Description:
Urban expansion is a principal process threatening biodiversity globally. It is predicted that over half of the world's population will reside in urban centres by 2010. If we are to conserve biodiversity, a shift in perspective from traditional ecological studies based in natural environments, to studies based in less natural environments is paramount. To effectively conserve species which occur in urban environments, comprehensive analysis is necessary to determine the processes that are driving this urban usage. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology provides a valuable tool for efficient spatial analysis and predictive mapping of species distributions. This study used GIS to analyze current breeding sites for the powerful owl, a vulnerable top order predator in urban Melbourne, Australia. GIS analysis suggests that a number of ecological attributes were influencing powerful owl usage of urban environments. Using these ecological attributes, predictive mapping was undertaken, which identified a number of potential breeding sites for powerful owls within urbanized Melbourne. Urban environments are traditionally perceived as “the wastelands” of natural environments, however, this study demonstrates that they have the potential to support apex predators, an important finding for the management of rare and threatened species.
Description:
This study focuses on cost and schedule issues of international development (ID) projects. Through empirical analysis we examine ID project cost and schedule performance and the main reasons for poor project outcome. We look at 100 projects that are sponsored by the Asian Development Bank and hosted by several Asian countries. The study identifies that most late projects experience cost underrun – an unusual cost and schedule variation relation in projects. Further we identify the root causes of project delay and cost underrun. Research findings will benefit ID project professionals, organizations and the ID project body of knowledge. The study can be extended to analyse other developing country projects sponsored by different donors.
Description:
Green roofs have the potential to address several of the environmental problems associated with urbanisation, and can be used as mitigation for habitats lost at ground level. Brown roofs (a type of green roof) can be used to mitigate for the loss of brownfield habitat, but the best way of designing these habitats remains unclear. This paper reports an experiment to test the effects of different types of recycled aggregate on the development of vegetation assemblages on brown roof mesocosms. Five recycled aggregates were tested: (1) crushed brick, (2) crushed demolition aggregate, (3) solid municipal waste incinerator bottom ash aggregate, (4) a 1:1 mix of 1 and 2, and (5) a 1:1 mix of 3 and 2. Each was seeded with a wildflower mix that also included some Sedum acre and vegetation development was studied over a six-year period. Species richness, assemblage character, number of plants able to seed, and plant biomass were measured. Drought disturbance was the key factor controlling changes in plant assemblage, but effects varied with substrate treatment. All treatments supported a similar plant biomass, but treatments with a high proportion of crushed brick in the growth substrate supported richer assemblages, with more species able to seed, and a smaller amount of Sedum acre. Crushed brick, or recycled aggregates with a high proportion of crushed brick, are recommended as good growth substrate materials for encouraging brown roof plant diversity. This investigation demonstrates the importance of multi-year studies of green roof development for the generation of robust findings.
Description:
Many local government or regional plans have “a sustainable future for our community” as a goal. However, few local or regional governments have a sustainability reporting tool in place that enables them to understand how far along the pathway to sustainability their community is. There are a range of reasons for this, including current sustainability indicators and indices not matching the needs or capacity of local actors. This paper argues that a collaborative approach to developing sustainability reporting tools, that involves sustainability experts and local actors working together, will be more successful at developing a tool that has a theoretical basis with locally relevant indicators, which is practical for informed decision making. This process will also build the sustainability reporting capacity of local actors. This collaborative approach was tested in South West Victoria, Australia, resulting in a locally relevant, practical and theoretically sound sustainability reporting tool that met the needs of local actors. This outcome shows that a collaborative approach can overcome some of the barriers to sustainability reporting for local actors; however, further testing is required.
Description:
Many local government or regional plans have “a sustainable future for our community” as a goal. However, few local or regional governments have a sustainability reporting tool in place that enables them to understand how far along the pathway to sustainability their community is. There are a range of reasons for this, including current sustainability indicators and indices not matching the needs or capacity of local actors. This paper argues that a collaborative approach to developing sustainability reporting tools, that involves sustainability experts and local actors working together, will be more successful at developing a tool that has a theoretical basis with locally relevant indicators, which is practical for informed decision making. This process will also build the sustainability reporting capacity of local actors. This collaborative approach was tested in South West Victoria, Australia, resulting in a locally relevant, practical and theoretically sound sustainability reporting tool that met the needs of local actors. This outcome shows that a collaborative approach can overcome some of the barriers to sustainability reporting for local actors; however, further testing is required.
Description:
This article investigates how cultural landscapes (especially the potentially limiting organically evolved landscape) can be used as a research framework to evaluate historical mining heritage sites in Australia and New Zealand. We argue that when mining heritage sites are read as evolved organic landscapes and linked to the surrounding forested and hedged farmland, the disruptive aspects of mining are masked. Cultural landscape is now a separate listing for World Heritage sites and includes associative and designed landscape as well as those that have evolved organically. These usages have rarely been scrutinized with care. We analyse how mid-nineteenth century goldmining sites can be best thematically interpreted and understood for their heritage, indeed World Heritage, significance and, where appropriate, developed for their sustainable heritage tourism potential. Drawing on a number of research disciplines, a schematic framework is offered for interpreting and classifying these new world cultural landscapes based upon analysis of gold-rush heritage sites throughout the Trans-Tasman world. We evaluate and apply this framework to place-based case studies in Victoria, Australia and Otago, New Zealand
Description:
Taking Broken Hill as an exemplar of Australian, indeed global, labour heritage, this article, analyses the survival of labour heritage and union practices in the town that continues to the present. It examines the interpretation of successive layers of industrial and labour history as a means of revealing a culturally dynamic and enduring community with close connections to its built heritage. The authors challenge the application of two-dimensional and static models of heritage interpretations too often applied to contested heritage sites. The authors argue that Broken Hill is a community whose determined social and industrial character and distinct built environment has transcended changing patterns of investment and economic decline.
Description:
Philosophers of science have long been interested in articulating how values serve to condition scientific endeavour. In the 1930s and 1940s, a simple notion of verification had initially been employed by economists to support the idea of appraising theory with reference to facts or observables. However, the idea of theory-laden facts complicated this story in the 1960s, when Thomas Kuhn showed how a theory itself determines the nature of the facts that are to confirm or refute it (1962). The specification of what is to be measured, how it is to be measured or tested, and when a measurement is significant, came to be recognised by traditional economic methodologists (including Mark Blaug 1980) as a necessary condition for making any observations whatsoever. Economic analysis was then seen to presuppose the selection of a set of basic values. In the face of post-modernism and value-pluralism, certain economic methodologists (e.g. McCloskey 1983) chose to bracket the difficult problem of justifying these basic values, by limiting economic methodology to a mere description of what economists happen to do and how they happen to argue (Dow 1997: 78). As Sheila Dow explains, the current state of play is one in which economists agree that a selection of values permits the science to proceed, all the while avoiding the question of the justification of these values, by uncritically accepting what economists already tend to do. Although even the indicative and descriptive judgments of econometric analysis are thus premised on a fairly arbitrary selection of values (Ziliak and McCloskey 2008), little attention has been paid to the effect of value-selection on the discoveries of so-called ‘positivist’ economics. This is one important problem with mainstream economics.
Description:
This paper examines whether ISO 9000 certification benefits service firms in terms of their financial performance and promotes sustainable improvement. We argue that in a developing country setting such as China, the massive benefits brought by the signalling effect of the certification can discourage firms' motivation to fully implement the standard of certification and lead to the decline of investment on productivity-improving activities. In other words, the certification may have negative effects on the productivity of certified firms. We investigate 89,024 firms in Chinese service industries to assess the impacts of the certification on sales, productivity and profitability of these firms. To address the potential selection bias of ISO 9000 certification, the Propensity Score Matching method and Coarsened Exact Matching method were used. Our key findings are that the ISO 9000 certification does help to increase the total amount of sales, but it decreases the productivity and profitability of these certified service firms. We also find that earlier certifiers seem to gain larger advantage in sales but more reduction in productivity, and firms with higher level of technology intensity seem to obtain a larger increase in sales and less productivity loss after receiving their ISO 9000 certification.
Description:
This paper examines whether ISO 9000 certification benefits service firms in terms of their financial performance and promotes sustainable improvement. We argue that in a developing country setting such as China, the massive benefits brought by the signalling effect of the certification can discourage firms' motivation to fully implement the standard of certification and lead to the decline of investment on productivity-improving activities. In other words, the certification may have negative effects on the productivity of certified firms. We investigate 89,024 firms in Chinese service industries to assess the impacts of the certification on sales, productivity and profitability of these firms. To address the potential selection bias of ISO 9000 certification, the Propensity Score Matching method and Coarsened Exact Matching method were used. Our key findings are that the ISO 9000 certification does help to increase the total amount of sales, but it decreases the productivity and profitability of these certified service firms. We also find that earlier certifiers seem to gain larger advantage in sales but more reduction in productivity, and firms with higher level of technology intensity seem to obtain a larger increase in sales and less productivity loss after receiving their ISO 9000 certification.
Factors affecting the organizational adoption of blockchain technology : extending the technology–organization– environment (TOE) framework in the Australian context