Quantitative Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Research for Sustainable Development Goals

✍ Scribed by Stefano Fantoni (editor), Nicola Casagli (editor), Cosimo Solidoro (editor), Marina Cobal (editor)

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 198
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This open access book focuses on how scientific methodologies can help industrial managers, entrepreneurs and policymakers handle the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in an efficient and realistic way. It also offers an operative scheme for scientists to overcome their discipline barriers. Is interdisciplinarity an intrinsic research value or is it merely instrumental for handling the increasing flux of open problems that sustainability poses to science?Can these problems of sustainability be solved with what the authors already know? Is it just a matter of having the right people at the table and giving them sufficient resources, or is it something more? Is meeting the needs of the present without compromising those of future generations a scientific definition of sustainable development? Questions similar to those posed in the sixties regarding complexity must be asked about sustainability today. In addition, the new data science includes powerful tools for making novelquantitative predictions about future sustainability indicators, an open problem that the book discusses. This book is primarily addressed to Ph.D. students, postdocs and senior researchers in the Life and Hard Science (LHS) and Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) disciplines, as well as professionals of the primary, secondary and tertiary industrial sectors.

✦ Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Contents
Part I Laboratory Structure
1 Sustainability Complex Network
Introduction
The Small–World Complex Network
The Sustainability Complex Network
From a Small to Large Networks
Regular Graph
Random Graph
From Unweighted to Weighted SCN
Conclusions and Perspectives
References
Part II The Blue Planet and the Ocean Sustainable Economy
2 Routes to Ocean Sustainability and Blue Prosperity in a Changing World: Guiding Principles and Open Challenges
Introduction
Blue Economy
Ecosystem Services
Integrating Blue Economy and Ecosystem
Economy for a Full World
Sustainability
Ocean Under Multiple Threats
Managing the Last Commons
Concluding Remarks
References
Part III Food Security and the Health of the Planet and Its Inhabitants
3 Sustainability, Agricultural Production, Science and Technology
References
4 Liver and Nutrition
References
Part IV Climate and Environmental Changes
5 Climate Modeling of the Anthropocene
Introduction
The Basic Structure of Today’s CSMs
The Process of Producing Twenty-First Century Climate Change Projections and the Assessment of Related Uncertainties
The Need and Challenge of Including an Interactive Human Component in Climate Models
References
Part V The New Data Science for Sustainability and Human Ecology
6 Quantitative Human Ecology: Data, Models and Challenges for Sustainability
Introduction
Conceptual Models
Data-Driven Computational Models: Network Science
Machine Learning
Challenges
References
7 Computations for Sustainability
Introduction
Mathematics for Sustainability
Real-Life Applications
Enhancement of Computational Performance
Conclusions
References
Part VI Energy Transition and Industrial Product Chains
8 Sustainability in the Energy System and in the Industrial System
The Industrial System and the Energy System
“Fuel and Engine” of all Human Activities
A Brief Historical View
Recent (R)evolutions
Central Role of the Human Element in Sustainability
Current Status of the Industrial System and the Energy System
A Critical View on Current Data
The Urgent Need for a Transition
Implementing the Transition
Measurement: Quantitative Indicators
Education: Communicating the Industry-Energy Transition
Key Enabling Technologies for the Transition
Economics of the Transition
Policy and Regulations
Conclusions
References
Part VII Sustainability Frames, Social Equity and the Right to Sustainability
9 Framing Sustainability
Sustainability in Frames
Sustainability Frames: Very Weak, Weak, Strong, Very Strong
The Very Weak Sustainability
The Weak Sustainability
The Strong Sustainability
The Very Strong Sustainability
In Summary: The Distinctive Elements of the Sustainability Frames
References
10 Natural Parks and Sustainable Development: A Theoretical Study
Introduction
Natural Parks and Sustainable Development
Park Supplying Goods: Searching for a Taxonomy
Governing Collective Goods: The Natural Park as a Place-Based Institution
Conclusions
References
11 The ‘Position’ of Social Sciences in Sustainability Issue. The Emblematic Case of Energy Transition
References
12 The Law of Sustainability
Introduction
The Legal Framework on Sustainability
The UN Development Goals
Climate and Corporations
Enforcing Sustainable Obligations from Below
Quantifying the Law? De-quantifying the SDGs?
The Dark Side of Numbers
What Law?
What to Do?
Part VIII Protection of the Earth Habitats with Space Tools
13 Protection of the Earth Habitats with Space Tools
Space Weather
Minor Bodies of the Solar System
Space is Really Interdisciplinary
The Laboratory for Quantitative Sustainability
Reference
Bibliography