Headquarters Zagreb, Croatia Website www.sdewes.org | Key people Neven Duić (Chairman) | |
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Type Non-governmental research organization Genre Sustainable development Founded Zagreb, Croatia (2009 (2009)) | ||
SDEWES Centre (The International Centre for Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems), is a non-governmental scientific organization based at the University of Zagreb, Croatia.
Contents
Mission
SDEWES Centre is dedicated to the improvement and dissemination of knowledge on methods, policies and technologies for increasing the sustainability of development by de-coupling growth from natural resources and replacing them with knowledge-based economy, taking into account its economic, environmental and social pillars. One of the main issues of the coming decades is to improve efficiencies by integrating various life supporting systems, using waste from one, as resource in other, and in exact moment when it is beneficial to all, integrating electricity, heating, cooling, transport, water, buildings, industry, forestry and agriculture systems.
The Centre organizes courses, summer schools, public lectures, seminars and workshops in order to promote sustainable development of energy, water and environment systems and provides professional opinion on issues of sustainability and sustainability metrics. The Centre also organizes a series of international SDEWES conferences for scientists to discuss issues of sustainability of energy, water and environment system. Through these actions, SDEWES Centre aims to provide a research platform that will provide comprehensive R&D activities, assessment and consultation on the research subjects of sustainable development.
History
SDEWES started as a project co-funded by CORDIS under the FP5 – INCO 2 programme in 2002, when first Dubrovnik Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems was organized. Partners in this project were University of Zagreb and Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon). After the organisation of three more conferences in 2003, 2005 and 2007, SDEWES Centre was established in 2009. Since then, eight more conferences were organized in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. As a separate regional event, the SEE SDEWES Conferences are held every two years, starting with 2014 in Ohrid. The 2nd SEE SDEWES Conference was held in Piran.
SDEWES-Skopje
New section of SDEWES Centre is established in Skopje, Macedonia, with the goal to gather professionals and scientists from broad range of disciplines, particularly located in the Southeast Europe, in order to provide scientific support for wise policy-making. SDEWES-Skopje aims to extend the activities at regional level including the other EU candidate and potential candidate countries, as well as EU neighbourhood countries to foster regional coordination in providing feasible solutions for the common challenges and gaining synergy effects.
Membership
According to the Statute of SDEWES Centre, every person can under the same circumstances apply for membership.
Conferences
Up to 2011, SDEWES Conference was organized as biennial conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. From the year 2012, it is an annual event but with a geographic regime. Every two years the conference is held in Dubrovnik, and in the years between on different locations.
The SDEWES 2012 Conference was held in Ohrid, and in 2014 on a cruise ship travelling between Venice and Istanbul.
In 2014, the first regional SEE SDEWES conference was held in Ohrid, Macedonia focused on South East Europe.
In 2015, the 10th Conference on SDEWES was held in Dubrovnik. 540 scientists from over 65 countries participated.
In 2016, the second regional SEE SDEWES conference was held in Piran, Slovenia.
Also in 2016, the 11th SDEWES Conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal.
In 2017, the 12th SDEWES Conference will be held in Dubrovnik.
Work presented at the conferences are published in scientific journals and among them, in the Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems
Journal
SDEWES Centre is publishing research open access Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems since 2013.
Research
SDEWES Centre forms research teams from the pool of members to participate in research projects. SDEWES Centre is involved in two FP7 projects, one Horizon 2020 project and one project under the European Strategy for Danube Region (EUSDR) fund START.
SDEWES Index
In line with the aims of the SDEWES Center, an index is also developed to benchmark the performance of cities across aspects that are related to energy, water and environment systems. With the namesake of the Center, the SDEWES Index consists of 7 dimensions, 35 indicators, and close to 20 sub-indicators. It is currently applied to 58 cities.