Feasibility of an environmentally friendly method of contaminant flushing in water distribution systems using containment ponds

Water distribution system flushing is one way to get rid of contamination. In conventional flushing, all the contaminated water gets discharged to the environment, thereby harming it. A new method is proposed here as an alternative solution, in which a containment pond lined with impermeable material will be constructed in a suitable place within the municipality. Network modelling was performed to investigate the feasibility of the new method. It was found that (1) the proposed flushing method can successfully reduce environmental impacts compared to hydrant flushing only, (2) a containment pond cannot clear the system periphery away from the containment pond, (3) the best location of a containment pond is not always at the furthest location from the source reservoir, and (4) for some systems, some pond locations might be better from an economic perspective, while other locations will be better environmentally.

Ecologically Intermediate and Economically Final: The Role of the Ecosystem Services Framework in Measuring Sustainability in Agri-Food Systems

Ecosystem services can be defined as the ecosystem’s contribution to human activities. According to recent assessments, the agricultural sector is one of the most important economic users of ecosystem services in Europe. To assess, value, and account for ecosystem services related to the agri-food system offers the possibility to measure and investigate how agricultural management practices together with changing environmental conditions can affect ecological resilience. However, the accounting of ecosystem services’ flows needs to be carefully addressed, because the overlapping of services and benefits and the overlapping of what are considered intermediate and final services could create dangerous misunderstandings about the role and importance of ecosystem services in agriculture. This paper reports on the possible accounting approaches that can be used to assess crop provision, as well as their meanings and implications from an ecological to an economic perspective. The results demonstrate that an economic accounting-based assessment of ecosystem services needs to move from an ecological holistic view to a one-by-one disaggregation of ecosystem services in order to avoid underestimates that would ultimately affect the policy perception of the role of ecosystems with respect to the agri-food systems’ resilience.

The Transnationalization of Business Education

Recent decades have witnessed the emergence and growth of transnational higher education, a specific form of internationalization which considers education as a product which can be packaged and sold abroad. This transnationalization of higher education is especially prominent in the discipline of business, which has wide student appeal. The purpose of this chapter is to review the transnationalization of business education. The chapter begins by situating transnational higher education within the internationalization of higher education more broadly. It then characterises transnational higher education, enumerating various definitions and transnationalization modes. Finally, it rationalizes transnational higher education from a geo-political/economic perspective.

Determinants of Development Achievements on District/City of Central Java in 2019

In 2019, Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional (Bappenas) awarded Central Java as the province with the best Perencanaan dan Pembangunan Daerah (PPD). However, if it is reviewed at the district/city level, it shows that there are still many areas that have low development achievements. In accordance with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) proposal, the Human Development Index (HDI) is used as an indicator of the achievement of district/city development whose calculations are good enough to describe development from both a social and economic perspective. The large difference in HDI between districts/cities in Central Java and the distribution of development achievements are still centered around the provincial capital, namely Semarang City, this indicates the occurrence of inequality in development achievements at the district/city level in Central Java. Because the observations in this study are districts/cities in Central Java, the linkage between district/city causes spatial autocorrelation. Therefore, spatial regression model is used to determine the model that has spatial autocorrelation. This study aims to determine the achievements of development and its determinants in the districts/cities of Central Java in 2019 using the spatial regression analysis method. From the results of the study, it is known that there is a dependence on development achievements between districts/cities in Central Java which is influenced by the regional capacity factor is characterized by PAD and economic growth; operational resource factors characterized by DAU, DAK and technology; and the level of poverty.