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The problems of water supply of China in 2000 are revealed by statistical data. It is shown that 450 cities will be short of fresh water; a great quantity is utilised in agriculture much of which can be saved; groundwater is over‐extracted; the level of water is falling by an average of 1‐2mu each year which has caused the subsiding of regional earth; the quality of drinking water and of water utilised in industry becomes poorer; water resources are polluted because of the increase in organic pollutants, the number and size of cities, the pollution of nutrient and colon bacillus, the decrease in the area of lakes, the shortage of money for administration, the amount of polluted water drained without efficient treatment, the low re‐utilisation ratio of water, and the low rate of sewerage system development.

This paper investigates the potential contribution of smart city approaches and tools to sustainable urban development in the environment domain. Recent research has highlighted the need to explore the relation of smart and sustainable cities more systematically, focusing on practical applications that could enable a deeper understanding of the included domains, typologies and design concepts, and this paper aims to address this research gap. At the same time, it tries to identify whether these applications could contribute to the “zero vision” strategy, an extremely ambitious challenge within the field of smart cities.

This objective is pursued through an in-depth investigation of available open source and proprietary smart city applications related to environmental sustainability in urban environments. A total of 32 applications were detected through the Intelligent/Smart Cities Open Source (ICOS) community, a meta-repository for smart cities solutions. The applications are analyzed comparatively regarding (i) the environmental issue addressed, (ii) the associated mitigation strategies, (iii) the included innovation mechanism, (iv) the role of information and communication technologies and (v) the overall outcome.

The findings suggest that the smart and sustainable city landscape is extremely fragmented both on the policy and the technical levels. There is a host of unexplored opportunities toward smart sustainable development, many of which are still unknown. Similar findings are reached for all categories of environmental challenges in cities. Research limitations pertain to the analysis of a relatively small number of applications. The results can be used to inform policy making toward becoming more proactive and impactful both locally and globally. Given that smart city application market niches are also identified, they are also of special interest to developers, user communities and digital entrepreneurs.

The value added by this paper is two-fold. At the theoretical level, it offers a neat conceptual bridge between smart and sustainable cities debate. At the practical level, it identifies under-researched and under-exploited fields of smart city applications that could be opportunities to attain the “zero vision” objective.

Although EU directives were issued quite some time ago, implementation progresses slowly and at an unequal pace in Union member states. Certification of assessors, auditors and verifiers differs widely and is sometimes inordinately complicated; in some instances accountants have stepped into the “vacuum”, in others “certification” documents are issued by private organizations. Uniformity is far from being the rule. This paper takes Belgium as a case study. In opposition to what has developed in the USA where federal authority can be completed, even toughened by US regulations, but remained national (viz. federal), in our example responsibility has nearly entirely been devolved to the next (regional) level of authority. A survey was conducted of EMAS implementation in 11 European States: its results are disclosed and commented on.

Sewage, particularly the domestic variety, is the major polluter of the aquatic ecosystem in developing Asian countries. Besides eutrophication, it causes a number of waterborne diseases. The growing urbanization in relation to deteriorating water quality; existing practices of sewage management through treatment; reuse and recycling; as well as the legal support to curb pollution are discussed in regard to China, India, Korean Republic and Jordan. Some meaningful suggestions are made for improved sewage management and pollution control.

The purpose of this research is to develop a scale that assesses place sustainability from the perspectives of residents, who are the main stakeholders. The resulting place sustainability scale (PSS) is a practical and useful tool for place administrators to measure place sustainability at all scales.

This research analyses the data collected from 636 residents in the town of Salaya in Central Thailand. To develop the scale, the authors randomise 318 samples to conduct an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and analyse the rest with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

A total of 11 factors of place sustainability were generated with 33 questionnaire items. Those factors were natural environment, social equity, economic growth, built environment, landscape, liveability, conviviality, transport, energy, water and waste management and governance.

The PSS can help place administrators, such as chief executives of sub-districts, mayors of town municipalities or governors of provinces, assess perceived sustainability from the perspectives of their residents. They can use this scale in conjunction with other sustainability indicators that calculate data from real variables and values to develop a comprehensive view of sustainability that includes both real and perceptual dimensions.

Numerous available indices and indicators use real variables and values to measure place sustainability. However, they have limitations: they can be complex and incomprehensible to outsiders or they might not support participative processes and policymaking. This research develops an alternative measure of place sustainability that assesses the perceptions of residents.

A method for assessing the environmental performance of Hong Kong’s buildings has been developed, known as the Hong Kong Building Environmental Assessment Method or HK‐BEAM. The assessment is a type of expert‐based survey, either of the design, in the case of proposed buildings, or an evaluation of building performance for newly built or existing buildings. The assessment essentially provides a benchmark of environmental performance against a series of qualitative and quantitative measures that earn “credits”. Buildings can be rated as “excellent”, “very good”, “good” or “fair”. The assessment covers global, local and indoor issues. The original assessment has been in use since 1996 and allowed appraisal of new and existing air‐conditioned offices. A new version has been recently produced for residential buildings. The latest version has addressed some of the criticisms of the earlier versions and covers a wider range of issues, taking a life‐cycle approach. Reviews the latest new residential version, making comparisons with the earlier new offices scheme.

Responding to natural resource depletion and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission problems, and also the stricter government’s energy regulations, the purpose of this paper is to develop a sustainable waste heat recovery optimal-profit-oriented management model especially targeting on the easily forgotten low- and medium-temperature waste heat in the industry. In the paper, a system is constructed to facilitate converting the low- and medium-grade waste heat in factories into electricity, and yields optimal profit.

This paper integrates an efficient Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system from both sustainable energy reservation and cost effectiveness approaches with an optimization model that adopts particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to determine proper installation locations and feasible generator sets. The system is constructed to facilitate converting the low- and medium-grade waste heat in factories into electricity, and yields optimal profit. The model considers the environmental factors: temperature, heat amount, equipment configuration of the number of ORC sets, and detailed investment cost constraints.

The results show that annual investment return rate, annual increase in electricity, power generation efficiency, and annual CO₂ emission reduction are all highly improved, and investment recovery period is shortened. Also, the larger scale of the waste heat emission, the better the performance is achieved. Finally, the study also completes a sensitivity test under dynamic conditions of electricity price, generator sales price and factory budget constraints, and the results are consistently robust. More valuably, this paper demonstrates applications on two different manufacturing industries with various waste heat emission scales to prove the accountability.

The main contributions are in three aspects. First, it proves that applying PSO to a nonlinear mathematical model can help determine the optimal number and style configuration of generators for waste heat sources. Second, different from the prior research works focusing on power generation, this paper also deliberates the cost factors, cost of generators, costs of numerous peripheral components and future maintenance costs to ensure the factories not conflict with the financial limitations. Third, it is not only successfully applied in two industries with different scales, but also robust with various economic tests, electricity price change, generator sales price change, and investment budget adjustments.

Rapid economic growth has enriched the lives of individuals and yielded rising material and living standards. However, various types of public pollution problems have successively emerged, and environmental problems have worsened in recent years. Furthermore, the prevalence of leisure and the rapid development of regional tourism industries and bed and breakfast lodging have exacerbated environmental destruction and pollution in various locales. The inclusion of ecotourism into ecological education and the provision of ecolodge are beneficial for the design of student learning outcomes; moreover, community residents and tourists can grasp the importance of environmental protection and education through ecolodging experiences. This measure would improve public awareness of environmental protection, facilitate the cultivation of social responsibility, and achieve the objective of environmental protection advocacy. Therefore, this study explored the relationship between ecological education and the environment by using Kenting National Park, a tourist attraction in Taiwan, as the case study. Tourists visiting the location were the research subjects, and convenience sampling was conducted by distributing 505 questionnaires, with 372 valid responses recovered—a return rate of 74%. The research revealed the following results: (a) Environmental education is positively correlated with environmental attitude. (b) Environmental attitude is positively correlated with environmental behavior. (c) Environmental education is positively correlated with environmental behavior. Finally, this paper proposes recommendations based on the research results with the aim of facilitating environmental literacy, correct environmental attitudes, concern for ecosystems, and the realization of environmental behavior.

Increases in industrialisation in developing countries bring bout increases in the levels of industrial waste which have to be disposed of. Increasing the efficiency of such waste disposal processes can be achieved by effective quality control systems. The objectives of waste control systems are multiple but can broadly be considered to be environmental and economic. This article shows how goal programming can be successfully applied to the type of quality control problem in which the levels of inputs and process variables are fixed in order to meet a required specification of output which is expressed by multiple characteristics. The authors conclude that the success of the approach depends crucially on the efficiency of the necessary regression analysis.

This paper aims to test the relationships among the experiential quality dimensions, the green relationship quality dimensions, environmental friendliness, green support, green desire and green experiential loyalty in a green bed & breakfast (B&B) context.

The data used in this study are based on a sample of 517 customers staying at one green B&B in Yilan County of Taiwan. The predicted relationship is tested using structural equation modeling.

The empirical findings reveal the following: five dimensions (peer-to-peer quality, physical environment quality, outcome quality, venue quality and administration quality) constitute a multidimensional model to conceptualize and measure perceived experiential quality that can achieve green experiential satisfaction in addition to environmental friendliness; environmental friendliness has a direct influence on green trust and green experiential satisfaction, which has a positive significant influence on green support and green desire; and green trust, green experiential satisfaction and green support contribute to green experiential loyalty.

To increase the perceptions of experiential quality dimensions, green relationship quality dimensions, environmental friendliness, green support, green desire and green experiential loyalty, the findings of this study will help green B&B management develop and implement market-orientated service strategies.

This paper provides data that result in a better understanding of the relationships among experiential quality dimensions, green relationship quality dimensions, environmental friendliness, green support, green desire and green experiential loyalty in a green B&B setting.