Influence of household savings on investments in climate-smart agriculture technologies: Findings from a climate-smart agriculture (CSA) survey in the Nyando Basin, Kenya

This brief summarizes findings of “Using Climate-Smart Financial Diaries for Scaling in Nyando,” a research project led by the Amsterdam Center for World Food Studies (ACWFS) with participation of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in East Africa, University of Nairobi (School of Economics) and Wageningen Economic Research. It is based on baseline data of an ongoing bigger panel data study involving 122 households located in Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs) and non-CSVs from 44 villages of Nyando Basin in Kisumu and Kericho Counties. The project’s focus is to assess the financial inflows and outflows of farming households by gathering and analyzing data on income, consumption, saving, lending and investment

Urban lighting project for a small town: comparing citizens and authority benefits

The smart and resilient city evolves by slow procedures of mutation without radical changes, increasing the livability of its territory. The value of the city center in a Smart City can increase through urban lighting systems: its elements on the territory can collect and convey data to increase services to city users; the electrical system becomes the so-called Smart Grid. This paper presents a study of smart lighting for a small town, a touristic location inside a nature reserve on the Italian coast. Three different approaches have been proposed, from minimal to more invasive interventions, and their effect on the territory has been investigated. Based on street typology and its surroundings, the work analyzes the opportunity to introduce smart and useful services for the citizens starting from a retrofitting intervention. Smart city capabilities are examined, showing how it is possible to provide new services to the cities through ICT (Information and Communication Technology) without deep changes and simplifying the control of basic city functions. The results evidence an important impact on annual energy costs, suggesting smart grid planning not only for metropolis applications, but also in smaller towns, such as the examined one

Diversification of livelihoods among small-scale farmers in the Nyando Basin, Kenya: Findings from a climate-smart agriculture baseline survey

This brief summarizes findings of a climate-smart agriculture (CSA) research project led by the Amsterdam Center for World Food Studies (ACWFS) with the participation of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in East Africa, University of Nairobi (School of Economics) and Wageningen Economic Research. It is based on baseline data collected as part of an ongoing survey of 122 households located in the Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs) and non-CSVs villages of Nyando Basin in Kisumu and Kericho Counties. It discusses diversification of livelihood sources

Migration, Openness and the Global Preconditions of 'Smart Development'

In this article, we present a first empirical reflection on 'smart development', its measurement, possible 'drivers' and 'bottlenecks'. We first provide cross-national data on how much ecological footprint is used in the nations of the world system to 'deliver' a given amount of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion. To this end, we first developed UNDP-type performance indicators on these six main dimensions of development and on their combined performance. We then show the non-linear regression trade-offs between ecological footprints per capita on these six dimensions of development and their combined performance index. The residuals from these regressions are our new measures of smart development: a country experiences smart development, if it achieves a maximum of development with a minimum of ecological footprint. We then look at the cross-national drivers and bottlenecks of this 'smart development' and compare their predictive power using stepwise regression procedures. Apart from important variables and indicators, derived from sociological dependency and world systems theories, we also test the predictive power of several other predictors as well. Our estimates underline the enormous importance of the transfer of resources from the center to the periphery, brought about by migration, with huge statistical observed positive effects of received worker remittances on smart human development, Happy Life Years, smart gender justice, smart R&D, and both formulations of the smart development index.index numbers and aggregation, environment and development, environment and trade, smart development, sustainability, environmental accounts and accounting, environmental equity, population growth, international migration, remittances

Developing a Mini Smart House model

The work is devoted to designing a smart home educational model. The authors analyzed the literature in the field of the Internet of Things and identified the basic requirements for the training model. It contains the following levels: command, communication, management. The authors identify the main subsystems of the training model: communication, signaling, control of lighting, temperature, filling of the garbage container, monitoring of sensor data. The proposed smart home educational model takes into account the economic indicators of resource utilization, which gives the opportunity to save on payment for their consumption. The hardware components for the implementation of the Mini Smart House were selected in the article. It uses a variety of technologies to conveniently manage it and use renewable energy to power it. The model was produced in-dependently by students involved in the STEM project. Research includes sketching, making construction parts, sensor assembly and Arduino boards, programming in the Arduino IDE environment, testing the functioning of the system. Research includes sketching, making some parts, assembly sensor and Arduino boards, programming in the Arduino IDE environment, testing the functioning of the system. Approbation Mini Smart House researches were conducted within activity the STEM-center of Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University, in particular during the educational process and during numerous trainings and seminars for pupils and teachers of computer science

Evaluation of Coordinated Ramp Metering (CRM) Implemented By Caltrans

Coordinated ramp metering (CRM) is a critical component of smart freeway corridors that rely on real-time traffic data from ramps and freeway mainline to improve decision-making by the motorists and Traffic Management Center (TMC) personnel. CRM uses an algorithm that considers real-time traffic volumes on freeway mainline and ramps and then adjusts the metering rates on the ramps accordingly for optimal flow along the entire corridor. Improving capacity through smart corridors is less costly and easier to deploy than freeway widening due to high costs associated with right-of-way acquisition and construction. Nevertheless, conversion to smart corridors still represents a sizable investment for public agencies. However, in the U.S. there have been limited evaluations of smart corridors in general, and CRM in particular, based on real operational data. This project examined the recent Smart Corridor implementation on Interstate 80 (I-80) in the Bay Area and State Route 99 (SR-99, SR99) in Sacramento based on travel time reliability measures, efficiency measures, and before-and-after safety evaluation using the Empirical Bayes (EB) approach. As such, this evaluation represents the most complete before-and-after evaluation of such systems. The reliability measures include buffer index, planning time, and measures from the literature that account for both the skew and width of the travel time distribution. For efficiency, the study estimates the ratio of vehicle miles traveled vs. vehicle hour traveled. The research contextualizes before-and-after comparisons for efficiency and reliability measures through similar measures from another corridor (i.e., the control corridor of I-280 in District 4 and I-5 in District 3) from the same region, which did not have CRM implemented. The results show there has been an improvement in freeway operation based on efficiency data. Post-CRM implementation, travel time reliability measures do not show a similar improvement. The report also provides a counterfactual estimate of expected crashes in the post-implementation period, which can be compared with the actual number of crashes in the “after” period to evaluate effectiveness