**Abstract**

Health and safety standards are paramount to all agricultural workers and more so to the foreign seasonal farm workers. European, North American and Oceanic agricultural sector heavily depends on the foreign workers migrating temporarily to carryout seasonal agricultural work that are not attractive to local citizens. The aim of this chapter is to critically analyze existing workplace health and safety measures, policies and practices of Foreign agricultural workers with a secondary focus on Canadian public health standards that applies to COVID-19 pandemic control and beyond. During the pandemic, many countries opened international labour migration as a measure of economic recovery. Recent news media reported two Caribbean workers in the Canadian Agricultural sector, had died of COVID-19 complications. The basis of this chapter is the research based evidence that the author carried out on occupational health and safety standards of the population of foreign seasonal farm workers using a multi-method data collection: a scoping review of existing standards, policies and practices and personal interviews with seasonal agricultural workers and their employers. This chapter provides a critical analysis of data from multiple sources and from multiple jurisdictions to uncover gaps and malpractices of existing occupational health and safety practice standards for illness and injury prevention of foreign seasonal farm workers.

**Keywords:** foreign seasonal farm workers, farmers, workers' and NGO perspectives, agriculture work related health and safety, public health measures of COVID-19, illness and injury prevention


# **Recent Developments and Applications in Tissue Mechanics and Tissue Engineering**

Federica Boschetti Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in *Applied Sciences*

Edited by

www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci


**About the Editors**

**Massimo Viviani** received Physics and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Genova, Italy, in 1992 and 1998, respectively. Since 1999, he has been a Researcher at the National Research Council of Italy, alongside which he is currently the Director of Research at the Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry and of Energy Technologies. His work is focused on the development of ceramic materials for energy applications. He is co-author of over 150 papers in multiple international journals and is a Section Board Member for the journal, *Energies*.

**Antonio Barbucci** received Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Genova, Italy, in 1991 and 1995, respectively. Since 1999, he has been a Researcher at the University of Genova, where he is currently a Professor in Material Science Engineering in the Dept. of Civil Chemical and Environmental Engineering. Since 2010, he has been an Associated Researcher at the National Research Council of Italy at the Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry and Energy Technologies. His work is focused on electrochemical processes for energy applications. He is co-author of over 100 papers in multiple international journals and is a Section Board Member for the journal, *Energies*.

**Maria Paola Carpanese** received Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Genova, Italy, in 2003 and 2008, respectively. Since 2009, she has been a Researcher at the University of Genova, where she is currently Assistant Professor in Ceramic Materials and Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage Devices. Her work is addressed to solid state electrochemistry and solid oxide reversible cell production and characterization (notably, impedance spectroscopy). She is co-author of over 50 papers in multiple international journals and a Topics Board Member for the journal, *Energies*.

**Sabrina Presto** received her Physics degree from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2000, and her Ph.D. degree from the University of Genova, Italy, in 2008. Since 2009, she has been a Researcher at the National Research Council of Italy, where she is currently a Researcher at the Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry and Energy Technologies. Her work is focused on the synthesis and characterization of ceramic materials for energy applications. She is the co-author of over 50 papers in multiple international journals and a Topics Board Member for the journal, *Energies*.


**5. Conclusions**

More than a third of global energy consumption and CO2 emission is generated by the building sector and the awareness of the importance of buildings' energy performance related to CO2 emissions has increased worldwide. Improving energy efficiency is one of the key policy directions for the UAE government to tackle energy security, energy conservation, and climate change. As a direct response, to increase energy efficiency in the building sector in the UAE, substantial steps have been taken in recent decades such as setting up the minimum levels of U-values for building envelopes, introducing building rating systems, and improving HVAC systems' efficiency. However, there is still an extensive evidence which shows that the buildings usually do not perform as well as predicted whilst in-use and this discrepancy is commonly referred to as the "energy performance gap".

The focus area of this research is using the building energy audit data and the POE and to reduce the dynamic energy performance gap in one of the university buildings in the UAEU, UAE. To achieve the main objective of this study, the energy audit data and the POE, followed by a detailed dynamic simulation method, were applied to several simulation scenarios. Identifying the cause of discrepancies between the as-designed and actual building, and to increase the accuracy of the simulation model, POE and energy audit data were used for calibrating the simulation model (Scenario C) to validate (Scenario D).

The research clearly indicated that the case study building in-use condition was not operated as designed and almost a quarter of the cooling-related energy was wasted by mismanaged and poorly understood building's active system operations and management. This type of performance gap is commonly found in the UAE and can be easily solved without increasing the cost or extra investment for systems upgrade. This method is able to use the calibration of the actual conditions of the building with a computer-generated energy simulation model to improve the accuracy of the simulation model, and efforts to identify the underlying causes of the gap between numerical/computational predictions and actual usage as well. This research method is very cost effective, and less than one year of the return of investment could be achievable. It also shows that the energy audit and POE study are possible to reduce the dynamic energy performance gaps in the building sector by improving the indoor environment quality, especially after the buildings are occupied as in-use phase.

**Author Contributions:** Y.K.K. conceived the presented idea and developed the theory and performed the computations. Y.K.K. and L.B. verified the analytical methods. K.A.T.A. and H.A. encouraged Y.K.K. to investigate the POE study and supervised the findings of this work. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the UAEU, grant name and numbers: 2018 Start-UP (31N380).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to the case study building is governmental facility.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors would like to thank the UAEU for supporting the study and allowing for the measurements to take place.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest and the funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.