Historic cities such as Old Najaf are challenged with balancing the preservation of their cultural and architectural heritage against the pressures of modern urban development. Being one of the major religious centers for Shia Islam, Old Najaf receives annual millions of pilgrims and tourists, pressuring its infrastructure and threatening its historic façade. The aim of this study was to explore the viability of integrated approaches that balance heritage conservation with sustainable urban development, and lessons learned from international best practices, as well as stakeholder perspectives on this issue in the face of these challenges. This prompted the study to identify the challenges and opportunities for the heritage preservation and sustainable development in Old Najaf. It aims to comprehend the way residents and experts understand the dynamics of these layers through a mixed methods approach as well as derive actionable lessons learned after comparative analyses with case studies in Fes, Morocco and Kyoto, Japan. The study also explores the role that emerging technologies, regulation, and citizen engagement can play in addressing this trade-off education about Artificial Intelligence. The study shows that the major impediments for Old Najaf heritage are unplanned urban growth, inadequate infrastructure and mass tourism. Survey responses show that both residents and experts prioritize stricter zoning laws at the city's level, improved infrastructure for those corridors and sustainable tourism practices. In Fes, a city already leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as digital twins in urban planning, and building on advances made by Kyoto in GIS, comparative insights from both cities show the need to embed advanced technologies within strong policy frameworks supported by community-led initiatives. The findings underscore the need for holistic and context-sensitive strategies to protect the cultural heritage of Old Najaf, in line with sustainable development. ©2025 The authors.
Monitoring lotic ecosystems is vital for addressing sustainability issues. The Al-Shamiyah River is the primary source of water for various daily activities in the Al-Shamiyah district. This study assessed the pollution levels of the river by measuring the concentration and distribution of heavy metals—specifically chromium, cadmium, manganese, copper, zinc, and lead—in both the river's water and sediments. The concentrations of heavy metals in the water ranged from 0.05 to 1.44µg/ L for copper (Cu), 1.57 to 7.25µg/ L for manganese (Mn), 0 to 1.7µg/ L for cadmium (Cd), 0.02 to 1.33µg/ L for lead (Pb), 0.08 to 2.74µg/ L for zinc (Zn), and 0.44 to 1.84µg/ L for chromium (Cr). In the particulate phase, the concentrations ranged from
... Show MoreRecent phosphorus (P) pollution in the United States, mainly in Maine, has raised some severe concerns over the use of P fertilizer application rates in agriculture. Phosphorus is the second most limiting nutrient after nitrogen and has damaging impacts on crop yield if found to be deficient. Therefore, farmers tend to apply more P than is required to satisfy any P loss after its application at planting. Several important questions were raised in this study to improve P efficiency and reduce its pollution. The objective of this study was to find potential reasons for P pollution in water bodies despite a decrease in potato acreage. Historically, the potato was found to be responsible for P water contamination due to its high P sensitivity a
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The organization of sporting activities at the local and international levels requires a lot of money, which has increased interest in marketing in the sports field, as it is one of the modern topics that represent the basic knowledge needed by the sports marketer and which represents one of the basic concepts to enhance the benefits and returns of sports clubs. The research problem was the weak awareness of the members of the administrative body of Iraqi sports clubs of the role of sports marketing in the dimensions of competitive superiority and not exploiting them in the optimal way that enables clubs to achieve competitive superiority. The research aims to know the role of sports marketing in competitive superi
... Show MoreThe emergence of oil fields and subsequent changes in adjacent land use are known to affect settlements and communities. Everywhere the industry emerges, there is little understanding about the impact of oil fields on land use in the surrounding areas. The oil industry in Iraq is one of the most important industries and is almost the main industry in the Iraqi economic sector, and it is very clear that this industry is spread over large areas, and at the same time adjoins with population communities linked to it developmentally.
The rapid development and expansion of oil extraction activities in various regions has led to many challenges related to land-use planning and management. Here, the problem of research arises on th
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The research aimed to prepare an audit program focusing on the activities of municipal institutions related to the environmental dimension as one of the dimensions of sustainable development, and applying the program for the purpose of preparing an oversight report related to assessing the impact of the activities of municipal institutions on the environmental reality as the main channel through which municipal institutions contribute to achieving the part related to it. Among the requirements of sustainable development, the proposed program was prepared and applied to the institutions affiliated to the Directorate of Mu
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The internal control is the tool through which it is possible to verify and ensure the implementation of tasks in accordance with the established plans and programs and to evaluate the level of performance that is implemented within the different companies.
A guarantee from the supplier with the absence of a specialized technical committee that follows up the stages of implementing the contract and disbursing all amounts of financial dues to the supplier before completing the implementation of the contract and overlooking the non-implementation of some clauses of the contract by the committee in charge of
... Show MoreThe current research seeks to Analyze third intermediate chemistry book following sustainable development standards for academic year (2016-2017). To do this, a list of sustainable development standards that should be included in chemistry book was designed based on the previous studies. The first version of the list consisted of (50) sub-case divided into three standards (social, economic, and environmental) which was exposed to group of experts in teaching chemistry and teaching methods. The list has modified to (43) sub-case. The researcher followed the implicit and explicit meaning in his analysis: one for recording and repetition and the other for frequency. The result showed that third intermediate chemistry book has achieved (20)
... Show MoreThe objective of this research is to analyze the content of science textbook at the elementary level, according to the dimensions of sustainable development for the academic year (2015-2016). To achieve this goal has been to build a list with dimensions of sustainable development to be included in science textbooks in primary school, after seeing the collection of literature and research and studies, as has been reached to the list of the dimensions of the three sustainable development and social, economic and environmental in the initial image consisted of (63) the issue of sub-divided the three-dimensional, the menu and offered a group of arbitrators and specialists in curriculum and teaching methods, and thus the menu consiste
... Show MoreReservoir quality assessment is important for detecting hydrocarbon-bearing zones and guiding future enhancement strategies. This study presents a detailed petrophysical evaluation of the Mishrif Formation in the Buzurgan Oilfield, which was selected due to its strategic value through its significant remaining reserves which making it an ideal candidate for advanced evaluation techniques. This study aims for shale content, porosity, permeability, water saturation, net to gross, and lithology determination. Well log and core data were used together to establish accurate property estimations. Permeability prediction through conventional methods, like core permeability-porosity correlations, was highly dispersive due to the heterogenei
... Show MoreCommunity detection is useful for better understanding the structure of complex networks. It aids in the extraction of the required information from such networks and has a vital role in different fields that range from healthcare to regional geography, economics, human interactions, and mobility. The method for detecting the structure of communities involves the partitioning of complex networks into groups of nodes, with extensive connections within community and sparse connections with other communities. In the literature, two main measures, namely the Modularity (Q) and Normalized Mutual Information (NMI) have been used for evaluating the validation and quality of the detected community structures. Although many optimization algo
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