Sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) is receiving increased focus, as sustainability takes a more central role in business, development, and education arenas. SOI processes typically draw from design thinking toolkits, with a focus on the user's needs and experiences. While this is an effective way to ensure that the innovation process is grounded in real, definable needs, it's also limited in its ability to place the problem in a larger societal and systemic context. This can lead to a narrow or incomplete problem definition.
This paper discusses the importance of incorporating online home delivery services (OHDS) into the concept of accessibility and marginalization. The authors propose a method to quantify access to OHDS and assess levels of inequalities in access to OHDS using data from OHDS providers in the pharmaceutical and food sectors, as well as from transport operators delivering parcels. The Västra Götaland Region in the West coast of Sweden is used as a case study. The results show significant inequalities in access to OHDS.
Thanks to fast learning and sustained growth, solar photovoltaics (PV) is today a highly cost-competitive technology, ready to contribute substantially to CO2 emissions mitigation. However, many scenarios assessing global decarbonization pathways, either based on integrated assessment models or partial-equilibrium models, fail to identify the key role that this technology could play, including far lower future PV capacity than that projected by the PV community.
This review focuses on how culture can complicate and impede attempts at promoting more efficient, more sustainable, and often more affordable forms of mobility as well as energy use in homes and buildings. In simpler terms: it illustrates the cultural barriers to a low-carbon, low-energy future across 28 countries. Rather than focus on energy supply, it deals intently with energy end-use, demand, and consumption.
Mercury contamination in soil, water and air is associated with potential toxicity to humans and ecosystems. Industrial activities such as coal combustion have led to increased mercury (Hg) concentrations in different environmental media. This review critically evaluates recent developments in technological approaches for the remediation of Hg contaminated soil, water and air, with a focus on emerging materials and innovative technologies. Extensive research on various nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), nanosheets and magnetic nanocomposites, for mercury removal are investigated.
Soiling consists of the deposition of contaminants onto photovoltaic (PV) modules or mirrors and tubes of concentrated solar power systems (CSPs). It often results in a drastic reduction of power generation, which potentially renders an installation economically unviable and therefore must be mitigated. On the other hand, the corresponding costs for cleaning can significantly increase the price of energy generated. In this work, the importance of soiling is assessed for the global PV and CSP key markets.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction encourages investment in innovation and technology development in disaster risk management. However, needs for science and technology inputs are unmet, and there is a lack of policy making that is based on science and evidence. This paper identified three key issues that could help overcome these barriers: networking, coproduction of knowledge, and a stronger role played by academia.
The UN has adopted the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030; SFDRR) in March 2015 and the member countries agreed to shift from disaster management to disaster risk management. The SFDRR is in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; September 2015). In 2016, the UNISDR together with partner organizations has prepared roadmap for mainstreaming Science and Technology in SFDRR. Out of four priority areas, this paper focuses on the appraisal of challenges in SFDRR priority 1 “understanding disaster risk” through the lens of science, technology and innovations.
Accountability and adaptive management of recent global agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement, will in part rely on the ability to track progress toward the social and environmental targets they set. Current metrics and monitoring systems, however, are not yet up to the task. We argue that there is an imperative to consider principles of coherence (what to measure), standardization (how to measure) and decision-relevance (why to measure) when designing monitoring schemes if they are to be practical and useful.
The paper contributes to the literature on gender gap in research investigating whether there is a gender gap in research evaluation. We use detailed data on 180,000 research papers evaluated during the Italian national research assessment (VQR 2004–2010) conducted by the Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (Anvur). The data are merged with information on individual researchers and characteristics of referees. The most important empirical finding is that there is a significant gender gap in research evaluation.
