SDEWES Centre
SDEWES Centre (The International Centre for Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems), is a non-governmental scientific organization based at the University of Zagreb, Croatia.[1][2]
Mission
SDEWES Centre is dedicated to the improvement and dissemination of knowledge on methods, policies and technologies for increasing the sustainability of development by de-coupling growth from natural resources and replacing them with knowledge-based economy, taking into account its economic, environmental and social pillars. One of the main issues of the coming decades is to improve efficiencies by integrating various life supporting systems, using waste from one, as resource in other, and in exact moment when it is beneficial to all, integrating electricity, heating, cooling, transport, water, buildings, industry, forestry and agriculture systems.
The Centre organizes courses, summer schools, public lectures, seminars and workshops in order to promote sustainable development of energy, water and environment systems and provides professional opinion on issues of sustainability and sustainability metrics. The Centre also organizes a series of international SDEWES conferences for scientists to discuss issues of sustainability of energy, water and environment system. Through these actions, SDEWES Centre aims to provide a research platform that will provide comprehensive R&D activities, assessment and consultation on the research subjects of sustainable development.[3]
History
SDEWES started as a project co-funded by CORDIS under the FP5 – INCO 2 programme[4] in 2002, when first Dubrovnik Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems was organized. Partners in this project were University of Zagreb and Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon). After the organisation of three more conferences in 2003, 2005 and 2007, SDEWES Centre was established in 2009. Since then, seven more conferences were organized in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.
Membership
According to the Statute of SDEWES Centre, every person can under the same circumstances apply for membership.
Conferences
Up to 2011, SDEWES Conference was organized as biennial conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. From the year 2012, it is an annual event but with a geographic regime. Every two years the conference is held in Dubrovnik, and in the years between on different locations.
The SDEWES 2012 Conference was held in Ohrid, and in 2014 on a cruise ship travelling between Venice and Istanbul.[5]
In 2014, the first regional SEE SDEWES conference was held in Ohrid, Macedonia focused on South East Europe.[6]
In 2015, the 10th Conference on SDEWES was held in Dubrovnik.[7] 510 scientists from over 60 countries participated.
In 2016, the second regional SEE SDEWES conference will be held in Piran, Slovenia.[8]
Work presented at the conferences are published in scientific journals [9] and among them, in the Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems [10]
Journal
SDEWES Centre is publishing research open access Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems since 2013.
Research
SDEWES Centre forms research teams from the pool of members to participate in research projects. As of 2015, SDEWES Centre is involved in two FP7 projects,[11][12] one HORIZON 2020 project[13] and one project under the European Strategy for Danube Region (EUSDR) fund START.
SDEWES Index
In line with the aims of the SDEWES Center, an index is also developed to benchmark the performance of cities across aspects that are related to energy, water and environment systems. With the namesake of the Center, the SDEWES Index consists of 7 dimensions, 35 indicators, and close to 20 sub-indicators. It is currently applied to 58 cities.[14]
References
- ^ European Alliance for Innovation, (retrieved 2015-06-18)
- ^ Wisions of sustainability, (retrieved 2015-06-18)
- ^ World academy of art and science, (retrieved 2015-05-05)
- ^ SDEWES project funded by CORDIS (retrieved 2015-06-17)
- ^ Global Conference Directory, (retrieved 2015-05-15)
- ^ LOCSEE on 1st South East European Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems - SEE SDEWES Ohrid 2014 (retrieved 2015-06-18)
- ^ PREPARE - Network of experts in sustainable consumption and production, (retrieved 2015-05-19)
- ^ Piran conference announced by Escape (retrieved 2015-10-19)
- ^ Elsevier, (retrieved 2015-06-18)
- ^ ROAD, Directory of open access scholary resources, (retrieved 2015-05-05)
- ^ S2Biom project, (retrieved 2015-05-05)
- ^ INNOVER-EAST project, (retrieved 2015-05-05)
- ^ FosterREG project, (retrieved 2015-06-17)
- ^ "SDEWES Centre - SDEWES Index". www.sdewes.org. Retrieved 2015-10-17.