Management of Natural Resources, Sustainable Development and Ecological Hazards II

About this book

Our current civilisation has fallen into a self-destructive process by which natural resources are consumed at an increasing rate. This process has now spread across the planet in search of further sources of energy and materials. The aggressiveness of this quest is such that the future of our planet is in the balance. The process is compounded by the pernicious effects of the resulting pollution.

Management of Natural Resources, Sustainable Development and Ecological Hazards II contains papers presented at the second International conference on the Management of Natural Resources, Sustainable Development and Ecological Hazards, which was held in Western Cape, South Africa. The conference discussed the objective of reaching sustainability in the framework of all different disciplines in order to arrive at optimal solutions. Hence, the meeting was essentially transdisciplinary in order to find appropriate sustainable solutions, i.e. those involving collaboration across a wide range of disciplines. The aim of the conference was to take stock of our situation and try to facilitate constructive principles and policies for a way forward.

Management of Natural Resources, Sustainable Development and Ecological Hazards II contains papers on the following topics: Development issues; Environmental issues; Changing climates; Transborder strategies; Air quality; Energy; Aquifer studies; Selected South African Water Issues.

Contents

Section 1: Development issues
- The Ecological Footprint Depth: preliminary consideration for national accounting
- Non-profit organisations (NPOs) for sustainable development at community, regional and civil society level
- Comparison study on evaluating urban traffic, transport system and services in China and Japan
- MERCY Malaysia's experience in recent response and rebuilding of disaster areas
- Tools for sustainable development: a comparison of building performance simulation packages
- Safe development of coal mine enterprises based on Endogenous Growth Theory
- A pre-investment model for a sustainable development
- Qualification of offshore facilities prior to application in a new field

Section 2: Environmental issues
- The effects of long-term thermal load on the stability of the lining of a deep underground waste repository
- Environmental viability for rural roads in the Amazon region, Brazil
- How nautical tourism ports affect the environment

Section 3: Changing climates
- The impact of relative sea level rise on the Northern Adriatic Sea coast, Italy
- Wind and wave storms, storm surges and sea level rise along the Estonian coast of the Baltic Sea
- Adaptation to climate change: does spatial planning help? Swarm planning does!
- Bayesian inference for predicting ecological water quality under different climate change scenarios

Section 4: Transborder strategies
- Baltic Sea Action Plan process: co-production of science and policy
- Strategic transborder environmental assessment for power generation in the Baja California, Mexico and California, USA border region

Section 5: Air quality
- Adaptive system of forecasting the air quality
- Application of artificial neural networks for classification and prediction of air quality classes
- Dilution and dispersion of inhalable particulate matter
- Biofiltration of methane: effect of temperature and nutrient solution
- Contribution to atmospheric benzene concentrations of the petrol stations in a mid sized city

Section 6: Energy
- Global distributed energy systems
- Primary energy supply and economic wealth
- Concentrating solar power in sustainable tourism
- Criteria and methodology for an indicator of energy applied to motorways
- Sustainable energy future for Austria
- Wind turbines site selection on an isolated island
- Energy saving and environmental benefits of metal box vegetal facades

Section 7: Aquifer studies
- Modeling the saltwater intrusion in the lowlying catchment of the southern Venice Lagoon, Italy
- Estimating a new approach for describing electrical conductivity parameters in partially saturated sediments

Section 8: Selected South African Water Issues
- An overview of the salinization problem in the Berg river catchment (South Africa)
- A comparative analysis of the PRMS and J2000 hydrological models applied to the Sandspruit Catchment (Western Cape, South Africa)
- An assessment of the Atlantis artificial recharge water supply scheme (Western Cape, South Africa)
- An Excel-based index (PestEX) for environmental mobility of pesticides in relation to water resources
- In-situ nitrate removal from groundwater to supply rural communities: experimental work and modelling

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