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Our world is becoming more urban. More than fifty percent of the global population now lives in cities, which poses new challenges for sustainable development. This book integrates theory and methods of sustainability assessment with concepts from systems science to provide guidelines for assessing the sustainability of urban systems. It discusses different aspects of urban sustainability, from energy and housing, to mobility and health, covering social, economic and environmental factors, as well as the various stakeholders and actors involved. The book argues for the need to find models and solutions in order to design sustainable cities of the future in light of the complexity of urban social life. Including diverse case studies from the developed and developing world, this book provides a useful reference for researchers and students from a broad range of disciplines working in the field of sustainability, as well as for environmental consultants and policy makers.
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
This chapter presents Sustainability Solution Spaces for Decision-Making (SSP) as an integrative method for assessing sustainability. The SSP represents the room to manoeuvre in the system at hand so that it can develop sustainably. The approach fulfils (1) systemic criteria; (2) normative criteria; and (3) procedural criteria. It provides a consistent set of targets and considers the systemic relations among the indicators representing the city-region. This gives the decision-makers concise guidelines for sustainable decisions and makes them aware of the associated trade-offs. SSP can be pursued following a participatory and an expert approach. Whereas the expert approach requires high quality of data, preferably either over time or over a large number of cities, the participatory approach is more flexible and can deal with qualitative data. That is, the expert approach is appropriate for comparing large sets of cities with each other, clustering and providing benchmarks for specific city types, and delivering general indications where policy development is required. The participatory approach might be particularly useful for assessing the impact of a specific project or analysing a specific sector, such as mobility or housing, in depth.
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
As an industrial revolution booms in Chile, the country’s air has been flooded by toxic emissions. Cities face the worst of the pollution, as factories are booming and urban centres are growing. Cars are one of the main contributors towards the accumulation of PM2.5. Sharing trips may help reduce the number of private and public vehicles on the road and thus reduce greenhouse gas emissions, travel time, and cost to individuals. In this study, I apply the concept of shareability networks to a survey of 113 591 trips taken in the city of Santiago in Chile, showing that with increasing but still relatively low passenger discomfort, cumulative trip length can be cut by 50 percent or more. I quantify the benefit of ride sharing in terms of traffic and emission reduction. I finally show that the ride-sharing potential is substantial, with nearly 100 percent of the trips shareable with current public transportation trip demand.
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
The sustainability of urban systems is a pressing topic now, and will be even more so in the future. Currently, more that 50 percent of the world’s population (74 percent in the EU) lives in cities, and this share is expected to keep increasing, posing new challenges for sustainable development. Although cities only cover 3 percent of the earth’s surface, they account for 75 percent of global CO2 emissions, and consume about 75 percent of resources and produce 50 percent of the waste worldwide. However, cities also provide income (80 percent of global GDP) and education, and are hotspots for innovation (Acuto & Panel 2016; Wigginton, et al., 2016). The ambiguous role of cities poses large challenges and renders it necessary to develop tools to assess urban strategies and developments from a sustainability perspective.
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
A wealth of indicators and indicator sets, structured in the form of standards (e.g., ISO, OECD, SDG Index, etc.), have been developed and proposed over the past decades to define and measure urban sustainability. Unfortunately, literature studies confirm that there is a lack of knowledge systematisation for such indicator sets in the sustainability assessment domain. In this chapter, we present and describe a formal representation of knowledge about sustainability indicators and their interrelationships, through the development of a domain ontology. To increase the potential for its adaptability and reuse, as well as to facilitate its continuous redevelopment, we make the developed ontology available online, through a dedicated web portal.
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
The epidemiology of mosquito-borne diseases is changing. This is a fact. Diseases that were mostly ‘confined’ to tropical regions are now becoming real threats for temperate countries – for instance, the chikungunya outbreak in Northern Italy in 2007, the chikungunya epidemic in the Americas and the Caribbean beginning in late 2013, the major Zika epidemic in 2015, which also led to local transmission in the US, and the recent surge of yellow fever cases in previously unaffected areas of Brazil. In this chapter, we propose a mathematical framework to emulate the dynamics of the spreading of a mosquito-borne disease in an urban environment. The main innovation of the proposed modelling framework is to improve on the current compartmental epidemiological models by considering not only vector-to-human transmission at fixed favourite cells, but also the probability of transmission along mobility pathways. This modus operandi allow us to improve the understanding of the interplay between human mobility and mosquito-borne disease in urban environments.
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
from
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Sustainability Assessment of the Housing System: Exploring the Interplay between the Material and Social Systems
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
from
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Sustainability Assessment: Introduction and Framework
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Romano Wyss, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,Emanuele Massaro, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne