Performance Assessment of Soil Moisture Meter under Sandy Clay Loam Soil

Background: Irrigation performs a substantial function for the growth of Agricultural vegetation. Soil supplies essential nutrients for the growth of plant and provides anchor support to the roots of the crops. Soil Moisture permits the requirement for water system to be measured ahead of a yield giving indications of misery. Knowing the soil moisture status empowers exceptionally productive water system, giving the water as and when required and wiping out the inefficient utilization of water when water system isn’t required. Methods: Sandy clay loam soil contains a decent arrangement of plant supplements and supports most sorts of plants and yields. So in the field plentiful accessibility of this soil its texture is discovered by estimating soil moisture. Result: Within the research we developed a soil moisture meter based on capacitive type sensor the output is analog voltage which is calibrated to soil moisture percentage and its performance is comparatively investigated with different moisture sensor under sandy clay loam soil. The proposed model is highly emphasized on the soil moisture percentage that is the level of water content in the soil. The percentage value is displayed in the LCD. The deployment cost is highly reduced in the proposed model.

Managing Apparent Loss and Real Loss from the Nexus Perspective Using System Dynamics

When water utilities establish water loss control programs, they traditionally focus on apparent loss rather than real loss when considering economic feasibility in the water sector. There is an urgent need for new management approaches that can address complex relationships and ensure the sustainability of natural resources among different sectors. This study suggests a novel approach for water utilities to manage water losses from the water-energy (WE) Nexus perspective. The Nexus model uses system dynamics to simulate twelve scenarios with the differing status of water loss and energy intensities. This analysis identifies real loss as one of the main causes of resource waste and an essential factor from the Nexus perspective. It also demonstrates that the energy intensity of each process in the urban water system has a significant impact on resource use and transfer. The consumption and movement of resources can be quantified in each process involved in the urban water system to distinguish central and vulnerable processes. This study suggests that the Nexus approach can strongly contribute to quantifying the use and movement of resources between water and energy sectors and the strategic formulation of sustainable and systematic water loss management strategies from the Nexus perspective.

Open defecation: risk factors for adverse outcomes in Indonesia

The increasing number of Indonesian population has caused serious issue of open defecation. Indonesia ranks the second large of open defecation prevalence in the world, after India. Human’s excrement was disposed in trench, drain, terrace, grassland, backwoods, forest, river, lake or other open spaces, thus, contaminates the water system. Open defecation can lead to the increasing risk of transmission of water-boene diseases of child morbidity in Indonesia. This study aimed at exploring different socio-economic and demographic factors of Indonesians who practice open defecation. Data were obtained from 49,627 female respondents of the 2017 Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey. The data were examined utilizing descriptive and logistic regression. The results reveal that the practice of open defecation is significantly influenced by place of residence, household’s wealth quintile, and household’s water supply. The findings suggest the needs for toilet construction and water supply sustainability in public area as well as in poor neighbourhood to eliminate open defecation in the country.

Knowledge to Predict Pathogens: Legionella pneumophila Lifecycle Systematic Review Part II Growth within and Egress from a Host Cell

Legionella pneumophila (L. pneumophila) is a pathogenic bacterium of increasing concern, due to its ability to cause a severe pneumonia, Legionnaires’ Disease (LD), and the challenges in controlling the bacteria within premise plumbing systems. L. pneumophila can thrive within the biofilm of premise plumbing systems, utilizing protozoan hosts for protection from environmental stressors and to increase its growth rate, which increases the bacteria’s infectivity to human host cells. Typical disinfectant techniques have proven to be inadequate in controlling L. pneumophila in the premise plumbing system, exposing users to LD risks. As the bacteria have limited infectivity to human macrophages without replicating within a host protozoan cell, the replication within, and egress from, a protozoan host cell is an integral part of the bacteria’s lifecycle. While there is a great deal of information regarding how L. pneumophila interacts with protozoa, the ability to use this data in a model to attempt to predict a concentration of L. pneumophila in a water system is not known. This systematic review summarizes the information in the literature regarding L. pneumophila’s growth within and egress from the host cell, summarizes the genes which affect these processes, and calculates how oxidative stress can downregulate those genes.

A Novel Dynamic Approach to Cost-Optimal Energy Performance Calculations of a Solar Hot Water System in an nZEB Multi-Apartment Building

This paper presents the methodology for conducting a cost-optimal energy performance calculation of a solar hot water system, used for space heating and domestic hot water needs. The calculation is based on dynamic hourly methods, according to the new Energy Performance of Buildings’ (EPB) set of standards EN 15316:2017, and a revision of the standard EN 15316-5:2017 from the year 2021, dealing with storage-tank water temperature calculations. The paper provides proposals for modifications to these newly introduced standards, in order to overcome the observed ambiguities and shortcomings. The calculation of annual energy performance of a building was performed on an hourly basis over a year for the reference of an nZEB multi-apartment building, for a climate area of the city of Zagreb, taking into account water temperature change in the layers of the storage tank connected to solar collectors and hot water boilers. The cost-optimal solution was then determined by varying individual parameters of the building technical system. The influence of these parameters on the energy efficiency of the building was analyzed in detail. Furthermore, the results were compared against those obtained by the Croatian calculation algorithm based on the previous set of EPB standards, EN 15316:2008, currently used EU-wide for the energy performance certification of buildings. The results indicated that the calculation methods of the present algorithm underestimated the consumption of building primary energy by 12%. The energy delivered by solar collectors was underestimated by 18%.

Stress-Testing Framework for Urban Water Systems: A Source to Tap Approach for Stochastic Resilience Assessment

Optimizing the design and operation of an Urban Water System (UWS) faces significant challenges over its lifespan to account for the uncertainties of important stressors that arise from population growth rates, climate change factors, or shifting demand patterns. The analysis of a UWS’s performance across interdependent subsystems benefits from a multi-model approach where different designs are tested against a variety of metrics and in different times scales for each subsystem. In this work, we present a stress-testing framework for UWSs that assesses the system’s resilience, i.e., the degree to which a UWS continues to perform under progressively increasing disturbance (deviation from normal operating conditions). The framework is underpinned by a modeling chain that covers the entire water cycle, in a source-to-tap manner, coupling a water resources management model, a hydraulic water distribution model, and a water demand generation model. An additional stochastic simulation module enables the representation and modeling of uncertainty throughout the water cycle. We demonstrate the framework by “stress-testing” a synthetic UWS case study with an ensemble of scenarios whose parameters are stochastically changing within the UWS simulation timeframe and quantify the uncertainty in the estimation of the system’s resilience.