scholarly journals Towards Zero Energy Stadiums: The Case Study of the Dacia Arena in Udine, Italy

Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattia Manni ◽  
Valentina Coccia ◽  
Andrea Nicolini ◽  
Guido Marseglia ◽  
Alessandro Petrozzi

The environmental impacts of sport events have been growing during the last decades, which has led to the organizing associations developing adequate countermeasures to both reduce carbon emissions due to construction and operational stages compensate for the emissions. This work aims at proposing an approach to stadiums energy enhancement that includes strategies largely recognized as effective and applicable to several building typologies (residential, commercial, academic, etc.). The selected case study is the Dacia Arena in northern Italy that has been recently refurbished and renovated. The proposed workflow has as a goal minimizing the increment of the operational emissions, caused by new heated areas in the stadium. Firstly, the energy consumption was estimated in dynamic state for Scenario 0 (current state) and Scenario 1 (refurbished state) to quantify the new plant’s energy demand. Secondly, two hypothetical system layouts were proposed and evaluated. In the first, the power for lighting, cooling and heating is supplied by a system that couples photovoltaic panels with heat pump. In the second, the same photovoltaic plant is integrated with a biomass plant and an absorption chiller. The comparison highlights the suitability of those interventions and the environmental advantages deriving from their exploitation.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 4814
Author(s):  
Koutra ◽  
Pagnoule ◽  
Galatoulas ◽  
Bagheri ◽  
Waroux ◽  
...  

Rapidly increasing global energy demand has raised concerns about the exhaustion of energy resources and the consequent heavy environmental impact. Improving energy efficiency in cities comprises an initial measure for addressing these phenomena. Within the current context of globalization, EU initiatives and policy targets have been proposed in order to revise urban development strategies and motivate its member states (MSes) toward “zero-energy objectives”. Providing a methodological approach with a simulation district analysis, the present article summarizes how this challenge was analyzed in an existing district in Belgium. This study contributes to the scientific discussion by analyzing the applicability of a holistic approach to zero-energy objectives on a larger scale.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karima H Alshoshan ◽  
Wedad B El-Osta ◽  
Yosof M Kahlifa ◽  
Ibrahim M Saleh

The residential load is one of the largest consumers of the electric energy in Libya that could be supplied by renewable energies. Renewable energy technologies and systems can be a good solution to build “Zero Energy Buildings”. A zero-energy house is proposed for Maqrun city. It is intended to use wind turbine with batteries as a storage system to supply electric energy demand for this house.The intended house average daily electric energy demand is estimated to be 35 kWh/day. Two WECS were selected to supply the energy demand each of size 6 kW. The energy produced by the selected wind energy conversion system (WECS) is about 23,894 kWh/yr and the expected capacity factor at the site is about 23%. Modeling of energy demand of the house and simulation of its performance was performed using excel sheets and HOMER software.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-387
Author(s):  
Jenni Mikkonen ◽  
Ira Lahovuo

Prior studies have recognized the importance of events in destination branding, but the focus has been on the roles of mega-events or sport events, while smaller cultural and freetime events have received far less attention. The stakeholder involvement in destination branding has also been attracting interest lately by many researchers, but there is lack of knowledge on how to utilize events in the branding processes. This study aims to fill the research gap through a case study in the South Savo region, eastern Finland. The purpose of this study is to examine the roles events have in destination branding, and how events are involved in cocreating the destination brand. The empirical data were collected through 13 semistructured interviews of event organizers and local tourism developers. The study identified four different roles and several involvement methods. The findings revealed the importance and potential of organized events in the branding, but it also revealed that they are not yet effectively utilized at the destination. However, there is a consensus about the importance of stakeholder involvement and a common will towards involving events in the branding process. The findings of this study can be utilized by tourism developers and stakeholders to improve destination branding processes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 386
Author(s):  
Jennie Gray ◽  
Lisa Buckner ◽  
Alexis Comber

This paper reviews geodemographic classifications and developments in contemporary classifications. It develops a critique of current approaches and identifiea a number of key limitations. These include the problems associated with the geodemographic cluster label (few cluster members are typical or have the same properties as the cluster centre) and the failure of the static label to describe anything about the underlying neighbourhood processes and dynamics. To address these limitations, this paper proposed a data primitives approach. Data primitives are the fundamental dimensions or measurements that capture the processes of interest. They can be used to describe the current state of an area in a multivariate feature space, and states can be compared over multiple time periods for which data are available, through for example a change vector approach. In this way, emergent social processes, which may be too weak to result in a change in a cluster label, but are nonetheless important signals, can be captured. As states are updated (for example, as new data become available), inferences about different social processes can be made, as well as classification updates if required. State changes can also be used to determine neighbourhood trajectories and to predict or infer future states. A list of data primitives was suggested from a review of the mechanisms driving a number of neighbourhood-level social processes, with the aim of improving the wider understanding of the interaction of complex neighbourhood processes and their effects. A small case study was provided to illustrate the approach. In this way, the methods outlined in this paper suggest a more nuanced approach to geodemographic research, away from a focus on classifications and static data, towards approaches that capture the social dynamics experienced by neighbourhoods.


Author(s):  
Diego Pires Ferraz Trindade ◽  
Meelis Pärtel ◽  
Carlos Pérez Carmona ◽  
Tiina Randlane ◽  
Juri Nascimbene

AbstractMountains provide a timely opportunity to examine the potential effects of climate change on biodiversity. However, nature conservation in mountain areas have mostly focused on the observed part of biodiversity, not revealing the suitable but absent species—dark diversity. Dark diversity allows calculating the community completeness, indicating whether sites should be restored (low completeness) or conserved (high completeness). Functional traits can be added, showing what groups should be focused on. Here we assessed changes in taxonomic and functional observed and dark diversity of epiphytic lichens along elevational transects in Northern Italy spruce forests. Eight transects (900–1900 m) were selected, resulting in 48 plots and 240 trees, in which lichens were sampled using four quadrats per tree (10 × 50 cm). Dark diversity was estimated based on species co-occurrence (Beals index). We considered functional traits related to growth form, photobiont type and reproductive strategy. Linear and Dirichlet regressions were used to examine changes in taxonomic metrics and functional traits along gradient. Our results showed that all taxonomic metrics increased with elevation and functional traits of lichens differed between observed and dark diversity. At low elevations, due to low completeness and harsh conditions, both restoration and conservation activities are needed, focusing on crustose species. Towards high elevations, conservation is more important to prevent species pool losses, focusing on macrolichens, lichens with Trentepohlia and sexual reproduction. Finally, dark diversity and functional traits provide a novel tool to enhance nature conservation, indicating particular threatened groups, creating windows of opportunities to protect species from both local and regional extinctions.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 156
Author(s):  
Paige Wenbin Tien ◽  
Shuangyu Wei ◽  
John Calautit

Because of extensive variations in occupancy patterns around office space environments and their use of electrical equipment, accurate occupants’ behaviour detection is valuable for reducing the building energy demand and carbon emissions. Using the collected occupancy information, building energy management system can automatically adjust the operation of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems to meet the actual demands in different conditioned spaces in real-time. Existing and commonly used ‘fixed’ schedules for HVAC systems are not sufficient and cannot adjust based on the dynamic changes in building environments. This study proposes a vision-based occupancy and equipment usage detection method based on deep learning for demand-driven control systems. A model based on region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN) was developed, trained and deployed to a camera for real-time detection of occupancy activities and equipment usage. Experiments tests within a case study office room suggested an overall accuracy of 97.32% and 80.80%. In order to predict the energy savings that can be attained using the proposed approach, the case study building was simulated. The simulation results revealed that the heat gains could be over or under predicted when using static or fixed profiles. Based on the set conditions, the equipment and occupancy gains were 65.75% and 32.74% lower when using the deep learning approach. Overall, the study showed the capabilities of the proposed approach in detecting and recognising multiple occupants’ activities and equipment usage and providing an alternative to estimate the internal heat emissions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 376
Author(s):  
Giacomo Cillari ◽  
Fabio Fantozzi ◽  
Alessandro Franco

Passive solar system design is an essential asset in a zero-energy building perspective to reduce heating, cooling, lighting, and ventilation loads. The integration of passive systems in building leads to a reduction of plant operation with considerable environmental benefits. The design can be related to intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence the final performance in a synergistic way. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive view of the elements that influence passive solar systems by means of an analysis of the theoretical background and the synergistic design of various solutions available. The paper quantifies the potential impact of influencing factors on the final performance and then investigates a case study of an existing public building, analyzing the effects of the integration of different passive systems through energy simulations. General investigation has highlighted that latitude and orientation impact energy saving on average by 3–13 and 6–11 percentage points, respectively. The case study showed that almost 20% of the building energy demand can be saved by means of passive solar systems. A higher contribution is given by mixing direct and indirect solutions, as half of the heating and around 25% of the cooling energy demand can be cut off.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 3366
Author(s):  
Daniel Suchet ◽  
Adrien Jeantet ◽  
Thomas Elghozi ◽  
Zacharie Jehl

The lack of a systematic definition of intermittency in the power sector blurs the use of this term in the public debate: the same power source can be described as stable or intermittent, depending on the standpoint of the authors. This work tackles a quantitative definition of intermittency adapted to the power sector, linked to the nature of the source, and not to the current state of the energy mix or the production predictive capacity. A quantitative indicator is devised, discussed and graphically depicted. A case study is illustrated by the analysis of the 2018 production data in France and then developed further to evaluate the impact of two methods often considered to reduce intermittency: aggregation and complementarity between wind and solar productions.


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