The conception, design, and implementation of sustainable development strategies in an organization aims at meeting and balancing economic, social, and environmental needs of internal and external stakeholders. While the principles and fundamentals of sustainability assist during the conception and design phases, the implementation process of management strategies – impacted directly or indirectly by internal and external factors – may identify areas of competitive advantages or challenges that would impede the projects and organizations’ performance targets. An organization is not an isolated entity and its performance is often compared against others in the market arena; therefore, assessment tools, benchmarking processes, and reporting strategies become essential for the understanding of the efforts made towards the implementation of plan, policies, and programs at the organization and project levels. A framework for a hybrid process-criterion benchmarking methodology is proposed in this paper. The framework integrates the Rank Xerox benchmarking process and the Wa-Pa-Su project sustainability rating system assessment methodology. The proposed hybrid process-criterion benchmarking methodology encourages the diversification in the development and implementation of sustainable and environmental rating systems in industry contexts (e.g., oil and gas, mining, heavy industrial, and energy) and aims for the improvement of existing sustainability performance assessment and reporting practices. It also assists the quantitative assessment process of advances and/or setbacks in sustainability performance and the implementation of continuous performance improvement programs. 相似文献
As environmental problems and pressures on natural resources escalate, awareness building and efforts to protect natural areas have also became a major goal to ensure sustainability. Ecotourism is one of the major activities to protect natural and cultural resources, while also providing economic benefits to both local people and government. Successful ecotourism planning is a function of establishing sound goals and criteria. In this paper, we have presented the example of Igneada, Turkey, as a case to elaborate this point. Igneada a coastal town, located on the north-west Black Sea region of Turkey, was declared a national park in 2007. The park is well known for its longos forests (flooded), lagoons, endemic and endangered species, and wildlife. However, currently, unsustainable economic activities, overgrazing, and urbanization cause threats to its sensitive ecosystems. Promoting ecotourism is a sustainable approach to balance economic, social, and environmental aspects in the development of Igneada.
The aim of this study is to define a set of ecotourism criteria and propose an ecotourism vision for Igneada. The methodology in this research involves field observations and a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis with an Analytical Hierarchy Process. A survey study is conducted with both local people and experts to define a framework to generate a priority ranking for ecotourism-planning decision. The research generated 5 main criteria and 14 subcriteria, among which ‘Proposal of Igneada in Turkey’s 2023 Tourism Strategy Plan’ was the highest ranked opportunity for ecotourism planning and development in the town. 相似文献
Three sets of nonlinear similarity functions for strong stability are selected to compare their performance in bulk parameterization.
To uncover their advantages and disadvantages, theoretical and measurement analyses are made with four profile metrics and
the Deacon number technique. Main disadvantages include the negligence of the different transfer efficiency between momentum
and heat, the flux cutoff due to the upper limit in gradient Richardson number (Ri) and the ignorance of limited stability range where the dimensionless gradient functions ( and ) approach constants. Accordingly, three suggestions are made for future improvement. First, the functions for wind velocity
and potential temperature should have the same function form, but with different coefficients. Second, and should approach constants only within a certain stability range. Third, the limit value in Ri should be avoided to widen their applicability in flux modeling. Furthermore, quantitative comparisons in transfer coefficients
for moment and sensible heat (CD and CH) are made among the similarity functions in the bulk Richardson number (RiB) range 0 < RiB < 1. Generally, significant discrepancy is found, which may approach a factor of two and three at large RiB in CD and CH, respectively. Finally, a new recommendation is made to one of the three sets, mainly because of its ability to predict CD and CH that decrease rather slowly in very stable conditions. 相似文献
Analysis of the structure and function of urban metabolic systems is an important goal of urban research. We used network pathways and network utility analysis to analyze the basic network structure of the urban metabolic system and the complex ecological relationships within the system, providing a new way to perform such research. Using four Chinese cities as examples, we developed an ecological network model of the urban metabolic system. By using network pathway analysis, we studied the changing relationships between metabolic length and the number of metabolic pathways, and between metabolic length and reachability. Based on the distribution of the number of metabolic pathways, we describe the basic structure and intercompartment relationships of the system. By using the sign distribution in the network utility matrix, we determined the ecological relationships and degree of mutualism between the compartments of the system. The basic components of the system consisted of the internal environment, the external environment, and the agricultural, industrial, and domestic sectors. With increasing metabolic length, the ecological relationships among the components of the system became more diverse, and the numbers of metabolic paths and their reachability improved. Although the basic network structure of the four cities was identical, the mutualism index differed. Beijing's mutualism index was superior to that of Shanghai, and much higher than those of Tianjin and Chongqing. By analyzing the structure and function of the urban metabolic system, we provide suggestions for optimizing the structure and adjusting the relationships, and propose methods for the application of ecological network analysis in future urban system research. 相似文献