Abstract: Drought is regarded as a slow-onset natural disaster that causes inevitable damage to water resources and to farm life. Currently, crisis management is the basis of drought mitigation plans, however, thus far studies indicate that effective drought management strategies are based on risk management. As a primary tool in mitigating the impact of drought, vulnerability assessment can be used as a benchmark in drought mitigation plans and to enhance farmers ability to cope with drought. Moreover, literature pertaining to drought has focused extensively on its impact, only awarding limited attention to vulnerability assessment as a tool. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for designing a vulnerability model in order to assess farmers level of vulnerability before, during and after the onset of drought. Use of this developed drought vulnerability model would aid disaster relief workers by enhancing the adaptive capacity of farmers when facing the impacts of drought. The paper starts with the definition of vulnerability and outlines different frameworks on vulnerability developed thus far. It then identifies various approaches of vulnerability assessment and finally offers the most appropriate model. The paper concludes that the introduced model can guide drought mitigation programs in countries that are impacted the most by drought.

Abstract: Every decision-oriented life cycle assessment (LCAs) entails, at least to some extent, a future-oriented feature. However, apart from the ex-ante LCAs, the majority of LCA studies are retrospective in nature and do not explicitly account for possible future effects. In this review a generic theoretical framework is proposed as a guideline for ex-ante LCA. This framework includes the entire technology life cycle, from the early design phase up to continuous improvements of mature technologies, including their market penetration. The compatibility with commonly applied system models yields an additional aspect of the framework. Practical methods and procedures are categorised, based on how they incorporate future-oriented features in LCA. The results indicate that most of the ex-ante LCAs focus on emerging technologies that have already gone through some research cycles within narrowly defined system boundaries. There is a lack of attention given to technologies that are at a very early development stage, when all options are still open and can be explored at a low cost. It is also acknowledged that technological learning impacts the financial and environmental performance of mature production systems. Once technologies are entering the market, shifts in market composition can lead to substantial changes in environmental performance.

Abstract: Nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) currently are the main pollutants emitted by diesel engines. While there is a start in using hybrid and electric cars, ships will still be fueled by mineral oil products. In the quest to achieve zero-pollution and carbon-free shipping, alternative forms of energy carriers must be found to replace the commonly used mineral oil products. One of the possible alternative fuels is biodiesel. This paper explores the optimization of the composition of biodiesel in order to reduce the concentration of particulate matter and NOx in exhaust gases of a one-cylinder diesel generator.