Search Results (657)

The availability of environmental indicators at the NUTS-2 level remains limited in European statistical sources, often resulting in regional sustainability analyses that reflect short-term policy dynamics rather than long-term conditions. To address this gap, this paper proposes a parsimonious framework based on a spatial stock indicator measuring the share of artificial land within each region (ENV_ARTIFICIAL_LAND), derived from CORINE Land Cover data and aggregated at the NUTS-2 level. Rather than serving as a short-term metric of policy performance, the indicator describes an inherited territorial stock reflecting historical land-use trajectories, consistent with path-dependent development processes. Using the Italian NUTS-2 regions as a case study, the indicator is analysed alongside key socio-economic variables covering economic capacity, social vulnerability, and human capital formation through a non-aggregative, quadrant-based trade-off framework. The results suggest pronounced regional asymmetries and structural mismatches, demonstrating that territorial rigidities and socio-economic outcomes follow differentiated, non-linear alignments. From a policy perspective, the analysis highlights the limits of uniform benchmarking and underscores the necessity of place-based strategies tailored to inherited spatial constraints. Future developments will include integration into territorialised lifecycle frameworks, to account for the cumulative effects of land occupation and environmental debt. While this framework offers a transparent screening tool for regional spatial rigidity, its convergent validity against high-resolution spatial datasets (such as HRL Imperviousness) and disaggregated land-use subclasses remains to be formally tested in future empirical research. Full article

Conventional international rankings assess urban efficiency via context-blind metrics, a design that the literature suggests may structurally disadvantage Mediterranean centres and obscure the sustainable policy pathways mandated by the Sustainable Development Goals, most notably the governance of urban transitions under SDG 11. This paper proposes the Context-Weighted Liveability Index (CWLI), which introduces context-sensitive weights into the aggregation of standard smart city KPIs, bridging the global comparability of IMD-style indices with the Mediterranean-specific assessment logic of the ASCIMER framework. Weights derive from five geographic coefficients—climate, culture, economy, historical density, and demography—through a transparent weighted additive formulation with an explicit sensitivity matrix, whose robustness is verified through Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis over 5000 perturbed configurations spanning parameters, coefficients, measurements and benchmarks. Coefficients and KPIs are computed from open spatial data through a replicable GIS protocol (QGIS; OpenStreetMap, Copernicus land cover and land surface temperature, and ISTAT/ELSTAT census data at sub-municipal scale). Applied comparatively to Bologna and Athens, the framework shows that contextual weighting concentrates over 60% of the total weight on climate-sensitive indicators and yields, through the decomposition of contributions, a policy diagnosis that differs from the one suggested by reading an overall smart city rank in isolation: Athens’ largest contribution is digital and its liveability deficit territorial—a profile with direct consequences for sustainable urban transition and talent attraction. Implications for SDG 11 monitoring, equitable access to urban green space, and digital twin integration are discussed. Full article

Walking tourism is increasingly supported by a wide range of digital technologies that are crucial for mitigating environmental impacts and promoting sustainable territorial development, yet their adoption remains fragmented and rarely interpreted within a unified infrastructure perspective. While systemic infrastructure perspectives are well-established in smart city and transport literature, existing studies on walking trails still tend to focus on individual tools or user-oriented applications. Drawing upon broader smart mobility concepts, this paper proposes a system-level framework, the SmartTrail Framework (STF), for the classification, functional interpretation and integration assessment of digital technologies in walking trail infrastructures. The framework is conceived as a transferable analytical and operational instrument applicable both to academic literature and to real-world trail systems, supporting infrastructure assessment, planning and digital maturity evaluation. Following an initial bibliometric analysis of a broader Scopus dataset comprising 1697 records, a structured literature review of 253 publications was conducted to operationalise and illustrate the framework through the systematic classification of digital technologies, the mapping of functional requirements, and the assessment of Integration Levels (IL). The STF integrates three analytical dimensions: a technology domain taxonomy (six categories), a functional requirement model (five infrastructure functions) and an IL scheme (IL0–IL3) that characterises the degree of systemic coherence among digital components. The results reveal a critical functional imbalance in current digitalisation: while user-oriented navigation and information services are widely adopted, backend infrastructure functions, particularly safety and operational logistics, remain severely underdeveloped, keeping most trail systems trapped in low-integration configurations. Applied to real-world trail systems, the framework enables the identification of architectural gaps, the prioritisation of integration investments and the definition of development pathways towards intelligent trail ecosystems. The paper aims to contribute to field research by providing a structured interpretative framework for understanding digital technologies as infrastructural components of walking trails. This supports a shift from tool-based thinking to system-based infrastructure design and offers practical implications for planners, managers and policymakers involved in the development of smart, resilient and environmentally sustainable trail infrastructures. Full article

The transition toward decentralized renewable energy systems creates monitoring problems that current digital infrastructures do not solve: sustainability claims are produced by the same actors they evaluate, environmental evidence is reported periodically rather than observed continuously, and the communities most affected by deployment cannot inspect the data used to represent their territories. Existing integrated platforms combine subsets of the blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) sensing and life cycle assessment (LCA) at the data layer, but they do not organize that integration through an explicit governance structure. This paper contributes a cybernetic governance framework in which the Viable System Model (VSM) supplies the organizing structure of a blockchain–IoT–LCA monitoring architecture, so that sensing, distributed trust, strategic intelligence and participatory governance are recursively coupled rather than sequentially chained. The framework was developed and evaluated under the Design Science Research paradigm, and instantiated in the IMPACT Energy.CO platform across two technology routes, wind and solar, in La Guajira, Cesar, Atlántico and Magdalena, Colombia. Evaluation against six pre-declared criteria reports 45 executed test cases with a 100% pass rate, 90% unit and 87% integration code coverage, load tests up to 5000 concurrent users with zero errors and sub-second mean response, an operating hash-chained provenance layer issuing verifiable LCA certificates, 14 participatory validation workshops, 199 users trained and 166 technicians certified. We use traceability in a deliberately narrow sense throughout: the property whereby a committed record can be linked to the ingested data series, model version and computation that produced it, and its integrity and ordering checked by a party that does not trust the producer. It is provenance and integrity traceability from the point of ingestion onward, and it is not metrological traceability: the architecture cannot verify that an original sensor measurement corresponds to the physical quantity it purports to represent. We accordingly make explicit what the architecture does not guarantee: a ledger protects records after commitment but cannot certify measurement at the point of capture, and we present a threat model, a set of implemented controls and the residual risk that remains. This study contributes an architecture, a reproducible development and evaluation method, and a calibrated account of what verifiable environmental monitoring can and cannot deliver in contested Global-South territories. Full article

Urban sustainability governance has long been dominated by growth-oriented metrics that measure aggregate improvement without establishing whether neighborhoods provide enough for all residents without continuous territorial expansion or resource-intensive redevelopment. Drawing on the post-growth planning, sufficiency theory, spatial justice, land governance, and the adaptive planning literature, this paper proposes a Spatial Sufficiency Multifunctionality Framework (SSMF). SSMF is a provisional conceptual framework requiring empirical validation and aiming to reorient neighborhood land assessment from growth optimization to sufficiency thresholds. The framework organizes planning around five interconnected dimensions: social sufficiency, economic resilience without growth dependence, ecological resilience, spatial governance and land-use sufficiency, and institutional and participatory capacity. Each is operationalized through illustrative indicators, thresholds, and linked governance instruments. SSMF asks whether per-capita land use remains within ecological capacities and whether access to services, green space, and affordable space is equitably distributed. The framework is developed through a systematic scoping review of the literature on urban sustainability, land governance, and post-growth planning, and provides a diagnostic logic and a menu of governance instruments. By shifting the evaluative focus from “more” to “enough, equity distributed within neighborhood capacities,” SSMF offers a provisional architecture for understanding post-growth principles at the neighborhood scale. Full article

Land-use transformation driven by large-scale water conservancy projects profoundly reshapes regional ecosystem structures and the supply capacity of ecosystem services, yet targeted quantitative assessments linking land-use evolution to ecosystem service values (ESV) in the Xiaolangdi Reservoir resettlement zone remain insufficient, restricting scientific ecological management and territorial spatial governance for reservoir-affected counties and districts. This study draws on the latest ecosystem service valuation theories proposed by domestic and international scholars and applies the value equivalence method to quantify variations in land-use pattern changes and ESV across nine resettlement counties and districts (including the Sanmenxia urban area) affected by the Xiaolangdi Reservoir relocation project. Data collected included historical records (1995–2020), digital elevation models (DEM, 30 m resolution), and land-use information. By applying value equivalence theory and analyzing land-use change impacts, the study calculated changes in ESV and conducted sensitivity analyses across different land types. The findings reveal significant impacts on surrounding counties following the reservoir’s completion. Data indicate that the expansion of water areas drove the total ESV to rise from US$3.3261 billion in 1995 to a peak of US$3.6557 billion in 2010, followed by a decline to US$3.6128 billion in 2020. The most pronounced changes occurred during the first five years post-reservoir filling (2000–2005), marked by elevated water sensitivity indices. This research clarifies the differentiated responses of ecosystem service functions to land-use changes across reservoir-affected counties, provides quantitative decision-making support for coordinated ecological restoration, cultivated land protection, and sustainable land management in the resettlement area of the Xiaolangdi Reservoir, and offers a replicable technical framework for ecosystem service valuation of large sediment-laden river reservoir regions worldwide. Full article

This study presents a comprehensive spatial analysis of the public transport network across the Almaty agglomeration, encompassing 211 routes within eight urban districts and seven adjacent administrative divisions. Drawing on digitized geodata from 3634 unique bus stops, the research methodology integrates quantitative and qualitative spatial metrics, including distribution density, average stop spacing, elevation gradients, and topological connectivity. The analysis highlights significant territorial imbalances: while 70.53% of all unique stops are concentrated within Almaty’s city limits, the surrounding regional network is highly fragmented, with an average stop spacing of 2579.53 m. Furthermore, topographic assessments confirm substantial operational challenges for north–south routing due to steep elevation changes, reaching 984.48 m within the city and 1243.23 m regionally. A critical evaluation of topological connectivity reveals that 44.63% of suburban bus stops lack transfer intersections, underscoring severe deficits in peripheral public transport provision. By assessing 56 distinct connection types, the study categorizes administrative districts based on their route integration levels. Ultimately, the derived spatial parameters offer a robust evaluation of the current transport framework. These insights establish a crucial scientific and empirical foundation for optimizing route geometries, bridging infrastructural gaps, and guiding sustainable transit planning in alignment with Almaty’s transition toward a polycentric urban model. Furthermore, the developed 3D spatial-topological framework provides a scalable, data-driven blueprint for municipal authorities to prioritize infrastructure investments, deploy multimodal hubs and enhance transit equity in other rapidly growing and topographically complex agglomerations worldwide. Full article

Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) products play a vital role in preserving cultural heritage, supporting rural economies, and promoting local breed biodiversity. However, few studies have validated instruments capable of assessing consumer knowledge, perceptions, and trust regarding PDO labels and authenticity cues. This study validated and optimized a survey instrument designed to evaluate consumer attitudes towards PDO cheeses, using Majorero and Palmero cheeses from the Canary Islands as case studies. A total of 539 valid questionnaires were collected before and after structured educational sessions. Cross-validated Canonical Discriminant Analysis techniques were employed to assess the reliability, discriminatory capacity, and predictive accuracy of survey items. Results revealed significant improvements in consumer knowledge and perceptions following the educational intervention. Participants demonstrated greater understanding of PDO regulations, increased confidence in sensory evaluation, and enhanced ability to identify authenticity cues. The discriminant model achieved a classification accuracy of 96.23% (AUC = 0.9925), confirming excellent predictive performance. Consumer attitudes were primarily influenced by territorial attachment, familiarity, and trust in certification rather than technical knowledge. These findings support educational and marketing strategies to strengthen origin labeling, improve consumer literacy, reinforce authenticity perceptions, and promote PDO products’ cultural and economic sustainability while providing a validated framework for future consumer research. Full article

The resurgence of measles in Canada has raised concerns about poor vaccination coverage and disruptions to routine immunization programs following the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2025, Canada lost its measles elimination status due to sustained measles transmission across multiple provinces. The reported cases primarily involved populations that were unvaccinated or under-vaccinated. This paper reviews successful vaccination strategies implemented during COVID-19 and assesses their applicability to measles prevention efforts. The return of measles cases in Canada after the COVID-19 outbreak demonstrates some of the difficulties in sustaining immunization rates in the general population. Even though Canada eliminated measles from its territory in the past, some challenges remain today. Full article

Geological conditions fundamentally constrain land-use suitability, terrain stability, and long-term sustainability, yet they remain underutilized in urban planning frameworks. This study presents a GIS-based geological suitability assessment model, tested on the City of Valjevo, Serbia, integrating lithological, structural, land use/land cover change and spatial data to guide urban development decisions. Seven lithological units—Quaternary deposits, lacustrine sediments, carbonate rocks, volcanic and pyroclastic rocks, ophiolites, ophiolitic mélanges, and Jadar Block sediments—were classified into four suitability classes based on lithological composition, structural characteristics, and rock mass behavior. An Integrated Geological Index (Igeo) was derived using an area-weighted approach across a regular hexagonal grid, enabling spatially explicit suitability mapping. Comparison with land use/land cover changes for 2012–2021 revealed a notable mismatch between geological suitability and observed development patterns: favorable and conditionally favorable terrains cover 72.5% of the study area but account for only 48.7% of recent urban expansion, while unfavorable terrains, occupying just 20.9% of the territory, absorbed 51.3% of new development. No expansion occurred within highly unfavorable terrains. These findings expose critical gaps in integrating geological criteria into planning practice and demonstrate a reproducible methodology for embedding geological suitability into sustainable urban development strategies across geologically heterogeneous regions. Full article

This systematic review examines the usefulness of geospatial data for localization and prioritization of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and where they are applicable to the local level. This study reviewed 147 peer-reviewed articles and identified 21 of the most significant sustainable development goals that use geospatial data for monitoring and evidence-based decision-making, strengthening the alignment between local development priorities and SDGs, including the difficulties in identifying and prioritizing SDG targets that are most relevant to local contexts. This study aims to extract and analyze data from the article corpus; assess the methodological quality of studies; identify major themes and research gaps; and synthesize knowledge on localization using geospatial data for the assessment and monitoring of SDGs. The study analyzes whether the scientific literature provides solid evidence to address the difficulties related to the use of geospatial data to support the process of evaluating SDGs at basic scales of governance systems. The methodologies are applied to carry out a categorization of articles into seven categories that present a series of considerations necessary for the implementation of SDGs at the local level. Then we characterize the types of geospatial data, methodological approaches, and analytical techniques used for local SDG assessment and monitoring. Finally, we will synthesize the contributions, limitations, and challenges associated with the use of geospatial data for SDG monitoring at the local scale. The results highlight that among the reviewed studies, almost all geospatial data are used to monitor purposes, while only a few support decision-making processes. This reflects the very limited use of geospatial data in the governance of SDGs at the local level. Furthermore, SDG indicators did not provide trends, and difficulties were noted in disaggregating the data at urban scales, particularly for social and economic SDGs. Multi-strategy approaches, including GeoAI and Geo big data, produce better results than the application of single strategies of geospatial data analysis for revealing whether the performance in the targeted territories of the SDGs is going well or not. The findings of this study will contribute to the growing body of knowledge related to sustainable development goals and provide practitioners with useful information retrieved from geospatial data and practical guidance when implementing sustainable development goals in large-scale territories, like municipalities and cities. Full article

This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of studies based on the Italian Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) over the period 2015–2026. Following a PRISMA-informed review process, 112 peer-reviewed articles retrieved from Scopus were qualitatively analysed. The review identifies six main research domains, ranging from farm economic performance and efficiency to environmental sustainability, policy analysis, diversification, and social-territorial dimensions. The results show that Italian FADN-based research is characterised by a well-established body of work on income dynamics, farm efficiency, and the impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), alongside the rapidly growing literature on environmental sustainability, climate change, resource use, and agroecological transitions. The main gaps concern the reliance on proxy-based environmental indicators, the fragmented and weakly conceptualised treatment of social sustainability, the limited analysis of trade-offs and synergies across sustainability dimensions, the limited understanding of farmers’ decision-making processes and behavioural responses, the marginal treatment of farm-level innovation, and the limited and fragmented analysis of circular economy initiatives and their impacts on farms and territories. These gaps point to the need for more integrative approaches, improved environmental and social indicators, stronger longitudinal and comparative designs, and greater attention to territorial, innovation, and circular economy dynamics. The review’s scientific contribution lies in consolidating a fragmented evidence base into a coherent analytical framework that clarifies the thematic evolution, structural imbalances, and methodological priorities of Italian FADN-based research. From this perspective, the transition from FADN to the Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN) is interpreted as a chance to extend farm-level analysis beyond economic monitoring and towards a more integrated assessment of agricultural sustainability. Full article

Land-use and land-cover (LULC) change is a major driver of ecosystem degradation and ecosystem service loss in tropical landscapes. This study assessed the impacts of LULC changes between 1985 and 2023 on the potential of different LULC classes to supply ecosystem services in the Upper Rio Pardo Basin (Rio Pardo and Rio São João do Paraíso watersheds), northern Minas Gerais, Brazil. LULC data from the MapBiomas Project were used to quantify transitions among LULC classes within the study area. The potential supply of ecosystem services was assessed using the Burkhard matrix, adapted to local environmental conditions and informed by expert knowledge, while the relative importance of ecosystem services was evaluated through a participatory assessment involving local communities. The expansion of pasturelands and commercial forest plantations was identified as the primary driver of ecosystem service loss in the study region. Native ecosystems showed the highest potential to provide regulating, supporting, provisioning, and cultural ecosystem services, particularly water regulation, soil protection, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. In contrast, anthropogenic land uses were primarily associated with provisioning services and showed limited capacity to sustain regulating and supporting services, indicating clear trade-offs between production and ecosystem functioning. Local communities identified water-related services as the highest priority, followed by climate regulation, soil fertility, and food provision. These findings demonstrate the value of integrating expert-based and participatory approaches to ecosystem service assessment and provide a basis for territorial planning strategies that prioritize the conservation and restoration of native vegetation, particularly in hydrologically sensitive areas. Full article

The increase in global carbon dioxide emissions is intensifying climate change and severely affecting diverse communities. Addressing these impacts requires sustainable planning approaches that promote environmental and social balance. This research aims to develop a transferable planning methodology incorporating ex ante evaluation for sustainable productive rural settlements, the application of which is examined through a design proposal in Pocollay, Tacna, used as a case study. The methodology comprises six sequential phases: integrated territorial diagnosis, construction of the multicriteria evaluation model, assessment of the baseline scenario, formulation of the planning model, application of the methodology to the case study, and comparative multicriteria evaluation of the projected scenario. As an application of the methodology, a Master Plan and a productive housing module were developed, integrating the proposed planning principles within a circular economy approach, together with bioclimatic design strategies aimed at resource efficiency, passive comfort, water management, renewable energy integration, and reduced environmental pressure. Compared with the baseline scenario, the projected scenario obtained higher potential performance scores across the architectural, environmental, productive, and socioeconomic indicators evaluated. These results represent expected performance according to predefined criteria rather than impacts observed after construction. In conclusion, the main contribution of the research is the proposed planning and evaluation methodology, which can be replicated or adapted in future applications by recalibrating its indicators, weights, climatic parameters, productive systems, material strategies, and community priorities. Full article

Romanian agricultural landscapes have undergone substantial transformation between 2000 and 2024, driven by agricultural modernization, market integration, and uneven regional development. This study assesses the opportunities and risks associated with these changes within a landscape-scale sustainability framework. Using 24 indicators describing land use, crop structure, productivity, mechanization, irrigation, input use, and socio-economic characteristics, we combined paired-sample t-tests, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and cluster analysis to examine temporal and spatial patterns of agricultural transformation across Romanian counties. The results reveal significant increases in arable land, mechanization, labour productivity, and cereal yields, accompanied by declining agricultural employment and growing crop specialization. PCA identified six key dimensions of transformation, highlighting increasing differentiation between intensive, productivity-oriented systems and traditional agricultural structures. Cluster analysis revealed nine distinct agricultural typologies and increasing spatial polarization between highly modernized, input-intensive lowland systems and persistent grassland-based mountain agroecosystems. The comparison between 2000 and 2024 indicates stronger specialization, technological intensification, and territorial differentiation of agricultural systems. These changes create opportunities through improved labour productivity and efficiency, while also reflecting increasing landscape simplification and evolving agri-environmental management patterns. The findings emphasize the need for regionally differentiated policies that support agricultural competitiveness, territorial cohesion, and sustainable rural development. Full article