1,720,986 research outputs found
Territori sostenibili e resilienti: la prospettiva dei servizi ecosistemici a supporto della pianificazione territoriale
No full textManaging Urban Sustainability in a Cooperative Interactive Learning Environment
No full textStriving to contribute to the current debate on how facing the challenge of managing limited resources in a sustainable way, this paper focuses on the issue or urban sustainability.
As many reports clearly state or underline (e.g., EEA 2015 and EU 2018), our urban environments are on the shrink of a huge collapse. Several reasons are at the basis of the problem (e.g., overcrowded population, pollution, traffic congestion, CO2 emissions, etc.) and a systemic approach to identify and understand their effects is advocated and at the center of a lively debate that engages both academics and practitioners (e.g., Sterman et al. 2015). Such approach is also recommended when organizing and running educational programs, not only in order to raise the students’ awareness about the complexity of urban sustainability (including the non-linearity of socio-technological processes and the need to consider multiple levels of the community and multiple sectors of governance and their interdependencies), but also to train properly the “policy-makers of tomorrow” in the context of urban sustainability. Interestingly, these issues are core to the lively debate swirling around the UN Sustainable Development Goals (in detail, the SDG n. 11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities” is particularly relevant for this study) and the Agenda 2030.
By reproducing in a Stella environment a simulated city, this paper aims to:
1. investigate and discuss how strategically relevant resources can be identified, formally represented and managed in a simulated urban environment, in this case, a System Dynamics computer model mimicking the management of a medium-sized city;
2. test the System Dynamics simulation model in the form of an Interactive Learning Environment and with specific scenarios, in order to sustain knowledge acquisition and awareness on how we can achieve sustainable urban management and a balanced societal metabolism while taking into account formal decision-making.
Two streams of research are used as the main theoretical references for this paper.
First, the paper builds on the concept of “urban metabolism” (Pincetl et al. 2012; EU 2018). The model of urban metabolism aims to identify and analyze the interactions between the natural and the human systems in a specific region (or environment); therefore, this approach not only allows describing how the human-environment interaction takes place, but also explaining how this interaction entails and informs strategic decisions related to the management of the resources at disposal, subsequently generating an array of impacts and consequences (even in terms of harmful side-effects).
Second, the paper builds on the concept of “anticipatory governance” (Fuerth, 2009; Quay, 2009; Guston, 2014).
Recognizing the existence of high degrees of uncertainty and complexity in modern systems (e.g., social and environmental ones), anticipatory governance is a new model of decision making based on concepts of foresight and flexibility that “uses a wide range of possible futures to anticipate adaptation strategies, and then monitors change and uses these strategies to guide decision making” (Quay, 2010, p. 496).
From a methodological point of view, the paper relies on System Dynamics principles and modelling tools (Forrester 1961 and 1968, Richardson and Pugh 1981, Sterman 2000).
Specifically, a System Dynamics computer model is used to portray the urban environment (i.e., the simulated city) under analysis and considers several sectors to be administrated and managed, as follows: urban planning, energy, transport, water management, waste management, and investment decisions.
The SD model is then transformed into an Interactive Learning Environment (see Davidsen 2000, Davidsen and Spector 2015; Alessi and Kopainsky 2015) subsequently used to explore the effects of managerial decisions related to the concepts of urban metabolism and anticipatory governance as aforementioned.
The focus of the SD-based ILE is mainly an educational one (see Morecroft and Sterman 2000) and the “game” provided within the ILE presents the following characteristics: a) the game can be played as a single or a multiplayer simulation; b) if played as a multiplayer game, it is an asymmetric one; c) the game is meant to be a cooperative one, with the players (if more than one) called to collaborate to manage the urban environment sustainably.
In terms of expected findings and contribution, the paper highlights how ILE-supported simulations allow exploring the effects generated by the players’ decisions related to the urban environment, with specific regard to the link that brings routinely human and business activities carried out in an urban environment to (positively and negatively) impact on the urban environment itself (e.g., in terms of new job opportunities which are offered, but also in terms of CO2 emissions that are generated). Subsequently, the main expected contribution of this study lies in its ability to increase players’ (i.e., students’) awareness about urban sustainability-related issues, and acquire a better ability to imagine, therefore anticipate, recurrent dynamics on the basis of common feedback structures, such widespread learning in a public organization can foster an anticipatory approach to governance, rather than reactive.
Notably, the SD model and the SD-based ILE are two of the outputs of a research project named “SUSTAIN”: specifically, SUSTAIN is an ERASMUS+ project with an innovative perspective on urban sustainability, whose main goal is to promote the importance of sustainability on the everyday problems of the cities among the students of Higher Education institutions, which are the ones that will shape the future
Delphi-based change assessment in ecosystem service values to support strategic spatial planning in Italian landscapes
No full textMost impacts on providing ecosystem services (ESs) are related to land use changes that may cause
ecosystem fragmentation and loss of ecosystem functions. Spatial planning, focusing on sustainable landscape
development, should consider the local potential for providing ESs as well possible impacts due
to land use changes. The results of a large number of recent studies on ES assessment are difficult to
replicate and integrate into landscape planning or definition of land use policies. The time and resource
constraints, needed in data gathering and analysis, limit local administrations in the concern about ES.
Extending the approach of spatially explicit benefit transfer, we present an expert-based estimation of
land use potential in providing ES. We enhanced ES estimations related to different land use classes (in
terms of
D/ha year) by considering “local conditions” such as elevation and distance from urban areas,
assuming these spatial characteristics can affect ES provisioning. The adaptation for “local conditions” was
performed through expert consultation, using Delphi survey and focus groups, involving 46 experts from
10 Italian research institutions. In detail, we used land cover maps for 1990 and 2000, and aggregated
the results on the province scale. The results show spatial pattern of gains and losses in ES values for
Italian provinces. The province level of aggregation seems to be effective for dealing with strategic phase
of spatial planning. By eliciting possible consequences of land use changes, this knowledge framework
may foster strategies for sustainable landscape planning and management
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
Dispelling 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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