Renewable energy systems have much lower environmental impact than conventional energy technologies. Tidal energy is one of the most important forms of renewables which carry the electricity production capacity within its height differences and current flow. In this paper, a time-dependent mathematical model for green energy generation from a single-pool tidal system is developed. Using current model with available tidal data, the extracted energy from this system can be calculated. Model results have shown that such system has the capacity of producing 40.6 Megawatts electricity from tidal energy for a specific area.

This paper discusses the history, the status quo, and future prospects of Zero Emission Buildings (ZEBs) in the Republic of Korea, illustrated by good practice examples. The advantages of, and requirements for, ZEBs are described, concerning the sectors energy, water, nutrients and biomass. ZEBs are characterized by net zero energy consumption through minimization of the service energy demand, which is covered with locally produced renewable energy. The direct water footprint is reduced up to 100% through on-site water supply and wastewater management according to the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management and Sustainable Sanitation. The fresh water demand is reduced through application of water efficient systems, as well as the collection, processing, recycling and reuse of wastewater for non-drinking purposes. Rainwater harvesting, storage, utilization and infiltration for augmentation of groundwater facilitates onsite freshwater supply and drinking water production from rainwater and groundwater. Nutrients and biomass from kitchens and sanitation systems are processed on-site and are recycled for local horticulture and agriculture. Traditional Korean buildings can be generally defined as ZEBs. With modernization and implementation of state of the art centralized infrastructure systems in the 20th century also traditional know-how and practice regarding the sustainable operation of buildings and resource management has been forgotten. However, since the beginning of the 21st Korean citizens, policymakers, scientists and companies have a growing interest in sustainability issues. This much promising trend is also reflected by a growing number of research and development activities, including the construction and operation of ZEBs.

Cairo's spontaneous poor communities signify the growing socio-economic disparity since 1970s open door economic liberalisation policy and 1990s IMF's structural adjustment program. These poverty belts attract rural migrants and urban poor from Cairo's residential core areas as a result of high land prices, shortage of affordable housing and decay of existing housing stock . Typical example of these poverty belts are cemetery areas (Cities of the Dead ) within Cairo's eastern fringes. The aim of the article is to examine the contested spaces within the Cities of the Dead, initially through a reconsideration of the number of occupants and of the relative balance of tomb dwellings and more conventional shanty town buildings. The tombs and mausoleums of the city's ancient and extensive cemeteries have been occupied by squatters, some of whom live in the mausoleums themselves, others in self-built constructions between and around the tombs. The paper raises several questions such as : - Does lack of affordability to provide an alternative residence play a key role in the occupation by people of tombs (hawch) by people in these cemeteries? Is there any possibility of classifying tomb dwellers into social groupings with various job types, income levels, educational status as well as residence patterns? - Does living in tombs generate a new value system, cultural patterns and social behaviour? Can one consider cemeteries as an isolated marginal area within Cairo's society? The current study is organised into three main sections. The first of which focuses on the general background of the Cities of the Dead in central Cairo looking at the socio-demographic and economic conditions characterising various cemetery areas with an emphasis on reasons behind living in cemeteries. Then the uniqueness of these Cairo squatter settlements is challenged through a range of socio-economic data which demonstrate the way their supposedly marginalised occupants are in part integrated into the city's urban economy. A comparative study is made of various household characteristics based on secondary data from official reports and previous academic research. These results will further relate to both small area survey and  population census data concerning age structure, marital status, educational levels, jobs, access to the CBD and the inner city, income level, residence, social relationships and formal and informal services . The second part of the study sets out to examine socio-economic problems in the area generally and more specifically relating to the tombs (hawch) cemetery people. The latter can be regarded as an example of squatter settlements together with those people living in the residential 'islands' or in-fillings (gozor) which resemble more conventional spontaneous or informal squatter areas elsewhere in Cairo. Inter- generational perception of future prospects and expectations will be investigated within focus group discussion with people's responses and coping strategies being examined. This provides the basis against which the third section of the study will explore the scenarios and alternatives with differentiation being made between people living in tombs (hawch) and those in residential islands (gozor) and surrounding spontaneous settlements such as Manshiet Nasser. In this section the empirical small area survey examines the northern cemeteries' tomb dwellers' right to the city and their resistance against official eviction plans . Such relocation policy is attributed to the fact that these cemeteries provide urban investment opportunities as a result of good road accessibility and geographical propinquity to Medieval Cairo's historical quarters and its ongoing tourist-orientated urban gentrification projects. Behind the declared official justification for eviction proposals of tomb dwellers, to Greater Cairo's suburban eastern desert, in terms of improving the environment and creating sustainable settlements, there lies a wider but hidden agenda. The local municipality aims to clear such strategically central areas from the presence of the poor, with legislation to protect the environment as a justification for securing access to land for urban gentrification projects. The paper emphasises the significance of poverty alleviation initiatives in strengthening urban poor's capacity to negotiate with local authorities for security of land tenure and legal recognition of their spontaneous settlements. The study proposes a stakeholder approach to the sustainable development of inner city poverty areas, whilst advocating radical policy action and collaborative planning for consolidating bottom up urban governance. Partnership between community based groups, grass root organisations, local authorities and planners would support urban poor's sustainable initiatives to improve their housing standards and basic services.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were set to eradicate extreme poverty in 2000-2015, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are set to replace the MDGs after 2015. The United Nations (UN) is leading several initiatives to elaborate on the SDGs and has recognised the difficulty of achieving all goals together. According to the UN initiatives, achieving the SDGs will be an agenda for everyone, regardless of countries, to prioritize ending extreme poverty and inclusive development for all as well as achieving major global sustainability issues like climate change. This paper explores the Japanese way of achieving the SDGs both in theory and practice. Municipalities are one of the most appropriate scales to enable sustainable development, thus three case studies on Japanese municipalities have been conducted to see if the early stages of achieving SDGs can be enunciated.The results suggest that Japan through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) can facilitate the coordination of the most suitable sustainability practices including environmentally friendly technology transfer to aid-receiving areas in Asia. Its accumulated experiences with the MDGs and human security systems associated with JICA's approach will make the Japanese way of dealing with SDGs unique.There are significant opportunities for Japan to help the Asian region reach their SDGs and Japanese municipalities should be preparing for these.

There are many concepts and labels developed with the aim to promote sustainable building. However, most of these concepts address mainly energy aspects and do not consider the entire environmental impact of a building construction. In contrast, the concept of Zero Emission Buildings (ZEB) integrates energy and material (biomass, water) flows, resulting in buildings, which do not produce harmful emissions and on the contrary produce energy, water and resources. It envisions maximum decentralisation of a building implying closed resource cycles and hence no environmental impact during its operational use. However, the concept of ZEB lacks a general framework under which potential buildings can be easily assessed. Consequently, the ZEB Assessment Method was developed in order to easily evaluate potential ZEBs regarding their environmental performance. The ZEB Assessment Method is based on a two-step process: firstly, the Sector Assessment and secondly the ZEB Assessment Tool. The Sector Assessment was developed to ensure a minimum integrity of the concept. It evaluates potential buildings regarding in how far they address the three sectors Water, Energy and Biomass based on the list of "eligible technologies" and the requirements to fulfil the sectors. If a building passed the Sector Assessment it was further investigated with the ZEB Assessment Tool in order to quantify and benchmark the environmental performance. The ZEB Assessment Tool was developed by considering specific decision parameters and appointing an appropriate characteristic to them. These decision parameters were (i) System boundary, (ii) Quantification of environmental impact, (iii) Database for UBP, (iv) Quantification of qualitative aspects, and (v) Calculation of target value. The evaluation of several case studies from Switzerland with the ZEB Assessment Method showed that the method with its tool is well adapted to the requirements of the ZEB Concept. Firstly, it requires a small amount of input data, which enables a simple primary assessment of a specific building. Secondly, it has the advantage that it evaluates a wide range of factors regarding the building's environmental performance. These are energy, water, biomass and a set of qualitative aspects. Furthermore, it takes into account various environmental impacts and can be applied for buildings with different type of use and in different countries of location.

Very few studies, including assessing pain and urinary incontinence, have lookedinto the relationship of with chronic health conditions and psychological resilience.Therefore, it was aimed to examine the prevalence and health attributes to psychologicalresilience in a country-wide setting in recent years. Data were retrieved from AdultPsychiatric Morbidity Survey in England, 2007 (n=7,403). Analysed were performed byadjusting for age, sex, deprivation level, marital status, education and survey deign. Peoplewho reported having any of the listed health conditions tended to have poor psychologicalresilience. Statistical significance was reached in people who had anxiety (OR 1.16, 95%CI1.01-1.32, P=0.038), ear problem (OR 1.24, 95%CI 1.06-1.45, P=0.009), asthma (OR 1.18,95%CI 1.00-1.39, P=0.047), bladder problem (OR 1.53, 95%CI 1.24-1.89, P<0.001),arthritis (OR 1.49, 95%CI 1.28-1.73, P<0.001), taking any medication (OR 1.26 , 95%CI1.10-1.45, P=0.001) and taking any injection (OR 1.36, 95%CI 1.00-1.85, P=0.053).Moreover, people with migraine, dementia, anxiety, cataract, high blood pressure,bronchitis, asthma, allergy, stomachache, bowel problem, bladder problem, arthritis, boneproblem, infectious disease, skin problem, taking any medication, taking any injection andeven taking any counseling tended to be unhappy. Future intervention research targetingpatients with chronic illnesses to optimise psychological resilience would be suggested.

Accommodation for both humans and animals could have impacted on bothoccupants and environments at the same time. Consequently, sustainable housing with asystematic life-cycle assessment has been one of the research focuses in the recent decadeswith an aim to lessen negative impacts on natural environments and to optimise occupanthealth and wellbeing. Following this context, it was aimed to carry out a systematic reviewto synthesise existing literature published until September 2014 on sustainable housingexamples from two largest research databases covering health and development research.There were 10 research articles found in the PUBMED database and other 8 researcharticles additionally found in the ScienceDirect database. Sustainable housing examplesmainly came from Americas and Europe while a few were from Africa and Australia. Nosound studies were found from Asia. The research quality of these studies was from low tomedium only. Research into sustainable housing examples for either humans or animals isstill limited and research methodology was not robust enough to give clear indications onthe promotion of sustainability in different housing environments. Collaborations betweenepidemiologists and engineers to employ real-life housing examples and to conduct rigorousresearch and follow-ups are therefore suggested.

Increasingly cities around the world are seeking innovative financial mechanisms to build urban rail transit projects. Land value capture (VC) is a financing mechanism to fund urban rail transit. Often VC mechanisms are viewed only as a financing tool applied in relation to increased land values from the administration and legislation perspectives, without actively involving the community in the process. The lack of such participatory approaches has resulted in the under collection of the true value established. The transit beneficiary community and city tax payers are especially important stakeholders in this process as their willingness to participate is really critical to the overall VC success and transport outcome. This paper introduces a participatory sustainability approach identifying various stakeholder engagement interventions, and a set of appropriate deliberative democracy techniques across the VC life cycle. A four-step "Participatory Strategic Value Capture (PSVC)" framework is proposed offering step by step guidance toward facilitating a meaningful stakeholder dialogue, deliberation and collaboration around the stated engagement interests. The PSVC framework, applied to the proposed Bangalore sub-urban rail project in India, has demonstrated the importance of stakeholder engagement in order to enable sustainable development community goals and review VC strategies from a win-win perspective.

In many respects education systems worldwide still contribute more to the obstacles than to solutions in humanity's quest to implement acceptable forms of sustainable living. The same appears to be the case with governments, especially at superregional and national levels. We summarise the evidence suggesting that many governments fall short of their own broadly stated commitments towards sustainability. Their achievements are evaluated in relation to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and currently discussed notions about the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Also, widely advocated transition strategies, in the educational sector and elsewhere, have met with only partial success. Our findings confirm our previous critical assessment of the UN's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and of the dominant interpretations of sustainable development per se. We describe the extent of the shortfall and offer some explanations for it. In the classroom, efforts to educate for sustainability are dominated by contingencies, norms and possibilities that differ fundamentally from governance in their dynamics and contingencies. It is therefore possible for teachers at all levels to take the initiative in ways that can compensate to some extent for the failures of governments. This possibility is documented by example cases and further expanded conceptually to describe a productive operating space for educators to help prepare learners for the inevitable challenges of the transition. We refer specifically to the goals of making communities more resilient, reducing their ecological overshoot, and maximising their human security. It is the level of community that offers the greatest potential for mitigating the failures of government as well as of education.

Our understanding of the environmental and health risks from nanotechnologies is still limited, which may result in stagnation of nanoinnovation. This emphasizes the need for an integrative assessment and adaptive management of the long-term risks from manufactured nanomaterials (MN) along the entire supply chains of nano-enabled products towards developing more sustainable nanotechnologies. Sustainable nanotechnology is being touted as a holistic and pragmatic concept that can guide incremental nanotechnology development amidst significant data gaps and uncertainty. The new European SUN (Sustainable Nanotechnologies) project is based on the hypothesis that the current knowledge on environmental and health risks from MN, whilst limited, can nevertheless guide more sustainable nanomanufacturing. SUN applies an integrated approach that estimates risks along the complete lifecycles of nano-enabled products. It aims to give clear answers to questions from regulatory authorities, and open new possibilities for innovators to design greener nanotechnologies. This will be achieved through development and application of new methods and tools for prediction of long-term exposure, effects and risks for humans and ecosystems (services), practices for risk prevention and management and tools to streamline effective decision making about safer products and processes. In order to achieve this, SUN will combine Risk Assessment and Lifecycle Assessment to develop a user-friendly software-based Decision Support System (DSS) for practical use by industries and regulators. The industrial partners in SUN will validate the DSS against real case studies in terms of risk/benefit and insurance costs. This validation will culminate in guidelines for safe nanoscale product and process design.