Search results for "Environmental Planning"

Reviewing the role of ecosystems services in the sustainability of the urban environment: A multi-country analysis

2020

The urban environment is characterised by many pressures caused by population growth, transport (and its related emissions), and the damage to green areas. Yet, there is a variety of ecosystem services available in urban areas, which may be deployed to ameliorate the current problems and foster their sustainability. This paper reviews the role of ecosystem services as tools for sustainability, based on an urban setting. It also describes a series of multi-country case studies, where an assessment of their functions using a set of benefits valuation approaches such as health benefits, economic benefits, social benefits and benefits to climate resilience, are provided, along with an appraisal…

Assessing Urban System Vulnerabilities to Flooding to Improve Resilience and Adaptation in Spatial Planning

2018

Fluvial, pluvial and coastal flooding are the most frequent and costly natural hazard. Cities are social hubs and life in cities is reliant on a number of services and functions such as housing, healthcare, education and other key daily facilities. Urban flooding can cause significant disruption to these services and wider impacts on the population. These impacts may be short or long with a variably spatial scale: urban systems are spatially distributed and the nature of this can have significant effects on flood impacts. From an urban-planning perspective, measuring this disruption and its consequences is fundamental in order to develop more resilient cities. Whereas the assessment of phys…

Soil conservation and sustainable development goals(SDGs) achievement in Europe and central Asia: Which role for the European soil partnership?

2021

Abstract Voluntary soil protection measures are not sufficient to achieve sustainable soil management at a global scale. Additionally, binding soil protection legislation at national and international levels has also proved to be insufficient for the effective protection of this non-renewable natural resource. In 2012, the FAO Members established the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) with the mission to facilitate and contribute exchange of knowledge and technologies related to soils, and develop dialogue and raise awareness for the need to establish a binding global agreement for sustainable soil management. Moreover, region-specific aspects of implementation are considered and strengthened th…

Climate Change and Disasters

2017

Ideas and approaches proven successful within disaster risk reduction (DRR) literature and practice are either bypassed or inadequately considered by contemporary climate change work. This chapter explores the intersections between climate change and hazards, vulnerability, and risk, looking at climate change as both a hazard driver and a hazard inhibitor. The implications of the narrow interpretations of vulnerability employed in climate change work are examined, as well as the ways in which climate change has come to act as a scapegoat for issues, events, and processes caused by hazard-independent factors. The chapter formulates a case for climate change adaptation (CCA) to be seen as a s…

How Critical Infrastructure Orients International Relief in Cascading Disasters

2016

Critical infrastructure and facilities are central assets in modern societies, but their impact on international disaster relief remains mostly associated with logistics challenges. The emerging literature on cascading disasters suggests the need to integrate the nonlinearity of events in the analyses. This article investigates three case studies: the 2002 floods in the Czech Republic, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima meltdown in Japan. We explore how the failure of critical infrastructure can orient international disaster relief by shifting its priorities during the response. We argue that critical infrastructure can influence aid request and …

Building Resilience Through Effective Disaster Management

2017

Existing literature argues that taking a holistic approach to disaster management is important for organizations in building resilience. Theoretical underpinnings to achieve a holistic understanding, however, is lacking. This article applies the notion of an ecosystem as a holistic lens to understand complex disaster management. The paper reports two case studies from Japan and Nepal to illustrate how an ecosystem works during a disaster. The theoretical framework of information ecology is used in analyzing the cases. Based on the findings, the study shows three interconnected mechanisms that can build resilience of an ecosystem in a disaster management context, namely (1) coevolution, (2) …

Disaster E-Health Framework for Community Resilience

2018

Parasites in the changing world – Ten timely examples from the Nordic-Baltic region

2020

Publisher's version (útgefin grein)

Reflections on Disaster Diplomacy for Climate Change and Migration

2016

Migration has always been part of human existence, supporting and inhibiting sustainable development while leading to both cooperation and conflict. Given that one possible consequence from the responses to contemporary climate change, or lack thereof, is migration, that also applies for climate change. To understand the complex interplay amongst climate change, conflict, and migration, many frameworks and models exist for analysis within sustainable development.

Integrating risk management tools for regional forest planning: an interactive multiobjective value-at-risk approach

2018

In this paper, we present an approach employing multiobjective optimization to support decision making in forest management planning under risk. The primary objectives are biodiversity and timber cash flow, evaluated from two perspectives: the expected value and the value-at-risk (VaR). In addition, the risk level for both the timber cash flow and biodiversity values are included as objectives. With our approach, we highlight the trade-off between the expected value and the VaR, as well as between the VaRs of the two objectives of interest. We employ an interactive method in which a decision maker iteratively provides preference information to find the most preferred management plan and le…