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Exploring the global scientific literature on urban metabolism
Full text linkUrban ecosystems can be conceptualized like living organisms supported by material and energy flows that allow the generation of ecosystem structures and functions and the production of goods and services. Urban metabolism accounts for the flows of materials, energy, resources, food, and people in cities, providing a framework for the study of the interactions between natural and socio-economic systems. In this paper, the global scientific literature on urban metabolism was explored to identify knowledge gaps and emerging research areas over the last decades. A bibliometric network analysis was implemented to generate maps based on network data of scientific publications displaying relationships among scientific journals, researchers, countries, and keywords. The total number of publications on urban metabolism from 1990 to 2019 resulted in 498 documents. USA and China resulted the first countries publishing on urban metabolism while among the journals, the Journal of Industrial Ecology and Journal of Cleaner Production resulted the first in the ranking. The co-occurrence network map of keywords showed that, over the last decade, the main focus of research on urban metabolism has shifted from environmental issues to environmental accounting and socio-economic aspects. Considering the importance of urban systems for the achievement of local and global sustainability goals, it is likely that the scientific literature on urban metabolism will continue growing over the next years. Being cities characterized by complex relationships between natural and socio-economic systems, it is desirable that future studies will explore the multidimensional features of urban metabolism through multi-criteria assessment frameworks
A multi-criteria framework for assessing urban socio-ecological systems: The emergy nexus of the urban economy and environment
Full text linkThe social and ecological impacts of urbanization require integrated management of cities and their resource metabolism for long-term sustainability and economic prosperity. Traditionally, network models are used to study internal metabolic processes in cities, complementing the traditional “black box” urban models to account for the input of material and energy resources and the output of final products and wastes. This study introduces a multi-criteria assessment framework by integrating a unique hybrid-unit input-output model with the emergy accounting method to estimate the environmental support provided to urban socio-economic systems, applied here to the case of Vienna, Austria. By focusing on the internal organisation and functioning of urban socio-economic systems, the proposed framework strengthens the understanding of ecological and socio-economic flows exchanged among industries and the environment. The results suggest that resources can be saved by applying supply-side and demand-side interventions and improving share of renewables. The multi-criteria assessment framework developed in this study allows to investigate the urban metabolism of cities and regional contexts through the identification of sustainable pathways rooted in material circularity and resource efficiency, supporting the design of policies in line with the “integrated wealth assessment” and “circular economy” principles
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
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
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Ecological network analysis of a metabolic urban system based on input–output tables: Model development and case study for the city of Vienna
Full text linkInternational audienceThe rapid economic growth accompanied by health concerns and other global environmental problems in cities and regions has boosted the popularity of the 'urban metabolism' topic among academics and policymakers. Currently, 56.2% of the world's population lives in cities, accounting for 80% of the global GDP. It is projected that the current trend for world economic growth complemented by population growth and migration will continue affecting the resource production and consumption in cities and the impact this has on other urban areas. Here, we developed a new model approach that combines emergy input-output tables with ecological network analysis to investigate urban metabolism generally, and applied it to Vienna, Austria. This novel approach allows researchers to study the hierarchy of sectors and functional relationships along all possible metabolic paths of ecological and socioeconomic flows exchanging in an urban economy and between the urban economy and its environment. Then, using system-level analyses (flow and contribution analyses) we determined the status of the system components. Finally, the critical components responsible for the status (distribution structure of each industry) and emergy consumption of the other sectors were identified using pairwise control and utility analyses. The results showed that the "agriculture, forestry and fishing" and "mining and quarrying" sectors had the lowest ability to receive financial inputs from the other sectors, reflecting a shortage of agricultural and mining products to meet consumers' demand. Moreover, "agriculture, forestry and fishing" had the highest energy dependence on the other sectors, indicating the lack of self-sufficiency in energy use and the inability of this sector to deliver energy effectively to consuming sectors. This also implies the importance of this sector in achieving the energy efficiency improvement and economic development goals for consumer cities. This work contributes to the existing literature on ecological network analysis via an introduction of the two-step approach that combines the diagnosis of low activity components in the system taken from traditional ecological network analysis with the novel identification of components behind the low activity of the other components. In addition, direct and indirect control, and indirect utility analysis were introduced for the analysis of the impact of the direct energy and indirect pairwise economic control and relational interactions of sectors in cities. Finally, this work explored the inner workings of the service part of the urban economy to reveal the role each tertiary sector plays in the development of primary and secondary sectors of an urban economy. The model developed in this study will provide support for city managers and policymakers to guide resource consumption towards an efficient and sustainable urban metabolic system worldwide
A multi-criteria framework for assessing urban socio-ecological systems: The emergy nexus of the urban economy and environment
Full text linkDispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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