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Study of the spatial and temporal trends of rainfall is very important for water resources planning and management. Therefore, this study has been attempted to examine the spatial and temporal trends and pattern of rainfall over the semiarid Sahibi Basin in Rajasthan State of India for a period of 57 years (1961–2017). Rainfall data for nine stations located over the basin have been obtained from the Department of Water Resources, Rajasthan. Statistical methods such as Mann–Kendall test, Sen’s slope estimator, and linear regression were employed to detect the rainfall trends. Percent change for rainfall, and years of excess and deficient rainfall, have also been identified. The findings have shown high interannual variability in mean annual rainfall with an average of 633.95 mm (SD = 204.93, CV = 32.33). However, no significant rising or declining trend has been observed in the mean annual rainfall over the basin during the 57-year period, whereas Kotkasim and Tapukara stations have shown significant increasing and decreasing trends, respectively. Further, pre-monsoon season rainfall has shown a significant increasing trend. Spatial analysis has shown an increase in rainfall amount from northeastern and western parts to the southeast. The observed spatial and temporal differences in the amount of rainfall are high. These results may be valuable for efficient and sustainable planning and management of water resources for agricultural purposes in the basin.

Today, planning theory must meet the challenges of reality. Success in the rational solution of urban planning problems and sustainable planning based on experience in this activity. In this publication, the author makes an objective assessment of the accumulated experience of planning socialist industrial cities. In the course of the analysis of functional planning development, the article compares two chronological periods. This comparison is used to assess the rate of development of the city. In addition, the publication presents conceptual schemes of territorial and functional planning for the development of a socialist city. As a result of the study of the possibilities of solutions for the urbanization of territories. One of the results of the study is the revealed relationship between the population of the city and urban infrastructure organizations. The author suggests in professional use some terms that more accurately express aspects of the planning of socialist cities in English.

The importance of scale in research and planning for the MCR in the developing world is no longer debatable. This is especially true in the current era of globalization and technological advances transforming traditional scalar hierarchies and creating multiple spatialities. The aspatial, network-based, representational, and discursive roles of scale are also becoming increasingly more consequential. I see scale as the third prong in a coherent tri-pronged approach to sustainable development in the Asian MCR that should be used in conjunction with the other two prongs, as discussed in the previous chapter. I recognize that scale remains a confounding concept, although a paradigmatic shift toward conceptual inclusivity by reconciling its many facets, seems to be taking place in the literature. In this chapter I offer an overview of this shift, followed by a brief look at the framework of the MCR from a bi-scalar perspective, and, given the need to recognize the diversities among (and within) the spaces in the MCR, conclude with one example of how elements of the three prongs can converge into a coherent approach for sustainable planning.

The design, construction and management of sustainable and intelligent buildings, neighbourhoods and cities require tools that can manage complexity in a completely different manner to the practices adopted to date. This chapter introduces the most advanced current approach, Building Information Modelling (BIM), focusing in particular on its use to support green and smart planning of buildings, neighbourhoods and cities. The initial part of the chapter introduces the general concepts underlying the BIM. The second part explores its application, the Green BIM, intended as the use of the tool to support the sustainable design of buildings. The chapter concludes with the introduction of a more recent concept, the City Information Modelling (CIM), intended as a common platform to design, build and manage the buildings, infrastructures and services of neighbourhoods and cities that evolve towards sustainable and smart schemes.

The primary contribution of this research is the theoretical development of a decision-support framework that identifies the tools and approaches that decision-makers could/should use to create policies and programs that transition society towards sustainability. The framework is then used to consider how Riga municipality might move the city’s transportation system towards sustainability and particular aspect – to planning decisions for passenger network in Riga City in the frame of Rail Baltica project – Riga central multimodal public transportation hub.

Urbanization plays an important role in the development of urban heat islands (UHI) in urban areas. UHI is a phenomenon where the urban built landscape shows a higher air temperature conditions than the surrounding hinterland and rural landscapes. Heat island also shows a lesser fall in temperatures than the adjacent outskirts and rural areas. The atmospheric concentration of GHGs has led to global climate change and because of the frequency of heat waves led to heat stress-related mortality and morbidity in mega high-density and compact cities located in the tropical and subtropical region of Southeast Asia. It is also observed that the city is divided into various microclimatic zones, and these zones are always in the process of continuous change due to unplanned and haphazard growth in urban built form.

The retail industry’s economic and environmental impact encompasses global supply chains and many thousands of facilities; it therefore has a significant impact on human health and the environment, and a responsibility for reducing this impact. This chapter begins with an overview of retail’s most common and significant environmental impacts and examines the origin of sustainable planning and operations, the business case for sustainability programs, and the maturation of retail sustainability programs.

Incorporating principles of sustainable development in long-term socio-economic planning at regional and municipal levels requires novel methodology and its supporting tools. In the chapter, the best practices of strategic planning of sustainable initiatives have been investigated based on the thorough analysis of the dynamics of sustainability indicators, major stakeholders, and organizations involved in the process. The approaches supporting sustainable planning and corresponding tools have been identified using planning activities in a large industrial and agricultural area – the Rostov region. As a result, the recommendations on strategic planning supporting sustainability at the local and regional levels are formulated. These recommendations can be useful for strategic planning in other regions with similar socio-economic characteristics.

The exploitation of the Earth and the alienation of people from the environment prompts us to take up the subject of sustainable planning and design. While new devices, innovations in construction seem to be more and more doubtful, it is worth reaching back to the times when the first initiatives to protect the natural and cultural landscape were created under the influence of the nascent industrialization and urbanization. It is advisable to analyze what principles were followed and how they affected the environment. The idea of building surrounded by greenery is visible in villages, transforming into summer and winter resorts at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century in the Karkonosze Mountains.

Accurate and reliable water demand forecasting is important for effective and sustainable planning and use of water supply infrastructures. In this paper, a hybrid EEMD-Elman neural network model for hourly campus water demand forecast is proposed, aiming at improving the accuracy and reliability of water demand forecast. The proposed method combines the Elman neural network, EEMD method, and phase space reconstruction method providing favorable dynamic forecast characteristics and improving the forecasting accuracy and reliability. Simulation results show that the proposed model provides a better performance of hourly campus water demand forecast by using the real data of water usage of our campus.

An important quest for a feminist transport agenda is that policy and practice reflect a diverse set of experiences. This chapter explores how professionals understand sustainable mobility and how their understandings are linked to gendered relations. The analysis shows that professionals use their own experiences of travelling as a source of knowledge. Their understandings of sustainable mobility are built on their own middle-class and family-oriented experiences. Sustainable mobility is thus constructed as something desirable but difficult for families to choose since car offers a flexibility that cycling and public transport don’t. This understanding excludes users who lack resources such as car. The chapter concludes with a suggestion for expanding professionals’ knowledge bases, which can support a future feminist transport agenda.

Management and planning of coastal and marine areas are complex processes that are more and more required to effectively support a coordinated development of socio-economic activities. In managing coastal and marine activities, it is important to have good governance with assistant from spatial data infrastructure (SDI), to ensure sustainable planning and development of marine area. GIS and related technologies are becoming increasingly used to aid in the administration and management of the marine environment. This article describes the implementation of SDI, demonstrating how an interoperable system can provide strong support in implementing the integrated coastal and marine management. It also focuses on the degree of GIS implementation, the issues, the limitation and engagement in establishing SDI-ICMM in Tunisia.

This introductory chapter lists the attributes of small towns, maps social transformations, and outlines contemporary challenges that those communities are facing and principles of sustainable planning. Setting the stage for the chapters that follow, it provides background and supportive material on environmental challenges, demographic trends, economic changes, and cultural aspects with unique implications on the retooling of town centres.

The EU project SmartReFlex—smart and flexible, 100%-renewable district heating and cooling systems for European cities—aims to promote the massive use of renewable sources for heating and cooling in cities through district heating networks. Among the project activities, the analysis of real case studies shows the potential of renewables in district heating systems. AIRU, Italian Association of District Heating, and the Department of Energy of Politecnico di Milano are supporting the promotion of local initiatives for renewable networks in the Emilia Romagna region: the feasibility of a multisource DHC system in Mirandola is assessed and presented in this paper. In Mirandola’s district heating and cooling system, natural gas is only one among several possible energy sources: alternative configurations integrating biomass, biogas and solar thermal have been included in the study. The analysis deals with the extension of the network and with the choice of the best new energy source to cover the new heat demand. The use of MCDA has been applied in order to perform a holistic analysis of possible energy-related choices by considering competing objectives. For instance, the use of biomass is quite controversial: biomass is a renewable, local and a CO2 neutral source, able to reduce GHG emissions. However, biomass burning can have negative impacts on air quality by producing pollutants such as PM10, BaP, SOx and NOx. This paper presents the multicriteria process applied to plant design, the various alternatives and the criteria used. The result is a combination of natural gas, biogas, solar thermal energy and biomass, which corresponds to the preference of both the utility and municipality.

To better realign them with sustainable planning, it is important to first understand the historic evolution of pre- and post-World War II small towns. Following a description of their origins, street patterns, urban form and land use, the chapter offers guiding principles for conceptual strategies on how best to make them sustainable while strengthening their centres. These include strategic densification, street patterns, architectural forms, comfortable microclimates, and environmentally sensitive land use.

The importance of universities goes beyond teaching and undertaking research. Universities can shape cities due to the significant number of buildings they occupy, large amounts of resources they consume and the high number of staff and students attending them. With many universities teaching subjects relating to sustainable planning, design, management, cities and society, they present an opportunity to lead by example and act as urban learning labs for a transition to a low carbon future. This chapter presents analysis from a post-occupancy evaluation of a Green Star rated university building in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to the analysis of building performance data, interviews were undertaken with key stakeholders involved across the design, construction and occupation of the building. A Building User Satisfaction survey was also undertaken for occupants. The analysis identified a number of key successes as well as a number of challenges. Learnings from the research are applicable not just to academic institutions but to the wider built environment industry in shaping the sustainability of the built environment.

The aim of this paper is to suggest guidelines for sustainable planning, understood as the union of actions relating to the building and the city. The strong connection between these two subjects requires a planning that should not travel on parallel tracks, as often happens, but it must be formed by a rational consideration of both. They have been analyzed for two types of urban fabric and, in relation to their characteristics, have been highlighted different problems. So we suggested some project solutions and use of materials that simultaneously improve the interior comfort of buildings and the urban comfort.

Today producing companies are facing an unpredictable and unstable market situation. Because of the strong customer orientation in the consumer goods industry, the Miele & Cie. KG is also affected by these incidents. The results are an increasing number of variants and a shortening of model life cycles. To ensure the long-term competitiveness, adapted strategies must be developed. A major challenge arises, particularly for press shops, because of the distinct difference between the constant long life of press systems and the decreasing model life cycle of the manufactured products. As a basis for the planning of a new press system, only the data of the current production and the next generation are available, which covers a time period of about ten years. The subsequent type of use of the press and the related requirements for the following 20 - 30 years cannot be planned. To ensure the sustainable planning of press shops, a holistic methodology is developed which involves the aspects of changeability. This includes the selection of the press system with appropriate press drive, tool change, transfer, etc. Further aspects like choice of site, assembly and material flow are considered.