In this paper, environmental sustainability performance assessment of 27 U.S. and Canada metropoles is addressed. A four-step hierarchical fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making approach is developed. In the first step, the proposed methodology is established by determining the sustainability performance indicators (a total of 16 sustainability indicators are considered), collecting the data and ...

Indicators of commitment to sustainability commonly applied to institutions of higher education provide no estimate of the actual effects that these institutions have on the persistence or prevalence of the socioecological systems that encompass them. Emergy methodology provides a theoretical framework for addressing this practical oversight based on its fundamental insight into the interdepend...

This paper describes the development of artificial neural network models for the prediction of annual PM10 emissions and concentrations, by using available sustainability and economical/ industrial parameters as inputs. A genetic algorithm and correlation analysis were used as methods for the selection of inputs for the PM10 emissions and the model of the PM10 concentrations, respectively. The ...

This article reflects on the recent unsustainable land use changes in the Autonomous Community of Madrid and asserts the need for progress towards economically, environmentally and socially sustainable development models. Following research undertaken over the last six years there are encouraging signs of agreement between stakeholders and the problem has begun to “open up”. Here a new phase of...

Indicators of the sustainability of fiscal policies play an important role in the conduct of the international surveillance of fiscal policies. The construction of these indicators, however, is beset with serious problems. To illustrate, many authors have observed that conventional measures of public debt are potentially misleading indicators of public wealth and the effects of fiscal policy on...

The rural sustainability index is a scientifically based tool to quantify the performance of agriculture. The sustainability of crop production is quantified from three perspectives; people, planet and profit. Within each perspective, one condition was selected that must be met to warrant agriculture. These are: No hazardous work should be used within the crop production chain; agricultural cro...

Agricultural sustainability refers to the ability of a cropping system to produce, without causing irreversible damage tothe ecosystem. There is an increasing need to view cropping systems and identify management practices in a holisticindicator-based impact assessment. The main objective of this study was to compare and rank the cropping systems of theMarvdasht plain in Fars Province; in order...

Neighborhood development is considered as one purpose of sustainable urban development (SUD) and a key action to reach the sustainability. This approach (SUN), enhance this new approach that the city's problems can be expected in return to the neighborhood concept. Applied methodology is based on descriptive-analytical, case study and librarian methods. In continuous, it was used of interview w...

The present journal recently stated in the call for a special issue on social sustainability, ―[t]hough sustainable development is said to rest on ̳three pillars‘, one of these—social sustainability—has received significantly less attention than its bio-physical environmental and economic counterparts‖. The current issue promises to engage the concepts of ―development sustainability‖, ―bridge s...

Measuring farm sustainability performance is a crucial component for improving agricultural sustainability. While extensive assessments and indicators exist that reflect the different facets of agricultural sustainability, because of the relatively large number of measures and interactions among them, a composite indicator that integrates and aggregates over all variables is particularly useful...