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Sustainable transportation is at the hearth of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is directly linked to many SDGs including SDG3 (good health and well‐being), SDG11 (sustainable cities and societies), SDG 7 (clean energy), SDG13 (climate), and SDG 12 (sustainable production and consumption). European countries have been promoting a widespread adoption of electric vehicles to achieve SDGs through resilient, technology‐driven, and human‐centric mobility. However, potential environmental benefits of electric vehicles depend on various regional factors such as the fuel efficiency and source of electricity generation. At the same time, the economic benefits of mobility to the economy are an important factor for evaluating the relative performance of electric vehicles. To this end, this research paper presents the first empirical analysis of the regionalized eco‐efficiency assessment of electric vehicles across Europe. We developed an integrated regionalized eco‐efficiency performance score, by employing life cycle assessment and principal component analysis techniques to assess the eco‐efficiency performance of electric vehicles in Europe. Considering the energy mix for electricity generation, three environmental indicators (carbon footprint, water consumption, and energy use) and one economic (contribution to national gross domestic product) indicator were used to compute the eco‐efficiency scores for 28 European countries. The eco‐efficiency scores for each corresponding country were calculated, compared, and clustered in as high, medium, and low eco‐efficiency score countries. The clvalid package of R software's archive network is used to determine the optimal number of clusters for the EES dataset. The results of the comparative study show that Denmark, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have a competitive advantage in eco‐efficiency performance compared to the other European countries. The regionalized distribution of the eco‐efficiency performance shows that the countries with the highest ecoefficiency score are located on the west side of Europe. Researches and policymakers can benefit from the applied methodology as well as the results to provide country‐specific investment policies to achieve higher benefits towards a transition to electric mobility in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainability impact of air transportation has become crucial to communities. Airports around the world are forced to be transparent with the society and to declare their sustainability results. As the sustainability goals and objectives and due to its multi‐dimension aspects that are needed to be decided of and subsequently improved, the decision has been taken, and the parameters have been selected due to its significance in this field. This research presents a managerial approach combining the optimization‐based frontier approach with the Global Report Initiative's comprehensive sustainability database for selected 30 major international airports based on data availability. In this regard, eco‐efficiency analysis is carried out with four different models using input‐oriented modeling with multiple undesirable environmental inputs (energy, carbon, water, and waste) and desirable outputs (revenue, passenger and employment) to compare efficiency and sustainability levels of airports in different contexts. Finally, performance improvement targets of each environmental indicators are presented for the airports. These comparative models reveal different frontier airports, which provide the opportunity to analyze diversified reference points for the same decision‐making unit. The presented statistical study has shown that San Francisco, Hong Kong, Hamad International Airport are the most efficient airports in terms of overall sustainability performance based on collected data and selected indicators. The authors also concluded that there is a discrepancy in sustainability data reporting between airports, and there is a need for collecting complete, consistent and real‐time social, environmental, economic, and governance data, to better compare and evaluate the performance of each airport from a sustainability perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology has indispensably been a part of the city evolution throughout history. In recent years, there has been a shift in the pattern of development in smart cities, where smart cities attempt to embrace practices of sustainability using Information and Communication Technologies and other smart solutions. Past studies reveal that these smart cities have failed in successfully incorporating sustainable development goals into their smart strategies, where they tend to focus more on achieving smartness goals rather than sustainability goals and targets. This paper presents a multi‐faceted interrogative study on several ongoing smart city initiatives around the globe that supports United Nations Urban Sustainability Agenda. This paper aims to focus on harmonizing smart and sustainable city initiatives with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals using a systems thinking approach. The study develops conceptual models that support the city transition into being a sustainable smart city. These conceptual models were designed based on the fundamentals of system thinking for a system of several elements under the key catalyzers "Policy and Governance," "Research & Development," and "Partnership." The causalities and interrelationships among elements in developed conceptual models justify the dynamicity and the impact of these elements within a system. The outcome of this research paper would support industry experts, policymakers, and city planners to adopt robust policy interventions and best practices for developing strategies that support the transition of smart cities to the futuristic label of sustainable cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]