Search

Since 2008, Bangladesh has had a school-based deworming programme to combat soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infection among school-aged children (SACs). Existing programmes have trouble reaching SACs, especially those out-of-school (OSCs). This study evaluated deworming coverage among school going children (SGCs) and OSCs in two Nilphamari sub-districts. It also evaluated community knowledge on STH control and deworming coverage in both areas for all SACs. Saidpur (intervention) and Kishoregonj (control) sub-districts, in Nilphamari, were surveyed in December 2019. The survey included SACs and their parents. Among SGCs, the intervention group (89.0%) had higher deworming coverage than the control group (75.5%). In the intervention group, 59.9% of OSCs received the deworming tablet versus 24.6% in the control group. Community involvement activities including door-to-door visits, courtyard gatherings, and miking benefited both SACs and their primary caregivers. SACs living in the intervention region, awareness of the last pill distribution date, and caregivers observing BRAC workers in action, were linked to SAC deworming coverage. Re-strategizing the deworming programme to include the OSCs is vital and suggests timely action. Building community awareness and periodic epidemiological assessment can further facilitate an improved drug intake.

Driven by the proliferation of DC energy sources and DC end-use devices (e.g., photovoltaics, battery storage, solid-state lighting, and consumer electronics), DC power distribution in buildings has recently emerged as a path to improved efficiency, resilience, and cost savings in the transitioning building sector. Despite these important benefits, there are several technological and market barriers impeding the development of DC distribution, which have kept this technology at the demonstration phase. This paper identifies specific end-use cases for which DC distribution in buildings is viable today. We evaluate their technology and market readiness, as well as their efficiency, cost, and resiliency benefits while addressing implementation barriers. The paper starts with a technology review, followed by a comprehensive market assessment, in which we analyze DC distribution field deployments and their end-use characteristics. We also conduct a survey of DC power and building professionals through on-site visits and phone interviews and summarize lessons learned and recommendations. In addition, the paper includes a novel efficiency analysis, in which we quantify energy savings from DC distribution for different end-use categories. Based on our findings, we present specific adoption pathways for DC in buildings that can be implemented today, and for each pathway we identify challenges and offer recommendations for the research and building community.

Building-level electrical distribution systems comprise a myriad of current-carrying equipment, conversion devices, and protection devices that deliver power from the utility or local distributed energy resources to end-use building loads. Electric power has traditionally been generated, transmitted, and distributed in alternating current (AC). However, the last decade has seen a significant increase in the integration of native direct current (DC) equipment that has elevated the importance of DC distribution systems. Numerous studies have comparatively examined the performance of various electrical distribution systems in buildings but have failed to achieve uniform conclusions, primarily because of a lack of consistent and analogous performance evaluation methods. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a standard set of metrics and measurement boundaries to consistently evaluate the performance of AC, DC, or hybrid AC/DC electrical distribution systems. The efficacy of the proposed approach is evaluated on a representative medium-sized commercial office building model with AC distribution and an equivalent hybrid AC/DC and DC distribution model, wherein the AC distribution model is concluded to be the most efficient. The simulation results show variation in computed metrics with different selected boundaries that verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach in ensuring consistent computation of the performance of building-level electrical distribution systems. This paper provides an initial set of guidelines for building energy system stakeholders to adopt appropriate solutions, thus leading to more efficient energy systems.

Detrimental effects exerted by biomass-based traditional cookstoves on health, environment, hygiene, and the soaring price of gas makes it imperative to investigate the feasibility of electric cooking as a promising clean cooking fuel in the context of Bangladesh. However, the adoption of electric cooking is unlikely to be welcomed if the monthly cost of electricity consumed by the electric cooking appliances is not comparable to traditional cooking fuels. So far, no study has been reported in this respect. Therefore, this paper is aimed to assess the energy consumption of available electric cooking appliances for cooking typical Bangladeshi dishes. Estimated monthly electricity cost of electric cooking is also reported and then compared to that of traditional cooking fuels. For the study purpose, three respondent families were provided with a rice cooker, hot plate, induction cooker and electric pressure cooker for cooking their daily meals. After four months of use, data related to dish cooked, amount of food, cooking time, and energy consumption were collected which shows that hot plate and rice cooker were the least preferred appliances due to their poor workmanship and limited use respectively. On the contrary, despite the fact that electric pressure cookers cannot perform all types of frying, it was the most preferred appliance owing to its ability to significantly reduce the cooking time and its less energy consumption. Induction cooker was less preferred for the additional requirement of compatible cook pots. The study also reveals that monthly energy requirements for electric cooking varied from 72–87 kWh corresponding to a cooking electricity bill ranging from BDT 504–609 per month (USD 6–7.5) which is less expensive as compared with biomass and LPG based cooking. This paper also highlights the prospects and challenges associated with the adoption of electricity as the primary cooking fuel in Bangladesh.

Digital and intelligent buildings are critical to realizing efficient building energy operations and a smart grid. With the increasing digitalization of processes throughout the life cycle of buildings, data exchanged between stakeholders and between building systems have grown significantly. However, a lack of semantic interoperability between data in different systems is still prevalent and hinders the development of energy-oriented applications that can be reused across buildings, limiting the scalability of innovative solutions. Addressing this challenge, our review paper systematically reviews metadata schemas and ontologies that are at the foundation of semantic interoperability necessary to move toward improved building energy operations. The review finds 40 schemas that span different phases of the building life cycle, most of which cover commercial building operations and, in particular, control and monitoring systems. The paper’s deeper review and analysis of five popular schemas identify several gaps in their ability to fully facilitate the work of a building modeler attempting to support three use cases: energy audits, automated fault detection and diagnosis, and optimal control. Our findings demonstrate that building modelers focused on energy use cases will find it difficult, labor intensive, and costly to create, sustain, and use semantic models with existing ontologies. This underscores the significant work still to be done to enable interoperable, usable, and maintainable building models. We make three recommendations for future work by the building modeling and energy communities: a centralized repository with a search engine for relevant schemas, the development of more use cases, and better harmonization and standardization of schemas in collaboration with industry to facilitate their adoption by stakeholders addressing varied energy-focused use cases.