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Environmental and Sustainability Assessment Using Simulation Modelling

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2020) | Viewed by 4155

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Interests: circular economy; green supply chain management; sustainable waste management; sustainability; simulation modelling

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Guest Editor

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The evaluation of environmental impact is becoming increasingly important in the research agenda in several fields, due to the urgent need to safeguard natural resources and seek sustainability. From the design to the management of industrial processes and services, environmental sustainability is often one important objective for companies and institutions, next to the economic one, as more and more national legislations are aiming at decreasing the environmental burden of human activities.

Assessing environmental impacts can be complex; sustainability has to be evaluated over time, and the variables to measure and the interacting factors can be numerous. Several methods to assess environmental impact exist, entailing advantages and criticalities and focusing on different aspects of environmental sustainability, but not all of them are effective tools to support decision making.

Simulation modelling is a widely applied methodology for decision making that is often used in the management phase to assess the performance of a system or to compare different design alternatives. Simulation offers several benefits, such as the possibility to model uncertainties and explore different scenarios, the ability to study a system over time considering different timeframes, and the possibility to consider multiple objectives and variables. This dynamicity can fit particularly well when environmental impacts have to be evaluated in a system, as simulation models can adapt to different levels of complexity and capture interactions among critical factors.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to collect original studies focusing on the application of simulation modelling as a tool to assess environmental sustainability. We encourage the submission of papers that deal with environmental issues in different sectors (e.g., manufacturing, services, supply chain management, etc.) contributing to address the sustainability challenge through simulation. Papers can be original research articles, reviews, or meta-analyses, and can be focused on environmental and sustainability assessment through simulation modelling applied to the following areas (but not limited to these):

  • Agriculture, aquaculture and livestock;
  • Construction;
  • Ecosystem and climate;
  • Energy;
  • Human health;
  • Information systems;
  • Land use;
  • Manufacturing;
  • Supply chain;
  • Transportation and logistics;
  • Urban and community planning;
  • Waste management, recycling, and reuse;
  • Water resources;
  • Mining;
  • Social behavior;
  • Tourism.

Dr. Fabiana Tornese
Dr. Antonio Padovano
Dr. Pier Paolo Miglietta
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • environmental sustainability
  • simulation modelling
  • environmental impact assessment

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

20 pages, 4955 KiB  
Article
Landscape Characteristics and Ecological Risk Assessment Based on Multi-Scenario Simulations: A Case Study of Yancheng Coastal Wetland, China
by Peng Tian, Luodan Cao, Jialin Li, Ruiliang Pu, Hongbo Gong and Changda Li
Sustainability 2021, 13(1), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010149 - 25 Dec 2020
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 3432
Abstract
Carrying out coastal wetland landscape simulations and current and future ecological risk assessments is conducive to formulating policies for coastal wetland landscape planning and promoting the coordinated development of the social economy and ecological environment. This study used the Cellular Automaton (CA)-Markov model [...] Read more.
Carrying out coastal wetland landscape simulations and current and future ecological risk assessments is conducive to formulating policies for coastal wetland landscape planning and promoting the coordinated development of the social economy and ecological environment. This study used the Cellular Automaton (CA)-Markov model to simulate the landscape data of the study area under different scenarios in 2021 and 2025, and built an ecological risk assessment (ERS) index model to analyze the differences of spatio-temporal characteristics of ecological risks. The results showed that: (1) The test accuracy of the CA–Markov model was 0.9562 after passing through the consistency test. The spatial distribution data of landscapes under current utilization scenarios (CUSs), natural development scenarios (NDSs), and ecological protection scenarios (EPSs) were gained through simulations. (2) During 1991–2025, the landscape types of Yancheng coastal wetlands undertake complicated transfers and have vast transfer regions. Under CUSs and NDSs, a large number of natural wetlands are transferred to artificial wetlands. Under EPSs, the area of artificial wetlands declines and artificial wetlands are mainly transferred to natural wetlands. (3) The ecological risk of Yancheng Coastal Wetland increases, accompanied with significant spatial heterogeneity, which is manifested as low in the north area and high in the south area, and there exist some differences between sea areas and land areas. Ecological risk levels transfer violently. Full article
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