1,720,957 research outputs found
Stormwater characterization and management in small urban catchments
No full textThis thesis is a preliminary study on how stormwater management should be improved also in small urban catchments and rural communities. The aim of the work is to improve knowledge and get new concepts on stormwater, in order to assess environmental risk by modeling and by proposing alternative ways to manage this phenomenon. This paper was written after another thesis on stormwater management, developed in the Master Degree in Environmental Engineering three years ago: the need to investigate on this topic was really crucial, so I decided to further deepen it in a Ph.D. program. In this case, a little basin of the High Friulian Plain was studied: in Friuli - Venezia Giulia Region, there is a huge number of little villages, each one with its own wastewater treatment plant and obviously with its own way to discharge stormwater in the environment. The selected village for the study was Galleriano di Lestizza, the place where I live, so it was my pleasure to understand stormwater fate and the implications of common design strategies of sewer systems. The results of the thesis could help to evaluate possible solutions to reduce first flush discharges and to control the total load of pollutant discharged into the infiltration pond at the end-of-pipe. This thesis opens a discussion on stormwater management in Friuli - Venezia Giulia Region: surface and groundwaters need to be protected from urban stormwater runoff, and this work allows to start a long and difficult path for an integrated water management and treatment protocol. The last hope of this work is to invite water regulators and water industries to focus on this topic, because they all must feel involved in the improvement of water resources and environmental habitat
Techno-economic feasibility of anaerobic digestion of cheese whey in small Italian dairies and effect of ultrasound pre-treatment on methane yield
No full textIn Friuli-Venezia Giulia plain (North-East of Italy), a significant number of small diaries is present; this study was aimed at evaluating technical and economic feasibility of diffused anaerobic digestion implementation at dairy level. Different kinds of cheese whey were characterized, and biochemical methane potential tests were executed. Good methane yields (up to 437.3 NmL CH4/g VSadded) were obtained, applying an inoculum-to-substrate ratio of 6. Ultrasound pre-treatment was investigated to evaluate an eventual increase in methane production and kinetics, varying applied ultrasonic energy: significant increases in methane yield (maximum +16.0%) and CH4 production kinetics (up to +46% increase after 3 days) were obtained at low ultrasonic energy of 251.4-693.7 Wh/kg VS, while at higher ultrasonic energy of 502.8-1387.5 Wh/kg VS no significant effect was visible. Energy consumption in selected dairies was analysed, to underline the impact of anaerobic digestion implementation on electric and thermal energy need, and it was concluded that through cheese whey anaerobic digestion it is possible to cover most of the dairies energy demand. Specific electric and thermal energy consumption were evaluated to be respectively in the range of 0.009-0.133 kWh/kg milk and 0.247-0.557 MJ/kg milk, while specific energy costs were calculated as 0.0079-0.0308 €/kg milk. For each analysed plant, digester volume to install and organic loading rate were hypothesized
Quality stormwater modeling in small suburban catchments: a case study
No full textRural stormwater management is usually considered less important in respect of large
urbanized areas, and only a few scientific papers investigated on it.
Italy is a really small country if compared with other states like Canada or Australia, but it
exhibits a strong suburban and rural urbanization: we can find a large number of singleindependent
rural villages, each one with its sewer network and treatment plant. Little
basins can have a strong first flush behaviour and actually there no studies which have
examined rural stormwater management in the Friulian Region in Italy.
Depending on the availability of surface water, stormwater can be discharged in rivers or
into infiltration ponds: in the middle of the Friulian plain the second option is really
common. Sewers and treatment plants were projected a few decades ago when first flush
effect was not widely known as it is nowadays.
The authors of this study want to start a monitoring program on stormwater with the aim of
modeling and calculating the first foul flush phenomenon by using software EPA-SWMM
5.1 in rural areas of the Friulian Region in Italy, in order to assess possible risk associated
with infiltration or reuse of stormwater
Infiltration Ponds in Small Urban Catchments: Stormwater Modelling and Sediment Contamination Assessment
No full textUsing EPA-SWMM in quality stormwater modeling: calibration and design strategies
No full textNon-point source pollution is widely considered the most important cause of environmental decay in aquatic ecosystems around urbanized areas. Evaluating first foul flush phenomenon is crucial in order to prevent unwanted and untreated discharges from sewer overflows. The use of numerical models for stormwater analysis is well established for research and management: however they are used in complex systems mainly to evaluate flow rates. In this study the authors want to describe the quality of stormwater in rural and peri-urban centers with SWMM. Several buildup functions were implemented with the aim of modeling the accumulation phenomena and to calibrate a qualitative model of stormwater runoff in terms of pollution. SWMM allows continuous simulations using historical rainfall series, which can be applied on a verified model in order to assess the risk of bad management practices and to design sustainable strategies in rural and suburban areas. Furthermore this kind of model will be used for evaluating stormwater discharges into infiltration ponds (very common in rural or peri-urban areas) because usually they are not supported by a correct first foul flush investigation
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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