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The purpose of this paper was to assess the economic impact of investment in different animal welfare–enhancing flooring solutions in Swedish dairy farming.

The authors developed a bio-economic model and used stochastic partial budgeting approach to simulate the economic consequences of enhancing solid and slatted concrete floors with soft rubber covering.

The findings highlight that keeping herds on solid and slatted concrete floor surfaces with soft rubber coverings is a profitable solution, compared with keeping herds on solid and slatted concrete floors without a soft covering. The profit per cow when kept on a solid concrete floor with soft rubber covering increased by 13%–16% depending on the breed.

Promoting farm investments such as improvement in flooring solution, which have both economic and animal welfare incentives, is a potential way of promoting sustainable dairy production. Farmers may make investments in improved floors, resulting in enhanced animal welfare and economic outcomes necessary for sustaining dairy production.

This literature review indicated that the economic impact of investment in specific types of floor improvement solutions, investment costs and financial outcomes have received little attention. This study provides insights needed for a more informed decision-making process when selecting optimal flooring solutions for new and renovated barns that improve both animal welfare and ease the burden on farmers and public financial support.

This article will select 25 years of subdivided data to perform Kaplan–Meier survival analysis on the export trade relations of Chinese wooden flooring, use discrete-time cloglog models to analyze influencing factors, use logit and probit models to test the robustness, and try to systematically reveal the duration of China's wood flooring export trade and its influencing factors.

This study used Kaplan–Meier survival function estimation method. In the survival analysis, survival function and hazard rate function are often used to characterize the distribution of survival time.

The continuous average export time of China's wooden flooring is relatively long, about 14 years. China's wooden flooring has a negative time dependency. After the export trade exceeds the threshold value of 15 years, the failure rate of trade greatly decreases, which has a “threshold effect.” Gravity model variables have a significant impact on the duration of China's wooden floor export.

Studying the duration of forest products trade is of great significance for clearing deep-level trade relations and promoting sustainable development of forest products trade.

While most efforts to combat climate change are focussed on energy efficiency and substitution of fossil fuels, growth in the built environment remains largely unquestioned. Given the current climate emergency and increasing scarcity of global resources, it is imperative that we address this “blind spot” by finding ways to support required services with less resource consumption.

There is now long overdue recognition to greenhouse gas emissions “embodied” in the production of building materials and construction, and its importance in reaching targets of net zero carbon by 2050. However, there is a widespread belief that we can continue to “build big”, provided we incorporate energy saving measures and select “low carbon materials” – ignoring the fact that excessive volume and area of buildings may outweigh any carbon savings. This is especially the case with commercial real estate.

As the inception and planning phases of projects offer most potential for reduction in both operational and embodied carbon, we must turn our attention to previously overlooked options such as “build nothing” or “build less”. This involves challenging the root cause of the need, exploring alternative approaches to meet desired outcomes, and maximising the use of existing assets. If new build is required, this should be designed for adaptability, with increased stewardship, so the building stock of the future will be a more valuable and useable resource.

This points to the need for increased understanding and application of the principles of strategic asset management, hitherto largely ignored in sustainability circles, which emphasize a close alignment of assets with the services they support.

Arguably, as the built environment consumes more material resources and energy than any other sector, its future configuration may be critical to the future of people and the planet. In this regard, this paper seeks to break new ground for deeper exploration.

This paper outlines how Design for Lean Six Sigma methods aided a medical device manufacturing company in developing a new strategic space management and approval process for its manufacturing site.

The project demonstrates the application of the Design for Lean Six Sigma and structured Define, Measure, Analyse, Design, and Verify methodology in designing and implementing a process that enables the case study manufacturing site to improve its space utilisation and free up space.

The project was validated in one manufacturing department, and the Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology resulted in creating 15% new space for that area, with opportunities identified to free up 44.7% of the total manufacturing floor space and realise over €2.2 million cost savings as well as start to manufacture new products launched.

The manuscript highlights for the first time how the Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology can be utilised for space utilisation and can be leveraged by other manufacturers. The current study's limitations are that it is a single-site case study application. Future longitudinal case studies on Design for Lean Six Sigma application in more manufacturing space utilisation projects would be useful. This study has implications for identifying best practices for Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology application in the device industry, thus improving the state of the art for introducing new manufacturing lines.

This is the first published work to utilise Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology for space utilisation in a medical device company. This review will provide medical devices and other manufacturing organisations with recommendations on utilising Design for Lean Six Sigma and design for improved space utilisation to reduce costs.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the voluntary living wage (LW) in the UK is set. It examines how this calculation relates to contemporary approaches to setting wage floors, both in relation to their goal of supporting adequate living standards and in relation to the place of wage floors in the labour mark.

The paper examines how compulsory and voluntary wage floors are being determined, in the UK and in particular the role of public consensus in contributing to the calculation and adoption of a LW. It then reflects on the future sustainability of a system of wage floors in which the concept of the LW plays a significant role.

The central finding is that widespread support for wages delivering socially acceptable minimum living standards has transformed the context in which low pay is being addressed in the UK. The LW idea has stimulated more decisive efforts to do so; however, if a compulsory version of a LW were to reach a level shown to be harming jobs, this could seriously undermine such efforts. Moreover, the extent to which adequate wages are compatible with high employment levels can also be influenced by state support for households, especially tax credits and Universal Credit.

The paper clarifies how the setting of the UK LW contributes to objectives related both to living standards and to labour markets, and critically addresses some key issues raised.

Children living in agricultural areas are exposed to pesticides in their living areas and through activities of daily living. These exposures may lead to adverse health effects. The purpose of this paper is to investigate household environmental and behavioural factors associated with chlorpyrifos exposure and resultant adverse health effects in children living in an agricultural community.

A cross-sectional study was conducted including 65 toddlers (age of 12–36 months) and their parents were face-to-face interviewed from January to February 2016. Toddler’s hands and feet, toys and floors were wiped for chlorpyrifos residue analysis. The wipes were extracted and analysed by gas chromatography with a flame photometric detector, and blood cholinesterase activity was measured by the EQM Test-mate (model 400).

The average age (± standard deviation) of children was 19.9 (±5.9) months. Chlorpyrifos detections were 61.5 per cent (hands), 57.1 per cent (toys), 53.8 per cent (floors) and 30.8 per cent (feet). The highest chlorpyrifos residue concentration was detected on toy surface (3.022 µg/m²). Chlorpyrifos residues on hands and feet were positively correlated with concentrations on floors and toys (Spearman’s ρ, p<0.01). Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that more frequent hand washing (β=−0.236, p=0.067) and showering (β=−0.240, p=0.056) was negatively associated with chlorpyrifos residue on children’s body. House cleaning frequency was significantly associated with an increase in haemoglobin-adjusted erythrocyte cholinesterase (β=0.251, p<0.05).

Chlorpyrifos exposures found in the children household area through their activities and behaviours can cause several adverse health effects. The circumstances associated with chlorpyrifos exposure should be mitigated and reduced to improve the household environment of children living agricultural areas.

This paper aims to investigate whether developers’ ask lower prices on homes in redevelopment sites than they do on similar units in smaller developments completed over a shorter time span. It also investigates whether developers price units differently at different stages of the redevelopment process. The development of designated redevelopment areas often consists of multiple projects spread across several years, some in parallel, some sequential. New units are put on the market in a piecemeal fashion, and infrastructure, shared green spaces and shared facilities are installed successively.

A hedonic price model is used to analyse sales prices of 7,000 new apartments in Oslo sold between 2011 and 2015, all else being equal. The paper distinguishes between infill as one-stage projects, and multi-staged competitive and multi-staged monopolistic redevelopments.

Dwellings in redevelopment projects sell at a lower price than similar dwellings in infill projects. In competitive redevelopments, those in charge of the last projects put a slightly higher price on apartments. In redevelopments involving only one developer, the last stages ask the lowest prices.

This research expands our understanding of developers’ pricing behaviour. Developers supplying housing for the private market through redevelopments land are willing to take risks particularly in the initial stage.

The findings indicate that credit institutions financing developers’ projects need to take into account the structure of selling prices, including lower prices and higher risk of pursuing redevelopment projects.

Gaining a better understanding of developers’ pricing behaviour deepens our insights into the dynamics of market-led urban brownfield developments; this knowledge may moreover inform policies on sustainable urban growth.

An original investigation of housing transactions in urban brownfield sites in Oslo provides fresh insights into developers’ pricing behaviour.

Introducing radical changes to the methodologies for the determination of capital requirements, the final stage of the Basel III standards, which is referred to as “Basel IV” by the industry, will be a significant challenge for the global banking sector. This article reviews the main components of the new framework, analyses its ongoing implementation in the European Union and discusses its potential impact on banks, putting forward policy recommendations.

This article uses primary sources such as the publications by the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision and the European Commission. It also reviews the secondary sources, including both academic articles and analyses by various stakeholders. However, this article does not undertake any empirical analysis.

This article discusses that Basel IV will introduce strategic, operational and regulatory challenges for banks in scope. It also identifies a number of areas which are subject to further debate in the European Union such as the enhanced due diligence requirements under the new credit risk framework; governance, reporting and control rules under the operational risk framework; exemptions for certain derivative transactions under the credit valuation adjustment framework and the level of application of the capital floors within banking groups. This article concludes that the global implementation of the reforms by all jurisdictions and transposition into national banking laws concurrently with the European Union in line with the Basel Committee's implementation timeline is important from a financial stability standpoint.

The article presents an up-to-date and comprehensive review of the practical implications of Basel IV standards. It analyses the implementation of the standards in the case of the European Union, reviews the potential policy implications and presents recommendations for risk management practitioners.

Debates over the definition, processes and outcomes of minimum and “living” wages are heated and often politically contentious in garment-producing countries. Internationally, there have been various initiatives to promote and support the implementation of a living wage for workers in labour-intensive manufacturing, ranging from corporate-driven social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives to the long-standing living wage campaign of the global unions. One prominent regional initiative is the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA). The purpose of this paper is to assess its reach and effect in Southeast Asia.

A living wage campaign is assessed with reference to Indonesia and Cambodia, two important garment manufacturing countries in Southeast Asia. The paper draws on data collected in interviews with garment manufacturers, brand representatives, trade unionists and labour NGO activists, including members of the AFWA Steering Committee in Indonesia and Cambodia, complemented by a systematic review of documents and reports produced by the AFWA.

As the paper shows, despite a series of initiatives, the Asia Floor Wage has failed to gain traction in Cambodia or Indonesia. This is so, the paper argues, because national economic, political and institutional contexts are the primary drivers of the strategies and priorities of constituent organisations, governments and industry stakeholders. In the absence of robust local and regional coalitions of trade unions, efforts towards a common and coordinated regional approach to living wages are thus unlikely to gain traction.

To a large extent, the literature on the concepts and practices associated with the living wage has focussed on developed rather than developing countries. This paper extends the literature by providing a systematic examination of a transnational wage campaign in developing Asian countries.

This study examined data from 13 international tall residential timber building case studies to increase our understanding of the emerging global trends.

Data were collected through literature surveys and case studies to examine the architectural, structural and constructional points of view to contribute to knowledge about the increasing high-rise timber constructions globally.

The main findings of this study indicated that: (1) central cores were the most preferred type 10 of core arrangements; (2) frequent use of prismatic forms with rectilinear plans and regular extrusions were identified; (3) the floor-to-floor heights range between 2.81 and 3.30 m with an average of 3 m; (4) the dominance of massive timber use over hybrid construction was observed; (5) the most used structural system was the shear wall system; (6) generally, fire resistance in primary and secondary structural elements exceeded the minimum values specified in the building codes; (7) the reference sound insulation values used for airborne and impact sounds had an average of 50 and 56 dB, respectively.

There is no study in the literature that comprehensively examines the main architectural and structural design considerations of contemporary tall residential timber buildings.