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This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book defines the new field of "Bioeconomy" as the sustainable and innovative use of biomass and biological knowledge to provide food, feed, industrial products, bioenergy and ecological services. The chapters highlight the importance of bioeconomy-related concepts in public, scientific, and political discourse. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the authors outline the dimensions of the bioeconomy as a means of achieving sustainability. The authors are ideally situated to elaborate on the diverse aspects of the bioeconomy. They have acquired in-depth experience of interdisciplinary research through the university’s focus on “Bioe...
The world is digitising as the need for low-carbon transitions gains urgency. Decarbonising energy requires the digital process control of energy production, transmission and end use. Diversified electrification across sectors requires real-time digital coordination of distributed energy production, At the same time, digitisation is accompanied by significant increases in energy demand, partly compensated through energy efficiency gains. The emergent linkages between digitisation and decarbonisation that constitute and enable the twin transition are the subject of this book. The collection features authors from across the social sciences who situate digitisation and low-carbon energy transitions in the socio-technical and political economic contexts in which they unfold, to offer insights on the dynamics and contingencies of digitisation in and beyond the energy sector. This is an open access book.
Frequently enabled by digitalization, great transformations are taking place in socio-technical systems such as energy, telecommunications, and mobility. These transformations indicate widespread shifts in societal infrastructure systems, rearranging relations between governments, industries, NGOs, and consumers. In this context, the question of trust in systems – as introduced by sociologists Luhmann, Coleman and Giddens – acquires new urgency, as yet uncommented upon in trust research, or socio-technical systems debates. Focusing on the energy sector, Patrick Sumpf analyzes the meanings of system and trust to develop a framework for both theoretical and empirical research, which is synthesized into an “Architecture of Trust” in systems.
Should we ban war robots or are they something we might want? What can computer games tell us about our morals? Is it OK to love a robot? What is ethical design in the digital world? How do we need to regulate the algorithms that impact our lives? The digital transition puts our ideas about morality to the test, presenting us with new questions in all areas of life: politics, economy, social life, communication, entertainment. In twenty contributions, experts from Europe, America and Asia rise to the challenge of finding answers to some of the new issues confronting us. The authors offer new perspectives on topics like robots for eldercare, autonomous vehicles, personal drones or data ethics. They present their ideas on how we, as a society, can deal with the digital challenges to our ethics and values. Their contributions provide insights into highly topical reflections on what is morally right in our digital era. Above all, they are an invitation to think and to join the discussion.
This book addresses the challenges of planning sustainable freight transport systems (road and air) in a time when the industry faces increasing pressure from environmental limits, climate change, carbon emission targets, bottlenecks in oil supply, infrastructure shortages and urban congestion. The author examines sustainable freight transport over the last 45 years on three continents, and includes developments on transport economics, logistics and transport geography as well as environmental economics. Readers will gain valuable insight on a number of practices and methodologies that will assist in making their systems more sustainable with fewer negative environmental effects at both the local and global level.
Bioeconomy is credited as being one of the key pillars for the FAO Strategic Framework 2022–2031 to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. [Author] More than 60 countries and regions have a dedicated bioeconomy or bioscience strategy today, and many more are already implementing the bioeconomy with plans and programmes, often also attempting to monitor and evaluate the progress towards the transition. [Author] Moreover, where trade-offs exist between different sustainability objectives, the bioeconomy offers an opportunity to realign the economy with the biosphere and account for the trade-offs in a holistic way. [Author] This toolbox provides a methodology to guide ...
This volume offers an insight into contemporary communication studies, as seen through the lens of qualitative research. It presents existing studies on qualitative research, current research programs, and trends for future expansion of this methodological approach. It also offers a series of practical examples of applying methods and techniques of qualitative research, to teach readers about the social world and to answer pressing problems related to applied communication. In terms of research, the studies within the book use focus-group interviews, in-depth interviews, qualitative content analyses, critical discourse analyses, and dispositif analyses. The volume covers areas such as education, public relations, advertising, strategic communication, heritage and museum management and intercultural dialogue. It will be a useful aid for students of qualitative research in the social sciences and humanities, but also for professionals in the field of communication.
This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of technology assessment (TA) practices, theories, methods and cultures across the globe. Highlighting the significant influence of rapidly changing technology on human life and development, it examines diverse perspectives on how TA can be developed to better meet the challenges of the future. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.
This doctoral dissertation presents a model to evaluate trade-offs between the energetic, economic, and environmental lifecycle performance of building projects. The model is explained so as to be replicable. The model is then applied for decision-making on different strategies for existing buildings in Germany. Results from the case-study show that current state-of-the-art building strategies considerably increase the risk of missing climate change mitigation targets in exchange to a relatively small economic improvement over innovative building strategies.