Evaluates trade-offs and uncertainties inherent in achieving sustainable energy, analyzes the major energy technologies, and provides a framework for assessing policy options.

The 2020 edition of the WWDR, titled Water and Climate Change illustrates the critical linkages between water and climate change in the context of the broader sustainable development agenda. Supported by examples from across the world, it describes both the challenges and opportunities created by climate change, and provides potential responses – in terms of adaptation, mitigation and improved resilience – that can be undertaken by enhancing water resources management, attenuating water-related risks, and improving access to water supply and sanitation services for all in a sustainable manner. It addresses the interrelations between water, people, environment and economics in a changing climate, demonstrating how climate change can be a positive catalyst for improved water management, governance and financing to achieve a sustainable and prosperous world for all. The report provides a fact-based, water-focused contribution to the knowledge base on climate change. It is complementary to existing scientific assessments and designed to support international political frameworks, with the goals of helping the water community tackle the challenges of climate change, and informing the climate change community about the opportunities that improved water management offers in terms of adaptation and mitigation.

Human-generated greenhouse gas emissions imperil a global resource: a biosphere capable of supporting life as we know it. What is the fair way to share this scarce resource across present and future generations, and across regions of the world? This study offers a new perspective based on the guiding ethics of sustainability and egalitarianism. Sustainability is understood as a pattern of economic activity over time that sustains a given rate of growth of human welfare indefinitely. To achieve this, the atmospheric concentration of carbon must be capped at some level not much higher than exists today, and investments in education and research should be higher than they currently are. International cooperation between developing and developed nations is also vital, because economic growth and the climate problem are intertwined. The authors propose that the guiding principle of bargaining should be that the dates at which developing countries’ living standards catch up with those of developed countries should not be altered by the agreement. They conclude that developed economies would have to agree not to exceed 1 percent growth in per capita GDP annually, while developing nations should grow at a faster rate, but still lower than current projections, until they converge. The authors acknowledge that achieving such a dramatic slowdown would carry political and economic challenges.

This book outlines the effects that technology-induced change will have on sport within the next five to ten years, and provides food for thought concerning what lies further ahead. Presented as a collection of essays, the authors are leading academics from renowned institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Queensland University of Technology, and the University of Cambridge, and practitioners with extensive technological expertise. In their essays, the authors examine the impacts of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and robotics on sports and assess how they will change sport itself, consumer behavior, and existing business models. The book will help athletes, entrepreneurs, and innovators working in the sports industry to spot trendsetting technologies, gain deeper insights into how they will affect their activities, and identify the most effective responses to stay ahead of the competition both on and off the pitch.

There are a number of different system concepts that have gained much relevance in the area of embedded systems over the past couple of years. First, there is the classic concept of embedded systems where the focus is on control systems for physical processes. Secondly, the notion of pervasive computing has evolved, where the vision foresees everyday objects having some form of computation capacity and, in most cases, sensing and communication facilities. Thirdly, the notion of wireless sensor networks has arisen, where small computing devices are able to sense their environment and cooperate in order to achieve a well-defined goal. These three types of quite diverse systems share a lot of commonalities on the one hand and, on the other hand, have some complementary aspects in common that make a combination of these systems into a coherent system vision promising. In particular, the important notions of control, heterogeneity, wireless communication, dynamic and ad-hoc nature and cost are prevalent to various degrees in each of these systems. A future system concept needs to combine the strong points of all three system concepts in at least these functional aspects. It has to provide support for the control of physical processes like today’s embedded systems do, have as good support for device heterogeneity and spontaneity of usage as required by pervasive and ubiquitous computing approaches, and has to be as cost efficient and wirelessly agile as wireless sensor networks are. These new systems consist, therefore, of individual entities or objects that jointly strive to reach a common goal, which will typically be a goal in sensing or control, and are dynamically and loosely federating themselves for cooperation, taking care not to overtax their available resources. This book presents a roadmap to these concepts which are summarized as cooperating objects.