Ecological Conservation and Engineering
11:25 - 13:05 | Meeting Room 102 (Level 1)
Chair: Prof. In摹. Paul Refalo
Mr Vincenzo de Cancellis
Islands and Small States Institute
This presentation discusses the results of a systematic literature review that investigates how marine and terrestrial protected areas promote climate change adaptation and support sustainable livelihoods in island contexts. The review aims to identify which climate-related impacts are predominant across islands and which conservation approaches yield relevant benefits for island communities. The review followed the PRISMA2020 protocol – from an initial pool of 1,112 records, 35 publications met screening criteria and addressed the roles of protected areas in adaptation and livelihood outcomes in the specific context of islands.
Results indicate that the predominant climate-related impacts consist of sea-level rise, coastal erosion, flooding, and heatwaves. MPAs are consistently associated with increased fish biomass, coastal protection, strengthened food security and ecotourism opportunities. Terrestrial protected areas contribute to freshwater management, microclimate regulation, recreation and shoreline stability. Significantly, land–sea integrated areas, although with limited literature, are emerging as hybrid approaches able to deliver complementary benefits that neither domain can achieve alone.
Further results show that positive outcomes highly depend on meaningful stakeholder engagement, integration of vernacular/traditional knowledge, equitable benefit sharing and governance aligned to regional priorities. Results indicate that protected areas can be a cornerstone of island adaptation portfolios when implemented through integrated, socially sensitive, and context-specific strategies, but research remains scarce, especially in the Mediterranean Sea.
Ms Erika Puglisevich
Department of Biology, Faculty of Science
Cemeteries function as distinctive urban green spaces that act as stable habitat islands within rapidly changing landscapes.
Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a systematic review and meta-analysis of Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar synthesised 28 eligible studies (2005–2025) to evaluate how typology, setting, and management influence vascular plant diversity.
Results indicate that cemeteries support diverse plant assemblages. Orchid-focused studies (29%) reported highly variable richness (0–127 taxa), indicating that cemeteries can serve as refugia for sensitive species. Non-native species comprised 16–60% of recorded floras. Species richness followed a significant hierarchical gradient across cemetery typologies. Monumental sites emerged as primary biodiversity hotspots (192.0 ± 94.5), supporting more than double the richness of grassland environments (82.5 ± 52.5). Forest cemeteries represented the most taxonomically impoverished and homogeneous category (63.1 ± 22.9). A tiered effect was observed across settings: managed urban cemeteries were most species-rich (200.0 ± 83.2), nearly doubling the richness of managed rural sites (100.0 ± 47.9), while abandoned rural sites were the least diverse (48.8 ± 20.6). Taxonomic composition followed these environmental filters: while Asteraceae and Poaceae formed a core assemblage across all cemetery types, Lamiaceae were elevated in grassland cemeteries (4.19%), and Brassicaceae were distinctive in urban/monumental settings (4.2%).
Cemeteries function as vital reservoirs of plant biodiversity. These findings suggest that the structural complexity of monumental sites and periodic urban maintenance are key drivers of botanical richness.
Mr Aman Batra
Institute of Aerospace Technologies
This research investigates the performance of Hybrid Turbo-Electric Propulsion Systems (HTEPS) for regional aircraft. As climatic impact intensifies, the need of the hour is to reduce emissions and improve sustainability. The transportation sector is a major contributor, accounting for 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions from aviation. Although COVID-19 severely affected the aviation industry, post-pandemic forecasts by ICAO predict 3.6% annual growth. Within the European Union, recovery is guided by Flightpath-2050 and Green Deal initiatives with ambitious targets to reduce CO鈧�, NO鈧�, and noise. In response, global research on electric, hydrogen-powered, and sustainable fuel-based aircrafts is underway.
Electric propulsion offers significant environmental advantages; however, battery energy densities exceeding 800Wh/kg are required for Airbus A320/Boeing 737-class aircraft with a 1,111 km range. With current battery energy densities (200–250Wh/kg), values doubling every 23 years, fully-electric large aircraft and matching conventional aircraft’s range-endurance is doubtful for several decades. To bridge this gap, an HTEPS-equipped aircraft is proposed, with an electric powertrain operating in conjunction with a gas turbine. Although this produces some emissions, it enables reductions in environmentally sensitive flight phases, take-off/landing, and flying in saturated regions to reduce contrails.
It was observed that in the existing range and endurance equations, only the cruise phase is considered; however, the climb and descent phases are also significant for flight missions under 1000 miles. Henceforth, derivations were carried out for them too. Also, effective energy management strategies (segregated fuel and battery use during flight phases to minimise fuel consumption, emissions, and weight) did not exist for HTEPS-equipped aircraft. This led to the creation of a tool that provides varying split hybridisation levels during flight phases by dividing each phase into multiple sections and comparing results based on the above-mentioned factors. In the tool, aircraft type and performance parameters are changed to obtain a detailed analysis.
Ms Sarah Mifsud
Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Injection moulding underpins the mass production of many plastic products, yet a largely invisible issue: trapped air inside moulds, continues to limit product quality, productivity, and energy efficiency. This research investigates a novel sealless active vacuum venting approach that removes trapped air without the mechanical complexity typically associated with conventional vacuum systems. A purpose-designed industrial mould was used to experimentally compare three venting strategies: no venting, passive venting, and the proposed active vacuum system. By combining in-mould sensors and airflow sensors with short-shot analysis, the study evaluates how air removal influences melt flow behaviour, parts’ surface quality, internal defects, moulding cycle time, and energy consumed. Results demonstrate that this novel sealless vacuum system significantly improves manufacturing performance. Total cycle time was reduced by 23%, increasing productivity to 96.9 cycles/hr. Despite requiring compressed air to generate a vacuum, overall energy consumption decreased by 15%, resulting in an 18% reduction in specific energy consumption compared to the baseline. Product quality also improved substantially, burn marks were eliminated even at high injection speeds, and sink mark depths were reduced by over 60%, indicating more uniform packing and reduced shrinkage. By proving that effective air removal can simultaneously enhance quality, speed and sustainability, this novel seal-less active vacuum venting system establishes itself as a vital innovation for the next generation of high-performance, eco-friendly manufacturing.
Ms Xuewen Lian
Institute of Aerospace Technologies
Aircraft landing and taxi operations still dissipate substantial energy and burn fuel, motivating onboard recovery concepts aligned with the More-Electric Aircraft roadmap. This PhD project investigates an onboard flywheel energy storage system (FESS) that captures a portion of landing kinetic energy and reuses it to support ground taxiing. The system requires two electrical machines with different specifications: a low-speed, high-torque machine integrated in the main landing gear (MLG) and a high-speed machine coupled to the flywheel. Despite their different electromagnetic and mechanical constraints, both machines are strongly limited by winding temperature, which bounds achievable torque/power density and insulation lifetime. Reliable thermal prediction is therefore essential for rapid design iteration and for assessing operating margins.
To enable fast electro-thermal design loops, this work adopts a recently proposed matrix-based formulation for stator winding thermal networks and applies it to aerospace machine design. In this approach, the conventional LPTN transient solution is replaced by a least-squares, current-parameterised polynomial matrix approximation, enabling online winding-temperature prediction without explicit matrix inversion or multiplication while retaining near-LPTN accuracy with microsecond-level runtime. Compared with standard LPTN implementations, which typically require seconds per transient evaluation, the resulting speedup makes large-scale parametric sweeps, sensitivity analysis, and iterative co-design feasible across many operating points and design variants.
Overall, the project demonstrates a computationally efficient pathway for winding temperature prediction that is applicable to machine designs with diverse performance requirements, supporting both high-level system studies for FESS-based energy recovery and practical electromagnetic–thermal design iteration under aerospace constraints.