The evidence-based practice among social work students

The aim of this study was to describe the knowledge, attitudes and use of the Evidence-based Practice process by the fourth year undergraduate social work students of the University of West Attica, in Greece and to explore the possible relationships between them. The study design was quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional survey. A total of 98 students participated in the study, through an anonymous, self-reported questionnaire. Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the University Institute of Lisbon. Data were analyzed using descriptive and correlation statistics. The results indicated that the students had a good level of knowledge of the EBP, although resistance to depart from the authority-based practice was detected. Moreover, the participants reported moderately positive attitudes towards the EBP, recognizing its value and being available to learn more about it. However, most of them did not declare themselves as practitioners of the EBP. The most common barriers to the implementation of the EBP were revealed to be the lack of knowledge and the limited access to the best available evidence. Although students believe that the future will be in the EBP, this is hardly reflected in the current university training and organizational culture. Furthermore, it was found that the students with higher levels of knowledge and more positive attitudes towards the EBP are more likely to use it in the future. The choice of conducting a Dissertation was related with higher levels of EBP use, but no statistically significant relation was found with the knowledge and the attitudes. Finally, the legal status and the domain of the internship Organizations were not found to significantly affect the knowledge, attitudes and use of the EBP by the students. The present study was the first one to uncover knowledge concerning the concept of EBP in the Greek context. Further studies about the EBP are recommended, in order to promote the effective use of research evidence in the social work training and practice in the country

Impact of carbon pricing on the cruise ship energy systems optimal configuration

The shipping industry has been facing increasing challenges due to the stringent regulations for anthropogenic emissions limits, the new targets for carbon emissions reduction and the potential carbon pricing introduction. These have led to an upsurge of activities towards improving the environmental footprint of cruise ships. This study investigates the impact of carbon pricing on the cruise ships optimal power plant configuration. Mathematical models are used to estimate the performance of the cruise ship energy systems. A novel bi-objective optimisation method for the cruise ship energy systems synthesis is developed, which employs the Non-Sorting Genetic Algorithm II optimisation algorithm and uses as objectives the Life Cycle Cost and the lifetime carbon emissions. Cruise ship configurations that perform optimally under carbon pricing scenarios whilst complying with the existing emissions regulations are identified. The derived results show that the baseline configuration does not belong to the optimal solutions, whereas solutions including carbon capture, waste heat recovery and dual fuel generator sets that operate with natural gas or methanol can reduce drastically the carbon emissions. The optimisation identified solutions that reduce the Life Cycle Cost by 40% compared to the baseline configuration despite increasing their capital cost whilst reducing of the carbon emissions more than 37

Sustainability assessment of ship energy systems at the design phase : integrating environmental and economic aspects

Sustainable development of the shipping sector is becoming increasingly important for policy, decisions makers, as well as, academia. A gap in assessing the sustainability of ship systems exists, even though the ship energy systems have the major environmental and economic impacts over the vessel’s operational lifetime. The purpose of this paper is to present the status of sustainability assessment in the shipping sector and introduce a method that can facilitate the integrated assessment of environmental and economic sustainability of ship systems lifetime at the design phase, by taking into consideration the operational and regulatory requirements of the vessel

A comparative analysis of EEDI versus lifetime CO2 emissions

The Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) was introduced as a regulatory tool employed at the ship design phase to reduce the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and increase the vessel’s operational efficiency. Although it stimulated the greening of the shipping operations, its effectiveness is considerably criticised from various shipping industry stakeholders. The aim of this study is to investigate the EEDI effectiveness on accurately representing the environmental performance of the next-generation ships power plants for two representative ship types, in specific, an ocean-going tanker and a cruise ship. The performance of the optimal power plant solutions identified in previous studies is analysed according to the existing EEDI regulatory framework and compared with the lifetime CO2 emissions estimated based on an actual operating profile for each ship. The results indicate that the EEDI underestimates the effect of technologies for reducing carbon emissions in all the investigated cases. In this respect, it is concluded that EEDI is classified as a conservative metric, which however can be used as an approximation to compare alternative solutions early in the design phase

Enhancing circularity in the car sharing industry : reverse supply chain network design optimisation for reusable car frames

The transportation sector is a great contributor of global carbon emissions, thus technical, regulatory, and behavioural efforts are being made to move towards more sustainable mobility, reducing the sector's environmental impact. Among the proposed solutions, car sharing is an appealing alternative for both environmental and societal reasons. However, society is facing another challenge with the rapid increase of vehicles that have reached the end of their life. As a result, regulatory initiatives drive car manufacturers towards a circular economy paradigm that incorporates reuse, remanufacturing and recycling processes in their supply chains. This work proposes and optimises the design of a reverse supply chain that enables circular economy pathways for the automotive sector with particular focus on car sharing vehicles' components that are reusable. Car sharing vehicles are selected due to their high mileage, short service life and rapidly increasing demand. This is the first work that identifies optimal reverse supply chains for reusable car sharing vehicle parts. The particular investigated case study involves a reusable and remanufacturable carbon fiber reinforced polymer car frame, which is selected due to its long-life span and light weight properties. The results indicate that the per unit and overall system cost is minimised when the percentage of frames remanufactured increases, thus efforts are required regarding the design of frames with remanufacturability in mind. The impact of economies of scale in cost reduction is demonstrated. Finally, the reusable frame appears to be advantageous compared to the single use one both environmentally and economically

Reverse logistics optimisation model for end-of-life wind turbine blades waste composites

Wind power is a promising renewable source of energy that has been experiencing significant growth over the last decades. The estimated life of the wind turbine blades is approximately 20 years and the first wind farm generations are approaching their end of life, leading to a considerable amount of waste materials from blades in the next years. Most of this material is currently landfilled or incinerated, thus not following a circular economy approach. In order to support more circular economy-oriented solutions, this work proposes a mixed integer linear programming model to optimise the reverse supply network design, from the wind turbine blades location to the end consumer of the recycled product. The developed model is applied on a case study in Europe, by employing data for wind farms from European databases. The output of the case study application is the most cost-efficient network design of the reverse logistics supply chain in Europe. Finally, the benefits of the proposed optimisation model for decision making of the logistics network configuration in a circular economy perspective are discussed

EEDI versus lifecycle CO2 emissions – Is it time for a more realistic policy?

In this work the EEDI for the optimal solutions derived from the multi-objective optimisation of a tanker ship energy systems with objectives the NOx, SOx, CO2 emissions as well as the Life Cycle Cost is estimated and presented. The results of the EEDI for each solution are compared with the lifetime CO2 emissions. First it is estimated that the baseline configuration does not manage to comply with the EEDI Phase 3 that will be implemented on 2025, therefore new configurations are required for the future. In addition, it is inferred from the findings that the EEDI underestimates the effect of technologies for reducing the carbon emissions. It was identified from the analysis that the operating profile should not be overlooked in the future regulations. Considering only one design speed, like the EEDI is inaccurate and does not manage to capture the real carbon footprint of the configurations. As a result, it does not provide incentives for the ship-owners to adopt greener technologies, whereas the lifetime emissions is a more representative metric. Therefore, adopting the lifetime CO2 emissions metric leads to the promotion of green solutions and decarbonisation of the shipping industry

The influence of ship operational profile in the sustainability of ship energy systems

In recent years, the environmental and economic sustainability of the shipping sector has gained great atten-tion due to the imposed environmental legislation and the uncertainty on fuel prices. The extant literature re-view acknowledges the importance of the operational profile in the improvement of ship systems energy effi-ciency. However, there has not been a complete study to identify and measure the impact of the operational profile on the environmental and economic performance of ship energy systems. In this paper, the influence of the ship operational profile on the sustainability performance of the main ship energy systems is investigated. Different operational profiles are implemented and the resulting economic and environmental impact of the main engine, the thermal boilers and the auxiliary engines of an Aframax tanker ship are analysed over the ship’s operational life cycle. Varying the speed distribution affects both the transportation time for a specific voyage as well as the number of voyages per year. Considering these parameters a complete estimation of the emissions emitted, the fuel consumption, the operational costs and the profits from the cargo transportation are estimated for each profile. The results show that even with small shifts in the speed distribution the differ-ences on the sustainability indicators are significant. Therefore, the operational profile needs to be considered in the early design phases when the synthesis of the energy systems takes place, in order to achieve significant improvement on the systems environmental and economic sustainability performanc

Environmental and economic sustainability assessment of emerging cruise ship energy system technologies

The environmental and the economic impact of ship energy systems is a rising concern for the shipping industry. A number of technologies to improve the sustainability of ship energy systems exists. The majority of previous research on ship energy systems selection focused on the techno-economic performance of one or two components. However, an approach of evaluating simultaneously the environmental and economic performance of the integrated ship energy systems is missing. In this respect, this work aims to identify the most sustainably performing configuration of cruise ship energy systems by quantifying and evaluating the life cycle cost and the CO2 lifetime gaseous emissions of the integrated ship energy systems. The machinery responsible for the propulsion, electric and thermal power production, as well as emission reduction and energy efficiency is included. The performance of existing and emerging technologies is modelled including fuel cells, carbon capture technology, waste heat recovery systems, as well as propulsion and auxiliary systems with alternative fuels such as LNG. Alternative system configurations of the investigated ship are generated and assessed based on on-board operational data of a cruise ship. A set of dominant solutions is derived by employing a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm and indicative results for the most sustainable configurations are presented. A sensitivity analysis is performed for future fuel prices and technologies capital cost for the year 2030. The derived results from the cruise ship case study indicate that the ship energy systems sustainability can be improved by adopting natural gas dual fuel technologies and fuel cells. In addition, introducing a carbon capture technology and a waste heat recovery in the ship energy systems can improve the carbon footprin