Digitalisation for Water Sustainability: Barriers to Implementing Circular Economy in Smart Water Management

“Clean water and sanitation” is listed as one of the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and implementing circular economy principles in the water sector has been widely regarded as an important approach in achieving this goal. In the era of Industry 4.0, research and practice in the digitalisation of the water sector to create a smart water system have attracted increasing attention. Despite the growing interest, limited research has been devoted to how digital technologies might enhance circularity. In practice, smart water systems often fail to promote circularity in such aspects as water reuse and resources recovery. This paper aims to identify the main barriers to implementing circularity in the smart water management system in Zhejiang, China. The research adopts a mixed research method that includes a literature review to identify the potential barriers from the existing studies, a case study to determine the most critical barriers in practice, and a fuzzy Delphi method to reach a consensus on the crucial barriers. The research identified 22 main barriers to implementing circular economy in smart water management. The barriers are divided into three categories: infrastructure and economic, technology, and institution and governance. The results show that the barriers related to recycling technologies, digital technology know-how, and the lack of CE awareness raise the most concern. Our findings also indicate that experts are interested in the decentralized wastewater treatment system. This research provides significant insights that practitioners, researchers, and policymakers can use in developing and implementing digital-based CE strategies to reduce water scarcity and pollution.

A New Flexible and Economic Technology for the Low Pressure Sand Casting of Steel Alloys

Low pressure casting is a very well established process for the casting of aluminium alloys. In the field of ferrous materials, however, the process has so far only found a few applications. The crucial reasons for this are the low flexibility and poor economic efficiency of the existing technologies. Since 2016, a new technology has been developed at the Foundry Institute of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, in which an induction crucible furnace can be used as a melting unit and, in combination with a cover including a casting pipe, as a casting unit. The new technology stands out from existing low-pressure casting technologies for ferrous materials, particularly in terms of its flexibility and cost-effectiveness. The main focus of the activities was the development of a casting pipe as well as the verification of its lifetime, the elaboration and verification of process parameters and sequences as well as the upscaling of the technology for an industrial application. In all considerations, the focus was on both the technical feasibility and the economic efficiency of the process. The result is extensive expertise that can be used in the future to offer a finished product for industrial applications as a plug-and-play solution together with an induction furnace construction company.

Bigger than Bitcoin: A Theoretical Typology and Research Agenda for Digital Currencies

Currency is the fundamental economic technology that makes promises credible among actors within and across societies. From shells, to metals, to paper, the technology of money has continually evolved to meet the changing needs of human society. The twenty-first century is witnessing yet another evolution in the technology of money: digital currencies. Although political economy scholarship has begun to focus on digital currencies, this research has largely focused on single early examples like Bitcoin. I argue that this generally narrow focus has obscured important degrees of variation among digital currencies and, by extension, has omitted important lines of research on digital currencies as a familiar evolution in the technology of money. In this article, I revisit the history of digital currencies with explicit attention to not only economic inefficiencies but also political power structures and offer a new typology for theoretically organizing digital currencies along dimensions relevant to practitioners of political economy. I illustrate that variation along these typological dimensions produces important differences among different digital currencies and, relatedly, I explore the implications this has for digital currencies’ externalities and governance demands. Drawing on this typology, I conclude with a proposed research agenda for the political economy of digital currencies.

Characteristic Curve Prediction of a Commercial Centrifugal Pump Operating as a Turbine Through Numerical Simulations

In this work, we seek to predict the characteristic curve of a commercial centrifugal radial flow pump operating as a turbine, applying a novel methodology based on the state of the art. Initially, the characteristic curve in pump mode is validated through numerical simulations. The results obtained are approximate to the points awarded by the manufacturer, with an error of less than 7% at the best efficiency point. Subsequently, the characteristic curve is generated in turbine mode, obtaining an error of less than 10% respect to mathematical model. Then, velocity and pressure contours are evaluated to validate the fluid dynamic behavior. Finally, the site operating conditions for electricity generation are obtained. With this, it is proposing a methodology for the selection of these turbomachines, applying an economic technology for zones that do not have access to the electrical energy, since it was not found a method that is being applied for its correct election in the hydroelectric generation at low scale.

Development of Economic Technology and Infrastructure in Stimulating Consumption and Economic Growth

This study aims to examine the development of technology and economic infrastructure in driving consumption and economic growth in Indonesia. This study uses secondary data from world banks and processed regression using the moving average autoregression method. We conclude that the supporting infrastructure for the economy and public consumption has a role or a role in driving economic growth. The construction of highways as the supporting infrastructure for the economy in terms of smooth distribution along with traditional markets is an economic supporting infrastructure that is very important in the Indonesian economy, supported by the high level of consumption of Indonesian society.

Economic technology analysis of LTE advanced pro dual spectrum licensed and unlicensed access using discounted cash flow methods

<p>Since implementing the long term evolution (LTE) technology, the surge in data service traffic has increased, causing an increase in demand spectrum, which has resulted in gaps in capacity requirements. Wireless service providers can respond to LTE technology updates. With LTE advanced pro technology that utilizes unlicensed spectrum technology can provide solutions to increase capacity and throughput. In this study, LTE advanced pro planning by capacity method to find the number of eNodeB and using the discounted cash flow method to analyze the feasibility of the costs to be invested in the implementation of the LTE. The results of the four simulated scenarios concluded that the number of eNodeB from the IV scenario with 20 MHz bandwidth at 1800 MHz frequency and 20 MHz bandwidth at 5 GHz frequency amounted to 23 sites, with a positive NPV value of $ 271,936.96, IRR of 14.91%, and for payback period occurred in the 3rd year. Thus the fourth scenario is feasible to be implemented.</p>

The Identification of Risks and its Criticality in the Nigeria Construction Industry

Failure in project delivering can be attributed to many risk events in the Nigerian Construction Industry. This risk could be as a result of the dynamic, sensitivity, and complexity of the construction Industry towards its environment, socio-political, economic, technology, and cultural variables in Nigeria. Nevertheless, the low level of Risk Management in Nigeria construction Industry, and the little understanding and knowledge of the subject by Project Stakeholders prompt this study. A quantitative method of research was carried out, and among the sixty (60) questionnaires administered to clients, consultants, and contractors in the Nigerian construction industry, thirty-one (31) valid responses were obtained. The questionnaires were designed on the twenty (20) types of risks that were identified by construction professionals which were categorized into five namely; Government and Politics; Finance and Economical; Management and Technology; social and Cultural; Natural and Environmental Risks. And, findings made revealed that economic and financial risks surpass all other types in the Nigeria Construction Industry.

Dynamic evaluation method of urban green growth level in Anhui province: a comprehensive analysis of 16 cities’ panel data from 2013-2017

Considering that green growth development is an increasingly important environmental trend, this paper develops an urban green growth development index and applies it to Anhui Province in China and its 16 cities. Previously, such analyses have taken place mostly at the provincial level, and research on cities is relatively rare. To fill the gap, this paper constructs an urban green growth economy evaluation index based on economic technology, social development, ecological environment, and energy emissions. Using the vertical and horizontal pull-off method to comprehensively evaluate the green growth development levels of 16 cities in Anhui province from 2013 to 2017, the residual expectation coefficient is used to measure and analyze differences in the development levels. The results show that Hefei and Huangshan emit a medium-high level of carbon, and the other 14 cities belong in the high-carbon category. Furthermore, cluster analysis shows that the green growth development levels of the 16 cities fall into four groups. There is a wide disparity between the groups, and the differences between groups are significantly larger than the differences within groups.