- Go to the Sessions
-
- a. Environmental Sustainability
- b. Corporate Sustainability Strategy
- c. Social Values for a Sustainable Economy
- d. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources
- e. Sustainable Urban Development
- f. Sustainable Development Policy and Practice
- g. Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Innovation
- h. Remote Sensing for Sustainable Management of Land and Biodiversity, Sustainable Agriculture
- i. Related Topics
- Event Details
Call for Papers
The World Sustainability Forum 2012 (WSF-2012) will cover timely research topics concerned with sustainability and sustainable development. The conference will include nine topical sessions focusing on:
1. Environmental Sustainability (Section A).
2. Corporate Sustainability Strategy (Section B).
3. Social Values for a Sustainable Economy (Section C).
4. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources (Section D).
5. Sustainable Urban Development (Section E).
6. Sustainable Development Policy and Practice (Section F).
7. Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Innovation (Section G).
8. Remote Sensing for Sustainable Management of Land and Biodiversity (Section H)
9. General and Related topics (Section I)
This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference aims to examine, explore and critically engage with issues related to recent insights and advances in these topics. In particular, the conference will encourage both theoretical and practical debates surrounding environmental, economical and social contexts for those who want to go beyond the buzzword.
The conference will be completely free of charge―both to attend and for authors to publish―and is sponsored by MDPI and the scientific journal Sustainability. Selected papers will be published in the journal Sustainability.
The 2nd World Sustainability Forum Conference will be held at www.sciforum.net, a new platform developed by MDPI to organize electronic conferences for scholars.
Please submit your abstract with max 2500 character (in English) by September 10, 2012. Abstracts should be submitted online at https://sciforum.net/conference/wsf2/page/call. All submissions will be reviewed by our scientific committee. For accepted abstracts, a full draft paper should be submitted by October 15, 2012.
Paper Submission Guidelines
For information about the procedure for submission, peer-review, revision and acceptance of conference proceedings papers, please refer to the section "Instruction for authors":
https://sciforum.net/conference/wsf2/page/instructions
Conference Chairs
Marc Rosen
[Not defined]
[email protected]
Sessions
A. Environmental SustainabilityB. Corporate Sustainability Strategy
C. Social Values for a Sustainable Economy
D. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources
E. Sustainable Urban Development
F. Sustainable Development Policy and Practice
G. Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Innovation
H. Remote Sensing for Sustainable Management of Land and Biodiversity, Sustainable Agriculture
I. Related Topics
Instructions for Authors
Submissions should be done by the authors online by registering with www.sciforum.net, and using the "New Submission" function once logged into system.
1. Scholars interested in participating with the conference can submit their abstract (about 200-300 words covering the areas of manuscripts for the proceedings issue) online on this website until 10 September 2012.
2. The Conference Committee will pre-evaluate, based on the submitted abstract, whether a contribution from the authors of the abstract will be welcome for 2nd World Sustainability Forum.
All authors will be notified by 25 September 2012 about the acceptance of their abstract.
3. If the abstract is accepted for this conference, the author is asked to submit his manuscript, optionally along with a PowerPoint and/or video presentation of his/her paper, until the submission deadline of 15 October 2012.
4. The manuscripts and presentations will be available on https://sciforum.net/conference/wsf2/page/call for discussion and rating during the time of the conference 1 – 30 November 2012.
5. The Open Access Journal Sustainability will publish the proceedings of the conference as a Special Issue. After the conference, the Conference Committee will select manuscripts that may be included for publication in this Special Issue. Five of the manuscripts with the highest scientific quality will be published free of charge following a successful peer-review.
Manuscripts for the proceedings issue must have the following organization:
First page:
Title
Full author names
Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors' e-mail addresses
Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
Methods
Results and Discussion
Conclusions
(Acknowledgements)
References
Manuscripts should be prepared in MS Word or any other word processor and should be converted to the PDF format before submission. The publication format will be PDF. The manuscript should count at least 3 pages (incl. figures, tables and references). There is no page limit on the length, although authors are asked to keep their papers as concise as possible.
Authors are encouraged to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint or similar software, to be displayed online along with the Manuscript. Slides, if available, will be displayed directly in the website using Sciforum.net's proprietary slides viewer. Slides can be prepared in exactly the same way as for any traditional conference where research results can be presented. Slides should be converted to the PDF format before submission so that our process can easily and automatically convert them for online displaying.
Besides their active participation within the forum, authors are also encouraged to submit video presentations. If you are interested in submitting, please contact the conference organizer – [email protected] to get to know more about the procedure. This is an unique way of presenting your paper and discuss it with peers from all over the world. Make a difference and join us for this project!
Submission: Manuscripts should be submitted online at https://sciforum.net/conference/wsf2/page/call by registering and logging in to this website.
Accepted File Formats:
MS Word: Manuscript prepared in MS Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in MS Word, the World Sustainability Forum Microsoft Word template file must be used. Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and make the layout very difficult.
LaTeX: ensure to send a copy of your manuscript as a PDF file also, if you decided to use LaTeX. When preparing manuscripts in LaTeX, please use the MDPI LaTeX template files.
Manuscript Preparation
Paper Format: A4 paper format, the printing area is 17.5 cm x 26.2 cm. The margins should be 1.75 cm on each side of the paper (top, bottom, left, and right sides).
Formatting / Style: The paper style of the Journal Sustainability should be followed. You may download a template file to prepare your paper. The full titles and the cited papers must be given. Reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [4] or [1-3], and all the references should be listed separately and as the last section at the end of the manuscript.
Authors List and Affiliation Format: Authors' full first and last names must be given. Abbreviated middle name can be added. For papers written by various contributors a corresponding author must be designated. The PubMed/MEDLINE format is used for affiliations: complete street address information including city, zip code, state/province, country, and email address should be added. All authors who contributed significantly to the manuscript (including writing a section) should be listed on the first page of the manuscript, below the title of the article. Other parties, who provided only minor contributions, should be listed under Acknowledgments only. A minor contribution might be a discussion with the author, reading through the draft of the manuscript, or performing English corrections.
Figures, Schemes and Tables: Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color. Full color graphics will be published free of charge. Figure and schemes must be numbered (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, etc.) and a explanatory title must be added. Tables should be inserted into the main text, and numbers and titles for all tables supplied. All table columns should have an explanatory heading. Please supply legends for all figures, schemes and tables. The legends should be prepared as a separate paragraph of the main text and placed in the main text before a table, a figure or a scheme.
Potential Conflicts of Interest
It is the authors' responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state here "The authors declare no conflict of interest." This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement preceding the "Acknowledgments" and "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. Financial support for the study must be fully disclosed under "Acknowledgments" section. It is the authors' responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state here "The authors declare no conflict of interest." This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement preceding the "Acknowledgments" and "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. Financial support for the study must be fully disclosed under "Acknowledgments" section.
MDPI AG, the publisher of the Sciforum.net platform, is an open access publisher. We believe that authors should retain the copyright to their scholarly works. Hence, by submitting a Communication paper to this conference, you retain the copyright of your paper, but you grant MDPI AG the non-exclusive right to publish this paper online on the Sciforum.net platform. This means you can easily submit your paper to any scientific journal at a later stage and transfer the copyright to its publisher (if required by that publisher).
List of accepted submissions (82)
Id | Title | Authors | Presentation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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sciforum-000256 | Urban Architecture as Connective-collective Intelligence. Nodes and Resources of 'Sustainable Developments' in Times of Crisis |
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Margot Pellegrino ,
Marco Simonetti ,
Luigi Oliva
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N/A |
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During the 20th century, with the advent of the industrial society and globalization, the language of planning changed according to the shifts in perception and use of physical space. By borrowing terms and spatial forms from biology and cybernetics, it increased their original semantic connotations. This paper outlines when the definition of architecture as connective-collective intelligence moved from cognitive sciences to urban design, where spontaneous and collective initiatives that redefined communication forms of urban life multiplied and intensified, both in developments and public space until it even affected the procedure of transmission of traditional knowledge. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sciforum-002677 | Polifunctional Zoning as a Factor of Urban Sustainability | , | N/A |
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Cities are becoming a power of human development and this has made a problem of optimal and sustainable use of city territory. In 1987 Gro Harlem Brundland commission suggested to make sure a better life quality for current and future generations and paradigm of sustainable and balanced development was aroused on this background. However urban planners do not have a solid attitude on which factors most influence the level of life quality in the cities. This is because factors of market, inertia of development and complexity of urban structure make negative environment to realization of sustainable and balanced development. Sustainable and balanced development can be reached only by regulative management. It is planned by establishing functions of city territories. Nevertheless in the most of countries mono-functional zoning is dominant, what makes set of a single function and this one-way use makes overuse of territory. Poly-functional zoning is an opportunity to follow principles of sustainable development, because withdrawal of zoning can establish all functions. This can impoverish territory in different cultural, environmental, economic, infrastructural aspects. Sustainable development studies are performed as indicators of pollution, energy, environment studies, but are mostly out of sight regulation of urban functions and management. Spatial integrity was dismissed as a part of mono-functional zoning. Therefore in this article we analyze city structure and zoning, which are influenced by permanent material stream. The analysis is based on the idea of metabolistical analysis of the city. In biology metabolism is a unit of chemical reaction in each cell. That let cells to grow, to multiple, to react to environment, to move. This some analogy is used in metabolistical research of the cities and lets us understand how to develop cities in a sustainable and balanced way. Cities transform energy (minerals, environment and information) to antropogenized system with human biomass and their ideas, and with formed unacceptable object (waste). This is the system of input, recast, storage and output, which is like a fusion of social, economic, technical and landscape processes. They form characteristic of functional zones and priorities of the sustainable use of the zone. We recommend that poly-functional zones can be show by territorial graphs methods. As an example of such methodological approach results of poly-functional zoning research in Kaunas city are presented. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sciforum-002768 | China and Renewable Energy: a Policy Analysis. Focus on Wind Energy | , | N/A |
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Starting from the 21st Century, the world has become increasingly concerned with the global environmental degradation issue, which appears to be in a state of irreversible crisis. It has been twenty years since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and humanity is still on the road to achieving a sustainable future. Although governments are eager to find a concrete solution for the global environmental emergency which jeopardizes the prospects of future generations; the global decision making process has found difficulties in achieving consensus. This paper will analyze the sustaining policies, which support and encourage the increase of renewable energy consumption and production in China. This country plays today a major role in the struggle against climate change due to the impact of its fast economic and demographic growth. In order to effectively highlight the policies and goals of renewable energy in China, wind energy will be analyzed as a case study. China is promoting renewable energy with the support of its policy, reaching diverse results on the consumption and the production availability of it. Indeed in 2010 China reached the first global position in production and consumption of renewable energy, where the production is much higher than the consumption. There is a gap between what the country produces and what it is able to use. As China has a big capacity on wind energy development; it is important to understand why China can\'t consume as much energy as produce. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sciforum-002771 | Bibliographic Analysis of the Major Research Topic on Sustainable Development and Security in Developing Countries | , | N/A |
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The aim of this paper is to analyze the research in developing countries, in sustainable development and in security of the population. Today sustainable development strategies require further research and promote security in these countries. This paper provides a first temporal and content analysis of the available scientific research in developing countries The analysis identify research areas related to security of the population and associated with sustainable development, among which has a significant place the health area. The results show that research on developing countries remains low but has a growing trend over time. Furthermore, sustainable development has a low interest in research (4%) of these countries, while security studies are moderately important (17%). The research effort is insufficient and unbalanced in relation to its contents to fight poverty. Therefore the proposals of Agenda 21, World Bank and OMG can be prejudicated in relation to sustainable development and fight against global poverty. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sciforum-002806 | The Sustainable Performance of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise: Case from Latvia | , | N/A |
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An enterprise as a core of any economic system has a great impact on sustainable development of a state or region.The operations and development of an enterprise as an economic entity depends on various factors, identification and evaluation of which is crucial for any enterprise. In the opinion of the authors the enterprise\'s performance is influenced by factors which can be grouped into three blocks: macroeconomic factors, demand factors and structure of industry sector. The authors present the conceptual model of factors influencing enterprise\'s performances and analyse factors\' interactions and manifestations of their impact. In order to study an attitude of entrepreneurs towards influence of external environment factors, the authors carried out empiric research with an aim to assess influence of sixteen external environment factors on performance of the enterprise. Besides, the authors create a model of sustainable performing of SMEs on the base of the results obtained from qualitative and quantitative research. External and internal business environment factors influencing effective performance of the enterprise and performance indicators that are to be supervised principally, according to the enterprise life cycle phases are included in the model. The developed model of SME sustainable performing has been tested in the sector of printing in manufacturing industry. Calculations and data processing were carried out using Microsoft Excel and EViews software. |
List of Authors (137)
Proceedings & Editors
Chair of the 2nd World Sustainability Forum
Scientific Advisory Committee
Organizing Committee
Dr. Brietta Pike (Basel, Switzerland)
Mr. Thomas Schurter (Basel, Switzerland)
List of Keynotes & Videos
Sustainable city
Energy Sustainability
Industry location assessment for multinational enterprises
A. Environmental Sustainability
Prof. Dr. Miklas Scholz, University of Salford, UK
Dr. Judith Tisdall, La Trobe University, Australia
Session Chairs
Professor Miklas Scholz, The University of Salford
Professor Judy Tisdall
B. Corporate Sustainability Strategy
Prof. Dr. John P. Ulhøi, Aarhus University, Denmark
Session Chair
Professor John Ulhoi
C. Social Values for a Sustainable Economy
Dr. Michael J. Heckenberger, University of Florida, USA
Prof. Dr. Terence J. Centner, University of Georgia, USA
Due to evidence that current economies are unsustainable, various efforts are being made to develop sustainable economies. Yet, proponents struggle to define what is meant by sustainability, particularly, in relation to contested social and cultural values. The session welcomes ideas for social values that might be incorporated into parameters for sustainable economies on topics that could include equity, empathy, education, human rights, poverty, health, environmental qualities, energy, and nutrition. We welcome ideas for a dialogue on socio-cultural values, including diverse gender, race and class-based differences, which should be considered in devising parameters for sustainability studies, such as climate change, ecological diversity and integrity, socio-economic development, urbanism, and environmental justice.
Session Chairs
Professor Michael Heckenberger
Professor Terence Centner
D. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources
Prof. Dr. Jesus Martinez-Frias, CSIC-INTA, Spain
This session aims to merge two topics of maximum scientific, technological and social-cultural interest (the so called twin pillars of sustainable energy policy): the objective of efforts to diminish the amount of energy required to provide products and services and the energy which comes from natural resources, which are naturally replenished . Energy is one of the hot themes of Rio+20 where one of the key questions is: How can we provide access to clean energy for everyone, and make sure that the energy we produce doesn’t contribute to climate change? It is well known that the more we use renewable energy, the more we benefit the environment, which has positive returns for everybody’s way of life. The session will describe the state-of-the-art, highlighting recent developments in both “pillars”. We also welcome contributions on advances in analytical techniques as well as other multidisciplinary issues from an earth and planetary perspective.
Session Chairs
Professor Jesus Martinez-Frias, Instituto de Geociencias, IGEO (CSIC-UCM)
Professor Jesus Martinez-Frias, Instituto de Geociencias, IGEO (CSIC-UCM)
E. Sustainable Urban Development
Dr. Michael J. Heckenberger, University of Florida, USA
The idea of sustainable urban development dates to the early 20th century, but radical 20th century changes in global population (<10% in 1900; >50 % in 2012) and associated size and distribution of cities and land-use, even in most remote areas of the globe, underscores the critical importance of urban sustainability, including global ecology and climate change. This session addresses major themes in urban studies in terms of sustainability, such as history and form, urban development and planning, environmental and social justice, socio-cultural diversity, public space and land-use, and the aesthetics and representations of urban life, and the tension between scientific models and applications and the diversity and socio-cultural rights of local groups and contexts, including minorities, marginalized groups and other vulnerable groups that comprise the majority of people affected by contemporary urbanism.
Session Chair
Professor Michael Heckenberger
F. Sustainable Development Policy and Practice
Prof. Dr. Christopher Koroneos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Prof. Dr. Sharon Megdal, University of Arizona, USA
The term \'sustainable development\' was defined by the report entitled Our Common Future released in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), the United Nations Brundtland Commission, as the development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. The concept of sustainable development takes into consideration the three constituent parts: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and sociopolitical sustainability. All these three dimensions must be given equal weight. Thus, some key issues that must be taken into consideration to ensure that development was sustainable, could be:
• Water Issues
• Energy
• Food Security
• Environmental Degradation
• Climate Change
• Population and Human Resources
• Industry
• Issues of Urban Living
• North-South Dialogue
• Economic Development and Environment
• Trade and Environment
Session Chairs
Professor Christopher Koroneos
Dr. Sharon Megdal, University of Arizona
G. Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Innovation
Prof. Dr. Marc A. Rosen, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada
Show all published submissions (4) Hide published submissions (4)
Submissions
List of Papers (4) Toggle list
H. Remote Sensing for Sustainable Management of Land and Biodiversity, Sustainable Agriculture
Prof. Dr. Daniele Riccio, University of Napoli Federico II, Italy
Session Chair
Professor Daniele Riccio