Sustainability — Open Access Journal

The El Niño phenomenon in 2012 triggered a drought in La Guajira, Colombia that extended until 2016. In this period, the average child mortality rate in the area reached 23.4 out of 1000. The aim of this paper is to identify the integrated spatial pattern (ISP) of a single indicator in this case; child mortality. At the same time, the ISP identifies causes and priority areas for action. The socio-economic vulnerability (SEV) variables and spatial indicators related to child mortality were selected from the literature review and through meetings, workshops, and interviews with the affected community during fieldwork. Using correlation analysis and stepwise regression, the SEV variables with more accountability in child mortality during the drought were identified: Households with a monthly income of less than 100 USD, the number of people older than 65, and the number of people younger than 5 years old. Allocating weights to the SEV variables according to their degree of accountability in child mortality, its ISP has been identified. The far north of La Guajira was detected as the area most affected by child mortality and was, therefore, the priority zone for implementing actions focused on generating new sources of income. Full article

The anthropogenic problems in richly sculpted areas (mountain and submontane) are mainly related to agricultural activity, which shapes the quality of surface waters. This paper presents an analysis of the results of the hydrochemical tests carried out in the years 2007–2018 at check-control spots. The heavy metal pollution index (HPI <100) indicated a low risk for aquatic organisms. The statistical calculations obtained by means of multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) designated that the hazard quotient (HQ) index can be combined with the electrical conductivity (EC) and total dissolved substances (TDS) parameters used in the assessment of water erosion. The HQ index showed that the concentration of individual heavy metals is lower than their value in the 0.5 percentile of the value. In subsequent studies, it should be assessed whether the size of arable land has an impact on the increased concentration of heavy metals in the surface water. We recommend small retention reservoirs as a potential management measure to improve the quality of the surface water at a regional scale. This study has great potential to mitigate the degradation processes related to the insufficient storage capacity, and to promote natural water retention. Full article

Due to the highly developed rail transit over the past decades, the phenomena of complex individual self-organized behaviors and mass crowd dynamics have become a great concern in the train station. In order to understand passengers’ walking-edge effect and analyze the relationship between the layout and sustainable service abilities of the train station, a heuristics-based social force model is proposed to elaborate the crowd dynamics. Several evacuation scenarios are implemented to describe the walking-edge effect in a train station with the evacuation efficiency, pedestrian flow, and crowd density map. The results show that decentralizing crowd flow can significantly increase the evacuation efficiency in different scenarios. When the exits are far away from the central axis of the railway station, the walking-edge effect has little influence on the evacuation efficiency. Obstacles can guide the movement of passengers by channelizing pedestrian flows. In addition, a wider side exit of the funnel-shaped corridors can promote walking-edge effect and decrease the pressure among a congested crowd. Besides providing a modified social force model with considering walking-edge effect, several suggestions are put forward for managers and architects of the train station in designing sustainable layouts. Full article

A final decision was made for the inclusion of the following tests: standing broad jump, seated medicine ball throw, 20 m SR test, 30 m sprint, Illinois test, and a new test, i.e., the crunning test, to assess different skill-related components at once. The use of this combination of tests allows for the assessment of all PF components and can help planning effective training programs and cultivate sporting talent. Full article

Aquaculture plays an important role in providing food and reducing poverty but it affects environmental change and coastal ecosystems. Remote sensing is a technology that is helpful in the spatial-temporal dynamic monitoring of aquaculture, coastal management, and environmental monitoring. Most research focuses on inland and coastal areas, and little attention is paid to the extensive distribution of marine aquaculture. As an example, we use the freely available Landsat data of the developed marine aquaculture Liaoning Province of China and use the object-oriented automatic extraction method to analyze the spatial and temporal distribution information of marine aquaculture from 2000 to 2018. The accuracy evaluation from the randomly distributed sample points in high-resolution remote sensing images shows that the extraction accuracy for all of the five individual years of aquaculture area was higher than 82%. The results showed that (1) in the past 19 years, the area of marine aquaculture in Liaoning Province showed an increasing trend, which increased from 35.41 km² in 2000 to 201.83 km² in 2018, approximately 5.7 times increase in total area, but the growth rate decreased slightly due to government policy and the environmental quality of the sea area. (2) The centroid of offshore aquaculture in Liaoning Province shows a migration pattern to the northeast, in general, extending from the Dalian Bay sea area to the eastern sea area of the Dalian Chengshantou National Nature Reserve of Coastal Landform in the northeastern direction, and the migration distance reached 48.78 km. Moreover, the migration distance between 2005 and 2010 was the largest of all of the periods, reaching 35.43 km. The new marine aquaculture areas are mainly concentrated in the eastern direction of Xiaoyao Bay, the Changshan Islands, and Guanglu Island in Changhai County. (3) The landscape pattern of marine aquaculture in Liaoning Province is split, large-scale aquaculture and small-scale aquaculture are symbiotic, and landscape ecological activities are active. For local managers, this study can provide valuable supporting data for the assessment of marine aquaculture yield in this region, comprehensive control and management of the marine environment, and stability of the marine ecosystem. For other countries or regions, this work provides a great reference value for monitoring the dynamic spatial distribution of marine aquaculture. Full article

This study examines the effect of omnichannel usage pattern on customers’ purchasing amount by determining statistical significance of different purchasing amount occurred for online and offline channel usage pattern with empirical analysis. The data is collected from a health and lifestyle company operated by Major Pharmaceutical company in Korea, which sells health supplement and skincare products through their owned online and offline channels. The channel usage pattern of customers is categorized into four groups: Customer using online channel only, customer using offline channel only, customer first joined membership through online and use both on/offline channels and customers joined membership through offline channel and use both on/offline. Then, the trading period, total number of purchasing, average purchasing amount per transaction and total purchasing amount during trading period among the above four groups were analyzed. The result demonstrated the number of purchasing, average purchasing amount and total purchasing amount for the omnichannel customer groups who cross used on and offline showed statistical significance. However, the difference in purchasing amount between the group of customers who joined online membership and use offline channel and another customer group that joined offline membership and use online channel was not statistically significant. This study overcame the limitation of conventional studies used survey based data, by the application of empirical data from the real customers in on/offline channels, and provides meaningful insights based on empirical real data that group of customers with higher purchasing experience in both on/offline channels shows high performance. Full article

Actual cities have become smart cities divided by zones. In the past, various innovative actions have been carried out to facilitate smart cities. The projects that were carried out, in response to the needs expressed by inhabitants and driven by individualistic growth, have gone beyond the regulations defined by the urban plan. In fact, territorial contexts reflect the needs of inhabitants, which always shift faster and are more reactive than traditional urban planning tools. The territory is a complex system and it works well if the design choices for its sustainable development are structured and coordinated by a strategic planning tool. The objective of this research is to propose a smart planning process in order to pursue the sustainable development of complex territorial systems. The paper has a particular interest in observing the integrated coastal-marine system as a possible example of real smart development. Smart planning applied to this type of landscape has a positive influence on the development of the environment, landscapes, infrastructure, mobility, services, energy, research, and innovation. Full article

A leading factor in the creation of avoidable household food waste is confusion about food date labels. In the United States, date labels are largely unregulated, resulting in a plethora of date label phrases used in commerce. Federal regulation has been proposed but never passed, while both industry and government have provided voluntary guidance on preferred label phrases. We study food producer adherence to the label phrases endorsed by the Trading Partner Alliance (TPA, an industry group), which includes “Use By” for perishable products subject to a material degradation of critical performance or potential food safety concern and “Best If Used By” for all other packaged foods. Based on three studies conducted between the fall of 2018 and the summer of 2019 that use two distinct measurement methodologies, we find adherence to be less than 50% and to differ by product category, retailer, region, and brand type (store versus national brands). We find numerous dry goods and other foods that are better suited to the “Best If Used By” phrase instead feature the “Use By” phrase. This misapplication of phrases to products and the low TPA phrase adherence rate suggests that practices as of the summer of 2019 may still contribute to consumer confusion about date labels and to inadvertent food discard. We explore possible reasons why our estimated adherence rate is lower than industry reported figures and discuss tradeoffs between government regulation and industry self-regulation. Full article

The aim of this article is to evaluate the impact of suburbanisation on the development of settlements with an emphasis on environmental aspects that need to be addressed in the process of extensive growth of municipalities in suburban regions. In the theoretical part, the article evaluates the processes of suburbanisation and their environmental impact. On a methodological level, municipalities in the suburban zone were first defined on the basis of driving distances. These municipalities were subjected to an analysis of the intensity of residential suburbanisation by calculating a multicriteria indicator from five selected criteria. In the second part of the analysis, a questionnaire survey of mayors was carried out in the particular municipalities. The responses were evaluated using the Likert scale method, and then statistically significant dependencies were sought among individual phenomena and environmental problems which need to be solved by the municipal management due to the growth of municipalities. It was found that the mayors consider changes in the landscape character to be among the most significant impacts of suburbanisation in the territory. A change in the rural character of municipalities because of the construction of urban-type houses is perceived as being very problematic. Another serious problem is the insufficient capacity of technical infrastructure such as sewerage and waste-water treatment. The costs of ensuring the quality of the environment and of public spaces, which are, in many cases, beyond the economic possibilities of municipalities, are also increasing significantly. The article also includes specifications of selected smart solutions and procedures that can help preserve the quality of the environment. Full article

Building maintenance is closely related to the performance and sustainability of buildings. However, existing approaches to maintenance are limited in terms of estimating required repairs. Therefore, this study proposes a case-based reasoning (CBR)-based model for estimating the time when the first repair will be needed after the completion of construction, even in phases where maintenance-related information is scarce. CBR and fuzzy-analytic hierarchy process (AHP) were employed as research methodologies. A database was established by collecting 257 cases related to maintenance of apartment buildings, and attributes were extracted through literature reviews and expert interviews. Then, attributes were weighted by fuzzy-AHP and case similarities were computed by measuring the Euclidean distance. Similar cases were retrieved based on similarity scores. The model was validated via a comparison of 20 randomly selected test cases with the output of retrieved cases. The results showed that the average case similarities of 3-, 5-, 7-, and 10-nearest neighbors (NN) were 98.05%, 97.86%, 97.73%, and 97.59%, respectively, and mean absolute percentage errors for 3-, 5-, 7-, and 10-NN were mostly lower than 20%, confirming the applicability of the proposed model. The proposed method will help in the preliminary estimation of the repair time of building components. Full article

The buried depth of a coal seam determines the temperature at which CO₂ and coal interact. To better understand CO₂ sequestration, the pore structure and organic functional groups of coal treated with different ScCO₂ temperatures were studied. In this study, three different rank coals were treated with ScCO₂ at different temperatures under 8 MPa for 96 h in a geochemical reactor. The changes in pore structure and chemical structure of coal after ScCO₂ treatment were analyzed using mercury intrusion porosimetry, attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy, fractal theory, and curve fitting. The results show that the enhancement effect of ScCO₂ on pore structure of coal becomes less significant as the increase of buried depth. In most of the treated coal samples, the variation proportion of mesopores decreased and the variation proportion of macropores increased. In the relatively higher rank coals, the degree of condensation (DOC) of aromatic rings decreased after treatment with ScCO₂. The DOC values showed a U-shape relationship with temperature, and the aromaticity showed a downward trend with increasing temperature. The chemical structural changes in the relatively lower rank coal sample were complex. These findings will provide an understanding of mechanisms relevant to CO₂ sequestration with enhanced coalbed methane recovery under different geothermal gradients and for different ranks of coal. Full article

As the smart city concept and applications continue to evolve, traditional architects and urban designers are facing an increasingly uncertain future. This paper outlines an innovative educational format to bolster and perpetuate the interdisciplinary nature of architects and urban designers that resonates with both sustainable development (SD) and smart cities (SCs). By applying ‘connective knowledge’ to the concept of interdisciplinarity education, a method was established that uses the SC concept to expand upon and create a bridge between distant disciplines in the context of higher education sustainable development (HESD). As a complementary educational pedagogy to the ‘whole institution approach’ to reduce barriers in higher education institutions (HEIs), this paper highlights an opportunity to apply the SC concept as a basis to construct an interdisciplinary design workshop to focus on building inter-personal competence, targeting university-level students majoring in architecture and urban design. The design workshop used microcontrollers and sensors as these are scalable and easily learnt building blocks of the Internet of Things and SCs. The inter-disciplinary workshop ran for 16 weeks with 14 students majoring in architecture and urban design and electrical engineering. Based on interviews and course evaluations, the experiment was vetted using capacities of inter-personal competence in sustainable development. A series of insights and findings from the design workshop indicated positive initial outcomes that were used to form a set of working criteria for the interdisciplinary design workshop. Future work will include structuring empirical data collection and analysis and expanding collaborations with other distant disciplines such as public administration and social innovation, as delineated by the SC concept. Full article

Human behavioral change is necessary if we wish to evolve into a more sustainable human society, but change is hard, especially given that many people equate environmentalism with personal sacrifice. This paper highlights a semester-long assignment in which undergraduate students examined five behaviors that claim to increase happiness with minimal ecological footprints. We used mixed methods to analyze students’ self-reported positive and negative affect scores before and after completing each of the five activities, along with descriptions of the carbon footprint of each activity and student self-reflections on whether each challenge promoted “sustainability”. Results indicated that students’ positive affect increased with each activity, while negative affect decreased. Student reflections indicated that engagement with systems thinking can be used to examine the relationship between their own well-being and the ecological outcomes of each of their chosen activities, as well as alternatives that would decrease their footprint. In final reflections, 85% of students stated that they would promote these five behaviors among the general public to enhance sustainability efforts. We discuss using the Sustainable Well-being Challenge as a tool to promote behaviors that support both human and ecological well-being. Full article

Permafrost is characterized by low temperature, and its thermal stability is key to geohydrological cycles, energy exchange, and climate regulation. Increasing engineering activities, i.e., road construction and operations, are affecting the thermal stability in permafrost regions and have already led to the degradation of permafrost and caused environmental problems. To understand the spatiotemporal influence of road construction and operations on the thermal dynamics in permafrost regions, we conducted a study in the Ela Mountain Pass where multiple roads intersect on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) and calculated the thermal dynamics from 2000 to 2017 using normalized spectral entropy (measuring the disorderliness of time-series data). Our results indicate that road level is a significant influencing factor, where high-level roads (expressways) exhibit stronger thermal impacts than low-level roads (province- and county-level roads). Our results also indicate that duration of operation is the most significant factor that determines the thermal impacts of roads on permafrost: the thermal impacts of the newly paved expressway are positively related to elevation, while the thermal impacts of the old expressway are positively related to less vegetated areas. The study provides an excellent method for understanding the spatiotemporal impacts of engineering activities on the temperature dynamics in permafrost regions, thereby helping policymakers in China and other countries to better plan their infrastructure projects to avoid environmentally vulnerable regions. The study also calls for advanced techniques in road maintenance, which can reduce the accumulated disturbance of road operations on permafrost regions. Full article

Current research and innovation (R&I) systems are not equipped to fully serve as catalysts for the urgently needed transformation of food systems. Though research on food systems transformation (first order: ‘what?’) and transformative research (second order: ‘how to’) are rapidly gaining traction in academic and policy environments, current efforts fail to explicitly recognize the systemic nature of the challenges associated with performing transformative second-order research. To recognize these manifold and interlinked challenges embedded in R&I systems, there is a need for a coupled-systems perspective. Transformations are needed in food systems as well as R&I systems (‘how to do the “how to”’). We set out to conceptualize an approach that aims to trigger double transformations by nurturing innovations at the boundaries of R&I systems and food systems that act upon systemic leverage points, so that their multisystem interactions can better support food system transformations. We exemplify this coupled-systems approach by introducing the FIT4FOOD2030 project with its 25 living labs as a promising multilevel boundary innovation at the cross-section of R&I and food systems. We illustrate how this approach paves the way for double systems transformations, and therefore for an R&I system that is fit for future-proofing food systems. Full article

Nowadays, in the North China Plain (NCP), most counties and suburban rural regions are promoting the "coal to gas" program under the situation of strong government support of large and medium-sized centralized biogas production (CBP) projects. This paper is aimed at the CBP projects, focuses on rural residents’ “willingness to use (WTU)”, “willingness to buy (WTB)” and the influencing factors for WTU/WTB. Through the analysis of rural residents from Hebei and Shandong provinces that belong to NCP in this survey, we find that 85% of respondents support the CBP program and the WTB is 63.15 CNY/year per capita, which is much lower than the cost of rural CBP in existing survey regions. The participation of rural residents is not only a manifestation of personal and family characteristics; understanding of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and household energy practices are more important. These non-economic factors seriously affect WTU/WTB. Hence, it is necessary to appropriately increase the government revenue to such projects, strengthen government guidance and publicity, improve the environmental knowledge and attitude of rural residents and guide residents’ practice. Based on a fully understanding of residents' consumption decision mechanism, we establish a financial support mechanism due to the demand response, adopt a correct calculation for financial support, such as a reasonable subsidy rate, and seek the greatest commonality of cost, financial support, and demand. Full article

Plant extracts have shown promising corrosion inhibitive actions for different metals in diverse corrosive climate. In numerous studies, it has been demonstrated that corrosion inhibitive features of plant extracts are due to the presence of complex mixtures of phytomolecules in their composition. However, rare efforts have been made to identify those phytomolecules accountable for the activity of the extracts. Therefore, in this paper, several Matricaria aurea extracts were prepared and assessed for their anticorrosive actions for mild steel (MS) in corrosive media (1.0 M HCl). Among the tested extracts, the methanolic extract showing the utmost anticorrosive activity was selected and processed further to identify its active phytomolecules, which led to the identification of a novel green corrosion inhibitor, MAB (Apigetrin). Furthermore, the anticorrosive properties of MAB on MS were evaluated comprehensively involving gravimetric, linear polarization, Tafel plots, EIS, and techniques like SEM and EDS. These findings expose that MAB performs like a mixed-type inhibitor and conforms the isotherm of Langmuir adsorption model. Moreover, the MS surface via SEM techniques exhibits a remarkable advanced surface of the MS plate in the company of MAB. The outcome of results through electrochemical analysis and weight loss methods were in good consonance, which depicts remarkable inhibition properties of the novel green inhibitor MAB. Full article

Sustainable development plays an important role in shaping conditions for economic growth, social development and care for the natural environment. The issue was also noticed at the level of the European Union, which is expressed among others by creating sectoral policies, including the Common Agricultural Policy. The aim of the article is to determine the influence of the Common Agricultural Policy on the level of socio-economic sustainability of farms in Poland. The authors formulate a hypothesis that the existing solutions serve the achievement of economic sustainability, determined by the agricultural to non-agricultural income ratio, but they do not provide sustainability of farms in terms of the social element understood as taking income disparities into consideration. In the article, panel regression and the ratio of income from representative FADN farms to average annual gross salary per employee in Poland in the years 2004–2017 were used. It was found that thanks to the support from the Common Agricultural Policy, the average income of farms comes close to the average income of the non-agricultural sector. However, the influence of the subsidies on changes in economic sustainability was uneven in various economic size classes of farms—the strongest farms benefited the most, which means that social sustainability in terms of equal distribution of income was not achieved. Full article

This paper examines the effectiveness of South Korea’s policy for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in office buildings and evaluates if national targets can be met. A sample of office buildings was categorized into two groups—conventional (Group A) and new (Group B)—based on when their construction was approved. Furthermore, data regarding the three design elements of the building envelope, that is building form, window systems, and U-values were collected. By statistically processing data of each element, reference building models were developed and a case study was conducted for each building. Design changes that were incorporated, keeping in mind the GHG reduction policy, showed 13.1% of saving energy in case 8 (reference building of Group B) than case 1 (reference building of Group A). The savings in case 8 were more than the average GHG reduction rate (12.8%) compared to business as usual (BAU). However, case 4 (a conventional (Group A) building form with new (Group B) window systems and U-values) achieved the greatest savings in building loads. The policy to enhance insulation in new buildings to reduce GHG emissions in the building sector has prompted changes in building forms and window systems and has reduced emissions by 10%, that is 3% more than the expected value. Thus, new innovations in building envelope design could achieve an average 12.8% reduction in emissions in buildings. Full article