1,720,967 research outputs found
Drivers of a more sustainable future food system – Lessons from Sweden
No full textThe global food sector is one of the most impactful sectors in the world, necessitating an urgent shift towards more sustainable practices. Sweden has made great progress in putting sustainability on the agenda as a strategic component of its national development strategy. Still, understanding how a full-scale sustainable food system can be achieved in practice and the drivers of such a transition remain unclear. In this study, we first empirically explore these drivers, their interdependencies and how these affect the Swedish food system’s progress towards its sustainability objectives. Then, we assess which scenarios for the future food system in Sweden perform better with regard to sustainability considerations. For the first objective, we utilised the DEMATEL technique to identify and quantify the cause-and-effect relationships among these drivers. The results showed that revenue and the use of toxic materials are key drivers for food systems’ sustainability in Sweden, suggesting a path for system improvement focus areas in the future. For the second objective, we applied TOPSIS as a decision-making method for assessing the sustainability of four different future scenarios for the Swedish food system. The outcomes suggest that food tech is the most sustainable scenario among the ones considered. The findings of this study will collectively aid in promoting sustainable consumption, encouraging a shift towards a more sustainable agrifood system in Sweden, a leading nation in sustainability efforts. This study was performed as part of the research programme MISTRA Food Futures (www.mistrafoodfutures.org) and was funded by MISTRA – The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. We gratefully acknowledge all survey respondents. Additionally, in the process of constructing the literature review for the identification of indicators, we leveraged the resources of a separate research initiative supported by the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas) within the national centre FINEST – Food Innovation for Sustainable System Transition [Grant no. 2020-02839]. </p
Sustainable Environmental Clean-up : Dynamic assessment for sustainable remediation of contaminated sites
Get PDFSoil and groundwater contamination is an increasingly recognised threat to public health and the environment around the globe. New types of contaminants continue to emerge, and awareness of their threat, continues to develop. Many countries have national clean-up programs with priority lists of the most hazardous contaminated sites. Investigation and remediation of these sites, however, take a long time. An important reason is that dealing with contaminated sites has high practical complexity and uncertainty, making it hard to decide whether a specific remedy measure should be implemented. This depends not only on hydrological and biogeochemical heterogeneities and variabilities at a site, but also on associated health, environmental, economic, and social impacts of taking or not taking an action in the long run. Contaminant fate and transport models help to understand and predict subsurface behaviour and potential risks. As well, sustainability assessment tools can help in the decision-making process. These tools aim at quantifying environmental, economic, and social impacts and comparing different scenarios of remediation to give an overview of all potential impacts with time. However, integration of contaminant transport models and sustainability assessment tools has not been performed, leading to a lack of a holistic but pragmatic view of the whole system. This could admittedly result in fixing one problem while generating new ones. Thus, this thesis integrates these into a novel system that recognizes variations of involved factors in time. For this, a contaminant transport model (INSIDE-T) and a sustainability assessment tool (INSIDE) were developed with the aim of coupling through a system dynamics approach and simulations, for its unique capabilities in integrating multiple types of data/information sources. This integration can provide a holistic, but pragmatic guide for decision-making in remediation actions. The new tool, DynSus, enables site managers to assessconsequences of their decisions in site clean-up projects in terms of contaminant spread risk, social, environmental, and economic impacts from a dynamic life cycle perspective. For this, experience from experienced site managers and stakeholders is used and the methodology is implemented, among others, on a seriously contaminated site in Sweden overseen by the Swedish Geological Survey as the main case study of the thesis. The results show that ”gentle” remedy measures, which are often considered sustainable, may not be the best options in terms of life cycle impacts, although they generally gain significantly higher sustainability scores at the beginning of the remediationprocess. The time these measures rank below more invasive methods is calculated by DynSus
To fight with contaminants through the inside! - A novel tool for more sustainable management of contaminated sites clean-up
No full text
Sustainable Environmental Clean-up [Elektronisk resurs] : Dynamic assessment for sustainable remediation of contaminated sites
No full textSoil and groundwater contamination is an increasingly recognised threat to public health and the environment around the globe. New types of contaminants continue to emerge, and awareness of their threat, continues to develop. Many countries have national clean-up programs with priority lists of the most hazardous contaminated sites. Investigation and remediation of these sites, however, take a long time. An important reason is that dealing with contaminated sites has high practical complexity and uncertainty, making it hard to decide whether a specific remedy measure should be implemented. This depends not only on hydrological and biogeochemical heterogeneities and variabilities at a site, but also on associated health, environmental, economic, and social impacts of taking or not taking an action in the long run. Contaminant fate and transport models help to understand and predict subsurface behaviour and potential risks. As well, sustainability assessment tools can help in the decision-making process. These tools aim at quantifying environmental, economic, and social impacts and comparing different scenarios of remediation to give an overview of all potential impacts with time. However, integration of contaminant transport models and sustainability assessment tools has not been performed, leading to a lack of a holistic but pragmatic view of the whole system. This could admittedly result in fixing one problem while generating new ones. Thus, this thesis integrates these into a novel system that recognizes variations of involved factors in time. For this, a contaminant transport model (INSIDE-T) and a sustainability assessment tool (INSIDE) were developed with the aim of coupling through a system dynamics approach and simulations, for its unique capabilities in integrating multiple types of data/information sources. This integration can provide a holistic, but pragmatic guide for decision-making in remediation actions. The new tool, DynSus, enables site managers to assess consequences of their decisions in site clean-up projects in terms of contaminant spread risk, social, environmental, and economic impacts from a dynamic life cycle perspective. For this, experience from experienced site managers and stakeholders is used and the methodology is implemented, among others, on a seriously contaminated site in Sweden overseen by the Swedish Geological Survey as the main case study of the thesis. The results show that ”gentle” remedy measures, which are often considered sustainable, may not be the best options in terms of life cycle impacts, although they generally gain significantly higher sustainability scores at the beginning of the remediation process. The time these measures rank below more invasive methods is calculated by DynSus
Assessing sustainability of innovative solutions for wild berry picking in Sweden
No full textA substantial quantity of berries is grown in Sweden, estimated at more than 550 000 tons every year. Intriguingly, only a fraction of this amount (some 2 5%) finds practical utilization. Historically, the low utilization rate can be attributed to a scarcity of harvesting personnel, challenges in accessing the harvesting sites, and logistical complexities. Even with the current berry picking value chain, which is mostly operated by seasonal Thai pickers, numerou s challenges persist. The workers’ work and life conditions are not satisfactory, and efficiency is low, making up a value chain that is far from sustainable. In an attempt for more efficient and sustainable chains, some innovative solutions are practiced in a European innovation project, FAIRCHAIN. These innovative solutions include (i) developing an app to track berries and spot more probable places to find berries in real time, and (ii) cleaning and processing the berries locally into products like jam o r use them as an ingredient in other products (e.g., dairy products) in different scales. We, however, regardless of the scale and prospectives of the innovations, put together a model to assess how sustainable these innovations are compared to the current value chains. Significance of such assessments in helping decision making and designing new value chains while considering different aspects of sustainability is clear. In pursuit of this objective, we have formulated a comprehensive framework tailored to evaluate the sustainability of the proposed innovations within the context of Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). To establish the foundation of this framework, we selected 18 important sustainability indicators for potentially shaping the sustainability outcomes of various innovative solutions, covering the three foundational pillars of sustainability: environmental considerations, social responsibility, and economi c viability. These indicators are Capacity development , Fair contracts and fair pricing , Human safety and health , Collective bargaining , Food sovereignty , Labor rights and Equity , Quality of life , Food quality , Local procurement , Local employment , Stability of market , Product information , Profitability , Stability of production , Land use , Energy use , Biodiversity , and Atmospheric impacts . Leveraging the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), we systematically assigned relative weights to these indicators, foste ring a nuanced evaluation process. The preliminary results indicate that social indicators (such as Quality of life and Capacity development ) and economic ones (such as Stability of production and Local employment ) gain the highest It is worth noting that the entirety of data to feed this model was gained after multiple rigorous sessions of discussion and weighting by the informed project partners to reach ultimate consensus. This is ongoing research and here we rely on showcasing the framework to highlight its capabilities and strengths and discuss its limitations. Insights found in such inclusive holistic assessment hold significant value for decision makers who need to see t he big picture before intervention decisions such as small and large scale innovations in short and long term. </p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
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