Search results

Climate change is occurring around us and impacting on our daily lives, meaning that we have to deal with our cities in a different way. There is also increasing awareness of the need for daily contact with green spaces and the natural environment in order to live a happy, productive and meaningful life.

This reflective essay tells the narrative of how urbanisation has been disconnecting humans from nature. Non-sustainable, non-resilient patterns of urbanisation, along with the neglect of inner-city areas, have resulted in fragmentation and urban decline, led to a loss of biodiversity, and caused the deterioration of ecosystems and their services. Urban regeneration projects allow us to “repair” and restore some of this damage whilst enhancing urban resilience. Connecting existing and enhanced ecosystems, and re-establishing ecosystems both within cities and at the peri-urban fringe is vital for strengthening ecosystem resilience and building adaptive capacity for coping with the effects of climate change.

Cities worldwide need to look for suitable solutions to increase the resilience of their urban spaces in the face of climate change. This essay explores how this can be achieved through the integration of nature-based solutions, the re-greening of neighbourhoods and by correctly attributing value to natural capital. Transforming existing cities and neighbourhoods in this way will enable ecosystems to contribute their services towards healthier and more liveable cities.

The main purpose of this research paper is to generate a holistic bibliometric study of the tourism industry and COVID-19 fields, to further investigate the current interests and trends emerging from scientific collaboration and thematic analysis and to identify research gaps that indicate future research directions.

This study conducts several analyses, which include the co-authorship and social network analysis, co-citation and keyword co-occurrence knowledge structures. The authors generate a knowledge map of the leading articles and link them with previous literature to elucidate the debates and consensus in research on COVID-19 and tourism.

Research interests concentrate in the USA, China, Europe and the Oceania areas, so more cross-continental collaborations are expected among them and with other regions. Popular topics are tourism sustainable transformation, crisis management and multidisciplinary fields like tourism, hospitality, information technology and environmental sciences. This paper also identifies underexplored topics for future investigation on the social, environmental, cultural and governance dimensions of sustainable tourism.

This paper contributes to guiding tourism researchers in identifying and finding publication references and future collaborations. Moreover, the investigation of knowledge structures could be beneficial for scholars hoping to broaden the current understanding of this field and discover potential for future tourism research, especially in the global pandemic and other severe health crises.

This study enriches the existing literature in the fields of tourism and the pandemic and highlights current interests and research trends exploring scientific collaboration, thematic analysis and knowledge mapping.

Sustainability is increasingly at the forefront of the public debate in Europe and the world. However, despite this increased interest, research seems to have partially ignored the importance of its social dimension and the issues related to social equity, people care, protection and personal development at all stages of society and, consequently, of business. Accordingly, this paper aims at investigating the “soft” dimensions of sustainability, integrating its mainstream “technical storyline” with a “human/social storyline”.

In this paper a taxonomy of the main key drivers of the soft dimension of sustainability is proposed and tested on a sample of Italian companies. Through interviews with their managers, actions and needs in terms of sustainability soft drivers are identified.

The achieved results demonstrated that the case companies differently integrated the soft dimensions of sustainability within their companies. All the sample companies are aware of the role of social sustainability. According to the proposed taxonomy, the systemic drivers of soft sustainability are the main shared ones.

The paper provides new insights into the essence of the organizational soft dimensions and their centrality in the overall achievement of sustainability for companies. It also offers managerial insights into how to effectively manage these dimensions and policy implications about the need for clearer consideration.

This study aims to assess the response of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to cleaner production and environmental sustainability, with a specific focus on identifying the leading countries and research networks driving these efforts.

A benchmarking academic journal was chosen, and the journal’s archive was comprehensively examined. To construct the data set, a conventional keyword search technique was applied in February 2023 to filter for ASEAN affiliations. The study used hybrid bibliometric analyses and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to analyze the collected data and address the research purpose.

The data analysis revealed a rising research trend, particularly after 2014. Malaysia had the most publications, followed by Thailand and Singapore, and their publications had the most cumulative citations among ASEAN countries. Research collaborations between Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore were frequent, but participation from other countries was low. The research topics on which ASEAN members focused were also identified, but it became apparent that there was little coordination. A scant few collaborations involving more than two countries were observed; thus, the MCDA analysis concluded that research leadership was absent in ASEAN countries.

This study contributes insights to the existing literature and offers a valuable overview of the research direction and collaboration status of cleaner production and environmental sustainability in the ASEAN region, thus benefiting policymakers. Additionally, this study introduces a novel approach combining bibliometrics analysis with MCDA to assess research collaboration, thus providing a novel methodology for future research policy evaluations.

This study examines the role of technology as a driver of sustainable tourism perceptions among Generation Z.

The work considers the perspective of locals in Pakistan and uses a multi-method, multiphase embedded research design approach.

The research findings demonstrated that technology has a positive correlation with the environmental, socio-cultural and economic dimensions of sustainable tourism perception among Generation Z. Therefore, technology could be considered a dimension of sustainable tourism perception for locals, but perceptions differ significantly depending on the size of the city of the participant. The results of the experimental design phase that utilized picture stimuli demonstrated a linear relationship between technology and sustainability and enhanced their definition and implementation for developing countries.

This research diverges from most past research on these topics by focusing on Generation Z, for whom digital media and technology play a crucial role and for whom these technologies are positively correlated with sustainability and its overall perception. Implications for policies and practices for emerging country governments are provided.

Despite city authorities in Bangladesh being concerned about urban sustainability, they often face difficulties in addressing predominant urban challenges threatening urban sustainability, due to limited relevant literature. To reduce this gap, this study aims to address the predominant urban challenges and assess their severity levels in four city corporations of Bangladesh, e.g. Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barishal, and Gazipur.

Using a mixed-method approach, this study rigorously analyzed field-level data obtained from 1,200 residents across selected cities using diverse statistical techniques. The quantitative analysis included descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and chi-square tests, whereas qualitative insights were derived through thematic analysis.

The study uncovered nine predominant urban challenges under two crucial factors “Feeble Urban Management” and “Illicit Activities” that collectively explain 62.20% variance. “Feeble Urban Management” explains 44.17% variance, whereas “Illicit Activities” accounts for 18.13%. Within these challenges, uncontrolled urban sprawl, inadequate disaster management, congested roads, and shabby drainage and waste management pose significant threats to urban sustainability. Illicit activities, manifested by encroachment on water sources, grabbing roadside, destruction of natural properties, and activities undermining social security, compound the urban sustainability issue. Severity analysis reveals Sylhet (54.5%), Rajshahi (46.4%), and Barishal (31.2%) as highly impacted, whereas Gazipur exhibits moderate severity (66.7%).

The findings of this study reveal intrinsic insights into urban challenges in Bangladesh that will provide valuable guidance to city authorities, equipping them to implement integrated and effective initiatives and programs that overcome these predominant urban challenges, with a specific focus on Rajshahi, Sylhet, and Barishal city corporations.

The Rohingyas are forcefully displaced from Myanmar and sheltered in the Cox's Bazar district of Bangladesh. They have outnumbered the local people indicating a critical condition of their living situation after the year 2017 influx. The aim of this paper is to present how coexistence has impacted social cohesion and reconciliation among different groups of Rohingyas and host communities.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 903 households through a multistage stratified random sampling. Social cohesion and reconciliation (SCORE) index was measured as a multifaceted theoretical construct based on the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.

The findings of this study are inclined toward the miracle of social cohesion and reconciliation between the Rohingya and host communities. Also, it is revealed that youth, males and Rohingyas who came before the year 2017 influx are more cohesive. In the host or local community, people having lower income, less education and involvement with the informal sector are revealed as less cohesive.

This study suggests vocational training as a short-term, cash-for-work as a mid-term and repatriation, proper identity, and protection services as long-term strategic plans to make the two communities more cohesive.

This study focuses on the SCORE indexes with a quantitative format, applying a second-order factor model.

To proactively draw efficient maintenance plans, road agencies should be able to forecast main road distress parameters, such as cracking, rutting, deflection and International Roughness Index (IRI). Nonetheless, the behavior of those parameters throughout pavement life cycles is associated with high uncertainty, resulting from various interrelated factors that fluctuate over time. This study aims to propose the use of dynamic Bayesian belief networks for the development of time-series prediction models to probabilistically forecast road distress parameters.

While Bayesian belief network (BBN) has the merit of capturing uncertainty associated with variables in a domain, dynamic BBNs, in particular, are deemed ideal for forecasting road distress over time due to its Markovian and invariant transition probability properties. Four dynamic BBN models are developed to represent rutting, deflection, cracking and IRI, using pavement data collected from 32 major road sections in the United Arab Emirates between 2013 and 2019. Those models are based on several factors affecting pavement deterioration, which are classified into three categories traffic factors, environmental factors and road-specific factors.

The four developed performance prediction models achieved an overall precision and reliability rate of over 80%.

The proposed approach provides flexibility to illustrate road conditions under various scenarios, which is beneficial for pavement maintainers in obtaining a realistic representation of expected future road conditions, where maintenance efforts could be prioritized and optimized.

This study aims to analyze the factors, evaluation techniques of the durability of existing railway engineering.

China has built a railway network of over 150,000 km. Ensuring the safety of the existing railway engineering is of great significance for maintaining normal railway operation order. However, railway engineering is a strip structure that crosses multiple complex environments. And railway engineering will withstand high-frequency impact loads from trains. The above factors have led to differences in the deterioration characteristics and maintenance strategies of railway engineering compared to conventional concrete structures. Therefore, it is very important to analyze the key factors that affect the durability of railway structures and propose technologies for durability evaluation.

The factors that affect the durability and reliability of railway engineering are mainly divided into three categories: material factors, environmental factors and load factors. Among them, material factors also include influencing factors, such as raw materials, mix proportions and so on. Environmental factors vary depending on the service environment of railway engineering, and the durability and deterioration of concrete have different failure mechanisms. Load factors include static load and train dynamic load. The on-site rapid detection methods for five common diseases in railway engineering are also proposed in this paper. These methods can quickly evaluate the durability of existing railway engineering concrete.

The research can provide some new evaluation techniques and methods for the durability of existing railway engineering.

Exploring the intrinsic connection between the ecological environment and the digital economy and empirically testing how the level of digital economic development affects the ecological environment. Using the entropy weighting method to analyze the weights of the indicators in the digital economic development level and ecological environment system to explore the factors that have the greatest impact on the ecological environment in the indicator system of the digital economic development level so as to deepen the theoretical understanding of the relationship between the level of development of the digital economy and the ecological environment. Explore the regional heterogeneity of the level of development of the digital economy to promote the healthy development of China’s ecological environment proving the difference in the level of development of the digital economy in the east west and central regions of China and the difference in the effect on the ecological environment.

Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2013 to 2021 this paper fits the index system of digital economy development level with three factors. A digital infrastructure digital industry and digital application combines environmental pollution and energy consumption to construct ecological environment indicators and explored the impact of digital economy development level on the ecological environment by using the entropy weight method and the random effect model.

The findings indicate that the degree of digital economic development has a positive and significant impact on promoting the healthy development of the ecological environment, in which the digital industry has the greatest impact on the ecological environment. Meanwhile, the improvement of industrial structure also has a positive effect on the improvement of the ecological environment, whereas the level of human capital inhibits the healthy development of the ecological environment, and the governmental support fails to effectively and significantly promote the improvement of the ecological environment. Furthermore, the empirical research indicates that the level of digital economy development has obvious regional heterogeneity on the healthy development of the ecological environment: the eastern and central regions have a significant effect, while the western region has a less significant effect.

Although domestic and foreign scholars and experts have conducted sufficient studies on the ecological environment and the development level of digital economy respectively, there are few studies on the empirical analysis of the positive significance and regional heterogeneity of the impact of the development level of digital economy on the ecological environment, which can be supplemented and referred to in this study. At the same time, it also provides intellectual support for our country to achieve high-quality development of digital economy and efficient governance of ecological environment.