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Leisure agriculture is an essential part of urban agriculture in Shanghai. However, sustainable development for urban leisure agriculture has reached a critical point. In this paper, we attempted to analyze the sustainability status of 22 urban leisure farms in Shanghai using the IDEA (Indicateurs de Durabilité des Exploitations Agricoles) method for sustainability indicators. From this analysis, we found out that farms’ average sustainability scores were 25.72 on the agroecological scale, 32.5 on the socioterritorial scale, and 46.5 on the economic scale. This proved that urban leisure agriculture in Shanghai has high sustainability at the economic scale, followed by the socioterritorial scale and the agroecological scale. However, the overall sustainability of urban leisure agriculture in Shanghai was low, which indicates that Shanghai’s urban agriculture still needs to be strengthened for sustainability. Thus, this paper concludes with some policy recommendations for the future development of urban leisure agriculture in Shanghai.

The drive to expand renewable energies is often in direct conflict with sustainable development goals. Thus, it is important that energy policies account for potential trade-offs. We assess the interlinkages between energy, food, water and land, for two case studies, Okinawa and Sogn og Fjordane. We apply a range of assessment methods and study their usefulness as tools to identify trade-offs and to compare the sustainability performance. We calculate cross-sectoral footprints, self-sufficiency ratios and perform a simplified Energy-Water-Food nexus analysis. We use the latter for assessing scenarios to increase energy and food self-sufficiency in Okinawa, while we use ecosystem service (ESS) accounting for Sogn og Fjordane. For Okinawa, we find that constraints on the energy, food and water sectors urgently call for integrated approaches to energy policy; for Sogn og Fjordane, the further expansion of renewables comes at the expense of cultural and supporting ESS, which could outweigh gains from increased energy exports. We recommend a general upgrade to indicators and visualization methods that look beyond averages and a fostering of infrastructure for data on sustainable development based on harmonized international protocols. We warn against rankings of countries or regions based on benchmarks that are neither theory-driven nor location-specific.

Measuring the comparative sustainability levels of cities, regions, institutions and projects is an essential procedure in creating sustainable urban futures. This paper introduces a new urban sustainability assessment model: “The Sustainable Infrastructure, Land-use, Environment and Transport Model (SILENT)”. The SILENT Model is an advanced geographic information system and indicator-based comparative urban sustainability indexing model. The model aims to assist planners and policy makers in their daily tasks in sustainable urban planning and development by providing an integrated sustainability assessment framework. The paper gives an overview of the conceptual framework and components of the model and discusses the theoretical constructs, methodological procedures, and future development of this promising urban sustainability assessment model.

Housing, an essential aspect of quality of life, is also significant for sustainable development (SD). All of the major international statements on SD refer to housing or settlement strategies. However, indicator sets derived from these statements often fail to include good indicators of sustainable housing. This article outlines the conceptualisation of SD and housing from the international statements. It proceeds by describing the international indicator sets which have been constructed based on these policy statements. International organisations such as the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) have all produced indicator sets. However, this article contends that housing is an underdeveloped indicator and calls for more attention to be paid to the importance of aspects of housing for SD and the measurement of progress towards it via social indicators.

Many higher education institutions (HEIs) have started to incorporate sustainable development (SD) into their system. A variety of sustainability assessment tools (SATs) have been developed to support HEIs to systematically measure, audit, benchmark, and communicate SD efforts. In recent years, stakeholders have increasingly asked HEIs to demonstrate their impacts on SD. These impacts are the direct and indirect effects an HEI has outside of its organizational boundaries on society, the natural environment, and the economy. This study analyzes to what extent SATs are capable of measuring the impacts that HEIs have on SD. A mixed-method approach, using descriptive statistics and an inductive content analysis, was used to examine 1134 indicators for sustainability assessment derived from 19 SATs explicitly designed for application by HEIs. The findings reveal that SATs largely neglect the impacts HEIs have outside their organizational boundaries. SATs primarily use proxy indicators based on internally available data to assess impacts and thus tend to focus on themes concerning the natural environment and the contribution to the local economy. Updating existing SATs and developing new ones may enable HEIs to fully realize their potential to contribute to SD.

CONTEXT: The sustainability of urban areas is essential to the sustainability of regions, nations, and the world as a whole. Urban sustainability indicators (USIs) can play an important role in advancing the science and practice of sustaining urban systems. OBJECTIVES: We review the key concepts of urban sustainability and commonly used indicators for gauging the state and progress of urban sustainability, and discuss how USIs can be further improved from a landscape ecology perspective. METHODS: This review is based primarily on peer-reviewed journal papers, as well as books, and documents published by international organizations, governmental agencies, and research institutions. We systematically examine what USIs actually measure and whether they are adequate for gauging urban sustainability, and then discuss major problems and challenges as well as ways forward in developing and applying USIs. RESULTS: Numerous USIs have been developed, including single composite indices and indicator sets. This paper focuses on three indicator sets and ten composite indices. Eight of them cover all the three dimensions of sustainability (environment, economy, and society), and five cover two of the three. Five of them measure strong sustainability, and eight only indicate weak sustainability. CONCLUSIONS: Urban sustainability indicators abound, and so do problems with them. These include technical issues of normalization, weighting, and aggregation (upscaling), as well as conceptual issues of indicator selection, boundary delineation, heterogeneity, scale, and strong versus weak sustainability. To overcome these problems, principles and methods in landscape ecology—particularly those of landscape metrics, spatial scaling, and landscape sustainability—have much to offer, and this represents a challenging and fruitful research direction for both landscape and urban scientists in the coming decades.

Corporate sustainability performance measurement systems (SPMS) have been the subject of a growing amount of research. However, there are many challenges and opportunities associated with the design, implementation, use, and evolution of these systems that have yet to be addressed. The purpose of this article is to identify future directions for research in the design, implementation, use, and evolution of corporate SPMS. A concise review of key literature published between 2000 and 2010 is presented. The literature review focuses on research conducted at the both the individual corporation-and sector-levels. The review of published literature provides a basis for the identification of a structured set of 65 key research questions to guide future work. The research questions will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers in corporate sustainability performance measurement.

In recent years, the manufacturing sector is going through a major transformation, as reflected in the concept of Industry 4.0 and digital transformation. The urge for such transformation is intensified when we consider the growing societal demands for sustainability. The notion of sustainable manufacturing has emerged as a result of this trend. Additionally, industries and the whole society face the challenges of an increasing number of disruptive events, either natural or human-caused, that can severely affect the normal operation of systems. Furthermore, the growing interconnectivity between organizations, people, and physical systems, supported by recent developments in information and communication technologies, highlights the important role that collaborative networks can play in the digital transformation processes. As such, this article analyses potential synergies between the areas of sustainable and resilient manufacturing and collaborative networks. The work also discusses how the responsibility for the various facets of sustainability can be distributed among the multiple entities involved in manufacturing. The study is based on a literature survey, complemented with the experience gained from various research projects and related initiatives in the area, and is organized according to various dimensions of Industry 4.0. A brief review of proposed approaches and indicators for measuring sustainability from the networked manufacturing perspective is also included. Finally, a set of key research challenges are identified to complement strategic research agendas in manufacturing.

The issue of urban sustainability is currently exceptionally up to date, and the sustainable development of cities has become an important topic on the political level. Many cities in the world are facing acute challenges concerning growing dangers to the environment and ensuring quality of life for their inhabitants. In connection with cities achieving their individual goals of sustainable development, urban sustainability indicator frameworks (USIFs) are becoming the subjects of attention. Such frameworks enable sustainability to be clearly measured and assessed. In this article, we analysed selected global and European USIFs in terms of their commonalities and differences, sustainability dimensions, thematic categories, and categorised indicators. Based on the analysis of the content of the reviewed frameworks, we compiled a list of generally recognised thematic categories within the four main dimensions of sustainable development, and we identified the key indicators of urban sustainability. Our review showed differences in the existing approaches that substantially contributed to the current inconsistencies in assessing and measuring sustainable development in cities. Our results provide an overview of this issue, e.g., to decision makers, and could concurrently serve as a generally applicable foundation for the creation of new urban sustainability indicator frameworks. We also point out the current trends and challenges in the domain of urban sustainability assessment.

The digitalized sustainability has become an inevitable element in the business strategies of organizations. Despite its huge potential, the implementation is a tedious and complicated task. Regardless of their prominent role in the oil & gas sector, the adaptation of sustainability in the spool fabrication industries is in the embryonic stage due to major impediments like organizational readiness, financial hurdles, lack of awareness and proper education, absence of stakeholder participation and lack of management support. In prior to the adaptation, the status quo of sustainability in the spool fabrication industry is to be assessed. The literature survey elucidated that there exists a dearth of studies pertinent to indicators of digitalized sustainable manufacturing in the spool fabrication industries. The objective of the current study is to assess the sustainability indicators in the spool fabrication business through a thorough examination of the literature and validation by professional opinion. The final list of indicators are accomplished by the expert’s opinion for exclusion of insignificance and inclusion of specific ones. The final list encompasses 9 Environmental indicators, 8 Economic Indicators and 10 Social Indicators which will be beneficial for developing sustainable strategies and serve as guidelines for the implementation of sustainable practices in spool fabrication industry.