Global Sustainability Inside and Outside the Territory

The following sections are included:

• Foreword
• Contents

Encouraging a greater sustainability at both local and global level is possible. The conditions making this aim possible concern different phenomena (population growth, desertification and food production) that must be taken into account with their complexity and interconnections in order to cope with present emergencies by adopting practical solutions. New technological solutions are necessary and indispensable for an eco-conversion of productive systems. At the same time a structural upgrading of food production is needed. Greater sustainability cannot be achieved without re-considering the ‘cycle’, the extraordinary mechanism whereby organic matter is destroyed in breathing and regenerated in photosynthesis. Questions worth being discussed and investigated range from renewable energy for the new agriculture to the reduction of fossil fuel consumption for the production of food energy, low CO2 emissions, new forms of protection of agricultural soil and water resources, in contrast to the ongoing processes of desertification and erosion of unrenewable natural resources (plant and animal biodiversity rural landscapes, etc.). Unsustainability of land grabbing should give cause for reflection too. On the other hand, the global sustainability project should involve issues such as the risks and opportunities related to the activity of food production within the urban and metropolitan areas conurbations or in arid or semi-arid areas, also the questions related to desalination, efficient use of water resources, role of the new eco greenhouses deserve attention.

The development of renewable energy sources up to now has been inspired to specific investments opportunities not corresponding to an overall and structural vision aimed to contribute to the creation of a new economic, industrial and social model. Part of the old development has been inspired to the same financial logic which provoked the current irreversible world crisis, mainly affecting now Europe but still US too. Macro drivers irreversible and of long term could give now the opportunity of a highly significant new development of renewable energy sources in a complete different logic and with the view of finally starting a path towards global sustainability, where man is really at center of the universe.

Intelligent communities and territories belong to an emerging movement targeting the creation of better environments. Technological information is recognized as an important factor shaping territorial systems of innovation. This paper focuses on territorial intelligence: distributed information systems localized over a region allowing continuous update and learning on technologies, competitors, markets, and the environment. Namely we describe the general problems of information extraction from raw data and automatic construction of knowledge bases from databases. Then we introduce a learning algorithm which integrates machine learning methodologies, databases technologies and high performance computing in order to discover the laws that govern an environmental process starting from examples of the process behavior itself.

The aim of this work is to present a method for “intelligent”, field-scale digital soil mapping based on visible-near infrared (vis-NIR) reflectance spectroscopy, in combination with statistical analysis (Principal Component Analysis, PCA and geostatistics). The study was carried out in a site of southern Italy. With reference to a 50 × 50 cell size grid, 240 soil samples were collected to a depth of 20–30 cm. The soil was analyzed by vis-NIR reflectance spectroscopy and the data were decomposed by PCA. The first three components (PC1, PC2, PC3) explained 98% of the total variance of the initial data set and therefore they were selected for the assessment of soil spatial variability by variography and kriging (geostatistics). The resulting PC1, PC2 and PC3 kriging maps were interpreted in the light of the information contents on reflectance spectra and compared with the results of a previous, conventional soil survey. The presented strategy seems to be efficient and reliable to use, when mapping soil spatial variability.

MARSec (Mediterranean Agency for Remote Sensing and Environmental Control) is a satellite monitoring center which provides satellite imagery and remote sensing based value added services to public bodies and private entities. Data are received, processed, stored and distributed directly by the Company. Data processing is performed by MARSec. MARSec operates at regional, national, and international level. Indeed, receives, processes and distributes near real time remotely sensed data covering the whole Mediterranean area, Central Europe and North Africa, and on board recorded satellite imagery worldwide

The use of the Internet has grown continuously in recent years and it is expected it still continues to grow significantly. The eCommerce applications are also growing significantly. In this work we describe an explicit reliable method for calculating the CO₂ emissions of an eCommerce systen, using simple to find data. The methods use variables that are related to hardware and software factors, but also to elements which are not strictly technical such as Web Design and Web Marketing.

The feasibility study of the project “Save the Camels” is one of the main goals of the memorandum of understanding between UTAP (Union Tunisienne de l'Agriculture et de la Pêche), GSEEP (Global Sustainable Social Energy Program) and FUTURIDEA (Innovazione Utile e Sostenibile) for promoting technological, scientific and agricultural cooperation. The aim of this project is saving ten thousands dromedaries located in the Kebili's area in central Tunisia.

Although the Camelidae are being able to survive under harsh environment, due to their unique morphological and physiological features, in some areas of Tunisia, they have a nutritional deficit even though they are well adapted to the utilization of vegetation of low nutritional value. Consequently, there are a serious production and reproduction problems, which lead to a decrease in the number of heads.

The camel is an excellent resource, because it transforms vegetal species that cannot be used by humans in very important protein sources for the people living in arid or semiarid areas. Therefore, it represents a big opportunity for the development of production of milk, meat and cosmetic products; indeed the camel milk also has significant antidiabetic activity and valuable nutritional properties as it contains a high proportion of antibacterial substances and 30 times higher concentration of vitamin C in comparison with cow milk.

The feasibility study of “Save the Camels” provides a methodological analysis focused on 3 strategic issues supported by the monitoring of the scientific literature.

The working hypothesis are: 1. Localization, spatial distribution and assumptions of food supplements; 2. Nutrition and Feeding; 3. Milk valorisation.

Worldwide, foodborne diseases are an important cause of mortality. There is a strong need to strengthen surveillance systems for foodborne diseases. Traceability is an increasingly common element of public and private systems for monitoring compliance with quality, environmental, and other product and process attributes related to food. The key issue to add values on traceability is to integrate the traceability system with the supply-chain management processes, by integrating small-scale farmers-producers in the food supply-chain through ICTs. In this paper, we introduce a traceability system based on RFID technology and Internet of Things.

People may experience in their life several types of stressful events that may influence social life. Chronic disease represents a further stress that ay influence not only social life but may also have impact on disease evolution too. Infectious disease represents one of the most important field in Medicine. Currently there is no tool to follow-up patients difficult to treat neither to evaluate emotional and social life of those subjects suffering chronic illness. Here we present our preliminary data on our project WTC (We take Care) a smartphone based App to monitor and follow-up patients with chronic infectious disease. The development of the App actively involved the patients, final users of our App.

The ‘sustainability’ has to be managed on the basis of innovative pathways taking into account the global biosphere, which can be defined as a complex of ‘anthropic-bio-geopedo-climatic’ factors variable in relation to the geographical area concerned. Hence the need for the ‘global sustainability’ is the basis for planning human activities in this current millennium. The concept of ‘global sustainability’ is summarized in the “State of the Planet Declaration” defined in Scientific Conference “Planet under pressure. New knowledge towards solutions” (London, 29 March 2012) and, fundamentally, proposes: (i) reorientation and restructuring of international and national institutions to innovate the governance of the ‘Earth system’; (ii) proposal of new objectives of ‘global sustainability’ taking into account various aspects: food, water, energy safety, biodiversity, ecosystem services, sustainable urbanization, social capital, sea and ocean protection, sustainable consumption and production; (iii) removal of constraints that prevent or reduce to less developed countries to increase their decision-making power in the international dialogue; (iv) market innovation; (v) provision of financial incentives for young entrepreneurs involved in eco-social and environmental initiatives, especially in less developed countries; (vi) promotion of education and scientific interdisciplinary research for a profitable policy orientation towards sustainability; (vii) revision of methods for GDP calculation by introducing indicators that go beyond the purely economic aspects inspired by a “biology - ecology - economy - culture - social sciences’ integrated vision solidifying in ‘green economy’ or ‘bio-economy’.

A fundamental element of the ‘global sustainability’ is the ‘global food security’, the theme on which EXPO 2015 “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” is focused. In this regard, it would be desirable to optimize the management of what is already produced, such example: (i) planning specific interventions to reduce the discrepancies in the food distribution at the level of planet Earth; (ii) refection and food chain rationalization; (iii) estimate of the food ‘nutraceutical’ value; (iv) insect farming for an alternative and/or supplementary animal source protein.

The bio-territory, inserted in a novel ecological vision that is inseparable from human context (human ecology), may constitute a ‘prototype’ of a new approach to manage the kaleidoscopic endogenous resources in order to promote ‘global sustainability’. Each ‘bio-territory system’, defined as “a model of sustainable management of a ‘microbioshere’ of a given ‘geographical area’ by local communities”, might individuate virtuous routes in relation to its productive potential on the basis of its originality supply. It may be seen as the ‘holistic’ moment of an ‘atomistic’ path represented by the multiplicity of its indigenous resources. The bio-territory can be intended to be managed ‘smartly’ if it firstly identifies its potential and then realize peculiar innovations suited to its real ‘productive’ potential; everything might be oriented to physical, psychic and social human development, according to the new moral imperative: ‘the ethics of care’. Some fundamental prerequisites for a ‘smart’ management of a ‘bio-territory’ in line with the ‘global sustainability’ are: (i) biodiversity; (ii) health geography; (iii) landscape; (iv) culture, research, innovation and training.

It is desirable a new science system of the global environment in which the role of the scientific community is significant in the understanding of ‘critical thresholds’ of the environmental global crisis in order to harmonize the local interventions in a global context.