Pavimento flexible con adición de cloruro de sodio a la base como estabilizante, Av. San Nicolas, Lima - 2022

La presente tesis está basada en determinar el comportamiento de una base granular con adición de cloruro de sodio en distintas dosificaciones. Para esto es importante realizarse la siguiente pregunta; ¿Como influye la adición de cloruro de sodio al material de la base? Por consiguiente, para lograr responder esta interrogante se realizaron los ensayos de contenido de humedad, análisis granulométrico, limite líquido, limite plástico, proctor modificado y CBR (California Bearing Ratio), para luego mediante métodos estadísticos identificar las variaciones producidas al material granular convencional con la adición de cloruro de sodio. Así mismo, para una evidencia más clara se realizó el diseño del pavimento flexible. Esta investigación concluye identificando que el cloruro de sodio proporciona un aporte mínimo al material granular que compone la base al adicionar proporciones menores al 3%

Socioeconomic Impacts of Policy Interventions in the Food-Energy-water Nexus

The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus is considered essential for human survival and critical for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, pressures on each component of the nexus are growing as a result of population and economic growth. The FEW nexus can also be affected by competition for limited land, climate change, and demand and supply changes. Although government policies targeting one of the components of the nexus will directly affect the others, they are still not accounting for the interconnectedness of all three. The dissertation, through three essays seeks to understand how government policies would affect the FEW nexus, focusing on Thailand or Brazil. The first essay assesses challenges with crop residue burning in Thailand. Additionally, the essay highlights policies implemented that target residue burning or its use and the potential solutions through crop residue use. The second essay examines specific policies on crop residue burning and renewable energy (RE) production to understand their impacts on sustainability. An extended input-output model is run to using policy scenarios for the future to gauge its impacts on total output, gross value added, employment, labor income, key input use, land use, water use and CO2 emissions on Thailand and Northeast Thailand. The final essay explores food and energy security given water supply limitations as water availability greatly impacts availability of food and energy. It uses a region in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where RE policies and other interventions have helped make ethanol production and use cost effective. A model is developed to maximize profits while optimally allocating water to food, energy and municipal water. The study looks at a normal rainfall year, and also runs a future demand change scenario. The dissertation concludes by detailing the challenges that exist, future potential for the FEW nexus policies, limitations and uncertainties. The dissertation establishes that given the interlinked nature of the FEW nexus, policies need to be implemented to account for all three components. The first essay shows that over time, an increasing number of policies in Thailand target crop residue burning through controlling burning or its use in RE production. Although these policies have been implemented, there are still shortcomings in the policy targets for biomass use, and in the large water use by the sector, as highlighted in essay 1 and 2. Essay 2 also demonstrates social, economic and environmental benefits of using crop residue for RE through employment generated, labor income increases, and CO2 emission reduction in Thailand and Northeast Thailand. We also see increasing competition for land for energy, with sugarcane potentially overtaking rice in Northeast Thailand. In essay 3, we see that while Brazil has implemented sound policies on RE, there are water security challenges, and competition between food, energy and municipal water supply. We see that the current infrastructure cannot satisfy future demand, leading to competing demands and equity challenges. Finally, in the conclusion, the research highlights uncertainties about future demand, water supply, technology, price, etc. along with potential policies

Developing Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules for Olive Oil

In the context of the Communication “Building the Single Market for Green Products”, the European Commission (EC) recommends a method to measure the environmental performance of products, named the Product Environmental Footprint. The PEF is a multi-criteria measure of the environmental performance of goods and services from a life cycle perspective. Currently, 25 pilot projects test the development of Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) for various products. This paper gives an overview of the process of developing the PEFCR for olive oil. An overview of the methods of the PEF screening study that aims at identifying the most relevant environmental impacts, processes and elementary flows are presented. The screening study assesses the impacts of the average olive oil consumed in the European markets.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

An integrated decision support tool for more sustainable management of biomass resources in agricultural regions

Agriculture currently faces a number of environmental sustainability issues. Three key issues that are the focus of this study are greenhouse gas emissions, depletion of mineral phosphorus resources and cadmium contamination in agricultural soil. Biomass can potentially be used as a renewable energy source and can also be returned to improve the nutrient and drainage structure of agricultural soils. Sustainable management of biomass and agriculture can have significant impacts on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from a region. Moreover, it reduces the demand for external energy supply, phosphorous (P) based fertilizer, and its associated Cadmium (Cd) impurity which can contaminate the soil, plant and food chains. These three issues have typically been considered separately, and managed by different agencies or organisations. The aim of this thesis is to develop an integrated decision support tool that can be used for evaluating alternative options for management and resource recovery from biomass for enhancing recovery of energy, returning carbon (C) and phosphorus (P) from biomass back to soil, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and also cadmium (Cd) contamination in an agricultural region. This research employed a combination of the tools of Material Flow Analysis (MFA), Geographic Information System (GIS) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). MFA is used as the primary tool for this research. GIS and CBA are combined with MFA in later stages of the overall procedure to develop an integrated decision support tool.This integrated tool has been applied to the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA) in Australia. Tracking the flow of essential substances using MFA has identified current resource management efficiency and substances accumulation across the region. Integrating a spatial analysis tool (GIS) with MFA has provided a feedback driven monitoring tool for evaluating trends of spatial accumulation of substances on agricultural land. This enables the time remaining before acceptable limits are exceeded to be estimated on a spatial basis. Integrated MFA and CBA has been applied to evaluate the tradeoffs and potential synergies of alternative biomass management options. Overall the tool can assist in evaluating the effectiveness of alternative scenarios and visualise the results to stakeholders in a systematic way