1,720,977 research outputs found
ASSESSMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTES: THE CASE OF ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES
No full textHigher education institutes (HEIs) contribute to educate future generations of scientists, decision makers and politicians. To overcome the present and future challenges involving environmental protection and climate change, the education of responsible individuals who may play a key role in improving global environmental sustainability levels is crucial. To achieve this goal, HEIs themselves must be promoters of values and ideas to support sustainable development. To start, HEIs should give a good example to students and society, provide best practices in terms of environmental conservation and sustainability, and be models to follow in terms of resource efficiency, energy use and waste management. However, the commitments and efforts of HEIs in this field must be measured in an unbiased way, to ensure a correct interpretation of their achievements, and with reference to the strategies adopted by universities. This paper aims to present the results of a survey on Italian universities in terms of energy consumption and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water use and waste production. These items will be presented in a temporal trend relative to specific parameters that help to decontextualise the results from the location of HEIs. Where available, information on the strategies implemented by HEIs to improve their performance will be reported and the results will be discussed. The results show improvements in terms of thermal energy consumption, water consumption and GHG emissions, whose decrease was favoured by a progressive shift towards renewable sources of electricity. Clear conclusions on waste production are not possible due to the insufficient amount of data. The indicators analysed here may be useful to important ranking systems, developed to assess HEIs’ performance worldwide, since the use of indicators that do not depend on the geographical context where HEIs are located may decontextualise the results and allow comparing different HEIs in an unbiased way
From Circular Economy to Circular Ecology: A Review on the Solution of Environmental Problems through Circular Waste Management Approaches
Full text link(1) Background: The application of concepts linked to the circular economy (CE) has led to a sudden development of studies in numerous fields. However, the level of environmental sustainability of CE strategies could be improved and this topic deserves more attention by the scientific community. This research addresses this gap and aims at presenting a new concept, named circular ecology (CEL), and its application to the field of waste management. (2) Methods: The paper presents a literature review on the criticalities of CE and on examples of studies that implement the CEL principles. (3) Results: The review highlights that CEL principles are widely applied to several fields of waste management, showing promising opportunities to export the results to other geographical contexts. (4) Conclusions: If supported by governments, CEL approaches may allow solving multiple environmental problems at once, with clear economic, time, resources, and emission savings
Organisational aspects and anatomy of an attack on NFC/HCE mobile payment systems
No full textNear Field Communication (NFC) and contactless applications are increasing at unprecedented rate and their value is being recognised by the financial industry (Ok et al., 2011). Attacks are also increasing and they can compromise the business value on NFC applications (Murdoch and Anderson, 2010, Trend Micro, 2015). The present paper analyse the anatomy of possible attacks, uncovering vulnerabilities and suggesting possible countermeasures. The value of the paper is found in the contribution to practical mitigation of risk in the mobile payment financial business, with respect to the technology side. Host Card Emulation (HCE) is a technology solution that permits the creation of a virtual representation of a smart card using only software components, effectively eliminating the need for Secure Element hardware in the device. NFC/HCE technologies has proved itself very vulnerable in a variety of aspects. The paper would go through specific vulnerabilities and vulnerable situation, like: a non-secure-device/cloud communication channel; access to data saved locally in wallet; reusability of token; use of fake POS; malware and fake application; specific vulnerabilities of “Tap & Pay”; device/cloud decoupling. Countermeasures that have been proved effective are offered to readers along with Organisational aspects to be taken into account
Environmental balance of an innovative waste-to-energy plant: the role of secondary emissions
Full text linkIn spite of their positive role in the framework of circular economy, waste-to-energy processes are responsible for the emissions of a large number of air pollutants. Although this sector has made significant improvements in the air pollution control of primary emissions, the role of other sources (i.e. secondary emissions) has been often neglected. This paper aims at investigating the contributions of primary and secondary emissions expected from a waste gasification plant that is planned for the construction in an Alpine valley. The results from this analysis show that secondary emissions would play a significant role in the overall emissive footprint of the plant, contributing to 29% and 10%, respectively, of the overall emissions of dusts and total organic carbon. In the light of such results, secondary emissions would require an appropriate monitoring approach, which should complement the existing monitoring protocols for primary emissions
Criteria for the Assessment of Health Risk from a Waste Gasification Plant
Full text linkIn mountainous regions, the atmospheric dispersion of air pollutants is limited by complex terrain morphology. Trentino (a province located in the Italian Alps) is characterized by a high population density, highly developed agriculture and farming, and the presence of civil and industrial activities, whose emissions tend to be trapped inside the valleys. These conditions translate into exposure levels that are potentially higher than other geographical contexts (e.g., flat or coastal regions). The academic research carried out in Trentino since 2005 has produced a series of publications on topics related to the risk for health derived from waste management and other activities. These publications has focused on: 1) the evaluation of the emissions of organic pollutants from the waste sector; 2) the monitoring of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in various environmental matrices; 3) a methodology to carry out a comprehensive health risk assessment considering all the relevant exposure routes in an area; 4) the role of the local diet in the exposure of a population to POPs; 5) methodologies to define new regulatory limit values for dioxin and hexavalent chromium; and 6) the role of dispersion modeling in assessing the exposure to air pollutants. The present paper will review these publications and provide a reference document to evaluate new project proposals that require a health risk assessment and facilitate the work of proponents, clarifying the requirements of a health risk assessment. The paper will refer to waste gasification, but the considerations expressed in this paper may apply to other activities
IMPORTANCE OF COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH RISK ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES FOR MODERN WASTE-TOENERGY FACILITIES IN COMPLEX GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXTS ORIENTED TO CIRCULAR ECONOMY
Full text linkTowards context-independent indicators for an unbiased assessment of environmental sustainability in higher education: An application to Italian universities
Full text linkHigher education institutes (HEIs) are important drivers for the development and implementation of best practices for environmental sustainability. However, reliable indicators are needed to objectively evaluate the environmental performance of HEIs and their policies. The present paper aims at identifying suitable indicators for unbiased comparisons among different HEIs and for the identification of temporal trends in terms of environmental sustainability performance. At this aim, sustainability reports made publicly available by 24 Italian HEIs over a 10-year period were considered. Normalization of sustainability variables such as the annual electrical and thermal energy consumptions, related greenhouse gas emissions, and water consumption, against context-specific factors such as the number of users of each university, latitude, illuminance, heating degree days (HDDs) and cooling degree days allowed identifying the actual possible disturbance of the same variables. HDDs were found to positively affect the thermal energy consumption and the related CO2 emissions. Based on this, a novel indicator was formulated where the actual value of thermal energy consumption and the related CO2 emissions are divided not only by the number of users but also by the HDDs of the HEIs’ locations. Indeed, this is a remarkable finding that, prior to confirmation with data from world HEIs, could be implemented in world university green ranking systems for improved and less biased sustainability assessments
Criteria for Enhanced Monitoring and Control Plans for a Waste Gasification Plant
Full text linkThe Environmental Monitoring Plan (EMP) and the Monitoring and Control Plan (MCP) are key documents required respectively in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedures and in the Integrated Environmental Authorization (IEA) for activities subjected to this procedure. Both documents aim at preventing impacts on the environment and human health and/or quickly taking actions if anomalous levels of pollutants are found in the environment. Trentino is an Italian region located in the Alps characterized by high population density in its valleys, complex terrain and, thus, a low level of dispersion of the atmospheric pollutants. The research carried out in Trentino in the last two decades has allowed identifying innovative monitoring approaches to point out issues that conventional methodologies could not detect. The present paper provides the key elements of an EMP that must be included in the EIA of a waste gasification plant. The paper proposes unconventional monitoring campaigns to guarantee a more efficient control of the areas influenced by the plant before, during and after its construction. The paper also discusses key aspects of an MCP for plants that are subjected to IEA. The final aim is to make this paper a reference document to 1) evaluate new projects of waste combustion plants, 2) suggest alternative monitoring methodologies to investigate the role of specific pollutants in peculiar contexts, and 3) prescribe a specific surveillance plan in the case of a plant that is subjected to IEA. Considerations on differences with conventional plants were also included
IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS ON ODOUR DISPERSION MODELLING AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO WASTE MANAGEMENT OPERATIONS
Full text linkThe management of waste entails the emission of a large variety of compounds into the atmosphere. Waste management processes (e.g. collection and transportation of waste, discharging of waste in dedicated facilities, mechanical-biological treatments and landfill disposal) are known for causing the problem of odour nuisance in the vicinity of waste treatment plants. Substances like volatile organic compounds, sulphides and nitrogen-based compounds are usually associated with waste management processes and, in general, are characterised by low odour threshold values, i.e. they are detected by the human sense of smell even at relatively low concentrations in ambient air. Dispersion modelling represents a fundamental step for the estimation of the odour impact near odour emission sources. However, the results of odour dispersion simulations are strongly affected by the initial hypotheses on the emission sources considered, by specific modelling parameters and by the quality of meteorological and morphological input data. In addition, the variability in the human perception of odour may not allow making universal conclusions on the results of an odour impact assessment, and this further complicates the matter. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the criticalities involved in the assessment of the odour impacts from waste management activities. The paper analyses and discusses the potential influences of the choices made during the preparation of dispersion modelling simulations. This contribution is expected to enrich the knowledge base on odour dispersion modelling and to help proponents, environmental consultants and environmental agencies to estimate the impacts induced by current and future waste management operations
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