1,720,975 research outputs found
Does community resilience decrease social–ecological vulnerability? Adaptation pathways trade-off in the Bolivian Altiplano
No full textWorsening climate change impacts and environmental degradation are increasingly supporting policies and plans in framing a linear understanding of resilience building and vulnerability reduction. However, adaptations to different but interacting drivers of change are unclear in the mix of opportunities and threats related to increasing connections, emerging technologies, new patterns of dependency and possible lock-in effects. This paper discusses a more open-ended understanding of the relationship between resilience and vulnerability, highlighting emerging trade-offs among adaptive capacities and exposures to different (and new) threats as they relate to social–ecological sustainability. The transition of the Southern Bolivian Altiplano, from being a remote rural area of subsistence farming to a global leader in quinoa production and exportation, has been taken as a study case. Results from 18 workshops organised within different communities provide insights about a range of trade-offs between community resilience attributes and social–ecological vulnerability induced from land use changes, livestock strategies, communities’ behavioural change and institutions’ emerging policies. The main theoretical advances of the paper relate to the need for critically framing multiple threat exposures and adaptive capacity trade-offs, contributing to arguing the usually positive meaning of resilience, and taking into account “to whom or to what is positive which adaptation” and “which trade-off should be accepted, and why”. Framing adaptive pathways through these questions would serve as a tool for addressing sustainable development goals, while avoiding lock-ins or unsustainable path dependencies
Trimmed weapons for energy data analysis in Universities’ living lab: current gaps and improvement proposal
No full textChapter 5, “Trimmed weapons for energy data analysis in Universities’ living lab: current gaps and improvement proposal”, G. Sonetti, L. Chelleri, K. Kikuta, M. Alweitaish
Resilience trade-offs: addressing multiple scales and temporal aspects of urban resilience
Full text linkThe concept of urban resilience has so far been related mainly to climate change adaptation and disaster management perspectives. Here we aim to broaden the discussion by showing how the framework of urban resilience should be related to wider sustainability challenges, including i) climate change and natural hazard threats, ii) unsustainable urban metabolism patterns and iii) increasing social inequalities in cities. Using three case studies (flood risk management in the Dutch polders, urban–rural teleconnections driving the Bolivian quinoa market, and spatial diversity in the adaptive capacity of Kampala slums),(1) we draw out significant insights related to scales and sustainability, which will push urban resilience research forward. The key “move” is to consider both spatial and temporal interactions, in order to shift from the mainstreaming of the resilience-building paradigm toward a critical understanding and management of resilience trade-offs. While urban resilience emerges not necessarily as a normatively positive concept anymore, we argue that addressing multi-scale and temporal aspects of urban resilience will allow greater understanding of global sustainability challenges
True green and sustainable university campuses? Toward a clusters approach
Full text linkCampus greening is often the first step universities take towards sustainability. However, the diffusion of sustainability reporting methodologies and rankings is still at an early stage, and is biased in mainly measuring energy efficiency indicators while omitting basic features enabling meaningful comparisons among centers or addressing social (users) aspects related to long term sustainability transitions. This paper aims to introduce a critical perspective on sustainability university frameworks through: (i) a review of current Campus Sustainability Assessments (CSAs); (ii) performing and comparing the results obtained from the application of two internationally recognized CSAs (namely, Green Metric and ISCN) to two case studies (the Politecnico di Torino, in Italy, and the Hokkaido University, In Japan) and, finally, (iii) proposing a new CSA approach that encompasses clusters of homogeneous campus typologies for meaningful comparisons and university rankings. The proposed clusters regard universities’ morphological structures (campuses nested within city centers versus outside of a city compact ones), climatic zones and functions. At the micro scale, the paper introduces the need for indicators beyond measuring pure energy efficiency, but which are attentive to local and societal constraints and provide long-term tracking of outcomes. This, better than a sheer record of sustainability priority actions, can help in building homogenous university case studies to find similar and scalable success strategies and practices, and also in self-monitoring progress toward achieving truly sustainable university campuses
How to monitor sustainable mobility in cities? Literature review in the frame of creating a set of sustainable mobility indicators
Full text linkThe role of sustainable mobility and its impact on society and the environment is evident and recognized worldwide. Nevertheless, although there is a growing number of measures and projects that deal with sustainable mobility issues, it is not so easy to compare their results and, so far, there is no globally applicable set of tools and indicators that ensure holistic evaluation and facilitate replicability of the best practices. In this paper, based on the extensive literature review, we give a systematic overview of relevant and scientifically sound indicators that cover different aspects of sustainable mobility that are applicable in different social and economic contexts around the world. Overall, 22 sustainable mobility indicators have been selected and an overview of the applied measures described across the literature review has been presented
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
From the «Resilient City» to Urban Resilience : a review essay on understanding and integrating the resilience perspective for urban systems
Full text linkResilience appears to have become a buzz word since the ecological, psychological, social and economic sciences began to use it to refer, respectively, to the capacity of ecosystems, people, societies, the economy, and more recently even urban systems to cope with disturbance. In fact, it is unclear exactly what the catchword «resilient city» means. Based on these assumptions, this article reviews resilience perspectives and their possible application to urban systems. In the first part of the paper, the concept of resilience, its evolution and perspectives (from engineering to social ecology) are analyzed with reference to ecosystems, societies and complex systems. In the second part we try to shed light on this panacea of concepts applied to cities. Important insights of this review are that certain resilience engineering perspectives (such as recovery and persistence views) can lead to unsustainable patterns of development in cities, while from complex systems resilience perspectives the principles of sustainability and transformability emerge as the consequent and necessary trajectory. While the term «resilient cities» often refers only to the capacity to maintain functions and structures, we argue that urban resilience should be framed within the resilience (system persistence), transition (system incremental change) and transformation (system reconfiguration) views.El concepte de resiliència sembla que actualment ha perdut significat. La banalització del concepte es deu, potser, a la proliferació del seu denominador comú o «capacitat de fer front a les pertorbacions» en moltes disciplines diferents. Un problema que se'n deriva és la manca de comprensió d'un nou concepte relacionat amb l'adaptació al canvi climàtic: «Resilient City». En aquest article, es pretén revisar l'evolució i les perspectives diferents del concepte de resiliència i analitzar la possible relació i aplicació d'aquestes perspectives a l'àmbit urbà. Un resultat de la revisió són les possibles malinterpretacions de la resiliència aplicada a l'ambient urbà quan ens referim a la principal propietat de conservació (resiliència entesa com a recuperació i tornada a l'estat previ després d'una pertorbació), que pot promoure un model urbà insostenible. Hi ha unes altres perspectives (la resiliència dels sistemes complexos) que ens transmeten missatges més sostenibles per a l'aplicació urbana d'aquest concepte, ja que s'interessen per les propietats de transformació i transició sostenible d'un sistema. D'aquesta manera, el concepte de resiliència aplicat a les ciutats ha de tenir en compte les propietats de conservació (capacitat de sobreviure al canvi), transició (mudar i adaptar-se al canvi) i transformació (reconfiguració del sistema) al mateix temps i desenvolupar-se d'acord amb unes dimensions socioeconòmiques i polítiques específiques.El concepto de resiliencia parece haber perdido significado en la actualidad. La banalización del concepto se debe quizás a su proliferación de su denominador común o «la capacidad de hacer frente a las perturbaciones» en muchas disciplinas diferentes. Un problema derivado es la falta de comprensión de un nuevo concepto relacionado con la adaptación al cambio climático: «Resilient City». En ese artículo, se pretende revisar la evolución y distintas perspectivas del concepto de resiliencia y analizar la posible relación y aplicación de estas perspectivas al ámbito urbano. Un resultado de la revisión son las posibles malinterpretaciones de la resiliencia aplicada al ambiente urbano cuando nos referimos a la principal propiedad de conservación (resiliencia entendida como recuperación y vuelta al estado previo después de una perturbación), que puede promover la resistencia de un modelo urbano insostenible. Otras perspectivas (la resiliencia de los sistemas complejos) nos transmiten mensajes más sostenibles para la aplicación urbana de este concepto, más interesados en las propiedades de transformación y transición sostenible de un sistema. De este modo, el concepto de resiliencia aplicado a las ciudades debe de tener en cuenta las propiedades de conservación (capacidad de sobrevivir al cambio), transición (mudar y adaptarse al cambio) y transformación (reconfiguración del sistema) a la vez y desarrollarse según dimensiones socioeconómicas y políticas específicas.La large utilisation du terme résilience semble avoir mené à une perte de sens. Ce mot est en-effet utilisé indifféremment pour qualifier une propriété des écosystèmes, ou des sociétés et de leurs économies à faire face et se rétablir suite à des perturbations. Ainsi le sens de l'expression «Ville Résiliente» laisse la voie à de nombreuses interprétations. Partant de ces constatations, cet article a pour but de clarifier les différentes visions de la résilience et leur application possible aux systèmes urbains. Dans une première partie seront analysés le concept de résilience et ses évolutions depuis différents points de vue (depuis l'ingénierie jusqu'à la socio écologie). Dans une deuxième partie, il sera tenté de clarifier le large panel de concepts faisant référence aux villes. Ce travail laisse entrevoir que de mauvaises interprétations du terme résilience peuvent surgir lorsque qu'il se réfère à l'ingénierie (entendu comme la capacité de récupération et la persistance dans le temps) et donc entraîner des modes de développement non durable. D'autres perspectives (celles de la résilience de systèmes complexes) apportent une vision plus durable en faisant émerger la transformabilité comme trajectoire nécessaire. Ainsi, alors que le concept de «Ville Résiliente» se réfère parfois uniquement à la capacité de maintenir les fonctions et structures, il apparaît qu'il devrait prendre en compte également les propriétés de conservation (capacité de survivre au changement), de transition (adaptation graduelle au changement), de transformation (reconfiguration du système) en même temps que se développer suivant des dimensions socioéconomiques et politiques (plus que technique)
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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