**4. The DBE policy guidelines on the safe reopening of schools**

The DBE under the guidance of the Department of Health (DoH) developed standard operating procedures (SOPs) to prepare all administrators on how to stop the spread, and manage COVID-19 cases within schools [2]. The SOPs explain the measures and protocols to be followed in the education sector to ensure safety against COVID-19 infections. Its main objective is to explain procedures to be followed by office managers, and school leadership in case there is a confirmed or suspected incident of COVID-19 infection in the work or school space [2]. These guidelines equip all leaders with information on how to act rationally and calmly when handling emerging cases. The guidelines also explain important terms used in the COVID-19 context, for instance, exposure levels, which explain how much contact a suspected individual has had with one whose infection has been confirmed by testing with another one who has been confirmed to have the infection and quarantine, which explains a period that one should spend in isolation from other people after testing or coming to contact with a confirmed case. This period had initially been put on 14 days but on 17 July 2020 the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) reduced it to 10 days minimum following guidelines from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

#### **4.1 Duties of COVID-19 committees at school**

The guidelines position principals as compliance officers at schools, responsible to apply all prescribed COVID-19 measures. These include the creation of COVID-19 committees. Although the COVID-19 pandemic demands a task-oriented response from leadership, situational factors like the skills and maturity to manage certain responsibilities oblige principals to delegate duties in a people-oriented manner. This necessitates the understanding of the levels of competency team members possess to carry particular responsibilities [4, 5]. COVID-19 conditions presented novel challenges to all concerned at the school level. Relevant training on COVID-19 for committee members to gain knowledge and confidence needed to be ensured by the principal of the school.

Duties of the committees included a range of activities such as initiating COVID-19 awareness programmes for their schools and communities; erecting signs and posters educating the public about hands and respiratory cleanliness; preparing and maintaining hand washing stations containing soap and water, 5 m away from toilets and bathrooms; ensuring the availability of hand sanitisers with a 70% alcohol content at entrance points of classrooms, teacher staff rooms, reception and waiting areas, and

all offices; managing daily removal of garbage from the school; and ensuring that the school buildings are properly cleaned and disinfected as per the DBE regulations. These committees are also tasked with the preparation of well-ventilated and equipped rooms for isolation purposes. They are also responsible to ensure the observance of social distancing in all spaces of the school and to encourage learners, and staff to properly wear their face masks. Another important duty for the committee is to ensure that there is enough personal protective equipment (PPE), for the entire school community.


**MICROBIOLOGY IN AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN HEALTH**

Edited by **Mohammad Manjur Shah**

#### **Microbiology in Agriculture and Human Health**

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/59645 Edited by Mohammad Manjur Shah

#### **Contributors**

Wanjun Zhang, Hiroo Uchiyama, Huhe -, Yuanbai Pan, Galina Novik, Victoria Savich, Elena Kiseleva, Hongxuan He, Wen Su, Debora Ferreira Barreto-Vieira, Ortrud Monika Barth, Nora-Hilda Rosas-Murrieta, Sandra R. Reyes-Carmona, Rebeca D. Martínez-Contreras, Nancy Martínez-Montiel, Lourdes Millán-Pérez-Peña, Irma Herrera-Camacho, Guadalupe Rojas-Sánchez, Mohammad Manjur Shah, Loukrakpam Bina, N. Mohilal

#### **© The Editor(s) and the Author(s) 2015**

The moral rights of the and the author(s) have been asserted.

All rights to the book as a whole are reserved by INTECH. The book as a whole (compilation) cannot be reproduced, distributed or used for commercial or non-commercial purposes without INTECH's written permission. Enquiries concerning the use of the book should be directed to INTECH rights and permissions department (permissions@intechopen.com).

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#### **Notice**

Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book.

First published in Croatia, 2015 by INTECH d.o.o. eBook (PDF) Published by IN TECH d.o.o. Place and year of publication of eBook (PDF): Rijeka, 2019. IntechOpen is the global imprint of IN TECH d.o.o. Printed in Croatia

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Microbiology in Agriculture and Human Health Edited by Mohammad Manjur Shah p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-2144-2 eBook (PDF) ISBN 978-953-51-5402-0


**3. Methods and Materials**

Numerical simulations were performed using the electrical and gas energy consumptions from four real dwellings in the east coast (Mediterranean area) of Spain. Weather in this region can be classified as a "Csa climate" with hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, according to Köppen climate international classification [33].

Using the information from actual energy invoices, four daily consumption datasets have been created. Four 10-apartment building consumption profiles were determined considering simultaneously factors from the single dwelling datasets. The selected dwellings are described as follows:

Data obtained from the gas and electrical utility invoices are one-month aggregated information that must be statistically treated to create the useful datasets to simulate the daily energy demand of the users. The numerical treatment has consisted of normal randomized daily energy consumption estimation using the daily seasonal average consumption values and its seasonal data standard deviation (Figure 2). This process was applied to both energy invoices (electricity and gas), taking the billing date into account to correct the consumption data of the different energy suppliers.

**Figure 2.** Statistical analysis from the annual energy invoices to randomize a daily energy consumption dataset for each building using seasonal values (average and standard deviation).

The results of the treatment of the numerical data can be observed in Figure 3, where the vertical axis is the daily electrical consumption and the horizontal one represents the daily thermal energy one. Darker dots are the daily consumption calculated from the utility invoices and the "*x*" markers are the randomized values obtained from the numerical treatment.

**Figure 3.** Result of the numerical treatment of the utility invoices to create an energy consumption dataset for each dwelling.

Electrical and thermal data in Figure 3 are correlated values, where two main tendencies can be observed. Dwellings with gas-powered heating facilities (Id 1 and Id 3) show a greater thermal energy demand for heating seasons. This results in two different "x-clouds": one energy demand cloud at the right-top side of the chart (Id 1: from 30 to 50 kWhth., Id 3: from 15 to 30kWhth.), where the heating demand can be detected; and a second cloud below 15 kWhth. that is overlapped with the two less-thermal demanding dwellings (Id 2 and Id 4). In the case of dwellings Id 2 and Id 4, the seasonal variation is notorious in the vertical axis due to the increase in the electrical energy demand during the heating season caused by the use of electrical heaters. When the thermal demand is limited to hot water, the energy consumption is function of the number of inhabitants as can be observed for the daily energy thermal values for Id 2 and Id 4, respectively. Heat-to-power (HtP) is calculated as the thermal demand over the electrical demand. This ratio is a season-dependent value, and normally a year-based calculation is provided. The results obtained with the datasets sorted in decreasing order are 3.4 (Id 1), 2.3 (Id 3), 1.5 (Id 2) and 0.7 (Id 4).

Considering each dwelling dataset, four 10-dwelling buildings were created using a randomized factor to simulate a centralized CHP. Heat-to-power ratios for the building datasets are similar in value and order.


**5. Conclusions**

Based on the time series MODIS NDVI datasets from 2001 to 2020, we retrieved the vegetation phenological parameters in the QLMs. The spatiotemporal variation in vegetation phenology was analyzed, and divergent correlations between the SOS and EOS and seasonal driving factors were explored. The results demonstrated that vegetation phenology in the QLMs is characteristic of advancing SOS, postponing EOS, and prolonging LOS, but the variation trends of vegetation phenology were not significant (*p* > 0.05) from 2001 to 2020. The seasonal temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture had spatiotemporal heterogeneous effects on the vegetation phenology. Compared with temperature and soil moisture, precipitation had a weaker influence on the vegetation phenology in QLMs. The spring temperature was the key driving factor influencing SOS in the QLMs. The autumn soil moisture and autumn temperature made the largest contributions to the variations in EOS at lower elevations (<3500 m a.s.l.) and higher elevations (>3500 m a.s.l.), respectively. Spring temperature was the key driving factor influencing SOS of most vegetation types. Autumn soil moisture was the main factor influencing EOS in deserts because of the strong soil moisture stress. An increase in summer soil moisture may limit vegetation growth in the QLMs. Under ongoing global change, finding the response of the SOS and EOS to driving factors is beneficial for a better understanding of the interactions between vegetation phenology and future climate change.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following supporting information can be downloaded at https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/rs14153645/s1: Figure S1: Comparison of satellite-derived phenology data with ground-based phenology data.

**Author Contributions:** Formal analysis, X.C.; Methodology, X.C.; Software, G.X. and D.L.; Visualization, G.X. and X.H.; Writing—original draft, X.C.; Writing—review & editing, X.C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant XDA20100102) and Gansu Provincial Science and Technology Major Special Plan (20ZD7FA005).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.


**Introduction**

plained in the next chapter in this section, where, as

physical properties.

VIII Preface

nuclear energy, thorium has been analyzed because of its abundant reserves and excellent

Environmental aspects of power plants are deeply analyzed in the third section. The chapter focuses on the consideration of aspects of environmental impact of all kinds of power plants, without taking into account the details regarding other aspects of energy sector develop‐ ment. This chapter examines the multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) method for carrying out

strategic environmental assessment (SEA) for power plants, covering the analysis and as‐ sessment of the energy sector spatial impacts on the environment and both social and eco‐ nomic elements of sustainable development. The last section deals with the modern world requirements for sustainable means of producing clean energy economically, on a very large scale. This chapter presents a detailed design study of a novel, scalable, self-contained solarpowered electrolytic sodium (Na) metal production plant meant to enable a hydrogen (H2) fuel, sustainable, closed clean energy cycle. Presented analysis shows that power from re‐ newable source (solar plant) is technically and economically viable for meeting the hydro‐

We expect that readers from various fields of engineering could find interesting practical

cially for industrial engineers involved in plant's maintenance, graduate students in ad‐ vanced study, and the researches who are working on new technologies toward

gen fuel clean energy needs of the large number of motor vehicles in the USA.

solutions for improving power plant's management. This book is useful as

improvement of power plants' reliability, safety, and overall energy efficiency.

a result of the rapid development of

a

a reference espe‐

**Dr Aleksandar B. Nikolic** Associate Research Professor

University of Belgrade, Serbia

Associate Research Professor

University of Belgrade, Serbia

**Dr Zarko S. Janda**

Electrical Engineering Institute Nikola Tesla, Belgrade

Electrical Engineering Institute Nikola Tesla, Belgrade