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Purpose: Higher education institutions have a significant role in preparing future generations for the world of work and sustainable development. This paper aims to present a curriculum model of an enquiry-based learning pedagogy and a sustainable development conceptual context as a mechanism for teaching skills in a geography module. Potential influences of this model on organisational change towards integrating sustainable development are explored. Design/methodology/approach: Following the design and implementation of the curriculum model, semi-structured interviews of the module teaching team were conducted. Thematic analysis was undertaken against a priori objectives determined from existing theoretical frameworks. Findings: Thematic analysis suggests powerful synergies exist between enquiry-based learning, education for sustainable development and skills teaching. Potential impacts are as follows: conceptual perspectives enhance cognitive potential around systems thinking, learning methods promote behavioural potential around professional capability and agency and cultural encounters raise affective potential around inclusive curricula. Practical implications: Findings indicate potential for bottom-up curriculum intervention to enhance individual learner capability and outcomes, to promote the role of Geography in responsible futures, to build teaching team capacity for active learning pedagogies, to influence individual and institutional behaviour change towards sustainability practices, diversity and inclusion, and to catalyse organisational change around sector priorities including integrating education for sustainable development, active learning, inclusive education and enhanced graduate outcomes. Originality/value: This paper identifies multiple benefits from a curriculum model combining skills teaching in a synergistic pedagogical and conceptual framework and its bottom-up potential to catalyse organisational change in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Higher education institutions have a significant role in preparing future generations for the world of work and sustainable development. This paper aims to present a curriculum model of an enquiry-based learning pedagogy and a sustainable development conceptual context as a mechanism for teaching skills in a geography module. Potential influences of this model on organisational change towards integrating sustainable development are explored. Design/methodology/approach: Following the design and implementation of the curriculum model, semi-structured interviews of the module teaching team were conducted. Thematic analysis was undertaken against a priori objectives determined from existing theoretical frameworks. Findings: Thematic analysis suggests powerful synergies exist between enquiry-based learning, education for sustainable development and skills teaching. Potential impacts are as follows: conceptual perspectives enhance cognitive potential around systems thinking, learning methods promote behavioural potential around professional capability and agency and cultural encounters raise affective potential around inclusive curricula. Practical implications: Findings indicate potential for bottom-up curriculum intervention to enhance individual learner capability and outcomes, to promote the role of Geography in responsible futures, to build teaching team capacity for active learning pedagogies, to influence individual and institutional behaviour change towards sustainability practices, diversity and inclusion, and to catalyse organisational change around sector priorities including integrating education for sustainable development, active learning, inclusive education and enhanced graduate outcomes. Originality/value: This paper identifies multiple benefits from a curriculum model combining skills teaching in a synergistic pedagogical and conceptual framework and its bottom-up potential to catalyse organisational change in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principles of sustainable development are becoming extremely relevant for organisations. In the case of universities, these institutions can act as agents in promoting these principles within society. The literature contains a wide range of studies which show how universities may play a critical role in disseminating sustainability principles on the one hand, and their translation into practice, on the other. At present, many higher education institutions are becoming more aware of their impact on the environment, and trying to understand the environmental needs and implications of their operations. Going further, some universities are incorporating sustainability principles into their activities. One of the questions that universities are now facing is how education for sustainable development can be translated into practice so that it can be effective in transforming society. This paper will discuss the need for and the usefulness of integrative approaches to implement sustainable development in higher education. In addition to a theoretical review of the state of the art, the paper will use case studies from the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and Bournemouth University (UK) to illustrate the effectiveness of integration of sustainable development principles in university research and teaching activities, and the many benefits integrative approaches may bring about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the marketplace becomes increasingly competitive, there is a need to differentiate oneself as a high performer. From Andrew Vaughan the CEO of Redevco: 'Greening our portfolio over the next two years is not only environmentally the right thing to do, it also makes sound business sense'. One of the barriers to this is the result of split responsibilities within the real estate sector. Buildings built and/or managed to sustainability standards, such as Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) have been shown to minimise risk and generate maximum profit via: high and continuous rental income; low operating and maintenance cost; and low depreciation. Through certification and verification all parties can be confident in: the performance of assets and portfolios; comparability across building types and countries; the analysis is based on sound science and standards; allows you to be one step ahead of legislation and industry best practices. UK valuers do not think we are paying a premier for green buildings but having to give a discount because the building is not performing well. This paper presents the business case and value gained by being sustainable and how certification gives credibility to process and performance of portfolios and buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel multicriteria (MCDM) framework using AHP and q-ROLPBM operator is presented. • We incorporate stakeholders' degree of pessimistic and optimistic rate for all criteria. • Environmental and economic are the most crucial dimensions followed by social and technical ones. • e-fuel and e-biofuel are found to be the two top ranked production pathways. • Findings are valuable for policy/investment development for sustainable fuel production. It is widely believed that alternative low carbon fuels (ALCF) can be instrumental in achieving the transportation sector's decarbonization goal. Unlike conventional fossil-based fuels, ALCF can be produced through a combination of different chemical processes and feedstocks. The inherent complexity of the problem justifies the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to support decision-making in the presence of multiple criteria and data uncertainty. In this paper, we propose a novel stakeholder participation-based MCDM framework integrating experts' perspectives on ALCF production pathways using the analytics hierarchy process (AHP) and the q-rung orthopair linguistic partition Bonferroni mean (q-ROLPBM) operator. The key merit of our approach lies in treating criteria of different dimensions as heterogeneous indicators while considering the mutual influence between criteria within the same dimension. The proposed framework is applied to evaluate four ALCF production pathways against 13 criteria categorised under economic, environmental, technical, and social dimensions for the case of the United Kingdom (UK). Our analysis revealed the environmental and the economic dimensions to be the most important, followed by the social and technical evaluation dimensions. The e-fuel followed by the e-biofuel are found to be the two top-ranked production pathways that utilise the electrochemical reduction process and its combination with anaerobic digestion. These findings, along with our recommendations, provide decision-makers with guidelines on ALCF production pathway selection and formulate effective policies for investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little research so far has been devoted to understanding the diffusion of grassroots innovation for sustainability across space. This paper explores and compares the spatial diffusion of two networks of grassroots innovations, the Transition Towns Network ( TTN) and Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale ( Solidarity Purchasing Groups - GAS), in Great Britain and Italy. Spatio-temporal diffusion data were mined from available datasets, and patterns of diffusion were uncovered through an exploratory data analysis. The analysis shows that GAS and TTN diffusion in Italy and Great Britain is spatially structured, and that the spatial structure has changed over time. TTN has diffused differently in Great Britain and Italy, while GAS and TTN have diffused similarly in central Italy. The uneven diffusion of these grassroots networks on the one hand challenges current narratives on the momentum of grassroots innovations, but on the other highlights important issues in the geography of grassroots innovations for sustainability, such as cross-movement transfers and collaborations, institutional thickness, and interplay of different proximities in grassroots innovation diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines how complex transport projects are reported in the media using the Transport Innovation Fund bid for Greater Manchester as a case study. It demonstrates how projects are simplified and distorted in the media in a systematic way. Such distortion is explained by a scheme’s perceived newsworthiness, its complexity and the contemporary nature of news media production. The paper has implications for future research in this area and the implementation of sustainable transport policy. It urges transport professionals to both better understand, and engage directly with, the media if they are to maximise the benefits of efforts to shape travel behaviour. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper discusses issues of decision support within the context of sustainable development and more specifically sustainable water cycle management to provide a context and a rationale for the decision support approach adopted within an on-going UK EPSRC-funded project, WaND. The paper proposes a set-up for a flexible, upgradeable, efficient and modular decision support framework and associated tools. Furthermore, the paper presents early prototypes of three decision support tools developed within the proposed framework including initial results for one of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental justice is both a vocabulary for political opportunity, mobilization and action, and a policy principle to guide public decision making. It emerged initially in the US, and more recently in the UK, as a new vocabulary underpinning action by community organizations campaigning against environmental injustices. However, as the environmental justice discourse has matured, it has become increasingly evident that it should play a role in the wider agendas for sustainable development and social inclusion. The links between sustainability and environmental justice are becoming clearer and more widely understood in the UK by NGOs and government alike, and it is the potential synergy between these two discourses which is the focus of this paper. This paper argues that the concept of ‘just sustainability’ provides a discourse for policymakers and activists, which brings together the key dimensions of both environmental justice and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities have become important drivers in promoting strategies for sustainable development. The primary objective of this article is to analyze the differences between public transportation in Newcastle upon Tyne, the city considered the most sustainable in the United Kingdom, and Florianópolis, a city with great potential for sustainable policies located in southern Brazil. This comparison may provide models, ideas and actions for the development of Florianópolis as a model of sustainability in South America. Therefore, a comparative analysis is provided: to observe changes, build models, and verify similarities and differences, while seeking to discover which behaviors govern political and social phenomena in the area of urban sustainability. This paper provides a comparative description of social and economic indicators: gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, inflation, employment, as well as the historical population evolution of the two cities. This work contrasts the sustainable transport model used by Newcastle and the reality of the transport needs of Florianópolis. This article is the first in a series to analyze the indicators for sustainable cities, focusing mainly on the reality of the South American city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Previous research suggests that, despite a desire to introduce environmental concerns into New Product Design, many companies in the northwest of England have not done so. In order to understand more about why companies do or do not take on sustainability methodologies, an entirely new and rigorous approach was taken. This paper therefore presents the results of a questionnaire investigating the up-take of Eco/Sustainable Design in manufacturing companies in Sweden – a country that might be considered more environmentally progressive than the UK – and discusses them alongside the results of an identical questionnaire in the UK. The results are presented in the context of risk and risk aversion/management – in particular the risk associated with taking on board Design for Sustainability as a design method or a company strategy. It is found that there is no clear “winner” in sustainability between UK and Swedish engineering companies; there is encouraging news in both countries, with a desire to practice sustainability, but some that is not so good with the number of companies that actually implement relevant methodologies. It is apparent that there are still hindrances and perceived risks preventing companies taking sustainability fully on board, despite the recognition that sustainability is a “good thing”; the importance of the implementation of sustainability has not yet been fully grasped by industry and by those with the responsibility required to effect any changes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper seeks to address the way the politics of sustainability governance is spatially organised and contested by voluntary and community sector (VCS) groups in the United Kingdom. Using the research lens of the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP), we seek to demonstrate how sustainability governance at regional and national scales is negotiated and produced from the 'bottom up'. We argue that VCS groups are agents of a complex process of 'scalar manoeuvring' whereby sustainability governance is produced and contested across a range of sites both within and across spatial scales. Such groups enter into external, nonstate-controlled governance networks as a reaction to state-orchestrated scales like LSPs. In the process, VCS groups engage with and utilise higher scales of state territoriality and governance to pursue quasi-autonomous sustainability objectives back at the local level. Such actions demonstrate how pragmatism is essential in enacting scalar agency in the pursuit of a local fix for sustainability. These findings contribute new insights into the ways in which local spaces of sustainability governance are produced and contested within wider UK state modernisation and rescaling processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is constant pressure for the civil engineering industry to keep improving its cost efficiency. In the meantime, the industry has to operate within an increasingly stringent policy and regulatory environment, more recently driven by the growing commitment to sustainable development. To overcome these challenges often requires more effective collaboration between professionals from different disciplines and wider stakeholder engagement in general. This paper focuses on the bridge engineering sector in the UK and identifies the main areas for improvement in the project delivery process, especially where effective collaboration can play a significant role. The increasing need for effective engagement of the affected community is highlighted and its implications for practising engineers are discussed. Key factors to enable effective collaboration in practice are then considered, with particular attention given to effective community engagement, after which the benefits of effective collaboration and community engagement are demonstrated by way of examples. Attempts are made to highlight some unique challenges brought about for engineers in practice by the implementation of sustainability principles. Key skills are identified to enable engineers to contribute to more sustainable bridge delivery. In order for their actions to be most effective, the development of applications-oriented, bridge-project-specific, best practice guides is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to identify and understand the commercial framing of retrofitting activities of existing buildings in the UK, the mediation of these issues in current regeneration processes and their relation to objectives for sustainable development. A case study focusing on the dynamics and retrofitting of non-domestic buildings in Bristol, UK showed that commercial objectives and local community regeneration are more prevalent in practice than environmental protection and carbon reduction objectives. This situation is supported by current regeneration policies and commercial interests. Sustainability issues have had an impact on current building practices and the UK property sector may be experiencing a shift as it gains understanding of the risks involved in 'unsustainable' buildings. The case study indicates that more radical changes in current practice are needed in order to reach contemporary objectives for carbon reduction in the existing building stock and to meet anticipated stronger policy and regulation. The Bristol case study was carried out in 2008, but before the global financial crisis impacted on development activity in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of the historic city has often been discussed through debates about conservation and development. In recent years some writers have discussed the idea of the historic city through concepts of sustainability and particularly the idea of social sustainability. However, although sustainability is important, the idea that local communities play a key role in the development of historic cities has been barely researched. The present paper fills this gap by looking at less well recognised investigations that have dealt with the way that different local communities have interacted and reinterpreted the urban heritage sites they live within or alongside. It is argued that more attention needs to be paid to the processual side of social life and the historic environment if issues of vitality, revitalisation and even sterility in the historic city are to be understood more readily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between increased urbanisation and subsequent capacity problems within drainage infrastructure. The respective merits of resolving these problems using: (i) ‘quick fix’ engineered solutions and (ii) long-term ‘planning-based’ remedial measures are investigated for a UK case study catchment. In the UK context a ‘quick fix’ approach would often involve the provision of in-sewer storage (e.g. a storage chamber or oversized sewer pipes) to store excess flows, releasing them back into the sewer later for subsequent conveyance to a treatment facility or outfall. SuDS retrofitting may represent an attractive alternative to this ‘hard engineering’ approach, but has proved difficult to implement under the UK’s current regulatory framework. A long-term ‘urban planning-based’ approach, on the other hand, involving the imposition of ‘pre-urbanised’ (greenfield), or even stricter, runoff restrictions to all new developments (or redevelopments) within urban areas could incrementally reduce the storm-water runoff entering the system over time. Historical maps are used to demonstrate how the case study catchment has become increasingly urbanised over the last 50years; and a simple modelling exercise demonstrates how this process has been directly responsible for exacerbating the catchment’s flooding problems. The case study also demonstrates practical opportunities for reducing or resolving the flooding problems with ‘quick fix’ engineered solutions, retrofit options, and long-term ‘planning-based’ remedial measures. These issues are specifically illustrated for a UK case study containing known ‘surface water’ flooding problems, but parallels to the urban African context are drawn and discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the South West of the UK, a growing number of rural and urban communities are exploring various pathways to a more sustainable living. The village of Belstone is among these pioneers of change through its Green Village project. It is a relatively affluent community and it has been a major challenge to engage people that are reticent to change their lifestyle and suspicious of the motives of the initiators. Based on a process of action research, this paper explores the attitudes and perceptions towards sustainability and how they influenced the people's engagement. We demonstrate that the partnership was effective in enabling the villagers engaged in the project to take control over the process. Behaviour changes were reported by the villagers actively engaged with the initiative. The Green Village did not “snowball” to the entire community; however, many of those who chose not to engage associated the word “Green” with traits that they did not identify with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-occupancy evaluation of buildings has been developing as a distinctive discipline for over 40 years, but has been traditionally more concerned with energy, social and architectural concerns in relation to the user rather than other issues of sustainability such as transportation, waste and resource use. This paper outlines the challenges of implementing post-occupancy evaluation in relation to rapidly developing UK government policy on climate change and other sustainability issues. It reviews developing methodologies and the progress to date in relation to key building typologies: offices, healthcare, education and housing. The methods are discussed in terms of their qualitative and quantitative aspects, as well as the degree of detail actually necessary to evaluate building performance effectively. A diagnostic approach that avoids any unnecessary and costly monitoring is advocated. Various barriers preventing the widespread implementation of post-occupancy evaluation are identified, including lack of legislation, threats of litigation, cost and the perception that the work of the design and building team is finished at the point of handover. The review concludes that it is not desirable to have one single method for evaluation, as each typology requires its own set of criteria. While a lack of education in professional programmes is an underlying barrier to implementation, there are positive signs that routine feedback is beginning to take hold in policy development and design office practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs on a research paper that studies the scope of constructing sustainable building in Great Britain. The various advantages of sustainable development includes, utilization of fewer nonrenewable resources, improved living and work environment and the increased life of the buildings. It is informed that sustainable buildings amount to lesser operating and building costs. Also discussed is the involvement of the government and society in encouraging sustainable development.