Search

Human mortality data is often modeled using a demographic approach. This approach does not present an adequate fit model for the number of deaths with great variability. For this reason, additional social, economic and environmental information is required to complement demographic modeling. This work evaluated the association between human mortality data (segregated by age and sex) with meteorological and air pollutant covariates at two geographical levels: country and macroclimatic regions. The modeling was based on a generalized linear modeling framework and takes into account the common feature of over-dispersion in human mortality data by applying a negative binomial distribution. The proposed model improved the dynamic behavior of the Farrington-like model (basic demographic model) and took into account extreme meteorological events and natural air pollution. Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::11 - Ciutats i Comunitats Sostenibles Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::11 - Ciutats i Comunitats Sostenibles::11.6 - Per a 2030, reduir l’impacte ambiental negatiu per capita de les ciutats, amb especial atenció a la qualitat de l’aire, així com a la gestió dels residus municipals i d’altre tipus Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::3 - Salut i Benestar Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::3 - Salut i Benestar::3.9 - Per a 2030, reduir substancialment el nombre de morts i malalties causats per productes químics perillosos i la pol·lució de l’aire, l’aigua i el sòl

The arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) description in non‐linear solid mechanics is nowadays standard for hypoelastic–plastic models. An extension to hyperelastic–plastic models is presented here. A fractional‐step method—a common choice in ALE analysis—is employed for time‐marching: every time‐step is split into a Lagrangian phase, which accounts for material effects, and a convection phase, where the relative motion between the material and the finite element mesh is considered. In contrast to previous ALE formulations of hyperelasticity or hyperelastoplasticity, the deformed configuration at the beginning of the time‐step, not the initial undeformed configuration, is chosen as the reference configuration. As a consequence, convecting variables are required in the description of the elastic response. This is not the case in previous formulations, where only the plastic response contains convection terms. In exchange for the extra convective terms, however, the proposed ALE approach has a major advantage: only the quality of the mesh in the spatial domain must be ensured by the ALE remeshing strategy; in previous formulations, it is also necessary to keep the distortion of the mesh in the material domain under control. Thus, the full potential of the ALE description as an adaptive technique can be exploited here. These aspects are illustrated in detail by means of three numerical examples: a necking test, a coining test and a powder compaction test.

The consistent tangent matrix for density-dependent plastic models within the theory of isotropic multiplicative hyperelastoplasticity is presented here. Plastic equations expressed as general functions of the Kirchhoff stresses and density are considered. They include the Cauchy-based plastic models as a particular case. The standard exponential return-mapping algorithm is applied, with the density playing the role of a fixed parameter during the nonlinear plastic corrector problem. The consistent tangent matrix has the same structure as in the usual density-independent plastic models. A simple additional term takes into account the influence of the density on the plastic corrector problem. Quadratic convergence results are shown for several representative examples involving geomaterial and powder constitutive models.

The overall goal of this study is to understand the renewal investment needs concerning the urban water cycle in Spain. To achieve this objective, three specific goals were identified: 1. Performing an inventory of special infrastructures and networks that make up the integrated urban water cycle, in its current actual configuration. 2. Calculating the as-new replacement value of the cost resulting from setting up all that capital. 3. Estimating the annual cost of renewal investment to sustainably maintain the capital, stemming from different scenarios based on their renewal period. The scope of this project covers the analysis of urban water cycle investment needs, distinguishing between water supply and sanitation services. In turn, each part of the integrated water cycle is broken down into networks and special infrastructures.

Las desigualdades del acceso de la población a niveles de servicio de agua y saneamiento, han sido muy discutidas en la literatura. Los niveles de servicio con los cuales se generan las tendencias temporales suman 100%, por tanto, son composicionales. Sin embargo, estos requieren de un enfoque estadístico particular que también ha sido evidenciado en la literatura. Por tanto, con el propósito de explicar la desigualdad que existe en el acceso a los niveles de servicio de agua y saneamiento según quintiles de riqueza, tanto en el sector urbano como en el rural, en este estudio hacemos un análisis estadístico de las tendencias temporales de acuerdo con las características de los datos. Para lo cual se toma el Perú como un caso de estudio.

In the international water and sanitation sector, it is usual to use multivariate statistical methods to monitor and report the overall progress of access to water and sanitation. However, the methods used do not take into account the compositional characteristics of the data. Recently, to overcome this problem, the application of multivariate temporal interpolation models that include this characteristic has been proposed. On the other hand, it is usual to carry out analyzes separately between the urban and rural sectors (WHO/UNICEF, 2015), even though both parties form a whole (the general population of the country). The disaggregated work does not allow to see the crossed influence between the population evolution and the levels of service. In addition, according to (Cohen, 2004), the question arises whether disaggregated work is a good option or not, given that the definition of both categories is not homogeneous, which makes international comparisons difficult. Therefore, this work focuses on the comparative analysis between the joint and disaggregated treatment of indicators of access to water, in urban and rural contexts, considering that the level of service is divided into four categories. Different temporal interpolation models are applied to the balances defined between the parties through the isometric logratio (ilr) transformation (Egozcue et al. 2003). The identification of outliers is included through Mahalanobis distance. The preliminary results obtained with the data from the countries of South America show that the adjusted models may depend on the joint or disaggregated approach. The quality metrics Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) confirm that the best adjustments are obtained in one way or another depending on the case. The outliers are different in each situation.

La preocupación por el envejecimiento de las infraestructuras de los servicios de abastecimiento y saneamiento se encuentra cada día más presente entre los distintos grupos de interés del sector del agua. Existe un consenso sobre la creciente necesidad de inversiones orientadas a cubrir los servicios actuales y los retos futuros. Muchas de las redes de abastecimiento se encuentran deterioradas y cercanas al fin de su ciclo de vida. El envejecimiento de las infraestructuras reduce la eficiencia de la capacidad instalada, aumentando los costes no solo financieros, sino también los ambientales, a través de las pérdidas de agua y/o vertidos no tratados, así como los costes sociales, debido al aumento del riesgo de fallos del sistema y de cese del servicio. La probabilidad y el impacto de los fallos en los servicios del ciclo urbano del agua se intensifican en los escenarios de cambio climático, caracterizados por el incremento de la intensidad y de la frecuencia de eventos extremos, así como por el crecimiento y concentración de población en zonas urbanas. Al mismo tiempo, se incide en la importancia de la inversión en nuevas infraestructuras que reduzcan el carácter intensivo de consumo energético de las dotaciones actuales. En el ámbito de la gestión del agua en nuestro país, se constata una falta de información detallada sobre la cuantificación, el estado y las necesidades de inversiones en el ciclo urbano del agua, entendido este como el conjunto de infraestructuras que dan servicio a la población y que distribuyen el recurso hidráulico desde las grandes infraestructuras de regulación, y que posteriormente son recogidas para su tratamiento antes del vertido. Para contribuir al avance de este ámbito de estudio, el 22 de marzo de 2018, la Cátedra AQUAE de Economía de Agua de la UNED y la Asociación Española de Abastecimientos de Agua y Saneamiento (AEAS) firmaron en Madrid un convenio de colaboración para llevar a cabo un proyecto sobre las necesidades de inversión en el ciclo urbano del agua en España.

En Perú un 50.35% (Año 2017) de la población total dispone de acceso a agua para el consumo humano gestionada de forma segura, mientras que, en el sector rural, este indicador llega solo al 20.75% (JMP, 2019). Por otro lado, en el Departamento de Huancavelica la prevalencia de enfermedades diarreicas agudas en niños (as) menores de 5 años, se encuentran entre el 10-12.8%. Mientras que la prevalencia de anemia en niños (as) de 6-59 meses de edad, se encuentra entre el 40-49% (ENDES, 2018). Siendo muchos de ellos atribuibles a la falta de condiciones adecuadas de servicios de Agua, Saneamiento e Higiene (ASH). En este contexto, en el 2019 se llevó a cabo la primera fase del proyecto, entre la Universidad Nacional de Huancavelica (UNH) y Centro de Cooperación para el Desarrollo (CCD) de la Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (UPC), con la finalidad de mejorar la gestión del agua y fortalecer las capacidades técnicas de los operadores de agua en comunidades rurales alto-andinas de Huancavelica (Perú). La primera fase de este proyecto tuvo como objetivo hacer un estudio del contexto social, higiene y calidad del agua en cinco comunidades rurales de la Provincia y departamento de Huancavelica, así como una evaluación de los sistemas de cloración y protocolos utilizados. Los resultados de este estudio concluyeron con la necesidad de capacitar a los representantes de las Juntas Administradoras de Servicios de Saneamiento (JASS) para una correcta gestión de los diferentes sistemas de agua, establecimiento de protocolos de cloración adecuados, dotación de insumos (cloro, detergentes) a las comunidades rurales, así como mantenimiento/limpieza de manantiales, reservorios y redes de distribución. Se detectó también falta de acceso a jabón en gran parte de las Instituciones Educativas y una muy baja participación de la mujer en las JASS.

Resumen del trabajo presentado en la 5th International Conference on Technologies for Development, celebrada en Lausana (Suiza) del 27 al 29 de junio de 2018., Engineers with a broader capacity are needed to contribute to the realization of the SDGs. Though a number of technical universities have recently devoted efforts to integrating sustainable development into engineering curricula, current international debates have not yet explored in detail the role that Higher Education should play within Global Citizenship Education. Here we present lessons learned from a European initiative, the Global Dimension in Engineering Education (GDEE), promoted by a transdisciplinary consortium of technical universities and nongovernmental organisations. GDEE (http://gdee.eu) has developed specific novel tools to widen the training of Engineers in Europe, and to include global development aspects into their professional competences. There are increasing needs to further transform learning and training environments and build capacity of educators and trainers on sustainable development issues (Perez-Foguet et al., 2017). The work discusses project-based training and a recently launched honors programme that represent promising tools to set possible ways forward.

Material complementari del cas d’estudi “Anàlisi Multivariant i Construcció d’Índexs: Mineria de Dades Aplicada al Sector Aigua i Sanejament Rural a Hondures”, part component del llibre “Casos d'Estudi per Integrar i Promoure Problemàtiques Globals a l'Aula d'Enginyeria Civil”.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes the indivisible and integrated nature of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets, as well as the need to address these interlinkages to fully achieve its aims. In addition, the Agenda stresses the importance of “leaving no one behind”, which can only be achieved by understanding the interlinkages between the Goals and by undertaking actions to bring them together for the benefit of all. Thus, the identification of these linkages will enable countries to implement the SDGs effectively by harnessing synergies between them while managing potential conflicts. Despite their significance in monitoring initiatives, indicators separately are not adequate to provide an insight into the complex cause and effect relations within global development issues. The suitability of Bayesian Networks (BNs) to integrate multiple and simultaneous relationships has been largely exploited in the literature. Taking a dedicated goal on water and sanitation (SDG 6) as starting point, this paper reviews the potential of a BNs approach to analyse the interdependency between the SDGs, the associated targets and the corresponding indicators. Available global data has been exploited to run the BNs model. Achieved results are compared with a recent research developed by UN-Water, where interlinkages between the targets under Goal 6 and other targets across the 2030 Agenda are conceptually described. The paper discusses the extent to which a BNs is a suitable system to identify and assess these linkages, relationships and synergies. The study concludes that a BNs approach is useful to accommodate the complexities and interdependencies of the SDGs targets and indicators.

Groundwater resources play a key role in the water economy of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. However, groundwater abstraction is estimated to exceed the annual groundwater recharge in 50% of the countries, reaching groundwater stress levels higher than 200% in some cases. This high level of groundwater stress is an indication of unsustainable groundwater consumption in the MENA region, which jeopardizes its socio-economic development. Given the urgent need for the sustainable use of groundwater resources in the MENA region. some countries have attempted to instigate a participatory management of groundwater resources. Morocco, for instance, have been trying to formulate an aquifer management model (‘aquifer contracts’) as a tool to promote stakeholder participation at the aquifer level. The aim of the government through these contracts is to develop a collective dialogue process where all concerned users are involved and engaged in defining sustainable groundwater management policies. However, the implementation of these aquifer contracts is rather a top-down approach and does not reflect the consultative process. This work aims to explore the potential of aquifer contracts as an instrument to support stakeholder participation in groundwater resources planning in the MENA region. The experience of aquifer contracts in Morocco is analyzed from a groundwater governance framework perspective, and compared to other participatory groundwater governance instruments.

Complementary material from the case study “Multivariate Analysis and Indices Construction: Data Mining Applied to the Rural Water and Sanitation Sector in Honduras”, part of the book “Case Studies to Integrate and Promote Global Issues in STEM Education”.

This article seeks to explain what is happening in South America in water and sanitation issues; It deals with the treatment of data that were generated in the period of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), through the method of compositional data. And at the same time shows the behavior of each country and the future of South America in the increase of coverage in water and sanitation. It also estimates access to piped water and sanitation in the years 2020, 2025 and 2030.

The 2030 Agenda includes a dedicated goal on water and sanitation (SDG 6) that sets out to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. SDG 6 expands the MDG focus on drinking water and sanitation to cover the entire water cycle. A clear lesson from the MDGs is that we cannot manage what we do not measure, and there is little doubt about the role of monitoring and evaluation data in providing the evidence base for decision-making. Against this background, a number of composite indicator frameworks have been implemented to make water and sanitation quality services available and accessible to all, particularly to those most in need. Despite their significance in sector monitoring, indicators are not completely adequate to provide an insight into the complex cause and effect relations within water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) issues. The flexibility of Bayesian Networks (Bns) have been exploited to integrate multiple and simultaneous cause-effect or dependence relationships and unravel the linkages between poverty and WaSH services. In consequence, Bns have proved to be effective in project planning and monitoring support. Three major weaknesses however hinder a wider use of this monitoring approach in sector planning: i) an increased data demand, ii) software availability to run the networks, and iii) lack of a systematic methodology to deal with networks generation. In this study, open-databases are exploited and free software “R” is applied. One monitoring initiative is selected as initial case study due to its increasing relevance in Latin America in monitoring the WaSH sector: the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Information System (SIASAR). On the basis of SIASAR’s conceptual framework, a simple Bn model has been applied to reflect the main issues that determine access to WaSH services. Data from Nicaragua is processed and analysed, since the Government has already carried out and completed a national baseline. The paper discusses about i) the proposed methodology to construct the networks, and ii) the potentiality of BNs in terms of evaluation and planning. It concludes that the proposed methodology represents a contribution to facilitate the use of this tool and that Bns are able to accommodate the complexities of WaSH-related issues. Additionally, they emerge as an effective management tool to support decision-makers in formulating and making informed choices between alternative actions.

Participatory analysis frameworks can help realize the Human Right to Water and Sanitation (HRtWS) by helping stakeholders self-assess how equitable is access to water and sanitation services, achieving a better understanding of the rights to water and sanitation and their principles, and raising awareness. This article presents the experiences of Castelló (Spain), Lima (Peru) and Barcelona (Spain) in using the “Equitable Access Score-card” to analyze the equity of access to safe drinking water and sanitation in these three cities. The aim is to compare and discuss the three different ways in which the diagnosis tool was applied. Results show that, although all three approaches served as a first-assessment and overview of the HRtWS by sector stakeholders at local level, developing an effective inter-stakeholder collaboration was pivotal for these participatory diagnosis tools to have significant impact.

Priority-driven and target-focused management of water and sanitation services is essential to achieve long-term sustainability. However, in the context of water and sanitation, statistical uncertainty is an inevitable feature, as surveys are the primary sources of the information used in the decision making process. Therefore, it needs to be considered to have a greater confidence in the decisions made based on the collected data. Outranking approaches provide an opportunity to handle imprecision and uncertainty characteristic of water management problems. In particular, ELECTRE-III uses pseudo-criteria to consider uncertainty in the decision-maker’s preferences, but does not take into account statistical uncertainty. A new interpretation of ELECTRE-III, in which pseudo-criteria are linked to the data uncertainty, is presented in the paper. The modified outranking approach (E3M) is used to evaluate water and sanitation services in Kenya and rank its 338 subdistricts according to their performances on 9 different criteria. E3M proved to be an effective ranking tool, providing a detailed hierarchy between the subdistricts, even when dealing with hundreds of alternatives. However, a quadratic dependence between the number of subdistricts ranked and the computational cost of the method was found, indicating that for larger number of alternatives (order of thousands), the time required would rise to the order of hours. Future work should focus on optimising the method’s algorithm and allowing its scalability to thousands of alternatives.

The integration of sustainable development in higher education is increasingly recognised as a priority for a growing number of universities, nonetheless, barriers for change remain and particular attention should be given to the success factors fostering an effective integration. The present contribution analyses the extent to which a professional development programme, aimed at engaging and empowering faculty, has positive effects to integrate sustainable human development principles into existing courses of engineering. Specifically, the research focuses on the effects of the integration of sustainable human development in new teaching modules in a subject of basic engineering science, implemented in regular courses of the first year of the degree in engineering. The methodology includes i) a standardised test to assess sustainability literacy of the students; ii) a focus group conducted with the students of the engineering courses involved in the initiative; and iii) an in-deep interview conducted with the academic coordinator of the subject analysed. The results of the present case study highlight the relevance of professional development programmes addressed to academics with regard to the integration of sustainability principles specifically in formal science disciplines. The conclusions highlight relevant insights from the case study that are useful for supporting further integration of sustainable development in engineering disciplines.

The integration of sustainable development in higher education is increasingly recognised as a priority for a growing number of universities, nonetheless, barriers for change remain and particular attention should be given to the success factors fostering an effective integration. The present contribution analyses the extent to which a professional development programme, aimed at engaging and empowering faculty, has positive effects to integrate sustainable human development principles into existing courses of engineering. Specifically, the research focuses on the effects of the integration of sustainable human development in new teaching modules in a subject of basic engineering science, implemented in regular courses of the first year of the degree in engineering. The methodology includes i) a standardised test to assess sustainability literacy of the students; ii) a focus group conducted with the students of the engineering courses involved in the initiative; and iii) an in-deep interview conducted with the academic coordinator of the subject analysed. The results of the present case study highlight the relevance of professional development programmes addressed to academics with regard to the integration of sustainability principles specifically in formal science disciplines. The conclusions highlight relevant insights from the case study that are useful for supporting further integration of sustainable development in engineering disciplines.

The provision of sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) services is essential for human health and development. In order to achieve this sustainability, reliable data is needed to support planning, and improved prioritisation tools are required to evaluate sector performance and promote decision-making. In this context, the present paper introduces to the WaSH sector the ELECTRE-III model, which has proved successful for multi-criteria ranking in water resources management. This article presents 1,600 communities in Nicaragua as case study and evaluates the method’s suitability to rank the performance of a large number of communities on multiple criteria. Results indicate that ELECTRE-III is effective at assessing communities at a large-scale and targeting the neediest areas for WaSH improvements.

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) are at the very core of sustainable development. As we embark on a new round of global goals to follow the 15 year Millennium Development Goals period, namely the Sustainable Development Goals, a top priority is to address a coherent framework for monitoring these services. In coming years, the sector will witness the development of a variety of multidimensional monitoring measures, albeit from different perspectives. This paper reviews three different multidimensional approaches that are increasingly adopted to determine the level of service delivered at the household. At the global level, a ladder approach to monitoring has been promoted by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme. Alternatively, the use of aggregated indicators is widespread, as they are adequate to capture and simplify the complexity inherent in services delivery. Finally, the Alkire & Foster methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement has been extensively used for pro-poor targeting. We adapt this method to capture a set of direct household-related water and sanitation deprivations that batter a person at the same time. Taking the international post-2015 monitoring framework as a reference point, this article analyses these measures and their outcomes. For illustrative purposes, one small town in Mozambique is selected as initial case study. We conclude that multidimensional measures are needed to provide a complete picture of the context in which the WaSH services are delivered. In consequence, they are useful to report on the SDG monitoring architecture.

Priority-driven and target-focused management of water and sanitation services is essential to achieve long-term sustainability. However, in the context of water and sanitation, statistical uncertainty is an inevitable feature, as surveys are the primary sources of the information used in the decision making process. Therefore, it needs to be considered to have a greater confidence in the decisions made based on the collected data. Outranking approaches provide an opportunity to handle imprecision and uncertainty characteristic of water management problems. In particular, ELECTRE-III uses pseudo-criteria to consider uncertainty in the decision-maker’s preferences, but does not take into account statistical uncertainty. A new interpretation of ELECTRE-III, in which pseudo-criteria are linked to the data uncertainty, is presented in the paper. The modified outranking approach (E3M) is used to evaluate water and sanitation services in Kenya and rank its 338 subdistricts according to their performances on 9 different criteria. E3M proved to be an effective ranking tool, providing a detailed hierarchy between the subdistricts, even when dealing with hundreds of alternatives. However, a quadratic dependence between the number of subdistricts ranked and the computational cost of the method was found, indicating that for larger number of alternatives (order of thousands), the time required would rise to the order of hours. Future work should focus on optimising the method’s algorithm and allowing its scalability to thousands of alternatives.