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This article describes an innovative method for measuring lighting levels and other lighting parameters through the use of aerial imagery of towns and cities. Combined with electricity consumption data from smart electricity meters, it was possible to measure the energy efficiency of public lighting installations. The results of this study also confirmed that lighting measurements, installation material, luminaire position, and electricity consumption data can be easily integrated into geographic information systems (GIS). The main advantage of this new methodology is that it provides information about lighting installations in large areas in less time than more conventional procedures. It is thus a more effective way of obtaining the data required to calculate the energy efficiency of lighting levels and electricity consumption. There is even the possibility of generating street lighting maps that provide local administrations with up-to-date information regarding the status of public lighting installations in their city. In this way, modifications or improvements can be made to achieve greater energy savings and, if necessary, to correct the distribution or configuration of public lighting systems to make them more efficient and sustainable. This research studied levels of street lighting and calculated the energy efficiency in various streets of Deifontes (Granada), through the use of aerial imagery.

Higher education is incorporating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at a fast rate for different purposes. Scientific papers include within the concept of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) the myriad applications of information and communication technology, e-resources, and pedagogical approaches to the development of education. TEL’s specific application to higher education is especially relevant for countries under rapid development for providing quick and sustainable access to quality education (UN sustainable development goal 4). This paper presents the research results of an online pedagogical experience in collaborative academic research for analyzing good practice in TEL-supported higher education development. The results are obtained through a pilot implementation providing curated data on TEL competency’s development of faculty skills and analysis of developing sustainable higher education degrees through TEL cooperation, for capacity building. Given the increased volume and complexity of the knowledge to be delivered, and the exponential growth of the need for skilled workers in emerging economies, online training is the most effective way of delivering a sustainable higher education. The results of the PETRA Erasmus+ capacity-building project provides evidence of a successful implementation of a TEL-supported methodology for collaborative faculty development focused on future online degrees built collaboratively and applied locally.

3D city models are a useful tool to analyze the solar potential of neighborhoods and cities. These models are built from buildings footprints and elevation measurements. Footprints are widely available, but elevation datasets remain expensive and time-consuming to acquire. Our hypothesis is that the GIS cadastral data can be used to build a 3D model automatically, so that generating complete cities 3D models can be done in a short time with already available data. We propose a method for the automatic construction of 3D models of cities and neighborhoods from 2D cadastral data and study their usefulness for solar analysis by comparing the results with those from a hand-built model. The results show that the accuracy in evaluating solar access on pedestrian areas and solar potential on rooftops with the automatic method is close to that from the hand-built model with slight differences of 3.4% and 2.2%, respectively. On the other hand, time saving with the automatic models is significant. A neighborhood of 400,000 m2 can be built up in 30 min, 50 times faster than by hand, and an entire city of 967 km2 can be built in 8.5 h.

On 25 September 2015, the member states of the United Nations approved an initiative in New York called “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” [...]

Recent financial scandals and the global financial crisis have generated numerous criticisms of the value and use of annual financial and sustainability reports prepared by companies. This has generated the elaboration and use of a new model of corporate-information reporting that considers strategic, social, economic, and environmental aspects. This study synthesizes the knowledge of the use of integrated reporting as a source of information, and bibliometrically analyzes of 268 articles published in the Web of Science database in 2011–2019. Results show that 77.6% of the academic articles were from developed countries, and the five most influential countries are Italy, South Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Results show that the development of this type of research is scarce in emerging economies. The most influential authors are García, Rodríguez, and De Villiers. A high level of interconnections is observed in used keywords, of which the most used are ‘sustainability’ and ‘management’. Lastly, this article contributes to the international discussion on integrated reporting by carrying out a structured review of the literature, highlighting previous research.

The cataloguing and revision of reactor pressure vessels (RPV) manufacturing and in-service inspection codes and their standardized material specifications—as a technical heritage—are essential for understanding the historical evolution of criteria and for enabling the comparison of the various national regulations, integrating the most relevant results from the scientific research. The analysis of the development of documents including standardized requirements and the comparison of regulations is crucial to be able to implement learned lessons and comprehend the progress of increasingly stringent safety criteria, contributing to sustainable nuclear power generation in the future. A novel methodology is presented in this work where a thorough review of the regulations and technical codes for the manufacture and in-service inspection of RPVs, considering the implementation of scientific advances, is performed. In addition, an analysis focused on the differences between irradiation embrittlement prediction models and acceptance criteria for detected defects (both during manufacturing and in-service inspection) described by the different technical codes as required by different national regulations such as American, German, French or Russian is performed. The most stringent materials requirements for RPV manufacturing are provided by the American and German codes. The French code is the most stringent with respect to the reference defect size using as a criterion in the in-service inspection.

The extent to which the structural reform of the Peruvian electricity market in the 1990s has improved the technical efficiency levels of the distribution companies and whether some firm specific explanatory variables had influenced upon the efficiency was analysed for first time using a second stage Tobit model to study the influence of some firm specific explanatory variables on efficiency. Some authors have argued that the use of Tobit regression is inappropriate in the second stage of DEA and have suggested using other recently developed options. Due to this, it might be worth revisiting this issue and adding those other alternative models to check whether the conclusions obtained with the Tobit model could be upheld. The nine alternative models estimated allow us to confirm that the incentives generated by the reform process led to the firms becoming more efficient. Moreover, private management and the ratio of low voltage sales to medium voltage sales for each company positively affect efficiency, whereas investment per customer is negatively correlated to it.