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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the contributions of the Asia‐Pacific region to leading practice in sustainability in higher education (HE), as prelude and orientation to this special issue collection from different countries and regions.

This is a critical review that includes international and regional policy contexts in sustainability and “education for sustainable development” (ESD), whilst exploring the trajectories of key initiatives across the region and considering the broader context of sustainability innovation within the HE sector.

The Asia‐Pacific region offers many creative initiatives and shows considerable progress in ESD and in understanding the learning dimensions of sustainability. At the same time, it mirrors global trends in that further work is needed to promote systemic change in educational arenas, particularly in terms of strategic integration within HE institutions. The Asia‐Pacific contributions to this collection demonstrate the need to harness national policy, to develop local and regional initiatives and to work effectively towards more profound change in HE curricula and through collaboration with external communities and stakeholders.

This is a distinctive collection of new initiatives from the Asia‐Pacific, which compensates for the comparative lack of dissemination in this area. There is considerable sustainability innovation emerging in this region which shows leading‐edge responses from within the HE sector on a number of key challenges and issues.

The purpose of this paper is to review key developments and the role of governmental support in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD) in higher education in Japan.

This is an analytical review paper on policy and practice, using an evaluative perspective to consider developments, challenges and prospects for ESD in higher education in Japan and the significant drivers for existing and ongoing activities.

This paper reveals the significance of the initiatives taken by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the Ministry of the Environment for the development of ESD in Japanese universities. Government policies and funding supports have been critical, but the current dependency on them also poses a significant challenge for the continuous development of ESD in Japanese higher education institutions over the longer term. Analysis suggests that encouraging leadership development for sustainability amongst university executive staff members is critical to continuing and strengthening efforts in this area in Japanese higher education.

Although environmental education and awareness is well developed in Japan, the engagement of higher education with the more inclusive field of ESD has been less well researched and documented. This review foregrounds the distinct historical platform for ESD in Japanese higher education and the strength of government support, to examine the role of these drivers for ESD and to inform understanding of sustainability efforts in higher education worldwide.

Water distribution networks (WDNs) must deliver water to its customers 24/7. Disruption of this important service after a strong seismic event impedes post-disaster activities and poses health and sanitation problems. Hence, WDNs must be able to quickly restore services after the occurrence of a major seismic event. This ability to return the water service can be a metric for resilience. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the resilience by developing a framework that translates various restoration strategies into an improved resilience measure for a multisource WDN.

This paper used a quantitative risk assessment method in developing the framework for the resilience quantification of WDN. Prim’s algorithm, Horn’s algorithm and maximum slope method are used for the restoration analysis conducted in this study.

This paper provides resilience indices of the WDN for each repair scenarios. Then, the resilience indices are used to determine the most efficient and optimized repair scenario to restore the hypothetically damaged WDN owing to Level 1 and Level 2 seismic events.

The developed framework of this study only focuses on the robustness, rapidity and resourcefulness properties of resilience.

This study aims to help the water district in the maintenance, repair and evaluation of WDN against seismic events. The results from the study can be used in preparing the disaster management plan of the local water district to repair possible pipelines. This study also serves as a starting point to more complex and comprehensive research about the resilience quantification of WDNs with the consideration of optimal restoration sequence in the future.

The developed framework in the resilience quantification of WDN is original, as it uses optimal restoration strategies to represent the rapidity property of resilience.

What does living mean today? This was the theme explored at Archilab 2001, an international working laboratory for young architects. The expo illustrated that architects are taking account of global warming and the need for sustainable development as well as integrating consumers’ concerns not only for flexibility in new lifestyles but also for utility and comfort.

Human beings spend their daily lives within the range of the atmospheric boundary layer, where airflow is affected by friction from Earth's surface. The airflow in this area is generally called wind. Strong wind occasionally causes severe damage to infrastructures and people because of its aerodynamic effects, but even weak and moderate winds can have serious environmental impacts on human society such as those seen with air-pollution problems and thermal effects.

This paper traces the incorporation of western educational histories in the development of normal-school curricula during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China (1901–1944). It uses publication networks to show how the study of comparative educational history facilitated the international circulation of knowledge in the teaching profession, and how the “uses” of educational history were shaped by larger geopolitical forces.

This paper analyzes the international exchange of texts between normal schools in China and Japan and, subsequently, between normal schools in China and the United States. A database of 107 publications in the field of western educational history that were adopted in China reveals specific patterns of textual citation, cross-reference, and canon-formation in the field of educational historiography.

With conclusions derived from a combination of social network analysis and clustering analysis, this paper identifies three broad stages in China's development of normal-school curricula in comparative educational history: “Japan as Teacher,” “transitional period” and “America as Teacher.”

Statistical analysis can reveal citation and reference patterns but not readers' understanding of the deeper meaning of texts – in this case, textbooks on the subject of western educational history. In addition, the types of publications analyzed in this study are relatively limited, the articles on the history of education in journals have not become the main objects of this study.

This paper uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover the transnational circulation of knowledge in the field of comparative educational history during its formative period in China.