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Abstract: Nowadays, there is contrasting evidence between the ongoing continuing and widespread environmental degradation and the many means to implement environmental sustainability actions starting from good policies (e.g. EU New Green Deal, CAP), powerful technologies (e.g. new satellites, drones, IoT sensors), large databases and large stakeholder engagement (e.g. EIP-AGRI, living labs). Here, we argue that to tackle the above contrasting issues dealing with land degradation, it is very much required to develop and use friendly and freely available web-based operational tools to support both the implementation of environmental and agriculture policies and enable to take positive environmental sustainability actions by all stakeholders. Our solution is the S-DSS LANDSUPPORT platform, consisting of a free web-based smart Geospatial CyberInfrastructure containing 15 macro-tools (and more than 100 elementary tools), co-designed with different types of stakeholders and their different needs, dealing with sustainability in agriculture, forestry and spatial planning. LANDSUPPORT condenses many features into one system, the main ones of which were (i) Web-GIS facilities, connection with (ii) satellite data, (iii) Earth Critical Zone data and (iv) climate datasets including climate change and weather forecast data, (v) data cube technology enabling us to read/write when dealing with very large datasets (e.g. daily climatic data obtained in real time for any region in Europe), (vi) a large set of static and dynamic modelling engines (e.g. crop growth, water balance, rural integrity, etc.) allowing uncertainty analysis and what if modelling and (vii) HPC (both CPU and GPU) to run simulation modelling ‘on-the-fly’ in real time. Two case studies (a third case is reported in the Supplementary materials), with their results and stats, covering different regions and spatial extents and using three distinct operational tools all connected to lower land degradation processes (Crop growth, Machine Learning Forest Simulator and GeOC), are featured in this paper to highlight the platform's functioning. Landsupport is used by a large community of stakeholders and will remain operational, open and free long after the project ends. This position is rooted in the evidence showing that we need to leave these tools as open as possible and engage as much as possible with a large community of users to protect soils and land.
Keywords: land degradation, land management, soil, spatial decision support system, sustainability
Published in DiRROS: 13.11.2023; Views: 473; Downloads: 236
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Abstract: Studying solid combustion phenomena in microgravity environments can be complex, and this is furthered by many limitations and constraints in the available microgravity research platforms. Consequently, fire safety in spacecraft is also a complex subject. The main limitations found in the field are related to the microgravity quality, the duration of microgravity conditions, the rig capabilities in volume and size, time scales, length scales and the diagnostic systems, and these are therefore the focus in the current investigation. The laboratory capacity of ground-based platforms has remained somewhat stalled since 1990s, some drop towers have recently been upgraded to extend their performance. New space-based platforms have been or are being established and could extend the windows-of-opportunity to perform research. In addition, a discussion is provided on the implications of the fact that the phenomena studied in the experimental investigations and the type of material employed covers both programmatic and scientific needs. It is found that a handful of materials are most widely studied to quantify and characterise some of the phenomena, while some materials have been employed even in single experimental efforts. The current literature review provides a very comprehensive overview of previous experimental studies and the experimental methodologies utilised. Thus, this study can become an aid to planning for future studies.
Keywords: Microgravity, research platforms, solid combustion, fire safety, spacecraft
Published in DiRROS: 13.11.2023; Views: 405; Downloads: 138
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Abstract: Diffusion flame behaviour and silica ash (SiO2) production were experimentally studied for various Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane thicknesses (0.125 mm to 1.0 mm) in normal gravity and during microgravity flight experiments. The flames were established on vertical samples (300 mm in length) and subjected to either opposed or concurrent forced flows (both laminar and turbulent), assimilating the NASA Test 1 that is in use for spacecraft material selection. The opposed flame spread rate was observed to be steady and could be estimated using classical theory. Under concurrent flow, the flame spread rate was only steady for very high forced flows. The opposed flame-spread rate ranged from 0.5 to 1.5 mm/s, while the concurrent case ranged between 0.1 and 12 mm/s. The transport of silica ash (SiO2) was found to affect the heat balance of the concurrent flame spread in a manner that resulted in unsteady flame spread. For opposed flame spread, on the other hand, the transport of silica ash showed to be irrelevant. The extinction behaviour for the concurrent flame spread was heavily dominated by the transport of silica-ash, while for opposed flames, extinction was due to kinetics (at high forced flows). In microgravity environments, the transport and deposition of silica ash is anticipated to dominate flame spread and near-limit as well. These results suggest that silica-based products might be less flammable in microgravity than other similar materials such as common thermoplastics (PP or PE) used as wire jackets.
Keywords: silicone burning, spacecraft fire safety, flame spread, near-limit, silica-ash
Published in DiRROS: 13.11.2023; Views: 429; Downloads: 148
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Published in DiRROS: 13.11.2023; Views: 513; Downloads: 215
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Keywords: varstvo gozdov, morfološke analize, Monochamus spp., žagovinarji, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, borova ogorčica
Published in DiRROS: 10.11.2023; Views: 477; Downloads: 0