Water Crisis in Vietnam

• Immediately after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Vietnam experienced economic turmoil and famine as the roots of industrialization began to grip the nation. • In 1986, the government declared a rapid transition from a planned to a market economy would take hold. The ensuing change caused further increased industrial development and a subsequent growth of the emerging market economy. 1 • To this day, Vietnam’s GDP is rising yearly at a rapid rate. • For this reason, much of Vietnam has been developed in a relatively short amount of time (since the end of the war) but much of it has lagged behind, including the infrastructure including water pipes and water sanitation plants. This lag has caused limited access to sanitized water in both rural and urban areas. • Despite an overall adequate water access for Vietnamese citizens, the sanitation of supplied water has not improved as markedly as the country as a whole. • Sanitation has increased from 37% in 1990 to 75% in 2011 as defined by the JMP’s sanitation standards. Here, sanitation is defined as the distance between a water supply and human excretion.2 • Although Vietnam’s water has been made safer over the past few decades, it is largely undrinkable. • A 2009 study done by scientists at the Vietnam Institute of Biotechnology concluded that ammonia levels in Vietnam’s waters range from an average of 6-18 times higher than an acceptable level. 3 Furthermore, arsenic levels range from 2-3 times higher than an acceptable level.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/cwicposters/1025/thumbnail.jp

Building the future: integrating building information management and environmental assessment methodologies

The demand for sustainable buildings is increasing driven in part by legislation, rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns amongst consumers. As a result clients and developers are increasingly seeking to incorporate environmental attributes into buildings and demonstrate these sustainability credentials by certifying a development using an environmental assessment methodology such as BREEAM or LEED. One of the major issues in delivering sustainable buildings is ensuring that measures incorporated into a building at design stage are translated into action during building construction. This disconnect between design and construction phases of a project often results in the need to undertake costly remedial measures to achieve a targeted sustainability rating, or the building failing the assessment. This paper suggests that by integrating BIM with Environmental Assessment Methodologies decisions made with regard to sustainability attributes at the design stage can be clearly communicated and understood by all involved in the buildings specification and construction. It introduces a conceptual framework that seeks to define the relationship between BIM and EAMs

Semi-proximal Mirror-Prox for Nonsmooth Composite Minimization

We propose a new first-order optimisation algorithm to solve high-dimensional non-smooth composite minimisation problems. Typical examples of such problems have an objective that decomposes into a non-smooth empirical risk part and a non-smooth regularisation penalty. The proposed algorithm, called Semi-Proximal Mirror-Prox, leverages the Fenchel-type representation of one part of the objective while handling the other part of the objective via linear minimization over the domain. The algorithm stands in contrast with more classical proximal gradient algorithms with smoothing, which require the computation of proximal operators at each iteration and can therefore be impractical for high-dimensional problems. We establish the theoretical convergence rate of Semi-Proximal Mirror-Prox, which exhibits the optimal complexity bounds, i.e. $O(1/\epsilon^2)$, for the number of calls to linear minimization oracle. We present promising experimental results showing the interest of the approach in comparison to competing methods

High-dimensional change-point detection with sparse alternatives

We consider the problem of detecting a change in mean in a sequence of Gaussian vectors. Under the alternative hypothesis, the change occurs only in some subset of the components of the vector. We propose a test of the presence of a change-point that is adaptive to the number of changing components. Under the assumption that the vector dimension tends to infinity and the length of the sequence grows slower than the dimension of the signal, we obtain the detection boundary for this problem and prove its rate-optimality

Sustainable Jobs in Sustainable Energy : closing the gap

The surge in demand for renewable energy has seen the sector expand in recent years. Evidence of this in the North East is the recent establishment of an R&D centre (New and Renewable Energy Centre NaREC). However, the North East, even with its strong engineering background, has not had a successful rate of growth due particularly to skill deficiencies (CURDS 2002; GO 2004). This project investigated higher-level skill needs in the sector and gives recommendations on integrating the findings into the University curricula. In particular it recommends change in the area of mechanical and electrical engineering, which covers a wide range of renewable energy employment needs through its HND, degree and Masters programmes

Kepuasan Wisatawan dengan Pemanfaatan Tur Virtual di Saat dan Pasca Pandemi Covid-19

Inovasi teknologi memiliki dampak luar biasa pada industri pariwisata, menciptakan pengalaman yang lebih mendalam bagi konsumen dan meningkatkan kepuasan mereka secara keseluruhan melalui tur virtual. Pesatnya perkembangan wisata ataupun tur virtual dan efektivitasnya dalam simulasi pengalaman kehidupan nyata memberikan kesempatan untuk membuat liburan virtual lebih menarik terutama ketika perjalanan yang sebenarnya tidak mungkin dilakukan di saat pandemi. Penelitian ini berjutuan untuk menelaah bagaimana virtual tur dapat meningkatkan kebahagiaan dan kepuasan konsumen ataupun pelanggan wisata (wisatawan) di tengah dan pasca pandemi Covid-19. Dengan menggunakan metode telaah pustaka, hasil penelitian ini mengungkapkan bahwa tur virtual dapat memanjakan masyarakat dan menghibur mereka serta juga memmuaskan mereka yang pada akhirnya berpengaruh terhadap niat untuk mengunjungi kembali, dan niat untuk mendukungnya. Bahkan bukan hanya itu, virtual tur juga dipercaya dapat menjadi sarana pengurangan stress yang diakibatkan dari dampak Covid-19. Sehingga tur virtual ini melindungi dan menunjang kesejahteraan kesehatan maupun psikologis. Artikel ini kemudian merekomendasikan kepada pemerintah maupun stakeholder lainnya agar mencoba untuk menerapkan tur virtual sebagai tren baru berlibur sekaligus sarana hiburan bagi masyarakat dan wisatawan (potensial) di tengah pandemi Covid-19. Dan demi memaksimalkan pemanfaatan tersebut, penelitian juga merekomendasikan agar lebih meminimalisir kesenjangan teknologi serta mengoptimalkan pemanfaatan VR pada tur virtual dengan menambahkan dan menyediakan fitur untuk berinteraksi dengan orang lain di situs. Informasi multimedia dalam atraksi wisata virtual yang dapat memudahkan masyarakat maupun wisatawan untuk belajar tentang aspek budaya dari tujuan wisata juga diperlukan