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There is a need for rigorous research documenting the important role of school nurses in facilitating positive health outcomes among students. Poorly managed care can affect student absenteeism rates, which are associated with academic performance and school funding, and students in underresourced schools are at particularly higher risk of suffering chronic conditions (e.g., asthma, diabetes) that necessitate proper care and management. The San Jose Unified School District (SJUSD) Nurse Demonstration Project was developed as a five-year endeavor to expand school nursing and formally link school nurses to a school-based health clinic. The initiative provides for full-time school nurses at four elementary and middle schools in SJUSD, and a nurse practitioner at School Health Clinics of Santa Clara County. The objectives are to: (1) improve access to primary care and prevention services, specifically asthma and chronic condition management and (2) facilitate the establishment of a medical home for students. Evaluation of the project employs a mixed methods research design, including a logic model, an intervention and control study design (comparing outcome measures in the four demonstration schools with five “control” schools), parent, teacher, and school administrator feedback, systematic nurse reports, and quantitative analysis of school health and administrative data, including health conditions and absenteeism information. Key findings in Phase I of the project are discussed, including improvement in screening and referrals, follow-up care among students with asthma, and mean days absent due to illness. With increasing budget cuts to public schools, documenting the impact of full-time school nurses will remain crucial in leveraging support and resources for school health services. Findings of this project indicate that school nurses provide valuable services and could be a major player in providing and coordinating effective management and prevention of chronic disease among children.

More significant reductions in residential primary energy consumption and in space heating in particular, can contribute to achieving climate change and energy efficiency objectives. Project information from demonstration projects is now becoming available for highly energy-efficient renovation concepts.

The goal of this research is to understand how owner-occupants can be persuaded to apply far-reaching energy-saving renovations of single-family houses. To this end, the research examines drivers and barriers of owners to adopt highly energy-efficient renovation concepts. Theory on decision processes in innovation diffusion is used, in order to examine the adoption of integrated concepts to achieve high energy performance. Belgian case studies (different building typologies) were examined. Adoption drivers and barriers perceived by owner-occupants are analysed. This leads to improved understanding of characteristics that can persuade future adopters. Possible measures are discussed to overcome barriers in the introduction phase of innovation diffusion, and are illustrated more in detail with a case study. The research shows that especially expectations of improved comfort provide an opportunity for the market entry of integrated concepts. Owners, architects and contractors could benefit from increased attractiveness, competitiveness, affordability and availability of highly energy-efficient renovations. Holistic approaches (stronger coordination and clustered renovation concepts), higher skill competence (education) and improved communication (actor networks, significant economic incentives) are recommended.

This article defines sustainability to include community, economy, and the buildings made in service to those considerations. As gateways for knowledge, libraries are particularly well‐suited as demonstration vehicles. Beneficiaries are determined so that potential sources of funding can be identified. The case study (Oak Park Library, Ventura, California) integrates state‐of‐the‐art energy‐conserving design into a new joint‐use public and high school library. Client review, public presentations, computer modeling, and environmental specifications research led to a design that was awarded nearly $250,000 in construction funding and “buydowns”. Computer‐modeled analyses of the energy‐conserving elements of the Oak Park Library showed reductions in heating, cooling, and electricity consumption when those strategies were implemented. The strategies illustrated include techniques in lighting design, cooling/heating, and construction that can be replicated in new and existing projects to maximize efficiency in high‐visibility community demonstration projects. A listing of additional resources is also included.

Although the UK Guarantee Scheme for Infrastructures (UKGSI) was introduced in 2012 to address the huge financing gap for critical infrastructures, PFI sponsors have so far guaranteed only few projects. Many stakeholders in the project finance industry have blamed this situation on lack of general understanding of strategies for harnessing the benefits of the government guarantee scheme. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perspectives of UK’s PFI/PPP stakeholders on critical factors influencing approval for government guarantees using the UKGSI as a focal point.

Using a mixed methodology approach, this study identified 26 important criteria used in evaluating government guarantee applications through focus group discussions with PFI stakeholders. The identified criteria were then put in questionnaire survey to 195 respondents within the UK PFI/PPP industry.

Through factor analysis, five critical factors determining successful government guarantee application were unravelled. These include: compliance with UK National Infrastructure Plan; demonstration of project bankability and risk management; value for money; proof of projects’ dependence on government guarantee; and certainty of planning commission’s approval.

Results of this study will facilitate an in-depth understanding of critical factors necessary for accessing government guarantee scheme for PFI/PPPs, while also improving the bankability of potential PFI projects.

Electric freight vehicles (EFVs) are one of the solutions to improve city logistics’ sustainability. EFVs, that are electric powered light and heavy vehicles with a number plate, have the potential to make zero emission city logistics possible within the urban area. However, although trials have been undertaken for the last years, large-scale usage of EFVs in city logistics does not occur yet. EFVs are technically possible, but the implementation of EFVs in practice is relatively limited.

This chapter examines by reviewing current and past EFV implementations, what are the challenges, barriers and success factors for EFVs in city logistics operations. EFVs have especially positive environmental effects, but are overall usually more expensive (especially in procurement) than conventional vehicles. Besides, other technical and operational issues remain to be solved, and many uncertainties still exist on long-term usage.

Three main barriers for large-scale EFV uptake are identified. The current logistics concepts are developed for conventional vehicles and should be redesigned to fit EFVs better. Local authorities’ support is essential in order to find a positive (or not too negative) business case. And EFV implementation requires companies that want to be sustainable. This contribution presents examples of how some companies or authorities deal with these barriers.

This chapter concludes by identifying elements that are necessary for acceleration of EFV uptake in city logistics operations.

Work undertaken as part of a research project funded under the European STAR Programme is examined. In the course of a major project on Value Added and Data Services (VADS) in the North of Ireland, an extensive study was conducted of similar developments in the Irish Republic. Some of the more important results of this secondary study are used here to assess the likely implications of enhanced infrastructure provision for the demand for advanced telecommunications services.

Previous research on clients’ procurement typically focuses on their procurement strategies. Research on local sustainability governance has, however, revealed that municipalities also govern construction projects through land allocations. This paper aims to explore how housing developers are governed by municipal land allocations and the implications. The purpose is to problematize the governance of sustainability during the early phases of construction projects.

A case study on an urban development project in Sweden was conducted. Empirical material consists of interviews with housing developers’ project managers, observations from seminars and meetings between the developers and municipality officials and the municipality’s policy for land allocations and sustainability program. This was analyzed using Bulkeley and Kern’s (2006) typology of modes of governing change at the local level as a framework.

The results provide examples where the municipality governs the housing developers by authority, enabling and provision. The implications for the housing developers during the early phases of their construction projects are explored.

Findings have implications for research on clients’ procurement strategies because it illustrates how they can be governed during the early phases of certain construction projects, which might limit their flexibility during procurement. However, the study is only based on housing projects in one urban development project governed by one municipality.

Findings provide support for clients when designing their procurement strategies.

This paper contributes to the understanding of how sustainability is governed in construction projects and the implications for housing developers’ flexibility.

This study aims to evaluate enterprise technology innovation capability in prefabricated construction (PC) from an input-output perspective, using six integrated enterprises in China as cases.

An evaluation system for enterprise technology innovation capability in PC was constructed, including total input, technology output (TO) and project output. All the evaluation indexes were quantified, and the subject and object indexes weights were determined using the fuzzy cognitive map and information entropy, respectively. The final scores and ranks were evaluated through gray relational analysis (GRA) based on the combined weights.

It was found that enterprise technology innovation capability in PC was low in China, with its unbalanced development in different dimensions and the poorest performance in TO, currently.

This research has developed an evaluation system for technology innovation capability in PC at the enterprise level and scientifically quantified all the indexes, which is a breakthrough over existing studies. The GRA model based on the combined weights proposed in this study can be applied to other comparable fields and regions, with its easy operation.

Major public cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure or Google, offer seamless experiences for infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). With the emergence of the public cloud's vast usage, administrators must be able to have a reliable method to provide the seamless experience that a public cloud offers on a smaller scale, such as a private cloud. When a smaller deployment or a private cloud is needed, OpenStack can meet the goals without increasing cost or sacrificing data control.

To demonstrate these enablement goals of resiliency and elasticity in IaaS and PaaS, the authors design a private distributed system cloud platform using OpenStack and its core services of Nova, Swift, Cinder, Neutron, Keystone, Horizon and Glance on a five-node deployment.

Through the demonstration of dynamically adding an IaaS node, pushing the deployment to its physical and logical limits, and eventually crashing the deployment, this paper shows how the PackStack utility facilitates the provisioning of an elastic and resilient OpenStack-based IaaS platform that can be used in production if the deployment is kept within designated boundaries.

The authors adopt the multinode-capable PackStack utility in favor of an all-in-one OpenStack build for a true demonstration of resiliency, elasticity and scalability in a small-scale IaaS. An all-in-one deployment is generally used for proof-of-concept deployments and is not easily scaled in production across multiple nodes. The authors demonstrate that combining PackStack with the multi-node design is suitable for smaller-scale production IaaS and PaaS deployments.