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Electrical production for residential areas is one of the most important goals of SDGs (17 UN goal) and UN-Habitat III (14 goals) that can be achieved by renewable energy. Now, renewable energy is a significant issue that must be considered seriously as a policy and in order to achieve energy sustainability on a global scale especially in whole developing countries. Also, since the role of renewable energy in sustainable development is remarkable, thus this article presents a comprehensive discussion of energy sustainability for urban areas with related energy indicators and technical analysis of a Hybrid Power System to show the importance of renewable energy to gain energy sustainability. This paper presents the feasibility of using PV-DG hybrid systems as the reliable energy by an economic and technical analysis in one of the southern cities of Iran use of HOMER software. Regarding the high average of solar radiation that is about 5.4 kWh/m2/d in Chabahar city, technical analysis of this system demonstrates that this city has a high capacity to producing the electrical energy via PV-diesel hybrid system with total electrical production amount of 10,575 kWh/yr from PV (8,447 kWh/yr) and Diesel system (2,128 kWh/yr). For do this work at the first, the required data is gathered from the meteorological organization of Iran and then technical and economic analysis is conducted with the Homer software. This study regarding the high potential of solar energy of Chabahar city shows that to achieve development especially in the energy sustainability field needs to implementing proper actions such as enough investment on clean energy and using renewable energy for electrical production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Iran is among the top ten CO 2 emitters in the world. • Achieving sustainable development undermined by heavy reliance on fossil fuels. • Environmental indicators are not consistent with the society and the economy. • However, improving the social indices strengthens the environmental indicators. • Altering the environmental subsystem resulted in convergence of sustainable system. Abstract Iran is among the top ten CO 2 emitters in the world and has pledged to reduce such emissions by up to 12 percent by 2030 through various policies and strategies. However, achieving this is somewhat undermined by the country's heavy reliance on fossil fuels which contributes to environmental pollution and depletion of natural resources. It is therefore important to have an understanding of the economic, social, and environmental subsystems and their interactions in order to formulate a suitable development path or model. Due to the lack of comprehensive studies on the current situation and the dynamics among these variables, this paper provides a multi-stage analysis of the issues based on data from 1992 to 2015 to construct the principal component analysis (PCA) combined index for each subsystem. Then, the interactions among the subsystems are investigated over the short- and long-terms using the vector autoregressive (VAR) model. The results of the PCA show that Iran lacks a balanced sustainable development approach as improvements in environmental indicators do not match those of the society and the economy indices. Further, the associated time path for the economic and societal indices depicts an increasing trend over time, especially in the economy index and that, since 2010, this subsystem has overtaken the societal index. Estimations of the VAR model, impulse response functions, and variance decomposition analysis show that the country's economic development has seriously undermined the environment even as improving the social indices has strengthened the environmental indicators. The interactions among subsystems show that economic development of the country took little consideration of environmental issues. This is the main reason for the backwardness of the environmental indices and its divergence from economic and societal indices. It is clear that assuming equal rates of growth for all subsystems have not produced a balanced development path. For Iran to achieve her sustainable development goals there should be increased focus on the environmental subsystem with the overall system converging symmetrically when the high growth rate assumption (double) is applied for this index compared with the societal and economical indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, research has shown a growing interest in the use of hybrid wind photovoltaic (PV) systems that provide better performance compared to the use of a single component due to complementarity in meeting electricity demand. Over the past twenty-five years, hundreds of articles have addressed the topic of hybrid systems considering different configurations and final uses and, over the past decades, many reviews have made a comprehensive summary of various results obtained. However, some reviews deal with the research in a too general and qualitative way, without providing quantitative data, and other reviews are too focused on a specific topic aspect. To provide a qualitative-quantitative prospect of the research trend in the last twenty-five years, the present work is aimed at carrying out a literature review and statistical analysis starting from data extracted from the 550 most relevant and recent articles concerning hybrid systems, published between 1995 and 2020. The review aim was to produce an upgradable matrix literature database that schematizes the content of all articles in terms of different categories, such as the geographical distribution, their component configurations, operating mode and the auxiliary components used to support it, their intended uses and study methodologies (simulation, experimental, economic, energy, environmental and social analysis etc.) and software used. In addition, all the optimization algorithm, energy, economic, environmental and social indicators available in the literature were extracted and elaborated to identify the most used. The 550 articles were analysed, compared, and classified into several categories to provide an overall framework of the state of the art. The objective is to clearly and appropriately show important trends and findings in the development of hybrid wind and solar PV experimental, simulation and optimization projects. Data are elaborated to obtain a statistical analysis for each category or a combination of categories. In particular, the analysis highlighted that research is more focused on testing systems in warm or temperate localities, with the Köppen climate groups B and C prevalent over the others. From the geographical point of view, Asia is the continent most involved in world research (with China, India and Iran the first three countries for total publications produced). However, also in other parts of the world, a growing interest was noticed in this technology. The prevalent tested system configuration mode is the stand-alone hybrid systems, in a wide variety of climates and especially for residential uses. Simulations are mostly implemented in the analysed publications, mainly through HOMER and MATLAB software. Parametric analysis is widely used for optimal system design with a large variety of techniques. In particular, the system performance is examined mostly from an energy point of view. Economic analysis is also very common, alone or in combination with energy analysis. The most frequently used optimization algorithms are the particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA), while the loss of power supply probability (LPSP) and renewable fraction (RE) for the energy analysis, the net present cost (NPC) and cost of energy (COE) for the economic analysis and the emissions (E) of CO 2 for the environmental analysis are most widespread indicators. Finally, an analysis on the size of the system components is performed to study which renewable source is more preferred at low and high installed power, for stand-alone, grid-connected systems and overall, considering different intended uses. The analysis highlights that PV systems are preferred at low installed powers, especially for residential use and stand-alone mode, while wind systems, in addition to being extensively used for low installed powers, demonstrates higher employment compared to PV systems as the power increases. The paper findings and upgradable matrix literature database are proposed as a valuable tool for engineers, experts and national and international policymakers. • 550 relevant papers were reviewed and used to create an upgradable matrix literature database. • Asia is the continent most involved in world research with Iran, India, and China. • The dry and temperate climate zones of Köppen climate group BWh are the most investigated. • Stand-alone hybrid systems and residential use are the most explored applications. • The use of photovoltaic system is preferred for low installed powers, while wind systems also for high installed powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A methodological frame work for assessment of water resources systems. • A water accounting system implemented according to the SEEA-Water framework. • Water security measured in terms of social, economic, and water resources, indices. • An system dynamics model was used to analyze policies to improve water security. • The local aquifer in Rafsanjan, Iran, was worked out as the case study. Rafsanjan Plain, located in the central Iran, is a dry area relying solely on its local aquifer for Pistachio production as its dominant economy. During the past few decades, unsustainable growth of Pistachio orchards and correspondingly overexploitation of the local aquifer have resulted in about 18 m fall of the groundwater table with terrible consequences such as reduction in the groundwater yield and about 1.2 m of land subsidence. The aim of the present paper is to analyze water security of the water resources system in the Rafsanjan plain in terms of the system vulnerability to water scarcity. Adopting an analytical framework for assessing the system vulnerability to water scarcity, the paper derives vulnerability indicators based on the data organized in terms of the System of Environmental and Economic Accounting for Water (SEEA-Water) for different water accounts associated to 2001 and 2006. The paper suggests policy options to reduce the system vulnerability using a system dynamics simulation model. The results showed that the water resources system of the study area is highly vulnerable to water scarcity due to large amount of water stress (more than 2), high dependency to groundwater (more than 95%), and high share of water consumption in agricultural sector (more than 90%). To alleviate the system vulnerability, the policy options are suggested to shift partly from agricultural activities to industrial and mining activities. It was shown that the policies could be effective to save water resources volume (more than 40%), improve water productivity (more than 25%), employment productivity (more than 17%), and labor productivity (more than 5%), and enhance per capita income (more than 3%) in comparison to the current state in the Rafsanjan plain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • DDA and weighted RVA approaches were developed to assess hydrologic alterations. • DDA outperforms in detecting and calculating hydrologic alterations. • Flood control measures have altered the Gharnaveh watershed's hydrologic regime. • A high conformity exists between DDA and weighted RVA results and other approaches. Assessing the natural or man-made alterations in the hydrological characteristics of watershed systems is a prerequisite to develop watershed management, restoration, and conservation strategies and plans. The Range of Variability Approach (RVA), based on a suite of Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA), is most widely used to assess hydrologic alterations. However, the traditional RVA and its revised versions and alternatives all suffer from major challenges such as binning the data and using only the target range to compare the probability distributions of the hydrologic variables in the pre- and post-impact periods through applying simplified statistical analyses. This paper proposes the Density Difference Approach (DDA) and the weighted RVA to overcome these challenges. Despite the previous approaches, which divide the time series of the continuous variables into discrete groups, DDA uses the continuous probability density function (pdf) estimated by the Gaussian Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) technique. It considers the magnitude, frequency, and order position of all individual data in the alteration analysis. Furthermore, to account for the variations in the values and frequencies of the variables beyond the target range, which is neglected in the traditional RVA, the weighted RVA approach has been proposed. These suggested approaches, along the other widely used alteration assessment approaches, have been applied to quantify the hydrologic alteration in the Gharnaveh watershed in the northeast of Iran using 50 years of daily discharge data recorded at the Tamar hydrometry station at the outlet of the watershed. The performance of the alteration analysis approaches was further evaluated using the randomly generated time series with the arbitrary changes in the probability distribution parameters. The results indicate a significant difference in the alteration values and ranks calculated by different alteration analysis approaches. Compared to the traditional RVA, the weighted RVA resulted in higher alteration degrees for most of the IHA indicators. DDA outperformed the other alteration analysis approaches for both the observed and randomly generated data. It better accounted for the alteration in the key characteristics of the probability distribution (including the location, dispersion, and skewness parameters) of the randomly generated data series. We recommend DDA as an appropriate hydrologic alteration assessment approach that assists water resource managers and decision-makers through accounting for multi-dimensional attributes of hydrologic alterations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development is being reconsidered as a process with unknown endpoint. Outputs of sustainable urban water systems defined as 'policies, projects, laws, technologies, and consumption and reuse amounts associated with urban water sustainability goals' are therefore being viewed as inadequate monitoring instruments. I propose a new methodology for sustainability monitoring whereby normality of a system is diagnosed through normality of its supporting inputs in lieu of normality of its complex outputs. Supporting inputs are 'intents and behaviors that support system goals'. Supporting inputs follow a principle of self-organization to remain in the norm and behavior zone commonly associated with system goals. This implies that normality of supporting inputs can be inferred from their longitudinally normal or Gaussian distribution that can be explored by significance tests; in particular, the Shapiro-Wilk test which is most powerful for n < 50. We identify fourteen supporting inputs of sustainable urban water systems - such as internet searches, community campaigns, staff training, agent-principal reporting and legislation propositions about water sustainability – and define quantitative indicators for them. The Shapiro-Wilk test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (K–S) of these indicators and a subsequent Boxplot outlying examination of non-normal indicators are undertaken in Yazd – a desert city in central Iran with a historic record in water conservation – in the light of its complex wastewater speculation. Qualitative examination of non-normal supporting inputs confirms the ability of our statistical methodology to detect problems in the system. • This paper proposes a new methodology for monitoring sustainability of urban water systems. • Normality of the system is inferred from normality of its supporting inputs. • Supporting inputs are intents and behaviors that support system goals. • Normality of supporting inputs is inferred from their longitudinally normal distribution. • Fourteen supporting inputs and their quantitative indicators are identified for significance tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this study was to design a system for measuring and monitoring social well-being in Iran, utilizing a conceptual model and choosing contextually specific domains and indicators. A number of different approaches in defining and measuring social well-being exist. Some of these measuring systems use a descriptive approach and employ sets of indicators, which cover topics of concern but lack any explicit theoretical basis. To better capture the specific societal context of social well-being within Iran, we constructed a compound model from multiple pre-existing conceptual models, allowing us to group indicators and show relationships among contextually relevant areas and domains. Our framework proposes that there are societal and individual-level determinants that affect social health in a society and that social health has outcomes and impacts. To measure social health, variables of social integration, social contribution, social coherence, social actualization, social acceptance, social support, and social functioning are considered. The outcomes and impacts are to be measured and monitored by 37 variables. In many countries, social well-being measurements have been conducted on a regular basis for decades. Some of these systems of social health focus on individual (micro) measures, some on societal (macro) measures, and many on both. In this research, both individual level and societal level well-being measures were selected after being deemed contextually important for Iran. This system of social well-being measurement is to be used as a descriptive and monitoring tool but could potentially be utilized in goal setting, outcome-based accountability, and evaluations in order to promote social well-being and social policy research in Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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