Development of Green Infrastructure Design for Sustainable Social-Ecological System

Dear Colleagues,

We live in a dynamic social–ecological system (SES) which is experiencing increasing impacts from changes in the climate. As the societal and ecological conditions change rapidly, living in the urban, coastal, and rural SES is becoming more challenging, where community is vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic disasters such as flooding, drought, erosion, landslides, heatwaves, and air pollution. In these circumstances, it is imperative to build a sustainable SES with an approach to resilience in terms of persistence, adaptability, and transformability to cope with severe natural disasters. This approach proposes that sustainable SES should be an integrated system closely linked to a supply of resilient ecosystem services because they play a key role in maintaining and stabilizing societal and ecological conditions.

Following the growing number of sustainability studies, green infrastructure (GI) is considered one of the most effective ways to deal with these circumstances in an SES. However, these studies have focused only on the theoretical and conceptual aspects of GI in terms of creating a sustainable SES. Therefore, more practical and in-depth research activities on GI design, including specific strategies, scientific analysis, and integrated evaluation, are desirable. 

This Special Issue seeks to gather a series of manuscripts relating to GI design for creating a sustainable SES. Manuscripts focusing especially on the development of GI design based on a transdisciplinary or systematic approach are welcome. Additionally, research conducted in various SES, such as urban, coastal, and rural areas, would also be appreciated. I hope that this Special Issue will contribute to sharing novel perspectives on green infrastructure design based on scientific knowledge.

Prof. Dr. Jinhyung Chon
Guest Editor

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