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Sustainability, Volume 9, Issue 6

2017 June - 202 articles

Cover Story: This paper presents and compares different approaches of science–practice collaboration, in particular action research, (Mode 2) Transdisciplinarity (Td), Transition Management (TM), and Transformative Science (TSc). We elaborate on the different roles that scientists in these processes play. In Td processes they work as facilitators to develop socially robust solutions, as activist researchers in TM projects, and as catalysts in TSc. In Td processes science is viewed as a public good aiming to serve all key stakeholders. Researchers involved in TM projects strive to influence ongoing transition processes. The TSc approach takes a catalyst perspective when inducing processes of strategic (societal) transition when including certain stakeholder groups. The paper focuses on what roles normative aspects play in the different approaches and new societal demands imposed on science and universities. View the paper
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Articles (202)

  • Article
  • Open Access
40 Citations
8,603 Views
17 Pages

Reducing Global Warming Potential through Sustainable Intensification of Basmati Rice-Wheat Systems in India

  • Tek B. Sapkota,
  • Vivek Shankar,
  • Munmun Rai,
  • Mangi L Jat,
  • Clare M. Stirling,
  • Love K. Singh,
  • Hanuman S. Jat and
  • Mohinder S. Grewal

21 June 2017

This study examines the effects of tillage, residue management and cropping system intensification through the inclusion of green gram on the performance of the rice-wheat (RW) system in NW India. We hypothesized that zero tillage (ZT) with residue r...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Science in Conservation Agricultural Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
4,934 Views
15 Pages

21 June 2017

Occupant behavior has a significant impact on building energy performance. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the stochastic characteristics of manual solar shades and their influence on building energy performance. A co-simulation for occupant...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Assessments of Buildings)
  • Article
  • Open Access
21 Citations
9,535 Views
16 Pages

Exploring the Staple Foodscape of Dar es Salaam

  • Marc C. A. Wegerif and
  • Johannes S. C. Wiskerke

21 June 2017

The city region foodscape is a relational space of spatially proximate as well as more distant relations. The current understanding of city region foodscapes will be enhanced by more analyses of what is happening in the African and Asian cities where...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue City Region Foodscapes)
  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
6,375 Views
18 Pages

21 June 2017

Ensuring equal opportunity of quality basic education is critical for a sustainable society, but access to high-quality public education is limited by the place of residence and income level of the household, especially under rigid geographic school...

(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Urban and Rural Development)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
4,717 Views
18 Pages

21 June 2017

The large scale deployment of renewable generation is generally seen as the most promising option for displacing fossil fuel generators. A challenge in integrating renewable energy resources (RERs) for distribution networks is to find approaches that...

(This article belongs to the Section Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability)
  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
7,199 Views
27 Pages

21 June 2017

This paper examines the issue of climate change pedagogy and social action in tourism, with particular interest in globally-significant destinations under threat from climate change. Little is understood of the role and responsibility of visitors as...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environment, Tourism and Sustainable Development)
  • Article
  • Open Access
24 Citations
8,116 Views
18 Pages

21 June 2017

The rebuilding of deteriorating residential areas is being replicated rapidly throughout Israeli cities despite limited assessment of the social consequences. This paper presents the findings of a social impact assessment (SIA) applied to a demolitio...

  • Article
  • Open Access
48 Citations
9,394 Views
19 Pages

21 June 2017

Different sustainability indicators tend to reflect different or even converse outcomes in terms of countries. A careful comparative study is needed to clarify whether these indicators are actually coherent with each other. We analyze and compare fiv...

(This article belongs to the Section Environmental Sustainability and Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
16 Citations
6,189 Views
16 Pages

Volatility Spillover between Water, Energy and Food

  • Massimo Peri,
  • Daniela Vandone and
  • Lucia Baldi

20 June 2017

Water, energy, and food and are strongly interconnected, and the sustainability of the whole world depends on this link. The aim of this article is to analyze the volatility spillovers between indexes representing the financial component of this nexu...

(This article belongs to the Section Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability)
  • Article
  • Open Access
51 Citations
12,350 Views
17 Pages

20 June 2017

Organisations have become interested in using integral management systems to increase their sustainable value. Although global integration models address sustainability in organisations, these models present shortcomings and limitations and do not de...

(This article belongs to the Section Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability)
  • Article
  • Open Access
53 Citations
13,510 Views
15 Pages

20 June 2017

The business ecosystem has provided a new paradigm for management research. Most research in the field has focused on profit-driven industries, neglecting the area of the circular economy. This research sets out to capture the mechanisms that the lea...

(This article belongs to the Section Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability)
  • Article
  • Open Access
36 Citations
9,487 Views
10 Pages

20 June 2017

Air pollution has been a serious challenge for human sustainable development. Researches show that emissions from the transport sector have been found to be a main source of air pollution in cities. Governments have implemented numerous green traffic...

(This article belongs to the Section Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
5,397 Views
14 Pages

20 June 2017

Greenhouse Gas emissions from agricultural activities, such as rice cropping, have been proven to be an important cause of climate change, with constant barriers and constraints in the implementation and promotion of mitigation measures among farmers...

(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Agriculture)
  • Article
  • Open Access
66 Citations
8,531 Views
16 Pages

Using an AHP-ISM Based Method to Study the Vulnerability Factors of Urban Rail Transit System

  • Liangliang Song,
  • Qiming Li,
  • George F. List,
  • Yongliang Deng and
  • Ping Lu

20 June 2017

As a sustainable means of public transportation, urban rail transit system undergoes rapid expansion in China. How to provide a safe and reliable service has been the subject of growing attention in this context. However, such work is challenging bec...

(This article belongs to the Collection Risk Assessment and Management)
  • Article
  • Open Access
15 Citations
14,951 Views
10 Pages

20 June 2017

Measuring resource efficiency can be achieved using different methods, of which primary energy demand is commonly used. The primary energy factor (PEF) is a figure describing how much energy from primary resources is being used per unit of energy del...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nuclear Waste Management and Sustainability of Nuclear Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
33 Citations
10,198 Views
17 Pages

20 June 2017

A number of successive energy crises over the last decade due to the lack of a balanced investment planning in the energy sector in Chile has led to a strong dependence on external sources and also doubled energy prices in the country, thus posing a...

  • Article
  • Open Access
17 Citations
6,065 Views
20 Pages

20 June 2017

Since the early 90s, Italy has undergone radical changes in the regulations of the public pension system aimed at mending its main drawbacks and improving sustainability in the long run. The reforms were intended to recover the national economy throu...

  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
9,377 Views
21 Pages

20 June 2017

In the last 30 years, China’s economic power has experienced great changes and has brought about a profound impact on the world economy. This led us to ask a question: do changes in China’s economic power shift the geo-economic relationships between...

(This article belongs to the Section Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability)
  • Article
  • Open Access
32 Citations
9,193 Views
14 Pages

19 June 2017

Interest in food systems sustainability is growing, but progress toward them is slow. This research focuses on three interrelated challenges that hinder progress. First, prevailing visions lack a concrete definition of sustainability. Second, global...

(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Agriculture)
  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
4,432 Views
13 Pages

Quantitative Investigations of Water Balances of a Dune-Interdune Landscape during the Growing Season in the Horqin Sandy Land, Northeastern China

  • Xueya Zhou,
  • Dexin Guan,
  • Jiabing Wu,
  • Tingting Yang,
  • Fenghui Yuan,
  • Ala Musa,
  • Changjie Jin,
  • Anzhi Wang and
  • Yushu Zhang

19 June 2017

Dune-interdune is the main landscape pattern of desert areas, such as the Horqin sandy land of Northeastern China. Exploring the temporal and spatial variation of the water balance is crucial for efficient vegetation restoration at the micro-landform...

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
5,081 Views
16 Pages

19 June 2017

The Three Rivers Source Region of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a key area that has extensive impacts on much of the population and economy of China as well as several Southeast Asian countries. The rangeland in this area has undergone degradation, th...

(This article belongs to the Section Environmental Sustainability and Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
88 Citations
13,329 Views
12 Pages

19 June 2017

As it is widely accepted, cycling tends to produce health benefits and reduce air pollution. Policymakers encourage people to use bikes by improving cycling facilities as well as developing bicycle-sharing systems (BSS). It is increasingly interestin...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Neo-Geography and Crowdsourcing Technologies for Sustainable Urban Transportation)
  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
8,537 Views
17 Pages

19 June 2017

Improving human settlements diagnosis is a key factor in effective urban planning and the design of efficient policy making. In this paper, we illustrate how network theory concepts can be applied to reveal the topological structure of functional rel...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Decipher the Present to Shape the Future- Rethinking the Urban–Rural Nexus)
  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
9,041 Views
13 Pages

18 June 2017

The future belongs to the youth, but do they really have a say in it? Learning processes with regard to a successful socio-ecological change must start in childhood and adolescence in order to succeed in social transformation. The youth cannot be a p...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue 6th World Sustainability Forum - Selected Papers)
  • Article
  • Open Access
49 Citations
14,000 Views
17 Pages

18 June 2017

Individuals around the globe engage in sustainable consumption in their everyday life, e.g., when it comes to individual transportation. Although tourism behavior contributes to global carbon emissions to a considerable extent, consumers’ awareness o...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Consumer Behavior)
  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
6,688 Views
16 Pages

18 June 2017

Credit scoring models are usually formulated by fitting the probability of loan default as a function of individual evaluation attributes. Typically, these attributes are measured using a Likert-type scale, but are treated as interval scale explanato...

  • Article
  • Open Access
96 Citations
5,679 Views
26 Pages

Stabilizing Valences of an Optimum Monetary Zone in a Resilient Economy—Approaches and Limitations

  • Gheorghe H. Popescu,
  • Elvira Nica,
  • Florin Cristian Ciurlău,
  • Mihaela Comănescu and
  • Teodora Bițoiu

17 June 2017

Following De Grauwe (2016), this research advances the idea according to which economies that are part of a monetary union issue debt in a medium of exchange they cannot control: financial markets develop the capacity to impose default on such econom...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resilient Economics and the Regional Sustainable Economic Growth)
  • Article
  • Open Access
226 Citations
31,704 Views
22 Pages

Sand and Dust Storms: Impact Mitigation

  • Nick Middleton and
  • Utchang Kang

17 June 2017

Sand and dust storms (SDS) play an integral role in the Earth system but they also present a range of hazards to the environmental and economic sustainability of human society. These hazards are of considerable importance for residents of dryland env...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dust Events in the Environment)
  • Article
  • Open Access
21 Citations
5,934 Views
23 Pages

17 June 2017

The transnational area of Changbai Mountain (TACM) is crucial to sustainable development in Northeast Asia owing to its abundant forest, which helps in maintaining biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services. However, the spatiotemporal patterns of...

  • Article
  • Open Access
34 Citations
10,645 Views
14 Pages

17 June 2017

There has been a long-standing debate about whether urban living is more or less sustainable than suburban living, and quality of life (QoL) is one of several key measures of the social sustainability of residential living. However, to our knowledge,...

  • Review
  • Open Access
139 Citations
12,889 Views
28 Pages

16 June 2017

In order to regulate natural processes and control the scale of human activities, sustainability assessment needs to be integrated into urban planning. In this context, indicator-based sustainability assessment tools are fundamental instruments that...

(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Urban and Rural Development)
  • Article
  • Open Access
142 Citations
21,215 Views
19 Pages

The Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Maturity Model: Linking Theory and Practice

  • Bernd Carsten Stahl,
  • Michael Obach,
  • Emad Yaghmaei,
  • Veikko Ikonen,
  • Kate Chatfield and
  • Alexander Brem

16 June 2017

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is an approach to research and innovation governance aiming to ensure that research purpose, process and outcomes are acceptable, sustainable and even desirable. In order to achieve this ambitious aim, RRI mu...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in Industry)
  • Project Report
  • Open Access
7 Citations
4,905 Views
8 Pages

ERA-PLANET, a European Network for Observing Our Changing Planet

  • Kanaris Tsinganos,
  • Evangelos Gerasopoulos,
  • Iphigenia Keramitsoglou,
  • Nicola Pirrone and
  • The ERA-PLANET Team

16 June 2017

ERA-PLANET is a wide European network comprised of 118 researchers from 35 partner institutions located in 18 countries, aiming to strengthen the European Research Area in the domain of Earth Observation (EO) in coherence with the European participat...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regional Sustainability Research Network: Selected Papers from the Expert Group Meeting on Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals with Water–Food–Ecosystem Resilience in the Mid-Latitude Region)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
4,925 Views
18 Pages

Regional Maldistribution of China’s Hospitals Based on Their Structural System

  • Lie Ma,
  • Qiu Xie,
  • Shiying Shi,
  • Xiaosu Ye and
  • Aifeng Zhao

16 June 2017

Health equity is significant for social sustainability and the Chinese government is trying to achieve the goals of “universal access to basic health care services”. As the comprehensive carrier of health care services, hospitals are almost the most...

  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
6,153 Views
14 Pages

16 June 2017

Understanding the nature of the diffusion process is crucial for sustainable development of a new technology and product. This study introduces a replacement diffusion model that leads to a better understanding of the growth dynamics of a technology....

(This article belongs to the Section Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability)
  • Article
  • Open Access
42 Citations
12,618 Views
20 Pages

16 June 2017

In this paper, we investigate the ongoing, self-motivated activity called freelancing or self-employment, and explore ideas about the entrepreneurial competencies needed to conduct a sustainable work life in the arts. We present the findings of a com...

(This article belongs to the Section Tourism, Culture, and Heritage)
  • Article
  • Open Access
102 Citations
16,851 Views
20 Pages

Conceptualizing Dimensions and Characteristics of Urban Resilience: Insights from a Co-Design Process

  • Ayyoob Sharifi,
  • Lorenzo Chelleri,
  • Cate Fox-Lent,
  • Stelios Grafakos,
  • Minal Pathak,
  • Marta Olazabal,
  • Susie Moloney,
  • Lily Yumagulova and
  • Yoshiki Yamagata

16 June 2017

Resilience is a multi-faceted concept frequently used across a wide range of disciplines, practices, and sectors. There is a growing recognition of the utility of resilience as a bridging concept that can facilitate inter-and transdisciplinary approa...

(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Urban and Rural Development)
  • Article
  • Open Access
48 Citations
14,485 Views
19 Pages

16 June 2017

Extensive energy consumption in construction and ventilation has caused numerous environmental problems alongside huge waste of nonrenewable natural resources in today’s world. Meanwhile, vernacular architecture has been able to sustainably adapt to...

(This article belongs to the Section Environmental Sustainability and Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
33 Citations
7,001 Views
14 Pages

16 June 2017

Green travel can ease urban traffic problems and has aroused Chinese government interest regarding their extensive concerns. Although the Chinese government has formulated some policies to encourage residents to perform green travel behavior, non-gre...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
3,906 Views
12 Pages

15 June 2017

This paper attempts to answer the question of whether or not “segregation”, or at least “differentiation”, takes place in commercial areas in terms of “spatial homophily”. Based on the 2010 Household Travel Survey data in the Seoul metropolitan area,...

  • Article
  • Open Access
21 Citations
6,358 Views
12 Pages

15 June 2017

Increasing precipitation by climate change and the growing number of impervious areas present greater risk of disaster damage in urban areas. Urban green infrastructure can be an effective mitigation alternative in highly developed and concentrated a...

(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Urban and Rural Development)
  • Article
  • Open Access
33 Citations
8,152 Views
23 Pages

15 June 2017

In recent years, research, society and industry recognize the need to transform the agri-food system towards sustainability. Within this process, sustainability experiments play a crucial role in transforming the structure, culture and practices. In...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Governance for Sustainability)
  • Article
  • Open Access
186 Citations
13,438 Views
32 Pages

15 June 2017

Over the last decade, bioeconomy policies, guided by integrated bioeconomy strategies, have developed. This paper presents a systematic and comparative analysis of official bioeconomy strategies of the EU, Germany, OECD, Sweden and the USA with regar...

(This article belongs to the Section Environmental Sustainability and Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
6,066 Views
20 Pages

15 June 2017

In Hong Kong, reclamation is the main method for developing new land use areas as most country parks and mountains are protected under a land policy that emphasizes conservation for their high ecological value. Therefore, the land use for urbanized a...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Land Use in China)
  • Article
  • Open Access
26 Citations
6,182 Views
11 Pages

15 June 2017

Land use intensity is an important indicator of human activities, so we quantified the land use intensity and five ecosystem services (soil conservation, water conservation, carbon storage, net primary productivity (NPP), and crop production) in 13 s...

  • Article
  • Open Access
46 Citations
8,374 Views
22 Pages

A Joint Evaluation of the Wind and Wave Energy Resources Close to the Greek Islands

  • Daniel Ganea,
  • Valentin Amortila,
  • Elena Mereuta and
  • Eugen Rusu

15 June 2017

The objective of this work is to analyze the wind and wave energy potential in the proximity of the Greek islands. Thus, by evaluating the synergy between wind and waves, a more comprehensive picture of the renewable energy resources in the target ar...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wind Energy, Load and Price Forecasting towards Sustainability)
  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
4,824 Views
23 Pages

15 June 2017

The attitudes and response of “policy receivers” should be taken into more consideration when governments make regulation policy. This paper discusses the public’s degree of understanding, support willingness, implement willingness, and influence wil...

  • Article
  • Open Access
29 Citations
8,448 Views
17 Pages

15 June 2017

This paper simulates the effect of a carbon tariff on China’s trade of industrial products and emission reduction through the GTAP 8.0 model, when the European Union, the United States, and Japan impose a carbon tariff simultaneously or respectively....

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
5,928 Views
11 Pages

14 June 2017

Liana constitutes an important structural and functional component in many forest ecosystems and has profound impacts on forest carbon (C) cycling. However, whether and how liana regulates spatial distributions of litterfall and soil organic C are st...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ecological Restoration for Sustainable Forest Management)

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Sustainability - ISSN 2071-1050