Education for Sustainable Development

The U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development has collected resources to help educators and the general public understand sustainable development (creating healthy ecosystems, communities and economies). Resources are categorized into youth, K-12, higher education, business, faith and funding. Educational levels: Primary elementary, Intermediate elementary, Middle school, High school, Undergraduate lower division, Undergraduate upper division, Graduate or professional, General public

Standardization Framework for Sustainability from Circular Economy 4.0

The circular economy (CE) is widely known as a way to implement and achieve sustainability, mainly due to its contribution towards the separation of biological and technical nutrients under cyclic industrial metabolism. The incorporation of the principles of the CE in the links of the value chain of the various sectors of the economy strives to ensure circularity, safety, and efficiency. The framework proposed is aligned with the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development regarding the orientation towards the mitigation and regeneration of the metabolic rift by considering a double perspective. Firstly, it strives to conceptualize the CE as a paradigm of sustainability. Its principles are established, and its techniques and tools are organized into two frameworks oriented towards causes (cradle to cradle) and effects (life cycle assessment), and these are structured under the three pillars of sustainability, for their projection within the proposed framework. Secondly, a framework is established to facilitate the implementation of the CE with the use of standards, which constitute the requirements, tools, and indicators to control each life cycle phase, and of key enabling technologies (KETs) that add circular value 4.0 to the socio-ecological transition

Managing stimulation of regional innovation subjects’ interaction in the digital economy

The reported study was funded by RFBR according to the research project No. 18-01000204_a, No. 16-07-00031_a, No. 18-07-00975_a.Purpose: The article is devoted to solving fundamental scientific problems in the scope of the development of forecasting modeling methods and evaluation of regional company’s innovative development parameters, synthesizing new methods of big data processing and intelligent analysis, as well as methods of knowledge eliciting and forecasting the dynamics of regional innovation developments through benchmarking. Design/Methodology/Approach: For regional economic development, it is required to identify the mechanisms that contribute to (or impede) the innovative economic development of the regions. The synergetic approach to management is based on the fact that there are multiple paths of IS development (scenarios with different probabilities), although it is necessary to reach the required attractor by meeting the management goals. Findings: The present research is focused on obtainment of new knowledge in creating a technique of multi-agent search, collection and processing of data on company’s innovative development indicators, models and methods of intelligent analysis of the collected data. Practical Implications: The author developed recommendations before starting the process of institutional changes in a specific regional innovation system. The article formulates recommendations on the implementation of institutional changes in the region taking into account the sociocultural characteristics of the region’s population. Originality/Value: It is the first time, when a complex of models and methods is based on the use of a convergent model of large data volumes processing is presented.peer-reviewe

Assessment of sustainable collaboration in collaborative business ecosystems

Advances in information and communication technologies and, more specifically, in artificial intelligence resulted in more intelligent systems, which, in the business world, particularly in collaborative business ecosystems, can lead to a more streamlined, effective, and sustainable processes. Following the design science research method, this article presents a simulation model, which includes a performance assessment and influence mechanism to evaluate and influence the collaboration of the organisations in a business ecosystem. The establishment of adequate performance indicators to assess the organisations can act as an influencing factor of their behaviour, contributing to enhancing their performance and improving the ecosystem collaboration sustainability. As such, several scenarios are presented shaping the simulation model with actual data gathered from three IT industry organisations running in the same business ecosystem, assessed by a set of proposed performance indicators. The resulting outcomes show that the collaboration can be measured, and the organisations' behaviour can be influenced by varying the weights of the performance indicators adopted by the CBE manager.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

On the feasibility of collaborative green data center ecosystems

The increasing awareness of the impact of the IT sector on the environment, together with economic factors, have fueled many research efforts to reduce the energy expenditure of data centers. Recent work proposes to achieve additional energy savings by exploiting, in concert with customers, service workloads and to reduce data centers’ carbon footprints by adopting demand-response mechanisms between data centers and their energy providers. In this paper, we debate about the incentives that customers and data centers can have to adopt such measures and propose a new service type and pricing scheme that is economically attractive and technically realizable. Simulation results based on real measurements confirm that our scheme can achieve additional energy savings while preserving service performance and the interests of data centers and customers.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Values-Based Network Leadership in an Interconnected World

This paper describes values-based network leadership conceptually aligned to systems science, principles of networks, moral and ethical development, and connectivism. Values-based network leadership places importance on a leader\u27s repertoire of skills for stewarding a culture of purpose and calling among distributed teams in a globally interconnected world. Values-based network leadership is applicable for any leader needing to align interdependent effort by networks of teams operating across virtual and physical environments to achieve a collective purpose. An open-learning ecosystem is also described to help leaders address the development of strengths associated with building trust and relationships across networks of teams, aligned under a higher purpose and calling, possessing moral fiber, resilient in the face of complexity, reflectively competent to adapt as interconnected efforts evolve and change within multicultural environments, and able to figure out new ways to do something never done before

Eco‐Holonic 4.0 Circular Business Model to Conceptualize Sustainable Value Chain Towards Digital Transition

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a circular business model based on an Eco-Holonic Architecture, through the integration of circular economy and holonic principles. A conceptual model is developed to manage the complexity of integrating circular economy principles, digital transformation, and tools and frameworks for sustainability into business models. The proposed architecture is multilevel and multiscale in order to achieve the instantiation of the sustainable value chain in any territory. The architecture promotes the incorporation of circular economy and holonic principles into new circular business models. This integrated perspective of business model can support the design and upgrade of the manufacturing companies in their respective industrial sectors. The conceptual model proposed is based on activity theory that considers the interactions between technical and social systems and allows the mitigation of the metabolic rift that exists between natural and social metabolism. This study contributes to the existing literature on circular economy, circular business models and activity theory by considering holonic paradigm concerns, which have not been explored yet. This research also offers a unique holonic architecture of circular business model by considering different levels, relationships, dynamism and contextualization (territory) aspects

Freshwater ecosystem services in mining regions : modelling options for policy development support

The ecosystem services (ES) approach offers an integrated perspective of social-ecological systems, suitable for holistic assessments of mining impacts. Yet for ES models to be policy-relevant, methodological consensus in mining contexts is needed. We review articles assessing ES in mining areas focusing on freshwater components and policy support potential. Twenty-six articles were analysed concerning (i) methodological complexity (data types, number of parameters, processes and ecosystem-human integration level) and (ii) potential applicability for policy development (communication of uncertainties, scenario simulation, stakeholder participation and management recommendations). Articles illustrate mining impacts on ES through valuation exercises mostly. However, the lack of ground-and surface-water measurements, as well as insufficient representation of the connectivity among soil, water and humans, leave room for improvements. Inclusion of mining-specific environmental stressors models, increasing resolution of topographies, determination of baseline ES patterns and inclusion of multi-stakeholder perspectives are advantageous for policy support. We argue that achieving more holistic assessments exhorts practitioners to aim for high social-ecological connectivity using mechanistic models where possible and using inductive methods only where necessary. Due to data constraints, cause-effect networks might be the most feasible and best solution. Thus, a policy-oriented framework is proposed, in which data science is directed to environmental modelling for analysis of mining impacts on water ES

Stakeholder engagement in sustainable housing refurbishment in the UK

The UK government is committed to effectively implement a viable sustainable agenda in the social housing sector. To this end housing associations and local authorities are being encouraged to improve the environmental performance of their new and existing homes. Whilst much attention has been focused on new housing (e.g. the Code for Sustainable Homes) little effort has been focussed on improving the 3.9 (approx) million homes maintained and managed by the public sector (in England), which, given the low rate of new build and demolition (<1% in England), will represent approximately 70% of the public housing stock in 2050. Thus, if UK is to achieve sustainable public housing the major effort will have to focus on the existing stock. However, interpreting the sustainability agenda for an existing housing portfolio is not a straight foreword activity. In addition to finding a ‘technical’ solution, landlords also haveto address the socio-economic issues that balance quality of expectations of tenants with the economic realities of funding social housing refurbishment. This paper will report the findings of a qualitative study (participatory approach) that examined the processes by which a large public landlord sought to develop a long-term sustainable housing strategy. Through a series of individual meetings and group workshops the research team identified: committed leadership; attitudes towards technology; social awareness; and collective understanding of the sustainability agenda as key issues that the organisation needed to address in developing a robust and defendable refurbishment strategy. The paper concludes that the challenges faced by the landlord in improving the sustainability of their existing stock are not primarily technical, but socio-economic. Further, while the economic challenges: initial capital cost; lack of funding; and pay-back periods can be overcome, if the political will exists, by fiscal measures; the social challenges: health & wellbeing; poverty; security; space needs; behaviour change; education; and trust; are much more complex in nature and will require a coordinated approach from all the stakeholders involved in the wider community if they are to be effectively addressed. The key challenge to public housing landlords is to develop mechanisms that can identify and interpret the complex nature of the social sustainability agenda in a way that reflects local aspirations (although the authors believe the factors will exist in all social housing communities, their relative importance is likely to vary between communities) whilst addressing Government agendas

The changing face of innovation policy: implications for the Northern Ireland economy

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