Topic Review
Population Projections
Population projections serve various actors at sub-national, national, and international levels as a quantitative basis for political and economic decision-making. Often, the users are no experts in statistics or forecasting and therefore lack the methodological and demographic background to completely understand the methods and limitations behind the projections they use for their analyses. Our contribution primarily targets that readership.
  • 768
  • 27 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Senior housing universal design
The senior housing universal design (SHUD) is relatively new, and uprising approach to primarily construct flats that would meet the needs of the elderly and/or disabled ones. These have been termed “barrier-free flats”. The necessary adaptations are implemented at the architectural design stage and involve modifications of bathroom, kitchen, household equipment, furniture, doors, as well as passageways. The primary SHUD of living spaces suitable for senior citizens (barrier-free flats) is more beneficial from the socio-economic perspective as compared to the adaptation of existing houses. 
  • 948
  • 27 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Security Drivers and Pragmatic Interventions
       This entry sought to identify trends in publications in the direction of sustainable food security by examining its drivers that are critical for shaping food policy. The sustainable food security drivers in food supply chain include food security governance involvement, input resource management, output management, information sharing, and interventions. Quality management is an ideal pragmatic intervention that has critical positive potential to improve the state of sustainable food security in the food supply chain.
  • 598
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Consumer Reselling
Since e-commerce has revitalized recently in the form of live commerce and Instagram shopping, both purchase and sales have become promoted among consumers while reselling has been facilitated in second-hand item markets and among consumers. Particularly, the new trend of consuming products, rather than merely owning products, has become a mainstream factor in the market. Accordingly, consumers show extraordinary consumption, focusing on the act of purchasing limited edition products of high scarcity and placing more importance on one-off experience rather than ordinary new products or premium products. It was verified that the need for joining was the most critical factor facilitating consumers' reselling of limited edition products. 
  • 1.7K
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Resilience of Urban-Rural Systems
The urban-rural systems were defined as a complex dynamic social-ecological system based on resilience thinking and transition theory. The notions of adaptation and transformation were applied to compose a framework to coordinate “resilience” with “sustainability”. Resilience thinking may contribute a system approach to the study by acknowledging URSs as complex dynamic social-ecological systems (SESs) with human-nature dynamics evolving cross multiple scales over time. Resilience depicts the capacity of complex URSs to absorb disturbance, adapt to changing conditions and withstand within the current regime, and cross the threshold into new development trajectories and fundamentally improved state in response to unforeseeable crises and enforced interventions. Linking it to transition theory (pp. 111–114) may help understand how the URSs evolution of technical, economic, social-cultural, and ecological dynamics bring about change towards sustainable development.
  • 1.4K
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Human Remains Detection Dogs
Human remains detection dogs (HRDDs) are powerful police assets to locate a corpse. However, methods used to select and train them are as diverse as the number of countries with such a canine brigade. First, a survey was sent to human remains searching brigades (N Countries = 10; N Brigades = 16; N Handlers = 50; N questions = 9), to collect their working habits. It confirmed the lack of optimized selection and training procedures. Second, a literature review was performed in order to outline the strengths and shortcomings of HRDDs training. A comparison between the scientific knowledge and common practices used by HRDDs brigade was then conducted focusing on HRDDs selection and training procedures. We highlighted that HRDD handlers explained to select their dogs by focusing on behavioral traits while neglecting anatomical features, which have shown their importance. Most HRDD handlers reported to use a reward-based training, which is in accordance with training literature for dogs. Olfactory training aids should be representative of the odor target to allow a dog to reach optimal performances. The survey highlighted the wide diversity of homemade olfactory training aids, and the need to optimize their composition. In the present document, key research topics to improve HRDD works are also provided.
  • 1.9K
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Disclosure of Nonfinancial Information
Services in the financial sector are developing rapidly and are not necessarily provided only by traditional banks and financial companies. Many nonfinancial companies provide financial services, and this may open the sector to additional risk. In this context, the aspects of both financial and nonfinancial reporting are important and need to be taken into consideration as a whole to provide a complex picture of a particular institution.
  • 608
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
EU Timber Regulation
Illegal logging and the associated deforestation have serious consequences for biodiversity, the climate, the economy and society. The EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) prohibits the placing of illegally harvested timber or timber products on the market. The objective of this paper is to analyse the recent evolution of EU imports of these products from the international market, in order to check how the transparency index of the supplying countries’ institutions and tree cover loss have influenced this trajectory. To that end, a panel data model is estimated with 228 observations from 38 exporting countries between 2012 and 2017. The results show that EU timber imports have a direct association with the transparency index and an inverse relationship with tree cover loss; both these relationships are highly significant at the one-percent level. Other significant factors are the performance of the EU construction sector (as a proxy for timber demand) and timber supply. In the short and medium-term, Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) signed between the EU and non-EU timber-producing countries have a negative influence on the supply to EU member states. This study presents an analysis of EU timber imports after the implementation of the EUTR, providing specific conclusions that can inform policymakers’ efforts to foster sustainable forest management.
  • 753
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Emotional Advertising
The correlation and perception of advertising on adolescents have been shown to be a key factor in the survival of subjective emotional states, as emotions are evaluation patterns that influence consumer behaviour.
  • 812
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Sustainable development of infrastructure projects
This entry responds to the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In 2015, the international community responded to the sustainable development challenge with their report Transforming Our World: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development . The SDGs are the United Nations’ blueprint, with 193 nations signatories, to address the global challenges, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, prosperity, peace and justice. The concept of sustainable development acquired its most cohesive definition in the United Nations’ 1987 Brundtland Commission report, which described it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” . Using the “triple bottom line” , Ochieng, Price and Moore took the definition further by placing it in the context of global construction projects and describing it as the balance of economic, social and environmental aspects. In their book, they identify a number of systemic issues, “hard and soft” in nature, that provide new challenges for global construction projects in relation to sustainable development.
  • 1.6K
  • 26 Oct 2020
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