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Sustainability tools should be taught to civil engineers to make the most sustainable engineering decisions in projects. This study is conducted mainly to compare the application of the sustainability approach in civil engineering education in Iran and some developed countries. In this study, the investigated factors are measured using the comparative-descriptive method. In this regard, the importance of sustainability education is discussed in addition to examining the views of domestic and foreign professional organizations. Besides, some solutions for sustainability education in civil engineering are provided by describing sustainability education topics in some world-class universities and comparing them with the approved civil engineering education program in Iran. Studies show that the educational programs of the country's higher education centres can be revised in some aspects to teach sustainability concepts. Sustainability concepts should be taught operationally by modifying and updating teaching methods and connecting students with industry and knowledge-based companies. In this way, students will get the necessary preparation to apply these concepts in the design, construction, and operation of civil infrastructure after passing the relevant courses. The quality of teaching sustainability tools and concepts can be improved by using interactive and encouraging approaches and group activities of civil students and engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy and industrial sectors are the most attractive investment regions for enhancing efficiency in production processes. The power industry is one of the important investment targets for enhancing corporate sustainability. One of the most fundamental problems in the power industry is the control of wasted energy in oil and gas fields and power plant sectors and the power losses management in transmission and distribution lines. The investment to new technology innovation and environmental protection from pollution gases emission in energy and power plant sectors and the power losses management in transmission and distribution lines play an important role in the implementation progress of the power industry. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of investment to flare gas and greenhouses gases reduction in energy and power plant sections and power losses control by equipping sections to improved engineering systems in transmission and distribution networks of the electricity supply chain. Indeed, the supply chain management needs information related to investment effect to activity level control as handling flare gas in energy sections and reducing harmful substance emissions and greenhouses gases in power plant sectors and harnessing power losses in transmission and distribution networks. The proposed approach evaluates the sustainability and efficiency of an electricity supply chain by a radial model in the presence of two categories of inputs under natural and managerial disposability, dual-role factors and undesirable produces. A real case on the Iran power industry is presented to demonstrate the applicability and practicability of the proposed method. Moreover, to demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach a supply chain identified by oil and gas companies, power plants, transmissions companies, dispatching companies and final consumers in the Iran power industry. One empirical implication has obtained from model performance in the electricity supply chain. The results indicate approximately, the oil and gas fields, the power plants and the distribution lines and the public divisions of power consumers have earned 100%, 90% and 90% efficiency of the total in supply chains, respectively. Particularly, this study recommends that transmission and distribution companies must have adequate decisional capacities regarding investment for transmitting power to industrial, agriculture divisions in the power industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, significant research has been devoted to optimizing sustainable energies to improve their technical performance, economic profitability, and social acceptance. Despite the development and application of numerous heuristic algorithms in the field of sustainable energy, a systematic review of the most popular solvers remains scarce. Therefore, this study developed a Boolean logic-based program in three keyword blocks to conduct a literature search for the applications of heuristic solvers in sustainable energy, investigating their geographic- and topic-based popularity and exploring the factors contributing to their success. After describing the basic concepts and terminology of optimization, the generic applications of 28 standard heuristic algorithms in the current literature on renewable energy were assessed, from which particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithms exhibited superior performance. Therefore, the history, structure, and variants of these two algorithms were extensively analyzed to understand the reasons behind their frequent applications in three major sustainable engineering fields: energy integration, buildings, and transportation. The search results revealed that the distinguished articles typically employed the multiobjective and hybrid variants of the two algorithms. The primary impetus for their development was the familiarity of the employing communities rather than the type of optimization problems or search spaces. The first authors were mainly affiliated with China, India, Iran, and the United States, whereas the active higher education institutes were distributed in several regions without a regular pattern. Considering their productive role in publishing advanced research, open-source journals are expected to spearhead future research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a research project that explored the issue of perceptions of the urban population regarding the role of plant clinics in the sustainability of green spaces in Tehran. The methodology used a combination of descriptive and quantitative research. The study involved 280 respondents from Region 17 of Tehran who attended the classes offered by plant clinics in the city. Data were collected through interview schedules. As the regression analysis showed, knowledge about benefits of green spaces, interest in green spaces, educational level and participation in training classes led to significant (41%) variation in the perception of respondents regarding the role of plant clinics in sustainability of urban green spaces. The results demonstrate that success of plant clinics in sustainability of urban green spaces will depend on informing the population about benefits of green spaces, and that the role of education and experience in the forming of perceptions must be recognised fully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]