Search Results (14,166)

This study examines the processes of technology adoption and appropriation among older adults participating in two community-based digital inclusion workshops (LAB65+) in Madrid, exploring how digital technologies are appropriated within community learning environments and identifying the social, relational, and pedagogical factors that shape this process, with particular attention to the role of mutual support, warm experts, and community learning dynamics. Drawing on a series of workshops and group interaction recordings conducted with regular attendees, the research identifies a set of factors that consistently shape participants’ engagement with digital tools. Particular attention is given to socio-educational background, previous work experience, and prior exposure to technology, as well as to the everyday motivations associated with the use of mobile phones for communication through WhatsApp, online purchasing, access to health services, and routine banking procedures. Across both labs, the findings reveal that successful and sustained engagement with technology among older adults depends less on technical training per se than on elements related to motivation, self-efficacy, meaningful instruction, and the creation or reinforcement of social ties in familiar environments. Although minor differences emerge between the two settings, the evidence consistently underscores the centrality of these relational and contextual factors over purely operational or skill-based considerations. The study highlights the need for community-oriented approaches that recognize and build upon the social dimensions of learning and using technology in later life. Full article

Recent evidence shows that multi-hazard events are becoming more frequent across Europe, highlighting the need to move beyond single-hazard approaches and toward integrated risk assessment. Despite recent advances, four key gaps persist: limited quantitative research on hazard interactions; model complexity that restricts large-scale applicability; narrow hazard coverage with insufficient integration of climate change scenarios; and neglect of cumulative impacts from sequential events. This study makes two complementary contributions. First, it proposes a scalable, unified multi-hazard risk assessment framework applicable at regional and European scales. In this framework, multi-hazard considerations are embedded throughout the entire assessment process—from study domain definition and loss metrics, through hazard characterization and conceptual incorporation of dynamic vulnerability, to the probabilistic treatment of hazard interactions and compound effects via a probabilistic, conditional-dependency framework conceptually represented as a Bayesian network. Second, based on the literature review conducted in this study, no prior European study was identified that combines flood, earthquake, and earthquake-triggered landslide hazards at the asset level for educational facilities. Therefore, this work is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, among the first such quantitative, asset-level multi-hazard risk assessments. The framework is demonstrated for over 1700 school buildings in the Region of Central Macedonia, Greece, using pan-European open-access datasets (ESHM20, ESRM20, JRC, GIRI, and ELSUS v2), making it readily transferable across Europe. By supporting risk-informed prioritization of mitigation and resilience investments, this work is consistent with the broader objectives of the Sendai Framework and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 11 and SDG 13. Full article

Economic well-being is essential for assessing sustainability of human settlement in urbanizing regions; however, the geographic factors linking settlement characteristics to residents’ well-being remain underexplored, particularly in counties in China undergoing urban–rural transformation. In this study, six representative Chinese counties (Yanshou, Wafangdian, Bazhou, Yugan, Yongsheng, and Raoping) with varying urbanization levels are investigated to establish a multidimensional evaluation framework and reveal the geographic factors underlying economic well-being. Through original household surveys conducted across these six geographically and economically diverse counties, we collected primary data from 1659 households; these data provide unique insights into residents’ lived experiences. By integrating these original survey data with objective indicators from statistical yearbooks and geographic features from multisource spatial data, key drivers were identified using Pearson correlation and random forest models. The results show the following trends: (1) significant county-level variation in subjective well-being, with Wafangdian ranking the highest and Bazhou ranking the lowest, while well-being aligned more closely with economic development levels; (2) income and happiness were the dominant determinants of subjective well-being, with work-related factors also contributing substantially, whereas nighttime light intensity, building density, and construction land area drove fusion well-being; and (3) multifactor modeling demonstrated strong explanatory power for fusion well-being (training set R² = 0.8313; validation set R² = 0.7531), indicating generalizability. The primary data collection across varied settlement settings provides strong empirical grounding. The findings reveal the spatial differentiation of economic well-being in urbanizing settlements, offering empirical support for targeted settlement planning and urban governance policies to improve sustainability and residents’ well-being in developing countries. Full article

Road traffic injuries remain a central challenge for sustainable transport, public health, and mobility governance. The task of monitoring these injuries requires indicators that jointly capture harm severity, road and environmental context, and patterns of vehicle involvement at scale. Using harmonised English-language Romanian police crash exports (2023–2025), we build 92,790 records with 36 variables and estimate two complementary k-means typologies: a severity partition based on the fatality, injury, and vehicle-count fields (a register proxy for involvement, not vehicle-type attributes) and a context partition based on the road, environment, mechanism, and cause fields with one-hot encoding and TruncatedSVD. Reported tables and figures reproduce the archived MiniBatch pipeline for replication; for context, full-batch k-means clustering on the same embedding is the recommended default when cross-year prevalence stability is required (train–test TVD 0.039 versus 0.569 under MiniBatch). We report silhouette-guided choices ($k=6$ severity, $k=4$ context), cross-seed stability, feature ablations, and a 2023–2024 versus 2025 prevalence comparison. A Pearson ${\chi }^2$ test on severity × context labels reveals strong statistical significance, yet Cramér’s V remains small—statistical association with limited practical coupling, consistent with complementary rather than redundant partitions. Limitations include police-reported injury counts; a coarse vehicle proxy; weak context geometry; and large MiniBatch context drift, which binds inference to within-year descriptive profiling unless analysts refit the model, add version labels, or adopt full-batch context clustering. The contribution is an integrated, reproducible profiling and governance workflow for dashboards and follow-on modelling—not a fixed multi-year cluster taxonomy. Full article

Announcements of major transport infrastructure can reorganize land markets long before construction begins, as expectations are capitalized into prices and building decisions—with direct implications for sustainable territorial planning. This study examines the real estate response to the 2024 announcement of the Torquemada airport project in the Valparaíso Region, Chile. We assemble a high-resolution microterritorial panel at the block–semester–land-use level, integrating three Chilean administrative registers: the SII cadastre (over 100 million construction lines across 16 semestral snapshots, 2018–2025), the F2890 conveyance records (1.49 million geolocated transactions), and the daily Unidad de Fomento series. We estimate a multi-outcome spatial difference-in-differences design, complemented by an event study, land-use heterogeneity analysis, local indicators of spatial association, placebo tests, spatial-weight sensitivity analysis, and the heterogeneity-robust Callaway–Sant’Anna estimator. We find a robust increase in new-parcel construction in the zone of influence—identified by an annual event study against never-treated controls whose pre-announcement coefficients are small and trendless, in sharp contrast to the uniformly positive pre-trends of the expansion and aggregate-stock series—together with selective appreciation of non-residential uses and no detectable effect on housing value. The expansion and aggregate-stock components are not separately identified: their pre-announcement trends are strongly non-parallel, so the corresponding fixed-effects coefficients are read as design-conditional associations. The evidence supports an activation of the extensive margin (new-parcel building) rather than a recomposition away from densification. We read the evidence as the anticipatory footprint of the announcement rather than a point causal effect. Detecting this footprint before construction enables anticipatory value capture and sprawl-containment policy while the planning window remains open. Full article

Flood risk is increasingly shaped by the combined effects of climate change and the vulnerability of built environments, while building-level flood damage severity analysis is often constrained by limited data availability. This study develops a transparent and reproducible framework for analyzing building-level flood damage severity under climate-adjusted hazard conditions in data-constrained environments. The framework integrates administrative post-event damage records, GIS-based terrain information, a terrain-based proxy flood-depth reconstruction procedure, and a standardized Rhine Atlas/ICPR depth–damage relationship. Representative terrain-based proxy flood depths are reconstructed using building locations, terrain elevation, and settlement-level exposure assumptions. Observed damage categories are not used to assign proxy flood depths directly, but serve exclusively as empirical ordinal reference information for ordinal consistency assessment of model-derived damage severity. Climate effects are incorporated through a simplified hazard adjustment based on projected changes in extreme precipitation intensity. The framework is applied to 413 residential buildings affected by flood events in Serbia during the period 2016–2021. Results show a consistent nonlinear relationship between terrain-based proxy flood depth and ICPR-derived structural damage severity, as well as a strong influence of terrain elevation on relative hazard intensity. Climate-adjusted sensitivity scenarios indicate that even moderate increases in extreme precipitation lead to measurable increases in structural damage severity and an upward shift in model-derived damage levels. The proposed framework provides a practical approach for flood damage severity analysis in data-constrained environments, supporting improved decision-making in sustainable flood risk management and climate adaptation planning. Full article

This study synthesises evidence on whether, why, and under what conditions digital technologies improve resource efficiency across multi-tier global value chains (GVCs) and examines the theoretical adequacy of dominant explanatory lenses. Following the PRISMA 2020 protocol, we searched Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, and ProQuest, retaining 150 articles for qualitative synthesis and 137 for bibliometric science-mapping; themes were developed via multi-cycle coding and triangulated with co-citation and keyword co-occurrence networks. Reported efficiency gains are strongest when firms deploy integrated digital stacks combining IoT sensing, AI analytics, blockchain traceability, and digital twins that jointly enable visibility, verification, and simulation-based optimisation, a pattern based predominantly on observational and cross-sectional evidence. Outcomes are contingent on cross-firm capability complementarities, data-governance arrangements, regulatory congruence, and cyber-risk maturity. A key structural finding is the digital-regionalisation paradox: stringent data-compliance demands can re-anchor sourcing within regulatory blocs, concentrating rather than extending GVC geography. Building on these findings, we propose three theoretical extensions, namely ecosystemic capability bundling, digital-sustainability spillovers, and distributed eco-innovation, that advance Transaction Cost Economics, the Resource-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities, and GVC governance theories to better account for the sustainability and platform dimensions of contemporary digitalised value chains. Full article

Space debris mitigation is a pivotal endeavor essential for sustaining human space exploration. To address the challenges posed by irregularly shaped, variably sized, and dynamically unpredictable debris in orbit, this paper proposes a mechanical design and motion control strategy for an omniwheel-based driving system. The mechanical architecture and kinematic principles of the system are elaborated in detail, complemented by the formulation of tailored motion control algorithms. First, the fundamental architecture of the driving subsystem is introduced, and the linear mapping between the uniformly distributed triad of omniwheels and the spherical drive is derived. Building upon this foundation, the kinematic transmission from the three evenly spaced driving subsystems to the contact sphere is established. This leads to the derivation of the overall linear mapping relationship between the nine uniformly distributed omniwheels and the contact sphere’s motion, thereby enabling precise trajectory tracking of the contact sphere via omniwheel actuation. Finally, comprehensive experimental validation was conducted in two phases. The first phase evaluated the fidelity and stability of the driving subsystem’s simulation model, as well as the accuracy of the kinematic mapping. Results demonstrate that the simulation model is highly stable and reliable. Under identical desired trajectories, the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) between theoretical calculations and simulations was 4.082 × 10⁻⁴, while the RMSE between theory and physical prototypes was 0.0032. These results confirm that the motion errors remain within acceptable tolerances and the kinematic mapping is accurate. For the spherical end-effector, under the same trajectory conditions, the RMSE values among theoretical calculations, simulations, and physical prototypes were 0.0929 and 1.62, respectively. These findings validate the derived linear kinematic mapping, demonstrating its efficacy in precise motion control, which lays the foundation for future on-orbit detumbling tasks. Full article

The study investigated and quantified the feasibility of using waste derived from shea tree fruit shells (Vitellaria paradoxa) as an organic multifunctional additive for building ceramic bodies, focusing on its influence on thermal behavior, pore formation, and mechanical performance. The scope of the research included sieve analysis, chemical analysis (WDXRF), phase composition analysis (XRD), thermal analysis coupled with evolved gas analysis (DTA–TG–EGA), and the evaluation of the physical and mechanical properties of the obtained ceramic materials. The analyses demonstrated that the shea waste was characterized by a high content of organic matter, a loss in ignition of 93.84%, and a calorific value of 19.421 kJ/g. The incorporation of biomass resulted in increased porosity and reduced apparent density of the ceramic materials. The relative porosity increased from 27.00% for the reference sample to 34.98% for the sample containing 30% shea waste. Simultaneously, the compressive strength decreased from 23.67 MPa to 10.10 MPa, while the flexural strength decreased from 8.96 MPa to 4.76 MPa. Partial replacement of conventional mineral additives and, in particular, partial substitution of fossil-derived kiln fuel demand with high-calorific biomass enabled a reduction in overall CO₂ emissions associated with ceramic production. This includes both process-related emissions from raw material decomposition and fuel-related emissions generated in the tunnel kiln. In addition, a reduced contribution of carbon originating from inorganic mineral sources (including carbonates) to total emissions covered by emission trading systems (ETSs) was observed. Despite the reduction in mechanical parameters, samples containing up to 20% shea waste retained properties suitable for application in the production of ceramic building materials. Full article

Digital inclusive finance (DIF) is gradually becoming an important driver of the high-quality development of rural industries. Based on panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2013 to 2023, building the high-quality development of rural industries index system and the digital new quality productivity (DNQP) index system, this study tests the impact and mechanisms of DIF on the high-quality development of rural industries. The main results show that DIF significantly promotes the high-quality development of rural industries. Furthermore, DIF facilitates this development by fostering DNQP. The study also identifies threshold effects, with DIF and DNQP serving as threshold variables. Additionally, the study examines the heterogeneity of the empowerment effect, demonstrating that this promoting effect is more pronounced in non-major grain-producing areas and regions with high-level fiscal support for agriculture. The findings provide theoretical and empirical evidence to support sustainable rural industrial development and offer policy implications for leveraging digital finance in rural contexts. Full article

This study presents a comparative evaluation of geopolymer foams incorporating either commercially available shape-stabilized phase change materials (PCMs) or laboratory-developed diatomite–paraffin PCM granules with controlled particle size fractions ranging from <1.6 mm to >2.5 mm. All PCM variants were incorporated at a constant dosage of 7.5 wt.% to isolate the influence of PCM type on the properties of the resulting composites. The commercial materials comprised PX-4, PX15, and PX20 (Rubitherm Technologies GmbH), whereas the laboratory-developed PCM consisted of paraffin immobilized within a porous diatomite matrix to produce granular shape-stabilized composites. The experimental program included the determination of bulk density, total porosity, pore size distribution, thermal conductivity (λ), thermal resistance (R), specific heat capacity (Cp), and compressive strength. The pore structure was characterized by mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP), while the morphology and dispersion of PCM particles within the geopolymer matrix were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). All mixtures were produced using the same alkali-activated matrix and identical curing conditions, with the PCM content maintained at 7.5 wt.%. The results demonstrated that the type of PCM significantly affected the microstructure and thermophysical performance of the geopolymer foams. The laboratory-developed diatomite–paraffin PCM provided the most favorable thermal insulation performance, exhibiting the lowest thermal conductivity (0.095 W/m·K) together with the highest thermal resistance (0.278 m²·K/W). In contrast, the commercial PX15 and PX20 materials exhibited the highest specific heat capacities (1.740 and 1.778 kJ/kg·K, respectively), indicating superior thermal energy storage capability. In addition, the estimated production cost of the laboratory-developed PCM (2.5–4.0 EUR/kg) was substantially lower than that of the commercial PX materials (approximately 20 EUR/kg), highlighting its potential as a cost-effective alternative for sustainable, energy-efficient building materials. These findings demonstrate that both commercial and laboratory-developed PCM systems can effectively enhance the functionality of geopolymer foams, although they provide different balances between thermal insulation, heat storage capacity, and production cost. Full article

Nowadays, for energy-based targets, investigations on the thermal characteristics of building materials are becoming increasingly common. Foam concrete is one of them. Foam concrete, which is already a very popular building material in terms of thermal insulation, needs to simultaneously improve its mechanical and thermal characteristics. Therefore, in the present study, we address the effects on foam mortars of blended cements containing zeolites. The replacement ratios of blended cements containing two different zeolites were 0, 10, 30, and 50%. This study aims to encourage the use of alternative additives to achieve objectives such as sustainability, energy efficiency and lower carbon emissions and to obtain optimum design data for the foam concrete market. The parameters examined in 28-day-old samples were basic physical characteristics, water absorption, ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), compressive strength, thermal characteristics and microstructure analysis. Based on the test results, for foam mortars containing blended cement with analcime and clinoptilolite, a 10% replacement ratio is optimal in terms of strength, whereas a 30% ratio is required for a significant improvement in thermal insulation. The foam mortars with a 10% analcime replacement ratio demonstrated the highest specific heat capacity. Full article

This review shows that lignocellulosic biomass is not merely an abundant feedstock for nanocellulose production but a strategic platform for building the next generation of sustainable, high-performance materials, integrating feedstock diversity, processing logic, characterization, market direction, and translational applications into a single narrative. Comparing woody and non-woody biomass through the lens of processability, recalcitrance, and value creation while showing why agricultural residues are increasingly central to low-cost, circular nanocellulose production beyond the usual acid-hydrolysis-centered discussion by emphasizing enzymatic hydrolysis as a lower-energy, lower-toxicity alternative while still acknowledging the persistent industrial advantages and environmental costs of chemical and mechanical routes. A further strength of this review is its effort to bridge structure and function: it links extraction strategy to morphology, crystallinity, thermal stability, and surface chemistry, then connects these properties to real applications in packaging, drug delivery, electronics, filtration, energy storage, and biomedical systems. Its distinctive contribution lies in showing that the future of nanocellulose depends not only on how it is extracted but also on how intelligently the biomass source, processing route, material performance, and market need are aligned. Full article

The growing adoption of prefabricated timber construction in Australia has highlighted persistent difficulties in integrating digital workflows between architectural design, structural engineering, and manufacturing. Although Building Information Modelling (BIM), Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM), and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) technologies are increasingly used, fragmented software environments, inconsistent data exchange, and limited early manufacturer involvement continue to cause information loss, manual rework, and design-to-manufacturing workflow gaps. This study provides a PRISMA-informed structured review of design-to-manufacturing integration in prefabricated timber construction, focusing on workflow stages, software ecosystems, interoperability issues, and manufacturer-ready data requirements. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, 588 records from ScienceDirect and Web of Science were screened, resulting in 60 peer-reviewed studies. These were supplemented by 32 practice-based technical sources, including industry reports, software manuals, user guides, CNC/machinery manuals, and interface documents. The review maps current workflows for timber frames, trusses, and mass timber components, identifying recurring challenges such as fragmented responsibilities, insufficient data detail, incompatible software, repeated remodelling, and weak design-production continuity. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a conceptual digital integration framework emphasising early collaboration, shared parametric logic, and clearer manufacturer-ready data to support more reliable, resource-efficient, and sustainable design-to-manufacturing workflows in Australian prefabricated timber construction. Full article

Biochar water treatment stands at a decisive crossroads, where the promise of large-scale application meets the reality of laboratory trial-and-error. This study contends that the fundamental bottleneck to progress lies in the field’s persistent reliance on empirical experimentation and black-box data models. We therefore propose a conceptual research paradigm that aims to deeply integrate physics-informed machine learning (PIML) with life cycle assessment (LCA). The novelty of this framework lies in three dimensions: (i) the bidirectional information flow between PIML and LCA, enabling simultaneous material design and sustainability assessment; (ii) the embedding of fundamental physical laws (adsorption isotherms, kinetics, thermodynamics) directly into learning architectures to ensure physical consistency; and (iii) the extension to a water–energy–soil–food closed-loop system for holistic resource management. While the individual components of this framework have been demonstrated in other domains, their integrated application to biochar water treatment remains in early development stages. This perspective outlines potential pathways and identifies critical research gaps that must be addressed to realize this vision. The focus is on charting future directions rather than reporting established achievements. Through critical evaluation, we assess current integrated models under small-sample constraints and explicitly pinpoint explainability and cross-scale generalization as two indispensable gaps that industrial deployment demands be bridged. Building on this foundation, we outline a blueprint for a closed-loop system coupling water, energy, soil, and food, and present a three-phase roadmap for future research. This study seeks to offer a constructive perspective with the hope of supporting biochar technology toward more sustainable implementation. Full article