Energy-efficient manufacturing is an important aspect of sustainable development in current society. The rapid development of sensing technologies can collect real-time production data from shop floors, which provides more opportunities for making energy saving decisions about manufacturing systems. In this paper, a digital twin-based bidirectional operation framework is proposed to realize energy-efficient manufacturing systems. The data view, model view, and service view of a digital twin manufacturing system are formulated to describe the physical systems in virtual space, to perform simulation analysis, to make decisions, and to control the physical systems for various energy-saving purposes. For online energy-saving decisions about machines in serial manufacturing systems, an event-driven estimation method of an energy-saving window based on Max-plus Algebra is presented to put the target machine to sleep, considering real-time production data of a system segment. A practical, simplified automotive production line is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method by simulation experiments. Our method has no restriction on machine failure mode and predefined parameters for energy-saving decision of machines. The proposed approach has potential use in synchronous and asynchronous manufacturing systems. Full article

Peasants’ calculation capacities (PCC) and measurement behaviors can enable the development of knowledge economy and technological exchanges. This study is based on critical observations made by analysis of Chinese and Ivorian rural markets to understand measurement system as a foundation of development of economic knowledge, science, and technology. A total of 167 rural people from China and Cote d’Ivoire were interviewed using a simple random sampling method through valid and reliable means. Using the univariate statistics, we summarized the data to statistically describe Chinese and Ivorian rural traders. The multiple linear regression model was used to examine the impact of different explanatory variables on peasants’ calculating capacities. From the independent two samples t-test, we statistically examined the difference between the calculation capacities of Chinese and Ivorian rural traders. Analysis of the data from China and Cote d’Ivoire showed that 76% of Chinese rural traders were using traditional or modern weighing balance compared to only 24% in Cote d’Ivoire. Modern or traditional weighing balance was popular only with traders or wholesalers dealing with bulk commodities, or traders with expensive products in the case of Cote d’Ivoire. Our findings also depict that the calculation capacities of Chinese rural traders are higher than Ivorian (p-value < 0.001). Experience was found to be the most effective factors for the estimation of PCC among Chinese and Ivorian rural traders. Together, these results significantly expand the knowledge, economy, and technology adoption issues in the context of China and Cote d’Ivoire. Thus, our analyses provide useful insights for policymakers, rural traders, advisers, for decision making and agricultural extension services in these two countries, particularly for China–Africa cooperation. Full article

The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus presents an opportunity to rethink predominant approaches to household behavior change science. We linked emerging FEW nexus research with existing literature examining household consumption and pro-environmental behaviors. While a large body of work examines the environmental impacts of household life and explores pathways to behavior change for sustainability, the literature lacks studies that test interventions in multiple FEW resource categories, leaving researchers unable to identify tensions and tradeoffs in the household system. To guide this developing field and accumulate findings on household behavior across disciplines, we proposed a conceptual typology that synthesizes interdisciplinary analytic traditions to classify behavioral interventions targeting the household FEW nexus. The typology synthesizes behavioral interventions as active, passive, or structural, and household-specific or non-specific, illustrating six distinct categories: information, tailored information, action, gamification, policy/price change, and material/technology provision. A review of 40 studies that guided the typology identifies four significant lessons for future intervention research: household non-specific information and tailored information work better together, feedback is more effective when it is persistent, price-based interventions (information or incentives) are often ineffective, and material/technology provision is very effective but utilized in few household studies. To push forward household resource consumption science, we advocated for a holistic nexus focus that is rooted in interdisciplinarity, coalition building with stakeholders, and data reporting that facilitates knowledge accumulation. Full article

The forest ecosystems of Mexico experience soil degradation mainly due to water erosion, which causes low vegetation regeneration. One of the strategies to diminish soil loss is through the construction of stone bunds (SB)—hand-made structures to trap sediment and store water for longer periods. However, little is known about their effects on pine establishment. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the effect of SB on the survival and growth of individual P. engelmannii Carr. specimens with respect to the distance of their planted. The study additionally sought to analyse how SB would affect changes in the production of aerial phytomass, herbaceous vegetation cover and soil characteristics in a reforested area of Durango State in north-central Mexico. Three treatments were evaluated by planting pine trees at three distances with respect to the SB: 80 cm upslope bund (UB), 80 cm downslope bund (DB) and between upper and lower bunds (BB). The variables analysed were the following: The survival and growth of reforestation, aerial coverage and the production of herbaceous plants, and the physicochemical characteristics of the soil. Survival showed significant differences (p < 0.05) among treatments, UB (80%), DB (27%) and BB (30%). The production of aerial phytomass did not show significant differences between treatments UB (1651 kg ha⁻¹) and DB (1058 kg ha⁻¹), although these two were different (p < 0.05) to BB (600 kg ha⁻¹). On the other hand, the vegetation cover and soil characteristics did not show statistical differences. These results highlight the importance of the effect of SB on the survival of P. engelmannii Carr. and the growth of herbaceous vegetation. Full article

Since the early 1980s, the concept of sustainability has been employed by designers to confront the problems deriving from the emergence of the environmental crisis. On the one hand, if this contributed to generating systemic design approaches and methods to mitigate the human impact on the planet, little has been done to explore sustainability as a concept that extends beyond anthropocentrism. Examining environmental issues by considering other-than-human viewpoints could introduce alternative scenarios compared to those envisioned through technocentric means. This work considers a speculative design project that provides a multispecies reading of the notion of environmental contamination through the engagement of human and vegetal perspectives. The considered methodology focusses on the transdisciplinary tactic of “following” plant collectives across the multiple sites and actors that populate their life. Building on post-humanism theories and Guattari’s concept of “ecosophy”, this paper entails that sustainability should be seen not just as the outcome of a design process, but also as a behavioural attitude, and design as an implementation of that attitude. It is argued that following other-than-humans can teach designers to think sustainably by cultivating relations of reciprocity that help to shed light on the multispecies landscapes of the Anthropocene. Full article

Many electricity markets around the world are still at developmental and transitional stages. To complete the transition and achieve the key objectives of perfect market design, designers often choose direct electricity procurement of large consumers (LCs) as a pilot. The trading mechanism is critical because it lays the foundation for the exploration of formulating a trading model and the succeeding solution; however, the existing trading mechanisms of direct electricity procurement struggle to cope with new challenges that electric power systems are facing. This paper proposes a novel two-stage trading mechanism, considering both the fairness and efficiency of direct electricity procurement. Based on the proposed trading mechanism, an agent-based trading model with multiple participants is developed. The simulation results of the transactions between LCs and generation companies (GenCos) illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed mechanism. With this mechanism, LCs and GenCos will have more choices in the trading process and can benefit from the reduction of the average market price. The two-stage trading model provides a new choice for market designers and participants of direct electricity procurement. Full article

The government plays a critical role in the promotion of recycling strategy among supply chain members. The purpose of this study is to investigate the optimal government policies on closed-loop supply chains and how these policies impact the market demand and the returning strategies of manufacturers and retailers. This paper presents a design of closed-loop supply chains under government regulation by considering a novel three-stage game theoretic model. Firstly, Stackelberg models are adopted to describe the one-shot game between the manufacturer and the retailer in a local market. Secondly, based on the Stackelberg equilibriums, a repeated and dynamic population game is developed. Thirdly, the government analyzes the population game to find the optimal tax and subsidy policies in the whole market. To solve the proposed model, the idea of backward induction is adopted. The results suggest that, by collecting tax and allocating subsidy, the government can influence the market demands and return rates. The centralized supply chain structure is always preferred for the government and the market. The government prefers to allocate subsidy to low-pollution, low-profit remanufactured products. The environmental attention of the government affects the subsidy policy. Full article

Policymakers and practitioners working in urban greenspace management want to know what kind of interventions are effective in promoting mental wellbeing. In practice, however, they rely on multiple forms of knowledge, often in unwritten form. This paper considers how such knowledge is interpreted and used by a range of stakeholders to identify greenspace interventions to support residents’ health and wellbeing in one UK city. It examines the interface between academic research, policy and practice, drawing on the findings of a three-year study in Sheffield, UK. The Improving Wellbeing through the Urban Nature project investigated the links between ‘urban nature’ and mental health. One strand of the research sought to influence policy and practice, and this article presents findings and reflects on some of the processes of this exercise. It highlights the role of tacit knowledge in practice and its influence on practitioners’ choice of greenspace interventions and the challenges in drawing on such knowledge to influence policy. The findings affirm practice-based knowledge as socially situated, interpretively fashioned and politically weighted. This paper concludes by demonstrating the importance of considering the local context when devising policy prescriptions for greenspace provision and management. Full article

The organization of large-scale sporting events implies different benefits and costs for hosting communities. However, little effort has been devoted to studying the impacts of event failures or postponed or cancelled events from the perspective of local residents. This paper is therefore concerned with the range of local residents’ perceived impacts resulting from the cancellation of the 2019 edition of the international men’s cycling race Tour of Croatia. In addition, it also examines if any significant differences exist between local residents familiar with the race and cancelling and local residents not familiar with the race, regarding the perceived impacts of this cancelled event on the hosting community. The number of perceived impacts was reduced by Exploratory Factor Analysis. Differences between local residents familiar with and those not familiar with the race and its cancelation were examined using the two-independent-samples Mann-Whitney U test. The results suggest that local residents not familiar with the event and its cancelation, when compared with local residents familiar with the event and its cancellation, perceive the majority of negative impacts as being weaker and most of the positive impacts as being stronger. Full article

The increase in carbon emissions is considered one of the major causes of global warming and climate change. To reduce the potential environmental and economic threat from such greenhouse gas emissions, governments must formulate policies related to carbon emissions. Most economists favor the carbon tax as an approach to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This market-based approach is expected to inevitably affect enterprises’ operating activities such as production, inventory, and equipment investment. Therefore, in this study, we investigate a production inventory model for deteriorating items under a carbon tax policy and collaborative preservation technology investment from the perspective of supply chain integration. Our main purpose is to determine the optimal production, delivery, ordering, and investment policies for the buyer and vendor that maximize the joint total profit per unit time in consideration of the carbon tax policy. We present several numerical examples to demonstrate the solution procedures, and we conduct sensitivity analyses of the optimal solutions with respect to major parameters for identifying several managerial implications that provide a useful decision tool for the relevant managers. We hope that the study results assist government organizations in selecting a more appropriate carbon emissions policy for the carbon reduction trend. Full article

Cleaner production has been used for several years in Latin America to minimize waste generation while reducing material and energy consumption. Despite those environmental benefits, its implementation may sometimes lead to changes in products or processes whose environmental performance can yield either positive or negative outputs when examined within a broader context, meaning it is necessary to complement cleaner production with other environmental tools that can provide environmental assessments. This paper presents a combination of cleaner production with life cycle assessment (LCA) applied within the wood industry in a case study in Salvador, a state of Bahia (Brazil), regarding the production of two models of wooden chairs. The study selected life cycle assessment as a scientific tool to quantify the environmental impacts of the models having ILCD 2011 midpoint and cumulative energy demand methods. The results confirmed the presence of environmental tradeoffs among the models that were not considered during the cleaner production program implemented. This paper also includes a proposal of a flowchart to guide the implementation of cleaner production when deciding to implement changes in material, energy source, processes, final destination, or lifespan of the product evaluated, identifying the stages where environmental assessment like life cycle assessment may be required to address tradeoffs. Full article

Currently, the green, sustainable development of metropolises is hindered by problems caused by Large-scale Instantaneous Peak-demands for Passenger-transportation (LIPP), such as traffic congestion and air pollution. To mitigate these problems, we propose a new type of demand-responsive service as an alternative to inefficient “door-to-door” service. The proposed service is based on service units designed to aggregate passengers for shuttle service. To guarantee service quality and efficiency, a maximum passenger walking time constraint, a request rejection mechanism and a scheme for ensuring solution feasibility are considered. Through numerical experiments, we prove the following: (i) the proposed transport option exhibits better performance (by 40.37% for passengers and by 35.79% for operators) than the door-to-door transport option for solving real cases. (ii) By testing different datasets, we prove that the proposed service is more suitable for the request distributions that are spatiotemporally concentrated. (iii) Regarding the individual components of the proposed clustering-first, routing-second solution framework, the proposed soft clustering algorithm exhibits better performance than the classical hard clustering method (by 8%), and the proposed routing algorithm is 1.5 times more efficient than the commercial solution software GAMS. Full article

In the karst area of southern China, karst water is important for supporting the sustainable production and home living for the local residents. Consequently, it is of significance to fully understand the water cycle, so as to make full use of water resources. In karst areas, epikarst and conduits are developed, participating in the hydrological cycle actively. For conventional lumped hydrologic models, it is difficult to simulate the hydrological cycle accurately. These models neglect to consider the variation of underlying surface and weather change. Meanwhile, for the original distributed hydrological model, the existence of epikarst and underground conduits as well as inadequate data information also make it difficult to achieve accurate simulation. To this end, the framework combining the advantages of lumped model–reservoir model and distributed hydrologic model–Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model is established to simulate the water cycle efficiently in a karst area. Xianghualing karst watershed in southern China was selected as the study area and the improved SWAT model was used to simulate the water cycle. Results show that the indicators of E_NS and R² in the calibration and verification periods are both above 0.8, which is evidently improved in comparison with the original model. The improved SWAT model is verified to have better efficiency in describing the hydrological cycle in a typical karst area. Full article

The purpose of this paper is to provide a contribution to the development of R&D and transformation functional platforms by identifying key performance influencing factors in the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to analyze platform operation performance status and reasons. The DEA method is undertaken to calculate the comprehensive efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency of R&D and transformation functional platforms in China’s 30 provinces within the period 2016–2018. Based on the 2018 pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency calculations, the K-means clustering method was used to classify the R&D and transformation functional platforms of 30 provinces. Finally, according to the clustering results, the corresponding clustering improvement scheme is given. The operational level of R&D and transformation functional platforms in many provinces of China still needs to be improved: the R&D and transformation capabilities are weak, the market share of leading products is low, the ability of new technology value-added is insufficient, and the development of R&D and transformation functional platforms has regional imbalance. This study is based solely on statistical data, these data alone obviously cannot fully describe and evaluate the real state of R&D and transformation functional platform due to the complexity and diversity of platforms. Further research is needed to generalize beyond the performance indicators constructed in this paper. For the problems of low overall operation efficiency, unbalanced regional development, redundancy of input resources and lack of professional management personnel in the operation of R&D and transformation functional platforms, policy suggestions can be put forward according to clustering results and input and output adjustment values calculated based on relaxation variables. The study presenting a methodology for analyzing R&D and transformation functional platforms’ operation performance, and the conclusions will provide reference for the development of platforms and high-tech industries. Full article

Groundwater chemistry has an important impact on the vegetation distribution in inland areas. An in-depth understanding of the impact of groundwater chemistry on vegetation can help in developing an effective management strategy to protect the inland ecosystem. The aim of this study was to identify the influence of groundwater chemicals on species diversity and the distribution characteristics of wetland plants at multiple scales based on the groundwater chemical data from 15 sampling points and the distribution data of 13 plants in the Sugan Lake Wetland in 2016. The results show that the groundwater of the Sugan Lake Wetland is weakly alkaline, with high salinity and hardness; the water chemical type is Na-SO₄-Cl; the concentration of the major water chemical parameters is significantly different and is the highest in the northwest, followed by the southwest, and is the lowest in the east; with an increase in the groundwater depth, the concentration of major water chemical parameters first showed an increasing trend followed by a decreasing trend; Artemisia frigida Willd, Poa annua L. and Triglochin maritimum L. were adapted to the environment with a higher ion concentration of the groundwater, and their salt resistance was the strongest; Blysmus sinocompressus and Polygonum are more adapted to the environment with lower salinity and hardness of groundwater; Thermopsis lanceolata has stronger adaptability to the ion concentration, salinity, and hardness of groundwater; other plants are adapted to environments where the ion concentration, salinity, and hardness of the groundwater are moderate. Full article