Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

Artists' Game Mods and the New Public Sphere

2011-07-27As of 2010, there are 183 million active gamers in the United States, each of whom plays at an average of 13 hours a week. Forty-nine percent of these players are between the ages of 18 and 49, and two out of every five of them are female. Following in a tradition of tactical interventions in mainstream media, contemporary North American artists are working with videogames as a means to engage the public in a discussion of the repercussions and possibilities of an increasingly digitized world. Artists’ games like Anne-Marie Schleiner, Brody Condon and Joan Leandre’s Velvet-Strike (2002) and Zach Gage’s Lose/Lose (2009) confront these issues by creating “mods,” or alterations of popular games. These artists use familiar reference points as catalysts for engaging new publics in conversations about contemporary art and the culture industry

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Circular Economy and Sustainable Development: A Systematic Literature Review

Circular Economy put forth as an alternative to traditional linear model of extract-use-dispose along with the concept of Sustainable Development encompassing economic, environmental, and social aspects have garnered tremendous impetus among academics, practitioners and policymakers alike. The UN Sustainable Development Goals embraced by the member nations in 2015 based on the preceding Millenium Development Goals have been placed as the targets to be achieved as a part of holistic human development. In this backdrop, this paper examines the intersection of sustainability and circular economy with a focus on the three aspects of sustainable development, first the economic aspect by examining the relationship between GDP and circular economy, second the social economic aspect within the interaction of Circular Economy with Sustainable development and third the environmental-economical aspect by examining circularity and sustainability in waste management and waste valorisation. This paper achieves its objective through a systematic literature review of 1748 journal articles collected from Web of Science and SCOPUS database following PRISMA standards, network analysis of keywords, and manual review of texts. Four Research Questions are formulated: RQ1: What are the major emergent topics in Circular Economy and Sustainable Development and how are they related? RQ2: What is the relationship among CE and GDP in the CE and Sustainability? RQ3: What are the relationships between CE and Sustainability? RQ4: What are different use cases of valorisation of waste as CE tool, and can valorisation be sustainable? RQ1 is answered by presenting hotspot of research on Circular Economy and Sustainable Development through keywords occurrence network analysis using VosViewer. This study identifies three clusters and seven thematic areas of research, along with 25 most used keywords. RQ2 is attended through review of the relationship between economic growth (Gross Domestic Product) and Circular Economy and proposes based on the review that CE is still at its infancy. The paper also discusses the appropriateness of using GDP as a measure of sustainable development. This paper addresses RQ3 by examining the relationship between Circular Economy and Sustainable Development through review of literatures. The indicators used to measure CE and SD are also discussed and summarised. This review finds that achieving SDGs require greater effort, and that the present status of achievement is a bleak picture. Further, the role of waste management and potentiality of waste valorisation to aid in circular economy and sustainable development is analysed to answer RQ4. Though there are ample potential, however the recycle rate is very minimal to quench the required level of circularity. While CE and SD are related, CE cannot be a universal panacea to global challenges like emissions reduction, energy consumption, climate change, gender equality, poverty, well-being, environmental protection etc. even though the impact of CE to achieve SD can be substantial. The paper recommends avenues for future research and presents the conclusion of the study

Portugal SB13: contribution of sustainable building to meet EU 20-20-20 targets

Proceedings of the International Conference Portugal SB13: contribution of sustainable building to meet EU 20-20-20 targetsThe international conference Portugal SB13 is organized by the University of Minho, the Technical University of Lisbon and the Portuguese Chapter of the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment in Guimarães, Portugal, from the 30th of October till the 1st of November 2013. This conference is included in the Sustainable Building Conference Series 2013-2014 (SB13-14) that are being organized all over the world. The event is supported by high prestige partners, such as the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) and the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment (iiSBE). Portugal SB13 is focused on the theme â Sustainable Building Contribution to Achieve the European Union 20-20-20 Targetsâ . These targets, known as the â EU 20-20-20â targets, set three key objectives for 2020: - A 20% reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels; - Raising the share of EU energy consumption produced from renewable resources to 20%; - A 20% improvement in the EU's energy efficiency. Building sector uses about 40% of global energy, 25% of global water, 40% of global resources and emit approximately 1/3 of the global greenhouse gas emissions (the largest contributor). Residential and commercial buildings consume approximately 60% of the worldâ s electricity. Existing buildings represent significant energy saving opportunities because their performance level is frequently far below the current efficiency potentials. Energy consumption in buildings can be reduced by 30 to 80% using proven and commercially available technologies. Investment in building energy efficiency is accompanied by significant direct and indirect savings, which help offset incremental costs, providing a short return on investment period. Therefore, buildings offer the greatest potential for achieving significant greenhouse gas emission reductions, at least cost, in developed and developing countries. On the other hand, there are many more issues related to the sustainability of the built environment than energy. The building sector is responsible for creating, modifying and improving the living environment of the humanity. Construction and buildings have considerable environmental impacts, consuming a significant proportion of limited resources of the planet including raw material, water, land and, of course, energy. The building sector is estimated to be worth 10% of global GDP (5.5 trillion EUR) and employs 111 million people. In developing countries, new sustainable construction opens enormous opportunities because of the population growth and the increasing prosperity, which stimulate the urbanization and the construction activities representing up to 40% of GDP. Therefore, building sustainably will result in healthier and more productive environments. The sustainability of the built environment, the construction industry and the related activities are a pressing issue facing all stakeholders in order to promote the Sustainable Development. The Portugal SB13 conference topics cover a wide range of up-to-date issues and the contributions received from the delegates reflect critical research and the best available practices in the Sustainable Building field. The issues presented include: - Nearly Zero Energy Buildings - Policies for Sustainable Construction - High Performance Sustainable Building Solutions - Design and Technologies for Energy Efficiency - Innovative Construction Systems - Building Sustainability Assessment Tools - Renovation and Retrofitting - Eco-Efficient Materials and Technologies - Urban Regeneration - Design for Life Cycle and Reuse - LCA of sustainable materials and technologies All the articles selected for presentation at the conference and published in these Proceedings, went through a refereed review process and were evaluated by, at least, two reviewers. The Organizers want to thank all the authors who have contributed with papers for publication in the proceedings and to all reviewers, whose efforts and hard work secured the high quality of all contributions to this conference. A special gratitude is also addressed to Eng. José Amarílio Barbosa and to Eng. Catarina Araújo that coordinated the Secretariat of the Conference. Finally, Portugal SB13 wants to address a special thank to CIB, UNEP, FIDIC and iiSBE for their support and wish great success for all the other SB13 events that are taking place all over the world

Quantitative Techniques in Participatory Forest Management

Forest management has evolved from a mercantilist view to a multi-functional one that integrates economic, social, and ecological aspects. However, the issue of sustainability is not yet resolved. Quantitative Techniques in Participatory Forest Management brings together global research in three areas of application: inventory of the forest variables that determine the main environmental indices, description and design of new environmental indices, and the application of sustainability indices for regional implementations. All these quantitative techniques create the basis for the development of scientific methodologies of participatory sustainable forest management

Images on the Move

In contemporary society, digital images have become increasingly mobile. They are networked, shared on social media, and circulated across small and portable screens. Accordingly, the discourses of spreadability and circulation have come to supersede the focus on production, indexicality, and manipulability, which had dominated early conceptions of digital photography and film. However, the mobility of images is neither technologically nor conceptually limited to the realm of the digital. The edited volume re-examines the historical, aesthetical, and theoretical relevance of image mobility. The contributors provide a materialist account of images on the move - ranging from wired photography to postcards to streaming media

Skyler and Bliss

Hong Kong remains the backdrop to the science fiction movies of my youth. The city reminds me of my former training in the financial sector. It is a city in which I could have succeeded in finance, but as far as art goes it is a young city, and I am a young artist. A frustration emerges; much like the mould, the artist also had to develop new skills by killing off his former desires and manipulating technology. My new series entitled HONG KONG surface project shows a new direction in my artistic research in which my technique becomes ever simpler, reducing the traces of pixelation until objects appear almost as they were found and photographed. Skyler and Bliss presents tectonic plates based on satellite images of the Arctic. Working in a hot and humid Hong Kong where mushrooms grow ferociously, a city artificially refrigerated by climate control, this series provides a conceptual image of a imaginary typographic map for survival. (Laurent Segretier

Images on the Move: Materiality - Networks - Formats

In contemporary society, digital images have become increasingly mobile. They are networked, shared on social media, and circulated across small and portable screens. Accordingly, the discourses of spreadability and circulation have come to supersede the focus on production, indexicality, and manipulability, which had dominated early conceptions of digital photography and film. However, the mobility of images is neither technologically nor conceptually limited to the realm of the digital. The edited volume re-examines the historical, aesthetical, and theoretical relevance of image mobility. The contributors provide a materialist account of images on the move - ranging from wired photography to postcards to streaming media