About
86
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Introduction
Dr. Gharbia is the Head of Department of Environmental Science at ATU Sligo. Integrated environmental dynamic systems modelling using GIS & Machine Learning Techniques is his main field of interest. Dr. Gharbia is a civil engineer with a master degree in water & environmental sciences, in addition to a postgraduate diploma in statistics. His PhD developed an integrated modelling platform (GEO-CWB) to study water vulnerability in large catchments.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2019 - present
Atlantic Technological University (ATU)
Position
- Head of Department of Environmental Science
September 2019 - present
October 2016 - August 2019
Education
March 2018 - March 2019
September 2014 - September 2017
September 2014 - June 2015
Publications
Publications (86)
The significance of Nature‐Based Solutions (NBSs) in addressing environmental and socioeconomic challenges is widely acknowledged, yet research on NBSs continues due to a limited understanding of their full benefits. This study addresses the existing gap by focusing on NBS co‐benefit valuation through digital platforms. These platforms support NBSs...
The use of low-cost environmental sensors has gained significant attention due to their affordability and potential to intensify environmental monitoring networks. These sensors enable real-time monitoring of various environmental parameters, which can help identify pollution hotspots and inform targeted mitigation strategies. Low-cost sensors also...
This study presents an integrated modeling framework designed to bridge scales from regional to urban, enabling a detailed assessment of the impacts of future climate scenarios on three European coastal cities: Massa (Italy) and Vilanova (Spain) in the Mediterranean, and Oarsoaldea (Spain) in the Atlantic. Conducted as part of the SCORE EU Project...
Climate change and human activities may yield serious implications for coastal areas. Rising sea levels provide specific challenges that might significantly affect coastal areas, risking their ecosystems, construction projects and livelihoods. Sea levels increased by 10 and 20 cm in the 20th century, and the IPCC predicts a rise of 20 and 88 cm by...
Water shortages and pharmaceutical pollution are two interconnected crises that pose severe threats to global health, environmental sustainability, and economic stability. Pharmaceutical pollution is widespread and has reached potentially toxic levels in over 258 rivers in 104 countries. So far, more interest has been paid towards efficient water t...
The rising presence of drug-related contaminants in water sources is a major environmental and public health concern. Several studies have addressed the hazardous influence of these pollutants on the lives of over 400 million people worldwide. In this study, we used molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate the efficacy of two promising composite...
This paper presents a geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) approach for generating wind power projection maps employing various Machine Learning (ML) models. These models include Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Decision Tree (DT), Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), and Support Vector Regression (SVR), which collectively aim to provide insigh...
The rising presence of drug-related contaminants in water sources is a major environmental and public health concern. Several studies have addressed the hazardous influence of these pollutants on the lives of over 400 million people worldwide. In this study, we used molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate the efficacy of two promising composite...
This research examines the intricate changes in the number of occurrences and cumulative rainfall of exceptional events in Portugal spanning 42 hydrological years (from 1981/1982 to 2022/2023). The study has two primary objectives: assessing the hydrological spatial dynamics of a region susceptible to climate-induced variations in exceptional rainf...
Urban Living Labs are open innovation ecosystems that integrate research and innovation activities within urban communities. However, while solutions co‐created and tested in the Urban Living Labs must be contextualized and tailored to each city's uniqueness, broader impact requires generalization and systematic replication across geographical, ins...
Coastal climate services play a crucial role in developing customised climate information for diverse end-users and stakeholders. To build climate-resilient societies, decision-makers should be empowered through easy access to powerful tools that enable timely adaptation to future and ongoing hazards. For this reason, fit-for-purpose climate servic...
“Changes of the Coastal Zones Due to Climate Change” explores the complex relationship between coastal climate change and sea dynamics while placing the research within a broader context of climate change and its effects on coastal ecosystems [...]
Assuring the quantity and quality of groundwater resources is essential for the well-being of human and ecological health, society, and the economy. For the last few decades, groundwater vulnerability modeling techniques have become essential for groundwater protection and management. Groundwater contamination is highly dynamic due to its dependenc...
This study presents a comprehensive analysis of heatwaves in mainland Portugal from 1 October 1980 to 30 September 2021 (41 hydrological years). It addresses a research gap by providing an updated assessment using high-resolution reanalysis daily minimum and maximum temperature data (Tmin and Tmax) from the gridded ERA5-Land dataset, overcoming the...
This poster presents the initial results from an initial experiment which integrated low-cost microscope cameras with a computer vision technique (i.e., YOLOv8) to detect microplastics (MP) and Non-microplastic (Non-MP) objects floating on water samples collected from ten locations in Sligo, Ireland.
Wind energy is a key element in the ongoing push to decarbonize the energy supply. The first step in the development of a wind farm at a specific site is to conduct feasibility studies including accurate long-term wind potential assessments and estimates of the annual energy production. However, as evidence of climate change becomes more apparent r...
Cities, and in particular those in coastal low-lying areas, are becoming increasingly susceptible to climate change, the impact of which is worsened by the tendency for population concentration in these areas. Therefore, comprehensive early warning systems are necessary to minimize harm from extreme climate events on communities. Ideally, such a sy...
Unequivocal change in the climate system has put coastal regions around the world at increasing risk from climate-related hazards. Monitoring the coast is often difficult and expensive, resulting in sparse monitoring equipment lacking in sufficient temporal and spatial coverage. Thus, low-cost methods to monitor the coast at finer temporal and spat...
Water is a basic element of the natural environment and the most important component in human water management. Rainfall is the main source of water. Therefore, determining the amount of precipitation reaching the ground using sensors is crucial information. Precise precipitation data are necessary for better modeling quality, as the observation da...
This paper summarises an updated climate change trends analysis—developed for the period from 1 October 1864 to 30 September 2021 within the scope of a Horizon 2020-funded project to increase climate resilience in European coastal cities—for a representative site of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (Portugal). By using long ground-based daily records o...
The performance of a desalination membrane depends on a specific pore size suitable for both water permeability and salt rejection. To increase membrane permeability, the applied pressure should be increased, which creates the need to improve membrane stability. In this research article, a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation was performed using Reax...
Climate change leads to an unequivocal rise in the intensity and frequency of natural disasters. This necessitates mainstreaming of climate adaptation strategies in the global movement on climate action. Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EBA) has become popular as an effective means of climate adaptation, which can be resilient and flexible compared to h...
Climate change has been recognised for decades, and environmental risks related to it areexpected to become more common over time as the world's population continues to grow. Thistendency is compounded by people congregating in areas such as coastal regions, which arebecoming increasingly vulnerable due to climate change. It is demonstrated that ov...
Changes in streamflow within catchments can have a significant impact on agricultural production, as soil moisture loss, as well as frequent drying and wetting, may have an effect on the nutrient availability of many soils. In order to predict future changes and explore the impact of different scenarios, machine learning techniques have been used r...
A significant growth in the future demand for water resources is expected. Hence researchers have focused on finding new technologies to develop water filtration systems by using experimental and simulation methods. These developments were mainly on membrane-based separation technology, and photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants which pla...
Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients
(APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and
humans. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers,
these employ different analytical methods, measure different
APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This
makes it difficult to quantify the sca...
Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and humans. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers, these employ different analytical methods, measure different APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This makes it difficult to quantify the sca...
Due to the rapid depletion of water resources, more interest is paid for the efficient desalination process in recent years. MoS 2 membrane aroused attention due to its high mechanical stability and electronic properties, which can sustain extra-large strains. In this study, the electronic properties and water desalination performance of TiO 2 /MoS...
Special Issue "Intelligent Sensing for Sustainable Production Industries"
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Dear Colleagues,
Over the last decade, there have been significant advances in intelligent sensing technologies which are having a major impact on the ability of many production industries to accurately monitor and control...
Assessment of dynamic regional Groundwater vulnerability on a spatiotemporal scale and develop a decision support tool that will generate different probabilistic groundwater contamination scenarios considering nitrate as an indicator.
Reverse osmosis (RO) technologies present a solution for water scarcity in many parts of the world where brackish water exists. Antiscalants act as a pre-treatment water additive for the RO plants in order to protect the membranes from scaling. This paper presents field and experimental lab works to examine the effects of antiscalants on the small...
Reverse osmosis (RO) technologies present a solution for water scarcity in many parts of the world where brackish water exists. Antiscalants act as a pre-treatment water additive for the RO plants in order to protect the membranes from scaling. This paper presents field and experimental lab works to examine the effects of antiscalants on the small...
The groundwater is the primary source for irrigation and other purposes in the Gaza Strip. The low irrigational water quality effects on the soil quality, which interrupts the growth of plants impacting agricultural yield and can cause risk to human health. Thus, it is essential to evaluate the water quality for irrigation uses. Therefore, it is a...
The evergrowing populations and increasing human activities are associated with a major increase in environmental pollution. However, their impact is still poorly understood due to the pervasiveness and spatiotemporal complexity of the phenomenon. Conventional approaches to environmental monitoring are based on networks of sparse measurement statio...
Parametrising the spatially distributed dynamic catchment water balance is a critical factor in studying the hydrological system responses to climate and land use changes. This study presents the development of a geographic information system (GIS)-based set of algorithms (geographical spatially distributed water balance model (GEO-CWB)), which is...
The increase of temperature attributed to anthropogenic emissions is projected to continue in future climate scenarios. Protocols and policies are being put in place in several European countries to reduce both emissions and impact of human activities on climate. The Irish Reforestation policy is a good example of such protocols. Nevertheless, ofte...
Climate change and human behaviour, such as building on floodplains, are increasing the incidence of floods in urban areas. This paper investigates the relationship between flood risk and residential accommodation costs, both sales and rental, using a detailed dataset of over 650,000 sale and rental listings in Dublin, Ireland over the period 2006-...
Renewable energy is considered to be a critical factor in developing wealthy and sustainable societies. However, its utilisation in the electrical power grid can be very challenging regarding the rates predictably. Renewable energy mainly depends on the local environmental conditions, such as temperature and rainfall-runoff ratios. Therefore, the e...
Reservoirs are designed to provide the balance between the flow brought by the river which is high variable in time and volume of water. The storage required on a river to meet a specific demand depends basically on three factors; the magnitude and the variability of the river, the size of the demand and the degree of reliability of this demand bei...
Evapotranspiration integrates energy and mass transfer between the Earth's surface and atmosphere and is the most active mechanism linking the atmosphere, hydrosphsophere, lithosphere and biosphere. This study focuses on the fine resolution modeling and projection of spatially distributed potential evapotranspiration on the large catchment scale as...
The increase of temperature attributed to anthropogenic emissions is projected to continue in future climate scenarios. Several protocols and policies are being put in place in several European countries to reduce both emissions and impact of human activities. The Irish Reforestation policy is a good example of such protocols. Nevertheless often co...
Reservoirs are designed to provide the balance between the flow brought by the river which is high variable in time and volume of water. The storage required on a river to meet a specific demand depends basically on three factors; the magnitude and the variability of the river flows, the size of the demand and the degree of reliability of this dema...
Water resources management and policies need to consider the dynamic nature of any catchment's water balance, particularly in planning stage, to develop effective strategies for the future. The main goal of this research is to create an innovative and integrated environmental modelling tool (GEO-CWB) by applying Machine Learning Techniques to a Geo...
Over the years, urban growth models have proven to be effective in describing and estimating urban development
and have consequently proven to be valuable for informed urban planning decision. Therefore, this paper investigates the implementation of an urban growth Cellular automata (CA) model using a GIS platform as a support tool for city planner...
Climate impact studies especially in the field of hydrology often depend on climate change projections at fine spatial resolution. General circulation models (GCMs), which are the tools for estimating future climate scenarios, run on a very coarse scale, so the output from GCMs need to be downscaled to obtain a finer spatial resolution. This paper...
General circulation models (GCMs) are used for estimating future climate scenarios, run on a very coarse scale, so the outputs from GCMs need to be downscaled to obtain a finer spatial resolution. This paper provides a methodology for GCM-Ensembles performance evaluation using a GIS platform by applying statistical spatial downscaling methods. Stat...
The concatenated effects of increased frequency of intense precipitations due to climate change and anthropogenic impacts in the form of construction in floodplains, channel straightening and increased presence of impermeable surfaces are increasing the incidence of floods in urban areas. This paper investigates behavioral responses to a natural ha...
Groundwater quality is a major environmental aspect which needs to be analyzed and managed depending on its spatial distribution. Utilization of insufficient management of groundwater resources in Gaza Strip, Palestine, produces not only a reduction in quantity but also deterioration in quality of groundwater. The aim of this study is to provide an...
Groundwater quality is a major environmental aspect which needs to be analyzed and managed depending on its spatial distribution. Utilization of insufficient management of groundwater resources in Gaza Strip, Palestine, produces not only a reduction in quantity but also deterioration in quality of groundwater. The aim of this study is to provide an...
The Gaza Strip is a part of the Palestinian coastal plain located in an arid to semi-arid region. It is bordered by Egypt from the south, the green line from the North, Nagev desert from the East and the Mediterranean Sea from the West, so the Gaza Strip is located on the south-eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, between longitudes 34° 2” and 3...
The Gaza Strip is a part of the Palestinian coastal plain located in an arid to semi-arid region. It is bordered by Egypt from the south, the green line from the North, Nagev desert from the East and the Mediterranean Sea from the West, so The Gaza Strip is located on the south-eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, between longitudes 34° 2” and 3...
The effectiveness of water resources management and policies need to consider the dynamic nature of any catchment’s water balance, particularly in planning stage, to develop innovative strategies for the future. Hence, future management planning scenarios and policies for a specific catchment have to integrate a dynamic water balance with future ch...
Climate changes over the Gaza strip area as a semi-arid area is a major factor that affects the developing strategic plans for water sector. This study aims to determine the future climate changes over Gaza strip. Fossil energy intensive (A1F1) with high sensitivity is the emission scenario that was used for the prediction process. The median assem...
As Mediterranean coastal area, the Gaza Strip is likely to be at high risk for water scarcity due to climate change, thus hydrological studies are necessary. This study aims to investigate the impacts of climate change on water balance elements of the Gaza Strip and generate future projections. The Water Balance computer model (WetSPASS) integrated...
The Gaza Strip is subjected to considerable impacts of climate change that may adversely affect the groundwater resource. A decrease in annual precipitation as well as an increase in temperatures are projected from an ensemble of global climate models. In this study, the impact of climate change on groundwater resources in Gaza coastal aquifer was...
The study of the impacts of climate change on groundwater is a major factor that affects the developing strategic plans. The Gaza strip coastal aquifer area as one of the semi-arid areas is affected by climate changes and that absolutely affects all kinds of water resources including groundwater resource. The purpose of this study is to study the i...