1,720,961 research outputs found
Application of risk analysis to landfills in Italy: Developed and tested methodology at provincial level
No full textIn the Italian authorization procedure for the construction of a landfill, the risk analysis (RA) is mandatory in case of request for derogation from the current legislation (Ministerial Decree (D.M.) 27 September 2010) in order to demonstrate that there is no risk for the environment. This paper describes the experience of the Province of Brescia, public body appointed for giving authorizations for new landfills, and its collaboration with the University of Brescia for the specific topic of RA applied to landfills. The research was undertaken because a lack of complete and specific indications about the application of such methodology to landfills has been identified. In particular, the province of Brescia faced the issue of verifying the proper application of such methodology in relevant cases. After referring to the legal and technical framework, including the current national legislation and a summary of the technical documents available for the topic (guidelines and instructions by technical bodies), the paper outlines the technical-preliminary approach applied by the Province of Brescia. This is complemented by a description of the methodological approach followed for RA for groundwater and for gaseous emissions, with a focus on biogas, together with the presentation of the results for three relevant case studies. The critical aspects that were faced and the proposal to overcome them, which are under discussion with the responsible bodies, are described as well
Separate collection of organic waste and cardboard: Assessing the impact of a development cooperation project in Tulkarem, west bank
No full textThis research aimed to analyze the impact of the introduction of a separate collection system for organic waste and cardboard in the Governorate of Tulkarem, West Bank (Occupied Palestinian Territories). The amount of waste diverted from the final disposal at the landfill of Zahret Al-Finjan was quantified and the quality of separate materials was evaluated. An economic and environmental analysis was performed to quantify the impact of separate collection in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and the costs for the local waste management authority. Different methods for data collection were used, such as meetings, field visits and database analysis, allowing the construction of a scientific-based and coherent descriptive framework for the local solid waste management system. The results of the study demonstrate that the separate collection of organic waste and cardboard is a sustainable solution under the environmental point of view, while criticality has been identified in terms of economic sustainability. The proposed method has led to a proper assessment, allowing the identification of the material collection as the most expensive stage and creating the basis for further intervention on the waste management system
Municipal solid waste management in refugee hosting communities: Analysis of a case study in northern Jordan
No full textThe Syrian civil war, which broke out in 2011, caused the displacement of more than one million refugees to Jordan. Most of them settled in the Northern Govenorates of Jordan. Due to this, the local services and infrastructures of the hosting communities, in particular the solid waste management (SWM), were put under great pressure. The aim of this study is to evaluate how the off-camp refugees impacted the SWM in the Greater Irbid Municipality (GIM; in the Irbid Governorate), both quantitatively and qualitatively. Data and results obtained from the studies carried out before the Syrian crisis are compared with data collected by the authors in 2016 using similar or comparable methodologies. Moreover, local citizen perceptions of and satisfaction with the solid waste (SW) service level were assessed. A deterioration of the SWM in GIM between 2011 and 2016 was observed in terms of service performance indicators (e.g., an increase of SW collection and transportation costs by 2.5 times and of fines for improper SW disposal by 2.2 times) and of citizens’ views (a decline in SWM quality was felt by 59% of the respondents). An attempt to cope with this situation has been made in recent years with international donors mobilizing efforts and resources to enable municipalities to meet the growing demand in basic SW services. There is however, still much to be done
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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