With the rapid increase of population, industrialization, urbanization, and the abuse of science and technology, environmental problems have showed an explosive development trend. Actions must be taken to ensure the rational exploitation and utilization of natural resources, prevent environmental pollution and ecological damage, and coordinate the relationship between environment and social development. Proceedings of 4th International Conference on Resources and Environmental Research (ICRER 2022) focuses on effective use of environmental resources, ecological restoration and remediation of degraded and polluted environment, and emission reduction technologies. This book brings the latest advances in resources and environmental research.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, SEB12, held in Stockholm, Sweden, and is organized by KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden in partnership with KES International. The International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings focuses on a broad range of topics relating to sustainability in buildings but also encompassing energy sustainability more widely. Following the success of earlier events in the series, the 2012 conference includes the themes Sustainability, Energy, and Buildings and Information and Communication Technology, ICT. The SEB’12 proceedings include invited participation and paper submissions across a broad range of renewable energy and sustainability-related topics relevant to the main theme of Sustainability in Energy and Buildings. Applicable areas include technology for renewable energy and sustainability in the built environment, optimization and modeling techniques, information and communication technology usage, behavior and practice, including applications.

In response to the increasing urbanization, advances in the science of urban hydrology have improved urban water system management, creating more livable cities in which public safety and health, as well as the environment, are protected. The ultimate goal of urban water management is to mimic the hydrological cycle prior to urbanization. On top of urbanization, climate change, which has been demonstrated to alter the hydrological cycle in all respects, has introduced additional challenges to managing urban water systems. To mitigate and adapt to urbanization under a changing climate, understanding key hydrologic components should expand to include complex issues brought forth by climate change. Thus, effective and efficient measures can be formulated. This Special Issue of Water presents a variety of research papers that span a range of spatial and temporal scales of relevance in different societies’ efforts in adapting to the eminent changes in climate and the continuous changes in the landscape. From mitigating water quality in permeable pavements and bioretention swales to understanding changes in groundwater recharge in large regions, this Special Issue examines the state-of-the-art in sustainable urban design for adaptation and resiliency.

Electric power systems are being transformed from older grid systems to smart grids across the globe. The goals of this transition are to address today’s electric power issues, which include reducing carbon footprints, finding alternate sources of decaying fossil fuels, eradicating losses that occur in the current available systems, and introducing the latest information and communication technologies (ICT) for electric grids. The development of smart grid technology is advancing dramatically along with and in reaction to the continued growth of renewable energy technologies (especially wind and solar power), the growing popularity of electric vehicles, and the continuing huge demand for electricity. Smart Grid Systems: Modeling and Control advances the basic understanding of smart grids and focuses on recent technological advancements in the field. This book provides a comprehensive discussion from a number of experts and practitioners and describes the challenges and the future scope of the technologies related to smart grid. Key features: provides an overview of the smart grid, with its needs, benefits, challenges, existing structure, and possible future technologies discusses solar photovoltaic (PV) system modeling and control along with battery storage, an integral part of smart grids discusses control strategies for renewable energy systems, including solar PV, wind, and hybrid systems describes the inverter topologies adopted for integrating renewable power covers the basics of the energy storage system and the need for micro grids describes forecast techniques for renewable energy systems presents the basics and structure of the energy management system in smart grids, including advanced metering, various communication protocols, and the cyber security challenges explores electric vehicle technology and its interaction with smart grids

Radiological crime scene management is the process used to ensure safe, secure, effective and efficient operations at a crime scene where nuclear or other radioactive materials are known, or suspected, to be present. Managing a radiological crime scene is a key part of responding to a nuclear security event. Evidence collection at radiological crime scenes may share a wide range of characteristics with that at conventional crime scenes, such as evidence search patterns, geographical scene modelling and evidence recording, whether or not explosives are involved. This publication focuses on the framework and functional elements for managing a radiological crime scene that are distinct from any other crime scene. It assumes that States have a capability for managing conventional crime scenes.

This book presents a 20-year historical overview and comprehensive study results of the aquatic environment affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. The book analyzes water remediation actions, using current science and mathematical modeling, and discusses why some were successful, but many others failed. This book will interest engineers, scientists, decision-makers, and everyone involved in radiation protection and radioecology, environmental protection and risk assessment, water remediation and mitigation, and radioactive waste disposal.

This is Volume II in a three-volume set on the Behavior of Radionuclides in the Environment, focusing on Chernobyl. Now, so many years after the Chernobyl accident, new data is emerging and important new findings are being made. The book reviews major research achievements concerning the behavior of Chernobyl-derived radionuclides, including their air transport and resuspension, mobility and bioavailability in the soil-water environment, vertical and lateral migration in soils and sediments, soil-to-plant and soil-to-animal transfer, and water-to-aqueous biota transfer. The long-term dynamics of radionuclides in aquatic ecosystems are also discussed, in particular, the heavily contaminated cooling pond of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which is in the process of being decommissioned. Lessons learned from long-term research on the environmental behavior of radionuclides can help us understand the pathways of environmental contamination, which, in turn, will allow us to improve methods for modeling and predicting the long-term effects of pollution. This book features a wealth of original data and findings, many of which have never been published before, or were not available internationally. The contributing authors are experts from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus with more than 30 years of experience investigating Chernobyl-derived radionuclides in the environment. The content presented here can help to predict the evolution of environmental contamination following a nuclear accident, and specifically the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident.

This open access book brings science and practice together and inspires a global movement towards co-creating regenerative civilizations that work for 100% of humanity and the Earth as a whole. With its conceptual foundation of the concept of transformation literacy it enhances the knowledge and capacity of decision-makers, change agents and institutional actors to steward transformations effectively across institutions, societal sectors and nations. Humanity is at crossroads. Resource depletion and exponential emissions that not only cause climate change, but endanger the health of people and planet, call for a decisive turnaround of human civilization. A new and transformative paradigm is emerging that advocates for regenerative civilizations, in which a narrative of systemic health as much as individual and collective vitality guide the interaction of socio-economic-ecological systems. Truly transformative change must go far beyond technical solutions, and instead envision what can be termed ‘a new operating system’ that helps humankind to live well within the planetary boundaries and partner with life’s evolutionary processes. This requires transformations at three different levels: · Mindsets that reconnect with a worldview in which human agency acknowledges its co-evolutionary pathways with each other and the Earth. · Political, social and economic systems that are regenerative and foster the care-taking for Earth life support systems. · Competencies to design and implement effective large-scale transformative change processes at multiple levels with multiple stakeholders. This book provides key ingredients for enhancing transformation literacy from various perspectives around the globe. It connects the emerging practice of stewarding transformative change across business, government institutions and civil society actors with the most promising scientific models and concepts that underpin human action to shape the future collectively in accordance with planetary needs.

The book is written as primer hand book for addressing the fundamentals of smart grid. It provides the working definition the functions, the design criteria and the tools and techniques and technology needed for building smart grid. The book is needed to provide a working guideline in the design, analysis and development of Smart Grid. It incorporates all the essential factors of Smart Grid appropriate for enabling the performance and capability of the power system. There are no comparable books which provide information on the “how to” of the design and analysis. The book provides a fundamental discussion on the motivation for the smart grid development, the working definition and the tools for analysis and development of the Smart Grid. Standards and requirements needed for designing new devices, systems and products are discussed; the automation and computational techniques need to ensure that the Smart Grid guarantees adaptability, foresight alongside capability of handling new systems and components are discussed. The interoperability of different renewable energy sources are included to ensure that there will be minimum changes in the existing legacy system. Overall the book evaluates different options of computational intelligence, communication technology and decision support system to design various aspects of Smart Grid. Strategies for demonstration of Smart Grid schemes on selected problems are presented.