Evaluation of Sustainable Development Management in EU Countries

The term sustainable development is used in many areas and spheres of life and is becoming a modern phenomenon determining the direction of progress of every society. Sustainable development implies continuous economic development with respect to environmental principles and focuses on overcoming conflicts between economy and ecology. The aim of this paper is to evaluate sustainable development management in EU countries through selected indicators characterizing sustainable development and its core dimensions. We present the results of an evaluation of the sustainable development of EU countries using cluster analysis. Countries that are similar in terms of sustainability are identified by cluster analysis. Four clusters were separated, the affiliation of each country to a particular cluster was determined, and the characteristics of each cluster were defined. The goal of sustainability management is to create an adequate approach to development of the economic and environmental performance, and therefore achieve sustainability. The achievements of most developed countries should be an incentive for those that are at a lower level of development. In addition, this research provides insight into some specific goals of sustainable development where some countries are lagging behind. This could be the basis for directing efforts in specific areas of sustainable development to improve their own position in such an important global issue

Strategies for a nearly Zero-Energy Building market transition in the European Union

European legislation makes nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (nZEBs) a standard by 2020. The technology is available and proven; however, the large-scale uptake of nZEB construction and renovation remains a challenge. ZEBRA2020 monitored the market uptake of nZEBs across Europe and provided data and knowledge on how to reach the nZEB standard. This information was structured and analysed to derive recommendations. ZEBRA2020 covers 17 European countries and almost 90% of the EU/EEA building stock and population. The online data tools provide unique information regarding nZEB market development and nZEB characteristics. New approaches have been developed in order to allow for a better comparability of national data. However, the absence or difficult accessibility to key data and in particular for non-residential and existing buildings as well as for renovations remains an important obstacle. The online nZEB tracker, based on a set of criteria, assesses the nZEB market maturity. On EU-level, the tracker shows a substantial gap of market maturity that still has to be closed by 2019/2021. A set of barriers and related recommendations have been identified both at national and EU level: The implementation of a common, shared long-term vision for the building stock is crucial. A quantitative comparison of national nZEB definitions is complex due to different system boundaries, calculation methodologies, applied factors etc. However, our analysis indicates that a significant share of nZEB definitions does not meet the intention of the EU directive on energy efficient buildings (EPBD) that the energy consumption should be “nearly zero or very low amount” and the remaining part “should be covered to a very significant extent by energy from renewable sources”. Thus, the new EPBD requires clear definitions of these terms and thresholds. Further, it is important to distinguish between new buildings and renovations – despite of a common nZEB definition for both cases. The nZEB compliance monitoring and sanctions regimes need improvement. Only about half of the covered Member States monitor the compliance of new buildings with energy performance requirements. The lack of professional skills continues to be an important barrier and should remain a focus, especially in case of new built. In many Member States, the reliability and credibility of Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) is often questioned by actors on the real estate market. Transforming EPCs into Building Certificates (“Passes”) for the whole lifetime of a building may increase credibility and serve as a key measure to foster building renovation towards an nZEB standard. Storage of building data in an electronically accessible national database may contribute to better data availability. Energy poverty and vulnerable consumers are a European-wide issue and need further attention. Shifting from fuel subsidy to energy efficiency support is required. Future-proof buildings will be highly-efficient micro energy-hubs consuming, producing, storing and supplying energy. A revised nZEB definition should be future-proofed to be a smart building and district-ready.publishedVersio

Delta Debugging for CUE Configurations

Program-Reduction hat sich als wirksames Mittel erwiesen, um die Compilerentwicklung zu beschleunigen bzw. Programme zu verkleinern, um sie sicherer zu machen. Kernstück vieler Reduktionsalgorithmen ist Delta-Debugging, ein Algorithmus zur systematischen Entfernung von Elementen aus einem Programm, währenddessen eine gegebene Eigenschaft erhalten bleiben soll. Da das Problem der Suche nach einem globalen Minimum als NP-complete eingestuft wird, definiert Program-Reduction den Begriff der "1-minimalen Lösung", bei der das Programm beim Entfernen eines einzelnen Elements die ewünschte Eigenschaft verlieren würde. Verbesserte Versionen von Delta-Debugging nutzen die baumartige Struktur des Quellcodes zur Reduzierung der notwendigen Tests, die formale Syntax von Programmiersprachen zur Begrenzung des Suchraums und probabilistische Modelle zur Beschleunigung des Reduktionsprozesses. Reduktionsalgorithmen werden in zwei Gruppen unterteilt: sprachunabhängige Algorithmen verwenden allgemeine Transformationen, um Programme in jeder beliebigen Sprache zu verkleinern, während sprachspezifische Reduktionsalgorithmen Domänenwissen nutzen, um spezifische und effektive Transformationen zu implementieren. Die meisten dieser Algorithmen werden auf prozedurale Sprachen angewandt. Diese Arbeit schlägt ein neuartiges Framework namens Seru vor, das sprach-agnostische Reduktionsalgorithmen erweitert und sprachspezifische Heuristiken auf modulare Weise integriert. Der Ansatz kann auf mehrere Sprachen angewandt werden, während das semantische Verständnis einer bestimmten Sprache genutzt wird, um Programme weiter zu reduzieren. Seru wird mit der Sprache CUE evaluiert, die starke Einflüsse von logischen Programmiersprachen enthält. Ergebnisse zeigen Verbesserungen für beide genutzten Reduktionsalgorithmen, Perses und Vulcan, mit bis zu 20,88% bzw. 16,94% kleineren Dateien. Der kombinierte Ansatz aus sprachunabhängigen Reduktionsalgorithmen und semantischen Heuristiken erwies sich als effektiv, aber zeitaufwändig in der Ausführung. Die Programmreduktion ist nicht nur für prozedurale Sprachen effektiv, sondern erweist sich auch als nützliches Werkzeug zur Reduktion logischer Programmiersprachen. In zukünftigen Arbeiten könnten Large Language Models verwendet werden, um die Entwicklung von Heuristiken für weitere Sprachen zu beschleunigen.Program reduction proved to be an effective way to speed up compiler development or shrink programs to make them more robust. At the core of many reduction algorithms is delta debugging, a technique to systematically remove elements from a program while ensuring a required property holds. Since finding a global minimum is an NP-complete problem, program reduction aims to find a 1-minimal result, where any removal of one element causes a test failure. Delta debugging was further improved by utilizing the tree-like structure of source code, by leveraging the formal syntax of programming languages to limit the search space and by building a probabilistic model to speed-up the reduction process. Reducers are partitioned into two groups: language-agnostic reducers use general transformations to shrink programs of any language while language-specific reducers leverage domain knowledge to implement specific and powerful transformations. Most of these reducers focus on procedural languages. This work proposes a novel framework called Seru, that extends agnostic reducers and adds the ability to integrate language-specific heuristics in a modular way. The generality of the approach is kept, while the semantic understanding of a specific language is utilized to further shrink inputs. Seru is evaluated on the language CUE, which has its roots in logic programming. The results show improvements for both base reducers, Perses and Vulcan, ranging up to 20.88% and 16.94%, respectively. The combined approach of language-agnostic reducers and semantic heuristics proved effective, yet time-consuming. Program reduction is not only effective for procedural languages, but shows to be a useful tool to reduce logic programming languages as well. In future work, large language models could be used to accelerate development of heuristics for more languages