by Komoneed | Dec 26, 2024
Climatelinks 2024 Year in Review: Blogs You May Have Missed
jschoshinski
Thu, 12/19/2024 – 17:25
Climatelinks’ blogs synthesize knowledge, tools, lessons learned, and best practices that are relevant for climate change and development practitioners. Here are a few insightful blogs you may have missed in 2024:
Empowering Jordan’s Youth for Water Conservation and Efficiency
USAID/Jordan seeks to increase the meaningful participation of the country’s youth aged 10-29 within their communities and the national economy, and one potential area for engagement is water conservation. The USAID Water Efficiency and Conservation (WEC) Activity is empowering young leaders to use their innovative solutions and dedication to tackle the challenge of water scarcity. By working with the Jordanian Association for Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, WEC aims to save at least 300,000 cubic meters of water annually.
Mobilizing Climate Finance to Strengthen Trade and Investment on the African Continent
The Prosper Africa-USAID partnership is a national security initiative that aims to increase two-way trade and investment between the United States and African countries. It recognizes the potential of climate finance and helps African governments, businesses, and smallholder farmers transition to sustainable, productive, and profitable approaches. In addition, the partnership seeks to identify new opportunities for private-sector partners to play a landmark role in green initiatives.
Measuring Adaptation: Increasingly Necessary but Not Always Easy
Climate adaptation encompasses many approaches, from building physical structures to behavior-change investments such as altering the time of planting a crop. With the increasing flows of adaptation finance comes a greater need to track how adaptation activities support climate resilience to ensure financing is effective. Although there is no “one size fits all” approach to measuring adaptation, some underlying principles can help determine the most appropriate metric.
USAID’s YALI Alumni are Using Technology to Fight Climate Change
The joint USAID and U.S. Department of State Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) supports African leadership and entrepreneurship skills development. A number of YALI members are creating innovations that pave the way for the utilization and development of new technologies designed to mitigate the negative impacts of a changing climate. To foster and encourage more climate- and tech-related leaders within the YALI alumni group, a three-week training program included masterclasses led by climate and environment industry experts.
Grassroots Project Jumpstarts Conservation Efforts in Mexican Countryside
In El Carrizal, Queretaro, Mexico, a Peace Corps Small Project Assistance grant funded by USAID/Mexico was used to construct rainwater collection cisterns, install solar hot water heaters, build dry composting toilets, and create numerous educational ecotourism signs. The project seeks to employ various eco-techniques and technologies to advance environmentally conscious best practices. It also emphasizes ecotourism as a sustainable development concept to boost the local economy and preserve the wilderness conservation area.
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Teaser Text
Climatelinks’ blogs synthesize knowledge, tools, lessons learned, and best practices that are relevant for climate change and development practitioners. Here are a few insightful blogs you may have missed in 2024.
Publish Date
Thu, 12/19/2024 – 12:00
Author(s)
Jamie Schoshinski
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Strategic Objective
Adaptation
Integration
Mitigation
Region
Global
Topic
Adaptation
Biodiversity Conservation
Climate Change Integration
Climate Finance
Digital technology
Clean or Renewable Energy
Infrastructure
Locally-Led Development
Private Sector Engagement
Resilience
Training
Water Management
Youth
Sectors
Climate
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by Komoneed | Dec 26, 2024
An innovative tech collaboration is helping to finesse a low-cost rubbish recycling process that relies on the insatiable appetite of black soldier fly larvae.
Biotech company ARC Ento Tech, based on the NSW Central Coast, is helping to process landfill in the state by using the larvae of this common fly to eat the organic waste that’s part of mixed solid waste. Once all the organic waste is eaten, the larvae are recovered and converted into commercial products, including organic fertiliser and a nutrient-rich insect meal for chickens, while the inorganic waste is converted into an industrial reductant that can replace coking coal.
As larvae, black soldier flies will eat almost anything, from food waste to manure, before they become adults and lose their mouths. This makes them a valuable addition to the recycling process. To make its system more efficient, ARC Ento Tech needs more fly larvae to be produced by adult flies in the recycling hatch, but until now, there has been no accurate way to measure black soldier flies’ reproductive behaviour.
This is where a neuromorphic system created by Western Sydney University researchers can help.
“While ARC Ento Tech have created ideal conditions for the black soldier fly larvae to flourish in the recycling hatch, they don’t know the speed at which black soldier flies can breed larvae and the number of larvae they produce,” said Project Lead Dr Alexandre Marcireau from the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems at Western Sydney University.
“Optimising the breeding of the flies requires precise knowledge of the number of flies that move from the ‘growing area’ where they eat waste, into the ‘breeding room’ where they breed and deposit larvae eggs. If we can count these fast-moving objects, then the recycler can systematically quantify the impact of breeding parameters such as temperature, light intensity and amount of food, and engineer an optimised system with significantly higher yields of larvae.”
It is difficult for conventional cameras and sensors to capture this sort of data due to the high speed and number of flies. The system designed by the Western Sydney University team is based on a neuromorphic camera: technology that uses sensors to collect only useful data, and which has been inspired by biology to accurately observe fast-moving objects, including flies.
The ‘High Speed Counting of Black Soldier Flies’ project utilised the world-leading neuromorphic vision capabilities at Western Sydney University in collaboration with Macquarie University researchers who delivered the hardware that allowed the sensor to operate inside the breeding cages.
“The FlyCount system was developed with neuromorphic vision sensors and a custom spike detection algorithm for real-time, accurate fly counting, which ensures 95% accuracy in dynamic lighting,” said Professor Subhas Mukhopadhyay from the School of Engineering at Macquarie University.
“By integrating neuromorphic sensing technologies to an IoT-enabled system, the system demonstrates the effectiveness and accuracy of the event-based counting system for tracking and analysing the movements of black soldier flies remotely.
“Collaborating with ARC Ento Tech, we have adapted advanced neuromorphic sensing to improve operational efficiency in fly breeding, showcasing how practical innovation can reduce environmental impact and support sustainable agriculture,” Mukhopadhyay said.
The project was funded by the NSW Smart Sensing Network, and its results have been published in IEEE Sensors.
“This is a great example of a genuine collaboration between all parties,” said NSW Smart Sensing Network Environment & Agriculture Theme Lead Dr Tom Hu.
“Western Sydney University had developed their neuromorphic sensing expertise from the space domain, and the mechatronic engineering capability at Macquarie University helped bring this into a new environment. The technology looks to now improve operational efficiencies in breeding flies — aiding ARC Ento Tech,” Hu said.
The solution comes at a time when Greater Sydney is on the brink of a waste crisis due to a lack of landfill space. Almost 70% of the mixed solid waste generated in Australia in 2018 was buried in landfill.
It is hoped the results of the project can be scaled up to help tackle this problem, as well as opening the door to other applications such as beehive monitoring.
Image credit: iStock.com/Jaka Suryanta
