehicles could be used in the energy demand management of vehicles besides improving the air quality inside their cabins. Moreover, traveling by public transport during a pandemic is a concerning factor, and analysis of the vehicle’s cabin environments could demonstrate how to decrease the risk and create a safer journey for passengers. Therefore, this article presents airflow analysis, air changes per hour (ACH), and respiration aerosols’ trajectory inside three vehicles, including a typical car, bus, and airplane. In this regard, three vehicles’ cabin environment boundary conditions and the HVAC systems of the selected vehicles were determined, and three-dimensional numerical simulations were performed using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling. The analysis of the airflow patterns and aerosol trajectories in the selected vehicles demonstrate the critical impact of inflow, outflow, and passenger’s locations in the cabins. The CFD model results exhibited that the lowest risk could be in the airplane and the highest in the bus because of the location of airflows and outflows. The discrete CFD model analysis determined the ACH for a typical car of about 4.3, a typical bus of about 7.5, and in a typical airplane of about 8.5, which were all less than the standard protocol of infection prevention, 12 ACH. According to the results, opening windows in the cars could decrease the aerosol loads and improve the low ACH by the HVAC systems. However, for the buses, a new design for the outflow location or an increase in the number of outflows appeared necessary. In the case of airplanes, the airflow paths were suitable, and by increasing the airflow speed, the required ACH might be achieved. Finally, in the closed (recirculating) systems, the role of filters in decreasing the risk appeared critical.

In the last few years, the increase of impervious surfaces, due to ongoing urbanization and climate change led several environmental impacts such as: urban heat island effect, air pollution, urban flooding, deterioration of water discharged in the receiving water bodies, and so on. In this context, a sustainable strategy is required, and an innovative solution can be found in the implementation of low impact development (LID) systems as green walls. These sustainable solutions, by reintroducing vegetation in urban area, can partially restore the pre-urbanization situation and mitigate these drastic environmental impacts. To investigate the state of art of these techniques, a deeper overview on the green wall systems was carried out. This analysis was finalized to evaluate the current developed systems in terms of classification, components and benefits in order to establish where do we stand in terms of evolution of these systems and where we are going in terms of new trends and possible future directions.

Here we present the hydrological effectiveness of Low Impact development (LID) solutions at urban catchment scale, by modelling a highly urbanised area located in South Italy. For the model creation and simulation, PCSWMM based on the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) was used. The analysis was carried out by considering different land use conversion scenarios including the implementation of LID practices. Therefore, a specific permeable pavement and green roof developed and implemented at full scale at University of Calabria were chosen as source-control measures. The simulations were run by using as input a synthetic hyetograph of 30 min with return period of 10 years. Three hydrological performance indexes, Runoff Coefficient (RC), Runoff Reduction (RR) and Peak Flow Reduction (PFR) were evaluated at subcatchment scale and, a mean value was estimated for an overall evaluation. Main findings show that RR and PFR linearly increase with the reduction of imperviousness due to the modelling of a major percentage of LID solutions, while the RC decreases. In addition, first detailed results reveal the suitability of LID solutions to reduce surface runoff also for the scenario 1 which considers the conversion of only 30% of specific impervious surface in green roofs and permeable pavements.

Permeable Pavement (PP) represents a good solution to solve stormwater management problems both in quantitative and qualitative way. In this way, the potential removal efficiency of a permeable pavement in treating metals was assessed by performing a monitoring campaign at a lab-scale system constructed for the purpose. Based on literature experiences, different relatively high-level concentrations of Copper and Zinc were applied during 8 different synthetic rainfall events. Results shown that the removal rates of Cu and Zn of the lab-scale pavements range from 85% to 92% and from 65% to 82%, respectively. Results also shown that the Cu removal rates of the lab-scale pavement are higher than Zn removal rate.

In an urban environment, sewer flooding and combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are a potential risk to human life, economic assets and the environment. In this way, traditional urban drainage techniques seem to be inadequate for the purpose so to mitigate such phenomena, new techniques such as Real Time Control (RTC) of urban drainage systems and Low Impact Development (LID) techniques represent a valid and cost-effective solution. This chapter lists some of the recent experiences in the field of Urban Hydrology consisting in a series of facilities, fully equipped with sensors and other electronical component, to prevent flooding in urban areas. A series of innovative numerical analysis (in Urban Hydrology research) have been proposed to define properties of the hydrological/hydraulic models used to reproduce the natural processes involved.

For many hydrologic analyses, planning or design problems, reliable rainfall estimates are necessary. For this reason, an accurate estimation of storm event properties is central to continuous simulation of rainfall. Rainfall is generally noted as single events or storms where the beginning and the end are defined by rainless of particular size duration called Minimum Inter-event Time (MIT). Starting from a critical study of the state of the art, this paper intends to investigate the definition of MIT for rainfall events shorter than an hour that, on an urban scale, are the most critical for designers, planners and operators of urban drainage system. All event characteristics such as depth and mean rain rate, are influenced by the choice of the value of MIT. This paper reviews the range of approaches used in literature and after this, based on a year of pluviograph records on an urban catchment, proposes a value of MIT according to catchment network entry time.

Mechanistic models have proven to be accurate tools for the numerical analysis of the hydraulic behavior of Low Impact Development (LIDs) techniques. However, their widespread adoption has been limited by their computational cost. In this view, surrogate modeling is focused on developing and using a computationally inexpensive surrogate of the original model. While having been previously applied to various water-related and environmental modeling problems, no studies have used surrogate models for the analysis of LIDs. The aim of this research thus was to investigate the benefit of surrogate-based modeling in the numerical analysis of LIDs. The kriging technique was used to approximate the deterministic response of the widely used mechanistic model HYDRUS-2D, which was employed to simulate the variably-saturated hydraulic behavior of a contained stormwater filter. The Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) index was used to compare the simulated and measured outflows and as the variable of interest for the construction of the response surface. The validated kriging model was first used to carry out a Global Sensitivity Analysis of the unknown soil hydraulic parameters of the filter layer, revealing that only the shape parameter α and the saturated hydraulic conductivity Ks significantly affected the model response. Next, the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm was used to estimate their values. The NSE value of 0.85 indicated a good accuracy of estimated parameters. Finally, the calibrated model was validated against an independent set of measured outflows with a NSE value of 0.8, which again corroborated the reliability of the surrogate-based optimized parameters.

Formula One has had the reputation of being the top organization for motorsport for over half a century, and the brand itself conveys an elite status to the hosts of the Formula One auto racing events. In recent years Formula One has attempted to expand beyond the traditional European and North American markets. This desire to expand brought Formula One to Istanbul, Turkey. However, a lack of market analysis and inadequate planning caused Formula One to shutter its event after only seven years. In order to understand the failure of Formula One in Istanbul completely, it is necessary to focus on the goals of the Formula One organization as well as the goals of the Turkish government. Ultimately, the relationship foundered because each entity could not meet the needs of the other.

The participants (athletes, spectators, organizers, etc.) of a sport event co-create the overall experience for each other and for themselves. Personal characteristics and motivational factors to attend the event often differ amongst participants, and the event marketing strategy should address the difference is those who co-create the event experience. The knowledge of different motivators as well as personal values of event participants should give new insight to sport event marketers and managers. According to the Human Values Theory, values are the most important guiding principles for people when making decisions. Sport events attract firstly the competing athletes and secondly the spectating audience. This paper studies the personal value structures of the spectators and competing team members in World Rally Championship (WRC) Neste Rally Finland event. The overall summary of findings reveals in part the factors behind the popularity of WRC Neste Rally Finland. For some, the rally is a “family reunion,” where experienced spectators come to enjoy the rally driven by same minded, experienced teams and drivers.

Design storms are very useful in many hydrological and hydraulic practices and are obtained from statistical analysis of precipitation records. However considering design storms, which are often quite unlike the natural rainstorms, may result in designing oversized or undersized drainage facilities. For these reasons, in this study, a two-parameter double exponential function is proposed to parameterize historical storm events. The proposed function has been assessed against the storms selected from 5-year rainfall time series with a 1-minute resolution, measured by three meteorological stations located in Calabria, Italy. In particular, a nonlinear least square optimization has been used to identify parameters. In previous studies, several evaluation methods to measure the goodness of fit have been used with excellent performances. One parameter is related to the centroid of the rain distribution; the second one is related to high values of the standard deviation of the kurtosis for the selected events. Finally, considering the similarity between the proposed function and the Gumbel function, the two parameters have been computed with the method of moments; in this case, the correlation values were lower than those computed with nonlinear least squares optimization but sufficiently accurate for designing purposes.