THE USEFULNESS OF ANALYTICAL TOOLS FOR SUSTAINABLE FUTURES

The aim of this study is to assess the usefulness of analytical tools for policy evaluation. The study focuses on a multi-method integrated toolkit, the so-called SMILE toolkit. This toolkit consist of the integration of three evaluation frameworks developed within an EU-funded consortium called Development and Comparison of Sustainability (DECOIN) and further applied within the consortium Synergies in Multi-Scale Inter-Linkages of Eco-social systems (SMILE). This toolkit is developed to provide reporting features that are required for monitoring policy-making. The sustainable development perspective is rather difficult to attempt due to its dynamism and its multi-dimensionality. Therefore, in this study, we aim to assess the usefulness of the SMILE toolkit to sustainable development issues on the basis of the critical factors of sustainable development. In other words, here, we will prove the usefulness of the toolkit to help policymakers to think about and work on sustainable developments in the future.

Rumo aos desafios da economia circular : ferramentas de apoio a uma nova estratégia na prática de design

ABSTRACT : The circular economy is a new strategic concept to meet society's needs in a more efficient and sustainable manner based in decoupling the economic growth and welfare from the increase in the consumption of natural resources. It implies the transition from the traditional linear model to a more innovative and circular approach in the development of the economy by designing new products, new services, and new systems, supported, in most cases, by the re-thinking and creation of new business models. Designers and product developers have an important and crucial role to achieve a successful and wide implementation of the concept which has to be accepted and applied in practice by businesses along the whole value chain and meet the current and future needs of consumers and the society. Currently, several methods, principles, practices, tools, training initiatives, and many resources are being developed globally as a result of the wide exploitation of the concept, but there is still a large gap between what is available to companies and designers, and what is applied in practice on product and service development. This paper reflects part of the PhD research project under development by the authors which is based on the promotion of the design practice within Circular Economy. It explores the results of the review of circularity tools available that can be used by design professionals to systematize and guide their development process. The analysis will support the development of a toolkit and guidelines oriented for the practical implementation of the circular economy in the development of innovative and efficient products and services. (Camocho, Ferreira, & Vicente, 2018).A economia circular é um novo conceito estratégico que visa responder às necessidades da sociedade de uma forma mais eficiente e sustentável que se baseia na dissociação entre crescimento económico e bem-estar do aumento do consumo de recursos naturais. Esta transição, do modelo linear tradicional para uma abordagem mais inovadora e circular no desenvolvimento da economia implica o desenvolvimento de novos produtos, novos serviços e novos sistemas, apoiados, na maioria dos casos, no repensar e na criação de novos modelos de negócio. Os designers e os responsáveis pelo desenvolvimento de produtos têm um papel importante e crucial para alcançar uma implementação ampla e bem-sucedida do conceito. Este deve ser aceite e aplicado na prática pelas empresas ao longo de toda a cadeia de valor atendendo às necessidades atuais e futuras dos consumidores e da sociedade. Atualmente, vários métodos, princípios, práticas, ferramentas, iniciativas de formação e outros recursos têm sido desenvolvidos globalmente como resultado da ampla exploração do conceito, no entanto, ainda existe uma grande lacuna entre o que está disponível para empresas e designers e o que é aplicado na prática no desenvolvimento de produtos e serviços. Este artigo reflete parte do projeto de investigação de doutoramento em desenvolvimento pelos autores, o qual se baseia na promoção da prática de design no âmbito da Economia Circular. Explora os resultados da revisão de ferramentas de circularidade disponíveis que podem ser aplicadas pelos profissionais de design na sistematização e orientação do processo de desenvolvimento. Esta análise irá apoiar o desenvolvimento de um conjunto de ferramentas e orientações para a implementação prática da economia circular no desenvolvimento de produtos e serviços mais inovadores e mais eficientes. (Camocho, Ferreira & Vicente, 2018).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Choice architecture and design with intent

Motivation – Choice architecture (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008) is a phrase of the moment among politicians and economists seeking to influence public behaviour, but the relevance of the concept to designers has received little attention. This paper places choice architecture within the context of Design with Intent—design intended to influence user behaviour. Research approach – The concepts are introduced and choice architecture is deconstructed. Findings/Design – Affordances and Simon’s behavioural model (1955) help understand choice architecture in more detail. Research limitations/Implications – This is only a very brief, limited foray into what choice architecture is. Originality/Value – User behaviour can be a major determinant of product efficiency: user decisions can contribute significantly to environmental impacts. Understanding the reasons behind them, a range of design techniques can be identified to help users towards more efficient interactions. Take away message – The intended outcome is a useful design method for helping users use things more efficiently

A Prototype Toolkit For Evaluating Indoor Environmental Quality In Commercial Buildings

Measurement of building environmental parameters is often complex, expensive, and not easily proceduralized in a manner that covers all commercial buildings. Evaluating building indoor environmental quality performance is therefore not standard practice. This project developed a prototype toolkit that addressed existing barriers to widespread indoor environmental quality performance evaluation. A toolkit with both hardware and software elements was designed for practitioners around the indoor environmental quality requirements of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers / Chartered Institution of Building Services / United States Green Building Council Performance Measurement Protocols. This unique toolkit was built on a wireless mesh network with a web-based data collection, analysis, and reporting application. The toolkit provided a fast, robust deployment of sensors, real-time data analysis, Performance Measurement Protocol-based analysis methods and a scorecard and report generation tools. A web-enabled Geographic Information System-based metadata collection system also reduced field-study deployment time. The toolkit was evaluated through three case studies, which were discussed in this report

Progressive Analytics: A Computation Paradigm for Exploratory Data Analysis

Exploring data requires a fast feedback loop from the analyst to the system, with a latency below about 10 seconds because of human cognitive limitations. When data becomes large or analysis becomes complex, sequential computations can no longer be completed in a few seconds and data exploration is severely hampered. This article describes a novel computation paradigm called Progressive Computation for Data Analysis or more concisely Progressive Analytics, that brings at the programming language level a low-latency guarantee by performing computations in a progressive fashion. Moving this progressive computation at the language level relieves the programmer of exploratory data analysis systems from implementing the whole analytics pipeline in a progressive way from scratch, streamlining the implementation of scalable exploratory data analysis systems. This article describes the new paradigm through a prototype implementation called ProgressiVis, and explains the requirements it implies through examples.Comment: 10 page

A practical review of energy saving technology for ageing populations

Fuel poverty is a critical issue for a globally ageing population. Longer heating/cooling requirements combine with declining incomes to create a problem in need of urgent attention. One solution is to deploy technology to help elderly users feel informed about their energy use, and empowered to take steps to make it more cost effective and efficient. This study subjects a broad cross section of energy monitoring and home automation products to a formal ergonomic analysis. A high level task analysis was used to guide a product walk through, and a toolkit approach was used thereafter to drive out further insights. The findings reveal a number of serious usability issues which prevent these products from successfully accessing an important target demographic and associated energy saving and fuel poverty outcomes. Design principles and examples are distilled from the research to enable practitioners to translate the underlying research into high quality design-engineering solutions

Analyzing and Visualizing Cosmological Simulations with ParaView

The advent of large cosmological sky surveys - ushering in the era of precision cosmology - has been accompanied by ever larger cosmological simulations. The analysis of these simulations, which currently encompass tens of billions of particles and up to trillion particles in the near future, is often as daunting as carrying out the simulations in the first place. Therefore, the development of very efficient analysis tools combining qualitative and quantitative capabilities is a matter of some urgency. In this paper we introduce new analysis features implemented within ParaView, a parallel, open-source visualization toolkit, to analyze large N-body simulations. The new features include particle readers and a very efficient halo finder which identifies friends-of-friends halos and determines common halo properties. In combination with many other functionalities already existing within ParaView, such as histogram routines or interfaces to Python, this enhanced version enables fast, interactive, and convenient analyses of large cosmological simulations. In addition, development paths are available for future extensions.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure