Fisheries and aquaculture have emerged as a promising food production sector at the global level as well as regional levels. Fish and fish products are produced in one region and then are traded ...across various parts of the world. The whole sector is dependent on chains of workers engaged at landing centres, breeding units, processing units, and the trade and export chains. When the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown hit the country, it affected the whole sector and caused a huge decline in the production and trade of fishing products. This article aims to have a glimpse into the aquaculture sector and evaluate the impact of the pandemic on this sector in India. This valuable information can be of great importance to government and aquatic food suppliers so that they can evolve their strategies to withstand ongoing and future pandemics. It also helps them in framing regional and sectorial adjustments to transform investment plans, match market demands, improve monitoring strategies and get prepared for future needs.
•The purpose of this article is to have a glimpse into the aquaculture sector and evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this sector in India.•This valuable information can be of great importance to the government and aquatic food suppliers so that they can evolve their strategies to withstand ongoing and future pandemics.•It also helps them frame regional and sectorial adjustments to transform investment plans, match market demands, improve monitoring strategies and prepare for future needs.•Some of the major challenges the entire fishing community faced during the COVID-19 lockdown are (i)difficulty in hiring truck drivers for transport of cargo.•(ii) Delayed seaweed seed material transportation.•(iii) Total shutdown of shrimp processing unit, forced engagement of minimal labour in shrimp feed, medicine and probiotics industries.•and (iv) Negative impacts on the livelihood of local fishermen due to fishing ban and low demand.•The paper also summarizes the reformations in the aquaculture sector in India to future pandemics.•Outbreak of COVID-19 has stimulated digital transformation across many aquaculture supply chain in India to reduce the dependence on manpower.•Scientific farming practices, the inclusion of technology and decreasing the over-dependency on export (around 90%) can recover the sector and can help take it to a desired level.
Landslide is one of the important geophysical hazards that can cause a severe damage in the society and economy. Anthropogenic activities, on the other hand, are accelerating the probability and ...extent of the landslide. As a result, a proper estimation of the landslide probability is an essential step in contemporary research. The novel ensemble approach of 'Weight of Evidence (WOE)', 'Logistic Regression (LR)', 'WOE-Classification and Regression Tree (CART)', 'WOE-Multilayer perceptron (MLP)' and 'WOE-Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost)' has been considered for estimating the landslide susceptibility of Kalimpong district in India. In validation datasets, the AUC values of ensembles 'MLP-WOE, CART-WOE, LR-WOE and XGBoost-WOE' are 0.924, 0.953, 0.940 and 0.944, respectively. According to its predictive abilities, the ensemble of 'LR-WOE' is the most optimum model, followed by 'XGBoost-WOE, CART-WOE and MLP-WOE'. Aside from that, the 'WOE' model was used to assess the importance of sub-parameters individually.
The escalating demand for sustainable business practices underscores the necessity of identifying and adopting innovative solutions tailored for enduring success. This study probes the critical ...questions of what distinguishes certain entrepreneurs as frontrunners in implementing sustainable solutions and how their practices can serve as blueprints for widespread adaptation. The gap this research addresses hinges on a detailed understanding of the mechanisms through which these entrepreneurs’ commitment to sustainability catalyzes broader organizational and cultural changes. Employing a qualitative case study methodology, in-depth interviews were conducted with six entrepreneurs renowned for their pioneering sustainability initiatives. The findings illuminate commonalities among these leaders, including a profound interest in sustainability issues and the courage to pioneer novel, sustainable practices. Their enthusiasm effectively permeates their respective organizations, fostering an environment ripe for continual sustainable evolution. The study contributes significantly to the literature by elucidating how personal commitment in leadership can translate into comprehensive organizational change, setting a new benchmark for sustainability in organizational practices. Furthermore, it provides practical implications by showcasing that sustainable development is an ethical imperative and a viable strategic approach that can enhance competitiveness and stakeholder engagement. The recommendations in this study advocate for businesses to cultivate leadership qualities that champion sustainability, encourage cultural shifts towards sustainable practices, and develop robust frameworks for sustainability integration across all operational levels.
A prospective way to make transportation more sustainable is changing the commuters’ travel behavior, which can be realized by creating mobility plans for institutions. A new approach related to ...workplace mobility planning is developed in three pilot locations in Hungary. As a first step, a roadmap is established including current situation analysis as well as collecting potential measures, setting up a mobility team, and developing pilot actions. The paper presents the planning process taking several aspects, such as commitment, vision, stakeholders’ involvement, situation analysis, measure implementation, and recommendations, into account. In the process, several stakeholders are involved to provide useful inputs through online surveys, personal interviews, and focus group meetings. The pilot development process covers three institutions in three locations with such specific parameters as the size of the city, the number of employees, location, and accessibility. As a result, it is seen that most measures aim at cycling infrastructure development, bike fleet introduction, and electric charger deployment. The proposed process is easily transferable and applicable in any location and any institution. The results not only support the commuters but show a potential to serve long-term societal goals, as well.
74% of Europeans live and move every day in cities, and 40% of the total CO2 emissions from transport is caused by urban mobility. The decarbonisation of urban transport can therefore produce a ...substantial reduction in total CO2 emissions. Cities have proposed various measures to reduce CO2 emissions from mobility, concentrating particularly on reducing private individual transport (car) by offering a range of alternatives.
Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) are not new in Europe, as numerous precedents in France, UK, Italy and Germany have now been underway for a decade. SUMPs propose a strategy to reduce dependence on private cars by imposing a series of measures.
As the plans were designed for the long term (ten to fifteen years), it is only natural to question their effectiveness after a certain time has elapsed. However, there is little literature on this issue. To fill this gap this article proposes a methodology to evaluate Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans using indicators to assess the current situation of the city in terms of the effectiveness of the measures implemented, focusing on the specific case of the city of Burgos in Spain, where the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan was introduced in 2005, and on the results based on the proposed methodology.
CO2 savings are always the primary target of a SUMP. Most assessments highlight changes in behaviour or public perception, but contain no in-depth analysis of cost-effectiveness. This paper aims to calculate a cost analysis for each tonnes of CO2 saved. This methodology is used in other fields such as lighting and energy, but not in transport due to its complexity. However, effectiveness ratios can be calculated with the available data on modal shift and investments in the SUMP, taking into account the costs as a whole. Other methodologies to determine external cost savings are included in the proposed methodology to achieve a more accurate ratio and consider more external factors.
•Methodology to estimate the cost of CO2 saved through the use of sustainable transport modes.•Identification of variables affecting the assessment of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans.•Proposal of a new system to assess the measures implemented in a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan.
This paper aimed to provide a set of sustainable measures suitable for workplaces according to local requirements. To support this, a specific Transportation Demand Management strategy was applied, ...which is called Workplace Travel Planning. The result of such a Workplace Travel Plan is a package of measures implemented by an organization to encourage sustainable commuting. This research focused on two stages of the planning process: in the analysis stage, data were gathered from the stakeholders, and travel behavior was analyzed, while in the planning stage, a specific set of measures was proposed to the workplace. The selection of those measures relies on several aspects, such as existing workplace infrastructure, employer policies, employee requirements, local infrastructure, cost of implementation, level of sustainability. The mobility questionnaires are the instruments used to retrieve the input data used in the method, while the categorization of measures contributes to the next phase of the method serving as the output options. To each measure, factors, weights, and sustainability impacts were assigned. The connection of the phases was realized by creating the utility value of the measure, which enables the ranking of the measures. The approach provides a comprehensive framework of connecting employee requirements, employer willingness, and site-specific opportunities by defining a quantitative utility function, which results in a list of most suitable measures for a specific workplace.
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•Restoration measures led to the recovery of macrophyte communities.•Downward trend of associations typical for high eutrophic state was observed.•Former association of submerged ...plants – Potametum lucentis, recurred.•The occupied areas of some existing communities increased, e.g. nympheids.•Improvement of light conditions is necessary to accelerate the recovery of elodeids.
Restoration of urban lakes becomes necessary to slow down unfavourable processes and to recover theirrecreational role. Macrophyte communities are good bioindicators, thus they can be used to assess the effectiveness of restoration.
The aim of the study was to determine the dynamics and patternof macrophyte recovery as a result of the restoration measures in a degraded shallow urban lake characterized by strong cyanobacterial blooms. Annual changes in the composition and areal coverage of littoral macrophyte phytocoenoses, and in the Ecological State Macrophyte Indexwere recorded using a GPS and the ArcGIS programme and analysed in relation to changes in water quality for three years following restoration measures (phosphorus inactivation, aeration, and biomanipulation).
The shifts were statistically significant in the first two for total nitrogenconcentrationand three years for chlorophyll aconcentration, whereas total phosphorus concentration only decreased significantly in the third year. Changes in water transparency were not significant. The ecological status of the lakewas good or moderate. A characteristic pattern of recovery was observed. Phytocenotic richness increased (from 9 to 12 communities) and total phytolittoral area decreased (from 42 to 37ha, i.e. 12%) during restoration efforts. The area of hypereutrophic plant communities (Ceratophylletumdemersi, Hydrocharitetummorsus-ranae, Typhetumangustifoliae) decreased, the former submerged community returned (Potametumlucentis) and the area of some existing communities (e.g. nympheids) increased.
Slow return of elodeidswas caused by low transparency andlack of submerged vegetation propagules, which are the most probable limiting factors of the recolonization process.
Establishment of new entrepreneurial ventures have a direct influence on economic growth of the economy and society of every country. It relates especially to unemployment level and net income of the ...employees. Given these facts, the two aims of the paper are: 1) presentation of the Innovativeness of 14 countries of South - East Europe region and two additional countries: Poland and Hungary based on their overall ranking(s) as well as Information and Communication Technologies, ICT access and ICT use; and 2) to present development and business performance of academic start-up and spin-off companies in ICT sector which were created by the University of Novi Sad (Serbia) and which allowed it to become a sustainable University. The indicators such as total number of new ventures, number of employees, total revenue and average gross profit margin were used in order to analyse establishment, development and sustainability of academic ICT start-up and spin-off companies. The study shows that sustainable measures, particularly academic start-up and spin-off companies, have a very important role in sustainable economic growth (local, national and regional) and are a significant driver of innovation. They are of key importance for the sustainable development of the University.
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