Search Results (209)

We processed life expectancy data of an age group less than 1 years old from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in the contiguous USA, as well as a set of 33 environmental variables (or features) from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) from the years 2003 through 2019. Visualizing the IHME data, we identified a massive disparity in life expectancy of the age group less than 1 years old in the contiguous USA, where counties in southern states have relatively lower life expectancies compared to counties in northern states. Our use of machine learning to estimate the life expectancy of the sub-1-year-old age group is moderately accurate, as the coefficient of determination (R${}^2$) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) between the true and estimated values was found to be 0.81 and 1.06 years, respectively, in an independent test set using only a set of five environmental variables. Our key finding shows that apart from well-known pollutants, such as particulate matter (PM), ozone, and carbon monoxide, a reduction in pollutants such as formaldehyde, sulphate aerosols, and dust aerosols; an increase in vegetation areas; and good environmental conditions, such as lower wet-bulb temperature, could potentially increase life expectancy in the US. Future work may include socio-economic variables such as household income, poverty rate, and other relevant features to create a comprehensive set of variables to improve the results and individuals’ quality of life. Full article

The construction of oil, gas and petrochemical mega-projects in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states combines high-hazard simultaneous operations with wet-bulb globe temperatures (WBGTs) that exceed occupational limits well before the statutory midday work ban begins. Existing digital tools advise, warn or monitor. None of them withhold a work permit, and that is the gap this paper addresses. Following a design-science approach, this paper specifies and analyses a digital occupational risk management (D-ORM) framework whose central and novel element is a permit engine gated on the measured or forecast WBGT rather than on clock time, with the gate failing safe when the measurement is unavailable. Saudi Arabia serves as the reference case; Qatar supplies the only existing GCC legal precedent for a measured WBGT trigger and is used here as a reference point, not as a proposed Saudi threshold. Five results follow, all of them analytical. A diurnal WBGT model calibrated to published Saudi field measurements places 68% of the daily heat load above 30 degrees Celsius before the Saudi ban starts, and a Monte Carlo perturbation of the model parameters keeps that share above half in 93% of draws. A heat factor applied to residual-risk scoring reorders the task hierarchy, and the ordering survives a plus-or-minus-one-point perturbation of the input scores in most draws. WBGT gating on a conventional day shift costs 54% of productive crew-hours, while a gated split shift recovers 58% of that loss; the same split shift also protects worker income, which falls to 0.46 of the baseline under a gated day shift but to only 0.73 under the split. ISO 1999 median threshold shift shows that an 85 dB(A) trade never reaches a 10 dB audiometric-priority threshold in a 40-year career, while a 95 dB(A) trade reaches it in 3.2 years, which places audiometric triage in the 90 to 95 dB(A) band. Detecting a lost-time injury frequency shift from 0.62 to 0.30 requires about 68 million work-hours per arm, which is beyond a single package-year and explains why such claims should not be asserted from scenario curves. All models are stated in closed form, the status of every number is declared, and no outcome is presented as observed. The practical implication for contractors and regulators is that heat control is a work-authorisation and shift-design problem before it is a monitoring problem. Full article

Increasing exposure of workers to heat-wave conditions and occupational heat stress highlights the need for methods that integrate the assessment of thermal working conditions with the selection of sustainable and economically justified protective measures. This article proposes an integrated technical–economic framework for assessing heat stress during outdoor work, based on the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) index and dry-bulb temperature t_d. The framework also enables the determination of cost-effectiveness domains for selected protective solutions. Three environmental scenarios and four variants of meteorological conditions were analysed, representing different combinations of solar exposure, humidity, and air movement. The calculations assumed an 8-h work shift, including 4 h during which conditions exceeded the adopted criterion, a 10-person work team, and a labour cost of EUR 30/(worker·h). The preventive measures analysed included organisational measures, shading, local mechanical cooling, combinations of technical solutions, and a separated cooled work zone; PCM cooling vests were considered solely as a supplementary measure. For each variant, avoided losses, implementation costs, economic balance, the equivalent number of avoided work stoppages, and the minimum number of avoided work stoppages required to achieve cost-effectiveness were determined. The cost-effectiveness threshold ranged from one avoided work stoppage for shading, through three avoided work stoppages for mechanical cooling and the technical package, to eight avoided work stoppages for a separated cooled zone. The proposed approach constitutes a modifiable framework for selecting measures to mitigate the effects of heat stress under different climatic, organisational, and cost conditions. Full article

Urban spatial structure represents a fundamental determinant of urban thermal dynamics; however, the nonlinear responses of different Local Climate Zones (LCZs) and their spatial extents to thermal environments remain insufficiently understood. This study focuses on the central urban area of Qingdao, China, and establishes an integrated analytical framework for urban thermal environments by coupling remote sensing-based classification, WRF–SLUCM numerical simulation, and interpretable machine learning approaches. Based on 10 m Sentinel-2A imagery acquired in 2016, 2020, and 2025, a 17-class LCZ classification scheme was developed using the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform and an improved Random Forest algorithm. The derived LCZ maps were subsequently incorporated into the WRF 4.7–SLUCM model with a four-level nested configuration to simulate 24 h near-surface meteorological conditions at a finest spatial resolution of 0.333 km, from which the Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) was calculated. Furthermore, the LightGBM model combined with SHAP interpretation was employed to quantitatively examine the nonlinear statistical response between LCZ area and WBGT and to identify the associated critical scales. The overall classification accuracy of the LCZ maps for the three study years ranged from 74.4% to 75.0%, with Kappa coefficients ranging from 0.7333 to 0.7446. The SHAP analysis identified four response patterns: negative-to-positive, positive-to-negative, consistently negative, and consistently positive. Different LCZ types exhibited distinct area thresholds, and some types showed a reversal in their thermal-environment response after exceeding a critical scale. These results indicate that the relationship between LCZ and WBGT is not simply linear but represents a scale-dependent nonlinear statistical association jointly shaped by land-cover type and patch size. This study provides methodological support for the quantitative and fine-scale analysis of urban thermal environments in coastal hilly cities. Full article

Outdoor sports spaces in residential areas must provide safe and comfortable conditions for daily exercise, yet in severe cold regions their use is constrained by wind, solar exposure, thermal stress, noise, and air quality. Using six sites in Harbin, China, this study developed an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-based evaluation system covering the wind, light, acoustic, thermal, and air environments. Candidate indicators were screened using a user questionnaire, expert AHP judgments were used to derive weights, and site performance was quantified through field monitoring, site surveys, and ENVI-met simulation. The indicator weights, in descending order, were wet-bulb globe temperature (14.96%), pedestrian-level wind speed (13.67%), building layout conducive to air circulation (13.55%), pedestrian-level wind vortices and still-air zones (12.79%), sunlight exposure and lighting effectiveness (12.67%), shading rate of hard ground surfaces and structures (12.15%), reflectivity of pavement and covering materials (11.37%), and outdoor noise level (8.83%). Overall scores differed across the six sites. An AHP-weighted performance-shortfall analysis, calculated relative to the ideal Grade 5, identified outdoor noise, shading, building-layout-related air circulation, and sunlight/lighting performance as the four largest cross-site improvement needs. The resulting framework supports the diagnosis and renewal of outdoor sports spaces in cold-region residential areas. The empirical results represent the monitored summer and autumn transitional scenarios rather than year-round performance. Full article

To address the soil thermal imbalance and energy performance degradation caused by long-term operation of ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems in hot-summer/cold-winter regions such as Chongqing, this study proposes a hybrid heat exchange strategy that coordinates short- and long-cycle thermal regulation. On the long-cycle scale, cooling towers are employed during spring or transitional seasons to extract ambient cold energy and store it seasonally in the soil, thereby achieving cross-seasonal cold storage and temporal redistribution of cooling capacity. On the daily scale during summer, the seasonal cold storage and cooling tower heat rejection jointly regulate the ground temperature. A dynamic simulation model of the GSHP system was established to evaluate and optimize its long-term operational performance under cooling, heating and cold storage modes. Annual simulation results show that cold storage efficiency is positively correlated with the temperature difference between the outdoor wet-bulb temperature and the soil, and that cross-seasonal cold storage exerts only a minor impact on the heating COP in spring, which decreases by merely 0.16–0.29 compared with the wet-bulb temperature-controlled GSHP (WBT-GSHP) strategy. During summer operation, cooling towers preferentially handle the cooling load when the outdoor wet-bulb temperature is low; once the cooling load increases significantly, the heat pump units are activated and the soil-stored cold energy is utilized, effectively suppressing the rise in ground temperature. Compared with the WBT-GSHP strategy, the proposed approach improves the summer cooling COP by 0.79–1.41, substantially enhancing the operational efficiency of the cooling mode while maintaining the long-term soil temperature within a predefined range. This strategy can provide a novel solution and theoretical basis for mitigating the thermal imbalance problem in GSHP systems in Chongqing and similar hot-summer/cold-winter climate zones. Full article

This study employs a multi-method, high-precision research approach to evaluate the thermal comfort performance of a window-based direct evaporative cooling (DEC) air conditioning system installed in a university dormitory building (50 rooms) in Beijing. To compensate for the insufficiency of single-day test data, the study was conducted continuously for 30 days from 1 June to 30 June 2026 (00:00–23:59 daily). Eight calibrated sensor sets were deployed in each of the 50 rooms (that is, eight fixed sensor sets per room × 50 rooms = 400 synchronously logged spatial measurement points, each integrating a fixed SHT35 temperature/humidity sensor with a matched hot-wire anemometer probe; this unusually dense, building-scale simultaneous deployment is uncommon in previous dormitory studies), recording data simultaneously across all rooms throughout the test period with the DEC units continuously operating. The research integrates field physical measurement data, standardized subjective questionnaire surveys (200 within-person paired questionnaires, each pairing a student’s retrospective recall of the pre-DEC condition with an in situ vote collected during DEC operation), and advanced computational thermophysiological modeling results based on the frameworks of ISO 7730–2021 and ASHRAE Standard 55–2023. Environmental parameters, including dry-bulb temperature (Ta), relative humidity (RH), and air velocity (Va), were monitored at eight spatially distributed points per room with a 10 Hz sampling frequency and a one-hour median resolution. The mean radiant temperature (Tr) was approximated as equal to Ta due to the absence of globe temperature measurements, and this simplification is discussed as a limitation. Simultaneously, through a single-session questionnaire (June 24–30) compliant with ISO 10551 and the Appendix B requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 55, which paired each respondent’s retrospective recall of the early-June pre-DEC (non-cooled) condition with a concurrent vote collected during DEC operation—a recalled-pre/concurrent-post design rather than two separate real-time pre-/post-intervention surveys—data on clothing ensembles, activity levels, and subjective thermal sensation votes (TSV) were collected. The acquired data were input into a customized simulation platform developed in the Fortran language (which was debugged and cross-validated against the ISO 7730/ASHRAE Standard 55 reference implementation to within 0.01 PMV scale units), which employs the Fanger two-node thermoregulation model to accurately calculate and predict the predicted mean vote (PMV), predicted percentage of dissatisfied (PPD) occupants, new effective temperature (ET*), and standard effective temperature (SET*). The results indicate that the DEC unit achieved a stable outlet temperature reduction of Δt = 3.87 °C (inlet temperature 31.72 °C, outlet temperature 27.85 °C), with an average wet-bulb air temperature of 18.66 °C and an average outlet relative humidity of 58.3% (inlet RH: 42.1%), confirming the expected humidifying effect of direct evaporative cooling while maintaining an average indoor relative humidity of 42.07%—a result particularly relevant to Beijing’s dry-to-semi-humid summer environment, where evaporative cooling is thermodynamically favorable. Because no DEC-off baseline period was monitored, the measured indoor conditions are reported as observational associations with DEC operation rather than as effects attributable exclusively to the unit; the pre-DEC satisfaction level was recalled retrospectively within the same single session and is therefore subject to recall/contrast bias; and all energy-saving figures are theoretical nameplate estimates rather than metered energy consumption. Full article

Heat stress has become a major concern for the organization of outdoor sporting events under a warming climate, yet climatological decision-support frameworks remain scarce for African Olympic venues. This study aims to characterize climatological heat risk during the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) and to develop an operational framework to support competition scheduling. Hourly ERA5 reanalysis data (1991–2025), restricted to the official Games period (31 October–13 November), were used to compute the Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) and the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). Long-term trends, climatological diurnal cycles, and hourly probabilities of exceeding operational heat-stress thresholds were analyzed across the three competition zones (Dakar, Diamniadio, and Saly). Heat stress increased significantly over the study period, with WBGT P90 trends ranging from +0.33 to +0.47 °C decade⁻¹, while UTCI P90 also increased significantly in Dakar and Diamniadio. A persistent spatial gradient (Saly > Diamniadio > Dakar) was identified, and the highest heat-stress levels consistently occurred between 11:00 and 17:00, peaking around 14:00–15:00. Integrating WBGT and UTCI within a hierarchical decision-support framework showed that early morning (before 09:00) and evening (after 19:00) provide the most favorable periods for outdoor competitions, whereas midday requires precautionary measures or schedule adjustments, particularly in Saly and Diamniadio. These findings demonstrate that climatological information can be translated into actionable climate services supporting heat-risk management for major sporting events. Although intended for long-term planning, the proposed framework should be complemented by real-time weather forecasts during the Games to support operational decision making. Full article

In the broader context of ecological transition, it is essential to identify solutions that ensure indoor environmental quality encompassing thermal, visual, acoustic, and indoor air quality conditions to safeguard occupant health and well-being. These solutions should also meet the demand for energy-efficient buildings. With specific regard to thermal environments, a distinction must be made between residential and non-residential settings, where comfort conditions can be achieved, and industrial environments, where thermal stress—and consequently health risks—may arise. To evaluate the quality of a thermal environment, key metrics are necessary. These include the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and the Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD) for global thermal comfort, Predicted Heat Strain (PHS) and the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) for hot environments, and Required Insulation (IREQ) for cold environments, all governed by ISO-EN standards. The use of indices in residential and non-residential buildings outlines two critical challenges. The first relates to the fact that, in certain instances involving non-air-conditioned buildings, conditions can be borderline between comfort and thermal stress, which must be accurately identified. Secondly, the application of indices frequently neglects necessary variables, disregarding the fundamental limitations and operational boundaries inherent to both objective and personal input quantities. Moreover, the use of measurement devices inconsistent with the minimum requirements laid down by the standards in the field results in unwanted biases with unforeseeable consequences. This review explores the formulation, use, and limitations of the four indices mentioned, providing a perspective on their future development. It establishes the criteria for reliable long-term assessments of thermal and energy environments, encompassing the analysis of both heat and cold strain. Full article

(1) Background: Climate change is reducing the climatic windows in which outdoor sport and physical activity can be safely practised. Yet, it remains unclear whether the resulting population exposure is distributed evenly across countries or is concentrated in countries with higher socio-economic vulnerability. Here, we assess the country-level distribution of population exposure to sport-relevant heat along a projected socio-economic vulnerability gradient. (2) Methods: We assess a screening-level, population-based proxy of sport-relevant heat exposure, defined by residents living in grid cells experiencing specified afternoon WBGT exceedance frequencies. We first quantify a population exposure burden by combining reconstructed afternoon wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) exceedance frequencies from bias-corrected CMIP6 projections (NEX-GDDP, five-model ensemble) with SSP-consistent gridded population. The resulting grid-cell exposure burden, expressed in person-days yr⁻¹, is aggregated to the country level. Countries are then ranked using a published national socio-economic vulnerability index (GVI), and the distribution of the exposure burden along this vulnerability gradient is quantified using a population-weighted concentration index (CI). The GVI is used as the ranking variable and is not incorporated into a multiplicative vulnerability-weighted risk metric. Two internally coherent futures (SSP1-2.6 and SSP2-4.5, each paired with its corresponding socio-economic pathway) are evaluated at mid-century (2055) and late century (2085). (3) Results: The population exposure burden is concentrated in more vulnerable countries in all scenario–horizon–threshold combinations (CI > 0; 0.09–0.25). Under SSP1-2.6 at mid-century, the five-model mean CI showed a descriptive increase from 0.17 for WBGT ≥ 28 °C to 0.25 for WBGT ≥ 32 °C, although the 95% paired hierarchical-bootstrap interval for the 32-minus-28 °C contrast included zero. By 2085, about 4.11 billion people live in cells experiencing at least 30 days yr⁻¹ with WBGT ≥ 32 °C under SSP2-4.5, compared with 2.14 billion under SSP1-2.6. (4) Conclusions: The results identify projected between-country inequalities in resident population exposure to sport-relevant heat conditions; they do not quantify actual sport participation, athlete exposure or health outcomes. The comparison between SSP1-2.6 and SSP2-4.5 further shows substantial differences in both climatic hazard and population exposure between these two integrated climate–demographic–socio-economic futures. Full article

Rapid growth in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and high-performance computing has substantially increased data centre rack power densities, resulting in higher heat generation and more demanding cooling requirements. As water remains widely used in many cooling systems, understanding the relationship between cooling technologies and water consumption is essential for improving cooling efficiency and sustainability. This paper presents a survey of reported water usage effectiveness (WUE) across 83 data centre entries, providing a combined dataset that links WUE with heat-rejection categories. The reported data shows that 23 of these data centres exceed 0.4 L/kWh, which is a sustainability target specified by the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact for new data centres in water-stressed regions using potable water. Dry facilities employing closed-loop liquid cooling require essentially no water, while evaporative systems typically report water usage effectiveness values up to 2.5 L/kWh. Reported WUE is a facility-level operational metric, set by the proportion of the IT heat load rejected by evaporation, which depends on the heat-rejection topology, ambient wet-bulb conditions, and operating set points. A higher server-side heat transfer coefficient permits a higher coolant supply temperature for a given chip temperature limit, widening the range of ambient conditions under which heat can be rejected without evaporative assistance. Server-side heat transfer is therefore an enabling condition for low WUE rather than a determinant of it. One-dimensional heat transfer models are developed to estimate heat transfer coefficients for different server-level cooling mechanisms widely used for cooling servers within data centres, including air cooling, single-phase immersion cooling, direct liquid cooling, and two-phase immersion cooling. Air cooling, with the lowest heat transfer coefficient, remains widely used in small-scale facilities, whereas direct liquid cooling and two-phase immersion cooling achieve coefficients up to three orders of magnitude higher and are increasingly deployed in high-density installations. These coefficients are used to derive an equivalent evaporative water demand, an upper-bound estimate of the water that would be evaporated in rejecting the heat each mechanism removes; it shares the units of reported WUE but describes thermal capability rather than facility water consumption. Full article

Although conventionally quantified as an urban–rural thermal anomaly, urban heat islands are systematic expressions of development choices that shape unequal exposures and health risks across cities. This article develops an integrated urban development-health framework explaining how imperviousness, vegetation deficit, landscape configuration, urban morphology, thermally absorptive materials and nocturnal heat retention connect heat exposure with physical disease, mental well-being and climate-responsive planning. A critical integrative review reported using PRISMA 2020 and PRISMA-ScR principles, organised evidence from urban climate, public health, environmental epidemiology and planning. The synthesis covers the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), Local Climate Zones (LCZs), sky-view factor (SVF), height-to-width ratio (H/W), land-surface temperature (LST), Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET), wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) and nocturnal minimum temperature, together with cardiovascular, respiratory, psychiatric, sleep, mortality and well-being outcomes. Six recurrent amplification pathways were identified: imperviousness and low canopy cover; nocturnal heat retention; social vulnerability; blue-green and cool infrastructure; heat–pollution–humidity interaction; and sleep/mental-health disruption. The Urban Heat-Health Development Index (UHHDI) and Urban Heat-Health Amplification Pattern (UHHAP) are proposed as transparent, review-derived tools for urban diagnosis and policy prioritisation. A Spanish/Mediterranean climatic-zone transition analysis illustrates how future climatic severity can be translated into planning-relevant exposure potential. The findings support a shift from simply describing urban heat to diagnosing development-driven heat-health risk, with implications for urban regeneration, thermal justice, public-health adaptation and healthy-city governance. Full article

Compound hot–humid events are placing increasing pressure on urban health and land-use governance as climate warming and urban expansion continue. This study examined urban built-up areas in 21 prefecture-level cities and prefectures of Sichuan Province for 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, and 2024. Using the IPCC hazard–exposure–vulnerability framework, ERA5-Land, MODIS land-cover, GHSL population, and socioeconomic data were combined to construct the Humid Heat Hazard Index (HI), Population-Density Exposure Index (EI), Socioeconomic Vulnerability Index (VI), and Comprehensive Urban Heat–Humidity Risk Index (HHRI). Contribution decomposition, LISA, and standard deviation ellipse analysis were then used to examine risk changes and spatial patterns. The mean HHRI decreased from 0.42 to 0.24, but rebounds appeared in 2010 and 2024. HI varied strongly among years and drove short-term risk changes, EI declined continuously, and VI dropped from 0.87 to 0.30, making it the main factor behind long-term risk reduction. Higher-risk areas were mainly located in southern Sichuan, southeastern Sichuan, and the central-eastern Sichuan Basin. LISA results showed high-risk clusters in basin cities and low-risk clusters on the western Sichuan Plateau. The standard deviation ellipse remained mostly within the basin and followed the basin urban belt. Future adaptation should combine public-service improvement with heat warnings, cooling services, and emergency preparedness. Full article

To advance the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality alongside the global energy transition, energy conservation and carbon reduction in refrigeration and air-conditioning systems have garnered widespread attention. Dew-point evaporative cooling (DPEC) represents a promising energy-efficient cooling technology, whose performance is strongly governed by the water supply strategy. This study presents a systematic comparison of falling-film and atomization water supply modes on a counter-flow DPEC test bench featuring 3D-printed palm fiber filament walls. Experiments were conducted over inlet air temperatures of 32–50 °C, velocities of 1.3–4.0 m/s, and a range of water supply temperatures. The results demonstrate that the falling-film mode yields 15–25% higher dew-point efficiency than the atomization mode under baseline operating conditions. Water supply temperature (15–30 °C) exerts a negligible influence on falling-film cooling performance. The hybrid falling-film–atomization mode achieves the highest cooling capacity in the medium-to-low air velocity range, with a maximum wet-bulb efficiency of 1.15, while the falling-film mode yields the highest COP of up to 2.2. These findings offer experimental guidance for optimizing water supply strategies in fiber-wall DPEC systems. Full article

Water scarcity in the Peruvian Altiplano demands irrigation strategies that optimise water use without compromising agricultural productivity. The objective of this study was to compare the effects of drip irrigation and micro-sprinkler irrigation on the agronomic development, water balance, and yield of Chinese garlic (Allium sativum L.) in the community of Challapujo, Ilave, Puno, during the 2021–2022 growing season. Six plots were evaluated under two localised irrigation treatments: T-1 (drip) and T-2 (micro-sprinkler). The irrigation scheduling was based on a daily water balance, accounting for evapotranspiration, precipitation, effective root depth, and soil moisture thresholds. The soil exhibited analogous hydro-physical characteristics across treatments, with a bulk density of 1.28 g cm⁻³, a field capacity of 20.31%, and a permanent wilting point of 10.33% for T-1 and values of 1.31 g cm⁻³, 19.99%, and 10.16%, respectively, for T-2. The C-factor was calculated based the actual volume applied and the effectively wetted area, estimated at 80% for drip irrigation and close to 100% for micro-sprinklers. During the 190-day growing period, 84 effective irrigation events and a cumulative precipitation of 424.30 mm were recorded. Treatment T-1 required 1099.98 min of irrigation and applied 223.87 mm, whereas T-2 required 1280.75 min and 346.76 mm; this represented an absolute saving of 122.89 mm and a 35.5% reduction in favour of drip irrigation. Nevertheless, no significant differences were observed regarding to plant height, pseudostem diameter, leaf length, pre-bulbing stage, number of leaves, or yield—with values of 14.70 t ha⁻¹ for T-1 and 14.83 t ha⁻¹ for T-2. In conclusion, both systems yielded equivalent agronomic results, but drip irrigation demonstrated superior water-use efficiency, making it a technically favourable alternative for high-Andean production systems with limited water availability. Full article