1,720,962 research outputs found
Renewable energy production planning in the north-east of Italy by means of multi-criteria analysis
No full textThe excessive energy reliance on fossil fuels, together with the need to assure energy supplies and the will of reducing environmental emissions in order to comply with Kyoto’s objectives, has fostered the interest towards energy savings and renewable energy. In Italy, many initiatives have been proposed regarding renewable fuels. These projects range from heat production fed by ligneous-cellulosic and undergrowth residues, to power plants coupled to anaerobic digesters fuelled by animal dejections, Combined Heating-Power (CHP) plants fed by vegetal oil together with district heating (DH), and Combined Cooling-Heating and Power (CCHP), all these projects being focused on energy saving.
Such initiatives, in limited territorial contexts (Regions, Districts and Municipalities) are often in competition with each other, both for the economic incentives and the availability of energy sources.
Public bodies’ decisions on which plant has to be firstly financed, because of its major benefits in terms of both energy supply and inhabitants’ wellbeing, have thus achieved major importance. Multicriteria analysis therefore appears as a natural tool in order to support such decisional process. This memoir shows a real case study in which the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been applied to choose the priority of financing different energy plants, in order to reduce the dependency from fossil fuels and improve the overall efficiency of an area in the North-East of Italy. A survey on 16 municipalities in the district of Udine (Italy) is presented. Various feasible plants have been evaluated by means of the AHP regarding technical, economic, environmental and social issues. Technical, economic and environmental criteria were furthermore disaggregated into more detailed sub-criteria.
A pairwise comparison between different options was then conducted – where feasible – through real design data, while a panel of experts evaluated the non-quantifiable criteria. However, having been the will of the public administration to finance projects which better complained with the Kyoto’s objectives, the environmental aspect always resulted as the main criterion. As a consequence of this analysis, the best alternative has been identified in a CCHP plant serving the ‘Ham District” in San Daniele, well-known on international level. The AHP has been confirmed as an efficient tool to promote communication and participation of all the actors who take part in the decisional process
Waste management in an industrial park: industrial ecology benefits
No full textIndustrial ecology principles are a powerful tool for assessing the sustainability of modern engineering and production processes including Industrial Parks. This paper reviews the possibility of developing a set of benchmark indicators to assess the environmental sustainability of Industrial Parks (Industrial Park) utilising four main environmental sustainability categories- air emissions, water emissions and waste management both in terms of the waste produced and potential waste by-product exchanges (industrial symbiosis). This paper outlines preliminary results from a broader research project focusing on the development of potential ‘benchmark’ sustainability indictors for Industrial Parks utilizing the Kwinana Industrial Area (KIA) in Perth, Western Australia as a case study reference
A decision support system for sustainable energy supply combining multi-objective and multi-attribute analysis: An Australian case study
No full textA framework for an energy supply decision support system (DSS) for sustainable plant design and presented in this paper, utilising an innovative use of multi-objective and multi-attribute decision-making
(MODM, MADM) modelling together with impact assessment (IA) of the emission outputs. The mathematical
model has been appliedwithin an eco-industrial park (EIP) setting and includes three steps. First, an assessment
of the total EIP emissions' inventory and impacts is conducted; the second step, focusing on the sustainability
benefits of combined heating and power (CHP) plants and photovoltaic technologies, developed a multiobjective
mathematical model including both economic and environmental objectives in a Pareto-frontier
optimisation analysis. Four different scenarios involving combinations of CHP plants (internal combustion engine,
gas turbine, micro-turbines and fuel cells) and two types of PV plant (monocrystalline and polycrystalline)
were evaluated. The third step utilises a MADM methodology – the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) – for
selecting the best alternative among the Pareto-frontier efficient solutions. This model has been applied to a
case study of an EIP located in Perth (Kwinana Industrial Area—KIA),Western Austral
Exhausted poultry beddings: from environmental issues to resources
No full textGiven the relevance in food production of poultry farms, it is required to pursue technical solutions to cope with the environmental issues due to the exhausted poultry beddings disposal, as received by the European Directive EEC/91/676, which limits beddings’ traditional spreading on soils. Alternative disposal routes are thus needed. The most promising option is the energy conversion for heat and/or power production. Small and medium size plants are here presented, to be installed inside the farm premises. Furthermore, synergies with the farm towards BAT’s improving are pursued. Eventually, an economic analysis of the various plant sizes is hereby presented, considering some economic indexes (NPV, PBA, IRR, PI) and provided with a sensitivity analysis. The memoir also reports a series of charts for the technical and economic evaluation of plant size depending on specific farming type and farm siz
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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