Search Results (858)

Dual University Education is presented as a recent and innovative model in curriculum design, with strong foundations in dual vocational training. The purpose of this study is to examine the image of this educational model as projected by the universities themselves. To this end, a documentary analysis was conducted based on news articles published on the digital press portals of Spanish universities from 2021 to 2025. Following the guidelines of a documentary research approach, a total of 344 items were identified and coded. The results indicate that institutional discourses focus on highlighting the relevance and impact of dual education, presenting arguments both for and against this model regarding the four key stakeholders: students, universities, companies, and society. It is concluded that discourses on Dual University Education portray the coordination between institutions as complex but strategically significant, with notable benefits for these groups. Full article

The paper analyzes the evolution and strategy development for sustainable community-based ecotourism (CBET) in the commune of Hoa Bac in Central Vietnam. It is based on a pilot project carried out from 2019 to 2025 within the scope of a larger research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) as part of the research line ‘Sustainable Urban Regions’. As a key component of the overall research approach, the goal of this pilot project along the Cu De River valley in the vicinity of the city of Da Nang has been a culturally adapted and ecologically sensitive tourism model that leads to income and socio-economic improvement, environmental protection and a decentralized low-impact infrastructure. The results of six years of qualitative longitudinal participatory research based on community workshops, interviews and surveys, direct observations as well as participatory field activities show how transformations in natural, cultural, human, social, financial and built capitals have shaped the transition from resource-dependent livelihoods to a diversified ecotourism economy. By mobilizing and empowering the local community, partly belonging to the Co Tu ethnic minority, sustainable development emerged not from isolated interventions but from a structured process of interlinked development strategies including cultural revitalization, environmental preservation, locally adapted agroforestry, skills and capacity development, cooperative governance, decentralized infrastructure, and income diversification. The study demonstrates that stakeholder and community empowerment, appropriately designed governance models (in this case the establishment of a tourism cooperative), targeted capacity development and knowledge transfer can strengthen the resilience and long-term sustainability of ecologically sound and culturally adaptive community-based tourism initiatives. Overall, the lessons learned from the research in Hoa Bac contribute to designing and implementing a holistic approach to CBET in rural settings. Full article

During the purchase or renovation of housing, a limitation exists in the finish design process for construction projects, as buyers cannot switch between various finish options for their apartments. Instead, they must depend on visual graphics or physical samples to imagine the appearance of these finishes in their home. Combining Building Information Modeling (BIM) with Virtual Reality (VR) presents a promising way to overcome this challenge. This study introduces a BIM-VR tool and a methodological framework designed to support decision-making when selecting finishes, with a focus on cost, waste reduction, and overall project perception. The research method adapts the Design Science Research (DSR) technique for developing an artifact through four key steps: (1) identifying the problem the artifact aims to solve; (2) defining the artifact’s solution goals; (3) designing and developing the artifact; (4) evaluating and fine-tuning the artifact. The tool developed allows for immersive walkthroughs within a digital replica of a residential building, along with the ability to customize and measure finishes. The artifact was assessed through a questionnaire administered to 53 potential residential end users, including potential apartment buyers and individuals interested in residential customization processes. The findings indicate a mean perceived-improvement score of 87.7 out of 100 for the BIM-VR method, reflecting participants’ favorable comparison between the BIM-VR and traditional finish-selection approaches. This innovation benefits the construction industry by enhancing stakeholder communication and supporting a faster design process in building finishes selection. Full article

China’s 2026 land-use policy mandates that commercial and residential construction remain within existing urban footprints, making urban renewal the primary source of spatial capacity for future urban development. Understanding how diverse stakeholders make decisions regarding urban renewal and shape the resulting spatial configurations is therefore of critical importance. This study develops an integrated multi-agent system (MAS) and cellular automata (CA) model to simulate the spatial dynamics of urban renewal. The model explicitly incorporates the location preferences of three key agents—government, developers, and residents. Using Wuhan as a case study, we project land-use patterns for 2035 under three scenarios: a traditional development scenario, a multi-agent simulation (MAS) scenario, and an urban renewal scenario. The findings reveal that (1) urban renewal significantly improves land-use patterns by curbing urban expansion and reducing the loss of farmland and forest cover; (2) government agents exert the strongest driving force on construction land expansion (contribution coefficient: 0.1758), while residents demonstrate a discernible influence on the selection of renewal sites (0.1199), with developer preferences largely aligning with government priorities; (3) a marked preference divergence exists among agents—within central urban areas, resident selection probabilities are only 60–70% of those of government and developers, indicating a notable mismatch between market demand and planning objectives. Moreover, more than 74% of renewal areas are projected to generate economic returns below renewal costs, signaling a potential financial sustainability risk. These results suggest that while urban renewal can effectively slow urban sprawl and mitigate ecological land loss, it simultaneously necessitates multi-stakeholder governance frameworks and sustainable financing mechanisms to reconcile competing interests and reduce fiscal vulnerabilities. The proposed simulation framework offers quantitative support for spatial policy making in China’s future land stock-constrained urban development contexts. Full article

Quality and safety incidents in nuclear power plant construction can result in severe socioeconomic losses. Thus, controlling core quality and safety risks that trigger major accidents is urgent. Stakeholders involved in risk control form structures with distinct social-network features. This study adopts social network analysis to build a core risk governance network model. It analyzes individual and overall network metrics to identify core stakeholders. The key stakeholders include project owners, contractors, supervision institutions, equipment manufacturers, and government regulatory authority. However, effective collaborative governance among these parties remains a challenge. The study then adjusts the organizational network structure and evaluates its effectiveness. This study helps mitigate stakeholders’ governance role risks and improves collaborative governance outcomes. Full article

Public sector organizations are under increasing pressure to modernize service delivery while preserving transparency, interoperability, accountability, and citizen trust. Blockchain technology offers relevant capabilities for these objectives, particularly through shared ledgers, cryptographic verification, and programmable rules. However, its adoption in public sector contexts remains constrained by the lack of architectural guidance tailored to inter-organizational services. This study proposes BRA-PS, a Blockchain Reference Architecture for Public Sector Citizen-Centric Applications, developed from a real-world digitalization project in Quebec, Canada. The architecture organizes components into six layers (presentation, business, communication, smart contract, blockchain, and data) with cross-cutting concerns addressing governance, access control, security, and monitoring. A key design principle is the public–private workflow separation, which enables inter-organizational collaboration while preserving each organization’s operational autonomy and data confidentiality. We validated the architecture through a case study involving a vehicle registration process between two public agencies, supported by a proof-of-concept implementation using Hyperledger Fabric. An Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method (ATAM) evaluation, conducted with a panel of five domain experts, identified six architectural risks, including InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) confidentiality exposure and smart contract inflexibility, six non-risks, six sensitivity points, and six trade-offs across three key quality attributes: autonomy, collaboration, and functional suitability. The results show that BRA-PS can support implementation decisions, clarify stakeholder responsibilities, and expose relevant architectural trade-offs. The recommendations derived from the evaluation provide practical guidance for the adoption of blockchain in citizen-centric public sector services. Full article

Urban centers today face unprecedented challenges in energy management, emissions, waste disposal, and public services, as nearly 70% of the global population is projected to live in cities by 2050. The complexity and rapid evolution of urban systems underscore the pressing need for stability, innovation, and adaptability, particularly regarding sustainability and digital transformation. AI-powered simulation models have emerged as transformative tools, capable of simplifying, predicting, and managing highly intricate urban systems while offering policymakers valuable insights for strategic planning. However, the integration of AI in smart and sustainable urban development presents critical legal, ethical, and regulatory concerns. This study examines these questions by evaluating existing and emerging frameworks addressing algorithmic transparency, data protection, stakeholder engagement, and sustainable development in prominent urban models including Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Singapore, Tokyo, Bangalore, and Nairobi. Comparative analysis is conducted through a doctrinal desk review, focusing on statutory provisions, international policies (EU, UN-Habitat), ISO Smart City standards, and local governance charters. Key issues addressed include the risk that AI models, if unregulated, become opaque “black boxes” that obscure both decision-making logic and accountability. Without robust standards, there is no guarantee of interoperability, revision, or representation of public interest. Equitable management, access, and inclusive participation are vital to responsible AI frameworks in urban planning. This article advances a comprehensive legal and policy framework for ensuring accountability, transparency, and stability in AI-driven city governance, bridging gaps between technological innovation, urban studies, and regulatory oversight. The proposed governance structure empowers cities to adopt multi-level, authority-driven mechanisms that safeguard the common good while leveraging AI’s potential in sustainable urban transformation. Full article

The circular economy is recognised as a key topic that requires the development of user-friendly methodologies for circularity assessment, with digitalisation supporting more accurate evaluation processes. This study proposes an automated digital tool to calculate products’ Circularity Level (LC), defined in UNI/TS 11820:2024 and aligned with ISO/TC 323 circular economy standards (ISO 59004, ISO 59010, and ISO 59020) and the Level(s) EU sustainability framework. Specifically, an Excel-based calculator is developed to encode regulatory requirements, automatically compute LC values, generate radar charts highlighting improvement areas, and export results to MS Word for automated stakeholder reporting. Additionally, for construction materials, an information flow between MS Excel and Autodesk Revit is established using Dynamo, enabling the automated creation of product-related BIM objects and the integration of circularity data into the BIM model. The workflow is demonstrated through its application to a single case, namely the ITER Project, which implements earthen plasters enhanced by by-products from the agricultural and stone supply chains. An LC of 43.77% is obtained, driven by material efficiency and recovery, but limited by renewable energy use and end-of-life management. Future research will investigate AI techniques to optimise indicator scores and enhance digital circularity assessment in the construction sector. Full article

The construction sector continues to experience elevated levels of insolvency, driven by an interplay of structural vulnerabilities and macroeconomic pressures, including supply chain disruptions and cost inflation. These challenges have been particularly prominent in Australia, especially among micro and small construction firms, which account for over 90% of reported insolvency cases. In 2024, the Australian construction sector contributed nearly one-quarter of all company insolvencies nationally. This study undertakes a comprehensive review of construction insolvency research, synthesising key themes, causes, early warning indicators, and mitigation strategies, while contextualising global insights using empirical evidence from the Australian construction sector. The methodology integrated systematic literature screening, scientometric analysis, and critical thematic synthesis with a descriptive and selective statistical examination of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) data, complemented by practice-informed insights. The review identified dominant research trajectories, centred on financial risk management, insolvency prediction models, project-level cost and governance risks, and emerging data-driven approaches. Empirical analysis revealed that inadequate cash flow (~16–20%), poor strategic management (~12–18%), and weak financial controls (~11–15%) consistently rank among the leading causes of construction firm failure over the last decade. Indicators such as non-payment of statutory obligations and deteriorating working capital are observed in over half of insolvency cases, highlighting persistent structural fragility. Although global strategic focus areas emphasised financial monitoring and early warning systems, practice-informed findings indicated that effective mitigation requires their operationalisation through capability development, early intervention tools, regulatory oversight, and stakeholder-informed support mechanisms. The study shows how global insolvency risk concepts align with Australian regulatory evidence and highlights the need to translate early-warning approaches into accessible tools and support mechanisms for micro and small construction firms. Full article

The Engineering-Procurement-Construction (EPC) general contracting model has emerged as the dominant delivery method for large-scale infrastructure and industrial projects in China. However, contemporary EPC project cost control remains plagued by critical industry challenges, including fragmented cross-stage coordination, pervasive data silos, and the shallow integration of digital technologies into core management processes. This study considers three key stakeholders—government regulators, project owners, and EPC general contractors—and develops a tripartite evolutionary game model to analyze the strategic interactions underlying intelligent cost control in EPC projects. We examine the evolutionary stability of each stakeholder’s strategy selection, explore how various factors influence tripartite strategic choices, and further investigate the stability of equilibrium points in the game system. The key findings are summarized as follows: (1) Strengthening government incentives and penalties simultaneously promotes owners’ investment in intelligent cost control systems and general contractors’ active collaborative cost management. However, excessive incentive intensity undermines the government’s regulatory effectiveness. (2) Establishing a revenue-sharing mechanism for excess cost savings fully stimulates the spontaneous cooperation willingness of owners and general contractors, serving as the cornerstone for market-oriented operation of intelligent cost control. (3) Reducing owners’ intelligent construction investment costs and general contractors’ collaborative control costs effectively addresses practical implementation barriers and accelerates the digital upgrading of engineering cost management. Finally, numerical simulations are performed using MATLAB R2020b to validate theoretical findings. Full article

Digital Transformation (DT) increasingly relies on project-based organizing to develop and deploy new capabilities, yet corporate innovation projects frequently stall not for lack of ideas but because of recurring governance and resource-commitment bottlenecks. This study presents a micro-longitudinal, AI-enabled, and human-reviewed analysis of 711 episodes drawn from 28 weekly project governance meetings across two corporate startup initiatives participating in the same internal incubation program, conducted between November 2024 and April 2025. Employing a six-stage analytical pipeline that combines episode-level segmentation, linguistic tension markers, and a large language model (LLM) classifier, we identify 28 decision-relevant governance tensions, which are then abductively grouped into 13 project governance dilemmas and mapped onto Teece’s dynamic capabilities framework (sensing, seizing, reconfiguring). The key finding is that 62% of dilemmas are structural in nature—reflecting persistent governance design tensions between autonomy and control, compliance and agility, and centralization and decentralization—and that 69% concentrate at the seizing stage, corresponding to resource-commitment and execution decisions. This pattern indicates a governance choke point in corporate DT projects that is structural and decisional rather than ideational. By shifting attention from lagging indicators (overruns) to governance tension leading indicators, the approach supports earlier interventions to reduce decision latency and protect project delivery performance. We further synthesize two incubation-specific meso-level governance dilemmas—stakeholder engagement and compliance vs. agility—that serve as transmission mechanisms between macro structural constraints and micro-level decision bottlenecks. The AI-enabled pipeline is proposed as a replicable early-warning system for project governance tensions in organizations pursuing digital transformation. Full article

Decarbonising the built environment has increased the importance of prefabricated construction, yet its cost and resource efficiency are still constrained by fragmented supply chain collaboration. This study examines how lifecycle supply chain collaboration affects cost control performance in prefabricated construction. Based on supply chain management theory and expert consultation, a conceptual model was developed and tested through structural equation modelling using 517 valid responses from stakeholders in China’s prefabricated construction supply chain. The results show that management factors across all four project phases (decision and design, component production, transportation, and construction and installation) significantly improve cost control performance, with design standardisation, production scheduling, transport logistics, quality assurance, and workforce proficiency as key drivers. Process coordination exerts a significant mediating effect, while environmental factors significantly moderate the relationships. In practical terms, the findings indicate that stakeholders should prioritise design standardisation at the early stage, strengthen coordination across production, transport, and installation activities, and enhance quality control and workforce training to reduce avoidable cost overruns and resource waste. Beyond their theoretical contribution to research on supply chain collaboration in prefabricated construction, these results offer concrete direction for practitioners seeking to improve cost efficiency and make better use of resources within industrialised building systems. Full article

Diadromous fish provide key ecological and socio-economic services in European Atlantic catchments, yet their marine phase remains poorly understood and weakly integrated into management. Involving nine partners from Portugal, Spain, France and Ireland, the DiadSea Interreg Atlantic Area initiative aims to fill these critical knowledge gaps on the marine and estuarine phases and to translate this information into coordinated conservation and fisheries management tools. To do so, the project combines historical and newly collected fishery-dependent and -independent data (landings, by-catch, cooperative surveys with commercial and recreational fishers) with advanced microchemical, genetic and environmental DNA (eDNA) analyses to characterize marine distributions, mixing areas and connectivity for shads, Atlantic salmon, sea trout, European eel, sea lamprey and other diadromous species. It also includes innovative case studies on lamprey tagging and intestinal metabarcoding, coastal habitat suitability mapping for shads using river plumes and environmental variables, and joint otolith microchemistry–genomics approaches to reassess European eel panmixia and maternal origin at the Atlantic scale. Species distribution models under present and future climate scenarios, specifically RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, are used to identify priority marine areas for conservation, zones of high temporal turnover and key interfaces ensuring longitudinal (river–sea) and latitudinal connectivity, which will feed into an updated interactive web Atlas of diadromous species. In parallel, DiadSea establishes a transnational observatory of stakeholders to harmonize legislation, co-develop adaptive fisheries management plans and produce climate-aware policy guidelines, while capacity-building actions include an origin-labeling scheme for sustainably harvested diadromous fish, educational games and a comic book to raise awareness among younger generations and the wider public. Together, these work packages will deliver the first integrated, marine-focused, evidence-based and decision-support framework for diadromous fishes in the North-Eastern Atlantic, strengthening conservation, sustainable fisheries and stakeholder engagement under ongoing climate change. Full article

This study aims to address the need to operationalize Industry 5.0 (I5.0) by developing a comprehensive Assessment Framework for the adoption of the Human Centricity, Environmental Sustainability, and Industrial Resilience pillars. While existing models largely focus on technological maturity, they fail to provide measurable tools for evaluating I5.0 adoption. To bridge this gap, the paper proposes an Assessment Framework based on a structured set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) developed within the EU-funded PROSPECTS 5.0 project. The methodology combines an extensive literature review, a workshop with relevant stakeholders, a Delphi survey with experts, and empirical refinement conducted through workshops involving 14 companies across multiple sectors and of varying sizes. The results highlight that organizations predominantly measure traditional indicators such as health and safety, energy consumption, and supply chain robustness, while underestimating emerging dimensions such as human empowerment, social inclusion, circularity, and advanced human–machine collaboration. The framework introduces a set of KPIs for each of the I5.0 pillars, supporting structured assessment across different industrial contexts while allowing sector-specific adaptation. The findings reveal a gap between the perceived importance of several sustainability and human-centric metrics and their actual implementation. This framework allows organizations to self-assess their practices, guide strategic decisions, and align technological growth with societal and environmental goals. Full article

The global change towards renewable energy presents significant challenges, particularly for local communities in developing countries. Although many of these countries have adopted various clean energy initiatives, numerous wind power projects have faced considerable delays and implementation obstacles. Key issues include conflicts with local inhabitants, environmental licensing bottlenecks, and difficulties integrating projects into national electricity grids. These setbacks highlight misaligned stakeholder interests and the lack of robust tools for impact assessment. This paper introduces a multi-criteria decision-making model designed to evaluate the sustainability impacts of wind power megaprojects, using a case study from Colombia. The model integrates stakeholder perspectives and assesses projects across four dimensions: environmental, social, economic, and institutional. Its application demonstrates the model’s effectiveness in capturing complex social dynamics and improving the understanding of stakeholder concerns. It offers a structured framework to support more inclusive and informed decision-making processes. This study proposes a practical tool for enhancing the planning and governance of renewable energy initiatives, the stakeholder-oriented multidimensional assessment framework designed to evaluate social, economic and environmental challenges associated with wind power projects. The findings underscore the importance of incorporating these dimensions into impact assessments to foster stronger alignment with local communities and increase the likelihood of project success in the energy transition. Full article