228 research outputs found

    Perceptions, Actors, Innovations

    Get PDF
    With Agenda 2030, the UN adopted wide-ranging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that integrate development and environmental agendas. This book has a unique focus on the political tensions between environmental and socio-economic objectives and advocates for a cooperative shift towards environmentally sound sustainability

    Developing green interventions for the implementation of the Water Framework Directive through systems-based economic approaches

    Get PDF
    Across the globe, society faces significant environmental challenges. Deforestation, intensive agriculture, pollution, and overexploitation of natural resources among other pressures create the conditions for natural capital depletion, ultimately jeopardizing economic development. To reverse such trends in the water sector and avoid the collapse of inland water ecosystems, the European Commission introduced the Water Framework Directive. A distinct example of integrated water resources management, the Directive aims to provide a holistic approach of managing inland waters efficiently by substituting previous fragmented legislation that focused on managing different aspects of water resources. Still, despite progress in the Directive’s implementation, approximately half of the EU’s surface waters are not in good condition. Analysing the efforts of Member States to assess the socio-economic dimensions of water ecosystems and develop programmes of measures to achieve the objectives of the Directive, indicates a lack of understanding of what and how should be assessed. The information included in the River Basin Management Plans denotes insufficient connections between pressures and interventions, as well as poor economic analysis that often disregards a great portion of benefits and costs associated with transitioning towards a desired state. To support the implementation of the Directive and to provide a systems thinking perspective on environmental management decisions, the presented work blends ecosystem services with economic methodologies, develops integrated tools and approaches and tests their applicability in real cases. Findings show that such tools improve the robustness of the socioeconomic assessments of proposed measures and have the potential to engage stakeholders in the process. Additionally, they enable the use of natural capital accounting methodologies to improve the understanding of the connection between management interventions and the overall system status. Furthermore, the included research assesses the effectiveness of nature-based approaches as interventions on the system to influence the interactions of components within socioecological systems and drive them towards the desired state. Additionally, given the way economic dimensions permeate decision-making processes and current debates on environmental management, the current thesis proposes an alternative vision for the sustainable use of natural resources. Overall, the undertaken research demonstrates the need for using economic tools through a systems prism for the implementation of the Water Framework Directive and environmental policies in general to deliver socioecological improvements.Open Acces

    A space-time model for demand in free-floating carsharing systems

    Get PDF
    A novel model approach is proposed to estimate the spatiotemporal distribution of demand for free-floating carsharing. The proposed model is based on a Poisson regression model for right-censored data and estimates possibly time-varying demand rates of small subareas of a service region based on booking data with spatiotemporal information on pickups and dropoffs of cars. The approach allows operators to gain insights into the spatiotemporal distribution of demand for their service and to estimate the loss of demand due to unavailability of cars. Moreover, it can also be used as an input to improve the design of the service, through relocation techniques or to analyze the service with macrosimulation models. In addition, the approach is applied to a case study with real data

    A space-time model for demand in free-floating carsharing systems

    Full text link
    A novel model approach is proposed to estimate the spatiotemporal distribution of demand for free-floating carsharing. The proposed model is based on a Poisson regression model for right-censored data and estimates possibly time-varying demand rates of small subareas of a service region based on booking data with spatiotemporal information on pickups and dropoffs of cars. The approach allows operators to gain insights into the spatiotemporal distribution of demand for their service and to estimate the loss of demand due to unavailability of cars. Moreover, it can also be used as an input to improve the design of the service, through relocation techniques or to analyze the service with macrosimulation models. In addition, the approach is applied to a case study with real data

    Estimación del impacto ambiental y social de los nuevos servicios de movilidad

    Get PDF
    El transporte es fuente de numerosas externalidades negativas, como los accidentes de tráfico, la congestión en las zonas urbanas y la falta de calidad del aire. El transporte también es un sector que contribuye sustancialmente a la crisis climática con más del 16% de las emisiones globales de gases de efecto invernadero como resultado de las actividades de transporte. Muchos creen que la introducción de nuevos servicios de movilidad podría ayudar a reducir esas externalidades. Sin embargo, con cada introducción de un nuevo servicio de movilidad podemos observar factores que podrían contribuir negativamente a la sostenibilidad del sistema de transporte: una cadena de cambios de comportamiento causados por la introducción de posibilidades completamente nuevas. El objetivo de esta tesis es investigar cómo los nuevos servicios de movilidad, habilitados por la electrificación, la conectividad y la automatización, podrían impactar en las externalidades causadas por el transporte. En particular, el objetivo es desarrollar y validar un marco de modelado capaz de capturar la complejidad del sistema de transporte y aplicarlo para evaluar el impacto potencial de los vehículos automatizados.Transport is a source of numerous negative externalities, such as road accidents, congestion in urban areas and lacking air quality. Transport is also a sector substantially contributing to climate crisis with more than 16% of global greenhouse gas emissions being a result of transport activities. Many believe that the introduction of new mobility services could help reduce those externalities. However, with each introduction of a new mobility service we can observe factors that could negatively contribute to the sustainability of the transport system – a chain of behavioural changes caused by introduction of entirely new possibilities. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the new mobility services, enabled by electrification, connectivity and automation, could impact the externalities caused by transport. In particular the objective is to develop and validate a modelling framework able to capture the complexity of the transport system and to apply it to assess the potential impact of automated vehicles.This work was realised with the collaboration of the European Commission Joint Research Centre under the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Agreement N035297. Moreover, this research has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the project: AUTONOMOUS – InnovAtive Urban and Transport planning tOols for the implementation of New mObility systeMs based On aUtonomouS driving”, 2020-2023, ERDF (EU) (PID2019-110355RB-I00)

    Applications

    Get PDF
    Volume 3 describes how resource-aware machine learning methods and techniques are used to successfully solve real-world problems. The book provides numerous specific application examples: in health and medicine for risk modelling, diagnosis, and treatment selection for diseases in electronics, steel production and milling for quality control during manufacturing processes in traffic, logistics for smart cities and for mobile communications

    A review of commercialisation mechanisms for carbon dioxide removal

    Get PDF
    The deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) needs to be scaled up to achieve net zero emission pledges. In this paper we survey the policy mechanisms currently in place globally to incentivise CDR, together with an estimate of what different mechanisms are paying per tonne of CDR, and how those costs are currently distributed. Incentive structures are grouped into three structures, market-based, public procurement, and fiscal mechanisms. We find the majority of mechanisms currently in operation are underresourced and pay too little to enable a portfolio of CDR that could support achievement of net zero. The majority of mechanisms are concentrated in market-based and fiscal structures, specifically carbon markets and subsidies. While not primarily motivated by CDR, mechanisms tend to support established afforestation and soil carbon sequestration methods. Mechanisms for geological CDR remain largely underdeveloped relative to the requirements of modelled net zero scenarios. Commercialisation pathways for CDR require suitable policies and markets throughout the projects development cycle. Discussion and investment in CDR has tended to focus on technology development. Our findings suggest that an equal or greater emphasis on policy innovation may be required if future requirements for CDR are to be met. This study can further support research and policy on the identification of incentive gaps and realistic potential for CDR globally

    PROCEEDINGS 5th PLATE Conference

    Get PDF
    The 5th international PLATE conference (Product Lifetimes and the Environment) addressed product lifetimes in the context of sustainability. The PLATE conference, which has been running since 2015, has successfully been able to establish a solid network of researchers around its core theme. The topic has come to the forefront of current (political, scientific & societal) debates due to its interconnectedness with a number of recent prominent movements, such as the circular economy, eco-design and collaborative consumption. For the 2023 edition of the conference, we encouraged researchers to propose how to extend, widen or critically re-construct thematic sessions for the PLATE conference, and the paper call was constructed based on these proposals. In this 5th PLATE conference, we had 171 paper presentations and 238 participants from 14 different countries. Beside of paper sessions we organized workshops and REPAIR exhibitions
    corecore