Smart cities (SC) promote economic development, improve the welfare of their citizens, and help in the ability of people to use technologies to build sustainable services. However, computational methods are necessary to assist in the process of creating smart cities because they are fundamental to the decision-making process, assist in policy making, and offer improved services to citizens. As such, the aim of this research is to present a systematic review regarding data mining (DM) and machine learning (ML) approaches adopted in the promotion of smart cities. The Methodi Ordinatio was used to find relevant articles and the VOSviewer software was performed for a network analysis. Thirty-nine significant articles were identified for analysis from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, in which we analyzed the DM and ML techniques used, as well as the areas that are most engaged in promoting smart cities. Predictive analytics was the most common technique and the studies focused primarily on the areas of smart mobility and smart environment. This study seeks to encourage approaches that can be used by governmental agencies and companies to develop smart cities, being essential to assist in the Sustainable Development Goals.
The growing concern about the development of sustainable production systems leads organizations to seek the support of management tools for decision-making. Considering the whole life cycle of the product, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has an important role in this scenario. The objective of this paper is to present, through the theoretical discussion, the role of LCA in strategic planning of the organization. It showed the enormous potential for decision making on the environmental aspect, but also the critical factor in the development shares in the competitive context. The use of LCA can reduce the environmental impacts of the system under study (primary purpose) and guide the range of advantages in the fields of marketing, legislation and environmental labeling, competitive strategies, efficiency use of resources and others.
Purpose Some universities have a commitment to both academic education and sustainable development, and the sustainable development goals can support several sustainable actions that universities may take as principles and attitudes. From this perspective, the purpose of this study is to present environmentally sustainable practices at a federal university in Brazil and to analyze and discuss the potential environmental impacts associated with an environmentally sustainable practice implemented using life cycle assessment (LCA) and its benefits for the university's decision-makers.
Design/methodology/approach To accomplish that, the study combines a description of environmentally sustainable practices at the 13 campuses of the Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR) in terms of education, water and electricity consumption, waste management and emissions. As a result of this analysis, one campus identified that a high volume of disposable plastic cups were being disposed of, for which the use of reusable plastic cups was introduced. In addition, an LCA study (ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2006) quantified the benefits of the introduction of said reusable plastic cups.
Findings The results show that the university is working on environmentally sustainable initiatives and policies to become greener. At the same time, using a systematic LCA made it possible to measure that replacing disposable plastic cups for reusable ones reduced waste generation but increased water consumption on the campus. Faced with this, a sensitization was carried out to reduce water consumption. Finally, the current study provides lessons on the environmental performance to universities interested in sustainable practices, fostering perspectives for a better world. The findings of this study encourage organizations to accomplish environmental actions toward greener universities. The study shows that institutions need to be reflective and analytical about how even "greening" measures have impacts, which can be mitigated if necessary.
Practical implications The sustainable practical implications were reported, and an LCA was conducted to assess potential environmental impacts of reusable plastic cups. It was identified that raw material production is the phase that generates most environmental impacts during the life cycle of the product, along with the consumer use phase, due to the quantity of water used to wash the reusable cups. In addition, the practical contributions of this study are to provide insights to institutions that aim to use environmental actions, i.e. suggestions of sustainable paths toward a greener university.
Originality/value This is one of the first studies to investigate and discuss sustainable practices at UTFPR/Brazil. The study assessed one of the practices using a scientific technique (LCA) to assess the impacts of reusable plastic cups distributed to the students of one of the 13 campuses. Although there are other studies on LCA in the literature, the value of this study lies in expanding what has already been experienced/found on the use of LCA to assess environmental practices in university campuses.
The objective of this work is to perform a temporal comparative analysis in a network of companies in the furniture sector, in Santa Catarina, southern Brazil, presenting drivers through circular economy modeling. The study was performed applying the model proposed by Saraceni et al. (2017) in a network of Furniture companies in Concó ; rdia, Brazil. The model diagnoses the presence of industrial symbiosis practices in five domains variables involving Technical, Economic, Political, Information and Organizational Factors, influencing three spheres: by-product exchange, service sharing, and managerial cooperation. The study addressed the positive relationship aspects of the circular economy as guidelines for improving the industrial symbiosis of the network. The results of data collection in 2019 were compared with the results of the application made in 2014. The comparison revealed a significant advance from 2014 to 2019 towards Industrial Symbiosis, highlighting that corrective actions and circular economy strategies may lead this business network to be the first Industrial Symbiosis case in Brazil in the next few years, meanwhile fostering the ecological network&rsquo ; s process to the country.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on a life cycle assessment (LCA)-based ecodesign teaching practice via university-industry collaboration in an industrial engineering undergraduate course.
Design/methodology/approach A new course was designed and taught in the Industrial Engineering undergraduate course of a Federal University in Brazil. The course comprised explanatory lectures and a practical project developed in a partnership between the university and an industry partner where students had to develop Ecodesign proposals based on LCA to improve the environmental profile of both solid and reticulated paint brushes. To that end, students used the LCA software tool Umberto NXT v.7.1.13 (educational version), where they modeled the life cycle of four plastic brushes and assessed it using the impact categories of climate change and resource consumption, and the Ecoinvent v.3.3 database. After course completion, students, professors and industry collaborators were asked to provide feedback on the project performance and expectations.
Findings The course design used was welcomed by both students and the industry partner. Students found the novel approach intriguing and useful to their future careers. The results also exceeded the industry partner's expectations, as students formulated valuable insights. Professors observed that learning was made easier, as content was put into practice and internalized more easily and solidly. The approach was found to be a win-win-win.
Practical implications Students acquired a fair share of knowledge on sustainability issues and potential existing trade-offs, which is valuable to industrial practices. The industry noticed the valuable contributions that academia can provide. The university profited from providing students with a real case challenging traditional teaching methods.
Originality/value To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first case studies to show how LCA and ecodesign teaching practice can support sustainability learning in an industrial engineering undergraduate course.
AbstractThis article aimed to propose and test a model to assess the potential of sustainability reporting (SR) standards as facilitators for knowledge and technology transfer (KTT), the Sustainable Reporting Knowledge and Technology Transfer (SURKaTT) Model. The proposed model can be used mainly by researchers and public organizations that intend to or are currently conducting SR initiatives. It can be used to assess and compare SR standards, being a facilitator to KTT processes. GRI, a worldwide well‐known SR standard was assessed using the SURKaTT Model, and results show that GRI performed at only 58.8% of its potential to facilitate KTT processes. This pioneering approach can encourage researchers onto developing further criteria to assess the possibilities of KTT in SR, and it is a kick‐off start for SR to be considered a both purposeful and serendipitous source of KTT initiatives.
By reason of the requirements of quality on the part of consumers and regulatory agencies, the dairy industries require tools capable of optimizing their processes in virtue of threats from countries which have a lower cost of production. The Statistical Process Control (SPC) is a powerful tool to evaluate and monitor the process in relation to their stability. This paper presents an application of Statistical Process Control (SPC) in a dairy plant located in the south of Minas Gerais. The process analyzed was the packaging of butter in 200g pots. The purpose of this article is to identify the actual state of the filling process of butter in this dairy and compare them with the requirements established by legislation. Therefore, was used samples and control charts to demonstrate the current state of the process and normality tests, in particular the t-student. The results demonstrate that the industry does not harm the consumer and that is faithful to the legislation. However, it was identified that in case the industry presents an overweight in nominal content of each package, which leads to considerable injury once the feedstock used in the production of butter (cream) is of great economic value.
