The business model concept has gained a prominent position both in academia and among practitioners during the past 30+ years. The aim of this Special Issue of Systems is to contribute to a stronger theoretical basis for the business model concept. This includes a focus on the systemic character of business models and the systems approaches that this entails. Another important aspect is to allocate more attention to innovations of business models. The business models that emerged with e-commerce and e-business as such were in themselves innovations. However, innovations of business models have received too little attention. Most of the business models analyzed and discussed in the business model literature have been rather static instead of dynamic. This is the reason why this Special Issue of Systems, entitled ‘Business Model—the Perspective of Systems Thinking and Innovation’, has been developed.

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Effective safety management has always been a key objective for the broader airworthiness sector. This book is focused on safety themes with implications on airworthiness management. It offers a diverse set of analyses on aircraft maintenance accidents, empirical and systematic investigations on important continuing airworthiness matters and research studies on methodologies for the risk and safety assessment in continuing and initial airworthiness. Overall, this collection of research and review papers is a valuable addition to the published literature, useful for the community of aviation professionals and researchers.

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This open access book introduces crealectics, a new creative methodology that bridges philosophical depth with practical innovation. Drawing on Leibniz's concept of compossibility – the idea that not everything possible can coexist in the same world –the author develops a five-phase approach to holistic innovation: resetting, crealing, profusing, compossibilizing, and realizing. Tested through real-world applications including case studies with Vattenfall R&D, the crealectic method offers an alternative to purely analytical or dialectical approaches to innovation, what the author calls “inner-novation." The book presents the C.I.P.H.E.R. model (Crealectic Intelligence and Philosophical Health for Eudynamic Realities), demonstrating how individual transformation and collective innovation can work together to create "the best of compossible worlds." This interdisciplinary work contributes to possibility studies, sustainability thinking, and innovation methodology, offering practical tools for academics, practitioners, and students seeking approaches to creative problem-solving that honor both diversity and coherence.

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This open access book introduces crealectics, a new creative methodology that bridges philosophical depth with practical innovation. Drawing on Leibniz's concept of compossibility – the idea that not everything possible can coexist in the same world –the author develops a five-phase approach to holistic innovation: resetting, crealing, profusing, compossibilizing, and realizing. Tested through real-world applications including case studies with Vattenfall R&D, the crealectic method offers an alternative to purely analytical or dialectical approaches to innovation, what the author calls “inner-novation." The book presents the C.I.P.H.E.R. model (Crealectic Intelligence and Philosophical Health for Enriched Realities), demonstrating how individual transformation and collective innovation can work together to create "the best of compossible worlds." This interdisciplinary work contributes to possibility studies, sustainability thinking, and innovation methodology, offering practical tools for academics, practitioners, and students seeking approaches to creative problem-solving that honor both diversity and coherence.

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Cultural landscapes are the result of social-ecological processes that have co-evolved throughout history, shaping high-value sustainable systems. The current processes of global change, such as agricultural intensification, rural abandonment, urban sprawl, and socio-economic dynamics, are threatening cultural landscapes worldwide. Whereas this loss is often unstoppable due to rapid and irreversible social-ecological changes, there are also examples where rationale protection measures can preserve cultural landscapes while promoting the sustainability of social-ecological systems. However, not all conservation policy-making processes consider the value of cultural landscapes, which makes their preservation even more difficult. Indeed, conservation policies focused on the wilderness paradigm are often counterproductive to conserving highly valuable cultural landscapes. The chapters in this book cover a wide spectrum of topics related to the preservation and sustainability of cultural landscapes, using different methodological approaches and involving regions from all over the world. This book can be useful for both researchers and professionals interested in using the socio-ecological framework in their scientific and applied work.

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This Special Issue comprises original research contributions on the changing landscape of sustainability policies and their economic and social impacts. The first paper duscusses the ‘green growth’ and ‘de-growth’ recipes for global climate change. The other ten papers address the transition policies of two major actors of the world system: the European Union (five papers) and China (five papers). The papers show that, in spite of the huge differences between the EU27 and China, in both cases, environmental and climate energy policies, as well as circular economy policies, can be effective in driving the sustainability transition or some of its core processes. Effectiveness emerges for a broad range of different policy approaches. A clear-cut conclusion emerging from the papers is that innovation, technological, social or institutional, is the key lever to make policies effective.

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This scholarly book is Volume 2 of a duology that seeks to stimulate conversations among development evaluators, commissioners of evaluations and development programme decision-makers about the role of evaluation in addressing inequality and fostering an equitable society in Africa. The book chapters explore the following questions: (1) Take stock of what we know about inequality – what inequality is in the African context, and how does it affect the lives of the citizens of African countries? (2) What does equitable evaluation mean? How can the concept of equitable evaluation be adopted in evaluation practice? (3) What lessons can be learnt from evaluations of interventions that address inequality at various levels (sectoral, programmatic and project) levels? (4) What epistemological transformation in evaluation practice is needed to achieve an equitable society? and (5) How have issues of inequality manifested within evaluation practice through organisations, institutions and international development? This book’s target audience is academics engaged in the field of developmental programmes in sub-Saharan Africa.

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A Gazdaság 5D-ben című kötet a jelenlegi társadalmi-gazdasági rendszerek alapvető ellentmondásait vizsgálja, módszertani eszközökkel is elemezve az ökológiai, gazdasági és társadalmi alrendszerek kölcsönhatásait. Mivel a pénz és a gazdasági növekedés iránti vonzódásunk rövid távon aligha változik meg, ezt a hajtóerőt kihasználva kell olyan életképes alternatívát keresni, amely összeegyeztethető a természeti rendszerek működésével. Ennek egy lehetséges módja, hogy a gazdasági növekedés iránti preferenciánkat és pénzalapú értékrendszerünket olyan irányba hangoljuk át, amely összhangban van a természet rendszerszintű működésével. A szerző rámutat, hogy már a számviteli rendszer egy hiányosságának puszta korrekciója paradigmaváltáshoz vezethet. A szerző a civilizációk ciklikus fejlődését és összeomlását feltáró történeti áttekintésével feltárja a jelenlegi világrendszer sajátos sérülékenységét. Az elméleti alapokat kiterjedt esettanulmányok egészítik ki, mint a Las Gaviotas ökológiai közösségének, a bali víztemplomok rendszerének, a regeneratív mezőgazdaságnak vagy a városi reziliencia példáinak bemutatása.

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Through out the current period of educational change, Geography education has also changed. The

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How we can enact meaningful change in computing to meet the urgent need for sustainability and justice.The deep entanglement of information technology with our societies has raised hope for a transition to more sustainable and just communities—those that phase out fossil fuels, distribute public goods fairly, allow free access to information, and waste less. In principle, computing should be able to help. But in practice, we live in a world in which opaque algorithms steer us toward misinformation and unsustainable consumerism. Insolvent shows why computing's dominant frame of thinking is conceptually insufficient to address our current challenges, and why computing continues to incur societal debts it cannot pay back. Christoph Becker shows how we can reorient design perspectives in computer science to better align with the values of sustainability and justice.Beckerpositions the role of information technology and computing in environmental sustainability, social justice, and the intersection of the two, and explains why designing IT for just sustainability is both technically and ethically challenging. Becker goes on to argue that computing could be aided by critical friends—disciplines that draw on critical social theory, feminist thought, and systems thinking—to make better sense of its role in society. Finally, Becker demonstrates that it is possible to fuse critical perspectives with work in computer science, showing new and fruitful directions for computing professionals and researchers to pursue.

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The overall focus of this Special Issue is on educational spaces relating to integrated STEM and interdisciplinary partnerships that might occur in integrated STEM spaces. These educational spaces include formal and informal schooling and include studies involving collaborative work teams, pre-service, in-service teachers, STEM faculty experiences, pre-collegiate students, interdisciplinary education, science education, technology education, engineering and computer science education, and mathematics education. The purpose of this Special Issue is to bring together a showcase of current studies in integrated STEM and related partnership work in teaching and learning. The newly released Handbook of Research on STEM Education (Johnson, Mohr-Schroeder, Moore, and English, 2020) explores areas of STEM in an international context and sets the stage for this Special Issue. The articles included show perspectives from around the globe.

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It has been confirmed that the number of cases and the death toll of COVID-19 are continuing to rise in many countries around the globe. Governments around the world have been struggling with containing and reducing the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19; however, their respective responses have not been consistent. Aggressive measures imposed by some governments have resulted in a complete lockdown that has disrupted all facets of life and poses massive health, social, and financial impacts. Other countries, however, are taking a more wait-and-see approach in an attempt to maintain business as usual. Collectively, these challenges reflect a super wicked problem that places immense pressure on economies and societies and requires the strategic management of health systems to avoid overwhelming them—this has been linked to the public mantra of ‘flattening the curve’, which acknowledges that while the pandemic cannot be stopped, its impact can be regulated so that the number of cases at any given time is not beyond the capacity of the health system. Dynamic simulation modelling is a framework that facilitates the understanding/exploring of complex problems, of searching for and finding the best option(s) from all practical solutions where time dynamics are essential. The papers in this book provide research insights into this super wicked problem and case studies exploring the interactions between social, economic, environmental, and health factors through the use of a systems approach.

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Current efforts to limit the ravages of schistosomiasis are pushing the world closer to eliminating a chronic infection that has been associated with human life in the tropics since time immemorial. This notwithstanding, the disease remains a scourge for large populations in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, and the main part of this book is made up by papers dealing with its current distribution, discussing ways and means to establish and implement improved control approaches. While chemotherapy limits the symptoms caused by schistosomiasis, the number of infected people will not decrease until the parasite's life cycle is interrupted. To that end, some papers focus on the intermediate snail host, which is notoriously difficult to control, while others discuss human hygiene and sanitation. The latter approach not only prevents infection through avoiding people being infected from the snail, but more importantly, also stops people infecting the snail by leaving contagious feces and urine in nature. With morbidity reduced by chemotherapy, the immediate target now is the interruption of transmission to be achieved by new tools, such as the novel chemotherapies, improved diagnostics (for humans, animals, and snails), and vaccines discussed in several of the papers. As made clear in this book, a complex infection requires new tools as well as work on many fronts, above all; however, a clear idea is needed as to how to skillfully combine the tools available and sustain implemented control activities.

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Many people live in rural areas in tropical regions. Rural development is not merely a contribution to the growth of individual countries. It can be a way to reduce poverty and to increase access to water, health care, and education. Sustainable rural development can also help stop deforestation and reduce livestock, which generate most of the greenhouse gas emissions. However, efforts to achieve a sustainable rural development are often thwarted by floods, drought, heat waves, and hurricanes, which local communities are not very prepared to tackle. Agricultural practices and local planning are still not very risk-informed. These deficiencies are particularly acute in tropical regions, where many Least Developed Countries are located and where there is, however, great potential for rural development. This Special Issue contains 22 studies on best practices for risk awareness; on local risk reduction; on several cases of soil depletion, water pollution, and sustainable access to safe water; and on agronomy, earth sciences, ecology, economy, environmental engineering, geomatics, materials science, and spatial and regional planning in 12 tropical countries.

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The construction industry is growing rapidly and time has changed the construction methods used. The traditional way of construction is becoming obsolete and technology is taking over. In this case, sustainable construction is the future and the new norm in the construction industry. Although there are various opportunities in this sector, there are also some challenges that exist and hinder productivity. Hence, this reprint covers the opportunities and challenges in sustainable construction.

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The issues facing humanity have become increasingly complex due to the fact they are embedded in a global web of ecological, economic, social, cultural and political processes that are dynamically interlinked. The capacity to conceptualise and redesign solutions, in systems and sustainability terms, will increasingly be what society and employers expect. This “expectation” is globally one of the biggest challenges for education. This Special Issue highlights key developments in the area of systems education and how some of the many challenges are currently being addressed. The 15 articles published fall into five groups: how to design learning systems for systems thinking and sustainability education; insights from the various systems education programs available internationally; different approaches to teaching systems thinking and sustainability; how systems education can be tailored to broaden systems education beyond universities; and possible future pathways for systems education for a sustainable planet. The range and magnitude of the contributions to this book illustrate the diversity of systems education practices and programs (learning systems) in the global systems community, and the relevance of systems thinking and practice to examining issues crucial to the long-term sustainability of the planet.

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This Systems Thinking Special Issue contains 12 papers on the nature of systems thinking as it applies to systems engineering, systems science, system dynamics, and related fields. Systems thinking can be broadly considered the activity of thinking applied in a systems context, forming a basis for fundamental approaches to several systems disciplines, including systems engineering, systems science, and system dynamics. Although these are somewhat distinct fields, they are bound by common approaches in regard to systems. Whereas systems engineering seeks to apply a multidisciplinary, holistic approach to the development of systems, systems science seeks to understand the basics related to systems of all kinds, from natural to man-made, and system dynamics seeks to understand system structures in order to influence its dynamics. Man-made systems have become more ubiquitous and complex. The study of systems, both natural and engineered, presents new challenges and opportunities to understand emergent, dynamic behaviors that inform the process of sense-making based on systems thinking.

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This book offers a comprehensive overview of areas with elevated levels of crime, which we consider ‘risky places.’ These can be facilities, nodes, or paths and can be found everywhere, from small towns to megacities. Crime and fear are examined from the perspective of those who use these places, based on examples from the US, the UK, Sweden, Nigeria, Brazil, China, Australia, and more. Advocating for a systems thinking approach, the book shows what can be learned from risky places and identifies ways to address their inherent problems. The book also assesses current barriers to applying systems thinking and identifies ways to foster interconnected long-term crime prevention strategies that meet the diverse needs of multiple stakeholders. Aimed at academics, students, and professionals in urban planning, criminology, geography, and related fields, this book is a vital resource for those dedicated to creating safer, more inclusive, and sustainable environments. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

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The global education crisis is a complex problem that requires change from teachers, school managers, civil society, implementers, planners, governments and donors. Addressing the issues that lie beneath this crisis requires new ways of working. Systems thinking is a suite of approaches to grappling with complex problems that is beginning to gain traction in international education. This book brings together new research in the nascent field of systems thinking in international education. Outlining the implications that systems thinking can hold for future research, practice and progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4, a diverse range of leading scholars, policymakers and practitioners present novel research to encourage the shift from a linear view of change to a systems view. Chapters present diverse approaches to applying systems thinking in education across middle- and low-income countries, alongside research on how this has changed mindsets more widely. Questioning notions such as scaling and the universal applicability of ‘what works’, authors here suggest that locally relevant evidence and systemic rewards for using it are necessary to achieve SDG 4. This innovative book exemplifies how systems thinking offers the tools, frameworks and concepts to improve outcomes in education systems. With the education crisis further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, this timely book is essential reading for all those concerned with education and sustainable development goals. This thought-provoking book should be read by all those working to achieve SDG4; those whose day jobs inspire them and who look to their bookshelves for new ideas.

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In this book, conventional and new methods through which sustainability can be promoted in mathematics and science subjects are described and discussed. The aim of the book is to support teachers and teacher educators in their work, and to create a multi-sided view on sustainability, and on education for sustainable development. Curriculums and teaching approaches for the implementation of sustainability in schools and universities, especially in teacher education, are discussed. The pedagocical studies presented give useful examples of how sustainability can be included in mathematics, physics and biology education. The described teaching methods are discussed also in relation to students' competence and learning outcomes. In addition, valuable ideas are presented for the development of curriculums and teaching practices in higher education and schools. The book is suited for all teachers and researchers who are interested in sustainability and sustainable development, and want to develop their teaching in higher education and schools.

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Supply chains are currently globalized and companies operate internationally owing to the fact that raw materials, production processes, and the consumption of the final products are carried out in different countries. This implies high material and information flow, which incurs high costs associated with the supply chain and logistics, sometimes up to 60% of the total cost of the product. Therefore, companies seek to optimize their resources to reduce these costs and improve sustainability in a globalized market. This book, entitled Tools, Methodologies and Techniques Applied to Sustainable Supply Chains, contains 15 chapters that report case studies applied to industrial and service sectors. The authors come from areas such as Mexico, Colombia, Italy, Sweden, Slovakia, China, and Australia. They indicate how managers make use of tools and techniques to solve problems associated with supply chains to reduce their cost and remain competitive. A great effort has been made to analyze this problem, and the methodologies are clearly described here to facilitate the reproducibility of each technique and tool. This was done in the hope that hoping that they may one day be applied in more companies.

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This open access book brings together scholars in the fields of management, public policy, regional studies, and organization theory around the concept of resilience. The aim is to provide a more holistic understanding of the complex phenomenon of resilience from a multi-sectorial, cross-national, and multidisciplinary perspective. The book facilitates a conversation across diverse disciplinary specializations and empirical domains. The authors contribute both to theory testing and theory development and provide key empirical insights useful for societies, organizations, and individuals experiencing disruptive pressures, not least in the context of a post-COVID-19 world. Diverse chapters are held together by a clear organization of the volume across levels of analysis (resilience in organizations and societies) and by an original perspective on resilience derived from an extended review, by the editors, of the existing literature and knowledge gaps, according to which each of the individual chapter contributions is positioned and connected to.

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This open access book brings together scholars in the fields of management, public policy, regional studies, and organization theory around the concept of resilience. The aim is to provide a more holistic understanding of the complex phenomenon of resilience from a multi-sectorial, cross-national, and multidisciplinary perspective. The book facilitates a conversation across diverse disciplinary specializations and empirical domains. The authors contribute both to theory testing and theory development and provide key empirical insights useful for societies, organizations, and individuals experiencing disruptive pressures, not least in the context of a post-COVID-19 world. Diverse chapters are held together by a clear organization of the volume across levels of analysis (resilience in organizations and societies) and by an original perspective on resilience derived from an extended review, by the editors, of the existing literature and knowledge gaps, according to which each of the individual chapter contributions is positioned and connected to.

Rómulo Pinheiro is Professor of Public Policy and Administration at the Department of Political Science and Management at the University of Agder, Norway. Maria Laura Frigotto is Associate Professor in Organization Theory and Management at the Department of Economics and Management at the University of Trento, Italy. Mitchell Young is Assistant Professor in the Department of European Studies, Institute of International Studies at Charles University, Czech Republic.

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This reprint captures recent advancements in the introduction, usage, and adoption of smart and digital disruptive technologies in the built environment. It consists of 17 chapters covering a range of topics and article types. The key topics include the adoption of smart technologies, automation, and disruption in the built environment, such as wearable devices and augmented reality in construction safety, electronic process monitoring for construction tasks, digital capture of buildings through point clouds, UAVs, and LIDAR, BIM for a learning environment, underground works and wood construction, collaborative information management technologies in construction, techniques for structural health monitoring and evaluation, construction risk management, inclusive walking communities, smart spin models for cities, landfill and waste management in cities, and circular economy in construction for sustainable development.

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A rapid growth in various industries and domestic activities is resulting in a huge amount of wastewater. Various types of wastewaters, such as textile, municipal, dairy, pharmaceutical, swine, and aquaculture, etc., are produced regularly by respective industries. These wastewaters are rich in nutrient content and promote eutrophication in the ecosystem and pose a threat to flora and fauna. According to an estimate, eutrophication causes losses of almost 2 billion US dollars annually, affecting real estate and fishing activities. Treatment of wastewater is a costly process and recently wastewater treatment with simultaneous energy production has received more attention. Microorganisms can be used to recover nutrients from wastewater and produce bioenergy (biodiesel, biohydrogen, bioelectricity, methane, etc.). A better understanding of the composition of various types of wastewaters and the development of technologies like anaerobic digestion (AD), microbial fuel cell (MFC), and microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) can help to make wastewater-based biorefinery a reality. To provide an overall overview to students, teachers, and researchers on wastewater to bioenergy technology ten chapters are included in this book.

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