Sharif Digital Repository

The sustainability of urban infrastructure is assessed in three integral economic, social, and environmental dimensions. This study focuses on advancing a design approach based on value through the optimization of the life-cycle cost of steel moment frames, considering sustainability indicators by utilizing endurance time method analysis.In this path, the dimensional specifications of steel frame sections are selected optimally using an automated process with the objective of minimizing the cost of the structure's life cycle as the objective function and code specifications as optimization constraints. The cost of the life cycle, includes material extraction and production, transportation,... 

Background: Sustainability is one of the most controversial issues in companies’ supply chain these days. Moreover, growing environmental, social, and ethical concerns have scrambled up the push of organizations to adopt sustainable business enforcement into their operations.Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine the current status of sustainability of supply chains and how it is measured. The goal of this study is to answer the research question: How organizations measure their sustainable supply chain performance with Key Performance Indicators? Method: To comprehensively answer the research question, a qualitative research approach was chosen, and the primary empirical data was... 

Nowadays, construction with earthen materials has become more widespread due to their advantages: low construction cost, low embodied energy, application of green materials, and recyclability. Rammed earth (RE) as a sustainable construction has been used worldwide for decades. They are built in many countries such as Australia, China, India, and many parts of Africa and Europe. The rammed earth materials are cheap, accessible, and green and provide good thermal buffering. Stabilizers such as cement and lime with high embodied energy are frequently used in rammed earth construction to enhance materials' mechanical properties and durability. Stabilizers in RE materials could affect the energy... 

Rammed earth (RE) is an eco-friendly building material and has been capturing special attention among researchers. Many of the recently studied RE additives are extremely resource- and energy-consuming. On the other hand, the usage of fly ash (FA), which is a sustainable replacement for cement, has been scarcely investigated in RE construction. In this paper, an experimental investigation was performed on the physical and mechanical properties of RE materials stabilized with the combination of cement and alkali-activated FA. This scrutiny consists of density measurements, pulse velocity tests, unconfined compression tests, and direct shear tests. Additionally, the carbon dioxide emission and... 

Traffic accidents around the world kill a large number of people every year, and their lightest consequences are temporary disabilities for citizens. According to the statistics, the number and severity of accidents have been growing, due to the expansion of cities and the human population there, and this increases the need to pay attention to traffic safety. One of the substantial subcategories of traffic safety research is public transportation. However, limited studies have been done in this field. One of the main modes of public transportation are buses, which bring more risk of accidents to passengers, due to their size and higher passenger capacity compared to passenger vehicles.... 

The issue of global warming and environmental protection is an issue whose importance becomes clearer every day and requires the cooperation of all stakeholders. One of the key stakeholders are consumers. A significant part of environmental pollution is directly or indirectly related to consumer behavior. Understanding the decision-making process and the influencing factors on consumer behavior will help policymakers and legislative bodies to design more effective programs to modify the consumption pattern. Extensive studies have been done on this subject in various research fields. Two theories of planned behavior and value, belief, and norm have been examined in various researches and in... 

Financial benefits are no longer the only decision makers’ criteria and they consider environmental and social merits due to the modern nature of management and international competing. As a result, sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) rises noticeably in popularity among academics for researching on it and industrialists for applying it. Having reviewed respective researches, The SSCM is addressed by an integrated approach in this rsearch for selecting green suppliers and finding optimal production plan in two phase. In first phase, thank to related literature, a framework including environmental criteria is purposed for evaluating suppliers by Analytic network process method (ANP).... 

To gain commercial competitive advantage in a constantly changing business environment, demand forecasting is very crucial for an organization in order to make right decisions regarding manufacturing and inventory management. The objective of this thesis is to propose a forecasting technique which is modeled by artificial neural-fuzzy networks. The effectiveness of the proposed approach to the demand forecasting issue is demonstrated using real-word data. Then we investigate a suitability of a decision-making model for airline route planning based on the so called “Game Theory”. The model is helpful to decide whether a new route is, in fact, needed. Different case studies reveal that... 

Organizations now take several risks and many factors affect their anticipated performance. The origins of these risk could be external such as Interest rate, political and social changes and change in governing laws and regulations or could be internal such as operational risk, information risks and strategic risks. Enterprise risk management (ERM) as a holistic approach to risk management has been recently used by most organizations. Prior researches on ERM efficiency have inconsistent results and there is a need for more meticulous scrutiny. In this research we examine the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a mediator in the relation between ERM implementation and firm’s... 

Today, with the expansion of business relations at international levels, there are many organizations that operate in global supply chains. Activities at such levels face new types of challenges in various fields of "supply chain management" pillars, of which "supplier selection" is one of them. The possibility of unexpected events, the need to comply with environmental protection laws, as well as the need to take into account social considerations, are among the things that have increased by being in larger supply chains, making it challenging to provide the basic resources needed in such chains and forcing their managers to considering considerations other than what they have always... 

Traffic is a major contributor to emissions in many large cities with severe air pollution. Experience in London, Milan, and Stockholm shows that charging for the use of roads can be effective in reducing emissions, as well as congestion. This study examines the use of predictive cordon tolls based on weather forecasts to reduce ambient air pollution and congestion. Travelers choose their destinations inside or outside the cordon, and whether to drive or take public transport. Passenger vehicles are divided into three classes according to their emission characteristics, and higher tolls are imposed on more polluting vehicles. The Box model of emission dispersion is used to predict air... 

One of the ways to solve the problem of water scarcity in the agricultural sector is the development of the greenhouse. Using greenhouse and control of its internal conditions can increase productivity and reduce water consumption. But the issue that needs to be noted is higher energy consumption in greenhouses in comparison to traditional agriculture. The purpose of the present research is to evaluate the various technologies of supplying water and energy with a view to the climate, type of equipment and economic parameters. An analytical tool for designing and operation of the greenhouse have been developed and presented that may be applied in greenhouse sector. It is possible to evaluate... 

Pre-fabrication of building components, as a level of industrial building, is an innovative method of construction, which is widely used in developed countries nowadays. However, this method has accounted for a small percentage of the construction in developing countries like Iran. On the other hand, it is essential to consider sustainable development with the incidence of issues such as degradation of natural resources and ecosystems, pollution, over population, injustice procedure, and decrease in quality of human life. Industrial building systems have a significant impact on improvement and expansion of sustainable development laws due to their potential characteristics. Hence, the... 

An increase of wastewater treatment plants and wastewater treatments methods have increased the importance of selection of best wastewater treatment alternative. This selection should not be merely based on the quality of effluent, but the whole factors (economic, environmental, technical and social factor) should be considered. Different methods for the assessment of wastewater treatment plants is used. For example, life cycle assessment is used for the evaluation of environmental impacts or cost-benefit analysis are used for economic analysis. But, for selection of the most sustainable technology whole factors should be evaluated together. Multi-criteria decision-making methods can be... 

Conservation of water and protection of water resources is considered as an important and fundamental element in sustainable development. In the southern regions of our country, access to fresh water is very difficult and it is very costly to supply. In Kish Island with an area of approximately 9000 Ha, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) is very important in terms of water supply and the environment and the natural ecosystem. Due to the confined and limited water resources available, and its reducing per capita, IWRM will become more important. In this regard,the Island's water resources (conventional and unconventional) need to be analyzed. Water systems can be modeled using... 

The purpose of this study is to introduce a new indicator to estimate the amount of irrigation water in excess of the need and also to determine the optimal irrigation pattern to reduce water loss in agriculture. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the major loss of fresh water takes place in agriculture, and the reduction of water resources is more significant in developing countries that do not have advanced agricultural equipment. One of the challenges in the studies related to reducing the amount of water used in agriculture is a lack of knowledge on the spatial distribution and temporal changes in water loss in a region. Although estimation of... 

During the last decades, the exponential population growth as well as the adverse impacts of climate change have brought about serious challenges in supplying freshwater demands. In this regard, buildings account for a considerable portion of freshwater withdrawal. Accordingly, urgent measures should be taken to tackle this crisis. Rainwater harvesting (RWH), Greywater recycling (GWR), and Hybrid rainwater greywater (HRG) systems are considered efficient substitute resources that are able to reduce the consumption of water supplied by centralized networks in buildings. Nonetheless, there is a vital need for the financial and technical assessment of these systems. Additionally, multiple... 

The main objective of this research is to provide a framework by which decision-makers can evaluate and compare alternatives for sustainable development planning under uncertain dynamic future considering the risk and uncertainty associated with human judgment as well as the uncertain future. This approach combines the Delphi method, fuzzy set theory, and a discrete multi-criteria method based on prospect theory (TODIM). TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for iterative MCDM) method is a particular multi-criteria approach based on the prospect theory. A qualitative Delphi technique is used to identify a set of qualitative sustainability criteria and to rate the alternatives accordingly. The... 

The objective of this research is to develop a mathematical model for analysis and design of airport cities. In this model, the interactions among the elements of an airport city -regarded as a complex system- will be analyzed, and the impact of the stakeholders’ requirements on the functional and physical architecture of the airport city will be investigated. So as the first step, the stakeholders of the system and their requirements are identified and classified. Second, the concept of operation of the airport city is investigated, and then the architecture of the system is modeled as a queuing network. So that each element of the airport city is regarded as a service center, including the... 

In This article, we aimed to estimate impact of dual sourcing strategy on environmental implication and show how this strategy can ameliorate the emission of greenhouse gases. For this purpose, first we define comprehensive NLP models for splitting order problem with carbon emission cap and carbon emission Trade-Cap policy. Then customized sequential quadratic programming approach had been developed for solving these models. In addition, customized Genetic Algorithm validated this approach. Finally numerical results show that order splitting strategy cause to reduction in costs and emission at same time. Beside this outcome, we show the so-called Trade- Cap policy almost performs better than...