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General Circulation Models (GCMs) are tools designed to simulate time series of climate variables globally, accounting for effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They attempt to represent the physical processes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land surface. They are currently the most credible tools available for simulating the response of the global climate system to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, and to provide estimates of climate variables (e.g. air temperature, precipitation, wind speed, pressure etc.) on a global scale. GCMs demonstrate a significant skill at the continental and hemispheric spatial scales and incorporate a large proportion of the complexity of the global system; they are, however, inherently unable to represent local subgrid-scale features and dynamics. The spatial scale on which a GCM can operate (e.g., 3.75° longitude x 3.75° latitude for Coupled Global Climate Model, CGCM2) is very coarse compared to that of a hydrologic process (e.g., precipitation in a region, streamflow in a river etc.) of interest in the climate change impact assessment studies. Moreover, accuracy of GCMs, in general, decreases from climate related variables, such as wind, temperature, humidity and air pressure to hydrologic variables such as precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff and soil moisture, which are also simulated by GCMs. These limitations of the GCMs restrict the direct use of their output in hydrology. This thesis deals with developing statistical downscaling models to assess climate change impacts and methodologies to address GCM and scenario uncertainties in assessing climate change impacts on hydrology. Downscaling, in the context of hydrology, is a method to project the hydrologic variables (e.g., rainfall and streamflow) at a smaller scale based on large scale climatological variables (e.g., mean sea level pressure) simulated by a GCM. A statistical downscaling model is first developed in the thesis to predict the rainfall over Orissa meteorological subdivision from GCM ...

This paper seeks to identify and understand the legal framework and models that undergird the regional gas pipeline networks being established in our times, against the backdrop of the evolving legal norms and business practices. It further seeks to examine the ways in which the competing rights and interests of different stakeholders in the system can be balanced and adjusted.

According to the United Nations, the World population will reach 9 billion by 2050, with the majority of this growth occurring in developing countries. More than half of global population growth is expected to occur in Africa. On the other hand, one in nine of the World’s population suffers from chronic hunger, the vast majority of which live in developing countries (FAO et al., 2015). We therefore need to find new and sustainable solutions to feed this increasing population and alleviate the predicted negative impact of global changes on crop production. This e-Book summarize current research to improve food security and livelihoods in rural communities, reduce vulnerability, increase resilience, and mitigate land degradation in developing countries.

Rainfed areas, although vary from region to region, are important in terms of agriculture since most of the poor communities live in these areas. Rainfed agriculture (RFA) is fragile due to climatic vagaries. More than 90 per cent area comes uner RFA in the sub-Saharan Africa; the corresponding figures are 90 per cent, 60 per cent and 75 per cent for Latin America, South-Asia, East-Asia and Near-East North Africa, respectively.

{"references": ["Ljungberg, Lennart Y. \"Materials selection and design for development of sustainable products.\" Materials & Design 28, no. 2, 2007, pp 466-479.", "Bakhoum, Emad S., and David C. 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Rough guide to sustainability. London: RIBA Enterprises Ltd., 2010.", "Vincent, Peter. Saudi Arabia: an environmental overview. CRC Press, 2008.\n[10]\tGasson, Christopher. \"Tariff policy: a global perspective.\" In Saudi water and power forum, Jeddah. 2008.\n[11]\tTaleb, Hanan M. \"Towards Sustainable Residential Buildings in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.\" PhD diss., University of Sheffield, School of Architecture, 2012.\n[12]\tAlnatheer, Othman. \"Environmental benefits of energy efficiency and renewable energy in Saudi Arabia's electric sector.\" Energy Policy 34, no. 1, 2006, pp. 2-10.\n[13]\tAlrashed, Farajallah, and Muhammad Asif. \"Saudi building industry's views on sustainability in buildings: questionnaire survey.\" Energy Procedia 62, 2014, pp. 382-390.\n[14]\tBanani, R., Maria Vahdati, and A. Elmualim. \"Demonstrating the importance of criteria and sub-criteria in building assessment methods.\" PhD diss., WIT Press, 2013.\n[15]\tReed, R., Bilos, A., Wilkinson, S., & Schulte, K. W. \"International comparison of sustainable rating tools.\" Journal of sustainable real estate, 1(1), 2009, pp. 1-22.\n[16]\tLarsson, N. User Guide to the SBTool assessment framework. iiSBE, 2012,October 24.\n[17]\tShaawat, M. Essam, and Rehan Jamil. \"A Guide to Environmental Building Rating System for Construction of New Buildings in Saudi Arabia.\" Emirates Journal for Engineering Research 19, no. 2, 2014, pp. 47-56.\n[18]\tTaleb, Hanan M., and Steve Sharples. \"Developing sustainable residential buildings in Saudi Arabia: A case study.\" Applied Energy 88, no. 1, 2011, pp. 383-391.\n[19]\tAlyami, Saleh H., Yacine Rezgui, and Alan Kwan. \"Developing sustainable building assessment scheme for Saudi Arabia: Delphi consultation approach.\" Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 27, 2013, pp.43-54.\n[20]\tAbdallah, Moatassem, Khaled El-Rayes, and Liang Liu. \"Operational performance of sustainable measures in public buildings.\" Journal of construction engineering and management 139, no. 12, 2013, A4013008.\n[21]\tSimos, J., \"evaluation environmental: Un processus cognitif negocie. These de doctorat, DGF-EPFL, Lausanne, 1990a.\n[22]\tSimos J. \"Evaluer l'impact sur l'environnement: Une approche originale par l'analyse multicrit\u00e8re et la n\u00e9gociation,\" Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, Lausanne, 1990b \n[23]\tRoy, B., Bouyssou, D. \"Aide multicrit_ere _a la d_ecision: M_ethodes et case, Economica.\" Collection Gestion, Paris, 1993.\n[24]\tRoy, B., Mousseau, V. \"A theoretical framework for analysing the notion of the relative importance of criteria.\" Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis 5, 1996, pp.145\u2013149.\n[25]\tShanian, A., Abbas S. Milani, Natasha Vermaak, Katia Bertoldi, Tom Scarinci, and Miklos Gerendas. \"A combined finite element-multiple criteria optimization approach for materials selection of gas turbine components.\" Journal of Applied Mechanics 79, no. 6, 2012, 061019.\n[26]\tAutodesk. \"Revit 2010 API: Developer's Guide, Version 1.0.\" Autodesk,2009,http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112andid=2484975.\n[27]\tWu, Wei. Integrating building information modeling and green building certification: The BIM-LEED application model development. University of Florida, 2010."]} Achieving environmental sustainability is one of the important issues considered in many countries’ vision. Green/Sustainable building is widely used terminology for describing a friendly environmental construction. Applying sustainable practices has a significant importance in various fields, including construction field that consumes an enormous amount of resource and causes a considerable amount of waste. The need for sustainability is increased in the regions that suffering from the limitation of natural resource and extreme weather conditions such as Saudi Arabia. Since buildings designs are getting sophisticated, the need for tools, which support decision-making for sustainability issues, is increasing, especially in the design and preconstruction stages. In this context, Building Information Modeling (BIM) can aid in performing complex building performance analyses to ensure an optimized sustainable building design. Accordingly, this paper introduces a roadmap towards developing a systematic approach for presenting the sustainability of buildings using BIM. The approach includes set of main processes including; identifying the sustainability parameters that can be used for sustainability assessment in Saudi Arabia, developing sustainability assessment method that fits the special circumstances in the Kingdom, identifying the sustainability requirements and BIM functions that can be used for satisfying these requirements, and integrating these requirements with identified functions. As a result, the sustainability-BIM approach can be developed which helps designers in assessing the sustainability and exploring different design alternatives at the early stage of the construction project.

A. Context Biofuels are today one of the only direct substitutes for oil in road transport, available on a significant scale. They can be used today, in existing vehicle engines, unmodified for low blends, or with cheap modifications to accept high blends. Biofuels are expected to represent a substantial part of the 10% target for renewable energy in transport by 2020, set by the European Commission in its Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC. With biofuels reaching a visible scale at the European level, discussions have emerged about the sustainability of biofuels compared to fossil fuels. It is clear that policy should make sure that the use of biofuels in the transport sector should happen in a sustainable way that balances the main transport related challenges of greenhouse gas reduction, reducing oil dependency and improving air quality. Specifically for the Belgian situation, BIOSES is a research project assisting the Belgian government in setting a roadmap for biofuels and analysing the potential impact that biofuel introduction may have on greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and air quality. B. Objectives The project develops different scenarios for the introduction of biofuels, based on the technological evolution in vehicle models, the likely biofuel blends on the European markets, and the possible interest of certain end user groups. Based on up-to-date data (complemented with own measurements) of energy use, emissions and cost projections, the practical feasibility and the ecological and economic impact (on micro and macro level) of the introduction of biofuels in Belgium are analysed. Results are used to create a roadmap for the introduction of biofuels in Belgium. C. Conclusions The main biofuel options for Belgium on the short term are biodiesel (methyl ester) from vegetable oil, to be blended with diesel fuel (up to B7), potentially supplemented with hydro-treated vegetable oil (HVO) in the future, and bio-ethanol from sugar or starch crops, to be blended with gasoline fuel (up to E10). Next to general blending, also options of high blends or pure biofuels could be envisaged (such as E85, ED95, B30, B100, PPO, bio-methane).