The environmental footprint of transport by car using renewable energy

Replacing fossil fuels in the transport sector by renewable energy will help combat climate change. However, lowering greenhouse gas emissions by switching to alternative fuels or electricity can come at the expense of land and water resources. To understand the scale of this possible tradeoff we compare and contrast carbon, land and water footprints per driven km in midsize cars utilizing conventional gasoline, biofuels, bioelectricity, solar electricity and solar‐based hydrogen. Results show that solar‐powered electric cars have the smallest environmental footprints per km, followed by solar‐based hydrogen cars, and that biofuel‐driven cars have the largest footprints

in case of Uzavtosanoat stock company

Thesis(Master) --KDI School:Master of Public Policy,2015For the last decades within the automobile industry, it is vital that companies adequately compete for consumer sales. With the industry struggling due to the current economic conditions, as well as a push for environmental sustainability, companies have to come up with new competitive strategies. There are 6 major ways that a company can give themselves an advantage over others. They are cost, quality, service, brand, innovation, and convenience. The current research is focused on competitive issues in economy of Uzbekistan, in particularly, automobile industry of Uzbekistan. This report analyses recent automotive market and it competitiveness in Republic of Uzbekistan and outside of it, and shows how the development of the automotive industry influenced the economy’s productivity and growth. The study also contains conclusions related to improving competitiveness of products and suggestions for government of in UzbekistanmasterpublishedBunyod Muhammadnosirovich HOLMATOV

Mekong River Delta crop mapping using a machine learning approach

Agricultural land use and practices have important implications for climate change mitigation and adaptation. It is, therefore, important to develop methods of monitoring and quantifying the extent of crop types and cropping practices. A machine learning approach using random forest classification was applied to Sentinel-1 and 2 satellite imagery and satellite-derived phenological statistics to map crop types in the Mekong River Delta, enabling levels of rice intensification to be identified. This initial classification differentiated between broad and prevalent crop types, including perennial tree crops, rice, other vegetation, oil palm and other crops. A two-step classification was used to classify rice seasonality, whereby the areas identified as rice in the initial classification were further classified into single, double, or triple-cropped rice in a subsequent classification with the same input data but different training polygons. Both classifications had an overall accuracy of approximately 96% when cross-validated on test data. Radar bands from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 reflectance bands were important predictors of crop type, perhaps due to their capacity to differentiate between periodically flooded rice fields and perennial tree cover, which were the predominant classes in the Delta. On the other hand, the Start of Season (SoS) and End of Season (EoS) dates were the most important predictors of single, double, or triple-cropped rice, demonstrating the efficacy of the phenological predictors. The accuracy and detail are limited by the availability of reliable training data, especially for tree crops in small-scale orchards. A preliminary result is presented here, and, in the future, efficient collection of ground images may enable cost-effective training data collection for similar mapping exercises

The nexus across water, energy and food (WEF): learning from research, building on evidence, strengthening practice

While water-energy-food (WEF) Nexus is one of the most important, and widely investigated, environmental topics of our time, previous stock taking efforts possess notable limitations, namely (i) their focus is restricted to research articles, and (ii) there is less focus on nexus permutations that begin with energy and food. This paper assembled more than 900 documents and systematically categorized them according to more than 10 key parameters (e.g. scale, methods, limitations), to characterize approaches, achieved outcomes and presence of variables likely to support on-the-ground change. Our results reveal that WEF Nexus activities are often driven by the water sector, undertaken at global and national scale and authored by experts from diverse backgrounds. Among the utilized methods, modelling and review (i.e. systematic) are the most common. While climate change and governance are routinely considered in WEF Nexus documents, gender, stakeholders and capacity are not. These findings highlight areas for improvement in the design of WEF Nexus initiatives

Inland water: an overlooked source of greenhouse gases

This blog post summarises the online seminar, NEXUS Gains Talk 7