Which are the factors that may explain the differences in water and energy consumptions in urban and rural environments?

Rural and urban environments present significant differences between water and energy consumptions. It is important to know, in detail, which factors related to the consumption of these two resources are different in both environments, once that will be those important to manage and discuss in order to improve its use efficiency and sustainability. This research work involves a survey whose aim is to find the factors that in rural and urban environments may justify the differences found in water and energy consumptions. Besides the collection of water and energy consumption data, this survey analyzed 80 variables (socio-demographic, economic, household characterization, among others), that were chosen among the bibliography as possible factors that should influence water and energy consumptions. After the survey application in rural and urban areas and the data statistical treatment, 42 variables remained as truly differentiating factors of rural and urban environments and so as possible determinants of water and energy consumptions. In order to achieve these objectives, a descriptive data analysis and statistical inference (Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test and the Chi-square test of homogeneity) were performed. All the 42 differentiating variables that result from this study may be able to justify these differences, however this will not be presented in the paper and it is reserved for future work.POCI-0-0145-FEDER-016730 Project (PTDC/AAG-REC/4700/2014) with the designation ENERWAT: Water to energy: characterization, modelling and measures for the reduction of urban and rural household consumption, financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) through the COMPETE 2020 - Programme Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization (POCI). This work was partially supported by the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) through the project PEst-OE/ECI/UI4082/2013 (C-MADE

ENERWAT project: some preliminary results

Water and energy are two linked important resources and its use efficient must be profoundly studied. On the other hand, it is believed that there are significant differences between the pattern of water and energy consumption in rural and urban areas, whose influencing factors require study too. Swveral research state a large difference in urban and rural household water consumption pattern. However, rural household's consumptions are under-researched compared to urban residential consumptions. This paper aims to provide some preliminary results of a research project named ENERWAT, supported by the Portuguese Science and Technology Fiundation. One of the parts of the referred project was the design, application and results analysis of a survey, in order to find the main differences in the water and energy consumptions at the end-use level, and tha factores that influence it in urban and rural households. A total of 245 households participated in the research during the year of 2016 (urban: 110 dwellings) and (rural: 135 dwellings), responding to questions such as their family composition, dwellings characterization, water and energy consumption habits and conservation behaviors of these resources. Some of the obtained results will be here provided.This work was partially funded by project POCI-0-0145-FEDER-016730 (PTDC/AAG-REC/4700/2014) under the name ENERWAT: Water for energy: characterization, modeling and measures for reducing domestic urban and rural consumption, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through COMPETE 2020 - Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Program (POCI). This work was partially supported by the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) through the project PEst-OE/ECI/UI4082/2013 (C-MADE)

Mechanical characterization of masonry built with iCEBs of granite residual soils with cement-lime stabilization

The environmental impact due to the overexploitation of nonrenewable resources, the processing and transportation of materials, and waste production is a global concern that the construction industry must urgently address, since it is among the greatest contributors. Earth construction can be seen as an alternative building solution, enhancing sustainability, despite traditional techniques being nowadays in disuse in most developed countries. Construction with interlocking compressed earth blocks (iCEBs) is a recently developed technique, put in evidence in the last few decades, for overcoming many earth construction limitations. Here, this technique is studied as a sustainable building solution for Northern Portugal, where the typical soils are sandy, granitic residual soils with low clay content. These soils typically demand cement stabilization to produce earthen materials, which compromise the sustainability of the construction solution. In order to improve sustainability, stabilization with hydraulic lime is proposed as a partial replacement of cement. For this purpose, the properties of the selected soil were characterized through a set of geotechnical tests, with different percentages of cement and lime in the mixture composition tested, concerning the compressive strength of the specimens. A mixture composed of 87.5% of soil, 7.5% of cement, and 5% of lime was shown to be the most suitable for producing iCEBs with adequate mechanical performance. The compressive behavior of the iCEBs masonry was characterized by testing prisms and wallettes, considering both dry stack and mortar joints cases. The obtained results showed that using mortar in the bed joints allows for the improvement of the compressive strength (a 5%–18% increase) and Young’s modulus (a 65%–92% increase) of the masonry. Thus, it can be concluded that masonry built with locally produced iCEBs and stabilized with cement and lime is a feasible building solution, for a sustainable earth masonry built from sandy granitic residual soils, where the mechanical behavior is substantially enhanced by using bed-joint mortar.This work was partly financed by national funds, through the FCT Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under the projects UIDB/00616/2020 and UIDP/00616/2020 for the Unit Institute CQ-VR and UIDB/04029/2020 for the Unit Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering (ISISE)

Earth-based render of tabique walls – an experimental work contribution

A research work focused on studying earth render for tabique application purposes is presented. Initially, a brief description of the tabique building technique is provided. The relevance of the application of this traditional building technique is also highlighted. Different compositions of earth render are experimentally analysed and the respective performance is evaluated. Flexural and compressive strengths, workability, drying shrinkage cracking and water resistance are the material properties assessed. A simple earth render is selected as being adequate for tabique building applications and it is applied on the manufacturing of a tabique wall sample. This wall sample is monitored in terms of thermal insulation ability and its thermal transmission coefficient is estimated. Taking into account that there is still a lack of published technical information related to this topic, this paper may contribute to solve this limitation and to give some guidance in future repairing processes of tabique construction. The technological benefit of adding lime or cement with earth is researched. Real tabique timber structure samples are applied in order to validate the obtained experimental results.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Characterization of water and energy consumptions at the end use level in rural and urban environments: Preliminary results of the ENERWAT project

The characterization of water and energy consumptions is essential in order to define strategies for their rational use. The way these resources are used in households is the path for efficient and rational management, interdependent from each other. It is believed that there are significant differences between the patterns of water and energy consumption in rural and urban areas, where influencing factors should also be identified. This article aims to provide some preliminary results of a research project named ENERWAT, with the main goal to characterize the relation between water and energy consumption at the end use level for urban and rural environments. One of the goals of the aforementioned project was the design, application, and results analysis of a survey, in order to find the main differences in the water and energy consumptions at the end use level and the factors that influence it in urban and rural households. A total of 245 households participated in the research during 2016 (110 urban dwellings and 135 rural), responding to questions on their family composition, dwellings characterization, water and energy consumption habits, and conservation behaviors of these resources. The project also includes the instrumentation and monitoring of dwellings in rural and urban environments to quantify the water consumption and related energy consumption. This stage is still in progress and includes in situ measurements of nine different households (four in rural and five in urban environments) during at least one year. In this article, some of the results obtained by the survey application and the in situ measurements are presented. Despite the large number of data and the associated complexity, it can be concluded that the joint analysis of the results allows identification of a connection between water and energy consumption, as well as a household’s consumption patterns.This work was partially funded by project POCI-0-0145-FEDER-016730 (PTDC/AAG-REC/4700/2014) under the name ENERWAT: Water for energy: characterization, modelling and measures for reducing domestic urban and rural consumption, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through COMPETE 2020—Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Program (POCI). This work was partially supported by the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) through the project PEst-OE/ECI/UI4082/2013 (C-MADE). The research of the A. Manuela Gonçalves author was partially financed by Portuguese Funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) within the Project UID/MAT/00013/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

From water to energy: Low cost water & energy consumptions readings

Water and energy are essential for human existence, and its rational use should be encouraged. According to the literature review, water consumption directly affects energy consumption and are inseparably linked resources. The energy to water part of the water/energy nexus, increasingly highlighted as an important issue for future planning and strategic policy considerations. Joint consideration of both water/energy domains can identify new options for increasing overall resource use efficiency. This work is part of the project ENERWAT that has as goal to measure in situ the water/energy consumption related with water supply end use in rural and urban dwellings in order to validate the data collected by survey. A methodology for low cost measure and store water/energy consumes was developed. Water, Gas and electricity data was stored in image format. In this paper, a CNN architecture was applied and trained to read water/energy. The models suited their proposed. The achieved accuracy for test set was: water - dozen: 0.98, unit: 0.92; gas: dozen: 0.94, unit: 0.99; and electricity - dozen: 0.99, units 0.99. The more challenge digit was water unit digit due to partial occlusion. It is presented a day of readings and discussed some events

Metodologia estatística na caracterização do consumo doméstico de água

Neste trabalho é estabelecida uma metodologia estatística com o principal objectivo de efectuar a caracterização dos consumos de energia associados aos consumos de água ao nível doméstico em áreas rurais e urbanas, identificando os factores influenciadores desses consumos.Este trabalho foi parcialmente financiado pelo Centro de Matemática da Universidade do Minho por Fundos Nacionais através da FCT - “Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia”, no âmbito do projecto PEstOE/MAT/UI0013/2017. Este trabalho foi parcialmente financiado pelo projecto POCI-0-0145- FEDER-016730 (PTDC/AAG-REC/4700/2014) com a designação ENERWAT: Água para energia: caracterização, modelagem e medidas para a redução do consumo doméstico urbano e rural, financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia e cofinanciado pelo Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) através do COMPETE 2020 - Programa de Competitividade Operacional e Internacionalização (POCI). Este trabalho foi parcialmente apoiado pela FCT (Fundação Portuguesa para Ciência e Tecnologia) através do projecto PEst-OE/ECI UI4082/2013 (C-MADE).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Materiais e sistemas de construção sustentáveis

Atualmente, tem-se verificado um interesse crescente em adotar comportamentos mais sustentáveis, nomeadamente relacionados com a redução dos consumos energéticos e das emissões de gases de efeito de estufa. A preocupação com o uso dos recursos ainda disponíveis no planeta tem sido um aspeto primordial contemplado nas agendas políticas da generalidade dos países. A indústria da construção civil está atenta a esta realidade e, por isso, esforços crescentes têm vindo a ser realizados no sentido de a tornar mais sustentável. Neste contexto, têm sido desenvolvidos trabalhos de investigação centrados no estudo do potencial de aplicação de resíduos na construção, como por exemplo o caroço de espiga de milho e os resíduos têxteis, e também na aplicação de técnicas solares passivas, nomeadamente a parede de Trombe. No que respeita aos resíduos foram desenvolvidos trabalhos preliminares para determinação das suas propriedades térmicas. Os estudos no âmbito da parede de Trombe visam um melhor conhecimento do seu desempenho térmico, assim como a quantificação da sua contribuição para a diminuição do consumo energético, com vista a incentivar a sua integração na envolvente dos edifícios. Nesta comunicação serão apresentados os principais resultados obtidos relativos às propriedades térmicas dos resíduos e às diversas variáveis influenciadoras do comportamento térmico da parede de Trombe