Towards Evidence-Based Sustainable Communities: Report on Survey of Urban Sustainability Centers in U.S. Universities

Provides an overview of characteristics of urban sustainability research centers, including organizational structure, personnel capacity, finances, current objectives, and recent research topics. Considers policy implications

Sustainable eLearning in a Changing Landscape: A Scoping Study (SeLScope)

The report begins by exploring the concept of sustainable e-learning - defining it and establishing its characteristics in the context of Higher Education. To ensure a sound and systematic process, the review is informed by a five-phase methodological framework for scoping reviews by Arksey and O'Malley (2005). Examples and perspectives on the concept of sustainable e-learning are summarised and key factors impacting on sustainability are abstracted. highlights potential gaps and suggests directions for further research on the topic

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

Community Fisheries Management Handbook

This handbook is a unique product. It is the first "field guide" to community-based fisheries management focused specifically on fisheries, such as those of the Northwest Atlantic, that are already highly regulated by governmental authorities, with licensing and other requirements that limit access and effort. While a variety of resource materials are available on community-based natural resource management, almost all of these are written by practitioners working in the South (developing countries) and rely on case studies and techniques that have been tested in less industrialized tropical fisheries. Therefore, this handbook is one of the few publications about community-based management in 'Northern' fisheries.The need for this handbook was identified by participants working on an initiative on the Atlantic coast of Canada, "Turning the Tide: Communities Managing Fisheries Together" (www.turningthetide.ca). Turning the Tide works for improved fisheries management through community-based approaches, and through cooperative efforts among aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities. To that end, it has brought together fishermen and their communities to share information and ideas on community-based management, through events such as community forums and study tours. Participants recognized the need for a handbook on community-based fisheries management that is relevant to their own fisheries and that can be used as a tool to provide information and support for practitioners, as well as to document current practices and insights obtained, and to promote and raise public awareness about community-based fisheries management. The stories and insights in the handbook are those of Turning the Tide participants and their allies from around the Atlantic Region – the Atlantic coast of Canada and the north-eastern North America-United States – who shared this information during Turning the Tide activities, and in individual and group interviews, and who reviewed the materials used in producing this handbook. The various tools and ideas explored here are currently being applied in the region, and so the handbook demonstrates how community-based approaches to fisheries management are working today

Sustaining Autonomous Communities in the Modern United States (The United Communities of America)

America has become industrialized and characterized by social anxiety and overconsumption. The inability to be sustainable has led the once plentiful and flourishing nation into an ongoing sustainability crisis. Even if there is a deep connection between them, this essay focuses on social sustainability rather than ecological. It argues for an intentional community-based framework to keep American life sustainable. Pollution, civil unrest, and intense social anxiety create unfulfilling life conditions for many American citizens. Using examples from modern American intentional communities, I will explain the need for self-directing, close-knit communities. Flourishing community members, as it will be considered from sociological and pragmatist theory, are notably more autonomous and environmentally conservative than mainstream American society. Communal societies immensely aid in successfully establishing contextually-based governments that help fulfill their citizens. They are more conscious of their environment (in the broader sense than the ecological one) and thus seek a healthy sustainable consumption rate and social climate. The values and traditions that cultivate environmental care are integral in communities and often combat the instability of American society. Though grassroots communal living can be hard and often forsakes the amenities of capitalist America, it offers alternative values that would still sustain and help to achieve fulfillment by the population