Global awareness and commitment, in regards to climate change, access to water and renewable energy deployment has risen in the last decade. However, many countries are still locked in unsustainable practices, specifically in regards to energy, this results in damaging consequences not just for the country but the world. Case in point of the Dominican Republic (DR), an island with an immense renewable energy potential, a growing economy and the financial aid of many international entities. Regardless of all this, “the business as usual” decision for the energy strategies is based on fossil foil. As a result, thousands of people are still without energy, the infrastructure itself is unreliable, and the cost of fossil fuel is 8% of the country’s GDP. In addition to, blackouts, the expensive tariff for users and unstable energy grid. Therefore, this paper discusses and critically evaluate critical success factors for implementing renewable energy strategies in the DR. For this purpose, an extensive literature review was done, along with interviews with the key actors in the renewable energy market of the DR. This resulted in the evaluation of the energy infrastructure by obtaining a clear view of the situation. Future work will involve creating a framework for implementation of renewables.

In recent years, the idea of smart sustainable cities has come to the fore. Furthermore, it is quickly gaining momentum, and worldwide attention as a promising response to the challenge of urban sustainability. This pertains especially to ecologically and technologically advanced nations. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of smart (and) sustainable cities in terms of their underlying foundations, assumptions, state– of–the art research development, policies, and future planning practices. As to the design strategy, the paper reviews existing sustainable city models and smart city approaches. Their strengths and weaknesses are examined by focusing on the degree to which cities to the objectives and whether the latter incorporate these goals. To distinguish the related challenges, these models and adopt methodologies are assessed and contrasted against each other in line with the notion of sustainability. The gaps in the exploration inside the field of smart sustainable cities are recognized as in accordance with the research being proposed. Subsequently, a coordinated approach is proposed in view of an applied theoretical perspective to align the existing problems and solutions identified for future practices in the area of smart, sustainable urban planning and smart cities policy development. With regard to knowledge contribution, the paper demonstrates Policy developments related to smart cities in general and particular problems within the policy development, as well as considering the commitment to the application of the policy. Also, diverse country’s approach on policies for smart cities and their policy related to Governance It also reveals that numerous research opportunities are available and can be realized within the realm of smart sustainable cities.

Higher education tends to recognise gender equality in terms of representation, progression and success for students and staff. Athena SWAN is a Charter which addresses gender equality. This paper is based on critical review of literature and secondary data analysis. A thorough literature review explores the best practices adopted by Universities in UK who were awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze. In doing so, 39 Universities were identified from the CHOBE members (Council of Heads of the Built Environment Heads of Department of Construction, Property and Surveying) in the year 2017 who have built environment students and staff. The results revealed that none of the Universities had gold award of Athena SWAN whereas 26 Universities had bronze awards. From the secondary data analysis of three years data from Equality in higher education, statistical reports on student and staff shows areas of concern for built environment where the female percent of student and staff are in the lower end of the spectrum. Therefore, initiatives and lessons learnt from other successful awarded Universities will be discussed in this paper so that awareness and adoption of the best practices by the built environment sector is encouraged.

Business models have routed its way through smart cities. This, being an important phenomenon for an organisations success the concept has not been defined accurately. Literature review defines this as fuzzy and vague concept despite its importance to organisations is tremendous. This paper advances our understanding of the business model concept by reviewing the different types of business models and business model definitions following a systematic literature review approach. The paper progresses with a comparison between the businesses models developed for the smart cities domain. The paper seeks to address the question - How are smart cities going to generate economic value?

Extensive urbanisation is increasing on a global scale. The urban population is estimated to rise to 66 per cent by 2050. This significant urbanisation growth drives the consumption of resources causing resource shortages and posing significant environmental and social concerns. To manage these concerns municipal decision makers' attempt to leverage the smart city concept with collaboration between external actors as a means to maintain the prepossessed living standard in the city. The philosophy of smart cities is to see challenges as opportunities and take advantage of other trends such as digitalization. Smart cities may offer a major market opportunity that can be easily exploited by information and communication technologies providers and their telecom equipment partners. However, although the opportunity exits, capitalizing on it is not as straightforward as it seems. This paper investigates the predominant challenges in smart city initiatives from the municipal decision makers' perspective. The study is based on the findings of a survey conducted via 65 participants from various small and medium enterprises and large organisations. The results show that smart cities decision makers mainly perceive challenges with various technical and non-technical issues such as collaboration, economical, governance, social acceptance, and awareness of technology, as well as high technological risk, security and privacy of users and cyber-crimes issues.

The UK construction industry is currently suffering from a skills shortage. There are many reasons and issues that surround this, however Office of National Statistics data shows only 13% of the construction industry is employed by females. This research study will discuss the perception of the construction industry by students studying construction subjects. The research within this study involved literature review and 12 qualitative interviews. The results revealed that there are campaigns to encourage women to join the constructions industry however there is still a stigma attached that the industry is scarred by discrimination harassment, pay equality and stereo typing that are deterring females from offering greater diversity, new ideas and a solution to the skills shortage from joining the industry. On this basis, a culture change and new legislation clearing up the major issues within the construction industry needs to be completed prior to remarketing the image of the industry campaigning enabling females to join the sector