Sustainable use of citrus waste as organic amendment in orange orchards

The use of citrus waste (peel, CW) as organic fertilizer was investigated on soil microbiota and on soil physico-chemical and hydraulic characteristics. The biotic components on CW and the effect on nutritional status, leaf chlorophyll content, fruit set and production of "Tarocco" orange trees were also identified. The citrus waste was supplied to an experimental orchard at different doses: 45 kg m(-2) (with and without Ca(OH)(2) addition) and 90 kg m(-2). The study was conducted in three consecutive years (2015-2017) on 20-year old orange trees at the experimental farm of the University of Catania (Italy). The main results of the study confirm that the use of CW as a biofertilizer offers a great opportunity for sustainable sweet orange production

Comparing the use of ERA5 reanalysis dataset and ground-based agrometeorological data under different climates and topography in Italy

Study region: The study region is represented by seven irrigation districts distributed under different climate and topography conditions in Italy. Study focus: This study explores the reliability and consistency of the global ERA5 single levels and ERA5-Land reanalysis datasets in predicting the main agrometeorological estimates commonly used for crop water requirements calculation. In particular, the reanalysis data was compared, variable-by-variable (e.g., solar radiation, R-s; air temperature, T-air; relative humidity, RH; wind speed, u(10); reference evapotranspiration, ET0), with in situ agrometeorological obser-vations obtained from 66 automatic weather stations (2008-2020). In addition, the presence of a climate-dependency on their accuracy was assessed at the different irrigation districts. New hydrological insights for the region: A general good agreement was obtained between observed and reanalysis agrometeorological variables at both daily and seasonal scales. The best perfor-mance was obtained for T-air, followed by RH, R-s, and u(10) for both reanalysis datasets, especially under temperate climate conditions. These performances were translated into slightly higher accuracy of ET0 estimates by ERA5-Land product, confirming the potential of using reanalysis datasets as an alternative data source for retrieving the ET0 and overcoming the unavailability of observed agrometeorological data

Building a smart city service platform in Messina with the #SmartME project

© 2018 IEEE. Some words mark an era, and "Smart City" is definitely one of these. A Smart City is an urban area where the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are employed to improve citizens' Quality of Life (QoL) in areas such as: mobility, urban surveillance, and energy management. Throughout this paper, we present the #SmartME project, which aims to create an infrastructure and an ecosystem of "smart" services by exploiting existing devices, sensors, and actuators distributed in the city of Messina. We also present the Stack4Things framework, which is the management core of the #SmartME project

Monitoring of irrigation water use in Italy by using IRRISAT methodology: The INCIPIT project

The INCIPIT project (INtegrated Computer modeling and monitoring for Irrigation Planning in ITaly) focuses on the development of a methodological framework to monitor irrigation water uses at different spatial scales and under different hydro-meteorological conditions in six Italian regions (Apulia, Campania, Emilia Romagna, Lombardia, Sardinia, and Sicily). The objective of the INCIPIT project is to fill the wide gap between research and application in order to meet the requirements of sustainable waterrelated policies – such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD), and the MIPAAF Ministry Decree of July 31, 2015- where a specific set of obligations of measurement and estimation of the irrigated areas and irrigation water volumes is defined. For this purpose, the ESA Sentinel-2 (S2) satellites provide a very valuable source of information for mapping irrigated areas and estimating spatially-distributed irrigation water requirements. This study illustrates the results achieved using the IRRISAT methodology. In detail, the quantification of the irrigation water abstraction was achieved using the one-step approach, based on the Penman–Monteith equation, and properly adapted with canopy parameters namely crop height, Leaf Area Index (LAI), and surface albedo derived from S2 data. The quantification of the irrigated areas was performed by using pre-existing maps, unsupervised (clustering), and supervised classification (Machine Learning Algorithms) applied to dense temporal series of vegetation indices. The analysis was performed for the irrigation seasons 2019 and 2020 in seven irrigated areas, which differ in size, type of irrigation schemes, farm delivery, irrigation methods, and crop types

An IoT service ecosystem for Smart Cities: The #SmartME project

#SmartME has been one of the first initiatives in Italy to realize a Smart City through the use of open technologies. Thanks to the use of low cost sensor-powered devices scattered over the city area, different “smart” services have been deployed having the Stack4Things framework as the common underlying middleware. In this paper, we present the results obtained after 2 years of project highlighting the vertical solutions that have been proposed in different areas ranging from environmental monitoring to parking management

Building a smart city service platform in Messina with the #SmartME project

© 2018 IEEE. Some words mark an era, and "Smart City" is definitely one of these. A Smart City is an urban area where the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are employed to improve citizens' Quality of Life (QoL) in areas such as: mobility, urban surveillance, and energy management. Throughout this paper, we present the #SmartME project, which aims to create an infrastructure and an ecosystem of "smart" services by exploiting existing devices, sensors, and actuators distributed in the city of Messina. We also present the Stack4Things framework, which is the management core of the #SmartME project

Building a smart city service platform in Messina with the #SmartME project

Some words mark an era, and "Smart City" is definitely one of these. A Smart City is an urban area where the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are employed to improve citizens' Quality of Life (QoL) in areas such as: mobility, urban surveillance, and energy management. Throughout this paper, we present the #SmartME project, which aims to create an infrastructure and an ecosystem of "smart" services by exploiting existing devices, sensors, and actuators distributed in the city of Messina. We also present the Stack4Things framework, which is the management core of the #SmartME project