scholarly journals Effects of Climate Change on the Future of Heritage Buildings: Case Study and Applied Methodology

Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 132
Author(s):  
Harold Enrique Huerto-Cardenas ◽  
Niccolò Aste ◽  
Claudio Del Pero ◽  
Stefano Della Torre ◽  
Fabrizio Leonforte
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Building Performance ◽  
Masonry Building ◽  
Indoor Climate ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Heritage Buildings

Heritage buildings and the precious artworks contained therein, represent inestimable cultural and artistic evidence from the past that must be properly preserved for future generations. In the last decades, climate change has gained relevance and is becoming crucial to assess the building performance under such effect to provide timely mitigation actions to preserve our cultural heritage. In this regard, this paper outlines a method that combines different experimental activities and tools to forecast possible future risks due to climate change for the conservation of the artworks and provide its application in a relevant case study in Italy, the Duomo di Milano. In detail, the suggested method consists of the monitoring of the building indoor climate to validate a simulation model, defining possible future scenarios based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections, and evaluation of the future conservation risks of the main artworks. The results of the analysis carried out, show that for some artworks (e.g., stone sculptures, some organic materials, etc.), the conservation conditions will not worsen compared to the current situation, while for others (e.g., paintings, wooden objects, etc.) the risk of deterioration is expected to increase substantially. This study helps to understand how the future climate can affect the indoor environment of a huge masonry building and allow to plan targeted mitigation strategies aimed to reduce the future risks.

scholarly journals Climate Change Effect on Building Performance: A Case Study in New York

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 3160
Author(s):  
Kristian Fabbri ◽  
Jacopo Gaspari ◽  
Licia Felicioni
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New York ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
System Capacity ◽  
Building Performance ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Winter Time ◽  
Indoor Comfort

The evidences of the influence of climate change (CC) in most of the key sectors of human activities are frequently reported by the news and media with increasing concern. The building sector, and particularly energy use in the residential sector, represents a crucial field of investigation as demonstrated by specific scientific literature. The paper reports a study on building energy consumption and the related effect on indoor thermal comfort considering the impacts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 report about temperature increase projection. The research includes a case study in New York City, assuming three different scenarios. The outcomes evidence a decrease in energy demand for heating and an increase in energy demand for cooling, with a relevant shift due to the summer period temperature variations. The challenge of the last decades for sustainable design was to increase insulation for improving thermal behavior, highly reducing the energy demand during winter time, however, the projections over the next decades suggest that the summer regime will represent a future and major challenge in order to reduce overheating and ensure comfortable (or at least acceptable) living conditions inside buildings. The growing request of energy for cooling is generating increasing pressure on the supply system with peaks in the case of extreme events that lead to the grid collapse and to massive blackouts in several cities. This is usually tackled by strengthening the energy infrastructure, however, the users’ behavior and lifestyle will strongly influence the system capacity in stress conditions. This study focuses on the understanding of these phenomena and particularly on the relevance of the users’ perception of indoor comfort, assuming the IPCC projections as the basis for a future scenario.

From climate change perception to bottom-up adaptation initiatives: a case study from banana producers of Upper Huallaga basin, Peru

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Livia Serrao ◽  
Lorenzo Giovannini ◽  
Luz Elita Balcazar Terrones ◽  
Hugo Alfredo Huamaní Yupanqui ◽  
Dino Zardi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Annual Rainfall ◽  
Banana Plant ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Clear Trend ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Weather Events

<p>Climatic characteristics and weather events have always conditioned the success of a harvest. Climate change and the associated increase in intense weather phenomena in recent years are making it clearer than ever that agriculture is among the sectors most at risk. Although problems in agriculture are found all over the world, the most vulnerable contexts are those where agriculture is low-tech and rainfed. Here, adaptation strategies are even more urgent to secure the food production. Assuming that the awareness of climate change is the basis for the adoption of adaptation and mitigation strategies, it is interesting to correlate the degree of perception of local inhabitants with their willingness to adopt bottom-up initiatives.</p><p>The current study focuses on banana producers’ perceptions of climate change in a tropical valley, and the initiatives that farmers adopt to cope with recent intense weather events. The banana plant (Musa Musacae) grows in tropical climates with annual rainfall around 2000 mm and average temperatures around 27°C. The species’ threadlike root system and the weak pseudostem make it particularly vulnerable to wind gusts, which, at speeds higher than 15 m/s, can bend and knock over entire plantations. The increased frequency of convective thunderstorms observed in connection with climate change has made downburst phenomena more frequent and caused greater crop loss.</p><p>The aim of the present work is to estimate the correlation between banana producers’ perceptions of climate change and their bottom-up initiatives for adaptation. To achieve this goal, the case study of the Upper Huallaga valley, which is located in the Peruvian Amazon region as shown in Figure 1, is analysed. The work was carried out at two levels: (i) we interviewed 73 banana producers in the valley, (ii) we estimated the alterations and trends in temperature and precipitation recorded by the only three available meteorological stations within the valley. Finally, we compared the two databases to evaluate if the perception of the population was confirmed by the data. Most of the surveyed population observed an increase in temperature, consistent with the results of the data analysis, and an increase in precipitation, which was not consistent with observations as these showed a cyclic variation without a clear trend. With regards to the adaptation measures, it was observed that, although a clear majority of the sample surveyed (around 82%) agreed with the existence of climate change, only 46% of them had taken any initiative to counteract adverse events in some way. However, it is important to note that the strategies implemented were all devised and implemented by the farmers themselves. Funding and coordinating the dissemination of these adaptation practices by the local authority through a rural development plan could certainly strengthen the population’s effort.</p><p><img src="https://contentmanager.copernicus.org/fileStorageProxy.php?f=gnp.34e8e7df2cff59382630161/sdaolpUECMynit/12UGE&app=m&a=0&c=59f620ca81f3a3bb7bb44139d499513c&ct=x&pn=gnp.elif&d=1" alt=""></p><p><em>Figure 1, On the left side: the Upper Huallaga basin. </em><em>On the right side: the study area</em></p>

The past and future of human rights

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-224
Author(s):  
Gráinne de Búrca
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Future ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
Advocacy Campaigns

This chapter reflects on the lessons to be derived from the advocacy campaigns in Pakistan, Argentina, and Ireland discussed in earlier chapters. Insights drawn from those campaigns are used to refine the experimentalist account of human rights advanced in Chapter 2, particularly as regards the importance of social movements and of building broad social support for human rights campaigns. The remainder of the chapter describes five major challenges of the current era—illiberalism, climate change, digitalization, pandemics, and inequality—and considers the difficulties they pose for the experimentalist account of human rights advocacy. It argues that the experimentalist practice of human rights advocacy is reasonably resilient and adaptive, and that internal contestation from within the human rights movement as well as external critiques have already helped to catalyze reform and to push activists and advocates to think more innovatively about the changes needed to strengthen the ability of the movement to engage with these major challenges in the future. It concludes that in a turbulent era, rather than abandon human rights, we should redouble our efforts to bolster, renew, and reinvigorate a movement that has galvanized constituencies and communities around the globe to mobilize for a better world.

Epilogue

2016 ◽  
pp. 119-122
Author(s):  
Christian W. McMillen
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Health Infrastructure ◽  
Health Infrastructure ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Face ◽  
New Challenges

There will be more pandemics. A pandemic might come from an old, familiar foe such as influenza or might emerge from a new source—a zoonosis that makes its way into humans, perhaps. The epilogue asks how the world will confront pandemics in the future. It is likely that patterns established long ago will re-emerge. But how will new challenges, like climate change, affect future pandemics and our ability to respond? Will lessons learned from the past help with plans for the future? One thing is clear: in the face of a serious pandemic much of the developing world’s public health infrastructure will be woefully overburdened. This must be addressed.

scholarly journals Investigating Future Urbanization’s Impact on Local Climate under Different Climate Change Scenarios in MEGA-urban Regions: A Case Study of the Pearl River Delta, China

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 771
Author(s):  
Pak Shing Yeung ◽  
Jimmy Chi-Hung Fung ◽  
Chao Ren ◽  
Yong Xu ◽  
Kangning Huang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Pearl River Delta ◽  
Pearl River ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
The Pearl River Delta ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Pearl River

Urbanization is one of the most significant contributing factors to anthropogenic climate change. However, a lack of projected city land use data has posed significant challenges to factoring urbanization into climate change modeling. Thus, the results from current models may contain considerable errors in estimating future climate scenarios. The Pearl River Delta region was selected as a case study to provide insight into how large-scale urbanization and different climate change scenarios impact the local climate. This study adopts projected land use data from freely available satellite imagery and applies dynamic simulation land use results to the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). The simulation periods cover the summer periods in 2010 and 2029–2031, the latter of which is averaged to represent the year 2030. The WRF simulation used the observed local climate conditions in 2010 to represent the current scenario and the projected local climate changes for 2030 as the future scenario. Under all three future climate change scenarios, the warming trend is prominent (around 1–2 °C increase), with a widespread reduction in wind speed in inland areas (1–2 ms−1). The vulnerability of human health to thermal stress was evaluated by adopting the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT). The results from the future scenarios suggest a high public health risk due to rising temperatures in the future. This study provides a methodology for a more comprehensive understanding of future urbanization and its impact on regional climate by using freely available satellite images and WRF simulation tools. The simulated temperature and WBGT results can serve local governments and stakeholders in city planning and the creation of action plans that will reduce the potential vulnerability of human health to excessive heat.

scholarly journals A case study of haemoglobinopathy screening in the Netherlands: witnessing the past, lessons for the future

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suze M.P.J. Jans ◽  
Carla G. van El ◽  
Eddy S. Houwaart ◽  
Marjan J. Westerman ◽  
Rien J.P.A. Janssens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 224-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle P. Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Viewing Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Parallel Universes ◽  
Indigenous Perspectives ◽  
Colonial Violence ◽  
Climate Crisis

Portrayals of the Anthropocene period are often dystopian or post-apocalyptic narratives of climate crises that will leave humans in horrific science-fiction scenarios. Such narratives can erase certain populations, such as Indigenous peoples, who approach climate change having already been through transformations of their societies induced by colonial violence. This essay discusses how some Indigenous perspectives on climate change can situate the present time as already dystopian. Instead of dread of an impending crisis, Indigenous approaches to climate change are motivated through dialogic narratives with descendants and ancestors. In some cases, these narratives are like science fiction in which Indigenous peoples work to empower their own protagonists to address contemporary challenges. Yet within literature on climate change and the Anthropocene, Indigenous peoples often get placed in historical categories designed by nonIndigenous persons, such as the Holocene. In some cases, these categories serve as the backdrop for allies' narratives that privilege themselves as the protagonists who will save Indigenous peoples from colonial violence and the climate crisis. I speculate that this tendency among allies could possibly be related to their sometimes denying that they are living in times their ancestors would have likely fantasized about. I will show how this denial threatens allies' capacities to build coalitions with Indigenous peoples. Inuit culture is based on the ice, the snow and the cold…. It is the speed and intensity in which change has occurred and continues to occur that is a big factor why we are having trouble with adapting to certain situations. Climate change is yet another rapid assault on our way of life. It cannot be separated from the first waves of changes and assaults at the very core of the human spirit that have come our way. Just as we are recognizing and understanding the first waves of change … our environment and climate now gets threatened. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, interviewed by the Ottawa Citizen. (Robb, 2015) In North America many Indigenous traditions tell us that reality is more than just facts and figures collected so that humankind might widely use resources. Rather, to know “it”—reality—requires respect for the relationships and relatives that constitute the complex web of life. I call this Indigenous realism, and it entails that we, members of humankind, accept our inalienable responsibilities as members of the planet's complex life system, as well as our inalienable rights. ( Wildcat, 2009 , xi) Within Māori ontological and cosmological paradigms it is impossible to conceive of the present and the future as separate and distinct from the past, for the past is constitutive of the present and, as such, is inherently reconstituted within the future. (Stewart-Harawira, 2005, 42) In fact, incorporating time travel, alternate realities, parallel universes and multiverses, and alternative histories is a hallmark of Native storytelling tradition, while viewing time as pasts, presents, and futures that flow together like currents in a navigable stream is central to Native epistemologies. ( Dillon, 2016a , 345)

scholarly journals Inclusion of climate change strategies in municipal Integrated Development Plans: A case from seven municipalities in Limpopo Province, South Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mankolo X. Lethoko
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Integrated Development ◽  
Greenhouse Gasses ◽  
Local Municipalities ◽  
Development Plans ◽  
Adaptation And Mitigation

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made it clear that anthropogenic greenhouse gasses are the main cause of observed global warming that leads to climate change. Climate change is now a global reality. In the South African political set-up, local municipalities are the structures that are in direct contact with communities and they draw up Integrated Development Plans (IDPs), which are reviewed and upgraded annually. The article seeks to investigate the extent to which climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies are embedded IDPs in seven vulnerable municipalities in the Limpopo Province. The article conducted an in-depth content analysis of the IDPs of the seven municipalities and the results have revealed that these municipalities have not included adaptation and mitigation strategies adequately in their IDPs despite being the most vulnerable municipalities in the province. The article concludes that these municipalities have not as yet institutionalised climate change in their daily operations, planning and decision making. To this end, the paper recommends that local municipalities should include climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in their IDPs.Keywords: Climate change; adaptation; mitigation; Integrated Development Plan; vulnerable municipalities

scholarly journals Leishmaniasis and Climate Change—Case Study: Argentina

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Daniel Salomón ◽  
María Gabriela Quintana ◽  
Andrea Verónica Mastrángelo ◽  
María Soledad Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Vector Borne Diseases ◽  
Scale Models ◽  
Vector Borne

Vector-borne diseases closely associated with the environment, such as leishmaniases, have been a usual argument about the deleterious impact of climate change on public health. From the biological point of view interaction of different variables has different and even conflicting effects on the survival of vectors and the probability transmission of pathogens. The results on ecoepidemiology of leishmaniasis in Argentina related to climate variables at different scales of space and time are presented. These studies showed that the changes in transmission due to change or increase in frequency and intensity of climatic instability were expressed through changes in the probability of vector-human reservoir effective contacts. These changes of contact in turn are modulated by both direct effects on the biology and ecology of the organisms involved, as by perceptions and changes in the behavior of the human communities at risk. Therefore, from the perspective of public health and state policy, and taking into account the current nonlinear increased velocity of climate change, we concluded that discussing the uncertainties of large-scale models will have lower impact than to develop-validate mitigation strategies to be operative at local level, and compatibles with sustainable development, conservation biodiversity, and respect for cultural diversity.

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