Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Agroecosystems

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 4235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Sun ◽  
Elisabete Silva ◽  
Wei Tian ◽  
Ruchi Choudhary ◽  
Hong Leng

In this paper, we developed a new integrated analysis environment in order to thoroughly analyses urban-building energy patterns, named IUBEA (integrated urban building energy analysis), which focuses on energy modeling and analysis of a city’s building stock to support district or city-scale efficiency programs. It is argued that cities and towns account for more than two-thirds of world energy consumption. Thus, this paper explores techniques to integrate a spatial analysis environment in the field of urban building energy assessment in cites to make full use of current spatial data relevant to urban-building energy consumption and energy efficiency policies. We illustrate how multi-scale sampling and analysis for energy consumption and simulate the energy-saving scenarios by taking as an example of Greater London. In the final part, is an application of an agent-based model (ABM) in IUBEA regarding behavioral and economic characteristics of building stocks in the context of building energy efficiency. This paper first describes the basic concept for this integrated spatial analysis environment IUBEA. Then, this paper discusses the main functions for this new environment in detail. The research serves a new paradigm of the multi-scale integrated analysis that can lead to an efficient energy model, which contributes the body of knowledge of energy modeling beyond the single building scale. Findings also proved that ABM is a feasible tool to tackle intellectual challenges in energy modeling. The final adoption example of Greater London demonstrated that the integrated analysis environment as a feasible tool for building energy consumption have unique advantages and wide applicability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9777
Author(s):  
Thiago Vargas Maldonado ◽  
Francesca Allievi ◽  
Luiz Panhoca

The Amazon biome occupies 60% of Brazilian territory, configured as a complex metabolism due to its diversity and the history of occupation by humans in the exploitation of its services. The Amazon nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa) occurs in the entire Amazon biome, which is essential for its sustainability. The Amazon nut production chain in the northwest of the State of Mato Grosso presents itself as a relevant case of analysis of the extractive activity of non-timber forest products (NTFP). Based on interpretative assumptions, the multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach is applied to the data collected in a farmers’ cooperative. The objective of this study was to analyze the socio-environmental metabolism of the productive chain of the Amazon nut in the northwest region of the Mato Grosso State (MT) in Brazil. As the MuSIASEM approach can generate an integrated set of indicators measured at different scales and dimensions of analysis, the results show a lack of sustainability in the social dimension, in the environmental dimension, and the presence of intermediaries that serve companies that function as an illegal part of the metabolism. As a next step, the defined method needs testing on different NTFPs and in other micronarratives.


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