Search

Sea defence policy in England has proven contentious in the early twenty-first century, with government willing to defend the coast only where it is considered cost effective and not minded to compensate people for any resulting abandonment of homes. Additional focus is brought to this position by the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which reflect a growing emphasis on climate change effects and other environmental hazards, and the wellbeing of the current generation and those to come. This requires policy makers to seek to balance economic, social and environmental dimensions, and to tackle inequalities; with a central commitment of the goals to "leave no one behind". Subsequent to publication of the SDGs, England was promised a revolution in the government's approach to Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM). This paper seeks to understand the nature of this revolution with particular regard to extant issues around just governance. It finds that policy fails to deal with issues over the local acceptability of proposals for change and the bearing of risk, and instead lies principally in the elevation of the problematic concept of resilience and an accompanying ambivalence towards ideas of sustainability and sustainable development. International agreement that compensation should be paid to those countries suffering the worst effects of climate change, including sea level rise, suggests that adoption of a similar approach to vulnerable homeowners might be the more appropriate revolution and bring policy more into line with the aspirations of the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supply chains constantly face new problems that go way beyond the traditional issues of supply and demand uncertainty, particularly due to the impact of worldwide disruptive events. This paper aims at mapping academic literature examining so far issues related to the impact on supply chains of the COVID-19 outbreak based on a thorough literature review of peer-reviewed papers published in 2020. Following criteria established by the systematic approach, we build a framework based on the most recent papers of the discipline to address major disruptions that challenge SCM operations. We consider features from individual organisations, characteristics of the whole supply chain, performance metrics for long-term sustainability, and attributes from external disruptions. We derive a list of topics that deserve further investigation such as collaboration, technology adoption and knowledge creation together with their diffusion, strategies to shape and promote awareness along supply chain stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand how photovoltaic (PV) panels impact wind loads on low-rise buildings. The hypothesis posits that solar panels on a roof reduce wind-induced forces on components and cladding. To test this hypothesis, we experimentally investigated a 1:7.5 scale model in an open-jet wind facility, considering cases of bare roof and roofs with PV panels in three different configurations. The findings indicate that PV panels offer varying benefits based on the wind direction angle, generally reducing total wind forces on the primary structure. The addition of solar panels yields wind load reductions of 45–63%, depending on the configuration and details of the solar panel system, implying that buildings may not require additional reinforcement for PV panels. The findings have significant implications for enhancing the design and installation of residential solar energy systems, promising a more sustainable and secure future amid climate change and extreme weather challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban infrastructures, to fully take advantage of future investments, must first be recognized as interconnected complex systems of systems. This forum paper describes research and education needs that, if properly addressed, could prepare the civil engineering profession to meet the new challenges of urban infrastructure renovation. Among the needs, the objective documentation of the life-cycle performance of constructed systems could leverage novel sensing systems and advances in computer science, tools often untapped by civil engineering programs. Other needs and opportunities involve the design process, perhaps the most important milestone in the development of civil engineers. The topics and needs discussed in this paper could becomecore curriculum areas in newly developed postgraduate and eventually in undergraduate programs. The authors hypothesize that, if the integration of such topics is successful, civil engineers could become true protagonists of the rejuvenation of the US urban infrastructures and future stewards of cities and megacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of risk as the theoretical and methodological basis for information-consistent ranking of decision alternatives is central for safe, sustainable and resilient societal developments. However, due to significant disparities in the understanding of the concept of risk in academia, and in its application in governance and industry, we argue that a new paradigm for risk must be established. In a sequence of three papers (Part I, Part II and Part III) we take up this challenge, with the leading objective of providing a coherent foundation for the further development and transfer of the general body of knowledge relevant to governance of risk, resilience and sustainability – through research and education. In Part I, the present paper, we first present our motivation and general approach to the problem. Thereafter, we provide an overview and a discussion on the state of research and education in the domain of risk, resilience and sustainability, and propose a generic, information-based hazard classification scheme, which informs the development of a domain ontology and a blueprint for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research paper is to implement a machine learning model with the integration of the supply chain occupational reference (SCOR) model to develop an artificial intelligence-based system for resilient and sustainable supplier selection for a pharmaceutical company. Initially, the SCOR 4.0 model with the integration of Best Worst Method (BWM) has been used to develop the framework of customer satisfaction and to identify the critical elements of the suppliers. Later, the gradient boosting machine learning model has been implemented to classify the supplier as well as rank the suppliers from best to worst based on the acceptability score. The result shows that the gradient boosting algorithm performs well as a classifier, where the supplier with the most acceptability score represents the best supplier and the supplier with the least acceptability score represents the worst supplier. This study contributes to our understanding of how and when integrated SCOR and machine learning models can help improve supplier selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, tourism is being deeply impacted by glacial retreat caused by climate change. However, research on stakeholders' adaptation to climatic change and its threat to the industry on tourism niche is currently inadequate. Thus, through a literature review of 61 glacier peer-reviewed papers, this paper highlights the advancement in research on glacier tourism and provides some basis for understanding stakeholders' adaptation strategies to climate change. The review shows that glacier tourism research publications increased between 2015 and 2020. It also identifies some impacts of climate change on the glacier tourism industry as well as 27 adaptation strategies to climatic change, which are classified under seven main themes: changes to access, activities, tourism planning, educational activities, temporal substitutions, spatial substitutions, and glacier shrinkage attenuation. We discuss the relevance of the resilience concept in the tourism industry and recommend that tourists' experiences should be enhanced by applying the findings of research on tourists' motivations and landscape perception and developing more adaptation-oriented research. The findings suggest that the glacier tourism industry can reduce its vulnerability to climate change through increased collaboration between tourism operators and climate and tourism researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent national level guidelines and research efforts increasingly suggest the use of resilience and sustainability concepts for natural hazard mitigation and recovery planning at the regional and community levels. This paper aims to distinguish and compare the two abstract concepts in the context of road networks recovering from a hazard event since resilience and sustainability metrics are often interchangeably adopted and can lead to inaccurate equivalencies between the two concepts. A spectrum of resilience and sustainability metrics are defined herein and a research methodology is described to evaluate them probabilistically. A case study demonstration on the road network in the Memphis Metropolitan Statistical Area (MMSA) for a probabilistic suite of earthquake scenarios shows that the correlation between network resilience and sustainability is dependent on the hazard level as well as the graphical abstraction of the real road network. While some correlations are observed between temporal sustainability metrics, such as missed trips and traffic emissions, and resilience metrics, like total travel distance and time, the correlation weakens as the network resolution becomes more sparse. These results show that while for dense networks, time-evolving travel time and travel distance may be used as proxy measures for hazard sustainability evolution, for sparsely connected networks, hazard resilience and post-hazard sustainability remain relatively distinct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the contradictions and tensions in the governance of international migration that the pandemic has exposed. It starts by defining the pandemic emergency as a wicked problem. Even though wicked problems usually do not have solutions, we argue that building resilience and sustainability as key features in migration governance can help address this wicked challenge. We look at three types of resilience: situated, structural and systemic and discuss the extent to which they may form the basis of sustainable migration governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities and neighbourhoods are changing rapidly. While rapid change is accepted, it is less clear how to understand and analyse change and steer it towards a more sustainable trajectory. This paper focuses on the transformation of a particular street in Mamelodi, situated in Pretoria (capital city of South Africa). Utilizing a resilience lens, we unpack the various cycles of adaptation evident in the street. Our analysis shows that the transformation of Tsweu Street broadly followed the phases of the adaptive cycle, namely rapid growth, conservation, release and reorganization and incorporated three dimensions of resilience, namely social or community, spatial and institutional resilience. We argue that resilience thinking offers a mechanism to understand and analyse change at various scales, including the street level and that this provides planners with a tool to work with change through the application of appropriate measures at the relevant time to maximize their impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern societies rely on large-scale interdependent networks and systems that are critical for economic growth and societal well-being. Such infrastructure are vulnerable to natural as well as anthropogenic hazards. Past disasters have shown that the societal consequences of the damage and failure of infrastructure often significantly exceed the physical damage to such systems. In addition, the extent of impact on society is typically not limited to the immediate aftermath of a hazardous event but can be long term. This paper introduces sustainability and resilience as two of the most important characteristics of infrastructure, in terms of addressing societal needs, and presents some of the engineering tools for the development of sustainable and resilient infrastructure. It provides a targeted perspective based on a volume of previous works aiming to outline the underlying narrative and set the scene for future developments. The paper includes a broader discussion of interdisciplinary considerations to be accounted for to achieve sustainable and resilient infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in urbanization and climate change brings new challenges to the cities' sustainability and resilience, mainly related to flood and drought events. Among these challenges, it can be highlighted the physical and health damage to the population, interruption of water, energy and food supply services, damage to basic infrastructure, economic losses and contamination of urban rivers. To contribute to the increase of resilience in urban centers, LID practices have been used as a new approach of mitigation and adaptation within urban drainage systems, aiming at runoff retention, peak flow attenuation, pollutant removal and ecosystem services restoration (e.g., resources recycling, carbon sequestration, thermal comfort and landscape integration). These different mitigation purposes and complementary benefits provided by LID practices can be related to the different Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) presented by the United Nations (UN), to achieve countries' systemic sustainability. The identification of local techniques that contribute to the different SDG helps to achieve their territorialization and application as public policy. Therefore, this paper presents a literature review, categorizing the studies into different generations based on their main application purpose and presents a linkage of the LID benefits to different SDG. Some challenges were identified requiring further investigation, such as the need to identify and quantify the energy demands for LID practices maintenance and their incorporation in the system final energy balance, identification of processes that contribute to carbon sequestration and emission, and risks of emerging pollutants for human health from water reuse and nutrient cycling for sustainable agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate change adaptation field has evolved considerably in recent years. Important contributions have been made, with scholars developing methods for assessing vulnerability in different countries and communities, documenting broad strategies for adaptation and identifying opportunities for and barriers to adaptation as well as ways to enhance adaptive capacity. Issues of sustainability are, however, not readily argued and embraced. Predominantly, our analysis exposes that current adaptation discourse, particularly in Africa, offers a narrow conceptualisation of sustainability. The paper argues for a clear framework of sustainability in adaptation discourse which encompasses awareness to contextual aspects in responding to climate variability and change as well as resilience aspects. The paper also calls for an expansion of the knowledge base around the concept of 'climate-smart agriculture' towards effectively incorporating sustainability aspects in climate change adaptation discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Certain non-energy materials have been identified as being critical to the manufacturing sector and wider economy due to having a high risk of supply disruption combined with high economic importance. The criticality of specific raw materials is becoming increasingly acute as the escalating use of resources is driven by an increasing global population. Critical materials are vital elements in the value chain yet their supply risk may often be ineffectively addressed by traditional supply chain management strategies. Most research to date has been focused at a national or industrial policy level thus many manufacturers are unaware if their operations are at risk from critical materials at a product level. This paper presents a framework that takes a systematic approach to identifying, assessing and mitigating risk associated with critical materials bilaterally along the value chain to facilitate manufacturers in the identification, assessment and mitigation of critical material supply risk. This paper also describes how the framework can be facilitated for application in industry through preliminary design specifications towards a development of a decision support tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the interwoven relationships between a city's physical infrastructure and the dependence on its reliable functioning by societal systems. Physical failure of our infrastructure tests the vulnerabilities of the social, cultural, and economic systems that comprise a city. Numerous frameworks offer guidance for addressing how cities can be more resilient, sustainable, and/or livable. Without recognizing the dependency of all systems on a properly functioning built environment, these frameworks only provide partial solutions. For example, if a system was not reliable under normal operating conditions, what is the point of recovering? This paper reviews three sustainability and resiliency frameworks for the extent to which they address reliable infrastructure. The Envision rating system focuses on the sustainability of infrastructure projects. The STAR Community rating system and Rockefeller Foundation's City Resilience Framework address broader community systems through the lens of sustainability and resiliency, respectively. A City Dependency Model is proposed to better define how our infrastructure systems relate to broader resiliency and sustainability goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban population in India is growing at a fast rate along with the growth in the construction of residential concrete houses. Though a majority of these residential buildings are still of naturally ventilated type due to the lower-middle-income group of the population, these buildings will be subjected to indoor overheating with climate change in future climatic years. This can cause severe thermal discomfort among the indoor occupants and reduce their well-being and satisfaction towards the indoor environment, and increase the possibilities of heat-related illness and even death. This paper presents the results of the effect of climate change on the thermal comfort of indoor occupants of low-rise naturally-ventilated buildings in two different physiographic and climatic regions of eastern India. The assessment methodology of indoor overheating hours and indoor overheating degree based on adaptive temperature limits are used to evaluate the indoor condition. Different simulation variants of archetypes, orientation, wall types, ventilation rates, roof types, etc. resulted in 13,824 conditions. The results show that these concrete dwellings existing in the region are unable to suppress the effects of global warming and the indoor environment deteriorates in these buildings in future conditions. The decrease in the number of annual overcooling hours caused by the increasing ambient temperature due to global warming is lesser than the increase in the number of annual overheating hours, which ultimately results in the decline of the number of indoor annual comfortable hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leading international organisations presently argue that a transition to ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA) is an obligatory task to ensure food supply for an anticipated nine billion people by 2050. Despite the rubric’s newfound importance, the conceptual underpinnings of CSA are often left unclear. Focusing on the World Bank’s framework, this paper critically interrogates the principles and concepts that underpin CSA. It argues that while CSA provides greater policy space for more holistic approaches to agriculture, it nonetheless operates within an apolitical framework that is narrowly focused on technical fixes at the level of production. This depoliticised approach to the global food system tends to validate existing policy agendas and minimise questions concerning power, inequality and access. By highlighting four strong tensions that permeate the CSA framework, the paper extols the need to greatly widen the scope of debate. To this end, it proposes an alternative ‘climate-wise’ framework to foreground the inherently political dimensions of food and agriculture in an era of climatic change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Environmental change holds many social risks, exposing vulnerable communities and influencing community resilience. Social Impact Assessment (SIA) and Disaster Risk Assessment (DRA) both address social risks and impacts following from social changes induced by developments and disasters, aiming to ensure increased and sustainable community resilience. Although similar in purpose, SIA and DRA are rarely intentionally integrated, and while published research is sparse, it does suggest that their integration is an emerging trend. Therefore, as a step to investigate integration, and acknowledging the importance of theoretical underpinnings, this paper investigates the integration of SIA and DRA for increased community resilience. The investigation reveals three distinct areas of potential integration i.e. focus (people centred for sustainable development), approach (pro-active, multi-stakeholder and transdisciplinary), and regulation (mandated under legislative requirements). These findings suggest that both SIA and DRA can benefit significantly from integration, and thereby contribute to increased resilience and improving the social well-being for communities at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disruptions in the natural gas supply chain result in reduced throughput and associated emissions and losses, causing significant economic, environmental, and social impacts. Therefore, it is crucial to design supply chains that are resilient and sustainable to prevent or reduce the effects of disruptions. This paper proposes a novel Mixed-Integer Linear Programming model, which optimizes the natural gas supply chain in terms of resilience and sustainability, by examining the impact of an additional workflow design (contingency pipeline) located between the shutdown inlet and outlet nodes in the transmission echelon. The model is applied to a "real world" case, using data collected from gas companies operating in Nigeria. Both steady and transient states of the system are examined in this study through a set of scenarios. The best final solution was found to yield 93.6% performance increase when compared to target throughput and 63% performance increase with the introduction of the contingency when compared with the baseline scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial increase in research on sustainability and resilience is changing the traditional disciplinary boundaries of risk assessment and management. To understand the implications of this change and define future strategic directions for risk education, we conduct a comprehensive exploratory study of the knowledge domains encompassing risk, sustainability and resilience between 1990 and 2017. Combining quantitative bibliometric techniques such as term co-occurrence and bibliographic coupling, we show the historical evolution of the knowledge domains of risk, sustainability and resilience on a to-date unprecedented scale, based on 442,171 scientific records. Based on a comprehensive background study involving more than 100 cluster network maps, in the present paper, we illustrate the different disciplinary contributions, important authors, geographic distribution of the research, and the organizations producing the research as well as the extent to which they are integrated into the knowledge domain of risk. A complementary qualitative analysis provides context to the concepts and trends identified in the bibliometric analysis, together with an outlined vision for future education in risk, sustainability and resilience science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on the idea of cross-border regional innovation system (CBRIS) to investigate the implications of global and regional changes in social, political, economic, and ecological systems on cross-border regions. In an era of increasingly abrupt changes in border permeability, CBRIS offers an intriguing context for studying such processes. Our main contribution is to define a resilient CBRIS (RCBRIS) for sustainability based on careful reading of previous literature on resilience, sustainability, and CBRIS integration. As merging these concepts requires a sound understanding of the factors driving or constraining CBRIS integration, we conduct a systematic review of the literature to answer our main research question: what factors affect the resilience and sustainability of CBRIS? The literature reveals that the studied CBRIS are not particularly sustainable and that their resilience remains a neglected topic. This is a definite cause for concern for everyone interested in the long-term success of cross-border regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historic urban centres are struggling to survive in rapidly emerging global environments. While many significant historic districts were demolished to pave the way for new environments, others just disappeared from neglect and destruction. Tensions over land use and the continued consumption of historical areas such as trade and tourism place considerable pressures on their distinctive values that make them attractive places in which to live, work and visit. Such pressures have brought into focus the extent to which cultural sustainability can participate in revitalising a historic city while sustaining its place identity in a global world. In the age of globalisation, the mismatch between cultural (history, memory) and economic forces (tourism, trade) in a historic city can lead to the erosion of place identity. Within this context, this paper explores the following question; 'in what way can cultural and economic forces be integrated with a historical city or district to accommodate change while sustaining its place identity'? The case study approach is used as the primary method of investigation, and old Doha in Qatar is the main setting of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how the Energy System Sciences provide the theoretical backbone and empirical substance we need to connect findings from across the human and natural sciences in a way that is practical, rigorous, and heart-warming at the same time. Our premise is that the same energy science that explains systemic health in ecosystems can be used to create an empirical explanation of systemic health in human systems too. This integrated understanding of planetary health directly addresses the underlying socio-economic drivers of today's crises in a rigorous yet emotionally compelling picture of how to save civilization socially, economically and environmentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is premised on a conceptual framework that attempts to draw theoretical and practical connections between sustainability, resilience and adaptation. The framework is explored through a case study of the corporate real estate (property) strategies of Goldman Sachs (a multinational investment banking and investment management company) developed over the course of the consolidation and development of its corporate headquarters. This case seeks to identify the existence and nature of the relationships by and between sustainable corporate real estate strategies, resilient operations planning and the firm's adaptive capacity. A secondary proposition seeks to evaluate whether the capacity of the firm to adapt and be resilient to changing conditions has been positively advanced by the firm's sustainable corporate real estate strategies. The findings support the proposition that these connections do exist, as well as the proposition that sustainability was promoting adaptive capacity and operational resilience. However, it remains an open question to what extent these practices and capacities are deterministic of one another. This paper sets the stage for future research that seeks to measure and model organizational adaptive capacity and to understand the potential co-benefits that may serve the interests of firms who struggle to rationalize the costs of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The resilience of US container ports is increasingly challenged by disruptive and stressful events such as regulatory change, adverse weather, larger container ship sizes, changing patterns of trade and sea routes, and the still to be quantified effects of enlarging the capabilities and capacity of the Panama Canal. Port sustainability requires the port managers to be resilient in their practices, to maintain existing performance levels and to increase market share when opportunity presents. The primary question that this paper addresses is how US container ports might be affected by adverse events and how they undertake resilience processes when faced with complex problems and uncertain outcomes. The paper gathers insights from literature on complex adaptive systems to discuss how US container ports may adapt to changing circumstances through innovation and the emergent outputs of self-organised agents (components) of their port organisations. The paper suggests that by conceptualising ports as complex adaptive systems, port managers may be able to better understand the complexity of change and organisational dynamics and thus harness the phenomenon of self-organisation towards their strategic intent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With recent advancement in energy-based sustainable design of building structures, the need for inclusive yet practical models to integrate resilience and sustainability is increasingly recognized. This paper integrates structural seismic resilience and sustainability assessment methods with whole-building energy simulation techniques to present a new comprehensive decision model for the design of buildings. Risk-based multi-attribute utility theory and analytic hierarchy process are used to develop a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework considering various economic, social and environmental criteria involved in design of buildings. The model is implemented on a number of RC buildings, and the influence of building configuration on environment, seismic performance, and energy consumption is studied. It is found that shear wall ratio plays a significant role in both seismic loss and energy consumption of RC buildings. Increasing the shear wall ratio effectively reduces the direct monetary loss and downtime as well as energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing awareness of climate change and resulting impacts to communities have generated increasing interest in understanding relationships between vulnerability, resilience, sustainability, and adaptive capacity, and how these concepts can be combined to better assess the quality of complex adaptive systems over time. Previous work has described interactions between these concepts and the value-added should they be integrated and applied in a strategic manner, resulting in a new understanding of system quality defined as sustainable resilience. However, a framework for explicitly integrating vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability assessment to develop understanding of system sustainable resilience has yet to be proposed. This paper presents a high-level, integrated and dynamic framework for assessing sustainable resilience for complex adaptive systems. We provide a set of functional definitions, a description of each step in the proposed assessment process, and walk through an example application of the framework, including a discussion of preliminary analyses, technical methodologies employed, and suggested future advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores resiliency theory by assessing the ability of communities to adapt and recover economically and socially after a natural disaster. Community resiliency describes the capacity of finding a new equilibrium that is strengthened from change. Resilience can be seen as a strategy to facilitate recovery after a trauma and can be used as a preventative measure to avoid undesired outcomes. Through a qualitative assessment of the HandMade in America programme in three rural communities in Western North Carolina, this paper draws attention to the facilitation of community capital, resulting in social and political networks that allowed these towns to rely on increases in tourism to rebound from the 2004 hurricanes season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a novel decision analysis framework and corresponding probabilistic systems representations allowing for the consistent and integral quantification of systems resilience and sustainability. This facilitates – to the knowledge of the authors, for the first time – that decisions relating to the governance of socio-ecologic-technical systems may be optimized with due consideration of their impacts at both local and short-term time scales as well as on global and long-term time scales. The resilience performance of the interlinked system is modeled through the formulation of resilience failure events which occur if one or more of the capacities of the interlinked system are exhausted. Sustainability failure is analogously introduced as the event that one or more of the Planetary Boundaries are exceeded. A principal example shows there is a trade-off between resilience, generation of benefits, consumption of materials, and emissions to the environment. Resilience provides benefits to society but at the same time imposes material consumption and emissions to the environment. Systems can, however, be designed such that resource consumption and associated environmental impacts are reduced and the resilience performance is increased simultaneously. The example further illustrates that social governance system failure may follow from inadequate design and governance of infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fringes between urban areas and their surrounding territory usually concentrate strains of transformation and urban growth. Equally, planning strategies that promote the adaptation of urban development to the identity of territory contribute to the resilience of these urban fringes. This paper aims to illustrate this idea through the analysis of three of Spain's inland medium-sized cities during the period of intense urban growth that started in the eighties and concluded in 2008. The cases of Vitoria, Zaragoza, and Valladolid clearly show the negative consequences of an expansive urban model in their urban fringes, but also the alternatives that slowly emerged over this period. While the main urban planning tools enabled an unsustainable urban expansion, other planning proposals introduced an alternative approach that mitigated the effects of the real estate boom and have paved the way towards a better future: Vitoria with its green infrastructure, Zaragoza with its integrated development effort that took advantage of an International Exhibition and Valladolid with its coordinated planning. These different tools have a key feature in common: a deep comprehension of their territories as the strongest foundation for conducting urban development in more sustainable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Perspectives from the recent and ancient past are largely underutilized in modern sustainability or food systems studies. However, information about regional crop histories and land use systems through time can add essential value and context to debates concerning future agricultural strategies and food security. In particular, archaeological and anthropological research can provide long-term perspectives on adaptive solutions and agricultural resilience that could support strategies for sustainable agriculture, especially in developing countries. This paper explores this debate within a food systems framework and highlights the need for researchers to work across disciplines and sectors to share knowledge, exchange ideas and create solutions in order to meet the challenges of feeding the world in a healthy, equitable, sustainable and resilient way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture has long been endorsed as a means to promote food security and economic wellbeing in African cities. However, the South African context presents mixed results. In order to establish the contributions of urban agriculture to sustainable livelihoods, the sustainable livelihoods framework is applied to a case study on cultivators from Cape Town's Cape Flats. This study contributes to the empirical literature on urban agriculture by providing a deeper understanding of the benefits cultivators themselves attribute to urban agriculture. The key finding is that cultivators use urban agriculture in highly complex ways to build sustainable livelihoods. NGOs are central to this process. Distrust, crime and a lack of resources are, however, limiting factors. The paper concludes with policy recommendations to support pro-poor urban agriculture in African urban centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This explorative paper works across discourses to suggest the possibility and potential of an integrative paradigm for sustainability education that reconciles instrumental and intrinsic educational traditions, informed and infused by resilience theory and social learning. It argues that such an integrative view is required in the context of the urgency of building more resilient local social-ecological systems (SES), and that such a view offers the possibility of new energy and direction in the sustainability education debate. The paper is essentially a thinkpiece that attempts to look at touchstones between discourses to suggest the possibilities and potential of mutual illumination and better integration. The paper begins by reviewing tensions between an instrumentalist view and an intrinsic value view of environmental and sustainability education, the former seeing such education as a means to individual and social change, the latter upholding the primacy of the autonomous learner who, secondarily may - or may not - take action towards sustainability. The paper then considers the discourse of the resilient learner, before reviewing social learning literature linked to resilience and discussing how far these various views can be brought together and reconciled. Parallels are made with tensions in the debate on sustainability when seen as a desirable ideal, or as a process. Transformative learning theory is then introduced in relation to addressing the paradox of resilient but maladaptive worldviews and the need to educate for resilience. The paper concludes with an argument for a transformative education paradigm - 'sustainable education' - which necessarily integrates instrumental and intrinsic views and which nurtures resilient learners able to develop resilient social-ecological systems in the face of a future of threat, uncertainty and surprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relations between agricultural modernization and sustainable agriculture. The point of departure is the observable decrease in the sustainability and social–ecological resilience of agricultural and food systems. We ask where, precisely, the notions of agricultural modernization and agricultural sustainability contradict each other. In more concrete terms we ask what forms of modernization makes agriculture more (or less) sustainable. Our literature review shows that while the term ‘sustainable agriculture’, has been extensively debated, the term ‘agricultural modernization’, while carrying a positive and forward-looking connotation, remains poorly defined. To address this gap, we draw on evidence from real-life cases in fourteen countries in an attempt to interpret how the two concepts are perceived in very different contexts. These case studies show that different understandings of modern and sustainable agriculture coexist and that agricultural development follows diverse pathways. We conclude that the growing demands for an agricultural and food system that is more resilient, equitable and inclusive can be met by providing more support for the many divergent trajectories of agricultural modernization that practitioners are actually pursuing: trajectories that are often more attuned to the imperatives of ecology and to changing socio–economic preferences than the classical modernization trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern hyper-separation of economy from ecology has severed the ties that people have with environments and species that sustain life. A first step towards strengthening resilience at a human scale involves appreciating, caring for and repairing the longstanding ecological relationships that have supported life over the millennia. The capacity to appreciate these relationships has, however, been diminished by a utilitarian positioning of natural environments by economic science. Ecologists have gone further in capturing the interdependence of economies and ecologies with the concept of socio-ecological resilience. Of concern, however, is the persistence of a vision of an economy ordered by market determinations in which there is no role for ethical negotiation between humans and with the non-human world. This paper reframes economy–ecology relations, resituating humans within ecological communities and resituating non-humans in ethical terms. It advances the idea of community economies (as opposed to capitalist economies) and argues that these must be built if we are to sustain life in the Anthropocene. The argument is illustrated with reference to two construction projects situated in ‘Monsoon Asia’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays there is a pronounced interest in the need for sustainable and resilient infrastructure systems to address the challenges of future infrastructure development. This paper presents a three-objective optimization model for the investigation of various sustainable and resilient design alternatives for water distribution networks. Although optimal design of water distribution networks is a thoroughly studied area, most researchers focused on efficient algorithms to solve the complex design problem. Cost has predominantly been the objective in previous studies with few models also considering resilience or environmental impacts (CO2emissions). This research combined all these parameters in a multi-objective model to obtain various sustainable and resilient design alternatives. The model is demonstrated on a three-loop benchmark network that was previously studied. The tradeoff between the objectives is further analyzed to identify the most beneficial solution from the pareto-optimal set of solutions. The dollar worth of enhancing resilience of the benchmark network by a unit is estimated to be in the range of $1.23 to $3.93 million, which translates to about 22% to 69% of the least possible life cycle cost. The results of this research reveal that resilience can be increased by paying a justifiable cost that will also compensate for CO2emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural systems are under deterioration due to ageing, mechanical stressors, and harsh environment, among other threats. Corrosion and fatigue can cause gradual structural deterioration. Moreover, natural and man-made hazards may lead to a sudden drop in the structural performance. Inspection and maintenance actions are performed to monitor the structural safety and maintain the performance over certain thresholds. However, these actions must be effectively planned throughout the life-cycle of a system to ensure the optimum budget allocation and maximum possible service life without adverse effects on the structural system safety. Life-cycle engineering provides rational means to optimise life-cycle aspects, starting from the initial design and construction to dismantling and replacing the system at the end of its service life. This paper presents a brief overview of the recent research achievements in the field of life-cycle engineering for civil and marine structural systems and indicates future directions in this research field. Several aspects of life-cycle engineering are presented, including the performance prediction under uncertainty and optimisation of life-cycle cost and intervention activities, as well as the role of structural health monitoring and non-destructive testing techniques in supporting the life-cycle management decisions. Risk, resilience, sustainability, and their integration into the life-cycle management are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses key contributors to sustainable livelihoods in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), Cambodia, by focusing upon villagers' access to assets, adaptation to shock and stress, and their degree of resilience to declines in natural resources. The study reveals that their access to the five assets for sustainable livelihoods is limited; that their capacity to adapt to shock and stress is low due to floods, drought and high food prices; and that their resilience to declines in natural resources is weak. Improvement in their capacity to adapt and in their resilience will be influenced by the degree to which they can access human, physical and social assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience and sustainability have both gained traction in civil engineering. There is significant overlap between both fields, but practitioners tend to remain confined to their niche. This paper clarifies the link between both fields, reflects on the underlying concepts, and identifies challenges and opportunities in understanding complex problems involving both resilience and sustainability. A conceptual framework is proposed for understanding resilience and sustainability together. The example of a coastal town subject to sea-level rise and large storms is used to motivate the framework. The example is used to evaluate the use of discount rates for events in the distant future. The results are discussed to determine our ability to decide whether such scenarios are sustainable. The conclusion is that computational approaches will be inadequate. Rather, there is a need for qualitative thinking that embraces ambiguity and unmeasurable uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami on multiple tourism destinations was a striking reminder of the vulnerability of tourism-dependent destination communities to shocks and stressors. However, the causal drivers of destination vulnerability remain under-researched. Furthermore, there are few studies that systematically apply and test the usefulness of new theoretical frameworks in assessing real-world problems like vulnerability to natural hazards. This crucial step in social theory development is often overlooked. In this paper we redress these fundamental gaps by “operationalising” the newDestination Sustainability Framework(DSF). TheDSFis used to guide a case study-based comparative destination vulnerability assessment (DVA) of the tsunami-affected destinations of Khao Lak, Patong and Phi Phi Don in Thailand to better understand destination vulnerability and its evolution in different places and developmental contexts. The findings indicate that destination vulnerability is created and perpetuated by a combination of multiple, dynamic and interacting factors, including geographical exposure, destination-specific development characteristics, social structures and governance processes. Underlying these factors and processes are competing stakeholder agendas and actions, historically-embedded cultural norms, institutional preferences and power structures that entrench and perpetuate unequal access to resources, all of which play out at multiple scales of social organisation over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is a key driver of global socio-economic progress. However, its sustainability is at risk from multiple shocks and hazards that threaten livelihoods. Surprisingly little is known about the complex drivers of destination vulnerability, leading to the creation and application of ineffective resilience-building solutions. The paper presents the Destination Sustainability Framework (DSF) designed to assess destination vulnerability and resilience, and support successful resilience-building initiatives. Holistic in nature, the DSF comprises: (1) the shock(s) or stressor(s); (2) the interconnected dimensions of vulnerability – exposure, sensitivity, and system adaptiveness; (3) the dynamic feedback loops that express the multiple outcomes of actions taken (or not); (4) the contextualised root causes that shape destinations and their characteristics; (5) the various spatial scales; and (6) multiple timeframes within which social-ecological change occurs. This innovative framework is significant because it's the first framework to chart the complex manifestation of vulnerability and resilience in tourism destinations. Further, it brings tourism sustainability research in line with wider debates on achieving sustainability within the dynamic coupled human–environment system, doing so through the inclusion of insights from contemporary systems approaches, including chaos–complexity theory, vulnerability approaches, sustainability science, resilience thinking, along with the geographies of scale, place and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews research on urban agriculture which relates to the three dimensions of sustainability: social, economic and environmental. We propose that urban agriculture has three elements: urban agriculture in isolation; its interlace with the people and environment within which it is situated; and its contribution to the design of built form. Additionally, we consider its scale: micro, meso and macro. The analysis draws attention to legal, social and economic constraints and opportunities. It suggests that future priorities for research should be directed towards (i) strategically identifying principles of sustainable urban agriculture that help policy makers to design resilient cities, e.g. using flood-prone areas for food and employment, and (ii) operationally trialling innovative institutional mechanisms, e.g. differential land taxes to support sustainable urban agriculture or payments for environmental services provided by urban agriculture such as carbon sequestration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh, India, economic and urban growth, and diversification have increased pressure on forests and forest-based social-ecological systems. As in many Himalayan regions, livelihood sustainability is linked to forest resources, products and Services. Recent development in the region, to which these systems may be vulnerable, brings into question environmental and livelihood sustainability. This paper examines the resilience of integrated systems of people and nature, of social-ecological systems, in the face of development pressures by evaluating a number of local and state-level institutional responses. Resilience, which describes the ability of the social-ecological systems to adapt to change by buffering shocks, improving self-organization and increasing capacity for learning, is an essential quality for sustainable development. Institutional responses which positively contribute to resilience and sustainability include the work of mahila mandals in forest management, adoption of Joint Forest Management (JFM) policies and practices, upholding rules, strengthening local institutions, establishing firewood depots and adopting alternative energy sources. Institutional failures brought about by the lack of rule enforcement and corruption erode resilience. The analysis of institutional responses helps to identify areas where capacity exists and areas in which capacity building is needed to produce resilient social-ecological systems and therefore, sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As our environment grows increasingly unstable and our awareness of a new breed of natural disasters weighs heavily on our collective consciousness, the anxiety resulting from our vulnerability within the changing world has been elevated. While design works towards adapting to our contemporary ecological challenges, alternative approaches that prioritize not only the systems and material considerations relevant to sustainability but the needs of ourpsychological conditionmust be considered. Such an approach, therefore, must expand the application of emotional design in fostering desire, love, attachment, and functionality, in the promotion of mental and emotional wellbeing. This paper investigates these ideas through a case study involving the development of speculative furniture designs. The artifacts proposed employ empathy, humor, creativity, and play in an aim to foster resilience around seismic events, and offers a timely precedent in support of sustainable design practice through the development of meaningful and durable design relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]