Assessing CO2 Emissions of Online Food Delivery in Japan

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown of cities have led to the rapid growth of online food delivery (OFD). Moreover, there are concerns that OFD platforms may impose offers on users in order to continue to increase their market share, leading to numerous environmental issues such as overconsumption and a significant increase in plastic packaging waste. Most studies have focused on the environmental impacts associated with food packaging and have been mostly limited to China. However, less research has been carried out on the overall CO2 emissions of an OFD order including food. In this study, the CO2 emissions of an OFD order were assessed by considering the production, distribution, consumption and disposal of the ingredients, based on lifecycle thinking and existing secondary data, for three representative food groups (Western food, Japanese food and Chinese food) in Japan. This study found that the food production of an OFD order accounts for more than 70% of the CO2 emissions of the entire process, especially food ingredient production. Policy support and initiatives such as OFD platforms being able to serve different quantities of food based on actual consumer demand to avoid food waste, as well as changes in delivery methods, would help reduce the CO2 emissions of OFD. © 2023 by the authors.

New Developments in Climate Change, Air Pollution, Pollen Allergy, and Interaction with SARS-CoV-2

In recent years, the environmental impacts of climate change have become increasingly evident. Extreme meteorological events are influenced by climate change, which also alter the magnitude and pattern of precipitations and winds. Climate change can have a particularly negative impact on respiratory health, which can lead to the emergence of asthma and allergic respiratory illnesses. Pollen is one of the main components of the atmospheric bioaerosol and is able to induce allergic symptoms in certain subjects. Climate change affects the onset, length, and severity of the pollen season, with effects on pollen allergy. Higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) can lead to enhanced photosynthesis and a higher pollen production in plants. Pollen grains can also interact with air pollutants and be affected by thunderstorms and other extreme events, exacerbating the insurgence of respiratory diseases such as allergic rhinitis and asthma. The consequences of climate change might also favor the spreading of pandemics, such as the COVID-19 one.

3D-Printed Face Mask with Integrated Sensors as Protective and Monitoring Tool

The outbreak of the recent Covid-19 pandemic changed many aspects of our daily life, such as the constant wearing of face masks as protection from virus transmission risks. Furthermore, it exposed the healthcare system's fragilities, showing the urgent need to design a more inclusive model that takes into account possible future emergencies, together with population's aging and new severe pathologies. In this framework, face masks can be both a physical barrier against viruses and, at the same time, a telemedical diagnostic tool. In this paper, we propose a low-cost, 3D-printed face mask able to protect the wearer from virus transmission, thanks to internal FFP2 filters, and to monitor the air quality (temperature, humidity, CO2) inside the mask. Acquired data are automatically transmitted to a web terminal, thanks to sensors and electronics embedded in the mask. Our preliminary results encourage more efforts in these regards, towards rapid, inexpensive and smart ways to integrate more sensors into the mask's breathing zone in order to use the patient's breath as a fingerprint for various diseases. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.

Testing CO2 Emissions Data During Covid-19 Pandemic Using Benford's Law

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted economic activities, which led to the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions due to lockdowns and restrictions. Using Benford's Law, we tested for anomalies in the world's daily CO2 emissions data for different sectors from January 2020 to December 2021. We found that the CO2 emissions data were under the category of "conformity” in 2020 and "non-conformity” in 2021. © 2023, Asia-Pacific Applied Economics Association. All rights reserved.

Global economic crisis, energy use, CO2 emissions, and policy roadmap amid COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as one of the deadliest infectious diseases on the planet. Millions of people and businesses have been placed in lockdown where the main aim is to stop the spread of the virus. As an extreme phenomenon, the lockdown has triggered a global economic shock at an alarming pace, conveying sharp recessions for many countries. In the meantime, the lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have drastically changed energy consumption patterns and reduced CO2 emissions throughout the world. Recent data released by the International Monetary Fund and International Energy Agency for 2020 further forecast that emissions will rebound in 2021. Still, the full impact of COVID-19 in terms of how long the crisis will be and how the consumption pattern of energy and the associated levels of CO2 emissions will be affected are unclear. This review aims to steer policymakers and governments of nations toward a better direction by providing a broad and convincing overview on the observed and likely impacts of the pandemic of COVID-19 on the world economy, world energy demand, and world energy-related CO2 emissions that may well emerge in the next few years. Indeed, given that immediate policy responses are required with equal urgency to address three things-pandemic, economic downturn, and climate crisis. This study outlines policy suggestions that can be used during these uncertain times as a guide.

SARS-CoV-2 airborne infection probability estimated by using indoor carbon dioxide.

Airborne transmission is one of the main routes of SARS-CoV-2 spread. It is important to determine the circumstances under which the risk of airborne transmission is increased as well as the effective strategy to reduce such risk. This study aimed to develop a modified version of the Wells-Riley model with indoor CO2 to estimate the probability of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron strains with a CO2 monitor and to evaluate the validity of this model in actual clinical practices. We used the model in three suspected cases of airborne transmission presented to our hospital to confirm its validity. Next, we estimated the required indoor CO2 concentration at which R0 does not exceed 1 based on the model. The estimated R0 (R0, basic reproduction number) based on the model in each case were 3.19 in three out of five infected patients in an outpatient room, 2.00 in two out of three infected patients in the ward, and 0.191 in none of the five infected patients in another outpatient room. This indicated that our model can estimate R0 with an acceptable accuracy. In a typical outpatient setting, the required indoor CO2 concentration at which R0 does not exceed 1 is below 620 ppm with no mask, 1000 ppm with a surgical mask and 16000 ppm with an N95 mask. In a typical inpatient setting, on the other hand, the required indoor CO2 concentration is below 540 ppm with no mask, 770 ppm with a surgical mask, and 8200 ppm with an N95 mask. These findings facilitate the establishment of a strategy for preventing airborne transmission in hospitals. This study is unique in that it suggests the development of an airborne transmission model with indoor CO2 and application of the model to actual clinical practice. Organizations and individuals can efficiently recognize the risk of SARS-CoV-2 airborne transmission in a room and thus take preventive measures such as maintaining good ventilation, wearing masks, or shortening the exposure time to an infected individual by simply using a CO2 monitor.

COVID-19 airborne transmission risk calculation using CO2 concentrations in a 3D office environment

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of deaths worldwide along with detrimental socioeconomic consequences. Existing evidence suggests that the rate of indoor transmission is directly linked with the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) conditions. Most of the existing methodologies for virus transmissibility risk estimation are based on the well-known Wells-Riley equation and assume well-mixed, uniform conditions;so spatiotemporal variations within the indoor space are not captured. In this work, a novel fine-grained methodology for real-time virus transmission risk estimation is developed using a 3D model of a real office room with 31 occupants. CONTAM-CFD0 software is used to compute the airflow vectors and the resulting 3D CO2 concentration map (attributed to the exhalations from the occupants). Simulation results are also provided that demonstrate the efficacy of using CO2 sensors for estimating the infection risk in real-time in the 3D office environment. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.

The Indoor Air Quality Trilemma: Improving Air Quality, Using Less Energy, and Meeting Stakeholder Requirements

Good indoor air quality (IAQ) is critically important for many aspects of our lives, including as we've found recently in reducing the transmission of airborne diseases such as COVID-19. Delivering good IAQ poses several challenges to organisations: it can require changes in working practices, be bounded by infrastructure capabilities such as buildings and their heating and ventilation systems, and result in substantial energy usage. In this study we have conducted a preliminary investigation measuring IAQ in a typical 'science lab' classroom, and engaging with stakeholders to jointly explore these data. Our mixed methods approach uncovers an indoor air quality 'trilemma', which relates air quality, energy usage, and stakeholder practices that can be mediated by, and understood as, a site for potentially impactful future HCI designs. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Under Pandemic: Assessment of Ventilation in Secondary Schools in The Netherlands

To investigate the sufficiency of ventilation during the COVID-19 pandemic for school children, a field study was conducted in 37 classrooms of 11 Dutch secondary schools between October 2020 and June 2021. All the classrooms were visited twice, before and after a three-month national lockdown, when different measures against COVID-19 were taken by the schools. For each visit, both CO2 concentrations and air temperature were measured during school hours, and detailed information on building/classroom characteristics, occupancy, and COVID-19 measures was collected. Results show that before the lockdown, CO2 concentrations in most classrooms exceeded the threshold levels of the Dutch Fresh Schools guidelines. The significantly lower CO2 concentrations measured after the lockdown, however, were mainly due to the decreased occupancy. Moreover, with windows and doors always being opened on purpose, the performance of different ventilation regimes could not be compared, while such behaviour may also lead to thermal discomfort for school children. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.

COVID-19 as an Energy Intervention: Lockdown Insights for HCI

As the operation of buildings accounts for around 30% of global CO2 emissions, reducing their energy consumption is considered crucial for climate change mitigation. Aware of this significance, the sustainable HCI (SHCI) community has conducted research on energy consumption for over 15 years. However, compared with domestic environments, commercial organisations are comprised of complex mixed-use buildings, and the socio-technical understanding of space and resulting energy use are relatively under-explored. In this late-breaking work, we present the initial findings of a longitudinal analysis that uses building energy data from a period covering the COVID-19 lockdown measures to help identify the energy associated with these buildings and their users. Viewing the pandemic as a unique, grand-scale 'energy intervention', the resulting consumption patterns are used to inform questions about leverage points for achieving change, stakeholder agency vs. infrastructure demand;and highlight the importance of putting energy data in context. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Can CO2 be used as an indicator of the probability of cross-infection?

The validity of using CO2 as an indicator of airborne infection probability was studied. Tracer gas measurements were conducted in a field lab with two breathing thermal manikins resembling "infected” and "susceptible” persons seated at desks. The room was ventilated with a mixing air distribution. Experiments were performed at three ventilation rates. CO2 gas was dosed into the air exhaled by the manikins to simulate the metabolic CO2 generation by people. Simultaneously, nitrous oxide (N2O) tracer gas was dosed into the air exhaled by one of the manikins ("infected person”) to simulate the emission of exhaled infectious particles. CO2 and N2O concentrations were measured at several points. The probability of infection was calculated based on the concentration of CO2 and N2O measured in the air inhaled by the exposed manikin ("susceptible person”). The results did not confirm that CO2 can be used as a proxy to assess the infection probability. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.

Invasive Mechanical Ventilation in COVID-19

Patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia present with severe hypoxemic respiratory failure, typically meet the clinical criteria for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and often require invasive mechanical ventilation. While peculiar pathophysiological aspects deserve discussion to better tailor the mechanical ventilation settings in these patients, most recommendations on the ventilatory management of these patients are derived from studies in patients with ARDS from causes other than COVID-19. Protective ventilation is recommended in most COVID-19 patients, tidal volume should be kept around 6 mL per kg of predicted body weight, positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) should be titrated individually considering that in many patients with COVID-19 improvement of oxygenation at higher PEEP is often accompanied by worsening of respiratory system compliance. Therefore, attention should be paid in limiting plateau and driving pressures to avoid excessive strain potentially resulting in ventilator-induced lung injury. Prone positioning has been used extensively in COVID-19 patients, but its impact on mortality is uncertain. Inhaled nitric oxide, extracorporeal CO2 removal (ECCO2R), and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) should be considered in selected patients as rescue measures. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Carbon Dioxide Monitoring in Refuse Collection Vehicle Cabins to Reduce the Risk of SARS-CoV-2 Airborne Transmission

During the COVID-19 pandemic, essential workers such as waste collection crews continued to provide services in the UK, but due to their small size, maintaining social distancing inside waste collection vehicle cabins is impossible. Ventilation in cabins of 11 vehicles operating in London was assessed by measuring air supply flow rates and carbon dioxide (CO2) in the driver's cabin, a proxy for exhaled breath. The indoor CO2 indicated that air quality in the cabins was mostly good throughout a working day. However, short episodes of high CO2 levels above 1500 ppm did occur, mainly at the beginning of a shift when driving towards the start of their collection routes. This data indicated that the ventilation systems on the vehicles were primarily recirculating air and the fresh air supply made up only 10-20 % of the total airflow. Following recommendations to partly open windows during shifts and to maintain ventilation systems, a second monitoring campaign was carried out, finding on average, an improvement in ventilation on board the vehicles. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.

Post-Occupancy study of indoor air quality in university laboratories during the pandemic

This post-occupancy study aims to assess the indoor air quality (IAQ) and ventilation performance in workshops and laboratories of a UK university during the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply airflow rates and CO2 were monitored as a proxy for evaluating ventilation performance. Additionally, particulate matter (PM10) was monitored to address the occupant's concerns about dust. Monitoring showed that maximum CO2 values recorded are mostly below 1000 ppm, with weekly averages below 520 ppm. This was expected as the supply airflow rates were significantly larger than recommended 10 l/s per occupant. Despite the large flow rates, PM10 levels in some laboratories were above the threshold value of 50 [μg/m3] supporting the poor IAQ claims of the occupants. The study indicated the room air re-circulation and indoor activities as the likely reasons for the elevated PM10 levels and some practical operational solutions were suggested for IAQ concerns. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.

Predicting the infection probability distribution due to airborne and droplet transmission

In this study, a method was proposed to predict the infection probability distribution rather than the room-averaged value. The infection probability by airborne transmission was predicted based on the CO2 concentration. The infection probability by droplet transmission was predicted based on occupant position information. Applying the proposed method to an actual office confirmed that it could be used for quantitatively predicting the infection probability by integrating the ventilation efficiency and distance between occupants. The infection probability by airborne transmission was relatively high in a zone where the amount of outdoor air supply was relatively small. The infection probability by droplet transmission varied with the position of the occupants. The ability of the proposed method to analyze the relative effectiveness of countermeasures for airborne transmission and droplet transmission was verified in this study. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.

Smart Device for CO2 Measuring and Supplementing with O2 Using IOT

Globally, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is rising due to rising carbon-based fuel consumption and ongoing deforestation. As carbon dioxide levels grow due to the warming trend, the atmosphere's temperature is predicted to climb. Increased fatigue, headaches, and tinnitus are just a few health issues that high CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere can cause. The electrical activities of the brain, the heart, and the lungs have all been demonstrated to change significantly after a brief exposure to 0.1 percent CO2. Continuous measurements of the atmospheric CO2 content have recently been shown to help evaluate the ventilation conditions in buildings or rooms. Additionally, it prevents the development of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (Severe acute respiratory). The coronavirus, known as a powerful acute respiratory, can make people ill. This has grown to be a significant concern in emergency medicine. © 2022 IEEE.

A comprehensive review on the diagnosis and testing strategies for coronavirus disease

The COVID-19 outbreak has fashioned to severe threat to each and every individual in social and economic aspects in the country. This required improved wisdom to know how it is different and dominant, to diagnose and determine effective vaccines to avoid the transmission of these deadly causative agents. From this review, the probable property of these deadly transmissible viruses is related to that of SARS-CoV-2 as a fright zone of viruses. It also provides some sparks about effective and accurate diagnosis and treatment strategies. The effective management and control of panic zone of virus (PZV) and SARS-CoV-2 are more important to reduce the pandemic situation.Copyright © 2023 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Application of Artificial Intelligence to Predict CO2 Emissions: Critical Step towards Sustainable Environment

Prediction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is a critical step towards a sustainable environment. In any country, increasing the amount of CO2 emissions is an indicator of the increase in environmental pollution. In this regard, the current study applied three powerful and effective artificial intelligence tools, namely, a feed-forward neural network (FFNN), an adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and long short-term memory (LSTM), to forecast the yearly amount of CO2 emissions in Saudi Arabia up to the year 2030. The data were collected from the "Our World in Data” website, which offers the measurements of the CO2 emissions from the years 1936 to 2020 for every country on the globe. However, this study is only concerned with the data related to Saudi Arabia. Due to some missing data, this study considered only the measurements in the years from 1954 to 2020. The 67 data samples were divided into 2 subsets for training and testing with the optimal ratio of 70:30, respectively. The effect of different input combinations on prediction accuracy was also studied. The inputs were combined to form six different groups to predict the next value of the CO2 emissions from the past values. The group of inputs that contained the past value in addition to the year as a temporal index was found to be the best one. For all the models, the performance accuracies were assessed using the root mean squared errors (RMSEs) and the coefficient of determination (R2). Every model was trained until the smallest RMSE of the testing data was reached throughout the entire training run. For the FFNN, ANFIS and LSTM, the averages of the RMSEs were 19.78, 20.89505 and 15.42295, respectively, while the averages of the R2 were found to be 0.990985, 0.98875 and 0.9945, respectively. Every model was applied individually to forecast the next value of the CO2 emission. To benefit from the powers of the three artificial intelligence (AI) tools, the final forecasted value was considered the average (ensemble) value of the three models' outputs. To assess the forecasting accuracy, the ensemble was validated with a new measurement for the year 2021, and the calculated percentage error was found to be 6.8675% with an accuracy of 93.1325%, which implies that the model is highly accurate. Moreover, the resulting forecasting curve of the ensembled models showed that the rate of CO2 emissions in Saudi Arabia is expected to decrease from 9.4976 million tonnes per year based on the period 1954–2020 to 6.1707 million tonnes per year in the period 2020–2030. Therefore, the finding of this work could possibly help the policymakers in Saudi Arabia to take the correct and wise decisions regarding this issue not only for the near future but also for the far future.

Extreme development of dragon fruit agriculture with nighttime lighting in Southern Vietnam

Dragon fruit is widely grown in Southeast Asia and other tropical or subtropical regions. As a high-value cash crop ideal for exportation, dragon fruit cultivation has boomed during the past decade in southern Vietnam. Light supplementing during the winter months using artificial lighting sources is a widely adopted cultivation technique to boost productivity in the major dragon fruit planting regions of Vietnam. The application of electric lighting at night leads to a significant increase of nighttime light (NTL) observable by satellite sensors. The strong seasonality signal of NTL in dragon fruit cultivation enables identifying dragon fruit plantations using NTL images. We employed Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) monthly nighttime imagery from 2012 to 2019 to extract the growing area of dragon fruit in Bình Thuan Province, the largest dragon fruit growing region of Vietnam. The Breakpoint for Additive Seasonal Trend (B-FAST) analysis was applied to calculate the seasonality of NTL inside the dragon fruit plantations and distinguish them from the background. The results indicated that the dragon fruit cultivation strongly increased after 2014 and reached a plateau after 2017. In recent years, dragon fruit cultivation has experienced a slight decrease due to market fluctuations. We applied a buffer analysis over the largest dragon fruit cultivation area in Bình Thuan to analyze the spatial trend of the expansion of dragon fruit planting. Our results suggest that the dragon fruit cultivation of Bình Thuan has expanded to cover most inter-hill plains, reaching a spatial extent capacity due to the topographical constraints, and thus has begun to encroach into the low-elevation foothill area. In the case of emergency lock-down orders in February 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, NTL used for dragon fruit cultivation changed heterogeneously in space and time, driven by market price and shipping limitations far away from the local restrictions. Under the dual rural-urban hot spot situation with strong and contemporary developments of both dragon fruit agriculture and the urban tourism industry, building structures were detected densely in the city and gradually dispersed well into the rural landscape in Bình Thuan. The outcomes of this study will be valuable for local policymakers to better understand of the available area for dragon fruit cultivation and achieve better-coordinated cultivation planning against future fluctuations of the global market while providing insights and new understanding into the dual hot-spot developments valuable for planning rural-urban change strategies. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.

VENTILATION EFFECT AND THERMAL ENVIRONMENT INDUCED BY ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL AS A MEASURE FOR COVID-19 IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSROOMS WITH MECHANICAL VENTILATION EQUIPMENT IN TOKYO

Air temperature and CO2 concentration were measured in classrooms with ventilation system from April 2018 through March 2022. It is assumed that, under the COVID-19 circumstances, windows of the classrooms, where ventilation system was working, were basically kept open throughout a year. The average air temperature at foot level was 11℃ during winter period because of cold outdoor air infiltration. The estimated ventilation rate tended to decrease during winter period. However, the estimated ventilation rate per person more than 30 m3/h was obtained in case of half number of pupils in the classroom with Hybrid-Flexible lesson for the whole day. © 2023 Architectural Institute of Japan. All rights reserved.