The Dynamics of Regions and Networks in Industrial Ecosystems

The Dynamics of Regions and Networks in Industrial Ecosystems
Author: Matthias Ruth
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1848449372

Industrial ecology provides a rigorous and comprehensive description of human production and consumption processes in the larger context of environmental and socioeconomic change. This volume offers methodologies for such descriptions, with contributions covering both basic and advanced analytical concepts and tools to explore the dynamics of industrial ecosystems, concentrating specifically on regions and networks. Each of the book s three parts contains an introduction by a leader in the field, as well as chapters ranging from conceptual models to case study applications. The first part offers an introduction to the main themes and issues surrounding regional and networked industrial ecosystems. The subsequent two parts broaden and deepen the discussion with emphasis on the regional and network characters relevant for analysis and management. The scale of issues ranges from buildings to regions to entire nations, with methods that range from input output analysis to computer-assisted simulation games. Researchers in the fields of industrial ecology, ecological economics, environmental and energy policy, environmental engineering, and resource and environmental economics will find this comprehensive book of great interest.

Changing Stocks, Flows and Behaviors in Industrial Ecosystems

Changing Stocks, Flows and Behaviors in Industrial Ecosystems
Author: Matthias Ruth
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 184844513X

This book marks an important contribution by Matthias Ruth and Brynhildur Davidsdottir to the developing literature that seeks to integrate our understanding of physical and environmental systems, the built human environment, economics, and complexity. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in industrial ecology, material flow assessment, and the state of the world generally. Braden R. Allenby, Arizona State University, US This volume offers the state-of-the-art in dynamic modeling of the functioning of firms in industrial ecosystems. The systematic connection between insights from engineering, ecological, behavioral and organization theories makes the insights policy-relevant. The authors combine an impressive knowledge of innovative concepts and modeling techniques with data on real-world industrial ecosystems. Jeroen van den Bergh, Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Industrial ecology provides a consistent material and energetic description of human production and consumption processes in the larger context of environmental and socioeconomic change. The contributors to this book offer methodologies for such descriptions, focusing on the dynamics associated with stocks of materials and capital, flows of raw materials, intermediate products, desired outputs and wastes, as well as the associated changes in behaviors of producers, consumers and institutions. The book begins by presenting analogies and analytical concepts pertinent to understanding the dynamics of industrial ecosystems, and offers a reflection on the use of those analogies and concepts, their limitations and potential extensions. Part II focuses on stocks and flows dynamics at the firm and industry level. Part III turns to the use of agent-based modeling and organization behavior theory to better understand and represent the dynamics within firms and the larger institutional environment within which they choose to use materials, energy and technology. Connections are made throughout between those dynamics and the associated changes in environmental quality. The concluding chapter addresses how to change a firm s environmental performance from within. Researchers and students in the fields of industrial ecology; resource and environmental economics; ecological economics; environmental, energy, and climate change policy; environmental engineering; and energy economics will find this comprehensive volume highly informative.

Sustainability: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives

Sustainability: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives
Author: Heriberto Cabezas
Publisher: Bentham Science Publishers
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2012-11-14
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 160805103X

The concept of sustainability is inherently multi-disciplinary because it concerns a complex system having economic, technological, ecological, political, and other perspectives. Consequently, any effort in the area of sustainability involves concepts, principles, and methods from engineering, the social sciences including economics and social psychology, the biological sciences including ecology, and the physical sciences. Sustainability: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives discusses multidisciplinary aspects of the salient concepts, principles, and methods relevant to sustainability in a coherent and comprehensive manner. Topics covered range from green engineering and sustainability metrics to infrastructure and environmental policy.

Handbook of Research methods and Applications in Environmental Studies

Handbook of Research methods and Applications in Environmental Studies
Author: Matthias Ruth,
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2015-08-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1783474645

This Handbook presents methods to advance the understanding of interdependencies between the well-being of human societies and the performance of their biophysical environment. It showcases applications to material and energy use; urbanization and tech

The Oxford Handbook of Business and the Natural Environment

The Oxford Handbook of Business and the Natural Environment
Author: Pratima Bansal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 717
Release: 2012
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199584451

This Handbook discusses the main issues, research, and theory on business and the natural environment, and how they impact on different business functions and disciplines

What Makes Clusters Competitive?

What Makes Clusters Competitive?
Author: Anil Hira
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0773589562

While global competitiveness is increasingly invoked as necessary for economic success stories, there are few answers available about how it can be achieved or maintained. The idea of stimulating industries to spur on economies is often proposed, but industrial policy can be seen as a boondoggle of government spending, and theorists of globalization are doubtful that such efforts can succeed in a world of fragmented supply chains. What Makes Clusters Competitive? tests fundamental theoretical hypotheses about what makes industries competitive in a globalized world by using the wine industries of several countries as case studies: Extremadura (Spain), Tuscany (Italy), South Australia, Chile, and British Columbia (Canada), Taking into account historical and location-specific characteristics, and drawing out policy lessons for other regions that would like to promote their industries, this volume demonstrates the value of applying cluster theory to understand market forces, while also describing the forces underlying the development of the wine industry in a range of different settings. An excellent resource for those interested in what makes industries succeed or struggle, What Makes Clusters Competitive? offers guidance for policymakers and the private sector on how to promote local industries. Contributors include David Aylward, Alexis Bwenge, Sara Daniele, F.J. Mesías Díaz, Christian Felzenstein, Husam Gabreldar, F. Pulido García, Sarah Giest, Elisa Giuliani, Andy Hira, Mike Howlett, A.F. Pulido Moreno, and Oriana Perrone.

Low Carbon Cities

Low Carbon Cities
Author: Steffen Lehmann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 534
Release: 2014-09-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317659139

Low Carbon Cities is a book for practitioners, students and scholars in architecture, urban planning and design. It features essays on ecologically sustainable cities by leading exponents of urban sustainability, case studies of the new directions low carbon cities might take and investigations of how we can mitigate urban heat stress in our cities’ microclimates. The book explores the underlying dimensions of how existing cities can be transformed into low carbon urban systems and describes the design of low carbon cities in theory and practice. It considers the connections between low carbon cities and sustainable design, social and individual values, public space, housing affordability, public transport and urban microclimates. Given the rapid urbanisation underway globally, and the need for all our cities to operate more sustainably, we need to think about how spatial planning and design can help transform urban systems to create low carbon cities, and this book provides key insights.

The Greening of Industrial Ecosystems

The Greening of Industrial Ecosystems
Author: National Academy of Engineering
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 1994-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309049377

In the 1970s, the first wave of environmental regulation targeted specific sources of pollutants. In the 1990s, concern is focused not on the ends of pipes or the tops of smokestacks but on sweeping regional and global issues. This landmark volume explores the new industrial ecology, an emerging framework for making environmental factors an integral part of economic and business decision making. Experts on this new frontier explore concepts and applications, including: Bringing international law up to par with many national laws to encourage industrial ecology principles. Integrating environmental costs into accounting systems. Understanding design for environment, industrial "metabolism," and sustainable development and how these concepts will affect the behavior of industrial and service firms. The volume looks at negative and positive aspects of technology and addresses treatment of waste as a raw material. This volume will be important to domestic and international policymakers, leaders in business and industry, environmental specialists, and engineers and designers.

The Dynamics of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

The Dynamics of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
Author: Allan O’Connor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2021-12-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000535932

This book aims to provide new approaches to analysing and thinking about how entrepreneurial ecosystems develop and evolve over time as well as shed light on the relatively unexplored area of entrepreneurship ecosystem dynamics. The concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems has emerged as a framework to understand the nature of places in which entrepreneurial activity flourishes. Time is fundamental to the analysis of the dynamics of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. New firm creation, survival, growth and demise all occur within a temporal context that is, over and within time. Systems approaches to research invariably model the influential effects of the actors and elements that shape, re-shape, maintain, shift and change the system itself. An entrepreneurial ecosystem point of view, therefore, is inherently time-dependent and provides an analytical framework that reveals how the number and diversity of entrepreneurial actors situated in a place and time influence the creation of new firms, their survival, growth, and ultimately the stability of markets and industry in a time and place. Whether for better or worse, the historic and present time dimensions underpin the functioning and trajectory of entrepreneurial ecosystem performances and how they are shaped over time. Each chapter in this edited volume outlines a particular perspective and/or a unique case drawn from a range of countries that collectively reveal the dynamics of an ever-changing entrepreneurial ecosystem. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development.