BACKGROUND: The Kingdom of Jordan belongs to the ten water scarcest countries in the world, and climate change is likely to increase the frequency of future droughts. Jordan is considered among the 10 most water impoverished countries in the world, with per capita water availability estimated at 170 m per annum, compared to an average of 1,000 m per annum in other countries. Jordan Government has taken the strategic decision to develop a conveyor system including a 325 km pipe to pump 100 million cubic meters per year of potable water from Disi-Mudawwara close to the Saudi Border in the south, to the Greater Amman area in the north. The construction of the water pipeline has started end of 2009 and shall be finished in 2013. Later on, the pipeline could serve as a major part of a national water carrier in order to convey desalinated water from the Red Sea to the economically most important central region of the country. The conveyor project will not only significantly increase water supplies to the capital, but also provide for the re-allocation of current supplies to other governorates, and for the conservation of aquifers. In the context of the Disi project that is co-funded by EIB two Environmental and Social Management Plans have been prepared: one for the private project partners and one for the Jordan Government. The latter includes the Governments obligation to re-balance water allocations to irrigation and to gradually restore the protected wetlands of Azraq (Ramsar site) east of Amman that has been depleted due to over-abstraction by re-directing discharge of highland aquifers after the Disi pipeline becomes operational. The Water Strategy recognizes that groundwater extraction for irrigation is beyond acceptable limits. Since the source is finite and priority should be given to human consumption it proposes to tackle the demand for irrigation through tariff adjustments, improved irrigation technology and disincentive to water intensive crops. The Disi aquifer is currently used for irrigation by farms producing all kinds of fruits and vegetables on a large scale and exporting most of their products to the Saudi and European markets and it is almost a third of Jordan's total consumption. The licenses for that commercial irrigation were finished by 2011/12. Whilst the licenses will be not renewed the difficulty will be the enforcement and satellite based information become an important supporting tool for monitoring. OUTLOOK: The ESA funded project Water management had the objective to support the South-North conveyor project and the activities of EIB together with the MWI in Jordan to ensure the supply of water for the increasing demand. EO Information provides a baseline for land cover and elevation and support the monitoring of further stages. usw.
The building sector shows enormous energy- and material flows. 40 percent of the European primary energy consumption refers to buildings and the building sector is responsible for more than 50 percent of waste materials in Europe. The European commission is aware of the importance of the building sector for sustainability and forces among other things sustainable development on a legislative level. Examples are the European Building Directive (2002/91/EG) and the Communication from the Commission to Council and the European Parliament, COM (2005) 718 'Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment. As already mentioned the building sector offers large potentials towards a sustainable development. But how to measure and assess sustainability of buildings? In order to assess all environmental impacts of buildings applicable instruments are required, considering the whole life cycle, including ecological issues and economical and social aspects. LCA (Lifecycle analysis) comprises a comprehensive accounting of all material and energy inputs of a building throughout its life cycle and consolidates the results in form of an environmental evaluation of the building. In the current project existing assessment instruments for the building sector are screened, compared, and tested regarding their suitability for daily use. Within the project integrative European wide standards for Life Cycle Assessment of buildings, as well as recommendations for stakeholders, landlords and designers will be worked out. Dissemination of LCA-applications for the building sector will be done by workshops and training sessions for above mentioned target groups. Prime Contractor: SINTEF Materials and Chemistry; Trondheim; Norwegen.
This follow-up project aims to reconstruct natural (climatic) and anthropogenic-induced hydrological changes and to provide new insights on the anthropogenic pollutants emitted in European environment over the last centuries, by focusing on: (1) The largest freshwater lake of Western Europe (Lake Geneva) and especially on industrial (trace metals) and microbial (pathogenic bacterial activity and resistance to antibiotic) pollution in the Vidy Bay; where are discharges the treated wastewaters of Lausanne since 50 years. (2) A drinking reservoir (Lake Brêt) in order to evaluate the impacts of agricultural activities and sewage emissions on the pollution of drinking water in Switzerland over the last century. Results demonstrate a slight enrichment in anthropogenic heavy metal since the 1950s but an additional (agricultural) source of copper during the last decade. In the absence of industries in the catchment, the records of DDT and PCBs highlight the long-range atmospheric transport of POPs that contaminated rural water resources via catchment runoff. (3) Human impact on the deposition of anthropogenic and natural trace element fluxes were measured in sediment cores from Lake Biel and from two upstream lakes (Lake Brienz and Lake Thun), all three connected by the Aare River. Results indicate that that the construction of sediment-trapping reservoirs significantly decreased regional riverine sediment discharge. Radiometric dating of the sediment core from Lake Biel furthermore identified hydrological releases of anthropogenic radionuclides from the nuclear reactor of Mühleberg located at ca.15 km from Lake Biel. Five publications (in refereed journals) directly resulting from this follow-up proposal are in process of publication.
Globalization raised the importance of food safety and quality concerns. Developed countries implement precautionary food regulation policies to protect their affluent consumers from unsafe food imported from developing and transition countries. However, the alarming number of trade disputes at WTO evidences cases of abuse of such policies. While claims on protectionist nature of food regulations are valid in principle, yet there is little empirical evidence about their economic effects. The questions of 1) quantification of trade impact of food standards and 2) investigation of national food regulation systems are absolutely essential for the new trade agenda. These problems for developing countries are on the focus of trade policy debate, whereas for transition countries are not considered seriously. Such a research for these recently liberalized markets gains a special significance. - The proposed research will employ Gravity Model for quantitative estimation of impact of EU aflatoxin standards on transition countries- exports.- Russian food regulations for cereal value chain, their enforcement and monitoring mechanisms will be investigated through value chain and cost-benefit analysis.- Compliance of Russian norms with EU standards will be estimated applying comparative advantage analysis.The study area is Stavropol region of the Russian Federation. Local experts will contribute to the construction of the research data set and analysis. The results of the research will assist 1) international policy makers in designing new global trade agenda and 2) Russian producers, exporters and decision makers in improving cereal value chain.
The Municipalities of Stara Zagora and Varna will be the targets for a 2,5 year project by WECF and its NGO partners from Bulgaria and the Netherlands; the Earth Forever Foundation, the Institute of Ecological Modernization and WASTE and IRC Netherlands. The project receives financial support from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs MATRA programme. The Institute of Wastewater Management (TUHH) is supporting this project with respect to the introduction of ecological sanitation and extensive wastewater treatment technologies like planted soil filters. Workshops are given and technical knowledge regarding the design, construction and operation of these facilities is provided. This will help to improve the current situation in the villages and will provide an example for further distribution of appropriate wastewater management in Bulgarian villages. Currently, only a very small part of the population is connected to a central sewer system, which discharges the wastewater without any further treatment into the environment. The remaining families are depending on outdoor pit latrines, soakaways and septic tanks which are very often subject to clogging. Thus, overflowing and discharging of wastewater onto streets is a very common problem.
Umformen von Wind in Strom, volle Betriebssicherheit auch in extremen Wetterlagen, bedienungsfrei und wartungsarm, 20 Jahre Lebensdauer, hohe Laufruhe - Verfuegbarkeit - Wirtschaftlichkeit, fuer Einsatz auch in Entwicklungslaendern d.h. korrosionssichere Aussenhaut, dicht gegen Sand, Feuchte, Termiten. Rotorblaetter in Composit-Bauweise, d.h. duennschalig, frei stehender Mast, Getriebe, Generator im Turmfuss, selbstaufrichtend, daher leicht montierbar, versetzbar und gefahrlose Reparaturen moeglich, vormontierte Baugruppen, teilweise auch geeignet fuer nationale Fertigungen ins Ausland. Anlage arbeitet automatisch, kein Personal erforderlich, Service 1 x im Jahr, sie liefert entweder Strom ins Netz oder ist fuer Inselbetrieb geeignet z.B. fuer Bewaesserung, niedriges Leistungsgew., niedrige Investitions- und Betriebskosten.
Ziel des Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprojekts ist die Planung und Umsetzung eines integralen Energie- und Sanierungskonzepts für das 1887 in Braunschweig eröffnete Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum. Unter Mitwirkung aller Projektbeteiligten werden die für die Sanierung relevanten Themengebiete Bauphysik, Raumklima, Heizung und Lüftung, Tages- und Kunstlicht untersucht. Der Einhaltung der für die Exponate maßgeblichen geringen Toleranzen in Bezug auf Feuchte und Temperatur kommt in diesem Zusammenhang besondere Bedeutung zu. Durch das Sanierungskonzept soll eine erhebliche Reduktion des Heizenergie- und elektrischen Stromverbrauchs erreicht werden (Heizenergie: - 35 Prozent, Strom für Beleuchtung, Belüftung und Befeuchtung: - 50 Prozent ). Weiterhin sollen die thermische und visuelle Behaglichkeit und die konservatorischen Randbedingungen für die Exponate verbessert werden. Dabei stehen eine Verbesserung der Gebäudehülle (Herstellung der Luftdichtheit, Einsatz optimierter Verglasungen etc.) und die Vermeidung sommerlicher Überhitzung im Vordergrund. Zur Umsetzung einer weitestgehend natürlichen Klimatisierung wird auch die Reaktivierung des vorhandenen Hypokausten-Systems geprüft. Die Konzepte werden seit Oktober 2000 durch Messungen und Computersimulationen geprüft und validiert. Nach der Sanierung folgt eine einjährige Monitoring- und Evaluierungsphase. Das Sanierungsprojekt für das Herzog-Anton-Ulrich Museum zeigt die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten, wie im behutsamen Umgang mit historischer Bausubstanz die klimatischen und visuellen Anforderungen an Museen optimiert und gleichzeitig erhebliche Energieeinsparungen realisiert werden können.
Mankind is approaching a crisis in energy generation and utilization. Traditional fossil fuel reserves are diminishing and legislative issues regarding CO2 emission will make use of existing lower grade reserves unattractive. New technologies have to be developed to satisfy the ever-increasing energy demand and to maximize efficient energy usage. The materials chemist, through the design of new materials with novel properties and by controlling interfacial interactions between materials, will play a crucial role in these endeavours and in enabling the paradigm shift that is required. This project is centred around two core and inter-related issues (i) energy generation from photovoltaics using sunlight and (ii) efficient lighting devices based on light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) and organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Both of these topics are areas of intense activity world-wide. Within Europe the PIs research group is one of the leaders in the field. However, as research efforts in these areas are proving successful and proof-ofprinciple systems are being established and optimized, a new factor needs to be addressed. State of the art photovoltaic devices based upon the dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) most frequently utilize inorganic dyes comprising ruthenium complexes of oligopyridine ligands. The projected next generation mass market OLEDs and prototype LECs are based upon iridium complexes containing cyclometallated pyridine ligands. A traditional criticism of these approaches related to the costs of the raw materials although this is in reality low compared to the costs of other components. However, the price reflects in part the availability of these metals and in this respect devices based upon ruthenium (1 ppb by atom in Earth crust) or iridium (0.05 ppb by atom in Earth crust) are unsustainable. This project is concerned with the development of complexes based upon abundant and sustainable first row transition metals to replace second and third row transition metals in these devices. Initial efforts will centre upon complexes of copper(I) and zinc(II) which have well-established photochemistry and photophysics making them suitable for such applications. The PI has already established proof-of-principle for the replacement of ruthenium by copper in DSCs and is a world leader in this technology. The work on the two projects will involve (i) materials synthesis and characterization (ii) computational modelling (iii) device construction and testing and (iv) property optimization.
Flowering time is strongly regulated by the circadian clock, which drives photoperiodic flowering. We recently explored natural allelic diversity of the clock in the dicot Arabidopsis and found a 'memory' of the proceeding environment. Furthermore, we showed that clock variation has a large role in directing flowering time under field conditions. Cloning of one circadian quantitative trait locus revealed variation at the flowering-time gene EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3). Here we will further explore allelic variation in clock genes to define key loci that direct photoperiodic flowering. Firstly, we will complete the construction of new Arabidopsis recombinant inbred populations derived from accessions originating from extremely differing latitudes, and map the genomes of these lines at kilobase resolution. These populations will be scored for variation in the clock and flowering time; dynamic correlations will be constructed. Together, components underling clock-gene variation that directs seasonal flowering will be identified. Secondly, we will examine the molecular genetics of circadian control of flowering in the monocot barley using existing and newly generated variation at barley ELF3. This gene is the likely direct regulator of the seasonality locus Ppd-H1. This second program should reveal dicot/monocot clock conservations and identify allelic variation at the circadian-clock gene ELF3 that could be directly used in barley breeding programs.
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