Demand response to improved walking infrastructure: A study into the economics of walking and health behaviour change

Walking is the most common form of moderate‐intensity physical activity among adults, is widely accessible and especially appealing to obese people. Most often policy makers are interested in valuing the effect on walking of changes in some characteristics of a neighbourhood, the demand response for walking, of infrastructure changes. A positive demand response to improvements in the walking environment could help meet the public health target of 150 minutes of at least moderate‐intensity physical activity per week. We model walking in an individual’s local neighbourhood as a ‘weak complement’ to the characteristics of the neighbourhood itself. Walking is affected by neighbourhood
characteristics, substitutes, and individual’s characteristics, including their opportunity cost of time.  Using compensating variation, we assess the economic benefits of walking and how walking behaviour is affected by improvements to the neighbourhood.  Using a sample of 1,209 respondents surveyed over a 12 month period (Feb 2010‐Jan 2011) in East Belfast, United Kingdom, we find that a policy that increased walkability and people’s perception of access to shops and facilities  would lead to an increase in walking of about 36 minutes/person/week, valued at £13.65/person/week. When focusing on inactive residents, a policy that improved the walkability of the area would lead to guidelines for physical activity being reached by only 12.8% of the population who are currently inactive. Additional interventions would therefore be needed to encourage inactive residents to
achieve the recommended levels of physical activity, as it appears that interventions that improve the walkability of an area are particularly effective in increasing walking among already active citizens, and, among the inactive ones, the best response is found among healthier, younger and wealthier citizens.

Perspectives on the Future of Public Private Partnership in the UK

During the past two decades the UK has played a leading position in the development and application of Public Private Partnership (PPP) based infrastructure procurement through its Private Finance Initiative model. This model had been developed during the last years of the Major Government and expanded during the early years of the Blair Government. The banking and economic crisis of 2007-09 has created major challenges to the use of PPP in the UK, making the sustainability of past levels of PPP investment and the future direction of PPP based infrastructure procurement in that country uncertain. This chapter summarises key developments in UK PPP up to the crisis; reviews the economic issues that have led up to the crisis; discusses the immediate impact of the crisis on the UK PFI and PPP market together with the transition arrangements that were put into to place by the Brown government; and, lastly, looks at recent initiatives taken by Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Coalition Government under the designation of Private Finance 2 (PF2).

Environmental and social supply chain management sustainability practices: construct development and measurement

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise and operationalise the concept of supply chain management sustainability practices. Based on a multi-stage procedure involving a literature review, expert Q-sort and pre-test process, pilot test and survey of 156 supply chain directors and managers in Ireland, we develop a multidimensional conceptualisation and measure of social and environmental supply chain management sustainability practices. The research findings show theoretically sound constructs based on four underlying sustainable supply chain management practices: monitoring, implementing systems, new product and process development and strategy redefinition. A two-factor model is then identified as the most reliable: comprising process-based and market-based practices.

Going above and beyond: how sustainability culture and entrepreneurial orientation drive social sustainability supply chain practice adoption

Purpose
– This paper aims to examine what drives the adoption of different social sustainability supply chain practices. Research has shown that certain factors drive the adoption of environmental sustainability practices but few focus on social supply chain practices, delineate which practices are adopted or what drives their adoption.

Design/methodology/approach
– The authors examine the facilitative role of sustainability culture to explain the adoption of social sustainability supply chain practices: basic practices, consisting of monitoring and management systems and advanced practices, which are new product and process development and strategic redefinition. The authors then explore the role played by a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation in shaping and reinforcing the adoption of social sustainability supply chain practices. A survey of 156 supply chain managers in multiple industries in Ireland was conducted to test the relationship between the variables.

Findings
– The findings show that sustainability culture is positively related to all the practices, and entrepreneurial orientation impacts and moderates social sustainability culture in advanced social sustainability supply chain adoption.

Research limitations/implications
– As with any survey, this is a single point in time with a single respondent. Implications for managers include finding the right culture in the organisation to implement social sustainability supply chain management practices that go beyond monitoring to behavioural changes in the supply chain with implications beyond the dyad of buyer and supplier to lower tier suppliers and the community surrounding the supply chain.

Practical implications
– The implications for managers include developing and fostering cultural attributes in the organisation to implement social sustainability supply chain management practices that go beyond monitoring suppliers to behavioural changes in the supply chain with implications beyond the dyad of buyer and supplier to lower tier suppliers and the community surrounding the supply chain.

Originality/value
– This is the first time, to the authors’ knowledge, that cultural and entrepreneurial variables have been tested for social sustainability supply chain practices, giving them new insights into how and why social sustainability supply chain practices are adopted.

A simplified procedure for sizing solar thermal systems based on national assessment methods in the UK and Ireland.

Solar heating systems have the potential to be an efficient renewable energy technology, provided they are sized correctly. Sizing a solar thermal system for domestic applications does not warrant the cost of a simulation. As a result simplified sizing procedures are required. The size of a system depends on a number of variables including the efficiency of the collector itself, the hot water demand and the solar radiation at a given location. Domestic Hot Water (DHW) demand varies with time and is assessed using a multi-parameter detailed model. Secondly, the national energy evaluation methodologies are evaluated from the perspective of solar thermal system sizing. Based on the assessment of the standards, limitations in the evaluation method for solar thermal systems are outlined and an adapted method, specific to the sizing of solar thermal systems, is proposed. The methodology is presented for two common dwelling scenarios. Results from this showed that it is difficult to achieve a high solar fraction given practical sizes of system infrastructure (storage tanks) for standard domestic properties. However, solar thermal systems can significantly offset energy loads due associated DHW consumption, particularly when sized appropriately. The presented methodology is valuable for simple solar system design and also for the quick comparison of salient criteria.

Evolving techniques for characterising and monitoring the stability of infrastructure slopes

Landslides and debris flows, commonly triggered by rainfall, pose a geotechnical risk causing disruption to transport routes and incur significant financial expenditure. With infrastructure maintenance budgets becoming ever more constrained, this paper provides an overview of some of the developing methods being implemented by Queen’s University, Belfast in collaboration with the Department for Regional Development to monitor the stability of two distinctly different infrastructure slopes in Northern Ireland. In addition to the traditional, intrusive ground investigative and laboratory testing methods, aerial LiDAR, terrestrial LiDAR, geophysical techniques and differential Global Positioning Systems have been used to monitor slope stability. Finally, a comparison between terrestrial LiDAR, pore water pressure and soil moisture deficit (SMD) is presented to outline the processes for a more informed management regime and to highlight the season relationship between landslide activity and the aforementioned parameters.

Research-informed design, management and maintenance of infrastructure slopes: development of a multi-scalar approach

The UK’s transport infrastructure is one of the most heavily used in the world. The performance of these networks is critically dependent on the performance of cutting and embankment slopes which make up £20B of the £60B asset value of major highway infrastructure alone. The rail network in particular is also one of the oldest in the world: many of these slopes are suffering high incidents of instability (increasing with time). This paper describes the development of a fundamental understanding of earthwork material and system behaviour, through the systematic integration of research across a range of spatial and temporal scales. Spatially these range from microscopic studies of soil fabric, through elemental materials behaviour to whole slope modelling and monitoring and scaling up to transport networks. Temporally, historical and current weather event sequences are being used to understand and model soil deterioration processes, and climate change scenarios to examine their potential effects on slope performance in futures up to and including the 2080s. The outputs of this research are being mapped onto the different spatial and temporal scales of infrastructure slope asset management to inform the design of new slopes through to changing the way in which investment is made into aging assets. The aim ultimately is to help create a more reliable, cost effective, safer and more resilient transport system.

Building information modeling based building design optimization for sustainability

Environmental problems, especially climate change, have become a serious global issue waiting for people to solve. In the construction industry, the concept of sustainable building is developing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this study, a building information modeling (BIM) based building design optimization method is proposed to facilitate designers to optimize their designs and improve buildings’ sustainability. A revised particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is applied to search for the trade-off between life cycle costs (LCC) and life cycle carbon emissions (LCCE) of building designs. In order tovalidate the effectiveness and efficiency of this method, a case study of an office building is conducted in Hong Kong. The result of the case study shows that this method can enlarge the searching space for optimal design solutions and shorten the processing time for optimal design results, which is really helpful for designers to deliver an economic and environmental friendly design scheme.