In August of 2002, the Schools of Engineering at Purdue University began an effort to identify “signature areas” as part of the commitment to reinforce the Schools’ standing as a preeminent academic engineering institution. The University administration has allocated 75 new faculty positions, above the current number of engineering faculty, to pursue highly relevant, multidisciplinary activitie...

Traditionally, minimization of the total travel time spent by the passengers in the system is the most preferred objective while planning transit systems. To satisfy this objective, forecasted travel demands between zones and characteristics of the available fleet are taken into account, and at the end of the planning process, optimum frequencies of each transit lines are identified. Unfortunat...

The objective of this paper is to review briefly the theory of contemporary sustainable landscape planning, to present a typology of landscape-planning methods and apply the typology to several landscape-planning frameworks and methods. Sustainability is an international policy goal with multiple dimensions and implications for planning. Landscape planning prescribes alternative spatial configu...

Although conventional energy resources are widely used for electricity generation globally as well as in Turkey, the renewable energy resources that do not deteriorate environmental quality and economic efficiency are increasingly favored to meet the energy demands in a sustainable way. Alternatively, limitations on land availability and high initial investment costs impede the development of r...

In spite of its natural sources, Turkey depends on other countries in terms of energy production, and a transfer from conventional fossil sources to sustainable energy sources is strongly necessary. Among the sustainable energy sources, biomass is the subject of this study. The characteristics, logistic aspects, environmental aspects, economical, legal and technical aspects are investigated in ...

Projections are important tools for long-term planning and policy settings. Renewable energy sources that use indigenous resources have the potential to provide energy services with zero or almost zero emissions of both air pollutants and greenhouse gases. Currently, renewable energy sources supply 14% of the total world energy demand. Renewable energy is a promising alternative solution becaus...

In recent years energy efficiency in different levels become of prime importance. Studies have been shown that urban planning can play a critical role in this area. At the same time in oil-producing countries like Iran, energy efficiency has not been considered as a national priority. However, in recent years with increase in the population growth, rapid urbanization and acceleration of environ...

The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) draws in its report " World in Transition – Towards Sustainable Energy Systems " [1] the conclusion that " it is essential to turn energy systems towards sustainability worldwide – both in order to protect the natural life-support systems on which humanity depends, and to eradicate energy poverty in developing countries. Nothing less than a fu...

Sustainable energy systems are necessary to save the natural resources avoiding environmental impacts which would compromise the development of future generations. Delivering sustainable energy will require an increased efficiency of the generation process including the demand side. The architecture of the future energy supply can be characterized by a combination of conventional centralized po...