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The purpose of this paper is to present pedagogical approaches developed and implemented to deliver sustainable design education (SDE) to second-year undergraduate students on civil engineering programmes in the (then) School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University. In doing so, the work presented offers an example of how to help students understand the contested and contingent nature of sustainability.

The research presented takes an action-based approach to the development of a teaching and assessment model centered on problem- and project-based learning in a real-world context.

Because of the use of a design brief, which addresses a practical infrastructure problem encountered by regional communities, the academic team were able to make arguments related to the three pillars of sustainability more accessible to the students. This suggests that pedagogical instruments based on problem- and project-based learning strategies are effective in delivering SDE.

The successful delivery of SDE requires commitment from the senior management teams leading individual departments as well as commitments embedded in the high-level strategies of Higher Education institutions. It was also found that some students need extra support from the teaching staff if their engagement through SDE is to be successful. This has practical implications for the amount of contact time built into undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes.

The teaching and assessment model presented in this paper addresses various substantive and normative issues associated with SDE making it relevant and transferable to courses other than civil engineering.

This paper provides a critical review of developments in the adaptability of buildings. The purpose of this paper is to determine the current “state-of-the-art”, describe current thinking and trends in research and practice, and identify issues and gaps that further research can address. It provides a basis for a scientific and practical understanding of the interdependencies across different design criterion. This paper increases the awareness of architects, engineers, clients and users on the importance of adaptability and its role in lowering impacts over the lifecycle of buildings as part of the infrastructure system.

This paper draws mainly from the literature as its source of evidence. These were identified from established databases and search engines (e.g. Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar) using keywords such as adaptability, adaptable, adaptation, and flexibility. Over 80 sources including books, journal papers, conference proceedings, research reports and doctoral theses covering the period 1990 to 2017 were reviewed and categorised. An inductive approach was used to critically review and categorise these publications and develop a framework for analysis.

The concept of adaptability includes many dimensions which can broadly fall into two categories: changes to buildings and user adaptations to buildings. However, previous research has mostly focussed on the former, with many attempts to identify building attributes that facilitate adaptability, and some considerations for its assessment. Key areas that have not been adequately addressed and which require further research include: user/occupant adaptations, cost, benefits and implications of various adaptability measures, and the development of a standardised assessment methodology that could aid in decision making in the design stage of buildings.

The adaptability strategies considered in this review focussed mainly on building components and systems, and did not include the contribution of intelligent and smart/biological systems. The coverage is further limited in scope due to the period considered (1990-2017) and the exclusion of terms such as “retrofit” and “refurbishment” from the review. However, the findings provide a solid basis for further research in the areas identified above. It identifies research issues and gaps in knowledge between the defined needs and current state-of-the-art on adaptive building for both research and practice.

This paper is a review of research into a highly topical subject, given the acknowledged need to adapt buildings over their lifecycle to environmental, economic or social changes. It provides further insights on the dimensions of adaptability and identifies areas for further research that will contribute to the development of robust tools for the assessment of building adaptability, which will enhance the decision-making process of building design and the development of a more sustainable built environment.

Beyond the rhetoric of Nigeria's policymakers, there are multifaceted challenges threatening sustainable development (SD) in Nigeria under climate change (CC). To strengthen theory and practice, this chapter discusses SD under CC in Nigeria using SWOT analysis. The exploratory focus of this chapter made the qualitative research method, an interpretivist research paradigm, most appropriate. Data sourced from scholarly articles and other secondary resources were reviewed, integrated and synthesised using SWOT analysis. At the end of the SWOT analysis, four insights emerged. The strengths and opportunities of SD under CC include increased awareness and growing access to climate-friendly technologies, sustainable finance, climate-friendly agriculture, solar technologies and renewable energy solutions, among others. The weaknesses and threats include deforestation, unabated gas flaring, rising carbon emissions and exorbitant cost of climate-friendly technologies, among others. The chapter explicates the need for policymakers and regulatory agencies in Nigeria to consolidate the strengths, correct all weaknesses, harness opportunities and avert the looming threats of CC. The chapter contributes to the three themes of SD by affirming that CC comes with devastating consequences that evidently pose existential risks and threats to people, profits and the planet. Consequently, policymakers need to mobilise sufficient resources and capabilities for CC adaptation and mitigation to achieve SD in Nigeria.

This study aims to gain an understanding of how caring for an ageing population affects caregivers’ psychological well-being, quality of life and ability to tolerate distress. This study provides valuable insights into the challenges faced by family caregivers and underscores the critical need for comprehensive support systems.

A correlational method and cross-sectional research design was used for the study. For this, a sample of 200 caregivers in the age range of 25–60 years who were taking care of the geriatric population above the age of 70 years for a minimum of one year were chosen. Four questionnaires − Burden Scale for Family Caregivers, Psychological Well-Being Scale, World Health Organization’s Quality of Life Scale-BRIEF version and Distress Tolerance Scale were chosen. Correlation and multivariate regression were calculated using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) 21 and Jamovi 3.4.1.

This study found that there is a negative correlation of caregiver burden with psychological well-being, quality of life and distress tolerance. The sub-domains of self-acceptance, psychological health and tolerance levels were most impacted for the caregivers. Through multivariate regression, it was found that the caregiver burden significantly predicted psychological well-being and quality of life.

This study focuses on the English-speaking caregivers which may overlook the diverse linguistic and cultural variations within the broader caregiver community in India and the data collection exclusively targeted family caregivers providing support to geriatric population without chronic illnesses. This restriction could potentially limit the generalizability of the findings to the broader caregiving context.

The implications of this research are that for caregivers, this study underscores the importance of tailored support programmes that address the negative impact of caregiver burden on psychological well-being and quality of life. Health-care professionals can use the findings to incorporate mental health assessments and interventions within caregiving contexts, recognizing the interconnected nature of these variables. Policymakers can use the findings to inform policies related to caregiver support and health-care resource allocation.

In India, the social norm is that children are expected to take care of their parents when they become old. Taking care of elderly parents can be challenging, even emotionally. As a result, this study will focus on how caregivers’ psychological well-being, quality of life and ability to tolerate distress are affected. Consequently, promoting the creation of community support groups and workplace mental health programmes which could give caregivers a forum to voice their concerns.

In the early 2000s, a wave of new practices concerning the adaptive reuse (AR) of historic buildings into boutique hotels began in Yazd, Iran. This study presents the findings of a postoccupancy evaluation (POE) of adaptively reused historic buildings into boutique hotels. It aims to explore and prioritize the main factors of architecture's physical aspects in the adapted buildings.

In order to carry out a POE, hotel guests' written reviews from online international and national travel platforms were analyzed. According to this preliminary analysis, a questionnaire was designed and randomly distributed among 300 hotel guests. The data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed using SPSS software. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce a set of indicators into the main components.

The findings revealed that “preliminary physical feasibility study and evaluation of building's functional potential” is the most important component with a weight of 0.709. Then, “adaptive reuse design” and “quality of building conservation” are placed with a weight of 0.232 and 0.058, respectively. The results show the mere attention of practitioners to architectural restoration rather than adapting historic buildings into boutique hotels in Yazd. Also, the lack of a specific framework for this purpose is felt in Iran.

Future research could evaluate the architectural aspects of historic buildings that have been converted into various functions from the main users' views.

This research's main contribution is to recommend guidelines for more user-friendly boutique hotels. This includes principal components and their sub-indicators that should be considered in the AR process of historic buildings by conservators, investors and hoteliers. Also, the extracted factors can be implemented for boutique hotels' improvements in operation because they determine the order of priority from the users' viewpoint.

This study introduces a new application of POE in the field of conservation of heritage assets and the hospitality industry; it focuses on the evaluation of the users' feedback regarding the architectural aspects of adaptively reused historic buildings into boutique hotels based on original empirical data.

The current study aims to investigate the various consumption motives (hedonic, gain and normative) responsible for strengthening consumers' intentions toward purchase behavior for electric vehicle (EV).

A total of 411 valid survey responses were collected using a structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to investigate the empirical fit of the hypothesized framework.

The results of structural equation modeling revealed that all three motives were positively correlated with purchase intentions for EV. Hedonic motives were found to have the strongest influence on purchase intentions. In addition, gain and normative motives were also found to be significant predictors of EV buying behavior. Further analysis revealed a positive correlation between gain, normative and hedonic motives. Moreover, personal moral standards seem to have a significant and positive impact on the positive emotions associated with buying EV.

The results of current research can be useful for marketers while designing promotional strategies for all the high-involvement green products. Marketing professionals and policymakers can use these results to build effective marketing strategies for EVs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions resulting from personal vehicle use.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study in the South Asian region that explores consumers' motives for EV purchase behavior. Further, this is among a few studies, which have attempted to investigate the impact of hedonic, gain and normative motives on green purchase behavior in the context of high involvement green products.

A core challenge in background subtraction (BGS) is handling videos with sudden illumination changes in consecutive frames. In our pilot study published in, Sakkos:SKIMA 2019, we tackle the problem from a data point-of-view using data augmentation. Our method performs data augmentation that not only creates endless data on the fly but also features semantic transformations of illumination which enhance the generalisation of the model.

In our pilot study published in SKIMA 2019, the proposed framework successfully simulates flashes and shadows by applying the Euclidean distance transform over a binary mask generated randomly. In this paper, we further enhance the data augmentation framework by proposing new variations in image appearance both locally and globally.

Experimental results demonstrate the contribution of the synthetics in the ability of the models to perform BGS even when significant illumination changes take place.

Such data augmentation allows us to effectively train an illumination-invariant deep learning model for BGS. We further propose a post-processing method that removes noise from the output binary map of segmentation, resulting in a cleaner, more accurate segmentation map that can generalise to multiple scenes of different conditions. We show that it is possible to train deep learning models even with very limited training samples. The source code of the project is made publicly available at https://github.com/dksakkos/illumination_augmentation

This paper aims to adopt Cameron and Quinn’s analysis of organizational culture and March’s learning framework to analyze the type of organizational culture (OC) that promotes learning competences and whether exploration and exploitation competences (ambidexterity) improve the European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM) results (excellent results). In addition, this research tests if these competences exercise a mediating effect in the relationship between OC and performance.

A model is proposed whose relationships have been tested using structural equations. The sample was obtained from the SABI database. Two hundred valid questionnaires were returned via a webpage, in which four managers from each of the 200 organizations responded.

The results support the proposed relationships. Adhocracy, hierarchy and market culture have a positive relationship with excellent results. A hierarchical culture develops exploitation competences, and a market culture develops learning ambidexterity. Moreover, exploration and exploitation increase results. Finally, these two cultures indirectly influence results through exploration and exploitation competences.

The proposed model can help managers who implement the EFQM model to better understand how the culture of their organization promotes learning and how these two variables improve their performance.

Because the EFQM model requires organizations to use a knowledge management system to enhance the effect of the enabliers criteria on excellent results, the managers of these companies must know that only market and hierarchy cultures are suitable for it. Besides, this study highlights the importance of two cultural values for the implementation of the EFQM Model and, therefore, to promote excellent results: market orientation and process control.

This study fills an existing gap in the literature by combining exploitation, exploration, OC and EFQM results in a single model and highlights the importance of market orientation and process control for excellent results and knowledge exploration and exploitation.