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This article explores the impacts of the changing land-use on urban heat island (UHI) in an urban transformation zone in Ankara (Türkiye). Identifying a characteristic rural landscape until the 1950s, the study area experienced a drastic land-use change by razing the fertile landscape of the city and replacing it with a sealed surface. Development of the squatter houses after the 1960s and, subsequently, the implementation of a new housing morphology have introduced new sceneries, scales and surface conditions that make the study area a noteworthy case to analyze.

Regarding the drastic spatio-temporal change of the study area, this research assesses the impacts of the changing land-use on UHI based on three periods. Using 1957, 1991 and 2021 aerial imaginaries and maps, it analyzes the temperature alteration caused by the changing land-use. To do so, different surface types, green patterns and built-up areas have been modeled using Ankara climatic data and transferred to ENVI-Met to calculate the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) values.

The calculation has been developed over a transect covering an area of 40 m × 170 m, which includes diversity in terms of architecture, landscape and open space elements. To encourage future design strategies, the research findings deliberate into three extents that discuss the lacking climate knowledge in the ongoing urban transformation projects: impervious surface ratio and regional albedo variation, changing aspect ratio and temperature variation at the pedestrian level.

Urban transformation projects, being countrywide operations in Türkiye, need to cover climate-informed design strategies. Herein, the article underlines the critical position of design decisions in forming a climate-informed urban environment. Dwelling on a typical model of housing transformation in Türkiye, the research could trigger climate-informed urban development strategies in the country.

This study aims to compare the local climate characteristics of Angkor Wat, Borobudur and Prambanan parks and determine effective strategies for mitigating thermal conditions that could suit Borobudur and Angkor Wat.

The study employed local climate zone (LCZ) indicators and ten-year historical climate data to identify similarities and differences in local climate characteristics. Satellite imagery processing was used to create maps of LCZ indicators. Meanwhile, microclimate models were used to analyze sky view factors and wind permeability.

The study found that the three tropical large-scale archaeological parks have low albedo, a medium vegetation index and high impervious surface index. However, various morphological characteristics, aerodynamic properties and differences in temple stone area and altitude enlarge the air temperature range.

Based on the similarities and differences in local climate, the study formulated mitigation strategies to preserve the sustainability of ancient temples and reduce visitors' heat stress.

The local climate characterization of tropical archaeological parks adds to the number of LCZs. Knowledge of the local climate characteristics of tropical archaeological parks can be the basis for improving thermal conditions.

Khan Jahan Ali (KJA) Bridge was constructed to promote industrial and commercial activity and improve economic and employment activity for local people. This study assessed the post-socioeconomic and environmental impacts of KJA Bridge on the inhabitants living adjacent to 2 Km from the bridge. As there is a slum adjacent to the bridge, the bridge has impacted much on the improvement of the social economic condition and lifestyle of the slum people.

The study approached a questionnaire-based field survey data collection through interviewing the people in the surrounding areas. To assess the environmental impacts, land cover change (LCC), carbon emissions and land surface temperature (LST) data were derived from Landsat images and processed in geospatial environment.

The study suggests that after bridge construction, 84% people have new jobs and about 87% people's income level has been increased. As a tourist spot, the bridge served employment opportunities for the 12% of the inhabitants. About 83% house structures have been improved, where the percentages of pucca and semi-pucca houses increased by 11% and 23%, respectively. The frequency of school-going children and literacy rate also increased. Despite all the socioeconomic development, 7.48% agricultural, 9.75% vegetation, 1.74% waterbodies were declined. Net carbon emissions increased to 13,432.39 tons from 3,323.46 tons; average LST increased from 25.750 to 32.550°C after the bridge construction.

This study focused on descriptive statistical analysis and portrayed the impact of the bridge on social, economic and environment from a micro point of view.

Urban water bodies play an important role in reducing summertime urban heat island (UHI) effects. Previous studies focused mainly on the impact of water bodies of large areas, and there is no analysis of the efficacy and scale effect of how small and medium-sized water bodies reduce the UHI effects. Hence, these studies could not provide theoretical support for the scientific planning and design of urban water bodies. This study aims to confirm, within different scale ranges, the efficacy of a water body in reducing the summertime UHI effects. We propose a scale sensitivity method to investigate the temporal and spatial relationship between urban water bodies and UHI. Based on the scale theory and geostatistical analysis method in landscape ecology, this study used the platforms of 3S, MATLAB, and SPSS to analyze the distance-decay law of water bodies in reducing summertime UHI effects, as well as the scale response at different water surface ratios. The results show that the influence of water surfaces on UHIs gradually decreases with increasing distance, and the temperature rises by 0.78 °C for every 100 m away from the water body. During daytime, there is a scaled sensitivity of how much water surfaces reduce the summertime UHI effects. The most sensitive radius from the water was found at the core water surface ratio of 200 m. A reduction of UHI intensity by 2.3 °C was observed for every 10% increase of the average core water surface ratio. This study provides a theoretical reference to the control of heat islands for the planning and design of urban water bodies.

Urban built-up has been increasing exponentially in the world. Urban population growth and migration are depleting the land resources and creating thermal discomfort. Cities all around the world are facing urban heat island effects and increased temperatures. This study aims to map land cover and formulate local climate zones for enhancing urban resilience against disaster and climate risks.

This study uses exploratory research to identify local climate zones for Lahore, Pakistan. Landsat 8 imagery was used to develop a land use land cover map. For mapping local climate zones, the standard World Urban and Access Portal Tool procedure was used.

Results have revealed that Lahore has grown exponentially. Compact low rise and open low rise were the two most common local climate zones prevalent in the city. In contrast, the outer regions of the city consisted of LCZ D (low plants) and LCZ F (bare soil).

This study highlights the need to consider local climate zones in future development plans and policies for ensuring sustainable, resilient and climate-friendly cities.

Local climate zone studies are missing in Pakistan. This study has empirically analyzed the ground situation of local climate zones for Lahore metropolitan city. This study will provide baseline support for future studies on urban heat island and climate change adaptation planning.

The idea is to propagate the concept of climate resilience in India beyond international mandates and bold statements, enabled through utilization of open data. The research underscores need for climate responsive planning for megacities in India with an example of National Capital Territory of Delhi, the capital of India whose trends and policies often form a blueprint for others to follow.

The research was conducted in six distinct, yet inter-related stages: literature review, data collection, data analysis at four levels – city, zonal, planning division and flood plains inhabited by climate vulnerable population with least adaptive capacity, formulating alternative scenarios of future development, evaluation of scenarios, conclusions and recommendations.

India has approximately 8,000 urban centres. Less than 2% of these centres have a planning document. Less than 1% of these documents acknowledge climate change as a phenomenon let alone a challenge to urban future. It is therefore a priority to address the challenge from a planning perspective for India.

Methodologies for evaluating the multiplier effect are still in their pre-final stage and there exist uncertainties and margin of error.

Aligned with pre-tested methodologies, the research through extensive empirical and spatial-temporal analysis indicates severity and irreversibility of socio-economic and environmental losses.

Risks and vulnerabilities to climate change and climate induced disasters exhibit multiplier effect that varies spatially across a region's demography. Quantitative analysis of multiplier effect on the secondary environment is rarely explored in climate studies. The paper addresses this lacuna by examining climate risks to Indian megacities with a case example of Delhi. The findings suggest that urbanization, climate risks and natural environment are interlinked, where an impact of one generates ripples across other two and their secondary environment plus sectors.

Fewer researchers have investigated the climatic and economic drivers of land-use change simultaneously and the interplay between drivers. This paper aims to investigate the nonlinear and interaction effects of price and climate variables on the rice acreage in high-latitude regions of China.

This study applies a multivariate adaptive regression spline to characterize the effects of price and climate expectations on rice acreage in high-latitude regions of China from 1992 to 2017. Then, yield expectation is added into the model to investigate the mechanism of climate effects on rice area allocation.

The results of importance assessment suggest that rice price, climate and total agricultural area play an important role in rice area allocation, and the importance of temperature is always higher than that of precipitation, especially for minimum temperature. Based on the estimated hinge functions and coefficients, it is found that total agricultural area has strong nonlinear and interaction effects with climate and price as forms of third-order interaction. However, the order of interaction terms reduces to second order after absorbing the expected yield. Additionally, the marginal effects of driven factors are calculated at different quantiles. The total area shows a positive and increasing marginal effect with the increase of total area. But the positive impact of price on the rice area can only be observed when price reached 50% or higher quantiles. Climate variables also show strong nonlinear marginal effects, and most climatic effects would disappear or be weakened once absorbing the expected rice yield. Expected yield is an efficient mechanism to explain the correlation between crop area and climate variables, but the impact of minimum temperature cannot be completely modeled by the yield expectation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the nonlinear response of land-use change to climate and economic in high-latitude regions of China using the machine learning method.

Year‐to‐year fluctuations of rainfall in the northern Negev desert provide an opportunity to characterize and assess the temporal dynamics of desertification, phenology, and drought processes. Such information was retrieved and analyzed by combined use of satellite imageries in the reflectivity and thermal spectral bands. Data covering four years of coarse spatial resolution and images from a high revisit time satellite, namely the NOAA‐14, were used. The images were processed to produce the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the land surface temperature (LST). These measures were applied to the sand field in the northwestern Negev (Israel), which is almost totally covered by biological soil crusts, and to an adjacent region in Sinai (Egypt), consisting mainly of bare dune sands. Various manipulations of the data were applied. Time series presentation of the NDVI and LST reveals that the NDVI values correspond to the reaction of the vegetation to rainfall and that LST values represent seasonal climatic fluctuation. Scatterplot analysis of LST vs NDVI demonstrates the following: the two different biomes (Sinai and the Negev) exhibit different yearly variation of the phenological patterns (two seasons in Sinai moving along the LST axis, and three seasons in the Negev, where the NDVI axis represents the growing season); the Sinai has an ecosystem similar to that found in the Sahara, while the Negev, only a few kilometers away, has an ecosystem similar to the one found in the Sahel; and drought indicators were derived by using several geometrical expressions based on the two extreme points of the LST‐NDVI scatterplot. The later analysis led to a discrimination function that aims to distinguish between the drought years and the wet years in both biomes. Results from the current study show that a great deal of information on dryland ecosystems can be derived from four, out of five, NOAA/AVHRR spectral bands. The NDVI is derived from the red and the near‐infrared bands and the LST from the two thermal bands. Combined use of these two products provides more information than any product alone.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a spatial model of population vulnerability (VI) capable of identifying areas of high emergency service demand (ESD) during extreme heat events (EHE).

An index of population vulnerability to EHE was developed from a literature review. Threshold temperatures for EHE were defined using local temperatures, and indicators of increased morbidity. Spearman correlations determined the strength of the relationship between the VI and morbidity during EHE. The VI was mapped providing a visual guide of risk during EHE. Future changes in population vulnerability based on future population projections (2020-2030) were mapped.

The VI can be used to explain the spatial distribution of ESD during EHE. Mapping future changes in population density/demography indicated several areas currently showing high risk will continue to show increased risk.

The limitations include using outdoor temperatures to determine health-related thresholds. Due to data restrictions three different measures of morbidity were used and aggregated to postal areas.

Identifying areas of increased service demand during EHE allows the development of proactive as-well-as reactive responses to heat. The model uses readily available data, is replicable in larger urban areas.

The model allows emergency service providers to work with high risk communities to build resilience to heat exposure and subsequently save lives.

To the authors’ knowledge this triangulated approach using heat thresholds, ESD and projected changes in risk in a spatial framework has not been presented to date.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to generate a better, systematic and scientific understanding of the basic reasons behind slope instability to help in developing the basic principles of landslide hazard zonation, monitoring and forecasting of landslide hazards for better and more effective landslide hazard mitigation and management.

The study is based on extensive field observations and intensive reviews of literature from secondary sources.

Mass movements especially landslides as they are known to common man are a recurring natural phenomenon and are an integral part of any geological/geomorphological circle of landform development through sequential development of slopes in any elevated region and especially in young fold mountain chains.

The paper presents a valuable insight into the basic reasons behind a landslide to spread awareness, to educate and sensitize people towards better and effective landslide hazard mitigation and thereby ensure people's participation in disaster management. It also aims to initiate and encourage research in the field of landslide management.

Landslides occur frequently and without any appreciable warning as such causing havoc and often insurmountable damage to life and property but despite their uncertainty, their causative factors and indicators of slope instability are very well known to an extent that the magnitude of these events, susceptible areas, the timing of such events and their potential impact can be studied, analyzed and evaluated on the basis of past occurrences and existing knowledge to mitigate their impact. The real value of the present study is to minimize losses due to landslides through better knowledge and enhanced levels of understanding of the phenomenon and its management by simply avoiding those particular reasons that could lead to slope instability problems.