This research proposes a sustainability index for products based on two out of the three aspects of sustainability: the environmental and the economic aspect. The index will examine the influence of the different actors (producers, consumers and authorities) and their reciprocal relations on the sustainability level of a product throughout the product life span and considering local environmental aspects. The Index goal is to express in a quantitative and simple manner the extent of product's impact on the environment, and to help producers, consumers and authorities in Israel in decision making processes.

The research method included 2 phases: 1. developing a theoretic model 2. Implementing the model using two case studies thus examining the model's applicability.

The theory development was based on broad literature review of indices examining different aspects of sustainability in products, processes, firms and activities and expresses integration of updated approaches in order to address some of the disadvantages in the existing indices. Based on the principles described above, the suggested index is constructed from a criteria table and grades mechanism which will constitute a comprehensive, yet simple and effective tool, in order to evaluate the sustainability level of a product. The criteria table translates different angles of sustainability to direct questions which can be answered using information from sources like: LCA, the firm's strategy, the product's packaging, actual consumer behavior, end of life management and regional data.

The Index feasibility and applicability was tested via two case studies of leading Israeli firms from the building and the beverages industry.

The implementation phase turned out as a necessary one in order to understand the extent of index applicability, and these are its main findings:
 

• The manufacturing firm's cooperation isn’t mandatory yet contributes in order to get the full data and apply the index on the tested product.

• It's possible to apply the index on products which were not analyzed via a LCA. The manufacturing firm will be required to share with the researcher environmental data, which in most cases is being monitored and collected.
• There are difficulties to compare environmental data collected from different sources.
• The suggested weights mechanism affects the grade only in the corner cases. In case the grades are averaged (around 50) the weights mechanism will have minor influence on the final grade.

The innovation of the suggested index is based on the approach to examine the influence of numerous actors throughout the product's life span on the extent of product's impact on the environment. In addition, this index addresses localization questions and is based on a holistic approach which is based on two out of the three aspects of sustainability: the environmental and the economic aspect. The suggested index addresses most of the disadvantages in the existing indices and is build in a manner which allows different users to use only the relevant parts, or to weight it differently, according to one's needs. The main contribution of this index is the model and its flexibility and not necessarily in the criteria selection, which is by nature based on subjective decisions.

The results of this study can contribute greatly to future policy formation of Israeli firms developing consumer products for the Israeli and global markets. The sooner firms will treat seriously the environmental impacts of their products the greater chances they have to compete successfully in global markets. In addition, today Israel must close gaps with regards to environmental policies compared to other OECD countries, and implementation of such Index can contribute to this purpose as well. The index might also contribute to risk management and new markets penetration. Coherent policy set by the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection, which will educate, encourage and guide Israeli firms to use such index while developing their products and later publish it clearly on their product's packages, will contribute greatly to position Israel as a leader in integration of environmental aspects in the industry.

The 'Back- yard birds count with public participation' project includes student participation as well as wide public involvement. The current study suggests that the project can be used as a means of achieving the objectives of the national plan for biodiversity, both in the field of education and as a tool for monitoring and evaluating biodiversity in towns and villages.

Three questions were asked in the study. The first two questions are related to the possibility of monitoring the ecosystem in the city by amateur bird counts:

The first examined the reliability of the data from the 'Back- yard birds count with public participation' project, and the second dealt with the relationship between gardens’ components and birds species, in order to assess the possibility that birds can be indicators for biodiversity. The third question addressed the educational impact on fourth-graders participating in the 'Back- yard birds count' project - on knowledge, attitudes, emotional and behavior about birds and nature.

The question of data reliability from the 'Back- yard birds count with public participation' project was studied in two ways: the first - compared bird-identifying data between high ranked counters and low ranked counters from the data of Back-yard bird counts of the years 2011-2013. The second - compared between amateur and expert counts from 48 initiated bird count situations, in which the expert and the amateur counted birds in the same place and time. The study found that the data from the 'Back- yard bird count with public participation' project gives good information on 80 percent of the 15 birds in the survey. Three birds were identified to a lesser extent by the amateurs: the Great Tit, Spectacled Bulbul, and Palestine Sunbird.

The question of the relationship between components of gardens and bird species was also addressed in two ways: the first – was analysis of 82 gardens from the data of the 2013 count, which were reported by high expertise counters, and selected from data collected at the central region of Israel.  41 gardens had a high number of bird species identified (13 species and more) and 41 had low number identified bird species (1-6 species). I compared the components in both types of gardens from data that was marked in the counting forms.  The second way in which I analyzed the relationship between elements of the garden and bird species was that I myself visited 30 gardens, 15 of which were gardens with a large number of identified bird species (13 and more) and 15 with a lower number of identified bird species (1-6). The characteristics which I referred to were bush covering, plant varieties and other characteristics such as dogs, cats, people, irrigation etc. The gardens that had many species of birds had higher cover of bushes, more species of bushes and trees, more coverage of grass and flower gardens compare to gardens with low numbers of bird species.

Most of the bird species in the gardens that had high number of bird species belonged to the 'City adapters' group, and most of the birds in the gardens with low number of bird species belonged to 'City exploiters' group.  The study results strengthen the hypothesis that the number of bird species and the extent that they belong to the Exploiters or the Adapters can be an indicator for biodiversity.

The educational impact of participation in the 'Back yard bird count with public participation' project was researched by using questionnaires given to fourth-graders before and after a 90-minute tutorial. The questionnaires tested the knowledge enhancement, emotional, behavioral, and attitudes related to birds, wildlife and nature.  316 students from 12 classes in 3 schools (4 classes each school) participated in the study. Half of all school classes participated in the 'Back yard bird count with public participation' project within the study, and half of the classes did not participate in the project.  All classes which participated in the study had an improvement of 21% in their answers, consisted of 9% improvement in knowledge and 12% improvement in attitudes that support saving birds and nature. Students who participated in the project had an additional improvement of 15%. This improvement was made up of 6% further improvement in knowledge and 9% improvement in emotional and sympathetic of birds and nature. In conclusion - participation in the Back yard bird count project improved the environmental literacy of students and is suitable as an educational means for preserving biodiversity.

In summary: this study demonstrates that the 'Back yard bird count with public participation' project, can be used as a means of maintaining biological diversity, both as a monitoring and as an interface tool and for education to maintaining biodiversity.

Monitoring planet earth is one of the most important challenges of mankind. It enables decision makers to act against global warming causes, pollution sources, activities such as illegal mining and more.

Change detection and multitemporal analyses aim to detect changes occurring over a specific geographical area using two or more images acquired at two or more different times. Spaceborne missions in the last decades enabled ongoing affordable monitoring of the earth with various earth observation sensors. These have shown the ability to detect different types of changes such as vegetation stress, pH values, water quality, urban growth and more.

With the enormous amount of data that is collected everyday with spaceborne instruments there is a need to have automatic procedures to produce monitoring products such as change maps from one time to another. In practice, up to the present, reliable monitoring products require ground truth collected data. This limits the adoption of this technology for specific areas of interest, leaving most of the earth surface unmonitored with the highest spatial resolution, although the data is collected and archived but not really used. In addition, govermental space agencies around the world are planning more spaceborne missions within the next few years with improved spectral and spatial resolution and increased temporal coverage.

For this reason, advances in reliable unsupervised change detection techniques are needed. These techniques do not require ongoing measurements of ground truth data, and thus can be applied for all types of acquired and archived images.

In this thesis we present and explore new methods related to unsupervised change detection. Our contribution can be divided into two main subjects. The first being a new thresholding approach for unsupervised binary change detection thresholding. This approach focuses on determining the threshold that discriminates between change and no-change pixels. The difference between pixels in the two images can be associated with real changes or noise. We propose a thresholding scheme that separates the threshold into two parts: 1) a threshold that accounts for the errors related to sensor stability, atmospheric conditions and data-processing variations, and 2) a threshold associated with georectification errors. We demonstrate our method using both multispectral Landsat images, airborne imaging spectroscopy HyMap images and examine small spectral changes of different soil samples in laboratory conditions as well. The second being a new method of predicting spectral emissivity in the long-wave infrared (LWIR) spectral region using the visible (VIS) spectral region. The proposed method is suitable for two main scenarios of missing data - sensor malfunctions and narrow FOV. We demonstrate the usefulness and limitations of this prediction scheme using the airborne hyperspectral scanner (AHS) sensor, which consists of both VIS and LWIR spectral regions.

The Sokolov mining area located in the western part of the Czech Republic is used as a case study for the presented methods. 

The objective of this research is to study and characterize the challenges that TV professionals faced when creating comedies and satires about the environment, and what are the approaches and strategies they applied in order to confront these challenges. This, in order to become familiar with and explore ways to effectively incorporate environmental issues in comedy and satire in view of strengthening and enhancing the environmental goal. The theoretical structure of the research is based on Entertainment-Education, or Edutainment, or the standard abbreviation –EE. (Rogers & Singhal, 1999).

     The theoretical body of work and the existing studies on intentional integration of social content in entertainment platforms focuses primarily on the effect on the audience. That is to say, the manner in which the project contents impact potential target audiences. These studies emphasize the end of the process, therefore it is worthwhile expanding and delving into the current theoretical and practical knowledge pertaining to earlier stages, by way of interviews with the TV professionals themselves, among others.

     The relevant literature shows that in order to create programs that effectively promote environmental issues, one must create a mutual endeavor among people who promote environmental issues, who are not used to collaborating. Developing Edutainment and creating intervention programs that apply the strengths of both parties must include the creation of a joint language and a joint work arena (Bouman 2002).

     To this end, we must procure a better understanding of the challenges facing each party seeking to create programs about the environment and of the means to tackle these challenges. This, in order to create fertile ground for collaboration. This study focuses on comedy and satire since they generate a critical environmental discourse that does not come to light for the most part in other genres.

     Satirical comedy, both in the format of a comedy drama or a sitcom, can partake in creating social change. The “Comedy structure” theory aims to explain this capacity. In comedy, which employs critical elements, viewers are provided an opportunity to see themselves in a new light. This enables them to see the wrongs in their world which have often already become embedded and a hidden norm; to observe themselves and the way they behave, as Burke writes (1937) – “To be observers of themselves”. This point of origin enables critical confrontation which sets out to generate social change.

This study is divided into two main parts and examines four primary research questions:

     The first part examines what type of entertainment programs focus on environmental issues and discerns the different forms of criticism in each genre.       Also, it examines which genres and programs promote behavioral changes and convey messages pertaining to environmental behavior. The first research question:

1. Which genres in the entertainment media promote environmental issues in the USA, England and Canada and in which did the program creators wish to promote behavioral change in the environmental context.

The second and main part of the study focuses on the challenges and strategies that TV professionals apply to create comedy and satire that pertain to the environment. This part focuses on three central research questions:

1. What is the personal motivation of comedy and satire creators in Israel and the USA and what are the challenges they face when seeking to incorporate the environmental issue in their work?
2. What have TV professionals chosen to do in order to overcome the challenge of incorporating environmental matters in their programs? What was their modus operandi?
3. How do the TV professionals perceive the potential of their impact as comedians and of the programs they create on target audiences?

Findings – Mapping environment oriented entertainment programs in the USA, England and Canada

     Of the entertainment genres, comedy and satire have a common and dominant critical point of origin. In addition, scripts can be effectively incorporated into comedy and satire that promote a change in environmental behavior, even in primetime.

Findings – Interviews with comedy and satire professionals in Israel and the USA

     Most TV professionals consider it their role to influence public opinion and attempt to correct social wrongs. In terms of environmental issues, many of the TV professionals do not consider this issue important nor worthy of undertaking.  They claim they are unfamiliar with the environmental issue, an issue that their children understand and will know how to tackle in the future. In this regard, there are cultural differences between American and Israeli TV professionals. American professionals acknowledge that environmental issues will impact their children’s future. The “environment is not important” approach or “the children will deal with it” is more widespread among the Israeli TV professionals. Though the Israeli TV professionals were not raised to care for the environment, budding changes in perception and an understanding of the urgency of the problem can be seen in some. A central issue that came up in the interviews is the way in which they perceive the chances that environmental comedy will amass an audience. Here, the environmental issue suffers from inferiority due to three factors that comprise challenges/downfalls as the TV professionals’ perceive them:

1. They claim the public is not sufficiently aware of the issue – Generally the environment is not a component of current affairs.
2. In their view, the public still perceives the environmental undertakings as unserious and unrealistic.
3. They believe that a majority of the public do not deem environmental issues central to daily life; they consider them remote and intangible.

     In addition to these concerns regarding the public’s perception of the issue, the TV professionals must confront the system in which they work. Many TV professionals feel that commercial television limits them. They report that in the existing media climate, in which major broadcast channels are owned by corporations, they must apply self-censorship.

     This study also examines the approaches and strategies of those TV professionals who did confront environmental issues in comedy, whether as a result of a broadcast network’s initiative such as NBC’s “Green Week”, or as an independent enterprise, or both.

Common Strategies employed by the TV professionals:

     The TV professionals were divided into two main groups: The first group, TV professionals who work and create according to the classic satire approach. The second, professionals, who adopt the dialogue approach. Some of the TV professionals who adopt the dialogue approach, want to provide viewers with knowledge and tools to confront “the environmental crisis”, i.e., they apply a proactive approach to promote behavior that is in line with the Edutainment approach.

     However, despite the differences between the TV professionals, they all apply three mutual strategies when creating environmental comedy or satire.

1. Please do not preach – The professionals believed the comedy should not be  preachy, or it no longer will be a comedy.
2. The environmental narrative must emerge from the program – In order to avoid preaching, the TV professionals tried to be “elusive with the message”. The environmental statement must be assimilated in the story in a natural fashion that complies with the characterization of the characters and their behavior.
3. Emotional connection and creating empathy with the characters – All the TV professionals claimed it is important the viewers care about the characters – creating an emotional bond to the environmental story via human conflict. Meaning, create empathy with the characters, a story the viewers can relate to.

Conclusion:

      This study presents how comedy and satire could be used to help promote environmental issues in two ways: 1) In a critical way, using satirical parody to bring about criticism towards environmental wrongs. 2) Providing tools for behavioral change in terms of the environment, while incorporating environmental issues in a comedic story and drama and thus evoking empathy with the protagonists. Its findings indicate that both parties –environmental experts and comedy and satire creators, face great challenges on the way to creating successful and effective Edutainment programs that focus on the environment. I hope this paper will provide an understanding of the challenges that comedy and satire creators face as they seek to deal with environmental issues on TV, and teach us about the strategies that TV professionals in Israel and the USA chose in order to tackle this issue.