Quantitative Research, Publications, Public Service Announcement

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The committee wishes to thank the authors who submitted their abstracts to the conference. We’ve received more abstracts than previous conferences! We look forward to having you at the conference, and you’ve opened up an opportunity for a new special issue journal.

Sustainability/Resilience Sessions will likely be held on May 20th, 2016, and Construction/Big Data will likely be held on May 19th, 2016. Pre-conference workshops will be held on May 18th, 2016.

ICSDEC 2016TM is co-sponsored by the American Society for Civil Engineers’ Architectural Engineering Institute, and the Arizona State University. ICSDEC 2016 will continue its strong tradition inherited from the previous conferences in 2011 (@Kansas City, MO), 2012 (@Fort Worth, TX), 2014 (@Beijing, China – invitation-only workshop), and 2015 (@Chicago, IL). ICSDEC has attracted hundreds of attendees from over 30 countries at every conference. ICSDEC had since published three (3) indexed (EI) conference proceedings (ASCE and Elsevier) and three special issue journals.

There will be at least two special issue journals for the conference, the Elsevier’s Resources, Conservation and Recycling and the ASCE Journal of Survey Engineering (Pending).

There are three conference tracks:

Sustainability/Resilience:Advances in mobility, housing, water, energy, communications, land use, resource management, materials, processes, finance, policy, systems and spaces, land use and management, economic diversity and growth / jobs, structural unemployment and stability, engineering solutions, bio-wastes and materials, transportation, system integration etc.

Construction: Building information modeling, planning, controls and methods, quantitative methods, productivity and workforce issues, risk management, safety, health management, contracting, project delivery, legal issues, advanced informatics, organizational and global issues, construction materials, and social media etc.

Intelligent Systems/Big Data: Data analytics, machine learning, applications, social media, data mining, automation, and system integrations etc.

Past Conference Proceedings

 

 

 

 

 

Previous Journal Special Issues (5 total)
ASCE Journal of Architectural Engineering (2011 and 2012)
Elsevier Journal of Sustainable Cities and Societies (2011 and 2015)
Elsevier Journal of Resource, Conservation and Recycling (2015)

There will be 2 or more special issues journals associated with this conference.

With This Extension You Can Now See Which Regions of AWS Are Sustainable And Which Are Not

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Climate change is approaching us fast and it is up to us to make sure that we reduce the use of fossil fuels, and care about the carbon footprint that we are leaving. So far, it has been easy for us to understand where the carbon footprint is expanding; for instance, the manufacturing, vehicles, as well as cattle are some of the more apparent forces that are behind the climate change.

However, when it comes to finding the elements that are not so apparent, there is no proper way of telling just how much energy is being used, and where the energy is being used the most.

There are a few aspects; for starters, turning on the lights, being connected to the internet, and using cloud services are just some of the aspects in which it is not easy to tell where the energy is being used, what the type of energy is, and what the impact of this energy on environment is.

For those who do not know, Google is known for buying renewable energy for which unit of electricity that their cloud services use. Which basically means that for each unit of electricity, Google is buying a unit of renewable energy; this is to reduce their overall carbon footprint. Not just Google, but Microsoft is also invested in using the sustainable energy, and is responsible for producing total  1.2 gigawatts of renewable energy across 3 continents. Lastly, AWS (Amazon Web Services) also offsets its use of energy to promote sustainability.

According to a research, the Information and Communication Technologies sector is responsible for producing up to 2 percent of the global carbon dioxide emission. Which means that the sector is on par with the aviation sector. It is speculated that data centers have the biggest carbon footprint in the ICT sector, mainly because of the ever so increasing internet based services, as well as cloud computing.

Carbon offsetting and tradeoff are certainly smart ideas that pave a way for the data centers and cloud services to become sustainable in the near future. However, moving to renewable energy one day is something that will become a necessity in near future.

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How a Low Carbon Economy is Possible With Sustainable Finance

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For those who do not know, sustainable finance refers to any type of financial service that integrates environmental, social, or governance into the business or the investment for that matters. It might sound like something that just popped up on the radar, but it has been around for some time.

Years ago, sustainable finance was not a hot topic it is today, as a matter of fact, you would barely hear about it. However, in the modern day and age, you can find it everywhere, and that is good.

This new mainstream attention and highlight is certainly a great thing for this type of finance, as it is reported that the market for sustainable finance is estimated to have a worth of $380 billion per year. This means that at this point, the sustainable finance has the same capital influx as the renewables did last year.

However, it is better to think realistically. For one instance, if we are taking the foray into the low-carbon economy seriously by 2050, it is not going to be cheap. Just the energy sector alone would require an annual price tag of $3.5 trillion per year.

There is no doubt that sustainable finance is a great way of removing the carbon from the economy, but if we are to achieve that, we are in need of a leadership that is radically different, as well as a leadership that thinks about the future rather than that present.

Money, no doubt, is one of the biggest driving forces, as we all know. Now is the right time to ask the richest some serious questions. How did this point arrive, and what is the way out? We need talk about strategies that be used to keep the capital under check, and make sure that we are doing something to keep the climate control under control.

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Can Customer Experience And Sustainability Be Combined?

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Organizations have the ability to impact their consumer’s choices quite a lot. They can encourage consumers to begin following new trends and even make significant changes in their lifestyles. A great example of how organizations do this is the recent focus on “green” products. There has been a steady increase in the demand for products that are less harmful for the environment and the market sector for green products has been growing at a rapid pace. Organizations can continue to encourage this sector’s growth by providing their consumers with incentives that will further encourage them to buy environmentally friendly products.

Unfortunately, many organizations believe that in trying to become green, they must be ready to sacrifice their profits. This is perhaps the biggest reason why many companies continue to steer clear of environmental sustainability. However, research on this topic has brought new information to light. Studies show that organizations can improve relations with their customers by adopting sustainability, making sustainability more profitable for companies in the long run.

How can companies do this? Let’s find out.

Understanding Your Consumers

Organizations need to know their customers so that they are able to provide them with them right kind of encouragement. In order to identify the right incentives to drive your customers, you must be aware of all their needs and wants. Doing so will provide your customers with a solid shopping experience as well and will greatly increase the chances of them coming back to you again.

Understanding your customer’s needs and wants has become incredibly easy for organizations now thanks to customer service software. This type of software essentially provides businesses with a wide range of tools that let businesses monitor their customers shopping habits and learn how to cater to them better. Kayako is a seasoned help desk company that provides superb customer service software, the company’s solutions are capable of catering to small to large organizations and are perfect for businesses that want to get more personal with their customers.

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