Assessing the integrated sustainability of a public rental housing project from the perspective of complex eco-system

Public rental housing (PRH) projects are the mainstream of China's new affordable housing policies, and their integrated sustainability has a far-reaching effect on medium-low income families' well-being and social stability. However, there are few quantitative researches on the integrated sustainability of PRH projects. Our study tries to fill this gap through proposing an assessment model of the integrated sustainability for PRH projects. First, this paper defines what the sustainability of a PRH project is. Second, after constructing the sustainable system of a PRH project from the perspective of complex eco-system, the paper explores the internal operation mechanism and the coupling mechanism among the ecological, economic and social subsystems. Third, it identifies fourteen indices to represent the sustainability system of a PRH project, including six indices of ecological subsystem, five of economic subsystem and three of social subsystem. Fourth, it qualifies the weights of three subsystems and their internal representative indices. In addition, an assessment model is established through expert surveys and analytic network process (ANP). Finally, the paper carries out an empirical research on a PRH project in Nanjing city of China, followed by suggestions to enhance the integrated sustainability. The sustainability system and its evaluation model proposed in this paper are concise and easy to understand and can provide a theoretical foundation and a scientific basis for the evaluation and optimization of PRH projects.

Spray deposition of exfoliated MoS2 flakes as hole transport layer in perovskite-based photovoltaics

We propose the use of solution-processed molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) flakes as hole transport layer (HTL) for metal-organic perovskite solar cells. MoS2 bulk crystals are exfoliated in 2-propanol and deposited on perovskite layers by spray coating. We fabricated cells with glass/FTO/compact-TiO2/mesoporous-TiO2/CH3NH3PbI3/spiro- OMeTAD/Au structure and cells with the same structure but with MoS2 flakes as HTL instead of spiro-OMeTAD, the most widely used HTL. The electrical characterization of the cells with MoS2 as HTL show promising power conversion efficiency -η- of 3.9% with respect to cells with pristine spiro-OMeTAD (η=3.1%). Endurance test on 800-hour shelf life has shown higher stability for the MoS2–based cells (ΔPCE/PCE=-17%) with respect to the doped spiro-OMeTAD-based one (ΔPCE/PCE =-45%). Further improvements are expected with the optimization of the MoS2 deposition process

A new multi-objective model to optimise rail transport scheduler

The sugarcane transport system plays a critical role in the overall performance of Australia’s sugarcane industry. An inefficient sugarcane transport system interrupts the raw sugarcane harvesting process, delays the delivery of sugarcane to the mill, deteriorates the sugar quality, increases the usage of empty bins, and leads to the additional sugarcane production costs. Due to these negative effects, there is an urgent need for an efficient sugarcane transport schedule that should be developed by the rail schedulers. In this study, a multi-objective model using mixed integer programming (MIP) is developed to produce an industry-oriented scheduling optimiser for sugarcane rail transport system. The exact MIP solver (IBM ILOG-CPLEX) is applied to minimise the makespan and the total operating time as multi-objective functions. Moreover, the so-called Siding neighbourhood search (SNS) algorithm is developed and integrated with Sidings Satisfaction Priorities (SSP) and Rail Conflict Elimination (RCE) algorithms to solve the problem in a more efficient way. In implementation, the sugarcane transport system of Kalamia Sugar Mill that is a coastal locality about 1050 km northwest of Brisbane city is investigated as a real case study. Computational experiments indicate that high-quality solutions are obtainable in industry-scale applications.

Investigating early childhood teachers’ understandings of and practices in education for sustainability in Queensland: A Japan-Australia research collaboration

In a study undertaken in Queensland, Australia, analysis of a survey that included both qualitative and quantitative questions revealed that, like their Japanese counterparts, early childhood teachers do not have well-developed ideas and practices in education for sustainability (EfS). Instead, they mainly practise traditional nature-based activities, such as gardening or playing outdoors, and teaching about resource conservation through books, posters or fact sheets. Teachers’ understandings of nature education, environmental education, and education for sustainability seem to influence their educational practices. Deeper understandings about sustainability are necessary to extend beyond such traditional practices. Even though national curriculum frameworks and guidelines point to the importance of sustainability within early childhood curriculum, these appear to be insufficient in strengthening early childhood teachers’ ideas of sustainability and how to practise it effectively. We suggest that it would be beneficial for early childhood teachers, both preservice and inservice, to have professional development opportunities that build deeper understandings of sustainability and its implementation in their settings.

A comparative study of early childhood curriculum documents focused on education for sustainability in South Korea and Australia

This thesis is about a comparative study of early childhood education (ECE) curriculum documents focused on education for sustainability (EfS) in South Korea and Australia. It examined how the national ECE curriculum documents in two culturally different contexts align with contemporary concepts of sustainability and activist early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) principles. Drawing on systems theory, Korean and Australian ECE curriculum documents were used as the primary sources for this study within the framework of critical document analysis (CDA). This study offers a step forward in developing culturally inclusive/holistic understandings of sustainability and more contextualised/localised approaches to ECEfS.

Factor five - Towards global sustainability through doing much more with much less

This is a revised text of the third lecture of the 2014 public lecture series, "The Path Toward a Global Civilzation" hosted by the Institute of Oriental Philosophy on October 2 in Tokyo. Dr Desha is a research principal of the Australian team at the Natural Edge Project which published Factor 5: Transforming the Global Economy through 80% Increase in Resource Productivity (2009) in collaboration with Dr Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker.

Scheduling techniques to optimise sugarcane rail transport systems

In Australia, railway systems play a vital role in transporting the sugarcane crop from farms to mills. In this paper, a novel job shop approach is proposed to create a more efficient integrated harvesting and sugarcane transport scheduling system to reduce the cost of sugarcane transport. There are several benefits that can be attained by treating the train scheduling problem as a job shop problem. Job shop is generic and suitable for all trains scheduling problems. Job shop technique prevents operating two trains on one section at the same time because it considers that the section or the machine is unique. This technique is more promising to find better solutions in reasonable computation times.

Sustainable housing development through integrated strata utility and transport infrastructure

A comprehensive study was conducted on potential systems of integrated building utilities and transport power solutions that can simultaneously contain rising electricity, hot water and personal transport costs for apartment residents. The research developed the Commuter Energy and Building Utilities System (CEBUS) and quantified the economic, social and environmental benefits of incorporating such a system in future apartment developments. A decision support tool was produced to assist the exploration of the CEBUS design variants. A set of implementation guidelines for CEBUS was also developed for the property development industry.

Introduction: Sustainability reconsidered

Indeed this is still a common interpretation of sustainability and sustainable development. in actual fact the report highlighted three fundamental components to sustainable development: environmental protection, economic growth, and social equity. It stated that the environment should be conserved and our resource base enhanced, by gradually changing the ways in which we develop and use technologies. Moreover it was clear that developing nations must be allowed to meet their basic needs of employment, food, water, energy, ...

Sustainability After Rio

It is now 20 years since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, better known as the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro. An important achievement of the conference was an agreement on the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol. Another was agreement to 'not carry out any activities on the lands of indigenous peoples that would cause environmental degradation or that would be culturally inappropriate'. Recently we have seen an updated and revised conference in Rio where the same issues were again discussed. Since then ideas about sustainability have changed considerably and to some extent they have merged with ideas about corporate social responsibility and about governance, determined by the economic and political fortunes of the actors involved. It is now time therefore to re-examine the concept of sustainability in the aftermath of this conference and to consider what issues are now considered pertinent around the world. This book therefore takes different positions concerning different aspects of this vital topic.

Modeling transport through an environment crowded by a mixture of obstacles of different shapes and sizes

Many biological environments are crowded by macromolecules, organelles and cells which can impede the transport of other cells and molecules. Previous studies have sought to describe these effects using either random walk models or fractional order diffusion equations. Here we examine the transport of both a single agent and a population of agents through an environment containing obstacles of varying size and shape, whose relative densities are drawn from a specified distribution. Our simulation results for a single agent indicate that smaller obstacles are more effective at retarding transport than larger obstacles; these findings are consistent with our simulations of the collective motion of populations of agents. In an attempt to explore whether these kinds of stochastic random walk simulations can be described using a fractional order diffusion equation framework, we calibrate the solution of such a differential equation to our averaged agent density information. Our approach suggests that these kinds of commonly used differential equation models ought to be used with care since we are unable to match the solution of a fractional order diffusion equation to our data in a consistent fashion over a finite time period.

Does the GRI influence sustainability disclosures in Asia-Pacific banks?

This article examines sustainability disclosures by the major banks in the Asia-Pacific region (the six largest banks from each of four countries: Australia, Japan, China and India) during the period 2005 to 2012. The findings show sustainability disclosures by banks that participate in the global reporting initiative (GRI) are significantly higher than disclosures by those banks that have not participated in the GRI. Amongst those banks that have participated in the GRI there is is a higher rate of disclosure by externally assured banks than by non-externally assured banks. Among the GRI

Transport-related fatalities and injuries leading to hospitalisation in pre-school children

Pre-school children grow and develop rapidly with age and their changing capabilities are reflected in the ways in which they are injured. Using coded and textual descriptions of transport-related injuries in children under five years of age from the Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit (QISU) this paper profiles the modes of such injuries by single year of age. The QISU collects information on all injury presentations to emergency department in hospitals throughout Queensland using both coded information and textual description. Almost all transport-related injuries in children under one year are due to motor vehicle crashes but these become proportionately less common thereafter, while injuries while cycling become proportionately more common with age. Slow-speed vehicle runovers peak at age one year but occur at all ages in the range. Bicycle-related fatalities are rare in this age group. If bicycle-related injuries are excluded, the profiles of fatal and non-fatal injuries are broadly similar. Comparison with a Queensland hospital series suggests that these results are broadly representative.

Scheduling tools to reduce the cost of cane railway transport

Cane railway systems provide empty bins for harvesters to fill and full bins of cane for the factory to process. These operations need to be conducted in a timely fashion to minimise delays to harvesters and the factory and to minimise the cut-to-crush delay, while also minimising the cost of providing this service. A range of tools has been provided over the years to assist in this process. This paper reviews the objectives of the cane transport system and the tools available to achieve those objectives. The facilities within these tools to assist in the control of costs are highlighted.