Hasil untuk "Environmental law"

Tassaddaq Hussain, Enrique Villamor, Mohammad Shakil et al.

Probabilistic streamflow models play a pivotal role in quantifying hydrological uncertainty and form the backbone of modern risk management strategies for flood and drought forecasting, water allocation planning, and the design of resilient infrastructure. Unlike deterministic approaches that yield single-point estimates, these models provide a spectrum of possible outcomes, enabling a more realistic assessment of extreme events and supporting informed, sustainable water resource decisions. By explicitly accounting for natural variability and uncertainty, probabilistic models promote transparent, robust, and equitable risk evaluations, helping decision-makers balance economic costs, societal benefits, and environmental protection for long-term sustainability. In this study, we introduce the bounded half-logistic distribution (BHLD), a novel heavy-tailed probability model constructed using the T–Y method for distribution generation, where T denotes a transformer distribution and Y represents a baseline generator. Although the BHLD is conceptually related to the Pareto and log-logistic families, it offers several distinctive advantages for streamflow modeling, including a flexible hazard rate that can be unimodal or monotonically decreasing, a finite lower bound, and closed-form expressions for key risk measures such as Value at Risk (VaR) and Tail Value at Risk (TVaR). The proposed distribution is defined on a lower-bounded domain, allowing it to realistically capture physical constraints inherent in flood processes, while a log-logistic-based tail structure provides the flexibility needed to model extreme hydrological events. Moreover, the BHLD is analytically characterized through a governing differential equation and further examined via its characteristic function and the maximum entropy principle, ensuring stable and efficient parameter estimation. It integrates a half-logistic generator with a log-logistic baseline, yielding a power-law tail decay governed by the parameter <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mi>β</mi></semantics></math></inline-formula>, which is particularly effective for representing extreme flows. Fundamental properties, including the hazard rate function, moments, and entropy measures, are derived in closed form, and model parameters are estimated using the maximum likelihood method. Applied to four real streamflow data sets, the BHLD demonstrates superior performance over nine competing distributions in goodness-of-fit analyses, with notable improvements in tail representation. The model facilitates accurate computation of hydrological risk metrics such as VaR, TVaR, and tail variance, uncovering pronounced temporal variations in flood risk and establishing the BHLD as a powerful and reliable tool for streamflow modeling under changing environmental conditions.

Jingyi Tian, Lin Cai

The fast motion of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites causes the propagation channel to vary rapidly, and its behavior is strongly shaped by the surrounding environment, especially at low elevation angles where signals are highly susceptible to terrain blockage and other environmental effects. Existing studies mostly rely on assumed statistical channel distributions and therefore ignore the influence of the actual geographic environment. In this paper, we propose an environment-aware channel modeling method for air-to-ground wireless links. We leverage real environmental data, including digital elevation models (DEMs) and land cover information, together with ray tracing (RT) to determine whether a link is line-of-sight (LOS) or non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and to identify possible reflection paths of the signal. The resulting obstruction and reflection profiles are then combined with models of diffraction loss, vegetation absorption, and atmospheric attenuation to quantitatively characterize channel behavior in realistic geographic environments. Since RT is computationally intensive, we use RT-generated samples and environmental features to train a scalable diffusion model that can efficiently predict channel performance for arbitrary satellite and ground terminal positions, thereby supporting real-time decision-making. In the experiments, we validate the proposed model with measurement data from both cellular and LEO satellite links, demonstrating its effectiveness in realistic environments.

Zico Junius Fernando, Firdaus Arifin, Muhamad Adystia Sunggara et al.

Transnational environmental crimes are among the most complex and destructive forms of cross-border criminality, including wildlife trafficking, illegal trade of endangered species, transboundary pollution, and unlawful exploitation of natural resources by state and non-state actors. These offenses have yet to gain explicit recognition as core international crimes, despite their severe impacts on ecosystems, geopolitical stability, and local communities. This article examines the urgent need to incorporate transnational environmental crimes into international criminal law and emphasizes a victim-centered environmental justice approach to restore the rights and sustainability of affected communities. Using normative and comparative legal analysis, it advocates recognizing ecocide and cross-border environmental offenses as serious violations of ecological justice and human rights. The study further explores how victim protection frameworks can extend to Indigenous communities, future generations, and non-human entities, offering guidance for Indonesia in building a more responsive, transnational, and victim-oriented environmental criminal justice system.

Wei LI, Zhiwei SONG, Zhiyuan HE et al.

With the rapid advancement of modern underwater detection technologies, both detection accuracy and frequency coverage, particularly in the low-frequency range, have improved significantly. Naval acoustic stealth has traditionally relied on noise source control and propagation path control methods, such as raft isolation, damping treatments, mufflers, and anechoic tiles. While effective in attenuating noise in the mid-to-high frequency bands, conventional technologies such as anechoic tiles face inherent limitations in absorbing low-frequency sound waves due to the large wavelengths of these frequencies and the constraints imposed by limited structural thickness. This low-frequency bottleneck has become a critical barrier to further advancements in naval stealth, highlighting the urgent need for innovative solutions. Acoustic metamaterials, with their unique ability to control long wavelengths using small-scale structures, offer significant potential for ship vibration and noise control. This paper first reviews the limitations of traditional naval acoustic stealth strategies, then examines three representative types of sound-absorbing and insulating metamaterials: phononic crystals, thin-film metamaterials, and Helmholtz-type metamaterials, focusing on their physical mechanisms and engineering applications. Phononic crystals, based on Bragg scattering, can create bandgaps that block specific frequency ranges, showing promise in vibration isolation for ship power systems and structural sound insulation. However, challenges such as lightweight design and environmental adaptability remain. Thin-film metamaterials, which leverage negative effective mass to bypass the mass law, enable ultra-thin and lightweight low-frequency sound insulation, making them ideal for naval lightweighting requirements. However, issues related to pre-tension control and marine durability persist. Helmholtz-type metamaterials achieve broadband low-frequency absorption through acoustic siphon effects, multi-order resonance, and acoustic mass regulation, proving effective for compartment noise control. Nonetheless, challenges such as fabrication complexity and cavity clogging still need to be addressed. The paper also reviews recent advancements in underwater acoustic coatings, which play a pivotal role in the external stealth of naval platforms. Two primary types are discussed: inclusion-based metamaterials, which achieve broadband low-frequency absorption through local resonance while maintaining high pressure resistance, and film/plate-type metamaterials, which leverage zero effective mass characteristics to enhance low-frequency performance. Additionally, strategies for broadband design, including multi-unit coupling, bandgap coupling, gradient structures, and multimodal regulation, are summarized. Finally, the paper highlights future directions for naval acoustic metamaterials, including enhancing their resilience under extreme marine conditions, developing intelligent systems that integrate sound absorption and sensing capabilities, and accelerating their transition to engineering application. As sonar systems evolve toward low- and ultra-low-frequency detection, acoustic metamaterials are expected to become a cornerstone of next-generation naval stealth technologies, providing innovative solutions to enhance concealment and operational security.

Le Zhang, Quanling Zhao, Run Wang et al.

Learning-based environmental sound recognition has emerged as a crucial method for ultra-low-power environmental monitoring in biological research and city-scale sensing systems. These systems usually operate under limited resources and are often powered by harvested energy in remote areas. Recent efforts in on-device sound recognition suffer from low accuracy due to resource constraints, whereas cloud offloading strategies are hindered by high communication costs. In this work, we introduce ORCA, a novel resource-efficient cloud-assisted environmental sound recognition system on batteryless devices operating over the Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs), targeting wide-area audio sensing applications. We propose a cloud assistance strategy that remedies the low accuracy of on-device inference while minimizing the communication costs for cloud offloading. By leveraging a self-attention-based cloud sub-spectral feature selection method to facilitate efficient on-device inference, ORCA resolves three key challenges for resource-constrained cloud offloading over LPWANs: 1) high communication costs and low data rates, 2) dynamic wireless channel conditions, and 3) unreliable offloading. We implement ORCA on an energy-harvesting batteryless microcontroller and evaluate it in a real world urban sound testbed. Our results show that ORCA outperforms state-of-the-art methods by up to $80 \times$ in energy savings and $220 \times$ in latency reduction while maintaining comparable accuracy.

Maria Luce Lupetti, Elena Cavallin, Dave Murray-Rust

Design educators are finding ways to support students in skillfully using GenAI tools in their practices while encouraging the critical scrutiny of the ethical and social issues around these technologies. However, the issue of environmental sustainability remains unaddressed. There is a lack of both resources to grasp the environmental costs of genAI in education and a lack of shared practices for engaging with the issue. This paper critically reflects on the energy costs of using genAI in design education, using a workshop held in 2023 with 49 students as a motivating example. Through this reflection, we develop a set of five alternative stances, with related actions, that support the conscious use of genAI in design education. The work contributes to the field of design and HCI by bringing together ways for educators to reflect on their practices, informing the future development of educational programs around genAI.

Zoe Pfister, Michael Vierhauser, Alzbeta Medvedova et al.

Forests are an essential part of our biosphere, regulating climate, acting as a sink for greenhouse gases, and providing numerous other ecosystem services. However, they are negatively impacted by climatic stressors such as drought or heat waves. In this paper, we introduce FORTE, an open-source system for environmental monitoring with the aim of understanding how forests react to such stressors. It consists of two key components: (1) a wireless sensor network (WSN) deployed in the forest for data collection, and (2) a Data Infrastructure for data processing, storage, and visualization. The WSN contains a Central Unit capable of transmitting data to the Data Infrastructure via LTE-M and several spatially independent Satellites that collect data over large areas and transmit them wirelessly to the Central Unit. Our prototype deployments show that our solution is cost-effective compared to commercial solutions, energy-efficient with sensor nodes lasting for several months on a single charge, and reliable in terms of data quality. FORTE's flexible architecture makes it suitable for a wide range of environmental monitoring applications beyond forest monitoring. The contributions of this paper are three-fold. First, we describe the high-level requirements necessary for developing an environmental monitoring system. Second, we present an architecture and prototype implementation of the requirements by introducing our FORTE platform and demonstrating its effectiveness through multiple field tests. Lastly, we provide source code, documentation, and hardware design artifacts as part of our open-source repository.

J. D. da Costa, C. Mouneyrac, M. Costa et al.

There has been an exponential interest in the occurrence and potential ecotoxicological consequences stemming from the growing prevalence of (micro)plastics in the environment. This has been especially evident by the increasing concern regarding the visible effects on marine ecosystems, with multiple local, regional, and trans-national initiatives developed toward the mitigation of what has been construed as an environmental disaster. However, it is not clear what the benefits – if any – of the multitude of norms, regulations, laws and recommendations that have been proposed and/or implemented in recent years are. Furthermore, many of the proposed laws may be of limited applicability, particularly considering the extent to which plastic occurs in everyday life. Herein, the current regulatory instruments are overviewed, focusing on the existing proposals and the extent to which these are based on the currently available scientific data, as well as the foreseen challenges that may restrain the relevancy and suitability of such legislative proposals.

Yang Luo, Yinghong Wu, Shuhua Ma et al.

Patrizia Ghisellini, Xi Ji, Gengyuan Liu et al.

Abstract The construction sector is one of the most impacting economic activities in the world. Its direct environmental impacts include a large use of non-renewable energy and mineral resources while its indirect impacts are related to the disposal of construction and demolition wastes (C&DW). To improve its environmental performances the sector is innovating in terms of cleaner materials, products and processes. Cleaner production (CP) as a preventive approach to environmental issues is showing to be adequate to address the environmental impacts of the construction sector for the transition towards the sustainable construction (SC). In China CP plays an important role along with the circular economy (CE) in the national environmental legislation and policy adopted to tackle the huge environmental challenges and for the transition to the sustainable development. In our study we carry out a narrative literature review to explore the alternative C&DW management (C&DWM) strategies beyond landfilling implemented in China for the purpose of evaluating the transition towards CP. The results show that CP for C&DWM has not been yet fully implemented in construction companies and industry mainly due to legislative and economic barriers. Construction companies are also much resistant to eco-innovation due to the fact they are only profit driven and lack of awareness of environmental protection through C&DWM, as well as lack of culture towards sustainable development. A refining of the current C&DWM regulations, laws and policies as well as the support of the demand of sustainable buildings are suggested as urgent measures to improve the C&DWM by the construction companies and to put the goals of CP, CE and SC at the forefront of their business agenda. For increased sustainability the above mentioned C&DWM policies should be based on much stronger integration of economic and environmental evaluation tools, in order to overcome regulatory, know-how and business barriers to Cleaner Production within a framework of environmental stewardship that aims to preserve the environmental integrity and the ecosystem services provided to the economy and societal wellbeing.

Muhammad Sheraz, Xu Deyi, Muhammad Zubair Mumtaz et al.

This empirical study examines the endogenous relationship between carbon emissions (CO2), financial development, renewable energy, globalization, and institutional quality in 64 belt and road initiative countries (BRI) using a two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) approach with panel data over the period 2003 to 2018. Furthermore, this study used (Dumitrescu & Hurlin, 2012) causality test to estimate the variables’ causal relationship. The results indicate that financial development significantly increases CO2 emissions and causes environmental degradation in BRI countries. However, renewable energy and globalization mitigate CO2 emissions and improve the quality of the environment. Institutional quality was positive in correlation with CO2 emission and indicates bad governance, corruption, weak bureaucracy, and improper implementation of environmental laws cause environmental degradation. Further, the study also reports a bidirectional relationship of financial development, renewable energy, and institutional quality with CO2 emissions and a unidirectional causality running from globalization to CO2 emissions in BRI countries. This study offers policymakers insight into restructuring the financial system, energy consumption pattern, and global integration and improving institutions’ quality for a sustainable environment and the economy at the national and regional levels.

Rachita Agrawal

Energy production, transportation, and industrial operations, which have higher carbon footprints, are frequently the focus of climate change mitigation measures. It is important to keep in mind that the processes involved in outer space launch operations, such as manufacturing, shipping and infrastructure construction have environmental impacts as well. It is critical to take into account the possible effects of space launches on the Earth’s climate from a legal and regulatory perspective as the space industry is expanded rapidly. When rocket propellants burn, carbon dioxide (CO2) and harmful gases are released into the atmosphere, which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions from space launches. This research paper in Part II elaborates on human rights perspective to climate change. Part III investigates the influence of outer space activities on climate. In Part IV, the evaluation of the disproportionate effects of space launch emissions on marginalised and vulnerable populations is discussed, with an emphasis on the concepts of climate justice and equity. Part V conducts a study of national laws, international environmental treaties, space law and policy procedures asserting liability and determining compensation for potential climate damage resulting from space launch activities. Part VI proposes establishment of specific liability frameworks and policy considerations through international cooperation for space launch operations liable for any negative climate repercussions along with incentivizing sustainable propulsion technologies and supporting green infrastructure.

Zhaozhong Chen, Ultan Daly, Aleksandr Boldin et al.

Atmospheric interaction with light has been an area of fascination for many researchers over the last century. Environmental conditions, such as temperature and wind speed, heavily influence the complex and rapidly varying optical distortions propagating optical fields experience. The continuous random phase fluctuations commonly make deciphering the exact origins of specific optical aberrations challenging. The generation of eddies is a major contributor to atmospheric turbulence, similar in geometric structure to optical vortices that sit at the centre of OAM beams. Decomposing the received optical fields into OAM provides a unique spatial similarity that can be used to analyse turbulent channels. In this work, we present a novel mode decomposition assisted machine learning approach that reveals trainable features in the distortions of vortex beams that allow for effective environmental monitoring. This novel technique can be used reliably with Support Vector Machine regression models to measure temperature variations of 0.49C and wind speed variations of 0.029 m/s over a 36m experimental turbulent free-space channels with controllable and verifiable temperature and wind speed with short 3s measurement. The predictable nature of these findings could indicate the presence of an underlying physical relationship between environmental conditions that lead to specific eddy formation and the OAM spiral spectra.

Gianluca Guidi, Francesca Dominici, Jonathan Gilmour et al.

The rapid proliferation of data centers in the US - driven partly by the adoption of artificial intelligence - has set off alarm bells about the industry's environmental impact. We compiled detailed information on 2,132 US data centers operating between September 2023 and August 2024 and determined their electricity consumption, electricity sources, and attributable CO$_{2}$e emissions. Our findings reveal that data centers accounted for more than 4% of total US electricity consumption - with 56% derived from fossil fuels - generating more than 105 million tons of CO$_{2}$e (2.18% of US emissions in 2023). Data centers' carbon intensity - the amount of CO$_{2}$e emitted per unit of electricity consumed - exceeded the US average by 48%. Our data pipeline and visualization tools can be used to assess current and future environmental impacts of data centers.

Timothy R. Law, Philip T. Barton

We present a practical cell-centred volume-of-fluid method developed within a pure Eulerian setting for the simulation of compressible solid-fluid problems. The method builds on a previously published diffuse-interface Godunov-type scheme through the addition of a specialised mixed-cell update that is capable of maintaining sharp interfaces indefinitely. The mixed-cell update is local and may be viewed as an interface-sharpening extension to the underlying diffuse-interface scheme along the lines of other techniques such as Tangent of Hyperbola INterface Capturing (THINC), and hence the method can be straightforwardly extended to include other coupled physics. We validate the method on a range of challenging test problems including a collapsing metal shell, cylinder impacts and the three-dimensional simulation of a buried explosive charge. Finally we demonstrate the robustness of the method, and its use in a multi-physics context, by modelling the BRL 105mm unconfined shaped charge with reactive high-explosive burn and rate-sensitive plasticity.

Zheyu Zhang

This paper realizes the estimation of classroom occupancy by using the CO2 sensor and deep learning technique named Long-Short-Term Memory. As a case of connection with IoT and machine learning, I achieve the model to estimate the people number in the classroom based on the environmental data exported from the CO2 sensor, I also evaluate the performance of the model to show the feasibility to apply our module to the real environment.

Xing Li, Manuel Baum, Oliver Brock

We introduce a Learning from Demonstration (LfD) approach for contact-rich manipulation tasks with articulated mechanisms. The extracted policy from a single human demonstration generalizes to different mechanisms of the same type and is robust against environmental variations. The key to achieving such generalization and robustness from a single human demonstration is to autonomously augment the initial demonstration to gather additional information through purposefully interacting with the environment. Our real-world experiments on complex mechanisms with multi-DOF demonstrate that our approach can reliably accomplish the task in a changing environment. Videos are available at the: https://sites.google.com/view/rbosalfdec/home

Felipe Kern Moreira, Marina do Ó Catão Agra

O presente artigo possui como objetivo descrever e analisar a proteção jurídico-ambiental relativa às atividades de mineração na plataforma continental brasileira. Para tanto, será utilizado o método descritivo com o emprego da abordagem qualitativa. As fontes primárias da presente pesquisa são compostas por normas internacionais e nacionais, documentos governamentais e decisões jurisdicionais. Não obstante a legislação e a jurisprudência assegurem a proteção ao meio ambiente, a mineração na plataforma continental, ainda carece da consolidação de critérios efetivos de proteção ambiental, particularmente, quanto à aplicação do princípio da precaução, dada a incerteza científica quanto aos impactos ambientais.

Irina O. Krasnova

In Russia, the aim to attain biosafety is declared in the strategic political documents without being adequately addressed in law relating to interaction between human communities and natural systems. To involve the ecological approaches into environmental legislation it seems reasonable to include into the general concept of beneficial quality of the environment the biological health of nature, when the impact of pathogenic, disease generating factors emanated by nature shall be minimized. The legal regulation should be based on the ecosystem and nature-based approach assuming that social development should follow and be in harmony with laws of nature. This approach will allow to upkeep the biological balance and biological health of nature and ensure biological safety of nature for human communities.

Shara Ye., Sliesar T.

The article considers the implementation of management functions, which requires effective analytical tools and appropriate information support to provide real and potential investors and creditors, including foreign, true and unbiased information about the financial condition and performance of the entity reporting in our country. The implemented reforms in Ukraine are aimed at ensuring that the information is clear and unambiguously interpreted by each user. The qualitative characteristics of useful financial information provide the types of information that are most useful to current and potential investors, lenders and other creditors in making decisions about the reporting entity based on the information contained in its financial statements. The basic principles of information support of complex analysis and optimization of financial results by segments of activity taking into account specific groups of users of financial reporting on the basis of data of the improved system of internal analytical registers of components of financial result - incomes and expenses are defined. It is proved that it is necessary to provide information in the notes to the financial statements as part of the elements of operating costs for the following activities: production, services, performance of works, management costs, sales costs, other operating activities. Further optimization of the main factors and components of the results of activities provide an opportunity to significantly increase the efficiency of the entity, which reports in subsequent periods, while improving its financial condition.