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Enhancing the resilience of cities and strengthening risk-informed decision-making are defined as key within the Global Agenda 2030. Implementing risk-informed decision-making also requires the consideration of scenarios of exposure and vulnerability. Therefore, the paper presents selected scenario approaches and illustrates how such vulnerability scenarios can look like for specific indicators and how they can inform decision-making, particularly in the context of urban planning.

The research study uses the example of heat stress in Ludwigsburg, Germany, and adopts participatory and quantitative forecasting methods to develop scenarios for human vulnerability and exposure to heat stress.

The paper indicates that considering changes in future vulnerability of people is important to provide an appropriate information base for enhancing urban resilience through risk-informed urban planning. This can help cities to define priority areas for future urban development and to consider the socio-economic and demographic composition in their strategies.

The value of the research study lies in implementing new qualitative and quantitative scenario approaches for human exposure and vulnerability to strengthen risk-informed decision-making.

This paper aims to propose a collaborative approach toward an integrated vulnerability assessment to climate change in Germany that attempts to bridge the gap between scientific output and policy demand.

Conceptually, the approach follows the definition of vulnerability as used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but it has modified this basic concept. It clearly distinguishes between three time slices (presence, near and remote future) not only regarding the change in the climatic conditions but also socio-economic development trends.

The paper concentrates on the selected methodological framework, the collaborative research design and those preliminary results of the nationwide vulnerability assessment that are transferable to other settings.

A Vulnerability Network (“Netzwerk Vulnerabilitaet”) emerged from an applied research project commissioned under the Adaptation Action Plan of the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety and the Federal Environment Agency. The assessment serves as evidence basis for the implementation of the German Adaptation Strategy. Thus, all relevant federal authorities and agencies are represented in the Vulnerability Network.

The approach is the first really integrative vulnerability assessment for the whole Germany, as it considers not only 16 sectors but also interconnections between these sectors and cumulative effects for three different time slices. Moreover, the normative component of the assessment was clearly separated from the analytic one. The Vulnerability Network as a whole has been responsible for all normative decisions to be taken during the assessment procedure thus ensuring a wide understanding and acceptance of commonly achieved results.

Until very recently an immense USSR comprised fifteen republics. Now the three Baltic states are free of Moscow's direction, and an independent Ukraine has joined Belarus and the former Russian Soviet Federated Republic (RSFSR) as the hub in a commonwealth of former republics that have declared themselves independent or “sovereign,” but federated through agreements based on economics or defense considerations. Whether one concentrates on the story of Baltic freedom following the abortive 1991 coup, the subsequent dissolution of central governmental power, or the lasting enmities among some of the peoples in Central Asia and the Caucasus, the pivot around which this new interest or heightened curiosity turns is the recent great change within the late Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

This study aims to propose a novel viscoelastic–viscoplastic combined constitutive model for glassy amorphous polymers within the framework of thermodynamics at finite strain that is capable of capturing their rate-dependent inelastic mechanical behavior in wide ranges of deformation rate and amount.

The rheology model whose viscoelastic and viscoplastic elements are connected in series is set in accordance with the multi-mechanism theory. Then, the constitutive functions are formulated on the basis of the multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient implicated by the rheology model within the framework of thermodynamics. Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) and loading/unloading/no-load tests for polycarbonate (PC) are conducted to identify the material parameters and demonstrate the capability of the proposed model.

The performance was validated in comparison with the series of the test results with different rates and amounts of deformation before unloading together. It has been confirmed that the proposed model can accommodate various material behaviors empirically observed, such as rate-dependent elasticity, elastic hysteresis, strain softening, orientation hardening and strain recovery.

This paper presents a novel rheological constitutive model in which the viscoelastic element connected in series with the viscoplastic one exclusively represents the elastic behavior, and each material response is formulated according to the multiplicatively decomposed deformation gradients. In particular, the yield strength followed by the isotropic hardening reflects the relaxation characteristics in the viscoelastic constitutive functions so that the glass transition temperature could be variant within the wide range of deformation rate. Consequently, the model enables us to properly represent the loading process up to large deformation regime followed by unloading and no-load processes.

This paper aims to describe an updated urban planning process to expose a theoretical model bridging the resilience concept and urban planning, and then it explains this process through Istanbul case.

A hypothetical framework is proposed based on the three different but complementary aspects of resilience which are identified as “resilience to what”, “resilience where” and “resilience how”, as well as “five elements process” referring the upgraded components of urban planning processes. Additionally, the methodology conducted to figure out a resilient urban planning process is listed as an expert opinion survey, a two-stage policy Delphi survey, public opinion survey and multi-criteria analysis.

It is possible to apply this process in many different case studies for various scales and temporalities for coping with the key vulnerabilities and promote the administrative response capacity.

Considering size of the study area and the unclarified roles of urban authorities, it is difficult to have a consensus on the key vulnerabilities and the prior urban policies.

The proposed process is beneficial in addressing the most prominent vulnerabilities and developing capacity to manage unexpected changes, through the collaborative decisions of a wide range of urban planning authorities. Depending on the severity of the disturbances, applying this process to identify changing priorities can be a crucial policy, both for long- or short-term urban policy-making, for further studies.

The author investigates the effects of human capital on labor income share in the 15 sectors of the European Union (EU)-13 countries and the United Kingdom (UK) over the period 2008–2015.

The author employs pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation with panel data, using the EU KLEMS database.

The results show that when education level increases, labor income share increases and gender-based labor income share differentials decrease. Return to education is higher in qualitative sectors in contrast with the other sectors. Moreover, there are gender-based labor income share differentials at the sectoral level. These differentials are higher in nonqualitative sectors, while they are relatively lower in qualitative sectors.

The biggest limitation of the study is that the data range cannot be expanded because of the database. The author is of opinion that the empirical findings will guide to policy makers in terms of wage setting.

The expected contribution of this study to the literature is to investigate the effect of human capital on labor income share at the sectoral level for the EU-13 countries and the UK. As far as the author knows, there is no study which investigates this topic at the sectoral level such a comprehensive, in the literature.

In an online shopping environment, individual reviews and aggregated ratings are important anchors for consumers’ purchasing decisions. However, few studies have considered the influence of aggregated ratings on consumer decision-making, especially at the neural level. This study aims to bridge this gap by investigating the consumer decision-making mechanism based on aggregated ratings to uncover the underlying neural basis and psychological processing.

An event-related potential experiment was designed to acquire consumers’ electrophysiological records and behavioral data during their decision-making processes based on aggregated ratings. The authors speculate that during this process, review valence categorization (RVC) processing occurs, which is indicated by late positive potential (LPP) components.

Results show that LPP components were elicited successfully, and perceptual review valence can modulate its amplitudes (one-star [negative] and five-star [positive] ratings evoke larger LPP amplitudes than three-star [neutral] ratings). The electroencephalogram data indicate that consumer decision-making processes based on aggregated ratings include an RVC process, and behavioral data show that easier review valence perception makes the purchase decision-making easier.

This study enriches the extant literature on the impact of aggregated ratings on consumer decision-making. It helps understand how aggregated ratings affect consumers’ online shopping decisions, having significant management implications. Moreover, it shows that LPP components can be potentially used by researchers and companies to evaluate and analyze consumer emotion and categorization processing, serving as an important objective physiological indicator of consumer behavior.

This study aims to investigates the appropriate number and kinds of accounting measures managers should use in their decision-making.

The authors apply an experimental method with 54 participants who work for a utility company in Japan.

This study suggests that under information overload, in which many measures are handled simultaneously, managers who have a high Need for Cognition (NFC) can no longer use either financial or customer perspective measures effectively, while when there is no information overload, they can use those measures. Managers with low NFC do not use customer perspective measures even when information overload does not occur.

This study concludes that we need to pay careful attention to differences in managers’ NFC as well as how many and what kind of measures should be provided to managers when designing multi-measures for performance evaluation.

This paper sheds light on the relationships among the number of measures, the characteristics of measures, and managers’ cognitive style when designing a management accounting system.

This paper aims to explore the involvement of various actors in the preparation of Palu City's spatial plan before the multi-hazard events of 2018. In addition, it evaluates the extent to which disaster risk reduction (DRR) is mainstreamed in the spatial plan.

The study uses qualitative methods of analysis with a risk-based planning approach and stakeholder analysis.

It is critical that DRR is mainstreamed in spatial planning from the preparation to the implementation. Disasters can take place when there is a knowledge gap in the planning process. This results in developments in disaster-prone areas and even in high-risk areas. Therefore, mainstreaming DRR into spatial planning requires national guidelines that offer planners at the local level clear and detailed guidance on what they must prepare, consider and do in a risk-based spatial planning process.

Spatial planning that does not mainstream DRR can lead to catastrophic consequences in the form of casualties and losses when multi-hazards occur.

The study provides evidence-based findings on the importance of mainstreaming DRR into spatial planning, particularly in areas prone to multi-hazards, which can be optimized through a risk-based planning approach.