Publications related to Ecological footprint

Vers un projet territorial du vivant L'outil des réseaux écologiques comme projet urbanistique de revitalisation du paysage agricole

The aim of my thesis is to provide urban architects and planners with working theoretical elements territorial project of the living. The living and the socio-ecological transition are key concepts in the nature and people paradigm, which asserts a human-n ...

EPFL2024

Decarbonizing the fertilizers sector: an alternative pathway for urea and nitric acid production

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos

In order to alleviate the environmental impact that nitrogen fertilizers production is responsible for, several efforts have been addressed to incentivize the partial or total decarbonization of the supply chains of ammonia and its derivatives. The decarbo ...

2024

The spatial and economic footprint of the coal industry on rural livelihoods in Jharkhand, India

Michaël Aklin

The socio-economic dimensions of coal mining in India form a complex picture of inter -linked livelihoods and economic dependencies. In this article, we contribute to sharpening this understanding through an analysis of household reliance on coal -related ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2024

Mesh-based topology, shape and sizing optimization of ribbed plates

In this paper, we present a new parameterization and optimization procedure for minimizing the weight of ribbed plates. The primary goal is to reduce embodied CO2 in concrete floors as part of the effort to diminish the carbon footprint of the construction ...

Springer2024

Optimal Design Operation Strategies of a Hyperloop Transportation System

Denis Tudor

In the last decades, transportation demand growth has played a major role in the increase of global CO2 footprint. At the same time, a number of countries have scheduled measurable and substantial cutback of CO2 emissions by 2050. As the transportation sec ...

EPFL2023

Design of New Low-Carbon Floor Systems by Reusing Cut Cast-in-Place Concrete Pieces

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Célia Marine Küpfer

As floors typically account for the largest share of a building embodied carbon footprint, new strategies to build low-carbon floors must be developed and implemented. Among these strategies, the reuse of existing components is a promising circular approac ...

Novus Press2023

Action Levers towards Sustainable Wellbeing: Re-Thinking Negative Emissions, Sufficiency, Deliberative Democracy

Sascha Nick

Systems theory defines leverage points as places to intervene in order to change a system. Points with high impact on system behavior are notoriously hard to act upon, and indeed most policy intervention is based at the lowest level (#12 in Donella Meadows ...

EPFL2023

Comparative Exergy and Economic Assessment of Fossil and Biomass-Based Routes for Ammonia Production

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego

Due to the increasing concerns about the marked dependence on fossil resources and their intrinsic economic uncertainty, as well as motivated by more stringent environmental regulations, the pursuit of alternative energy resources for the synthetic fertili ...

Silesian University of Technology2023

Greening the Swiss National Bank's Portfolio

Rüdiger Fahlenbrach, Eric Jondeau

Central banks are increasingly concerned about climate-related risks and want to ensure that the financial system is resilient to them. As they integrate these risks into financial stability monitoring, they also discuss how to apply environmental criteria ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2023

Durability Challenges of Low-Grade Calcined Clay Opposed to High-Volume Fly Ash in General Purpose Concrete

Karen Scrivener, Matea Flegar

With the decrease in availability of common supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) such as fly ash in Europe, the search for appropriate SCMs should be dealt with locally. A com-bination of abundant low-grade calcined clay and limestone powder has pro ...

AMER SOC TESTING MATERIALS2023

Separable Brønsted acidic imidazolium salts for polysaccharide hydrolysis in water

Kedar Ashok Abhyankar

The current reliance on limited petrochemical resources and the resulting ecological outcomes have made the exploration of alternative chemical and energy feedstocks invaluable. As such, the development of sustainable processes with a less harmful total en ...

EPFL2023

Integrated production of urea and nitric acid in the pulp industry: techno-economic and environmental analysis of black liquor gasification-based processes

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Shivom Sharma, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos

The pursuit of alternative energy sources for the nitrogen fertilizers sector has recently earned renewed interest due to increasing concerns regarding the world dependence on non-renewable energy resources and also motivated by the more stringent environm ...

2022

Steel Pipes and Global Networks: The Influence of Dalmine S.p.A in Shaping Resource Extraction Infrastructures

Anna Karla De Almeida Milani

Pipelines for extracting oil, gas, water, and supporting energy systems are part of the infrastructure of extractive sites, especially marked in countries with less urbanized areas. Throughout the twentieth century, such regions were influenced by economic ...

2023

A Framework for Autonomic Computing for In Situ Imageomics

Nina Marion Aurélia Van Tiel

In situ imageomics is a new approach to study ecological, biological and evolutionary systems wherein large image and video data sets are captured in the wild and machine learning methods are used to infer biological traits of individual organisms, animal ...

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc2023

Social media and deep learning reveal specific cultural preferences for biodiversity

Devis Tuia

Social media has created new opportunities to map cultural ecosystem services (CES) related to biodiversity at large scales. However, using these novel data to understand people's preferences in relation to these CES remains a challenge. To address this, w ...

2023

Molecular simulation on two-dimensional nanoporous material for energy-efficient separation

Mohammad Tohidivahdat

The energy-consumption by the chemical and petrochemical industry in the European Union (EU) accounts for about quarter of its energy footprint. Approximately half of this energy goes toward chemical separation, currently dominated by thermally-driven pro ...

EPFL2023

Regionalized Life Cycle Assessment of Food and Energy Systems

Xun Liao

To steer the sustainable transition in the food and energy sectors, reliable environmental data is required to answer environmental questions related to single agricultural crop, food product or energy technologies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been wid ...

EPFL2022

China’s extended urbanization driven by the 'consumption city' in the context of financialized ecological civilization

Florence Graezer Bideau, Thierry Marcel Theurillat

This article seeks to address current debates on ongoing China’s urban development and makes a theoretical proposal that links financialization and ecological civilization through the perspective of the increasing role of consumption in today’s transition ...

2022

Drivers and Barriers Toward Healthy and Environmentally Sustainable Eating in Switzerland: Linking Impacts to Intentions and Practices

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Ivo Philippe Baur, Ralph Hansmann

Food consumption is among the activities with the most significant environmental impacts, and furthermore contributes to rising health costs. We explored the factors that foster or hinder healthy and sustainable eating in Switzerland. Based on an online ho ...

2022

Towards sustainability through housing functions: a systems perspective for the study of Swiss tenants' residential mobility

Anna Pagani

Problem. Housing is a major contributor to Switzerland's carbon footprint and energy consumption, but it is also a basic need. Research on climate change mitigation strategies has so far paid insufficient attention to households' preferences and their cont ...

EPFL2022