Search Results (122)

Offshore wind development has become an important component of the renewable energy transition, yet its rapid expansion has also generated new sustainability challenges for marine biodiversity conservation. In Taiwan, offshore construction activities such as pile driving, drilling, dredging, and seismic surveys have raised growing concerns about anthropogenic underwater noise and its effects on cetaceans and other marine species Although Taiwan established its Cetacean Observer (TCO) system in 2020, the system remains constrained by fragmented authority, limited information transparency, insufficient professional training, unstable employment pathways, and weak cross-agency coordination. Against this background, this study shifts the analytical focus from diagnosing the deficiencies of the existing TCO system or assessing whether the Taiwan Cetacean Observer Association (TCOA) is beneficial to examining how the TCOA should be institutionally designed as a sustainable governance platform under offshore wind development. Drawing on environmental governance, institutional design, and intermediary organization scholarship, as well as document analysis and in-depth interviews with cetacean observers, contractors, marine conservation practitioners, and experts, this study develops a design-oriented institutional architecture for association-based marine conservation governance. Rather than treating the TCOA merely as a professional association, the study conceptualizes it as a governance infrastructure capable of stabilizing coordination, supporting implementation, strengthening professionalization, and enhancing accountability in a fragmented marine governance environment. The study proposes a five-module institutional architecture for a sustainable the TCOA, comprising employment and career support, as well as accountability and public engagement. Together, these modules can strengthen coordination, improve implementation capacity, enhance transparency, support observer professionalization, and build stakeholder trust. This study contributes to sustainability governance research by moving the discussion from whether an observer association is useful to how such an association should be institutionally designed to support long-term marine conservation governance. It also provides transferable insights for coastal jurisdictions seeking to align offshore renewable energy development with marine biodiversity conservation and Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14). Full article

Ukraine’s parliament is considering a monthly ownership levy on battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) of up to UAH 4000 as a road-fund replacement following the reinstatement of 20% value-added tax on BEV imports from January 2026, a fiscal reversal of the sustained incentive framework (zero customs duty since 2015; full VAT and excise relief from 2018) that has underpinned a fleet of approximately 246,000 registered BEVs in a wartime economy with acute petroleum import dependence. A five-year total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) model calibrated to Ukrainian market data (April 2026) computes the breakeven monthly levy across three charging scenarios and two energy-price assumptions; a structured comparative policy analysis maps the instrument against cross-jurisdictional adoption-suppression evidence; and a legal doctrinal analysis applies the fair-balance test under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights. The breakeven levy (L*) ranges from UAH 931 to UAH 1626 per month under baseline conditions and from UAH 63 to UAH 862 under adverse energy-price assumptions, placing the proposed UAH 4000 rate at 2.5 to 4.3 times the threshold. Cross-jurisdictional evidence positions Ukraine in the high adoption-suppression zone for flat ownership charges. The legal analysis indicates that the incentive programme satisfies ECHR legitimate-expectation criteria and that the proposed levy is likely to fail both the proportionality and transitional adequacy limbs of the fair-balance test. The preferred alternative combines a kWh surcharge on public charging with a phased per-kilometre road-user charge and three-year grandfathering for existing owners. Full article

Trusted Data Spaces (TDSs) have emerged as the core infrastructure for secure, privacy-preserving data circulation across industries and jurisdictions. However, state-of-the-art TDS implementations suffer from centralized platform monopoly, rigid cross-border governance failure, unfair value distribution, and poor scalability for global-scale collaboration. This paper proposes DAO-TDS, a novel decentralized autonomous trusted data space paradigm that enables centerless, cryptography-governed, and value-closed-loop data circulation. We make three core contributions: (1) We formalize the first anti-monopoly, incentive-compatible game-theoretic model for distributed TDS governance, with rigorous provable security guarantees; (2) we design an original Proof of Data Contribution (PoDC) consensus mechanism and a post-quantum secure Crypto-DAO governance protocol, with formal security proofs under the Universal Composability (UC) framework; (3) we implement a full prototype of DAO-TDS and conduct comprehensive, reproducible evaluations, showing that it supports 10,000+ distributed nodes with >12,000 TPS and <2 s 99th-percentile confirmation latency, while delivering >80% of generated value to data contributors (vs. <50% in centralized platforms). While the proposed paradigm demonstrates strong performance and security guarantees, it still faces challenges in adaptive cross-jurisdictional compliance and lightweight edge node deployment, which require further investigation. Full article

Public-sector sustainability and climate reporting increasingly address environmental exposure, governance, and financial effects, yet existing frameworks do not adequately disclose preparedness for low-probability, high-impact systemic risks whose probabilities, timing, thresholds, and transmission channels remain deeply uncertain. This article develops a Public-Sector Resilience Reporting Standard (PSRRS) as a pre-standard architecture for government preparedness disclosure. The design has three bounded objectives: diagnose cross-framework disclosure gaps, translate these gaps into a theoretically grounded capability-to-disclosure architecture, and demonstrate its analytical use through an illustrative Florida application and two hazard-neutral stress tests. The documentary corpus includes international sustainability and public-sector reporting standards, ISO and UNDRR resilience and continuity instruments, three Florida resilience documents, and peer-reviewed literature on resilience governance, decision-making under deep uncertainty, critical infrastructure interdependency, catastrophic uncertainty, climate-risk disclosure, public finance, climate-risk pricing, local-government credit risk, investor attention, and ransomware service disruption. A structured interpretive coding protocol classifies each framework as explicit, partial, or not explicit across nine disclosure dimensions; a codebook appendix identifies the assessment criteria, the a priori and inductively refined dimensions, and the validation boundaries. Florida is not treated as a basis for statistical or jurisdictional generalization. Instead, it illustrates how a comparatively developed resilience architecture may disclose statutory continuity, critical-asset data, project ranking, and output metrics while leaving systemic dependencies, adaptive triggers, long-horizon fiscal exposure, residual service risk, distributional effects, and assurance mechanisms insufficiently visible in the reviewed reporting corpus. AMOC and case-grounded cyber-fiscal stress tests show how the PSRRS shifts reporting from hazard inventories and funded projects toward auditable evidence of institutional capacity, adaptive readiness, and public-value protection. The article specifies mandatory, recommended, and optional clauses, evidence requirements, indicator examples, a disclosure index, a sample report structure, and a three-tier pilot conformity model. The contribution is conceptual and operational, but not yet a validated formal standard; cross-jurisdictional piloting, inter-rater coding, cost testing, assurance testing, and stakeholder consultation are identified as the next stage of standardization. Full article

The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) harmonizes market rules across the European Union, but it does not itself determine how entities should classify, measure, document, and tax crypto-asset transactions. This study examines whether Slovakia’s recent implementation measures have translated formal harmonization into operational accounting clarity. An anonymous online survey of 34 accounting, tax, finance, and business professionals recruited through purposive and convenience sampling was analyzed using counts, percentages, a descriptive cross-tabulation with Cramér’s V, and a documented but limited coding of two open-ended items. Because the sample is small and non-probability, all results are interpreted as indicative of the observed respondents rather than as population estimates. In the sample, 52.9% assessed the direction of legislative development positively, 72.7% of valid respondents considered current valuation rules inadequate, 60.6% reported that the reforms had not increased accounting clarity, and 60.6% perceived greater uncertainty. Tax obligations (50.0%) and record-keeping and documentation (35.3%) were selected more often than bookkeeping mechanics (14.7%). Practical experience co-varied with legislative monitoring in the realized sample (Cramér’s V = 0.62), although no population-inferential p-values or confidence intervals are reported. The pattern suggests a regulatory–operational clarity gap: legal taxonomy and market supervision have advanced faster than implementable valuation and documentation guidance. The proposed implementation framework combines survey indications with regulatory analysis, prior literature, and the authors’ professional judgment; it is a non-ranked proposal for consultation and further testing rather than a set of empirically validated policy priorities. Although derived from Slovakia, the framework is relevant to other EU jurisdictions translating MiCA’s common market rules into national accounting and tax practice. Full article

The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is a densely populated, highly connected coastal urban region that is exposed to typhoons, extreme rainfall, flooding, storm surges, heat-related risks, and public health emergencies. Existing studies have clarified many aspects of hazard exposure and spatial vulnerability, but evidence on how residents receive warnings, interpret risks, prepare, evacuate, and contribute to community resilience remains dispersed across disciplines and jurisdictions. This study maps the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of research on residents’ responses to urban disaster risks in the GBA. Following a PRISMA 2020-aligned identification and screening process, 144 records from the Web of Science Core Collection were manually screened. Bibliometric analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, a region–hazard matrix, and a BERTopic-inspired topic modelling procedure were then used to identify publication trends, disciplinary sources, spatial hazard patterns, and latent themes. The results show accelerated growth after 2020 and identify six interrelated themes: risk perception and preparedness; evacuation and shelter accessibility; urban flooding vulnerability; typhoon, storm surge, and coastal community risk; community resilience and climate adaptation governance; and health emergency response and psychosocial resilience. The review synthesises these findings into a heuristic framework linking risk information, cognitive appraisal, response action, and community resilience. The GBA is treated as an analytically informative, rather than statistically representative, case of a high-density, coastal, and multi-jurisdictional urban region. The findings suggest that resident-centred resilience planning should connect trusted and actionable warnings with inclusive digital communication, accessible protective resources, and cross-boundary coordination for compound hazards. Full article

Understanding vegetation resilience gradient effects across hierarchical administrative borders is critical for cross-jurisdictional land management yet remains underexplored. This study integrates an AR(1) model with XGBoost-SHAP analysis to assess resilience and its drivers across provincial, municipal, and county borders in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region using NDVI data (2000–2025). The results show that (1) vegetation resilience across hierarchical border belts experienced an initial decline followed by recovery. A notable shift in resilience optimality was observed from city borders in 2005 to provincial borders by 2020. Gradient effects were stronger in northern city borders. The stable-fluctuating type dominated, followed by peak and valley types. (2) Precipitation, tree age, and altitude suppress gradient formation. Conversely, cross-boundary economic disparity, nighttime light differences, and land use composition tend to be associated with amplified gradient effects in a hierarchical manner: cropland and built-up expansion intensify gradients at provincial borders but reduce them at city borders, suggesting a potential role of governance coordination. (3) Based on these findings, a tiered governance framework is suggested—northern high-gradient provincial and city borders are proposed as priority areas for intensive interventions, while county borders (where gradient effects are weakest) may benefit from moderate, low-intensity interventions focused on maintaining land use continuity. At the provincial level, stronger inter-provincial coordination—through cross-boundary ecological compensation and harmonized environmental standards—may help mitigate gradient effects. Collectively, this study provides insights for cross-jurisdictional land governance in the BTH region and other analogous urban agglomerations. Full article

Modern energy internets and large-scale industrial systems are becoming increasingly complex. Consequently, the rapid response capability of energy infrastructure during sudden failures has become a core element to ensure the stable operation of the social economy. Emergency repair path planning (ERPP) is a complex nonlinear combinatorial optimization problem. It is characterized by dynamic uncertainties, such as fluctuating task durations and variable traffic accessibility. This paper proposes a cross-regional emergency repair path planning (CR-ERPP) optimization model considering dynamic path conditions. The model takes into account jurisdiction ownership, cross-regional dispatch costs, path weights (congestion coefficient, grade coefficient, quality coefficient) and accident risk levels. The primary objective of this model is to minimize the total repair cost. Furthermore, an Adaptive Bitterling Fish Optimization with Evolutionary Game Theory (ABFO-EGT) is developed. It introduces adaptive mechanisms, evolutionary game theory, and a symmetric mutation strategy. These enhancements are designed to overcome the inherent limitations of traditional swarm intelligence algorithms, namely unbalanced search behavior and premature convergence to local optima. Performance analysis demonstrates that the ABFO-EGT algorithm exhibits superior convergence stability and global search capability. Case study results show that the proposed method significantly reduces the total repair cost. Specifically, the cost is reduced by 33.2% compared to manual decision-making, 27.6% compared to the GWO algorithm, and 9.1% compared to both the ACO and PSO algorithms. This study provides an efficient and reliable decision support tool for emergency management of large-scale energy systems. Full article

The growing complexity of cryptocurrency ecosystems has created substantial difficulties for anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement across jurisdictions. Existing AML information-sharing mechanisms are fragmented, slow, and constrained by privacy regulations. This paper presents CAHE-AML, a risk-adaptive architecture built on a context-aware hybrid encryption framework designed to enable secure and privacy-preserving cross-border AML data exchange between regulatory authorities and virtual asset service providers (VASPs). CAHE-AML integrates symmetric encryption, attribute-based encryption (ABE), a decentralized key governance model, and heuristic risk-scoring mechanisms for dynamic policy adaptation. Using an Ethereum Fraud Dataset, we compute risk scores to dynamically assign context-aware access policies across three hierarchical tiers: local, regional, and global. Experimental evaluation on an enterprise-grade multi-core system demonstrates high computational efficiency, achieving substantial throughput and low processing latency. The system identifies integrity breaches with high accuracy while maintaining a manageable data expansion ratio. These results highlight the computational feasibility of CAHE-AML’s cryptographic layer for real-time, high-frequency AML data processing in decentralized financial systems. Full article

Maritime transportation, a traditionally polluting sector, is engaged in sustainable innovation; advanced detection of marine pollution incidents can help control improvements in this sector. However, coastal and marine environmental governance is increasingly constrained by fragmented monitoring architectures in which environmental, operational, and regulatory datasets remain distributed across institutions and jurisdictions. Comprehensive governance mechanisms that cross the sea–land continuum are limited. Public authorities, port administrations, research institutes, and private operators independently monitor marine pollution, vessel movements, coastal pressures, and urban and ecological risks; however, these data streams remain siloed across organizational, sectoral, and jurisdictional boundaries. The absence of interoperability, real-time exchange, and coordinated analytics generates a gap between monitoring capacity and regulatory effectiveness, resulting in delayed detection of multi-risks, such as pollution incidents. Weak governance and assignment of responsibility and largely reactive enforcement practices further reinforce the problem. Anticipatory interventions are needed to improve coastal and marine sustainability. This paper examines the EMMERA (East Med Cross-border Marine Environmental Risk Assessment through E-Platform Integrated Data Management) platform established by three port authorities as a data-centric intervention designed to address some of these structural limitations. Implemented in port and coastal environments in Cyprus, Greece, and Israel, EMMERA integrates heterogeneous static and dynamic data sources—including satellite observations, administrative records, vessel information, and drone-based monitoring—into a unified operational framework accessible to competent authorities. Through data fusion, cross-validation, and automated anomaly detection combined with targeted drone verification, the platform aims to transform fragmented monitoring streams into coherent, actionable environmental intelligence, strengthening the evidentiary basis for regulatory intervention. The paper presents the platform design and provides a baseline assessment. It argues that EMMERA’s primary contribution lies not in the introduction of additional monitoring tools, but in enabling more effective coastal and marine environmental governance through integrated data infrastructures. EMMERA is proposed as a governance-oriented integrated data infrastructure whose anticipated contribution lies in improving institutional interoperability, risk visibility, and evidence generation for environmental oversight, even as operational effectiveness will require future evaluation following sustained deployment. More broadly, the paper proposes that integrated data architectures can recalibrate environmental governance, shifting emphasis from post hoc documentation toward anticipatory, coordinated, and performance-oriented regulatory practices. Full article

Background/Objectives: Traditional community oral health programs (COHPs) often remain reactive, clinic-based, and insufficiently integrated with medical, social, and aged-care systems. As a result, they may be poorly positioned to address the needs of older adults experiencing multimorbidity, mobility limitations, cognitive impairment, care dependency, and financial or geographic barriers. This paper proposes SPACES, an implementation-oriented conceptual framework for designing, delivering, and evaluating community oral health programs for older adults. Methods: SPACES was developed through a targeted interpretive synthesis of peer-reviewed literature, policy guidance, and implementation-oriented sources related to oral health, healthy aging, integrated care, access barriers, workforce development, and sustainable service delivery. Results: The framework comprises six interconnected domains: Scalable Prevention and Education, Partnerships Across Sectors, Adaptive Care Coordination, Community Access Solutions, Empowered Workforce Development, and Sustainable Service Models. It is intended primarily for adults aged 60 years and older, while allowing adaptation in jurisdictions that use 65 years and older as the eligibility threshold. The framework applies across community, home care, assisted living, and long-term care settings. SPACES organizes evidence-informed components for older-adult oral health, including routine screening, caregiver-supported daily mouth care, risk-stratified prevention, referral pathways, proximity-based service delivery, geriatric workforce competencies, task sharing, sustainable financing, governance, and quality improvement. Conclusions: SPACES is presented not as a tested intervention but as a conceptual and program-planning tool to help planners clarify responsibilities, identify equity gaps, align cross-sector resources, and select measurable implementation indicators. Future stakeholder refinement and empirical evaluation are needed through co-design, pragmatic implementation studies, and real-world assessment of feasibility, acceptability, cost, equity impact, and oral health outcomes. Full article

Innovation-oriented productive forces are increasingly concentrated in cities, but the multiscale mechanisms through which the built environment shapes these forces remain insufficiently understood. This study develops a spatial analytical framework linking firm-level new quality productive forces (NQPF) to fine-grained urban spatial structures. Using 89 A-share listed firms in the Xiamen–Zhangzhou–Quanzhou (XZQ) urban agglomeration, we first construct an entropy-weighted NQPF index from eleven financial indicators related to R&D human capital, advanced capital stock, intangible assets, and operational efficiency. Kernel density estimation is then used to transform discrete firm-level NQPF values into a continuous 600 m × 600 m grid surface as the dependent variable. On the explanatory side, 27 built-environment variables are organized into an integrated indicator system covering urban form, natural conditions, jobs–housing structure, and service infrastructures. We combine cross-validated recursive feature elimination (RFE-CV) with multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to construct two model specifications: a 7-variable parsimonious subset and a 14-variable highest-performing subset. This dual-subset design allows us to distinguish core structural drivers from more context-dependent spatial mechanisms. The results reveal three mechanisms. First, ecological adaptation reflects the scale-dependent enabling and constraining effects of infrastructure and natural-foundation variables. Second, structural coordination shows that mature cores may experience crowding-related suppression when functional and institutional resources become spatially mismatched. Third, boundary activation indicates that transport, public-service, and leisure-related facilities can activate peripheral and cross-jurisdictional interface zones when supported by network connectivity and institutional coordination. By coupling variable-specific bandwidths with local coefficients, this study advances the analysis of spatial heterogeneity and provides evidence for differentiated, innovation-oriented urban regeneration. Full article

PM2.5 pollution control in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area requires a clearer understanding of how PM2.5-related linkages are organized across closely connected cities and jurisdictions. This study develops a CCM-based directional-network framework using PM2.5 pollution data from nine cities and two special administrative regions in the Greater Bay Area. Convergent cross mapping is first applied to identify nonlinear directional associations among cities, based on which an intercity PM2.5 pollution network is constructed. Social network analysis and motif analysis are then used to reveal the network’s macro-level connectivity and micro-level interaction patterns. An exponential random graph model is further introduced to identify the natural and socioeconomic factors associated with the emergence of intercity PM2.5 pollution linkages. The results show that PM2.5 levels in the Greater Bay Area generally declined across the selected years, with high-value areas becoming more localized, while the CCM results revealed heterogeneous nonlinear directional linkages among cities. The strongest CCM linkage was observed from Foshan to Guangzhou (0.8978), whereas the weakest linkage was observed from Macao SAR to Zhaoqing (0.4993). The results derived from social network analysis indicate an east–west cross-regional linkage pattern, with most cities serving as bridging nodes in the network. Natural factors, including temperature and precipitation, as well as socioeconomic factors, including economic development and population density, were significantly associated with the formation of intercity PM2.5 pollution linkages. These findings highlight the need for an integrated governance approach that combines source-oriented control, coordinated management of intercity PM2.5-related linkages, and public participation to improve collaborative PM2.5 pollution management in the Greater Bay Area. Full article

Efficient and unimpeded factor allocation constitutes the cornerstone of urban–rural integrated development. Using panel data from 281 prefecture-level cities in China spanning the period from 2011 to 2023, this study employs a two-way fixed-effects model to empirically investigate the direct effects and transmission channels of the application of data elements on urban–rural integrated development. The findings are as follows: (1) The application of data elements significantly promotes urban–rural integrated development. On average, a 1% increase in the level of data element application is associated with a 0.089% rise in the urban–rural integrated development index. This result remains robust across a battery of robustness tests, with pronounced regional heterogeneity. (2) Mechanism analysis demonstrates that data elements application drives urban–rural integrated development through three primary channels: facilitating labor mobility, mitigating capital misallocation, and elevating total factor productivity (TFP). (3) Heterogeneity analysis based on regional characteristics reveals that this promoting effect is more significant in regions with superior economic growth, more advanced industrial structures, and abundant human capital. (4) Spatial spillover analysis indicates that while data element application facilitates local urban–rural integrated development, it simultaneously exerts a negative spatial spillover effect on neighboring regions. Accordingly, policymakers should prioritize strengthening digital infrastructure in less developed regions and take the lead in establishing cross-jurisdictional data sharing platforms coupled with benefit compensation mechanisms, thereby fostering coordinated advancement and mutually beneficial outcomes in urban–rural integrated development across regions. Full article

Environmental taxation constitutes a key instrument of climate policy and plays an increasingly important role in decentralised governance systems. Using Spain as an empirical setting characterised by high fiscal decentralisation and pronounced territorial heterogeneity, we analyse the determinants of regional environmental taxation, accounting for both internal regional conditions and cross-regional policy interaction. Employing spatial panel econometric techniques, we provide robust evidence of spatial interaction and temporal persistence in regional environmental taxation at both the intensive and extensive margins. We also find that regional environmental taxation depends not only on domestic economic, institutional, and political characteristics, but also on those of neighbouring regions. These patterns are consistent with key theoretical mechanisms in fiscal federalism and public economics, including tax competition, yardstick competition, the double dividend hypothesis, NIMBY-type responses, and development–environment dynamics. Fur-ther analysis at the intensive margin reveals adjustment patterns consistent primarily with upward dynamics, although some evidence of downward responses is also found. In particular, upward adjustments appear to be more systematic, while downward responses are limited to regions with relatively lower environmental taxation. This asymmetry sug-gests that competitive pressures do not operate uniformly across jurisdictions. From a sustainability and governance perspective, the findings show that environmental tax policies in decentralised systems are shaped by strategic inter-regional interdependence, influencing the trajectories of regional sustainability transitions rather than reflecting isolated policy choices. Full article