Irrigation of Urban Moss Surfaces: Making Cities Climate Resilient by Enhancing Moss Growth on Façades

Moss covered surfaces are a promising way to mitigate the urban heat island effect. A layer of moss on a building’s façade reduces heat absorption during summer, hence passively cooling the building and its surroundings. The startup Respyre wants to offer such moss layers as a commercial product. A bio-gel mixed with moss fragments is sprayed on...

Detecting irrigation of potato parcels in the Northern Netherlands using remotely sensed SAR images

As a response to the dry summer of 2018, Witteveen+Bos developed a model for water demand prediction to improve insight into water demands. Validation by water board "Hunze en Aas" has revealed the predictive power of the irrigation model to be very limited. For this thesis project, we developed a methodology for the detection of irrigation of...

Taking smallholder farming to the next level: Evaluating the Farm Incubator Model on its applicability in Sub-Saharan Africa. A mixed-methods approach

In developing countries, dependency on the agricultural sector, especially represented by smallholder farmers, is high. Approximately 90% of food in Africa is produced by smallholders.<br/>Smallholder farmers are defined as farmers cultivating less than 2 ha. They often run their business relying on traditional farming methods, making limited...

Linking cooling by nature and urban drought reduction to irrigation measures: Tackling the urban heat island and droughts simultaneously

To reduce the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect Green Infrastructure (GI) is seen as a key measure. Though, often the need for water to evaporate is neglected. This study focuses on showing the effects of irrigation and increased soil moisture contents on GI within urban areas to reduce the UHI-effect. ENVI-met, a micro-climate model, is used to...

Design of a Steerable Laparoscopic Aspirator-Irrigator: FlowFlex

Laparoscopy is a type of minimally invasive surgery in which instruments with long, slender shafts between handle and end effector are inserted through small incisions in the abdominal wall. A laparoscopic aspirator-irrigator (LAI) has a hollow shaft used to evacuate undesirable substances using a vacuum pressure, rinse tissue using a stream of...

The Canals Never Lie: MASSCOTE framework and modelling of operation strategies in the Gezira Irrigation Scheme

The Gezira irrigation scheme, in Sudan, stretches out south of Khartoum between the Blue Nile and the While Nile Rivers. For more than 95 years since its establishment in 1925, the scheme has been a significant asset to Sudan’s economy. It is considered one of the oldest and largest schemes in the world being served by one management body using...

Benefits of using remotely sensed time series data in optimizing water management decisions

Big data sources can play an important role in revolutionizing the field of water resources research. Time series data with high temporal and spatial dimensions encapsulates with itself numerous factors essential for coming up with robust decisions. In this thesis, we assess one such big data source for efficient water management in the Oum Er...

Farmers' Strategies Coping with Water Shortage: A Case Study in the Irrigation District of La Joya Antigua, Peru

Located between the Andes Mountains and the southwestern coastline of Peru, the irrigation district of La Joya Antigua has a typical sub-tropical desert climate with very little annual precipitation. Study on this irrigation district shows sufficient irrigation water on most of the farms in a wet year but a deficit of irrigation water in a dry...

Possibilities To Detect Supplementary Irrigation In Polder Areas With Remote Sensing

Whenever a piece of land is reclaimed for some reasons it becomes a polder. Polder areas by definition lie below the mean sea level and constitute special environments with respect to the prevailed wet conditions. In Netherlands, where the biggest part of the country is below the mean sea level, polders are common features of topography. Three...