Education and water conservation in Tucson, Arizona: towards an educational model for Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia and Tucson, Arizona are both surrounded by desert and rely on groundwater. Both places also suffer from similar types of water shortage problems. The average water usage, in gallons per person per day, in Tucson is 160. In contrast, in Saudi Arabia this figure is 260. Respectively, these factors encouraged the researcher to investigate the educational roles in Tucson. The findings and experience gleaned from Tucson will be used in Saudi Arabia where the researcher is planning to pursue his career.;Information circulated to the Tucson public about water conservation demonstrates effectiveness in addressing issues related to water problems and the needs of citizens. With little information about water conservation being disseminated through the university curricula, media, agricultural education programs, and school districts in Tucson, formal venues play an unproductive role in the efforts to solve the water problem.;Exploring the need for both formal and informal educational forums established in Tucson, Arizona to address behaviors in water conservation could help determine how to establish similar programs for solving the water problem in Saudi Arabia with respect to culture, education, and level of economics.;Teachers\u27 educational backgrounds and training may prove helpful and provide competence for teachers in addressing societal needs. Teachers and trainers agree that hands-on application and other valid teaching techniques and students\u27 evaluations could be examined in order to improve the link between schools and the water problem. Courses in agriculture and biology, for example, have been found to have a direct impact on students\u27 knowledge and information. Teachers, professionals, and the general public who participated in this study agreed on the importance of establishing water education issues in K-12 schools, community, and four-year colleges for long-term effectiveness.;It is crucial to understand the role of water to future development in Tucson. Both public education and higher education should focus on people needs and local problems for application not only information delivery. Overall the general public believed in applying the water sustainability concept toward water conservation

Water conservation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for better environment: Implications for extension and

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia faces an acute water shortage due to arid climate and absence of permanent lakes and rivers. The demand for water is growing substantially and that is being met through the available scarce and dwindling water resources. Ever-increasing imbalances are usually met by increasing water supplies, whereas the concepts of water-demand management have not been given due importance and weightage. Meeting the rapidly rising demand with scarce and depleting resources remains the critical issue. This paper places emphasizes on the urgency of adopting conservation and water-demand management initiatives to maintain demand supply relationship and achieve an acceptable balance between water needs and availability. The kingdom places emphasis on the shift from supply development to demand management to use of critical and non-renewable water resources efficiently. The article suggests that the water-use-efficiency (WUE) in various sectors can be enhanced and improved in the kingdom. The paper presents an overview of the country's water resources and issues related to water. Some possible conservation and remedial measures particularly in the agricultural sector -the largest and most inefficient user of water have been suggested. The objective of this article is to safeguard and conserve this precious natural resource through environmental friendly technologies for the future generations to come. It is presumed that water resources can be managed on sustainable basis by devising and employing environmental friendly technologies including water conservation measures. The usefulness of these measures can be supplemented through the vibrant and viable extension and education initiatives and capacity building programs

Education and water conservation in Tucson, Arizona: towards an educational model for Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia and Tucson, Arizona are both surrounded by desert and rely on groundwater. Both places also suffer from similar types of water shortage problems. The average water usage, in gallons per person per day, in Tucson is 160. In contrast, in Saudi Arabia this figure is 260. Respectively, these factors encouraged the researcher to investigate the educational roles in Tucson. The findings and experience gleaned from Tucson will be used in Saudi Arabia where the researcher is planning to pursue his career.;Information circulated to the Tucson public about water conservation demonstrates effectiveness in addressing issues related to water problems and the needs of citizens. With little information about water conservation being disseminated through the university curricula, media, agricultural education programs, and school districts in Tucson, formal venues play an unproductive role in the efforts to solve the water problem.;Exploring the need for both formal and informal educational forums established in Tucson, Arizona to address behaviors in water conservation could help determine how to establish similar programs for solving the water problem in Saudi Arabia with respect to culture, education, and level of economics.;Teachers' educational backgrounds and training may prove helpful and provide competence for teachers in addressing societal needs. Teachers and trainers agree that hands-on application and other valid teaching techniques and students' evaluations could be examined in order to improve the link between schools and the water problem. Courses in agriculture and biology, for example, have been found to have a direct impact on students' knowledge and information. Teachers, professionals, and the general public who participated in this study agreed on the importance of establishing water education issues in K-12 schools, community, and four-year colleges for long-term effectiveness.;It is crucial to understand the role of water to future development in Tucson. Both public education and higher education should focus on people needs and local problems for application not only information delivery. Overall the general public believed in applying the water sustainability concept toward water conservation.</p

Vegetation cover change detection and assessment in arid environment using multi-temporal remote sensing images and ecosystem management approach

Vegetation cover (VC) change detection is essential for a better understanding of the interactions and interrelationships between humans and their ecosystem. Remote sensing (RS) technology is one of the most beneficial tools to study spatial and temporal changes of VC. A case study has been conducted in the agro-ecosystem (AE) of Al-Kharj, in the center of Saudi Arabia. Characteristics and dynamics of total VC changes during a period of 26 years (1987–2013) were investigated. A multi-temporal set of images was processed using Landsat images from Landsat4 TM 1987, Landsat7 ETM+2000, and Landsat8 to investigate the drivers responsible for the total VC pattern and changes, which are linked to both natural and social processes. The analyses of the three satellite images concluded that the surface area of the total VC increased by 107.4 % between 1987 and 2000 and decreased by 27.5 % between years 2000 and 2013. The field study, review of secondary data, and community problem diagnosis using the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) method suggested that the drivers for this change are the deterioration and salinization of both soil and water resources. Ground truth data indicated that the deteriorated soils in the eastern part of the Al-Kharj AE are frequently subjected to sand dune encroachment, while the southwestern part is frequently subjected to soil and groundwater salinization. The groundwater in the western part of the ecosystem is highly saline, with a salinity  ≥ 6 dS m⁻¹. The ecosystem management approach applied in this study can be used to alike AE worldwide

Big data social media analytics for purchasing behaviour

The social media is rich in data and of late its data have been used for various types of analytics. This paper examines the purchasing behavior and sentiments of social media users from Jan - 2015 to Dec - 2016. The purchasing behaviour of the users is categorized into five: buy car, buy house, buy computer, buy hand phone and going for holiday. The paper will also demonstrate the trend of each individual category. The results of the analysis would provide businesses information on the social media users' purchasing behavior, their sentiment thus allowing them to take more appropriate strategies to enhance their competitiveness

Sentiment Analysis of Big Data: Methods, Applications, and Open Challenges

The development of IoT technologies and the massive admiration and acceptance of social media tools and applications, new doors of opportunity have been opened for using data analytics in gaining meaningful insights from unstructured information. The application of opinion mining and sentiment analysis (OMSA) in the era of big data have been used a useful way in categorizing the opinion into different sentiment and in general evaluating the mood of the public. Moreover, different techniques of OMSA have been developed over the years in different data sets and applied to various experimental settings. In this regard, this paper presents a comprehensive systematic literature review, aims to discuss both technical aspect of OMSA (techniques and types) and non-technical aspect in the form of application areas are discussed. Furthermore, this paper also highlighted both technical aspects of OMSA in the form of challenges in the development of its technique and non-technical challenges mainly based on its application. These challenges are presented as a future direction for research

Linking consumer confidence index and social media sentiment analysis

This study aims to analyse the link (correlation) between and the official CCI and social media big data (via sentiment analysis) on consumer purchasing behaviour for two types of products over the course of two years (24 months, from January 2015 to December 2016). The CCI data was obtained from the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER) while the sentiment analysis was obtained from twitter. The results indicate that there is a significant but very small relationship between CCI and social media sentiment analysis. On the basis of the results we conclude that social media can offer huge a huge volume of data on consumer confidence, the analysis of which can be conducted at a more rapid time and integrated with existing methods in a synergistic way to refine the accuracy of the CCI using data from far larger populations