This article reviews direct freshwater consumption in tourism from both quantitative and qualitative viewpoints to assess the current water demand of the tourism sector and to identify current and future management challenges. The article concludes that even though tourism increases global water consumption, direct tourism-related water use is considerably less than 1% of global consumption, and will not become significant even if the sector continues to grow at anticipated rates of around 4% per year (international tourist arrivals). The situation differs at the regional level because tourism concentrates traveller flows in time and space, and often-in dry destinations where water resources are limited. Furthermore, the understanding of tourism's indirect water requirements, including the production of food, building materials and energy, remains inadequately understood, but is likely to be more substantial than direct water use. The article concludes that with expected changes in global precipitation patterns due to climate change, it is advisable in particular for already water scarce destinations to engage in proactive water management. Recommendations for managing tourism's water footprint are made.
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Over the past 20 years, water quality in Indonesia has deteriorated due to an increase of water pollution. Research and analysis is needed to identify pollution sources and assess contamination in Indonesian water resources. Water quality management is not yet sufficiently integrated in river basin management in Indonesia, which mainly focuses on water quantity. Women are comparatively highly impacted by failing water resources management, but theirinvolvement in decision making processes is limited. Water quality deterioration continues to increase socio-economic inequality, as it are the most poor communities who live on and along the river. The uneven water quality related disease burden in Brantas River Basin widens the socio-economic gap between societal groups. In the Brantas region, cooperation and intention between stakeholders to tackle these issues is growing, but is fragile as well due to overlapping institutional mandates, poor status of water quality monitoring networks, and limited commitment of industries to treat their waste water streams. The existing group of Indonesian change makers will be supported by this project. Three Indonesian and three Dutch organisations have teamed up to support negotiation platforms in order to deal with institutional challenges, to increase water quality monitoring capacity, to build an enabling environment facilitating sustainable industrial change, and to develop an enabling environment in support of community concerns and civil society initiatives. The project builds on integrated water quality monitoring and modelling within a framework of social learning. The strong consortium will be able to build links with civil society groups (including women, farmer and fisher unions) in close cooperation with local, regional and national Indonesian governmentinstitutions to clean the Brantas river and secure income and health for East Java’s population, in particular the most vulnerable groups.
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Lebanon’s economic crisis has disrupted the country’s energy and water sectors, highlighting their interdependence. The methodologyinvolves surveying 150 municipalities across all Lebanese governorates, ensuring a comprehensive coverage of public and private waterresources. Data on water and energy were collected before and during the crisis to explore this nexus during periods of economic turmoil.The findings reveal a decline in water provision during the crisis, with the average weekly water supply plummeting from 49 h in 2019 to 22 hin 2023. Concurrently, the use of water tankers has surged from 26 to 44%, indicating a concerning shift in water acquisition methods.Despite the crisis, conventional water sources remain predominant, while unconventional sources account for less than 1% of the totalsupply. In response to the energy shortage, renewable energy sources have gained traction in residential, commercial, and industrial sectors.The scarcity and rising cost of electricity have driven the adoption of solar photovoltaics in the water sector, reaching 4.8% for extraction fromunderground reservoirs and 2.8% for distribution. Similarly, the use of solar water heaters has increased from 7.9 to 15.4% in 2023. Thesefindings underscore the interplay between energy and water security during periods of economic instability.
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Fresh water systems are rapidly changing and water quality is deteriorating as a result of climate change. Aquatic drones can help us understand these changes - which will be key to tackling water-related challenges ahead.The ideas presented in this article aim to inspire adaptation action – they are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Global Center on Adaptation.
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Urban green and shading are adaptation measures that reduce urban heat. This is evident from meteorological measurements and investigations with surveys and has been described in many papers (e.g. Klemm et al., 2015). The cooling effect of these adaptation measures is reflected by lower air temperatures and an improved thermal comfort. Shading and urban green are also experienced as cooler than impervious urban spaces without vegetation or shading. However, the cooling effect of water bodies in cities, such as rivers, lakes, ponds, canals,fountains, is not clear yet (Steeneveld et al., 2014). Several studies show that the cooling effect of water bodies in cities is small, or can even be a source of heat during nighttime. The effect depends on the characteristics of the water body and the meteorological conditions. Nevertheless, water is often mentioned as an adaptation measure to reduce urban heat.To support urban professionals in designing cooler urban environments by using water bodies, we investigated in more detail how different water types in msterdam contribute to cooling the environment. During five summer days, we measured the cooling effect of five different water bodies: a pond, a fountain, a canal, and two rivers. We used measurements from mobile weather stations (air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, global radiation and globe temperature) and collected almost 1000 surveys near the water bodies and a reference location. From these data, we could determine the effect of the water bodies on air temperature, thermal comfort and thermal sensation. The research question that we tried to answer with this study is: What is the cooling effect of different water types in the city of Amsterdam during hot days? The study has been carried out within the framework of a Dutch research project ‘Urban climate resilience – Turning climate adaptation into practice’ and supports urban professionals to decide on the right adaptation measures to reduce urban heat.
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Computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs) respond to a computer security incident when the need arises. Failure of these teams can have far-reaching effects for the economy and national security. CSIRTs often have to work on an ad hoc basis, in close cooperation with other teams, and in time constrained environments. It could be argued that under these working conditions CSIRTs would be likely to encounter problems. A needs assessment was done to see to which extent this argument holds true. We constructed an incident response needs model to assist in identifying areas that require improvement. We envisioned a model consisting of four assessment categories: Organization, Team, Individual and Instrumental. Central to this is the idea that both problems and needs can have an organizational, team, individual, or technical origin or a combination of these levels. To gather data we conducted a literature review. This resulted in a comprehensive list of challenges and needs that could hinder or improve, respectively, the performance of CSIRTs. Then, semi-structured in depth interviews were held with team coordinators and team members of five public and private sector Dutch CSIRTs to ground these findings in practice and to identify gaps between current and desired incident handling practices. This paper presents the findings of our needs assessment and ends with a discussion of potential solutions to problems with performance in incident response. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02179 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickvanderkleij1/
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In this article, Isaac argues that since 1948, Israel's control of water resources has been the result of military actions that forced between 700,000 and 800,000 Palestinians into exile and claimed the most fertile part of the disputed territory for the state. It thereby paved the way for subsequent military occupation. Isaac maintains that the Israeli occupation has violated the Palestinian right to the equitable and reasonable utilization of shared water resources. In his view, from the end of the 1967 war, Israel initiated its occupation of the territories of Palestine and quickly imposed military order with a view to achieving full control over land and water resources. To Isaac, these military orders served to dissolve the pre-1967 legal systems and which consisted of Ottoman, British, Jordanian (West Bank) and Egyptian (Gaza Strip) laws. This critical review article concentrates on the concept of justice tourism as a response to these assumed Israeli violations of Palestinian rights to equitable and reasonable utilization of shared water resources. The article sheds light on why and how justice tourism conceivably contributes to the Palestine host communities' transformation and hence to the development of higher level self-consciousness about their rights as "a sovereign nation".
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Antibiotics are a factor in developing antibiotic resistance in the environment. Outbreaks due to pathogens and resistant bacteria are an emerging issue in this decade. Resistance of Escherichia coli to two groups of antibiotics has been revised recently by the World Health Organization (WHO). These data showed that bacteria have already developed resistance to third and fourth group of antibiotics. The WHO report on surveillance and antibiotics consumption evaluation showed that antibiotic consumption varies in EU countries. Outbreaks have increased in parallel to these data depending on country, season, sex, and age group. This chapter revises the routes of spreading and surveillance of E. coli. There is a particular focus on water sources including hospitals, urban wastewater treatment plants (UWTPs), diffuse sources, and water reuse. Extensively revised data are given on the control techniques by biological and advanced processes. The emerging issue of gene transfer control in parallel to the control of bacteria is expressed. A detailed literature survey of emerging technologies of photocatalysis and nanoparticles is given.
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Bedrijven bevinden zich tegenwoordig vaak in een keten. Een keten kan worden beschouwd als een verzameling organisaties die een virtueel netwerk delen waar informatie, diensten, goederen of geld doorheen stroomt. Hierbij staan ICT-systemen veelal centraal. Deze afhankelijkheid werkt in de hand dat cyber-gerelateerde risico’s een opmars maken binnen ketens. Niet elke ketenorganisatie beschikt echter over de middelen en kennis om zichzelf te beschermen: om tot sterke ketens te komen is informatiedeling tussen ketenorganisaties over actuele dreigingen en incidenten van belang. Een doel van dit verkennend onderzoek, dat is uitgevoerd in opdracht van het Nationaal Cyber Security Centrum (NCSC), is om inzicht te bieden in de succesfactoren van informatiedeling-initiatieven op het gebied van cyberveiligheid. Met deze kennis kan het NCSC haar accounthouders en adviseurs helpen om de doelgroepen positief te motiveren om actie te nemen ter versterking van ketenweerbaarheid. Tevens wordt met dit onderzoek beoogd om aanknopingspunten voor vervolgonderzoek te identificeren. Het identificeren van succesfactoren vond plaats op basis van een literatuurstudie en gestructureerde interviews met in totaal zes leden uit drie verschillende bestaande informatiedeling-initiatieven rondom cybersecurity: het Managed Service Provider (MSP) Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC), Energie ISAC en de securitycommissie van de Nederlandse Energie- Data Uitwisseling (NEDU). Alle respondenten zijn informatiebeveiligingsexperts die hun organisatie vertegenwoordigen in de samenwerkingsverbanden. In totaal zijn 20 succesfactoren geïdentificeerd. Deze factoren zijn vervolgens gecategoriseerd tot vier thema’s die bijdragen aan een succesvolle informatiedeling. De thema’s zijn samen te vatten als teamfactoren, individuele factoren, managementfactoren en faciliterende factoren. De vier meest genoemde succesfactoren zijn: ● Expertise: Leden met onderscheidende en gespecialiseerde kennis bevorderen de informatiedeling en zijn ondersteunend aan het individuele leerdoel van de leden. ● Vertrouwen: Vertrouwen is een essentiële voorwaarde voor de bereidheid om samen te werken en informatie te delen. Tijd is hierin een cruciale factor: tijd is nodig voor vertrouwen om te ontstaan. ● Lidmaatschapseisen: Expliciete en impliciete lidmaatschapseisen zorgen voor een selectie op geschikte deelnemers en faciliteren daarmee het onderling vertrouwen. ● Structurele opzet: Een samenwerking dient georganiseerd te zijn volgens een structuur en met een stabiele bezetting van voldoende omvang. Vervolgonderzoek zou zich kunnen richten op het identificeren van strategieën voor het opstarten van samenwerkingsverbanden en het over de tijd behouden van enthousiasme onder de leden in de informatiedeling-initiatieven rondom cybersecurity. Ook onderzoek naar de eigenschappen of kwaliteiten van de voorzitter en hoe deze bijdragen aan het succesvol initiëren en onderhouden van een samenwerkingsverband zijn genoemd. Ook is nog onvoldoende duidelijk hoe gedeelde of juist onderscheidende expertise van de leden bijdraagt aan succes van de informatiedeling-initiatieven. Verder is er behoefte aan kennis over hoe de samenwerking tussen ketenpartners op het gebied van cyberveiligheid buiten bestaande samenwerkingsverbanden is ingericht. Denk hierbij aan een uitbreiding van de huidige studie, maar met een focus op kleinere bedrijven die deel uitmaken van ketens, maar waarbij IT niet de corebusiness is, aangezien die volgens respondenten als risicovol worden gezien voor de keten.
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This CIENS-report sums up the main findings from the project “Cultural heritage and water management in urban planning” (Urban WATCH), financed by the Research Council of Norway through the MILJØ2015 programme, and cofunded by the Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Norway (Riksantikvaren) and the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU). The project started up in 2012 and ended in 2015.
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