Sustainable Development
The Increased AQI of Dhaka City and its Partial Solution through Rooftop Gardening: An Urban Perspective
Ashfaq Ahmed, Nihal Ahmed, Maliha Tabassum
Dhaka, with an extremely high resident’s growth rate, is one of the most densely populated megacity in the world. An evident increment in the air quality index has been a concern for the city for the last couple of decades while most recently, it has topped the index of the world’s cities with the worst AQI for several consecutive days. With the continual growth of the number of multi-stored buildings to support its population, the city opened up a step towards an urban sustainability-an opportunity to exploit the rooftops. The aim of the study is to explore the potential of the rooftop gardening utilizing the significant amount of effective surface area it can already provide. Result show the health concerns of the citizens are directly associated with the alarming concentration of the pollutant, especially particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10), CO2, SO2, and NOx. Data from various relevant sources have been used to compute the pollutant absorption rate (mg/m 2) by average sizable gardening plants each day. One of the most significant findings from this study is that a planned rooftop gardening in this metropolitan area confirms the increased absorption of CO2 and PM10 to an extent of 63.25% and 66.67% respectively in 30 years. Beside the air quality benefit, this article also includes some practical environmental benefits of rooftop gardening from an urban perspective.
An Insight into an Eco-friendly Smart City: A Step towards Achieving Urban Sustainability in Dhaka
Nihal Ahmed, Ashfaq Ahmed, Muntasir Mamun
Modernization is the process of progressive transformation of a society in terms of development, proper civil opportunities, and other environmental aspects. In this process-industrialization and urbanization are the two key requirements. A large amount of resources is necessary for a viable implementation of such characteristics. At the same time, industrialization and urbanization have also implied some negative effects which stagnate the modernization process. The aim of this study is to explore a solution that is needed to accelerate the development procedure and also to prove beneficial upon the environmental and resource aspects. We carried out a concept of “Smart city” which eradicates some of the endangered dimensions of environment and resource. A Smart city is an urban area that uses different types of electronic Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to collect data and then use insights gained from that data to manage assets, resources, and services efficiently. The improvement of civil advantages, human health, and the safety of the environment and the usefulness of limited resources are the main focus of this concept. Different civil handicaps regarding traffic jam, noise pollution, and air pollution have been selected and the required data have been extracted to analyze the present situation. After studying the nature of the problems, four proposals have been made to improve the current state. Smart traffic signal, Underground parking space creation, silent horn, and automated spike strips are the proposed concepts. The cost analysis has also been included which gives an assumption about the resource required. “MATLAB”, “Igor Pro”, “Tecplot 360” & “Microsoft Excel” software has been used to plot and analyze the data. This result shows that the proposals made are eco-friendly and also cost-beneficial. It enhances the regular social life to a great extent.