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As woodworking and construction technologies improve, the construction of multi-storey timber buildings is gaining popularity worldwide. There is a need to look at the design of existing buildings and assess their sustainability. The aim of the present study is to assess the sustainability of modern high-rise timber buildings using multi-criteria assessment methods. The paper presents a hierarchical system of sustainability indicators and an assessment framework, developed by the authors. Based on this framework, the tallest timber buildings in different countries, i.e., Mjøstårnet in Norway, Brock Commons in Canada, Treet in Norway, Forte in Australia, Strandparken in Sweden and Stadthaus in UK, were compared across the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, economic/technological, and social). Research has revealed that none of the buildings is leading in all dimensions of sustainability. However, each building is unique and has its own strengths. Overall multi-criteria assessment of the buildings revealed that the Brock Commons building in Canada has received the highest rank in all dimensions of sustainability. The paper contributes to the theory and practice of sustainability assessment and extends the knowledge about high-rise timber buildings. The proposed sustainability assessment framework can be used by both academics and practitioners for assessment of high-rise timber buildings.

There is growing concern about the sustainability of freshwater ecosystems in northern Canada that are under significant stress from climate change, resource development, and hydroelectric development, among others. Community-based monitoring (CBM) based on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has the potential to contribute to understanding impacts on the environment and community livelihoods. This paper shares insights about culturally driven monitoring, through collaborative research with K&aacute, tł&rsquo, odeeche First Nation (KFN) in the Northwest Territories. This research was initiated in 2018 to improve understanding of the changes occurring in the Hay River and Buffalo River sub-basins, which extend primarily across the Alberta and Northwest Territories borders. Drawing on 15 semi-structured interviews conducted with KFN elders, fish harvesters, and youth, this paper illustrates the kinds of social&ndash, ecological indicators used by KFN to track changes in the health of aquatic systems as well as the fishing livelihoods of local people. Utilizing indicators, fishers observe declines in fish health, water quality, water quantity, and ice thickness in their lifetime. Community members perceive these changes to be a result of the cumulative effects of environmental stressors. The indicators as well as trends and patterns being observed and experienced can contribute to both social learning in the community as well as the governance of the larger Mackenzie River Basin.

In this paper, the aggregate index of national economies&rsquo, circularity (INEC) was proposed and empirically verified. For this purpose, the taxonomic linear ordering method was used, which is a multi-criteria decision-making procedure. This method replaces the analysis of the phenomenon described by a set of indicators with an analysis using one aggregate indicator: the so-called &lsquo, synthetic metric&rsquo, Based on 14 circular economy indicators that are available in the Eurostat database, the circularity indexes were constructed for 24 EU countries (including the United Kingdom). This allowed the author, on the one hand, to create a ranking of the countries, and on the other, to assign them to four groups, which were characterized by a similar level of circularity. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: how circular are the European economies? What are the main challenges in achieving circularity in Europe? Taking into account the INEC range [0,1], it should be noted that the level of circularity in the analysed European countries is low (an average of 0.3021). Therefore, the paper indicates the areas requiring improvement in this respect.

This paper describes the development of Citylab Post-Construction, a Swedish certification system for evaluating the sustainability performance of urban areas in a post‑construction phase once the area is inhabited. The process design was based on transdisciplinary and research-through-design approaches, and involved experts and practitioners within Swedish urban planning, real estate and construction sector. This paper is not highlighting the certification system per se, but rather the process of developing it, with the aim of increasing the understanding of such design processes. A previously developed, but so far untested, framework of key considerations for certification systems was used to clarify benefits and drawbacks of different design decisions. The framework was used in all steps of the process, from defining the overall structure, to selecting indicators, formulating detailed requirements and assessing comments of the open consultation of a draft version. The framework of key considerations proved useful in supporting this process, by highlighting conflicts as well as synergies and creating transparency with respect to trade-offs needed between being e.g., scientifically credible but still practical enough. While it is difficult to separate the framework from the process in which it was put to use, we believe that the framework can be supportive also in other processes, both for developing new certification systems or for refining and evaluating existing ones.

In response to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this paper proposes a new National Sustainable Development Index (NSDI), based on the modification of the Human Development Index (HDI). The purpose of our research was to improve the widely adopted HDI index by incorporating more comprehensive sustainability perspectives, so as to help policy makers to better analyze the sustainability-related issues facing their countries. After clarifying the concept of sustainable development, our research suggests that this term represents a coordination and configuration of economic, social, and environmental aspects of development, with its major focuses on balancing intra-generational welfare and maximizing the total welfare across generations. We then put forward a novel NSDI framework including 12 indicators from dimensions of economy, resource environment, and society, and calculated the weights of 12 indicators using the entropy method. To further validate our proposed index, this paper also measured the NSDIs of 163 countries in the world, and compared this index with the HDI and other well-known modification indices of HDI. The results showed that the NSDI is a reliable and relative complete index for sustainable development assessment, which makes up for the shortcomings of existing indices.

In 2015, member countries of the United Nations adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the Sustainable Development Summit in New York. These global goals have 169 targets and 232 indicators based on the three pillars of sustainable development: economic, social, and environmental. However, substantial challenges remain in obtaining data of the required quality and quantity to populate these indicators efficiently. One promising and innovative way of addressing this issue is to use Earth observation (EO). The research reported here updates our original work to develop a Maturity Matrix Framework (MMF) for assessing the suitability of EO-derived data for populating the SDG indicators, with a special focus on those indicators covering the more social and economic dimensions of sustainable development, as these have been under-explored in terms of the contribution that can be made by EO. The advanced MMF 2.0 framework set out in this paper is based on a wide consultation with EO and indicator experts (semi-structured interviews with 38 respondents). This paper provides detail of the evolved structure of MMF 2.0 and illustrates its use for one of the SDG indicators (Indicator 11.1.1). The revised MMF is then applied to published work covering the full suite of SDG indicators and demonstrates that EO can make an important contribution to providing data relevant to a substantial number of the SDG indicators.

Addressing sustainability in urban planning has led to an increasing number of certification systems to support such processes. Nevertheless, there is no commonly recognised framework listing what is important to consider when developing such systems. Citylab is a certification system that is used in several Swedish urban development projects. Today, Citylab certifies the planning process of urban areas but it will be extended with a post-construction part. This paper presents a three steps analysis of the design of such a post-construction certification system. First, a literature review was performed, which allowed for identifying three principles and 11 sub-principles that make up a generic framework for the design of similar certification systems. Second, 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Sweden with key urban development stakeholders to better specify the scope of a post-construction extension of Citylab. As a result, four alternatives emerge for the role and function of this system. Third, crossing the results of both previous steps allowed for an understanding of important considerations and implications for the Citylab post-construction certification system design. The paper concludes on the relevance of such a reflexive procedure for the design of certification systems in general, in which the use of the framework is a key to ensure transparency and enable deliberate choices and priorities.

This Special Issue proposes an array of 11 key papers aimed at investigating the complex and multifaceted nature of the biobased economy, focusing both on a conceptual understanding of the transition and on the measurement issues associated to it. More specifically, collected papers can be broadly divided in two groups: (1) those aiming at adding to our understanding of the transition process towards a sustainable biobased economy; and (2) those aiming at adding to the definition and measurement of the emerging sustainable biobased economy. In the guest editor view, papers collected in this Special Issue offer valuable and complementary insights to our understanding of the ongoing transition towards a biobased economy, providing a logical framework to understand the transitions, as well as an overview of existing tools to assess and measure it. Ideally, policy makers will benefit from the papers included in this Special Issue and, hopefully, it will contribute to make a further step to the much-needed transition towards sustainability.

Within the urban context, heritage conservation has been acknowledged as fundamental for sustainable development. This paper address the need to develop methodologies that enable understanding of the dynamics between these two fields that for long were regarded as opposing practices. The research crosses disciplinary boundaries through a mixed methodology that identifies 27 urban development common indicators as factors that are affecting the conservation of 69 World Heritage Cities (WHC). Indicators, which were selected from global urban monitoring tools, were analyzed within UNESCO State-of-Conservation reporting system. Results reveal key trends on urban factors assessed as a SWOT analysis in relation to the management of WHC. We argue that urban indicators can facilitate the understanding of development impacts in cultural heritage conservation, across the social, economic, and environmental dimensions. This paper contributes to the debate on the ability of indicators to bridge interdisciplinary and methodological issues that were related to common conceptualizations between urban development and heritage conservation and sustainability. The conceptual approach that is presented has proven to offer an empirical basis for a monitoring practice that fosters the sustainable management of urban heritage, which in the light of the New Development Agenda and the gaps in the state-of-the-art, is very much needed.

The paper presents the results of a participatory vision development process in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in Germany. The vision development was part of a scientific research project that accompanied the development of a sustainability strategy for NRW at state level. The Sustainability Strategy NRW was adopted in July 2016 and contains parts of the vision developed in the research project: Sentences from the narrative text vision and proposed targets and indicators that back-up the vision for a sustainable NRW in 2030 were used by the state of NRW. The vision was developed in iterative steps in three consecutive dialogue rounds with different stakeholders from science and practice. The paper presents the methodological approach and the results of the vision formulation process. The paper discusses the lessons learned from the vision development—from both practical and theoretical perspectives of transition management. The paper explores the relevance of setting ambitious targets for sustainable development as part of a state strategy by taking the proposed target of a “4 × 25% modal split” by 2030 as an example. The project demonstrated that a participatory approach for vision development is time and resource consuming, but worth the effort as it improves the quality and acceptance of a vision. Furthermore, the project demonstrated that transformative science contributes valuable inputs for sustainability transitions and for facilitating participatory vision development.

The paper describes the shifting perspective from the contemplative view to the dynamic-evolutionary view of heritage and the main characteristics of the resulting multi-criterial decision-aid tool for the evaluation of heritage. With the integration of conservation in planning processes and with opening of the procedures to public participation, there is a need for decision-aid tools that can help increase rationality and transparency in decision-making processes related to planning. By understanding the contemporary view of heritage and the landscape, it is possible to create tools capable of accounting for spatial complexity and the extant cultural, social, historic and economic relations. With this in mind, a specific tool was created that can be used for the analysis, diagnosis, evaluation and monitoring of spatial heritage (registered and under consideration for protection), identifying opportunities, defining strategies for heritage management processes, and in the creation and evaluation of development and management scenarios. The paper illustrates a shift in the consideration of heritage in spatial planning and presents an application of the developed model in a case study.

open access article With a goal of achieving net-zero emissions by developing Smart Cities (SCs) and industrial decarbonization, there is a growing desire to decarbonize the renewable energy sector by accelerating green buildings (GBs) construction, electric vehicles (EVs), and ensuring long-term stability, with the expectation that emissions will need to be reduced by at least two thirds by 2035 and by at least 90% by 2050. Implementing GBs in urban areas and encouraging the use of EVs are cornerstones of transition towards SCs, and practical actions that governments can consider to help with improving the environment and develop SCs. This paper investigates different aspects of smart cities development and introduces new feasible indicators related to GBs and EVs in designing SCs, presenting existing barriers to smart cities development, and solutions to overcome them. The results demonstrate that feasible and achievable policies such as the development of the zero-energy, attention to design parameters, implementation of effective indicators for GBs and EVs, implementing strategies to reduce the cost of production of EVs whilst maintaining good quality standards, load management, and integrating EVs successfully into the electricity system, are important in smart cities development. Therefore, strategies to governments should consider the full dynamics and potential of socio- economic and climate change by implementing new energy policies on increasing investment in EVs, and GBs development by considering energy, energy, techno-economic, and environmental benefits.

Measuring the advances performed in the 2030 Agenda and the contribution of public policies remains a key issue. Budgets are acknowledged as one of the most powerful tools made available to administrations to push forward this contribution, and so several initiatives have risen to align budget items and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) performance at all levels. The aim of this paper is to go beyond simple alignment and statistically analyze the interlinkages between budget and SDG achievement data. We have used the Spanish local administrations budget, together with indicators used to measure the 2030 Agenda goals at the same level, and computed a correlation test in order to find where budget allocation has an impact. We have then looked further into the relevant impacts to split them into direct and indirect. The research found ca. 25% of the budget items with relevant statistical links to the SDGs, with the SDGs 11 and 15 being the least impacted and SDGs 1, 4, 7, 8 and 16 the most connected ones. This research aims to set the bases of an evidence-based decision-support tool for a more efficient and sustainable policy design.

Energy and environmental data represent fundamental information for the analysis of sustainable development. On the other hand, these aspects should be associated with economic and human dimensions in order to obtain a more holistic vision. From this perspective, some indicators are discussed and analyzed in this paper in order to assess the performance of a country. As regards the energetic aspects, the data of total primary energy supply and exergy losses were considered. The environmental aspects were taken into account by considering the greenhouse gas emissions and the particulate matter emissions. These energy and environmental data were put in relation to the GDP (gross domestic product) and HDI (human development index, a multidimensional index proposed by United Nations), respectively. So, two sets of indicators were introduced&mdash, the set E for economic properties and the set H for human aspects. A case study was conducted by analyzing a group of countries that meet two criteria: the same macro-geographical area and comparable numbers of citizens. The European area&mdash, in particular, its six most populous countries&mdash, was chosen. From the results obtained, it is possible to point out that some countries present different rankings depending on whether set E or set H is considered. Another important aspect discussed is the temporal evolution of the indicators (the interval from 1990 to 2017 was considered). Political decision-makers can be supported by the use of the indicators of set H in order to evaluate well-being related to their choices on actions related to the energy and environment. These indicators can be used both to analyze the trends of a country and to compare them with the performance of some other similar countries.

According to the Circularity Gap Report 2020, a mere 8.6% of the global economy wascircular in 2019. The Global Status Report 2018 declares that building construction and operationsaccounted for 36% of global final energy use and 39% of energy&ndash, related carbon dioxide (CO2)emissions. The Paris Agreement demands that the building and construction sector decarbonizesglobally by 2050. This requires strategies that minimize the environmental impact of buildingsand practices extending the lifecycle of their constituents within a circular resource flow. To ensurethat eective measures are applied, a suitable method is needed to assess compliance in materials,processes, and design strategies within circular economy principles. The study&rsquo, s assumption is thatsynthetic and reliable indicators for that purpose could be based on reversibility and durabilityfeatures. The paper provides an overview of building design issues within the circular economyperspective, highlighting the diculty in finding circular technologies which are suitable to enhancebuildings&rsquo, service life while closing material loops. The results identify reversibility and durability aspotential indicators for assessing circular building technologies. The next research stage aims to furtherdevelop the rating of circularity requirements for both building technologies and entire buildings.

Production process sustainability refers to a manufacturing system in which manufacturing industries produce products in a sustainable way. In recent years, sustainability has become a major concern and challenge for manufacturing systems because of growing consciousness of the effects of their activities on the environment, society, and economy. Different organizational reports and the academic literature have proposed indicators of sustainable manufacturing that help to measure product and process sustainability. However, little of the previous research is related to employee-activity based indicators for production process sustainability. To bridge the gap, this study identified a set of indicators of production process sustainability based on direct and indirect impacts of manufacturing activities on employees, who are key resources in the entire production process, for efficiently applying a sustainability perspective. In addition, the paper provides an evaluation model for selecting relatively important indicators based on expert opinions. A fuzzy Delphi method was applied for the screening process of the decision makers (experts). A Delphi questionnaire prepared with a nine-point linguistic scale corresponding to respective linguistic variables was utilized to assess expert opinions on the importance of each indicator. These expert opinions were aggregated for each indicator by using an adopted algorithm that considers the degree of importance allocated to the decision makers, and the similarity and distance among decision maker opinions. Lastly, the key employee-activity based indicators were chosen based on the threshold value set.

Climate vulnerability assessments are an important prerequisite for establishing successful climate adaptation strategies. Despite a growing number of assessments on the national or global scale, there is still a need for regionalized studies with a high resolution to identify meso-scale vulnerability patterns. In this paper, we present an indicator-based assessment that was carried out in the Trinational Metropolitan Region Upper Rhine within the Interreg-V project Clim’Ability. The analyzed region is characterized by strong cross-border and transnational linkages, similar ecological features and climatic stressors but differing political, administrative, cultural and legal conditions. In this rather complex setting, we operationalized a state-of-the art vulnerability framework using 18 quantified indicators and aggregating them into a vulnerability index. We show that it is possible to downscale the methods used in recent assessments to a regional context with a challenging data situation and discuss strengths and uncertainties. The results are mapped for stakeholder communication purposes. They provide an evidence-base to the identification of the trinational vulnerability pattern and may enable stakeholders and decision-makers to enhance their own climate adaptation planning.

Aquatic ecosystems are one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world resulting in the decline of aquatic biodiversity. Monitoring and the assessment of aquatic ecosystems are necessary to protect and conserve these ecosystems as monitoring provides insights into the changes in the aquatic ecosystem over a long period of time and assessment indicates the status of these ecosystems. This paper presents an overview of different methods for the hydromorphological, physical–chemical and the biological monitoring and assessment of surface waters. Furthermore, recently developed monitoring and assessment methods are discussed to support sustainable water management and contribute to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals 6 (SDG6 related to clean water and sanitation) and 15 (SDG15 related to terrestrial and freshwater systems) of the United Nations. However, many other SDGs are dependent on freshwater, such as food (e.g., SDG2) and climate-related SDGs. We presented an innovative concept for integrated monitoring and assessment. The main new elements are the monitoring of all communities and the use of integrated socio-environmental models to link these communities to ecosystem interactions and functions as a basis for determining their relation to the SDGs. Models can also allow to determine the effects of changes in SDGs on the different elements of the concept, and serve in this manner as tools for the selection of an optimal balance between the SDGs in the context of sustainable development.

This paper guides decision making in more sustainable urban water management practices that feed into a circular economy by presenting a novel framework for conceptually designing and strategically planning wastewater treatment processes from a resource recovery perspective. Municipal wastewater cannot any longer be perceived as waste stream because a great variety of technologies are available to recover water, energy, fertilizer, and other valuable products from it. Despite the vast technological recovery possibilities, only a few processes have yet been implemented that deserve the name water resource factory instead of wastewater treatment plant. This transition relies on process designs that are not only technically feasible but also overcome various non-technical bottlenecks. A multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach is needed to design water resource factories (WRFs) in the future that are technically feasible, cost effective, show low environmental impacts, and successfully market recovered resources. To achieve that, the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) design space needs to be opened up for a variety of expertise that complements the traditional wastewater engineering domain. Implementable WRF processes can only be designed if the current design perspective, which is dominated by the fulfilment of legal effluent qualities and process costs, is extended to include resource recovery as an assessable design objective from an early stage on. Therefore, the framework combines insights and methodologies from different fields and disciplines beyond WWTP design like, e.g., circular economy, industrial process engineering, project management, value chain development, and environmental impact assessment. It supports the transfer of the end-of-waste concept into the wastewater sector as it structures possible resource recovery activities according to clear criteria. This makes recovered resources more likely to fulfil the conditions of the end-of-waste concept and allows the change in their definition from wastes to full-fledged products.

Cycle-tourism seems to be an emerging touristic model in many countries, including Greece. Although the infrastructure is limited, entrepreneurship can support the development of such tourism sector, as cycle-tourists have specific needs to be met during an excursion. Thus, it would be helpful if stores that meet specific prerequisites could be certificated as cycle-friendly companies. In order for such certification to be developed, it is necessary for those parameters to be defined. This paper focuses on that topic and such criteria were identified through in-depth interviews with cycle-tourists and cycle-tour operators. Through this research, conclusions were derived about the criteria according to which cycle-tourists in Greece select stores and accommodation during an excursion. Those selection parameters were transcribed to indicators that will be used in order to develop the certification at the next phase of the research. Moreover, conclusions were compared with outcomes of similar international studies. It was found that cycle-tourists are interested in specific services, regardless of the country in which they live or travel. Besides conventional touristic activities, the importance of small retail stores in remote villages acting as meeting points with local people and culture was highlighted.

Brazil has some of the world&rsquo, s most important forest and natural ecosystem resources and their sustainability is of global importance. The expansion of agriculture for livestock, the extractive industries, illegal logging, land conflicts, fire and deforestation are pressures on land use and drivers of land use change in many regions of Brazil. While different institutions in Brazil have sought to use Earth Observation (EO) data to support better land use management and conservation projects, several problems remain at the national and state level in the implementation of EO to support environmental policies and services provided to Brazilian society. This paper presents the results of a systematic analysis of the key challenges in using EO data in land management in Brazil and summarises them in a conceptual model of the factors influencing EO data use for assessing sustainable land use and land cover in Brazil. The research was based on a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews (43) and structured interviews (53) with key stakeholders who make use of EO data across different locations in Brazil. The major challenges identified in the complex and multifaceted aspects of using this information were associated with access to, and with the processing of, raw data into usable information. The analysis also revealed novel insights on a lack of inter-institutional communication, adequate office infrastructure and personnel, availability of the right type of EO data and funding restrictions, political instability and bureaucracy as factors that limit more effective use of EO data in Brazil at present. We close this analysis by considering how EO information for the sustainable management of land use and land cover can assist institutions as they respond to the varied political and economic instabilities affecting environmental governance and deforestation levels.

Sustainable tourism development is considered an essential challenge for improving resource management in coastal and maritime areas. In this context, various initiatives have been developed for facilitating the assessment and monitoring of tourism sustainability. Nevertheless, the perception of sustainability varies across different tourism stakeholders, since they approach tourism development under different perspectives while the issue of data availability has been a great barrier in measuring sustainability. The present paper examines the perceptions of sustainability observed over a Community of projects with the common aim of enhancing coastal and maritime tourism sustainability at the Mediterranean. Based on surveys, the Community of projects conceptualizes sustainability, reveals their own strategies in operationalizing sustainability assessment and evaluates the usefulness and the main gaps of various sustainability assessment toolkits. The findings of the study signify that tourism sustainability is a broad concept allowing for different interpretations. The assessment of sustainability seems to be affected by the perception and weight attributed to the economic, social, environmental, and governance pillar of sustainability by each project. Finally, the applicability of international assessment toolkits could be questioned as these do not reflect the objectives of the projects and tailored made approaches are considered as essential for operationalizing sustainability assessments.

In the 21st century, sustainability and indicators of world-class universities have come within the scope of an academic cottage industry. The complex problem of university sustainability implies a big challenge for countries and educators to implement important strategies in an integrated and comprehensive way. This paper highlights and analyzes the sustainability indicators of universities included as newly formed world-class universities (NFWCUs) in the top 100 from 2010 and 2018. The integration of three global ranking scales&mdash, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Quacquarelli&ndash, Symonds World University Ranking (QS) and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THEs)&mdash, allows us to minimize the impact of the methodology used. This study integrates regression analysis by using statistical grouping, case studies and normative analysis. Our principal findings are as follows: among the commonly ranked top 100 universities in 2018, the ARWU, QS and THE counted 57, compared with 47 in 2010. Thus, comparing 2010 and 2018 shows that 44 of the universities appeared simultaneously in ARWU, QS and THE rankings and maintained a sustainable position in any ranking system in the family of top 100 groups. Three lower-ranked NFWCUs in the hybrid list for 2010 lost their ranking and did not appear in the group of top 100 universities in 2018, which are covered by some catch-up and young universities. The NFWCUs were from US, Australia, China, Singapore, Germany and Belgium. By systematic comparison, the US and UK continued to dominate the stability of NFWCUs in 2010 and 2018. The key sustainability indicators include a high concentration of talent, abundant resources to offer a rich learning environment and conduct advanced research. Generally, the factors were negatively associated with ranking suggesting that a higher score result in top ranking and vice versa. Teaching, research, citation and international outlook were negatively correlated with THE ranking in 2018. Similarly, Alumni and PUB were negatively associated with ARWU ranking in 2018. All factors except international student ratio were significantly correlated in QS ranking either in 2010 or 2018, where negative association was observed. The significant contribution of our study is to highlight that for the sustainability of universities, it is necessary to have an increasing emphasis on the effectiveness and efficiency of government-supported research, stability of investments and more approaches to employ international initiatives. The results also confirm the appropriate governance, developing global students and place emphasis on science and technology as additional factors in the approaches of pathways to NFWCUs, with delivery of outstanding educational programs and comprehensive internationalization as a key indicator for performance improvement and global university ranking systems.

Circular economy (CE) is an emerging concept that contrasts the linear economic system. This concept is particularly relevant for cities, currently hosting approximately 50% of the world&rsquo, s population. Research gaps in the analysis and implementation of circular economy in cities are a significant barrier to its implementation. This paper presents a multi-sectorial and macro-meso level framework to monitor (and set goals for) circular economy implementation in cities. Based on literature and case studies, it encompasses CE key concepts, such as flexibility, modularity, and transparency. It is structured to include all sectors in which circular economy could be adopted in a city. The framework is then tested in Porto, Portugal, monitoring the circularity of the city and considering its different sectors.

Transportation plays a key role in urban sustainability planning and urban greenhouse gas emission reductions. Globally, cities have established sustainability agendas and policies to guide the shift from traditional private automobile dependent transportation systems towards an increased use of public transportation, cycling, and walking. While the surrounding physical urban form and governance structures condition public transportation services, there are also many other factors to consider when discussing sustainability. As such, comprehensive planning and policy-oriented assessment frameworks that are independent of local conditions are still largely missing in literature. This paper presents a Public Transportation Sustainability Indicator List (PTSIL) that provides a platform for an integrated assessment of environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability through an indicator-based approach. To demonstrate its use, the PTSIL is applied to analyze the policy documents of public transportation agencies in Helsinki, Finland, and Toronto, Canada. The results show that while both cities achieve relatively high scores in all dimensions, there is still high variability among individual indicators. The PTSIL presents a missed stepping stone between descriptive definitions of transportation sustainability and case specific sustainability performance assessments, offering an opportunity within the planning and policy-making sectors to review, assess, and develop public transportation services comprehensively.

This paper presents research results of a recent project creating an operational approach to assess vulnerability to climate variability and climate change in Tijuana, Mexico. Despite chronic flooding problems throughout the history of the city, local authorities and state authorities have given little attention to vulnerability to climate variability and climate change. This is the first assessment of vulnerability to flooding carried out in Tijuana. Research results show that over 10 percent of the total population in the city (over 153,000 inhabitants) lives in areas with high vulnerability to flooding, and an additional 18 percent (277,000 inhabitants) are in areas with what we classify as medium-high vulnerability. Results by census track identified specific areas and social groups in these categories, as well as the underlying drivers of vulnerability associated with the biophysical conditions of the landscape that have been modified by urban growth and through social processes (namely, deficiencies in local urban planning and its enforcement along with deficient social policies). Information and knowledge of vulnerability is a useful first step in the long process of creating climate adaptation and resilient pathways within the context of sustainable urban development.

Although sustainability is now a well-established concept, it is less well-established in the management of built heritage attractions. This paper reports research on the application of sustainability indicators for built heritage attractions, as a means to advance a more holistic sustainability assessment approach for the management of this important type of attraction. The research employed a questionnaire-based survey and four case studies designed to provide information concerning sustainability assessment for a substantial sample of built heritage attractions in both the UK and China. It seeks to identify the dimensions of sustainability for such attractions through a consideration of relevant sustainability indicators. The research findings indicate important variations in terms of the importance of key sustainable indicators between the UK and China. The results also provide pointers as to how the set of indicators might be developed further to provide a more holistic and measurable appraisal method to assess the sustainability of the management of built heritage attractions.

Tourist destinations are increasingly coming across multiple social, economic, cultural, and environmental challenges corroborated with a great urgency for sustainable development. In this context, the European Commission has launched in 2013 a unitary system of indicators for sustainable management of tourism destinations, called The European Tourism Indicators System (ETIS). More specifically, ETIS was configured initially with a total of 27 core indicators and 40 additional (optional) indicators. The purpose of this paper is to present the difficulties and challenges encountered in the application of ETIS, having as a case study, the county of Braşov, located almost entirely in the Romanian Carpathians. In this regard, a testing technique has been designed through an innovative Group Decision Support System (GDSS) that is applied to our destination. The results show that the selection of ETIS indicators is a flexible process that must be adequate with the particularities of each destination taking into account both the needs of the stakeholders, the information that is useful to them, and the existence and periodicity of the data available. Also, in some cases, when the available indicators are insufficient, additional indicators have to be introduced, and they must be subsequently adapted to the needs and specifics of the destination.

The concept of sustainable development, which has emerged over the last few decades, has moved away from the global to the local level. The sustainability measurements at the global level use the triple bottom line, considering environmental, economic and social dimensions, however, the limited data available at the local level has driven what little research there is to use these optics when considering cities sustainability. In this paper, we use a sustainability city index based on the intellectual capital approach, which considers the three dimensions for European cities. Concretely, we use the environmental and social dimensions of this city index to analyze the effect of different levels of development in terms of sustainability over the main economic variables with available information. The results highlight the importance of the social and environmental dimensions of sustainability in cities economic recovery and show that cities with best positions in sustainability have better performance in economic terms.

The UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the transition from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), heralds an important turn in global sustainability policy. With implementation now taking place in all countries, regardless of GDP, a key question is how affluent governments in large metropolitan areas can effectively contribute to global sustainable development. This paper argues that urban food systems strategies—a relatively new tool in local policymaking in the Global North—have the potential to amplify and consolidate national and international efforts in this direction and facilitate a more synergistic approach to SDG implementation. An in-depth comparative analysis of the 2030 Agenda and the sustainable food systems strategies of five of the ten largest cities in North America—New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto—helps to uncover key gaps and areas of convergence between goals, objectives, and evaluation frameworks. Goal- and indicator-level analyses cast light on promising areas for cross-jurisdictional cooperation and suggest that, while not without limitations, urban food systems strategies offer manifold pathways to streamline global, national, and local implementation efforts and effectively forward the 2030 Agenda over the next decade.

In order to regulate natural processes and control the scale of human activities, sustainability assessment needs to be integrated into urban planning. In this context, indicator-based sustainability assessment tools are fundamental instruments that provide information to support policy and decision-making. Indicators are necessary to monitor the implementation of the policies and provide feedback needed to accomplish the desirable state of sustainable urban development. This paper aims to explore the role of indicator-based sustainability assessment in policy and the decision-making process. Therefore, it reviews the identified sustainable development indicator initiatives and addresses the research gaps in the literature for future improvement of sustainability assessment frameworks. It concludes with a discussion that the major problem in sustainability assessment lies in the gathering of reliable and accessible data.

Recently, the integrated landscape approach has gained increasing interest of the scientific community, as well as of organizations active in the field of sustainable development. However, the enthusiastic welcome is challenged by little consensus on theory, terminology and definitions. Moreover, the operationalization of the approach into practice is a major challenge. In this paper, we present a framework to operationalize the integrated landscape approach in practice by putting a long-term collaboration between scientists and various stakeholder at center stage. Based on encompassing understanding of landscape-level processes and interactions, four pillars addressing different steps of a joint-learning circle are described and illustrated with examples. We consider the integrated landscape approach to be a prime way of targeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but novel forms of collaboration between scientists and other stakeholders based on long-term commitments will be needed for operationalization in practice.