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peer-reviewed Higher Education Institutes are being called upon to integrate sustainable development into their organisation, driven by national and international events, policies and environmental targets. This paper maps sustainability policies and initiatives of a select number of Irish and international Higher Education Institutes, exploring their integration of sustainability on-campus, testing of new ideas and technologies, and the amplification of lessons learned within society and economy. It provides a comparison of Irish Higher Education Institutes with international examples. Sixteen case studies were selected; seven from Ireland and nine international. A literature review was conducted with a focus on papers that dealt explicitly with sustainability education and outreach. Three site visits of Higher Education Institution campuses took place, as did interviews with energy and transport managers and academics of each institute. The results show the integration of sustainable development into Higher Education Institutes follows no standard approach, with the number of initiatives for sustainability outweighing the number of strategies and policies, presenting a general bottom-up process. Overall, Higher Education Institutes lack a systemic approach. The majority of initiatives focus oncampus actions, with outreach neglected. Higher Education Institutes represent significant resources in implementing sustainable development. To maximise their potential a mixture of top-down and bottom-up processes are necessary, with management support essential if sustainable development is to survive in the long-term, and for lessons learned to be successfully amplified to wider society and economy and assist in meeting national and international environmental targets.

Recent national government policy in Ireland proposes a radical transformation of the energy sector and a large reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Water and energy form the water–energy nexus, with water being an essential component in energy production. However, the connection between the production of energy and water is rarely made. In particular, the end-user processes are generally excluded because they occur outside the water industry. The present study includes two simple approaches for industrial sites to calculate their carbon footprint in the water sector. The assessment of the milk powder manufacturing using both approaches indicates that the combined emission factor of the water supply and treatment is approximately 1.28 kg CO2 m–3 of water. The dairy production among steel, textile, and paper industries appears to be the most carbon-emitting industry. However, the results show that the carbon intensity of the water supply and treatment can be minimized by the integration of renewable energy sources for the onsite heat/steam and electricity generation. The uniqueness of our approaches compared to calculations illustrated by the ecoinvent and other governmental databases is its simplicity and a focus on the main energy consuming manufacturing steps in the entire industrial process. We believe that the management of water and energy resources will be more efficient when “active water citizens” raise environmental awareness through promoting measures regarding data monitoring and collection, observed leaks and damages, dissimilation and exchange of information on sustainable water stewardship to public and various industrial stakeholders.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) sustainability assessments are receiving significant attention in the academic literature, with ever more complex grading and ranking systems being developed. This paper aims to provide national policy makers with a simple set of indicators to facilitate measuring progress towards sustainability for the HEI sector, within the context of national sustainability data collection efforts. Candidate indicators were identified and assessed from the two most subscribed to HEI sustainability assessments, namely, the UIGreenMetric and STARS, to develop a sector specific indicator set. This resulted in a final set of 12 indicators, covering on-site energy, greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste, water, travel, education, research, and governance. The proposed indicator set was then compared to publicly available data for Irish HEIs, to identify gaps in data collection, which found that direct campus energy use and associated Scope 1 and 2 emission data alone were collected with sufficient rigour. The described indicator set has the potential to be applied to guiding national sustainability transitions globally and offers a template for accelerating sustainability data collection efforts for the HEI sector.

peer-reviewed This paper describes a framework for estimating the effectiveness of photovoltaic and rainwater harvesting technology deployment on industrial and commercial zoned buildings to facilitate reducing national GHG emissions. Decarbonisation technologies pathways were investigated which may aid in meeting national decarbonisation targets, and their potential role at local administrative area scale evaluated. A finding arising from application of this method was that a small number of larger industrial and commercial buildings, representing only 4% of the sectors buildings, were found to account for 38% of its decarbonisation potential. Future carbon emission scenarios identified that electricity demand may be expected to increase for the industrial and commercial sector up to 2030, and that the technological potential for current photovoltaics systems have the potential to reduce GHG emissions by 4% more than currently planned Irish grid-scale decarbonisation trajectories. The method may be adopted at European scale, using local data on climate and building attributes, and is applicable at national, regional and local scales. The paper concludes with a review of technologies which may aid further decarbonisation studies, which include improved data availability for 3D building generation, and enabling technologies such as machine learning algorithms applied to satellite imagery. PUBLISHED peer-reviewed

Ireland is currently considered a laggard within Europe in relation to decarbonisation of its society, with future projections estimating increases in greenhouse gas emissions up to and beyond 2030. To accelerate Ireland&rsquo, s transition towards a low-carbon society, there is a need for leadership in deployment and experimentation of low carbon technologies. As Higher Education Institutions (HEI) currently play a major role in generation of human capital and the associated impact on societal development, HEIs are ideal locations to focus resources in terms of deployment and experimentation of decarbonisation technologies to demonstrate best practice for further replication within wider society. To guide Irish HEIs in this regard, a novel integrated approach titled &lsquo, Higher Education Accelerating Development for Sustainability&rsquo, (HEADS) has been developed and applied to the sector. The HEADS approach utilises the perspectives of quantitative systems analysis, sociotechnical analysis, and living lab learning to inform HEIs of their potential roles within national sustainability transitions. Applied to solar photovoltaic transitions in Ireland, the HEADS approach has identified HEIs as vital locations to deploy low-carbon technologies due to their amplification effect in signalling to wider society the attractiveness of these technologies.

University Campuses (UC) have the capacity to experiment with and demonstrate innovative sustainability solutions in a ‘real-world’ context that may serve as possible pre-configurations of sustainable societies. While there is potential for universities to improve their own operational sustainability by experimenting with innovative sustainability solutions on campus, the greatest potential of the sector is their multiplier effect on catalysing wider society’s transition towards sustainable communities. To evaluate UC potential contribution towards catalysing wider society’s transition towards sustainable communities, no single perspective is adequate due to the multi-dimensional nature of sustainability transition pathways. As a result an integrated approach titled the Higher Education Advancing Development for Sustainability (HEADS) approach was developed and applied to the UC sector in Ireland utilising the perspectives of initiative-based learning (or living lab), sociotechnical analysis and quantitative systems modelling. By utilising this integrated approach, a fuller picture is achieved by bridging the partial understanding obtained from each of these perspectives as to how UC may contribute to national transition towards sustainability.

peer-reviewed This paper describes a method for the quantitative estimation of the potential of decarbonisation technologies deployed on Higher Education Campuses (HEC). This was developed to fill the need for a practicable and standardised method to provide preliminary estimations of the deployment potential of building integrated photovoltaics (PV), micro-wind turbines, rainwater harvesting and ground mounted PV at HECs. The method identifies two key variables, namely roof area and open carpark area, to aid estimation of decarbonisation technologies deployment at HECs, using Google Earth imagery coupled with publicly available online HEC maps. The method was trialled for the higher education sector in Ireland identifying major potential for deployment of decarbonisation technologies for the sector. The building decarbonisation aspect of the proposed approach is applicable to sectors outside HEC particularly commercial and industrial sectors due to similarity in building footprint characteristics. The open carpark component of the methodology is also applicable to city-scale analysis due to uniformity in form of open carparks worldwide. This highlights the usefulness of this method through informing city-scale transitions towards decarbonisation

From a plaintiff's perspective, a jury trial and verdict are prepared for in every case. Experienced trial lawyers know, however, that it is preferable for both sides to reach an equitable compromise as to the value of a case, rather than risk the unknowns involved in a jury determination of a verdict. There are legal elements that require an independent analysis to determine whether a trial, settlement, or some form of arbitration is the appropriate strategy for a plaintiff to pursue.

The worst mistake any attorney or physician involved in a case of medical negligence can make is to underestimate the opponent. The expert witness may know a lot more about a certain field than the physician, or at least a lot more about what the basic standard of care is for a particular case. This article discusses the importance of the deposition and delineates four aspects of the deposition that are of utmost importance in a medical negligence case.

The most important initial step a physician can take in a malpractice case is to secure the best possible representation for his or her defense. This article enumerates the criteria for obtaining quality representation. Among other points, the author cautions the physician to consider the motivation of those who are defending him or her and explains how to determine if an attorney has one's best interests in mind.