Search

• Sewage treatment deficits for forecasted rural and urban populations computed for India. • Scenario analysis to aid urban planners and decision-makers plan sustainable sewage treatment. • Life cycle costs computed considering land, capital, operation and maintenance cost. • Investing in land for natural treatment systems beneficial than energy-intensive treatment. • Lowered greenhouse gas emissions due to natural and hybrid treatment systems. Sewage treatment involves a trade-off of land vs. energy and the location of installing Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) strongly impacts the decisions regarding treatment technologies. In the wake of rapid urbanization, deteriorating freshwater quality and water scarcity, it is crucial to plan adequate and low-cost sewerage infrastructure that can improve the quality of life in rural and urban areas. The present work involves a novel life cycle analysis through six scenarios generated from a holistic perspective that can aid urban planners and urban local bodies in planning the sewage treatment facilities in their cities, towns or villages. Instead of planning sewerage infrastructure for a long-term period of thirty years, it is suggested to create and operate the STPs only for the upcoming decade. Further, owing to the drawbacks of mechanized and natural treatment systems, adopting a mix of these treatment approaches in planning infrastructure is suggested and the benefits of implementing the same are quantified and discussed. Implementing these strategies results in almost 30 % cost savings and 40 % reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, hence, investing in land for natural treatment systems is suggested instead of incurring heavy electricity bills for mechanized treatment systems. The land cost significantly affects the decision-making regarding treatment technology selection; hence, the variation in the life cycle cost of different sewage treatment approaches is assessed for varying land rates in India. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A notable increase in research related to geospatial vulnerability assessment of urban floods is observed, primarily driven by the advances in exponential technologies and increasing frequency and severity of such events. Several studies have been attempted in Indian contexts for local-level risk mitigation and preparedness and informed decision-making with a limited scope due to unavailability of granular data at various levels as required. In response to this gap, current study examines the potential of top-down and bottom-up geospatial vulnerability assessment approaches for urban floods in Patna City of Bihar state, India. A qualitative articulation is used to identify and characterise a set of critical indicators and attributes relevant to the local vulnerability assessment of urban floods specific to the study area. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied for dimension reduction and assigning weights to indicators, and Composite Vulnerability Indices (CVIs) at Ward and Household (HH) levels are developed using multicriteria decision analysis. The results show over a fifty percent variation in the vulnerability profiles of households using ward-level (top-down) and HH-level (bottom-up) approaches. Moreover, a narrower range in the z-score of HH-level CVI (−1.26 to 2.60) over ward-level CVI (−3.95 to 2.49) from sensitivity analysis indicates the robustness of the former over the latter. The findings reveal a potential risk of maladaptation when employing a ward-level approach to vulnerability assessment as a policy instrument. The study also analytically validates the significance of localising indicators in regional and global frameworks for achieving efficient decision-making toward sustainability targets. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Logical framework for developing efficient MSW management system. • Multi-attribute model for finding suitable locations of MSW facilities. • Inclusion of all relevant environmental, social, economical and technical criteria. Selecting appropriate locations for municipal solid waste (MSW) management facilities, such as transfer stations, is an important issue in rapidly developing regions. Multiple alternatives and evaluation attributes need to be analyzed for finalizing the locations of these facilities. Multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) approaches are found to be very effective for ranking several potential locations and hence selecting the best among them based on the identified attributes. However, conventional MADM approaches fail to find the rankings of alternatives derived from all possible combinations of these potential locations. Therefore, this study presents a two-stage MADM model that also accounts for all possible combinations of locations. This study evaluates economical, environmental, social and technical attributes based on realistic conditions of the study area, i.e. , Nashik city (India). The results provide the ranks of all possible combinations along with their probabilities of rank reversibility. The mean and standard deviation of the relative closeness are further evaluated for the top-ranking locations under distinct schemes. The present study will help stakeholders in finding suitable locations for MSW management facilities while considering economic, environmental, social and technical attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global carbon budget, defined as the cumulative amount of permissible carbon emissions to meet the temperature targets, is widely used to study climate change. This carbon budget is rapidly decreasing, with a high probability of it getting exhausted in the coming few decades. The extensive use of non-renewable resources has resulted in a rapid depletion of the global carbon budget. Currently, there is a lack of studies assessing the long-term impact of various sectors on the rapidly decreasing global carbon budget. The recent budget estimates have further reduced by 200 GtCO 2 in the past decade, creating conflicts among the nations towards getting a higher share of the remaining budget. This study focuses on allocating the global carbon budget to a sub-sectoral level for India's iron and steel sector. First, the global carbon budget is allocated using different approaches, giving India a range of carbon budgets. Further, the allocation is done to the sectoral and sub-sectoral levels to obtain the benchmark targets between 2020 and 2050 from the national carbon budget. Projections have been made for the production capacity and the expected emissions till 2050 for India's iron and steel sector using three scenarios based on specific CO 2 emission reduction. The results indicate that the carbon emissions for the "specific CO 2 emission stagnation" scenario for 2 °C temperature target are 66% to 726% above the benchmark carbon budget allocated to the iron and steel sector using different allocation methods. The study also shows the benchmark carbon budget of the iron and steel sector for the 2 °C, 1.7 °C, and 1.5 °C temperature targets will deplete between 2023 and 2046 for the different emission scenarios. • Proposed framework for allocating global carbon budget to the sub-sectoral level. • Global to national carbon budget allocation done using four approaches. • Sub-sector emissions and production capacity projection done using three scenarios. • Year of exhaustion for sub-sector's carbon budget determined for various scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • National targets for embedded GHG emissions are calculated from the climate goal of the Paris Agreement. • Four explorative consumption scenarios for 2050 are derived based on a large survey of individuals in Denmark. • Reductions in GHG emission intensities of technologies required to meet national emission targets are estimated. • These estimates are compared to historic time series of emission intensities and future scenarios for ten selected technologies. • Results strongly suggest that both changes in "business as usual" and "consumption as usual" are needed. Abstract The COP21 summit in Paris led to a policy commitment of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5–2.0 °C and this can be translated to a global annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emission budget that is shrinking rapidly throughout the 21st century. Here, we estimate the reductions in GHG emission intensities of technologies that will be required for the embedded GHG emissions of a developed nation to stay within its fair share of a global emission budget in the year 2050. The estimates are made for different conceivable developments in consumption patterns in the case of Denmark, based on a large survey of current consumption patterns. To evaluate whether the required emission intensity reductions are likely to be met, they are compared to historic time series of emission intensities and to projections for 2050, based on policies currently in place, for ten technologies that have a high contribution to current GHG emissions. We estimate that emission intensities must be reduced by factors of 2–12 and 5–14, depending on the development in consumption, for the 2.0 and 1.5 °C climate goals, respectively. Of the ten selected technologies, only electricity supply is projected to, partially, meet the most strict reduction target, applying to a scenario where all inhabitants in 2050 consume as the most consuming inhabitants today. The results indicate that both a change in "consumption as usual" and in "business as usual" is needed for developed nations to meet equitable climate targets. This has implications for national and international policies targeting GHG emission intensities and may require a new orientation of policies to consider the societal structures around consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a second-generation wastewater treatment inventory model, WW LCI 2.0, which on many fronts represents considerable advances compared to its previous version WW LCI 1.0. WW LCI 2.0 is a novel and complete wastewater inventory model integrating WW LCI 1.0, i.e. a complete life cycle inventory, including infrastructure requirement, energy consumption and auxiliary materials applied for the treatment of wastewater and disposal of sludge and SewageLCI, i.e. fate modelling of chemicals released to the sewer. The model is expanded to account for different wastewater treatment levels, i.e. primary, secondary and tertiary treatment, independent treatment by septic tanks and also direct discharge to natural waters. Sludge disposal by means of composting is added as a new option. The model also includes a database containing statistics on wastewater treatment levels and sludge disposal patterns in 56 countries. The application of the new model is demonstrated using five chemicals assumed discharged to wastewater systems in four different countries. WW LCI 2.0 model results shows that chemicals such as diethylenetriamine penta (methylene phosphonic acid) (DTPMP) and Diclofenac, exhibit lower climate change (CC) and freshwater ecotoxicity (FET) burdens upon wastewater treatment compared to direct discharge in all country scenarios. Results for Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen (more readily degradable) show that the CC burden depends on the country-specific levels of wastewater treatment. Higher treatment levels lead to lower CC and FET burden compared to direct discharge. WW LCI 2.0 makes it possible to generate complete detailed life cycle inventories and fate analyses for chemicals released to wastewater systems. Our test of the WW LCI 2.0 model with five chemicals illustrates how the model can provide substantially different outcomes, compared to conventional wastewater inventory models, making the inventory dependent upon the atomic composition of the molecules undergoing treatment as well as the country specific wastewater treatment levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the construction sector, LCAs typically apply an approach based on fixed or partially fixed building lifespans/service lives/reference study period. The temporal scopes applied in building LCAs are hence typically not reflecting that the timeframes buildings can provide the service they are intended to provide, are (highly) dependent on numerous factors e.g.: building location, materials used to construct the building, energy supply and the use of the building. Inaccurate estimation of the temporal scope of a building LCA will lead to incorrect quantification of the environmental impacts of buildings. Incorrect quantification of the environmental performance of buildings may, in the worst case, derange/decelerate the development within the building sector towards more sustainable buildings. In this paper, a data set consisting of 20999 Danish buildings, demolished between 2009 and 2015, is analyzed. A multiple linear regression model is derived and used to quantify the temporal scope (often referred to as the reference study period) of building LCAs in an attempt to improve the accuracy of sustainability assessment of buildings, taking several influencing factors into account. The results obtained from the derived model are subsequently compared with several fixed/partially fixed building lifespan/service life/reference study period quantification approaches The regression model proved to estimate the lifespan with lower errors (compared to observed values) than the prevailing approach relying on a single fixed value for all building locations, uses and building materials. The application of model based site, use, and/or material specific etc. temporal scope quantification in LCA is new and provides a mean to reduce the uncertainty of LCA results; however, the approach needs to be formalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work looks at coupling Life cycle assessment (LCA) with a dynamic inventory and multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to improve the validity and reliability of single score results for complex systems. This is done using the case study of a representative Danish single family home over the service life of the building. This case study uses both the established and the coupled MCDA assessment methods to quantify and assess the balance of impacts between the production of mineral wool insulation versus the production of space heat. The use of TOPSIS method for calculating single scores is proposed as an alternative to the ReCiPe single score impact assessment method. Based on the single score impact values obtained from both of these methods, various insulation levels are ranked to determine an ideal insulation level and gauge the effectiveness of environmental impact reduction measures in current Danish building regulations. Using a comparison of the results from the two methods, a preferred choice of impact assessment method is determined. The findings show that if the midpoint impacts for a particular scenario are strongly correlated with a climate change impact indicator, it does not matter which impact assessment is applied. However, for the scenarios where other impact categories vary inversely or independently from the climate change impact indicator, such as with renewable energy production, there is need for a more unconventional method, such as the TOPSIS method, for calculating single score impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper presents a novel approach for absolute sustainability assessment of a building's environmental performance. It is demonstrated how the absolute sustainable share of the earth carrying capacity of a specific building type can be estimated using carrying capacity based normalization factors. A building is considered absolute sustainable if its annual environmental burden is less than its share of the earth environmental carrying capacity. Two case buildings – a standard house and an upcycled single-family house located in Denmark – were assessed according to this approach and both were found to exceed the target values of three (almost four) of the eleven impact categories included in the study. The worst-case excess was for the case building, representing prevalent Danish building practices, which utilized 1563% of the Climate Change carrying capacity. Four paths to reach absolute sustainability for the standard house were proposed focusing on three measures: minimizing environmental impacts from building construction, minimizing impacts from energy consumption during use phase, and reducing the living area per person. In an intermediate path, absolute sustainability can be obtained by reducing the impacts from construction by 89%, use phase energy consumption by 80%, and the living area by 60%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon footprint (CFP) is widely applied as an indicator when assessing environmental sustainability of products and services. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the validity of CFP as overall environmental indicator for representing the environmental burden of residents from urbanized areas. Applying four different Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods environmental impact profiles were determined for the consumption patterns of 1281 Danish urban residents. Six main consumption components were distinguished including road transport, air travel, food, accommodation (covering consumption of materials for the construction of dwellings) and use of energy in terms of thermal energy, and electricity. The results for the individual consumption components showed a strong correlation between CFP and nearly all other impact indicators for all the applied LCIA methods However, upon aggregation of the indicator results across consumption components, the impact indicators for the total consumption showed no significant correlation between CFP and the other impact scores for any of the four impact assessment methods. These findings suggest that while CFP can be a good indicator of the environmental burden associated with specific activities, this is not the case for more complex activities (such as consumption patterns related to urban life styles). This conclusion discourages the use of CFP as sustainability measure in relation to regulation of private or public consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential building insulation is regarded as an easy solution for environmentally friendly building design. This assumption is based on the perception that the amount of thermal energy used to create insulation in most cases is much smaller than the amount of thermal energythat is needed for space heating without insulation over the lifespan of a building. When the energy sources for insulation production are similar to the energy mix that supplies heat, this logic is valid to very high level of insulation. However, in Denmark, as well as many other countries this assumption is becoming increasingly incorrect. Given the generally long service life of buildings, the significance of future energy mixes, which are expected/intended to have a smaller environmental impact, can be great. In this paper, a reference house is used to assess the life cycle environmental impacts of mineral wool insulation in a Danish single-family detached home. This single-family house, is based on averages of current Danish construction practices with building heat losses estimated using Be10. To simulate a changing district heating grid mix, heat supply fuel sources are modeled according to Danish energy mix reports of fuel mix since 1972. Both the dynamic impact potentials saved by using insulation and the impacts induced from insulation's production are utilized to create an overall dynamic energy inventory for the lifecycle assessment. Our study shows that the use of such a dynamic energy inventory is necessary for increasing the validity of optimization assessment, and our study further shows that it is likely that current Danish regulation will not promote optimum levels of insulation in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of selecting the most sustainable stormwater management alternative in developing countries in a dense urban context. Firstly, suitable Low Impact Development (LID) stormwater management measures for dense urban areas in developing countries were identified based on critical review of literature. Alternatives have been formulated as varying percentages (degree of adoption) of these suitable measures to manage the stormwater sustainably. Further, a novel decision-making framework is developed which generates the hierarchy for selection of the most sustainable stormwater management alternative. Four main criteria (technical, economic, environmental and social) comprising three quantitative and eight qualitative indicators have been used for evaluating seven alternatives. The regional and local societal priorities are captured through criteria-weightings and are translated into a decision-making methodology. Experts' opinions have been included using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). One of the most widely used Multiple Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) method, TOPSIS, is used to rank the alternatives and to identify the most sustainable alternatives. Various scenarios to represent different stakeholders' perspectives have been articulated. Alternative with medium level of cost implication and satisfactory level of performance is chosen by the decision making method in most of the scenarios. The proposed decision making approach can be used for selecting sustainable stormwater management options in densely populated areas of developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been significant change in the way buildings are constructed and the way building energy performance is evaluated. Focus on solely the use phase of a building is beginning to be replaced by a life-cycle based performance assessment. This study assesses the environmental impact trade-offs between the heat produced to meet a building's space heating load and insulation produced to reduce its space heating load throughout the whole life-cycle of a building. To obtain a more realistic valuation of this tradeoff, a dynamic heat production model, which accounts for political projections regarding change in Danish energy supply was used in the analysis. This novel approach of generating inventory for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) helped to refine an understanding of optimal insulation levels. The findings of this study discourage the over-insulation of houses connected to the district heating grid, which is potentially promoted at present in Danish regulation. It is further concluded that improvement of the mineral wool insulation production process could allow for greater levels of environmentally beneficial insulation and would also help in reducing the overall environmental burden from insulating buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Assess potential of NMT and buses to meet regional transportation's climate targets. • Contribution from avoided trips and avoided materials is quantified. • Bus and NMT infrastructure development should be aggressively integrated. • Reducing vehicle material should be prioritized over decreasing tail-pipe emission. • Contributions from NMT and buses are not enough to meet the climate targets. Studies examining the potential of low-carbon modes of passenger transportation for achieving climate goals are limited. The study is one of the first to assess the potential of non-motorized transportation (NMT) and buses to meet regional climate targets representing 2 °C, 1.5 °C, and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions from 2018 to 2050. Also, the approach towards quantifying contribution from avoided trips and materials in holistically understanding the potential of NMT and buses is novel. Data from the transportation model of Mumbai Metropolitan Region's Comprehensive Mobility Plan is used to assess multiple scenarios of upgrading NMT and bus infrastructure to reduce cumulative carbon dioxide emissions (CCE) from passenger transportation. The assessment is based on three push levels, i.e., conservative, moderate, and aggressive. Results show that upgrading bus infrastructure contributes higher to reducing CCE than NMT. As NMT also contributes significantly to decreasing CCE, it is recommended that bus and NMT development should be integrated. However, their combined contribution will not meet the climate targets. Since avoided materials contribute considerably more than avoided trips, high emission materials such as aluminum used in light-weighting should be questioned. The results provide policy guidance to authorities in prioritizing buses and NMT infrastructure development during city planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable and informed resource consumption is the key to make everyday living sustainable for entire populations. An intelligent and strategic way of addressing the challenges related with sustainable development of the everyday living of consumers is to identify consumption-determined hotspots in terms of environmental and health burdens, as well as resource consumptions. Analyzing consumer life styles in terms of consumption patterns in order to identify hotspots is hence the focus of this study. This is achieved by taking into account the entire value chain of the commodities consumed in the context of environmental and human health burdens, as well as resource consumptions. A systematic commodity consumption, commodity disposal, and life style survey of 1281 persons living in urbanized Danish areas was conducted. The findings of the survey showed new impact dimensions in terms of Personal Metabolism (PM) patterns of residents living in urbanized areas of Denmark. Extending the PM analysis with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provided a clear picture of the per capita environmental and human health burdens, as well as resource consumptions, and the exact origin hereof. A generic PM-LCA Model for all the 1281 persons was set-up in Gabi 6. The assessment results obtained applying the model on all 1281 personal consumption scenarios yielded the 1281 Personal Impact Profiles (PIPs). Consumption of food and energy (electricity and thermal energy) proved to be the primary impact sources of PM, followed by transport. The PIPs further revealed that behavioral factors ( e.g. different diets, use of cars, household size) affect the profiles. Hence, behavioral changes are one means out of many that humanity will most likely have to rely on during the sustainable development process. The results of this study will help the Danish and other comparable populations to identify and prioritize the steps towards reducing their environmental, human health, and resource consumption burdens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the development and application of a user-friendly, scenario-based decision support tool (TechSelect 1.0). The objective of the study focuses on implementation of the ‘scenario-based’ multiple attributes decision-making (MADM) approach recently proposed by Kalbar et al. (2012a) . The tool incorporates multiple scenarios to deal with complex decision-making situations typically encountered in urban, suburban and rural areas. The scenario-based decision-making implemented through the tool reduces complexity in the selection of the appropriate wastewater treatment technology. It also uses a life cycle sustainability assessment framework for assessing technologies from environmental (life cycle assessment), economic (life cycle costing) and social (various sustainability indicators) perspectives. In addition, a user-friendly computational platform has been provided for the convenience of end users and stakeholders. The tool has been tested and validated on two real-life case studies pertaining to the problem of decision-making under complex situations. The results clearly explain the technology selection process and justify the simplicity of the tool in both the case studies. The proposed tool will broaden the application of scenario-based decision-making approaches in wastewater management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management of Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste from buildings has become essential to ensure sustainable infrastructural growth across the globe. The major proportion of C&D waste comprises of debris generated from the demolition activities, and their inadequate management can lead to disruption of natural resource cycles. Hence, there is a need to develop a holistic understanding of Demolition Waste Management (DWM) to reduce the building sector's impact on resources. Through a systematic literature review of 148 original journal articles, conference proceedings, and recent review papers (between the period 2000 to 2022) extracted from a scientific database, this study has identified 33 major global strategies for DWM guided by the Circular Economy (CE) framework through a perspective of the building lifecycle. A few of the strategies identified in this review are standardization of building components, incentivization of innovation, extended producer's responsibility, pre-demolition survey and audits, blockchain technology. Furthermore, the way ahead for the DWM in the Indian construction industry is assessed, and ten major challenges in CE implementation in India are discussed. The corrective actions are proposed against each challenge, and the extent of effort required for implementation with the impact created from each measure is also highlighted in this study. The review findings are valuable for both academicians and practitioners while establishing guidelines or framing policies during any stage of construction. The life cycle perspective of DWM proposed in this paper also attempts to chart a roadmap to reach various sustainable development goals. [Display omitted] • Demolition Waste Management (DWM) in building's lifecycle was reviewed. • Construction and Demolition sector studied from a life cycle thinking perspective. • The study proposes 33 building DWM strategies using the Circular Economy framework. • Challenges and way ahead in DWM within the Indian construction sector were assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries frequently encounter decision-making problems to achieve Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) throughout the development of coastal urban regions. Similarly, the prevailing Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) framework, the foundation of spatial environmental planning in Indian coastal regions, has shown limited effectiveness towards ICM enabled sustainable development in the past three decades. Therefore, efficient integrated geospatial approaches are required in such cases to synergize the coastal development and ecosystem services. In this work, Ideal Point (IP) based Coastal Area Index (IP-CAI) approach was developed to characterize coastal urban regions for rational allocation of coastal resources. The IP-CAI approach integrated decision and geospatial science for incorporating a geographical variation of physical coastal indicators in spatial planning. Further, experts' knowledge about the environmental sensitivity of physical coastal indicators toward coastal development was incorporated in the IP-CAI. The coastal megacity of Mumbai, India, was investigated to test and validate the IP-CAI approach for the quantitative characterization of coastal urban regions. The present study demonstrated the usefulness of IP-CAI in addressing a coastal region classification problem with a necessary scientific basis. The results, advantages, limitations, and implementation guidelines of IP-CAI are further discussed. [Display omitted] • Ideal Point approach based Coastal Area Index was developed. • Knowledge from group of experts were used to weight the physical coastal features. • The approach was tested to classify coastal areas of megacity of Mumbai. • Decision-support is improved for associated policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Plate-cutting is a critical operation in recovering steel from ships and involve nearly 70% of the total workforce employed for dismantling and recycling of ships in Alang-Sosiya Yards in India. In order to predict and manage health-safety-environment related concerns in ship-recycling, it is essential to have an in-depth knowledge of inputs and outputs of the plate-cutting operation. A novel time-motion study based methodology was developed in this research, based on extensive field data, to estimate these inputs (labour, oxygen and fuel) and outputs (emissions to air as well as deposition of paint and steel on intertidal sediment). An innovative plate cutting- parameter is defined to serve as functional unit for the study. The analysis of inputs showed that 6.2 kg of fuel is consumed per km of plate cut per mm plate thickness. On the output side, results showed that masses of paint emitted to the ambient air and paint deposited on intertidal sediments were 0.9 and 1.34 kg per km of plate cut per mm plate thickness, respectively, and CO2 emissions were estimated as 21.77 kg per km of plate cut length per mm of plate thickness. These findings are being used in policy making and developing amended regulations by the GMB, Government of Gujarat as well as have been found useful by the European Commission. The estimation approach developed and presented in this study can be used by ship dismantling and repairing yards anywhere in the world. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A framework for technology assessment for wastewater treatment is proposed in this work. A case study of technology selection for high rise buildings in urban centres of India is used for evaluation and to test this framework. The multiple-attribute decision-making technique is used for ranking the alternatives. The three most commonly used wastewater treatment technologies viz., activated sludge process (ASP), sequencing batch reactors (SBR) and membrane bio-reactor (MBR) are evaluated. Seven criteria having indicators derived from life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC) and criteria accounting for resource constraints, robustness of the system and sustainability are used for the evaluations. The technology assessment framework used in this work will help identify appropriate wastewater treatment technologies for various decision-making situations encountered while managing wastewaters. Importantly, this study validates the theory that it is the decision situation which decides the appropriateness of the technology and not the technology itself. Hence, the definition of appropriate technology given by Murphy et al. [4] is more convincing for water and sanitation technologies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

There is a lack of studies on assessing long-term impacts of different sectors on shrinking global carbon budget. Present study focuses on assessing contribution of electric vehicles (EVs) with improving electricity grids' efficiency (EGs) and minimizing 'transmission and distribution' (T&D) losses in reducing carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions and fulfilling emission targets for 2030 and 2050. Eleven different scenarios are articulated with estimated uncertainties for Mumbai Metropolitan Regions' (MMRs') passenger transportation using data extracted from MMR's Comprehensive Mobility Plan's transportation model. A novel methodology is developed to estimate local carbon budget targets from global targets between 2018 and 2050. The estimations indicate that carbon emissions in 'business as usual' scenario are 252%, 505%, and 55% above the targets for 2 °C, 1.5 °C, and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), respectively. Study also shows that introducing EVs in MMR without simultaneously improving EGs will generate more net CO 2 emissions than BAU. EVs with EG and T&D improvements are not enough to meet the estimated targets. However, their combined contribution significantly reduces CO 2 emission by half and reaches peak emission by 2025 from post-half-century. • Developed a novel methodology to estimate local carbon budget. • Transport emissions assessment with electric vehicle, electricity grid (EG), and T&D losses. • Interventions are unable to achieve carbon budget targets of 2 °C, 1.5 °C, and INDC. • Electric vehicles are not suitable without improving EG efficiency, and T&D losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appropriate spatial planning and environmental management of coastal areas in cities are essential to maintain a balance of environmental quality and urban development, whereas unscientific planning practices lead to the degradation of coastal ecosystems. Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) guidelines are currently being used in India for management of the coast. These guidelines are difficult to implement and do not take into account the variation of physical characteristics of the coast. The alternative to this approach is a quantitative land classification in coastal areas based on geospatial and multiple criteria decision making techniques. In this work, we applied these two approaches to the three case locations of the coastal lands in Mumbai region representing areas which are i) predominantly urban, ii) rural and iii) no development areas. The classification results of the two approaches are systematically compared and contrasted to show the lacunae in the present method of CRZ classification and to highlight the advantages of using the quantitative approach in coastal land classification. The comparative analysis shows that the quantitative approach takes into account the variation of physical features along the coast and will help in conserving the coastal ecosystem more efficiently. Image 1 • Challenges are identified in current practice of coastal area classification. • Comparative assessment of quantitative and prevailing approach is carried out. • Field validation showed the advantages of new classification approach. • Quantitative approach is found better than approach of current practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]