Search Results (3,037)

Traditional markets play an important role in the exchange of plant resources and the preservation of traditional food knowledge. This study documents the diversity of food plants traded in Renmin Market, located in Youjiang District, Baise City, Guangxi, China, and evaluates their cultural importance using the Cultural Food Significance Index (CFSI). Field surveys were conducted through market observations and interviews with vendors and local informants. All edible plant species were recorded, including their scientific names, vernacular names, used parts, and modes of consumption. A total of 104 food plant taxa were documented, representing a wide range of plant families and growth forms. The recorded plants were used in four main utilization categories: vegetables, spices, fruits, and beverages. Frequently used plant parts included fruits, leaves, shoots, and underground organs such as roots, rhizomes, and tubers. The CFSI values showed considerable variation in cultural importance among species, ranging from 21.6 to 1764. The highest CFSI values were recorded for Cucurbita pepo, Allium cepa, Cucurbita maxima, and Houttuynia cordata, reflecting their frequent consumption and versatility in local cuisine. Comparative analysis with previous studies in Baise City indicated that 38 species were shared among three markets, while 30 species were recorded exclusively in Renmin Market. These findings highlight the diversity of food plants available in local markets and their importance in maintaining regional culinary traditions and plant-based dietary diversity. Full article

Enhancing urban ecological resilience (UER) is crucial for mitigating soil erosion, improving land use efficiency, and preventing ecological degradation. The digital–real economy integration (DRI) plays a pivotal role in strengthening UER, offering a vital pathway for modernizing ecological governance systems and capabilities in the Yellow River Basin (YRB). Based on ecological resilience theory, this study establishes a three-dimensional evaluation framework centered on “resistance–recovery–adaptation”. Using panel data from 78 cities in the YRB from 2011 to 2023, we empirically examine the impact of DRI on UER. The results indicate that DRI significantly improves UER in the YRB, with notably strong positive effects on recovery and adaptation capacities, although there is no significant effect on resistance capacity. Mechanism analysis reveals that DRI promotes UER primarily through three channels: upgrading the industrial structure, strengthening government governance, and spurring green technological innovation. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that the positive impact of DRI on UER is more pronounced in downstream cities, urban agglomerations, non-resource-based cities, key environmental protection cities, green data center pilot cities, and informatization–industrialization integration pilot cities. Spatial analysis confirms DRI generating positive spatial spillover effects on the UER of neighboring cities. This study provides a theoretical basis for understanding the ecological governance potential of DRI and offers policy insights to support coordinated digital and green transformation in the YRB. Full article

With the rapid development of smart cities, coordinating diverse distributed energy resources through storage-centric shared management has become a critical challenge. This paper proposes a bi-level energy management framework to support peer-to-peer energy trading among multiple virtual power plants (VPPs) under multidimensional uncertainties. The interaction is modeled as a Stackelberg–Nash equilibrium framework, in which OK, we will make the necessary revisions as per the requirements.a public energy storage operator and a natural gas company act as leaders to maximize social welfare and design differentiated trading strategies for VPPs. The VPPs act as followers and participate in cooperative energy trading based on a generalized Nash equilibrium scheme, sharing surplus energy and allocating cooperative benefits according to their contributions. To address uncertainty, Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) is adopted to quantify the expected loss of the upper-level decision makers. The lower-level VPP problem is formulated as a three-stage stochastic robust optimization model considering renewable generation uncertainty. To solve the resulting nonlinear bi-level problem, a two-stage solution approach combining particle swarm optimization and KKT-based reformulation is developed to transform it into a tractable mixed-integer linear programming model. Numerical case studies verify the effectiveness of the proposed framework. Full article

Urbanization fundamentally fractures the natural water cycle, leading to a cascade of interconnected problems including increased flood risk, degraded water quality, stressed groundwater resources, and inefficient distribution networks. Traditional, fragmented management approaches that address these issues in isolation have proven inadequate. This research argues for a paradigm shift towards an Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) framework anchored in the concept of the “river-aquifer-pipe network continuum”, treating these components as a single, dynamic hydrological and infrastructural entity. Drawing upon a series of detailed case studies from Eastern Romania, this paper synthesizes the systemic impacts of development across the entire urban water system. Evidence from the Prut, Olt, and Bahlui river basins demonstrate how channelization exacerbates flood peaks and leads to severe biochemical degradation. Hydrogeological modeling of the Gherăești-Bacău wellfield reveals the vulnerabilities of over-extraction, while analysis of the Iași water network highlights the challenge of water losses in the aging infrastructure. In response, a modern, multi-tool approach is consolidated into a practical, three-stage framework for action: Diagnose, Prescribe, and Optimize. This framework advocates for (1) a comprehensive diagnosis using a suite of predictive numerical models (a “digital twin”); (2) the prescription of foundational, nature-based solutions, such as floodplain restoration, to heal core ecological functions; and (3) the continuous optimization of engineered infrastructure using smart, real-time control technologies. The synthesis concludes that an integrated, data-driven, and collaborative approach is the only sustainable path forward. Future research should focus on formally coupling these diagnostic models to create true Digital Twins of urban water systems—an essential step towards building resilient, water-secure cities for the 21st century. Full article

The global drive toward energy transition and carbon neutrality requires integrated and data-driven approaches for managing buildings and smart cities. Existing urban energy assessment frameworks remain fragmented and often lack multiscale interoperability between building-level models and territorial datasets. At the same time, shallow geothermal energy is emerging as an efficient and renewable solution for sustainable heating and cooling. To address these gaps, this study examines the potential of GeoBIM, the integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), as a unified framework for multiscale energy analysis and for supporting shallow geothermal applications. A systematic literature review was conducted based on the PRISMA framework, combining a systematic literature review using the Scopus database with the critical examination of representative case studies. The results show that GeoBIM-based modeling improves data quality, enhances thermal performance assessments, and supports the implementation of shallow geothermal systems, including energy piles and district-scale ground-coupled networks. Reported applications demonstrate energy consumption reductions exceeding 40% in certain urban contexts. Several research gaps and challenges were identified, particularly data interoperability issues, lack of standardization, computational complexity, and the need for specialized training. Overall, the review indicates that GeoBIM offers a promising pathway for optimizing resources, supporting informed decision-making, and advancing resilient and sustainable smart buildings and cities. Full article

This paper proposes a replicable, city-oriented workflow to support the preliminary screening of photovoltaic (PV) opportunities in Bogotá, Colombia, by integrating (i) georeferenced spatial inventories (roofs/land), (ii) solar-resource modeling based on local meteorological stations and radiation models, and (iii) an optional 3D module (LiDAR/DSM) to refine shading and orientation losses when higher-resolution data are available. Rather than claiming a complete citywide quantification from exhaustive building-level inputs, the workflow is demonstrated through two institutional case studies (public schools) selected to represent contrasting urban morphologies. The results show how the approach consistently transforms spatial constraints and solar estimates into comparable technical and economic indicators for decision-making at the site level. Finally, a practical scale-up pathway is described to extend the same logic from pilots to citywide portfolios through batch processing of urban footprints and the progressive enrichment of inputs—from 2D GIS screening to targeted 3D refinement—while preserving transparency and traceability of assumptions. For the two case study sites, the workflow yielded preliminary PV capacities of 72.6 and 95.0 kWp, with year-1 generation of 90.2 and 115.0 MWh, respectively. The IRR values achieved were between 18.9 and 19.5%, the simple payback period was approximately five years, and the LCOE was between 0.051 and 0.053 USD/kWh. It should be noted that the generation was reported as a central estimate with ±25% tolerance to reflect interannual solar resource variability. Full article

This study analyzes the impact of China’s smart city pilot policy (CSCP) on green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE) using panel data from 245 cities (2006–2021). Applying the multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) method, results show that CSCP significantly promotes GTFEE. CSCP improves urban GTFEE by about 6.18%. Meanwhile, CSCP contributes to the enhancement of GTFEE by stimulating green technological innovation and improving the efficiency of resource allocation. These impacts are particularly evident in cities characterized by higher levels of digitalization, peripherality, and being non-resource-based. The findings provide a framework for advancing urban green transitions and integrating smart and green development strategies, highlighting the importance of technology innovation in global energy governance. Full article

Public bus systems are vital to achieving sustainable urban mobility in developing countries; yet, the quality of bus stops, a critical interface between users and transit services, remains widely overlooked. This study evaluates bus stop quality in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, from bus users’ perspectives by integrating importance–performance analysis (IPA) and the customer satisfaction index (CSI) with level of conformity analysis (CR) using extensive, real-world survey data. The objective was to identify priority areas to help improve the quality of public bus stop provision in the city and ensure the most efficient allocation of resources by focusing on the quality attributes that matter most to bus users. The results highlight six critical service quality attributes that require immediate improvement due to their high importance to users and low service quality performance: (i) safety barriers to prevent traffic accidents while waiting at bus stops; (ii) accessibility of bus stops for elderly and disabled users; (iii) availability of signage and timetables/maps; (iv) overall bus stop quality; (v) narrow bus stop platforms; and (vi) waiting time at bus stops. Addressing these gaps is essential to enhance user satisfaction and ensure that users have a safer, more inclusive, and reliable PT experience. This study offers evidence-based recommendations to enhance bus stop design and service quality, thus contributing to improved user satisfaction and increased ridership. More broadly, the results can be applied to other rapidly urbanizing developing cities seeking to provide equitable, safe, and user-centered bus transit systems. Full article

Resource-based regions (RBRs) are vital to socio-economic development, yet intensive resource exploitation strains water, energy, and food (WEF) security and causes environmental stress. Optimizing collaborative management of the WEF nexus is crucial for their sustainable development. This study developed an integrated model (WEFN) for optimizing the WEF nexus in RBRs by combining multi-objective optimization and the efficacy coefficient method. The WEFN model incorporates internal couplings and external linkages of the WEF nexus into objectives and constraints. Using Daqing, China, as a case study, six policy scenarios were designed. S1 follows the 2030 planning scheme, while S2–S5 prioritize energy-food supply, environmental protection, water conservation, and economic gains, respectively. S6, formulated via the WEFN model, integrates the objectives of S2–S5 into a collaborative management policy. A comprehensive benefit evaluation system was established, yielding an Evaluation Index (EVI) to quantify WEF system benefits and identify the optimal scenario. Results show that collaborative policy S6 best supports coordinated socio-economic and environmental development in Daqing. The findings offer a valuable reference for WEF nexus management in other RBRs. Full article

What drives persistent urban–rural tourism satisfaction gaps: whether from promotional over-promising or structural service deficits? This distinction fundamentally determines whether territorial development resources should target marketing sophistication or productive capacity, yet remains empirically unresolved. Text-mining for 33,174 attractions across 349 Chinese cities reveals that both rural and urban destinations systematically under-promise, with description sentiment falling consistently below actual ratings, contradicting the “digital facade” hypothesis. Urban attractions nonetheless generate more positive surprises through superior service delivery (gap = 0.62 vs. 0.55). Sentiment measurement robustness is validated through triangulation of two independent dictionary-based methods ($r=0.58$, $p<0.001$) and cross-paradigm verification using a pre-trained BERT transformer ($\tau =1.000$ ranking stability). SHAP decomposition quantifies the policy implication: controllable service quality indicators, including description quality (23.2%), information richness (30.7%), and price positioning (16.5%), collectively explain over 70% of the variance in satisfaction, while fixed geographic factors (rural classification 14.9% and city-tier 14.7%) account for 29.6%, yielding a controllable-to-geographic ratio of 2.4:1. Propensity score matching with six covariates confirms a 0.074–0.100-point rural penalty persists after controlling for confounders, while non-linear analysis demonstrates that rural attractions face no marginal productivity disadvantage, and the challenge is baseline capacity, not investment efficiency. For policymakers pursuing Sustainable Development Goals 8, 10, and 12 through tourism-led regional strategies, these results mandate redirecting resources from demand-side expectation management toward supply-side infrastructure and workforce development, the true binding constraint on rural competitiveness. Full article

Learning transferable region embeddings is a fundamental problem in urban computing, as such representations support a wide range of downstream prediction tasks. Existing methods leverage multi-view and multimodal urban data but often fail to explicitly model spatial relations across views or effectively align general region embeddings with task-specific objectives. In this paper, we propose a spatial-aware Transformer (RE-SAT) network with semantic-guided prompting for urban region embedding. RE-SAT adopts a two-stage learning paradigm. In the first stage, a spatial-aware Transformer encoder injects connectivity and distance-based spatial priors into the attention mechanism to learn task-agnostic region embeddings from multi-view urban data. In the second stage, RE-SAT adapts the learned embeddings to downstream tasks via a semantic-guided prompt learning mechanism, which generates task-aware soft prompts from textual task descriptions without modifying the universal embeddings. Extensive experiments on multiple urban prediction tasks across different cities demonstrate that RE-SAT consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods, achieving maximum relative improvements of 12.2% in MAE, 12.2% in RMSE, and 6.7% in R², validating its effectiveness and generalizability. Consequently, this framework serves as a robust decision-support tool for urban planners and policymakers, facilitating efficient resource allocation and intelligent city management across diverse scenarios. Full article

Against the backdrop of global climate change, enhancing urban adaptive capacity to climate shocks has become a critical issue for sustainable urban development. Based on this, this study treats the Climate-Adaptive City Pilot (CACP) policy in China as a quasi-natural experiment and employs a difference-in-differences (DID) approach to empirically evaluate its impact on urban ecological resilience, using panel data from Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2010 to 2023. Heterogeneity and mechanism analyses are further conducted to explore differential policy effects and underlying transmission channels. The results indicate that the Climate-Adaptive City Pilot policy significantly enhances urban ecological resilience, and this finding remains robust after a series of robustness checks, including winsorized regressions, propensity score matching, time placebo tests, and individual placebo tests. Further analysis reveals that the policy effects are more pronounced in cities with lower or higher levels of human capital development, as well as in cities with low to medium water resource endowments. Mechanism analysis suggests that resilient infrastructure investment and green technological innovation constitute the key pathways through which the pilot policy improves urban ecological resilience. From the perspective of urban ecological resilience, this study provides empirical evidence on the effectiveness of climate-adaptive city pilot policies and offers important policy implications for deepening the implementation of climate-adaptive city initiatives, designing context-sensitive adaptation strategies, and improving urban climate adaptation governance mechanisms. Full article

Digital transformation of municipal public services remains uneven in transition economies, while national e-government indices often obscure substantial disparities across cities. This study develops a composite E-Government Maturity and Performance Index (EGMPI) to evaluate eleven Armenian municipalities across four governance dimensions: digital service availability, administrative efficiency, transparency and accountability, and citizen interaction and participation. Using publicly available data for Q1 2024, the analysis reveals pronounced metropolitan concentration, with large cities significantly outperforming smaller municipalities. Although performance correlates with population size and fiscal capacity, institutional and managerial factors strongly mediate outcomes, as comparable municipalities display substantial differences in service maturity. Results further show that local governments tend to prioritize transparency measures over functional efficiency, indicating symbolic digitalization rather than substantive service transformation. Unlike national e-government indices, this study provides a city-level diagnostic framework enabling intra-country performance comparison and actionable municipal policy design. Based on the findings, a multi-level policy roadmap is proposed, including shared national platforms, regional digital hubs, targeted capacity building, and leapfrogging strategies for low-maturity cities. The proposed governance-oriented framework offers a replicable tool for transition economies and demonstrates that effective digital transformation depends primarily on institutional coordination and citizen-centric management rather than financial resources alone. Full article

Vegetation elements on buildings such as green roofs are increasingly recognized as nature-based solutions to address urban environmental challenges. Green roofs can be adapted to diverse climates and building types. Their implementation in Slovakia has been rising, yet it remains limited in scale and technological ambition. Projects funded from public resources often remain conventional, with rare ambition to implement novel stormwater management systems and solutions that enhance biodiversity. Currently, the majority of investments in green roofs are limited to the private sector, while public institutions lag behind. Thus, public buildings with novel green systems and elements can still be considered non-conventional, innovative, and influential. This study investigates the development of green roofs on public buildings in the city of Nitra, Slovakia, from the first installation in 1992 to recent projects in the 2020s. By systematically mapping all existing public green roofs and conducting qualitative narrative interviews with key stakeholders, this research aims to identify the main motivations, actors, and barriers behind the implementation of green roofs in public investments. The novelty of this research lies in its mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to draw conclusions from a comprehensive dataset. By capturing all existing examples within their spatial and temporal context, rather than relying on a random subsample of case studies, this study provides a highly representative evaluation of green roof adoption. Preliminary findings provide insights into the temporal and spatial diffusion patterns of green roofs in a medium-sized Central European city and highlight the main drivers of public decision-making. The results contribute to a better understanding of how urban sustainability initiatives emerge in public sector contexts and aim to inform policy and planning to initiate and boost more green roof implementation. Full article

The smart city represents a new stage in urban evolution, driven by technological progress, social transformations, and the increasing emphasis placed on sustainability. This metamorphosis generates hub-type architectural models, used not only for data collection and interconnection but also for the management and monitoring of people, resources, and urban services. This discussion addresses how digital urbanism has followed different paths globally by synthesising technological, economic, social, and governance perspectives. Compared with traditional models of urbanisation, new smart cities are built not only for digital interconnection but also to be citizen-centred, environmentally friendly, and resilient to global crises. This article analyses recent scientific literature on the theoretical and practical foundations of technologies that support data-driven decision-making, infrastructure efficiency, and the delivery of inclusive public services. At the same time, major challenges are highlighted, such as the lack of system interoperability, information fragmentation, and the risks associated with excessive surveillance, which can generate social exclusion, as well as financial and political constraints. International examples from Helsinki, Barcelona, Dubai, and Singapore offer both models that have achieved success and critical lessons about the limits of these approaches. This paper is not limited only to the problems faced by smart cities. It also highlights the opportunities they can bring. Finally, based on the conclusions of the analysis carried out and the identified trends, a strategic framework is proposed, oriented towards responsible innovation, collaboration, and sustainability. This approach contributes to informing researchers, decision-makers, urban planners, and the public interested in the transformation of the urban environment. Full article