Several methods for regional environmental sustainability assessment have been proposed by the scientific community in the last few years, including two interesting resource-use based tools: Emergy Evaluation (Emergy) and Ecological Footprint Analysis (Footprint). Emergy Evaluation assesses all resources used, directly and indirectly, to support a region economy. Ecological Footprint Analysis e...

Article history: Received 22 May 2005 Received in revised form 19 September 2005 Accepted 26 September 2005 Available online 16 November 2005 Two prominent and alternate approaches, ecosystem service valuation and ecological footprints, link the production of ecosystem services with their consumption by societies. An overlapping goal of both approaches is to promote the sustainable use of ecosy...

Despite the scientific consensus that humans have dramatically altered the global environment, we have a limited knowledge of the specific forces driving those impacts. One key limitation to a precise understanding of anthropogenic impacts is the absence of a set of refined analytic tools. Here we assess the analytic utility of the well-known IPAT identity, the newly developed ImPACT identity, ...

The massive development of the cloud marketplace is leading to an increase in the number of the Data Centers (DCs) globally and eventually to an increase of the CO2 related footprint. The calculation of the impact of Virtual Machines (VMs) on the environment is a challenging task, not only due to the technical difficulties but also due to the lack of information from the energy providers. The e...