Sustainable Transformation of Individuals and Families: Design and Implementation of Holistic Personalised Socially Driven Persuasive Systems

Sustainability is a topic that has matured and has evolved from organisational sustain ability to societal sustainability and more recently to individual sustainability. As an individual is the core, basic component of society, and plays a critical role in societal transformation, there is growing interest and discussions on individual sustainability and wellbeing. Since the publication of Our Common Future – the report commis sioned by the UN General Assembly in tackling environmental and natural resources issues – the concept of ‘sustainable development’ has taken root in firms and govern ments, both in optimising their supply chain and in the planning of the sustainability of the society. However, counterintuitively, the fabric of the society – individuals and families – has been neglected in this journey of understanding their roles in sustaina bility, as well as in the nexus between their decisions and social outcomes. This thesis bridges the gap. Sustainability is a transformative process of improving the quality of lives by balancing various of our life aspects, such as economic, ecological, and societal dimensions. In this process, information systems often take a critical part as an analytical tool, which provides insightful decision support and recommendations based on collected data and information. In contrast to systems employed by corporates and governments, the development of sustainability systems for individuals and families is still in its infancy. Existing systems mostly are only focusing on one aspect of life and prescribe a single dimensional solution, without regard to the contextual and circumstantial complexi ties of life. In this light, this thesis aims to design and implement systems that adopt a holistic approach in understanding users’ individualistic needs, and in synthesising their life status and goals. The vision is to recognise the multifaceted aspirations of the users, and to nudge them toward a lifestyle that is sustainable, practical, and, above all, enjoyable. To realise this vision, the thesis adopts the multimethodological design science approaches (Hevner, March, Park, & Ram, 2004; Nunamaker, Chen, & Purdin, 1991) with the design eval uation methods from Hevner, March, Park, and Ram (2004) to address the challenges. ii First, the thesis defines individual and family sustainability and a set of nine principles named SSHARRPPP (Sustainable, Social, Holistic, Adaptive, Real-time, Real-world, Precise, Personalised, Persuasive). Based on these principles, the thesis develops sus tainable transformative processes that are applied to key activities and can bring fun damental changes for one’s life. From these conceptual and procedural foundations, the thesis designs system architectures and implements four systems as proof of con cepts. They are, namely, the SSHARRPPP Measurement, Shopping, Modelling, and Games. SSHARRPPP systems support individual and family sustainability holistically as they work together seamlessly. SSHARRPPP Measurement and Shopping measure key ac tivities that are performed by individuals and families. Based on the measured data, SSHARRPPP Modelling grasps causal effect relationships of one’s life dimensions and develops models. Lastly, SSHARRPPP Games helps people to stick with sustainable lives by making their journey enjoyable. All systems are designed to educate people to transform their lives. During the research, all of these conceptual, procedural, and sys tem artefacts are validated through publications, presentations and peer-review pro cesses. This thesis fills the gap in individual and family sustainability by bringing understand ing of human nature and systems together. Taken as a whole, it provides holistic un derstanding on sustainable life transformation and benefits researchers in both infor mation systems and sustainability. The thesis also lays the ground for future work in health and self-management, as it provides system solutions by synthesising core ideas from purposes of life and values, various human processes, and mechanisms to trans form our lives. At the practical level, the system architecture and the applications guide the system developers to design and implement systems for the sustainable transfor mation of individuals and families. Importantly, this thesis benefits individuals and families by making their sustainable life transformations holistic

Sustainable development projects: explicit and acroamatic story telling as part of a new ‘project ethnography’

This paper constitutes an attempt to find a means to represent multiple stories in the strong narrative of conventional sustainable development (SD) projects. The author’s experience of such projects in various parts of the world indicates that they have a tendency to arise from and reflect a dominant mindset, placing the SD project in what can be a working environment which is inimical to the very ideals which SD is supposed to represent. Short termism and value for money drive project formats and objectives whilst counter narratives and alternative stories arising from stakeholders in such projects are often ignored. Yet these alternative threads often contain strong SD messages of their own and could, if effectively utilised, enhance the SD project process. This paper sets out the case for a new field – ‘project ethnography’ – allied with the growing use of meta analysis to compare project ‘stories’. The paper presents preliminary findings using an analytical framework to facilitate an ethnographic analysis and draw out the stories that those working in such projects can tell. The analysis focuses on some SD projects in the Mediterranean which reinforces the view of the authors that the conventional model of SD project organisation and delivery often contains within itself alternative understandings – understandings which the authors regard as stories in collision with the presenting and accepted project narrative, but at the same time valuable in richness of experience and perspective which can be drawn upon for informing SD project design and implementation

Living labs in architecture : open innovation and co-creation towards a more sustainable architecture and lifestyle

Living Labs in Architecture can be tools towards a holistic knowledge generation and transmission, using real built environments for user-centred research and innovation as well as collaborative learning at a university campus and beyond. The present article describes existing living lab concepts and definitions, focusing on co-creation processes, methodologies for open innovation, and participatory learning approaches, with the LOW3 solar house living lab at UPC-Barcelona Tech as case study. Outcomes and lessons learned can serve as example for similar initiatives, establishing Architecture Living Labs as open, collaborative learning environments, innovation arenas, and places of social interchange, empowering communities in their learning and progress towards a more sustainable lifestyle.Postprint (published version

A holistic multi-methodology for sustainable renovation

A review of the barriers for building renovation has revealed a lack of methodologies, which can promote sustainability objectives and assist various stakeholders during the design stage of building renovation/retrofitting projects. The purpose of this paper is to develop a Holistic Multi-methodology for Sustainable Renovation, which aims to deal with complexity of renovation projects. It provides a framework through which to involve the different stakeholders in the design process to improve group learning and group decision-making, and hence make the building renovation design process more robust and efficient. Therefore, the paper discusses the essence of multifaceted barriers in building renovation regarding cultural changes and technological/physical changes. The outcome is a proposal for a multi-methodology framework, which is developed by introducing, evaluating and mixing methods from Soft Systems Methodologies (SSM) with Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). The potential of applying the proposed methodology in renovation projects is demonstrated through a case study

Goodbye to Projects? ¿ A livelihoods-grounded audit of the Plan for the Modernisation of Agriculture (PMA) in Uganda

Approaches to projects and development have undergone considerable change in the last decade with significant policy shifts on governance, gender, poverty eradication, and environmental issues. Most recently this has led to the adoption and promotion of the sustainable livelihood (SL) approach. The adoption of the SL approach presents challenges to development interventions including: the future of projects and programmes, and sector wide approaches (SWAPs) and direct budgetary support.This paper `A livelihoods-grounded audit of the Plan for the Modernisation of Agriculture in Uganda¿ is the fourteenth in the series of project working papers.Department for International Developmen

Goodbye to Projects? ¿ A livelihoods-grounded audit of the Sustainable Coastal Livelihoods Programme (SCLP) in South Africa

Approaches to projects and development have undergone considerable change in the last decade with significant policy shifts on governance, gender, poverty eradication, and environmental issues. Most recently this has led to the adoption and promotion of the sustainable livelihood (SL) approach. The adoption of the SL approach presents challenges to development interventions including: the future of projects and programmes, and sector wide approaches (SWAPs) and direct budgetary support. This paper `A livelihoods-grounded audit of the Sustainable Coastal Livelihoods Programme (SCLP)¿ is the twelfth in the series of project working papers.Department for International Developmen

Sustainability management accounting system (SMAS): towards a conceptual design for the manufacturing industry

[Abstract]: The study reported in this paper aims to identify an effective management accounting system using sustainability accounting concept for environmental and social cost measurement to add value to organizations. The motivation for undertaking this research is driven by the current practice of activity based costing (ABC), which has not identified and allocated costs of environment and social impacts to a single production activity. This has resulted in inaccuracies in cost accounting information when preparing environmental and social performance disclosures for internal management decisions, as well as external disclosures. This study therefore develops a conceptual model for a Sustainability Management Accounting System (SMAS) to improve the identification and measurement of environmental and social impact costs. A SMAS also provides sustainable organizations with a way to enhance cost allocation and analysis efficiently, thus creating more accurate cost accounting information for management decisions and reporting disclosure purposes. This paper describes preliminary work undertaken to date. Currently, it would appear that most Australian firms fail to report on their environmental performance, however, social indicators make it increasingly important for organisations to embrace corporate social reponsibility in their financial reporting and disclosure. Further, the results of quantitative data anlaysis will be used to identify an effective management accounting of sustainable organizations while supporting the development of a SMAS conceptual model

Designing trans-disciplinary research to support policy formulation for sustainable agricultural development

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Capital Budgeting and Sustainable Enterprises: Ethical Implications

This article focuses upon the growing, universal influence of social, environmental, and economic factors in business decision-making and the possibility of developing sustainable enterprises through a triple-bottom-line, capital budgeting approach