Search results for "sustainability assessment"

Sustainable Development Goals and Performance Measurement of Positive Energy District: A Methodological Approach

2021

The “Positive Energy Districts and Neighbourhoods for Sustainable Urban Development” program launched by the European Union can be considered a milestone towards the clean energy transition and carbon neutrality of urban areas. The achievement of this ambitious transition requires properly defined methodologies and action plans grounded on the main environmental, economic, and social pillars of sustainability. This paper is focused on the definition of a methodology for the characterization of PEDs sustainability assessment in terms of Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, the main research question to be answered regards the allocation of the surplus energy of PEDs to target the su…

Dynamic Sustainability Assessment Tool: Case Study of Green Biorefineries in Danish Agriculture

2020

In this work, a novel, dynamic sustainability assessment tool is presented and validated in a case study. This tool combines two methods&mdash

The aggregation of sustainability performance measuring at company level : a case study

2015

Industrial companies face constant scrutiny about their sustainability performance development and comprehensive sustainability performance measuring is demanded from them. Companies are measuring their sustainability performance with various and multitude indicators, but it is difficult to look into the overall sustainability performance of companies based on plentiful and variable sustainability measures. There is no universally accepted method to measure the overall sustainability performance of a company, though tools for this purpose are developed. This qualitative case study research aims to shed light on whether the sustainability indicators of a case company could be aggregated in a…

Increasing the Circularity of asphalt mixtures: Integrated Sustainability and Circularity Assessment as a progress monitoring tool towards more Circu…

2021

Sustainability and Circular Economy (CE) are two concepts that lately have been profoundly linked to each other. The road engineering industry has gradually been adapting practices that are considered both circular and sustainable. However, not all of these practices entirely consider the whole life environmental and circularity assessment and implications of asphalt mixtures.; which in turn leads to doubtfully circular and sustainable approaches. For this reason in this thesis, after analysing the ways that National Road Authorities implement and communicate CE through questionnaires and web searches, a Material Circularity Index quantifying framework, based on the proposed methodology of …

A systematic assessment of road pavement sustainability through a review of rating tools

2017

Pavements are engineered systems present in every modern society, and they have significant environmental, economic and social impacts. In an effort to promote more sustainable decisions regarding pavement design, construction and management, several pavement sustainability assessment tools have been developed. This research reviewed some of these tools and found that many of them do not treat the pavement as a system; instead, they seek to optimize individual aspects of the pavement in an effort to increase its sustainability. Therefore, a framework for analytically assessing the system outcomes towards sustainable objectives is presented and applied for modern pavement sustainability asse…

SUP R DSS: A sustainability-based decision support & system for road pavements

2019

Road pavement community members are increasingly becoming aware of the need to incorporating the principles of sustainable development into the sector. Policies are also going in this direction and as a consequence in the recent years researchers and practitioners are coming up with new materials, technologies and practices designed to reduce the negative impacts of their activities in the surroundings. Within this framework the road pavements sector is witnessing a paradigm shift towards the development of pavement technologies incorporating high-content of recycled materials, as well as best practices to decrease the overall carbon footprint. These are all promising solutions that to the …

Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment al comparto edilizio – teoria e applicazioni pratiche.

2014

AnMBR, reclaimed water and fertigation: Two case studies in Italy and Spain to assess economic and technological feasibility and CO2 emissions within…

2020

[EN] The use of anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) technology on urban wastewater can help to alleviate droughts, by reusing the water and nutrients embedded in the effluent in agriculture (fertigation) in line with Circular Economy principles. The combination of AnMBR and fertigation reduces CO2 emissions due to the organic matter valorization and the partial avoidance of mineral fertilizer requirements. However, both AnMBR and fertigation still face technological and regulatory barriers that need to be overcome. These bottlenecks were tackled within the first Innovation Deal approved by the European Commission in 2016, and gave rise to several case studies on water reuse systems. The r…

Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment: an implementation to marble products

2011

Life cycle energy sustainability assessment: an expanded framework for energy technologies

2018

Life Cycle sustainability assessment is one of the most relevant tools delving in sustainability science, based currently on the triple bottom line idea, that is identified in the use of the three tools of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA). The methodology is structured on international regulations and is currently being applied to a wide set of products and systems. However, when targeting specifically energy technologies with this methodology some specific issues need to be taken in consideration before applying tout court the standard LCSA methodology. Energy systems – in particular those where fluid streams are used – have an …