Search Results (797)

Against the global imperative to advance higher education for sustainable development and institutional transformation in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), coherent governance architectures have been recognized as a foundational prerequisite for enabling universities to embed sustainability into values into core operations, teaching, research, and community engagement. Drawing on socio-technical systems theory and complex adaptive systems thinking, this study analyzes 167 central-level policy documents (2015–2023) related to China’s Higher Education “Delegation, Regulation, and Service” reform to examine how governance intentions are translated into organizational control mechanisms. A dual-dimensional analytical framework is developed that conceptualizes policy objectives as system goals and policy instruments as control levers, combining content analysis with fuzzy systems methodology to quantify system coupling. The findings reveal distinct emergent patterns: governance objectives exhibit structural differentiation with functional complementarity, whereas the synergy of control levers is shaped by their functional roles and organizational adaptability. More importantly, a selective pattern of structural–functional decoupling is identified. Coupling between Improving Quality and its supporting levers declines substantially over the study period, while coupling involving Stimulating Vitality exhibits marked volatility and an overall decline. By contrast, coupling associated with Breaking Down Institutional Barriers and Improving the Modern University System remains consistently high. These differentiated patterns suggest that governance misalignment is concentrated in quality- and vitality-related objectives rather than occurring uniformly across the governance system. The study provides a diagnostic framework for assessing governance coherence as a prerequisite for organizational capacity-building, contributing to both sustainability governance research and the design of more coherent institutional governance systems. Full article

Low-emission zones (LEZs) require cities to define policy rules, predict effects before deployment, and verify outcomes afterwards, yet mobility, emissions, meteorology, exposure, data governance, and public communication are commonly handled in separate systems. This paper presents envair360, a Physical Intelligence architecture and a four-stage, evidence-gated LEZ methodology connecting project definition, baseline feasibility, digital-twin design, deployment, and verified impact closure. A design-science method is combined with an operational case study of Cartagena, Spain, because the research object is both a socio-technical artefact and a context-dependent municipal deployment. The technology chain is selected to bridge complementary scales and functions: SUMO for link- and vehicle-level traffic, WRF and CHIMERE for meteorology and regional chemistry, MUNICH and street-canyon parameterisation for computationally tractable street resolution, model-output calibration anchored to measurements, and FIWARE/NGSI-LD for governed context exchange. The manuscript distinguishes city observations, peer-reviewed component validation, demonstrated platform capabilities, and policy or engineering targets. A Murcia component study reports lower hourly than daily agreement after deep-learning calibration (NO${}_2$: $r=0.79$ hourly and $0.94$ daily; O${}_3$: $r=0.85$ hourly and $0.97$ daily), illustrating the importance of temporal aggregation and transfer limits. Digitisation of the prior Madrid ozone-density figure indicates modal shifts of approximately +32.0 and +27.8 source-axis units at two stations; the supplied source does not permit a numerical NO${}_x$ bias estimate. A separate six-city export audit covers 24,384 records and 4064 street segments and demonstrates a common model-output schema, not predictive validation. In Cartagena, project documentation reports elevated PM${}_{10}$/PM${}_{2.5}$, urban heat and solar-radiation stress, and a plausible role for dry-climate dust resuspension, supporting a superblock-oriented LEZ proposal with a long-term 30% vehicular CO${}_2$ reduction target. The paper’s specific contribution is the governed orchestration, evidence taxonomy, quality gates, reproducible lineage, explicit policy-scenario representation, and portable city-onboarding protocol; it does not claim that the individual scientific models, the Cartagena deployment, or the cited project targets originated in this manuscript. Full article

In the context of global advocacy of sustainable agriculture and urban-rural coordinated development, it is important to explore the socio-economic effects of agricultural eco-efficiency. In this study, we aim to empirically examine the impact of agricultural eco-efficiency (AEE) on the urban-rural income gap (URIG) and its mechanisms in China in order to provide policy recommendations for promoting the coordinated development of environmental sustainability and social equity. Based on Chinese provincial panel data from 2011 to 2024, a two-way fixed-effects model was employed. Robustness was tested through winsorization and variable replacement, and the lag of AEE was used as a variable to address endogenous problems. Furthermore, the adjustment effect model, the panel threshold model, and group regression were used to analyse the regulatory effect of financial support, threshold effect of urbanization levels, and heterogeneity across regions, technologies, and infrastructure. The research results show the following: (1) Improvement in AEE is significantly associated with a narrowing of the URIG, and this conclusion remains true under multiple tests. (2) Financial support plays a significant positive moderating role. (3) The impact of AEE has a double threshold effect based on the urbanization level, which is only significant in the range of medium urbanization level. (4) The effect is more obvious in the main grain-producing areas, areas with a high agricultural mechanization level, and areas with a high transportation infrastructure level. (5) AEE helps narrow the URIG in the target and neighbouring areas. Improving the ecological efficiency of agriculture has both environmental and income distribution benefits. Policy formulation should focus on strengthening the precise orientation of financial support and implementing differentiated strategies according to the urbanization stage, regional functional positioning, and technical foundation, so as to maximise its effectiveness in reducing poverty, increasing income, and promoting urban and rural equity. Full article

The pursuit of energy efficiency has dominated sustainable housing policy and research, yet growing evidence suggests that technical performance alone cannot guarantee positive outcomes, particularly in rural contexts where housing is embedded within complex socio-economic systems. This study addresses this gap by developing and applying a context-specific analytical framework for evaluating the socio-economic sustainability of rural housing in Scotland. Through a structured literature review of 43 peer-reviewed articles and thematic coding, four core sustainability dimensions were identified: People and Community, Land and Site, House, and Energy and Infrastructure. The framework was developed and tested through four contemporary rural housing case studies in Scotland, spanning private and social tenures across Aberdeenshire, Moray, Dumfries & Galloway, and Shetland Islands. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, on-site observations, and documentary evidence. A multi-evidence traffic-light evaluation system was developed to cross-check assessment results across distinct data sources. The findings reveal that sustainability outcomes are conditional, sometimes uneven, and shaped by multiple factors. While all cases demonstrated strong performance in community cohesion, affordability, and non-speculative land access, some persistent challenges emerged around energy resilience, fuel poverty mitigation, transport accessibility, and participatory practices for social-house design. The study contributes a replicable analytical framework to develop and evaluate rural housing sustainability beyond energy-efficiency assessments, providing empirical insights for policy and practice in Scotland. Full article

This paper systematically reviews the emerging field of smart urban agriculture, defined as the integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into food production practices within and around built-up urban areas. Although urban agriculture and digital agriculture have each generated substantial scholarship, their intersection remains conceptually fragmented and empirically uneven. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, this study reviews 143 English-language articles indexed in Web of Science and Scopus between 2016 and 2026, combining bibliometric mapping with structured thematic coding. The analysis shows that smart urban agriculture has expanded rapidly since 2021, but remains geographically concentrated and disciplinarily dispersed. Current research is organized mainly around IoT and sensor networks, machine learning, soilless cultivation, vertical farming, plant factories, and controlled-environment agriculture. ICT applications are most mature in enclosed, data-rich, and technically controllable systems, where they support monitoring, prediction, automation, and resource optimization. By contrast, community-based, open-space, and governance-oriented forms of urban agriculture remain underexplored. By systematically linking ICT families with different urban agriculture production settings, this review clarifies the field’s emerging knowledge structure and demonstrates that technological development remains uneven across agricultural forms and socio-institutional contexts. Full article

The growing implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has increased the importance of sustainable transformation in higher education institutions. Universities are increasingly expected to integrate environmental management, digital technologies, governance, education, and community engagement into unified sustainability frameworks. However, integrated sustainability management models for technical universities in emerging economies remain insufficiently explored. This study analyzes the long-term transformation of the EKTU Green Campus project at D. Serikbayev East Kazakhstan Technical University (Kazakhstan) during 2018–2025. The research is based on methodological triangulation combining institutional statistical data, official UI GreenMetric methodologies and indicators, university sustainability reports, and verified ranking results. The study examines the interaction between Smart Campus technologies, digital governance, sustainability-oriented education, environmental management, and campus infrastructure modernization. The results indicate substantial progress across multiple dimensions of institutional sustainability, including energy efficiency, digital sustainability governance, renewable energy implementation, sustainable transportation, circular economy practices, and education and research indicators. The findings suggest that Smart Campus technologies and digital monitoring systems can function as core instruments of institutional sustainability management rather than solely as technical infrastructure solutions. The EKTU Green Campus experience provides a practical reference for sustainability transformation in technical universities in Central Asia and other developing regions, while acknowledging that its applicability may depend on local institutional and socio-economic contexts. The study is limited by its single-case design and its reliance on institutional and ranking data, which may affect the generalizability of the findings. Full article

Online knowledge communities serve as critical infrastructures for innovation, yet prior research relying on net-effect logic has struggled to explain why similar communities differ in knowledge diffusion quality or reveal how multiple conditions synergistically produce high-quality outcomes. Drawing on socio-technical systems theory and dimensionalizing the DeLone and McLean (D&M) model into knowledge, technical, and social subsystems, this study adopts a configurational perspective to examine the joint influence of seven conditions on knowledge diffusion quality. Using data from 307 users and integrating fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with necessary condition analysis (NCA), we found that no single condition is individually necessary for achieving high-quality outcomes, highlighting the nonlinear and substitutable nature of socio-technical systems. Three equifinal pathways were identified: demand–response synergy, trust-mediated integration, and emotion–utility coupling, alongside four pathways leading to the absence of high-quality outcomes, demonstrating causal asymmetry. Notably, a dual-sided configurational pattern emerged: information utility quality serves as a core condition across all high-quality pathways, while service empathy appears as a core-absent condition in the majority of non-high-quality pathways. This study advances socio-technical systems theory by operationalizing equifinality, conjunctural causality, and subsystem interdependence, and offers practical implications for platform governance. Full article

Green collaborative innovation is a complex socio-technical system involving interactions among governments, universities, enterprises, and financial institutions. However, existing studies often examine these actors separately or focus on bilateral relationships, limiting the understanding of how multi-agent strategies jointly evolve toward sustainable innovation. This study develops a four-player evolutionary game model incorporating regional governments, universities, local enterprises, and green financial institutions to investigate the dynamic evolution of green collaborative innovation under bounded rationality. The model integrates fiscal incentives, technology commercialization returns, financial constraints, reputation effects, and social advocacy mechanisms to explore the conditions under which collaborative strategies emerge and stabilize. Theoretical analysis identifies the evolutionary conditions of different strategic combinations, while numerical simulations examine how key factors influence the evolution process. The results reveal that enterprise deep green transformation plays a central role in shaping the evolution of the entire collaborative innovation system. Government subsidies and financial constraints jointly influence enterprises’ transformation decisions, while technology commercialization returns and research support determine universities’ incentives for green R&D. Green financial institutions contribute not only through capital provision, but also through environmental risk assessment and market-based governance. In addition, social advocacy indirectly affects the evolutionary process by influencing reputation-related incentives and strengthening institutional accountability. This study contributes to green innovation and systems science research by providing a multi-agent evolutionary framework that explains the interactions among policy, technology, finance, and institutional factors. The findings suggest that effective green collaborative innovation requires coordinated governance mechanisms that integrate fiscal support, financial regulation, technology transfer, and social supervision. Full article

From a systems-thinking perspective, firms can be understood as adaptive socio-technical systems in which strategic resource allocation, innovation activities, organizational capabilities, and environmental conditions interact through dynamic feedback processes. This study examines whether strategic focus alternation, defined as the recurrent reallocation of resources between technology focus and market focus, is associated with firm resilience. Using 30,930 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2024, we construct a firm-level measure of strategic focus alternation and examine its association with resilience using industry and year fixed-effects models, complemented by multiple robustness analyses, propensity score matching, instrumental-variable estimation, Heckman two-stage estimation, and within-firm analyses. The results indicate that strategic focus alternation is positively associated with firm resilience, although the magnitude of this association is economically modest, suggesting that strategic focus alternation represents one contributing element within a broader organizational resilience system rather than a dominant managerial determinant. Strategic focus alternation is also positively associated with persistent innovation and ambidextrous innovation synergy; however, mediation analyses do not support these innovation outcomes as statistically significant transmission mechanisms linking strategic focus alternation to resilience. Furthermore, while the capability to undertake strategic focus alternation is positively associated with resilience across firms, greater within-firm alternation intensity, measured by switching frequency and magnitude, does not generate additional resilience benefits and is marginally negatively associated with resilience, indicating potential coordination and adjustment costs. Entrepreneurial orientation and knowledge integration capability further strengthen the positive association between strategic focus alternation and resilience. Finally, the findings suggest that organizational resilience depends less on frequent strategic switching than on disciplined strategic reconfiguration that maintains dynamic stability while enabling organizational adaptation under uncertainty. By integrating systems thinking with research on strategic resource allocation, organizational resilience, and innovation, this study provides a more comprehensive understanding of how firms balance strategic flexibility and organizational stability in dynamic environments. Full article

Public open space (POS) assessment tools have proliferated across disciplines and application contexts, yet their results often remain difficult to compare. Existing research has largely attributed this divergence to differences in indicator selection, overlooking the broader assessment architecture within which indicators acquire meaning. This study examines why POS assessment tools diverge by conceptualizing them as layered socio-technical sign systems. A systematic literature review identified 38 POS assessment tools, which were analyzed through structured content analysis. Twenty empirically derived attributes were mapped to a five-level semiotic framework comprising the empiric, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and social levels. The findings demonstrate that divergence is systematic rather than incidental and extends well beyond indicator content. At the empiric level, 57.9% of tools lack complete operational definitions, while 55.3% rely exclusively on subjective indicators. Structurally, 55.3% function as assessment frameworks rather than fully operational tools, reflecting substantial variation in procedural closure. Across all five semiotic levels, the cumulative interaction of measurement practices, structural organization, conceptual framing, intended application and institutional context generates cross-level structural misalignment that fundamentally constrains comparability. In response, this study proposes a semiotic compliance framework that specifies minimum documentation requirements for improving transparency, internal coherence, and interpretability without prescribing indicator standardization. The findings demonstrate that meaningful comparisons among POS assessment tools depend less on reducing indicator diversity than on explicitly aligning and documenting the multiple semiotic layers through which assessment systems generate meaning and support decision-making. The framework provides practical guidance for developing, evaluating, selecting, and comparing future POS assessment tools while preserving the contextual diversity required across different planning and governance settings. Full article

Just energy transitions in the Global South unfold under conditions of institutional fragmentation, fiscal constraints, and high socio-ecological turbulence, making governance capacity a critical bottleneck for effective decarbonization and climate justice. This study proposes the Cybernetic Environmental Hub (CEH) framework, which extends the Viable System Model (VSM) to sustainability governance by integrating AIoT-enabled environmental monitoring, Early Warning Systems, decentralized data governance, and justice-centered institutional design. Methodologically, the article is primarily a conceptual framework paper accompanied by an illustrative single-site qualitative case study designed to probe the plausibility and diagnostic utility of the proposed architecture rather than to generate statistical generalization. The research combines theoretical development with participatory territorial diagnostics in the Caribbean Mining Corridor, where socio-ecological challenges were collected through participatory innovation workshops, thematically coded, and mapped onto the five VSM subsystems to identify systemic “variety gaps.” The analysis indicates that fragmented operational initiatives coexist with weak meta-systemic coordination, limiting adaptive capacity in energy transition processes. The CEH architecture is proposed to address these deficiencies by embedding AIoT sensing, federated learning, blockchain-based coordination, and Early Warning Systems within recursive governance structures and is grounded in a real cyber-physical deployment of around 90 monitoring stations across Albania, La Jagua de Ibirico and Algarrobo. The study also introduces a Territorial Governance Maturity Model (H1–H3) to diagnose systemic learning capacities and transition readiness across technological, institutional, data governance, and justice dimensions. The findings suggest that cybernetic environmental hubs may function as socio-technical infrastructures supporting coordinated, adaptive, and justice-centered energy transitions in the Global South, while comparative empirical evidence remains an agenda for future work. Full article

This paper presents a systemic analysis of the global energy transition, framing it as the central thermodynamic and economic driver of the modern polycrisis. The primary research objective is to demonstrate how current decarbonization strategies, lacking a holistic view, inadvertently trigger nonlinear amplifying feedback loops that exacerbate geopolitical and market volatility. Methodologically, the research introduces a systemic control dashboard, operationalizing the anthropological concept of contact zones into measurable techno-ecological and socio-economic interfaces. This framework is preferable to existing socio-technical approaches because it operationally couples rigid physical limits (e.g., thermodynamics) with volatile socio-behavioral friction, eliminating the blind spots of siloed analyses. The main contribution of this study lies in its systemic validation: it proves that the energy transition operates as the master control node of the polycrisis and successfully identifies eight high-leverage control levers (comprising sixteen Key Performance Indicators) that govern the friction between physical boundaries and societal acceptance. Regarding policy implications, the findings demonstrate that securing a Social License to Operate (SLO) requires actively managing these specific interface tensions—such as balancing renewable deployment against baseload inertia—rather than relying on isolated cost–benefit metrics. Ultimately, this approach equips energy planners with a robust methodology to minimize systemic risk and guide the transition toward a resilient, low-entropy steady state. Full article

Climate change adaptation in cities increasingly requires not only technical and spatial solutions, but also a better understanding of residents’ beliefs and expectations towards green infrastructure. This study aimed to identify the relationship between climate change knowledge and preferences for urban green infrastructure among Warsaw residents. The research was based on a CAWI survey conducted at the end of 2024 among 780 adult residents of Warsaw. Respondent segmentation was performed using hierarchical cluster analysis and k-means clustering, while differences between groups were assessed using the Kruskal–Wallis and chi-square tests. Four resident segments were identified: Climate Aware, Natural-Factor Oriented, Sceptics, and Uncertain. These groups were found to differ significantly in their climate change knowledge and beliefs, socio-demographic characteristics, motivations for using green areas, and preferences for specific green infrastructure elements. Climate-aware residents attached particular importance to multifunctional green and blue infrastructure, including large parks, trees, water elements, and proximity to natural areas. More sceptical residents tended to perceive green areas mainly through their recreational and sport-related functions. The findings indicate that climate-adaptive green infrastructure should be planned in a socially differentiated way, combining environmental, recreational, and tourism-related functions to strengthen both urban resilience and the attractiveness of Warsaw. Full article

This qualitative phenomenological study examines how digital workplace surveillance embedded within remote and hybrid work systems shapes employee morale, organizational trust, and job satisfaction. Grounded in a socio-technical ergonomics framework, the research conceptualizes monitoring technologies not as neutral administrative tools but as structural design elements that recalibrate autonomy, accountability, and relational dynamics. The rapid normalization of telework during the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of algorithmic oversight systems, transforming managerial visibility and redefining performance metrics. Yet, limited empirical attention has been devoted to how these systems are subjectively experienced, particularly among younger workforce cohorts. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Generation Y and Generation Z employees working under digitally monitored telework conditions, the study explores how surveillance practices influence perceptions of autonomy, fairness, psychological safety, and engagement. The analysis identifies core themes reflecting tensions between efficiency and trust, transparency and intrusion, and compliance and intrinsic motivation. The findings contribute to socio-technical ergonomics scholarship by illuminating how oversight infrastructures can either support or destabilize sustainable and adaptive work environments. Full article

Digital transformation has expanded data infrastructures, artificial intelligence (AI)-supported systems, and automation across knowledge-intensive domains. However, these developments often remain fragmented and are not consistently aligned with human well-being, epistemic integrity, or collective learning. This conceptual and integrative review develops a bounded multi-layer framework of noospheric technologies for examining the alignment of data infrastructures, AI-supported cognition, governance arrangements, and human capabilities in knowledge-intensive systems. Noospheric technologies are defined as a contemporary extension of the established noosphere concept, referring to socio-technical configurations that support collective knowledge production and socially accountable development. The framework is applied to scientific and educational systems as two focal domains. In science, the review examines Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) research data environments, AI-assisted discovery, and automated research workflows. In education, it examines adaptive learning ecosystems, learning analytics, and AI-supported educational infrastructures. The synthesis identifies recurring constraints across the two domains, including data fragmentation, limited interoperability, opaque AI-mediated reasoning, algorithmic bias, incentive misalignment, privacy and governance challenges, and uneven capability development. The review translates the framework into observable mechanisms, risks, and evaluation criteria for future research, policy analysis, and institutional practice. Full article