International Workshop “SPA 2018 Sustainability Performance Assessment”
Riceviamo da Francesco Scorza la seguente informazione, che può essere di interesse anche per chi si interessa di Geografia:
SPA 2018 Sustainability Performance Assessment: models, approaches and applications toward interdisciplinary and integrated solutions.
Organized workshop @ ICCSA 2018 – International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications; July 2 – 5, 2018 in Melbourne, Australia in collaboration with the Monash University, Australia.
Paper Submission deadline: March 20, 2018
The aim of this workshop is to bring together scientists working in basic and applied science (scientific computation and applications in all areas of sciences, engineering, technology, industry, economics, life sciences and social sciences), but also qualified practitioners, to present, compare and discuss advances in research, applications and achieved results and to design future perspectives for “applied sustainability”. This workshop stimulates high-quality papers for presentation describing original interdisciplinary research results or case studies concerning “Sustainability Performance Assessment” according to the declared topics and research fields. All accepted papers will be published in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) Series. Accepted papers will be scheduled for oral presentation. Submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to register, to attend the conference and to present the paper. The conference language will be English.
Themes: Sustainability; applied sustainability; Ecosystem Services; Sustainable development; Sustainable and Inclusive planning;
Topics
• Sustainable management of natural resources (including: water management, land use and land cover changes, resource efficiency, biodiversity and ecosystem services)
• Sustainable energy (including: energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, smart energy systems, smart buildings, smart grids, energy planning)
• Sustainability and assessment tools (including: environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment, life cycle assessment, corporate social responsibility)
• Sustainability and social challenges (including social inclusion, territorial cooperation, planning for resilient communities, participatory planning processes, urban environment)
• Sustainability and climate change (including strategies for mitigation and adaptation, planning for resilience)
• Sustainability and risks (including disaster risk management, disaster risk reductions, urban and regional resilience, risk assessment)
• Sustainability in urban and regional planning (applied models and principles in sample case study including local practices reports, international thematic experiences, innovations in regional and national legislations)
• Computational Sustainability (optimization societal, economic, and environmental resources, applied data mining, machine learning and spatial geo-computation)
Position
Building upon the Millennium Development Goals, in the 2030 agenda for Sustainable development the United Nations established 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These are expected to become a key reference point for the development of mainstream global policies in the coming years, and to spur a greater focus on sustainability not only in theoretical perspectives but also, and mainly, in practical applications in every field of human action. An increasing global effort on “renewed sustainable development” with influences and constraints at multiple scales (from global to national, regional and local) can already be observed. We understand “renewed sustainable development” as the development of a former concept, widely explored in multiple scientific domains (from planning and management to decision science, from environmental science to economics and econometrics, from social science to operative research) that involves increasing awareness of the long-term environmental and social consequences of everyday human activities. Hence this renovation concerns the recognition of the need to assess sustainability by taking into account the balance that needs to be struck between the use of resources and their reconstitution in a proper time frame. Such new starting point follows excellent failures, among which prominent is that of the Kyoto protocol, which showed how a global agreement on challenging objectives can be undermined if human communities play the sole role of “les agìs” in such process. We refer to the general case of top down approach promoted without any effective inclusive actions for people and local communities: people “suffer” the decision without opportunities to participate actively in the policy making process. Renovation entails innovation: through the Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations launched a permanent call for innovation where sustainability is understood as a cross-sectoral value that needs to be operationalized and measured, in order for it to underpin effective actions in every resource-consuming sector, therefore challenging lond-standing knowledge, processes, and behaviors. Innovation, in turns, implies complexity: both research and technical applications need to steer towards interdisciplinarity; moreover, rigorous assessment methods are needed in order to allow for comparisons and rankings, and in this respect researchers and practitioners do not start from scratch, as they can draw useful lessons from available outstanding projects and best practice applications. If we take it that ‘assessing sustainability’ means ‘assessing long term impacts’ on environmental and/or human resources, then to deliver products or supply chain models with required necessary features in a resource-scarce world is a mandatory innovation. If we consider social sustainability, then the inclusiveness degree of social dynamics and policies represents an up-to-date indicator to be defined especially in the current EU development policy-making. If we look at sustainability assessment in human activities (such as agriculture, industry, land use, urban development, including infrastructure), then environmental risks, energy issues, climate change represent challenging arenas for both academic investigations and operative applications as regards decision making, production, market and governance. This list could become much longer if we enlarged the scope of subject areas or implementation domains. That’s the case if will focus on the hot spots: natural resources (including water, soil and biodiversity), food production, energy production and consumption, land take, technological innovations, social inclusion, as well as on their combinations. The Workshop will pay particular attention to methodologies, research reports, case study assessment concerning the various combinations of these and other areas in a multi- and interdisciplinary way.
Best Papers / Workshop follow-up
Selected papers will be proposed for publication in special issues in accordance with their specific topics. Workshop organizers will invite for extended versions submission after the conference.
Relevant journals for post-conference publishing:
Sustainability – Open Access Journal (MDPI)
International Journal of E-Planning Research (IJEPR) – IGI Global
other relevant journal worldwide in thematic special issue.
Workshop Organizers:
Francesco Scorza, University of Basilicata, Italy (francesco.scorza@unibas.it)
Valentin Grecu, Lucian Blaga University, Romania (valentin.grecu@ulbsibiu.ro)
Jolanta Dvarioniene, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania (jolanta.dvarioniene@ktu.lt)
Sabrina Lai, University of Cagliari, Italy (sabrinalai@unica.it)
Program Committee:
Lucian-Ionel Cioca, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania
Laura Colucci-Gray, University of Aberdeen, UK
Calin-Ionel Denes, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania
Grigoris Kafkalas, Tecnical University of Thessaloniky, Greece
Giuseppe Las Casas, University of Basilicata, Italy
Dionysis Latinopoulos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Giampiero Lombardini, University of Genoa, Italy
Federico Martellozzo, La Sapienza University, Italy
Beniamino Murgante, University of Basilicata, Italy
Silviu Nate, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania
Magdalini Pitsiava, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Piergiuseppe Pontrandolfi, University of Basilicata, Italy
Georgia Pozoukidou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Elena Cristina Rada, University of Trento, Italy
Marco Ragazzi, University of Trento, Italy
Xavier Salazar-Valenzuela, Central University of Ecuador, Galapagos Head, Barrio Miraflores entre Petrel y San Cristóbal, Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos, Ecuador
Vincenzo Torretta, Insubria University, Varese, Italy
Chiara Garau, University of Cagliari, Italy
Federico Amato, University of Basilicata, Italy
Important dates
March 20, 2018: Deadline for paper submission to the SPA Workshop.
April 8, 2018: Notification of acceptance.
May 6, 2018: Early-bird registration ends.
May 6, 2018: Submission deadline for the final version of the papers.
July 2-5, 2018: ICCSA 2018 Conference.
More Information @ http://www2.unibas.it/lisut/in
