Sharif Digital Repository

Traditional fragmented and mechanistic science is unable to cope with issues about sustainability, as these are often related to complex, self-organizing systems. In the paper, sustainable development is seen as an unending process defined neither by fixed goals nor by specific means of achieving them. It is argued that, in order to understand the sources of and the solutions to modern problems, linear and mechanistic thinking must give way to non-linear and organic thinking, more commonly referred to as systems thinking. System Dynamics, which operates in a whole-system fashion, is put forward as a powerful methodology to deal with issues of sustainability. Examples of successful... 

Coupling of lattice Boltzmann (LB) and phase-field (PF) methods is discussed for simulation of a range of multiphase flow problems. The local relaxation and shifting operators make the LB method an attractive candidate for the simulation of the single-phase as well as multiphase flows. For simulating interface dynamics, LB methods require to be coupled with an appropriate scheme representing interfacial dynamics. To this end, we have used a model based on the order parameter, which could be either an index function or a phase-field variable, and coupled it with a LB solver for the simulation of various classes of complex multi-physics and multiphase flows. The LB method is used to compute... 

This paper is an endeavour to give an alternative definition for sustainable development (SD). It reviews the previous works in this area, and finds common grounds of these works, namely dynamism and quantification of the system. The paper then discusses dynamic stability and relates it to the concept of sustainability. It constructs an analogy between sustainability objectives and dynamic stability. The discussion continues to introduce chaos as one inherent characteristic of socio-economic systems because of their nonlinear behaviour. A new definition of SD is then proposed. It is applied to the dynamic models that describe the inter-relationships of environmental, economic and social... 

Purpose: Tackling the challenges of water scarcity requires comprehensive management according to financial, environmental and social issues. This paper aims to develop a planning approach for systematic decision-making and pay attention to uncertainties in water demand management and supply investment. Design/methodology/approach: This study presents a multiobjective optimization model to manage water resources based on the balance of supply and demand. The objectives of the model include economic, social and environmental (sustainable development) factors. The model achieves an optimal urban water portfolio by using a scenario tree. Findings: The mathematical goal programming (GP) in a... 

In the post-recession period, the business environment in developing countries is still relatively undesirable. Based on the reports published, the number of closed entrepreneurs are significantly more than the number of those newly established. These statistics also reflect that the development of entrepreneurship faces several challenges. However, a strategic management program must be accurately conducted to effectively control entrepreneurial challenges based on the limitation of time and financial resources. On the other hand, the program should provide an appropriate opportunity for competitiveness by producing better quality goods and services successfully marketed to consumers. The... 

A part of resilience and sustainability in any urban environment is establishing and maintaining health. Sustainability in health is a dynamic process in which growth of physical, mental, and social health is guaranteed. A city is sustainable when all aspects of life, such as economy, environment, health, and infrastructure, are well defined and very often subjected to optimization  

In the 21st century, the world population is growing at a spiraling pace. Much of this growth is occurring in developing countries, where access to food, sanitary water, education, and health is severely limited. The ever-increasing urbanization highlighted the need for sustainable development based on human-environment interaction. The excessive and unplanned expansion of cities has resulted in numerous environmental predicaments due to clearly emphasized economic issues at the expense of social and environmental concerns. The most significant features of megacities are indicated in this paper and the environmental, social, physical, and economic criteria are addressed in order to attain... 

There is limited research that considers the sustainability aspect of the projects’ schedule. The present study proposes a model to cover this gap by considering sustainable development criteria. A multi-objective model with four objective functions, including minimizing cost, risk, and socio-environmental impacts, has been presented to decrease the project’s delay. Since some of the parameters are considered under conditions of uncertainty for the proximity of problems to real projects, the robust programming method is used to deal with the uncertainty, and the epsilon-constraint method was applied to solve the multi-objective model. Several scenarios are also defined to analyze the... 

Sustainable development is significantly contributing the environmental degradation due to improvements in financial sector in One Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) region. Thus, the present research work constructs the sustainable development index for BRI. Afterwards, it unfolds the nexus of sustainable development-environmental degradation and also evaluates the role of financial development indicators in BRI economies. By utilizing the robust mean group, the present study quantifies the long-run marginal impacts of sustainable development, financial development indicators, energy consumption, and urban sprawl on environmental degradation, respectively. The marginal impacts infer an inverted... 

Purpose: Tackling the challenges of water scarcity requires comprehensive management according to financial, environmental and social issues. This paper aims to develop a planning approach for systematic decision-making and pay attention to uncertainties in water demand management and supply investment. Design/methodology/approach: This study presents a multiobjective optimization model to manage water resources based on the balance of supply and demand. The objectives of the model include economic, social and environmental (sustainable development) factors. The model achieves an optimal urban water portfolio by using a scenario tree. Findings: The mathematical goal programming (GP) in a... 

This paper is an endeavor to quantify the concept of sustainable transportation. The prevailing idea in the context of sustainable development (SD) emphasizes on the reduction of transportation demand in order to reduce the environmental and social consequences of it. Nevertheless, in the current paper using a measure for SD and based on the conformity of the growths of all sectors with transportation supply and demand, the countries are comparatively studied. The measure, elasticity, for each two variables indicates the extent to which those two variables have been changing consistently. Indeed the elasticity values are measures of a "harmonic development" representing sustainability. The... 

In this paper, sustainability with respect to transportation sector of the selected countries has been evaluated. Seventy nine countries were initially selected for detailed analysis for the period of 1980-1995. The key dimensions of sustainable development i.e. social, environmental, and economic characteristics are used. Firstly, a set of sustainable transportation indicators has been introduced. Then composite indices of three non-transport groups with respect to four transport modes are calculated. The composite indices are aggregated by the concordance analysis technique to achieve comprehensive transport sustainability indices of countries, and according to these values, the countries... 

Construction industry is one of the most important fractions of economy in developing countries. This industry consumes enormous amounts of raw materials and produces considerable waste. The optimization of construction material usage not only saves costs but also can significantly contribute towards Sustainable Development. This article addresses Construction Waste Management as an approach to improve construction productivity, with a focus on its application in developing countries. The status of construction waste production and management in Tehran metropolitan, Iran-as a developing country-is investigated and compared with the status of developed countries. Subsequently, barriers to...