Consideration Of Sustainability Aspects Research Articles

Indirect emission accounting and effectiveness of market regulation toward sustainability

The consideration of sustainability aspects has become increasingly essential and explicitly required by regulatory bodies and financial market participants so that efforts for mitigating climate change and avoiding a global ecological collapse could be strengthened. However, the methods used to measure transition risks do not always adequately describe the relationship between financial assets and environmental pressures. The currently implemented methods are limited to assessing the risks of financial portfolios based on their industrial sector classification and consider only direct emissions. In contrast, Scope 3 effects, which account for a significant part of total emissions, are excluded from the calculations. To reveal how reliable recent knowledge on climate risks is, in this study we investigate the currently used methods of climate exposure evaluation and conduct an analysis for the EU-27 countries by extending the calculation to indirect impacts. Our calculations reveal that the most affected industries are hotels and restaurants, construction, manufacturing, and other services, in which overall emissions are seven times higher on average than direct values. These results also suggest that the aforementioned segments need different risk assessments and additional examinations as part of investment and lending processes.

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION – DEVELOPING DIGITAL TWINS IN A CASE STUDY

AbstractThe current engineering environment demands for an increasing level of interdisciplinarity, innovation, creativity and cross-domain thinking as well as the consideration of sustainability aspects. New concepts, such as Digital Twins and complex product systems lead to the need for integrated product development approaches and new methods that put the user perspective in focus. This also needs to be an integral part in today's teaching concepts of the next generation of engineers.At the Department of Industrial Information Technology of the Technical University of Berlin, a case study was conducted by applying a concept of project-based learning in the engineering domain to address these challenges. In this paper, the case study as well as the method and its validation are presented. Students from different engineering disciplines had the task of developing virtual and physical prototypes for a sustainable, complex product system with a digital twin and respective sustainable business models. Within a structured survey, the teaching concept and the applied method were validated and lessons learned as well as further improvement measures are derived.

Sustainability Practices and Performance in European Small-and-Medium Enterprises: Insights from Multiple Case Studies

The advancement of sustainability trajectories is a critical challenge for most of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs require specific considerations with regard to business methodologies for achieving and enhancing sustainability, since their business case is far from similar to larger counterparts. As a consequence, tools for implementation of sustainability practices within SMEs need to recognize these differences as well and take into account the intrinsic characteristics and special needs of these enterprises accordingly. This paper reports findings from a multiple case study survey aiming to explore new directions for enhancing the sustainability levels demonstrated by European SMEs. Case studies were conducted in SMEs from four European countries (Denmark, Austria, Greece, and the UK) attempting to shed light on the implementation status of sustainability practices within their business core design and suggest ways of transferring such approaches to other SMEs. In this context, three key questions guided the study — What is the current status of sustainability practices by European SMEs?, what are the emerging issues, setbacks and opportunities towards sustainability practices in SMEs?, and what strategies, resources, and competences may facilitate effective sustainability embeddedness in SMEs? Face-to-face interviews were conducted with owners and managers of the selected SMEs to better understand their attitude and performance in terms of implementing sustainability practices. Findings allow highlighting key sustainability practices as well as drivers and barriers that stimulate or hamper respectively the sustainability practices implementation. While findings reveal a considerable variation in viewpoints among the interviewed SMEs, we identify a strong orientation and momentum towards sustainability endorsement. The paper concludes with implications for policy and management planning and an overarching aim to increase awareness and consideration of sustainability aspects in European SMEs.

Towards a novel Business, Environmental and Social Screening Tool for Product-Service Systems (BESST PSS) design

Product-Service Systems (PSS) have recently regained attention in the literature and industry due to their potential to contribute to sustainability. PSS are also enjoying renewed attention, currently, as the large societal focus on circular economy (CE) enforces the potential of PSS. However, PSS are not more sustainable than traditional offerings by default and they, therefore, must be designed with sustainability in mind from the early design stages and their sustainability potential screened already at a conceptual design stage. Existing approaches to screen PSS sustainability have conspicuous shortcomings regarding their lack of comprehensiveness, usability and focus on the conceptual design stage deemed crucial for the sustainability level of the future offering. There is poor coverage, in the literature, of approaches to sustainability-driven PSS design, and no consolidated approach to supporting a comprehensive consideration of sustainability aspects in the early stages of PSS conceptualisation. This paper introduces a qualitative tool and a process that support decision-making through ex-ante screening of PSS concepts for manufacturing companies based on the triple-bottom-line (TBL) sustainable value potential over the PSS life cycle. The tool was developed iteratively through three action research cycles focused on theory development and theory testing, within a manufacturing company. The tool and the implementation process are perceived as an effective and efficient way to screen PSS concepts through a comprehensive, yet readily applicable and usable approach by the industry practitioners.

An artificial neural network tool to support the decision making of designers for environmentally conscious product development

The consideration of sustainability aspects in initial stages of product development is understood as an effective approach to plan a sustainable product life cycle. It can be achieved by integrating the sustainability considerations into decision making of companies in early design phases. This study aims to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool that can assist the designers in their decision making to choose environmentally benign design parameters of products. The proposed tool is based on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model which takes the life cycle design parameters (viz. size of product, density of material, manufacturing process, transport mode and recyclability) as inputs and provides the corresponding outputs in terms of ‘carbon footprint’ and ‘life cycle cost’ of a product. These outputs assist the designers to realize the trade-off between the environmental load and cost effectiveness of a design alternative. Thus, it enables the decision making of companies to select a more sustainable design. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) is developed for the AI tool so that the designers can efficiently use this tool. The results predicted by the proposed tool are compared with the results obtained through the life cycle assessment carried out by using GaBi 9.2. The comparison shows that the results predicted by the tool have a reasonable accuracy of more than 90% which is significant, especially in the design stages of environmentally conscious product development. Also, the time efficiency of the tool to compute the environmental impact was compared with that of GaBi 9.2 by using a T-test. Results showed that the time efficiency of the proposed AI tool is significantly higher than that of GaBi 9.2.

Practical guideline for cities and municipalities on an SDG-based assessment in the context of urban surfaces using life cycle thinking

The consideration of sustainability aspects is becoming increasingly important at municipal level in order to implement the SDGs. Some municipalities already have their own concepts for individual SDGs, such as climate protection (SDG 13). There are many fields of action in which municipalities can initiate changes to contribute to the SDGs. An important field of action is the municipal task of planning, building and maintaining urban areas and surfaces sustainably. However, as this topic is quite complex, there is a need for a guide for municipalities on how to conduct such a sustainability assessment. The authors provide a practical guideline for communities to evaluate the sustainability impacts of urban surfaces and their management processes. The guideline has been developed with special focus on its applicability and the reduction of the complexity of the topic for local actors. The authors present the guideline, describe the underlying methods and the five subsequent steps that can be followed by a community in order to conduct a sustainability assessment. First, the scope of the sustainability assessment is defined by classifying the municipal urban surfaces and their management processes and analysing their relevance. Then, the sustainability of the prioritized surface and process is analysed by selecting relevant indicators, identifying the life cycle phases and researching sustainability impacts in the phases for the thematic priorities. For each phase and indicator, relevant municipal areas of action are determined, selected ones further refined and possibilities for their implementation investigated. The guideline operationalizes the sustainability assessment methodology for the management of urban surfaces proposed by Henzler et al. [1], which uses SDG-based indicators and life cycle thinking of LCA, considering the interaction between the life cycle of urban surfaces and their products.

Green BIM potential in assessing the sustainable design quality of low-income housing: A review

This paper intended to investigate the potential use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) as an assessment tool that can evaluate and support optimization of sustainable design quality, especially for low-income housing or “Masyarakat Berpenghasilan Rendah” (MBR) in Indonesia. The consideration of sustainability aspects in the preliminary design phase is no longer a choice but a need for every stakeholder involved in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. BIM here was developed to be the effective technology that supports all stakeholders in integrating the needs of sustainable building design through sustainable workflow which is also known as “Green BIM”. The first phase of this study is conducting a critical review of integration between BIM and Green Building Rating System for Home, including LEED, BREEAM, GBI, Green Mark, and GREENSHIP. Then it is followed by reviewing BIM implementation in the housing sector based on case studies in several countries. The findings revealed that there is a potential use of BIM for small-scale project especially to support the sustainability of MBR in Indonesia. Even so, there are also challenges to be considered, including financial support and incentives from the government in the effort of implementing this Green BIM approach.

Modelling Best Oil Palm Site Planting in Njimom, West-Cameroon: A GIS-Analysis Combining Weighted Linear Combination, Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process and Utility Function

Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) has recorded a boom production the last decades and its main productive zone is inside the tropics that meet the best biophysical conditions. Investors as well as geospatial practitioners are increasingly interested on the best growing and harvesting conditions. So said, the aim of this paper is to select the best oil palm planting site through the best methods combination. The study area is the district of Njimom located in the west-Cameroon, transitional between the equatorial and the climatic zones. In the same GIS environment, the Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) respectively highlight the subtle differences between capability and suitability, while the Utility Function (UF) helps to assess the consideration of sustainability aspects. The first results consist in eight layers representing natural conditions, that is rainfall, temperatures, sunshine, slope, elevation, soil richness, soil moisture and forest cover, recoded in six classes ranked from 5 to 0 according to the FAO standardised scale. They are crossed using the straightforward method of WLC to give the “Capability layer”. The second results consist in three layers related to the social-economical constraints for production, as built-up area, distance to road and distance to rivers. These layers are recoded in binary with 1 and 0, they are weighted by the FAHP priority vector and membership approach to give the “suitability layer”. Then, the number of occurrences of each aspect of the sustainability is counted in each of the two preceding processes to perform the UF. The resulting value, that is 0.542 for the capability process and 0.315 for the suitability process, serves to weight their respective layers, and their sum gives the final map with the best oil palm site planting in the northern part of the study area, on about 34,950 ha, representing 44.8% of Njimom district.

A POMDP framework to find Optimal Policy in Sustainable Maintenance

The increasing importance of these two subjects, maintenance and cleaner environment, beside the relations between them, encourages us to investigate a mathematical Markovian model for Condition Based Maintenance problem while considering environmental effects. In this paper, the problem of proposing maintenance optimal policy for a partially observable, stochastically deteriorating system is studied, in order to maximize the average profit of the system with consideration of sustainability aspects. The modeling of this Condition Based Sustainable Maintenance (CBSM) problem is done using mathematical methods such as Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) and Bayesian theory. A new exact method named Accelerated Vector Pruning method and other popular estimating and exact methods are applied and compared in solving the presented CBSM model and several managerial conclusions were obtained.

Towards a Software System Providing Knowledge about Energy and Resource Efficiency Potentials within the Product and Process Development of Electric Drives

Despite numerous research activities, guidelines and regulations, the exploitation of energy and resource efficiency potentials at companies in the field of electric drive technology is still lagging behind. Existing catalogues of measures and research results are mostly too generic or too theoretic for companies, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Thus, this paper proposes the development of a user-oriented software system that supports the consideration of sustainability aspects within the product and process development of electric drives. The core component of this concept is a knowledge-based system (KBS), which reveals the wide range of energy and resource efficiency potentials along the whole product life cycle. In particular, correlations that exist between the individual saving potentials are to be mapped. By presenting the general solution concept and current stage of development, this paper provides the basis for future research which should focus on the further elaboration and prototypical implementation of the system proposed here.

Considering sustainability in project management decision making; An investigation using Q-methodology

Sustainability is one of the most important challenges of our time. Projects play a pivotal role in the realization of more sustainable business practices and the concept of sustainability has also been linked to project management. However, how managers of projects consider sustainability in their operational daily work is still to be explored. This paper uses Q-methodology to investigate the consideration of sustainability aspects in the decision making processes of project managers. The research question was How are dimensions of sustainability considered in the decision-making processes of project managers in relation to the triple constraint of time, cost and quality?Based on the Q-sort of selected respondents, the study found that the consideration of sustainability principles is underrepresented, compared to the triple constraint criteria. However, the analysis of the individual Q-sorts revealed four distinct perspectives that differ significantly in their consideration of sustainability principles and triple constraint criteria.

System Lifecycle Management - An Approach for Developing Cybertronic Systems in Consideration of Sustainability Aspects

Contemporary technological products are systems based on multiple engineering disciplines. Requirements, risen due to global competition and legislation, lead to complexity explosion especially with regard to the information flow within the product development process. Embedded intelligence and interconnectivity used for an autonomous decision-finding by the products increases complexity furthermore. This paper presents an approach and framework for model-based development of Cybertronic Systems supported by System Lifecycle Management for provision of data availability and traceability. An example based on eco-design of a Cybertronic Element – wheeled excavator – within a Cybertronic System – autonomous construction area – is presented.

Assessing Sustainability of Railway Modernization Projects; A Case Study from Romania

Projects are important ‘instruments of change’ in realizing a more sustainable society. Sustainability in project management aims to integrate the concepts of sustainability into project management. In order to facilitate the consideration of sustainability aspects of projects, the SPM3 model provides a ‘snapshot’ on how the different variables of sustainability are considered in the management of a specific project.This paper reports a case study into the consideration of sustainability in the project Modernization of KM614-Curtici Romanian Railway Network. The assessment showed that the project is primarily economically driven, but that environmental aspects are also proactively considered. The project focusses less on the social aspects.The assessment also showed that the sustainability aspects of the project are mostly considered in relation to the project's deliverable. Less attention is given to the sustainability of the process. Regarding the level of consideration of sustainability, the participants of the study first of all indicate that a more proactive consideration of sustainability aspects is desired.The participants also agreed that the assessment of the project with the SPM3 model provided a holistic analysis of the sustainability of the project that formed an essential step in the further development and improvement of the project.

Review of Full Truckload Transportation Service Procurement

This study was conducted to review the literature on full truckload (FTL) transportation service procurement and to identify the gaps from the perspectives of researchers and practitioners. FTL procurement in particular was reviewed because it is encountered more than others forms of procurement in freight movement, and it involves numerous challenges. A framework was developed to provide a systematic review of the literature, the findings of which are discussed in detail. Some key findings include the simplistic assumption of demand patterns, limited focus on non-price variables, a limited number of case studies, less consideration of sustainability aspects, and a lack of detailed studies on emerging economies.

Adsorption from Molecular to Process Scale – Where Intensification Meets Integration

AbstractBiopharmaceutical processes are complex in almost every aspect, they are not well understood, and so far they have not seen much integration, far less intensification. Adsorption plays a key role for handling, purifying, and processing of such complex systems. The current modular approach to a bioprocess chain needs integration and also more consideration of sustainability aspects. Integrated processes are a prerequisite for the supply of patients all over the world with high quality, innovative, and affordable therapeutics, also allowing stratified medicine approaches.

Incorporating sustainability aspects in structured trade and commodity finance

While in recent years the aspect of operation ecology is already widely introduced into the daily business of many banks, the issue of considering environmental aspects in external business relations as a part of sustainable business practice is a rather new and more difficult task. While the incorporation of environmental issues in credit management and investment funds becomes practice in some European and US banks, guidelines for the consideration of sustainability aspects in structured trade and commodity finance are rather more rare. This paper is an attempt to evaluate the existing opportunities to include environmental concerns into these two business sectors and to analyse which environmental criteria might be practicable. Above all the study is based on the consideration of financing trade with unsustainable or environmentally harmful substances. Concerning the sustainability aspects of these substances we revealed four criteria which will render substances as unsustainable. These are substances that are not degradable or only degradable over a long period of time, substances that are harmful to the environment and human health, and those that appear on regulatory or recommended negative lists. To give practical advice for banks, we identified products containing problematic substances and production processes causing problematic emissions. As a result we derived substance and product lists that may be used to help the organisational philosophy towards sustainability. The implementation of these lists would be a good starting point for financial institutions entering into a new area of sustainable business.

The Consideration of Sustainability Aspects in Transport Infrastructure Related Policies, Plans and Programmes: A Comparative Analysis of North West England, Noord-Holland and Brandenburg-Berlin

This paper is based on research conducted in 1997 and 1998 at the EIA Centre, University of Manchester. It examines the extent to which transport infrastructure related policies, plans and programmes (PPPs) in the three EU regions of North West England, the provincie (administrativeregion) of Noord-Hollandand the engerer Verflechtungsraum (EVR, planning region) of Brandenburg-Berlinconsider (environmental) sustainability issues in the form of objectives, targets and related options/measures for action. Furthermore, the role strategic environmental assessment (SEA) appears to play in this context is elaborated. The analytical framework for comparison is based on the sustainable development strategy of the European Commission, the Fifth Action Programme (Commission of the European Communities, 1993).