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Given the distinct and unique climates in these countries, research conducted in other parts of the world may not be directly applicable. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct research tailored to the specific climatic conditions of Australia and New Zealand to ensure accuracy and relevance.

Given population growth, urban expansions and predicted climate change, researchers should provide a deeper understanding of microclimatic conditions and outdoor thermal comfort in Australia and New Zealand. The study’s objectives can be classified into three categories: (1) to analyze previous research works on urban microclimate and outdoor thermal comfort in Australia and New Zealand; (2) to highlight the gaps in urban microclimate studies and (3) to provide a summary of recommendations for the neglected but critical aspects of urban microclimate.

The findings of this study indicate that, despite the various climate challenges in these countries, there has been limited investigation. According to the selected papers, Melbourne has the highest number of microclimatic studies among various cities. It is a significant area for past researchers to examine people’s thermal perceptions in residential areas during the summer through field measurements and surveys. An obvious gap in previous research is investigating the impacts of various urban contexts on microclimatic conditions through software simulations over the course of a year and considering the predicted future climate changes in these countries.

This paper aims to review existing studies in these countries, provide a foundation for future research, identify research gaps and highlight areas requiring further investigation.

The retail sector has the largest energy consumption among commercial buildings in the U.S. Although previous studies explored benefits, barriers and solutions for implementing sustainability in various building sectors, research focused on retail facilities has been very scarce. This study aims to explore U.S. facilities managers’ perceptions of barriers that prevented the implementation of energy-efficiency practices in the retail sector. Their perceptions were compared by facility size and facilities management company’s business revenue.

An online survey was distributed to the members of the International Facility Management Association and the author's LinkedIn network. The survey responses were analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis and ANOVA.

Managers from large facilities, as opposed to those from small ones, significantly more agreed that the unavailability of building automation systems, a lack of professional writing skills and a lack of awareness of life cycle cost (LCC) were the barriers. Business revenue did not cause significantly different perceptions of the barriers except for a lack of awareness of LCC and a lack of support from upper management.

This study fills the research gap on energy efficiency in the retail sector by revealing U.S. facilities managers’ perceptions of the barriers to the implementation of energy-efficiency practices in retail stores. This novel study compares perceptions of the facilities managers by facility size and business revenue; this comparison has not been performed before. The study also identified several new barriers to the implementation of energy efficiency in the retail sector.

This paper aims to analyse residents’ perceptions of tourism growth in Porto prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to determine the most appropriate strategies to mitigate negative tourism impacts. Studies on resident perceptions of tourism impacts are still scarce, particularly the ones addressing the topic in the context of Portuguese urban tourism areas.

Data was collected through an online survey, focusing on three categories of impacts: (i) economic, (ii) sociocultural (iii) and spatial-environmental, and the respective mitigation strategies, analysed from the perspective of Porto’s residents. Descriptive and bivariate statistics – T-test and Eta correlation – were used to analyse the collected data.

Respondents who live in the city centre experience specific tourism impacts more negatively, when compared to those living outside the inner-city area. Furthermore, no strong correlation is found between the said impacts and the respective mitigation strategies. However, creating awareness among tourists about acceptable behaviour in shared spaces is the strategy that stands out, as it has a medium correlation with all three impact categories. Most impact-strategy associations are weak, meaning that the defined strategies are not the most case-appropriate, which is something that policymakers should address.

To the best of the author’s/authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to adopt this approach in tackling the negative impacts of rapid tourism growth in Porto.

Informal migrant workers and street vendors have long been recognized as vulnerable groups in urban areas of Global South countries. However, limited studies exist on the economic challenges faced by migrant street vendors during crises. We aim to address this gap by shedding light on their livelihood and welfare losses during a public health crisis.

This research uses descriptive and qualitative analyzes to triangulate the results. Data are derived from surveys and in-depth interviews with migrant street vendors in the two biggest cities in Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The street vendors experienced significant business loss and consumption reduction during social distancing as well as encountered difficulties in recovering their businesses in the “new normal.” These adverse consequences were also found to disproportionately affect women vendors. Additionally, despite adopting various strategies and mitigation mechanisms to sustain their businesses and consumption, these efforts proved insufficient.

This research underscores the importance of short-term and long-term urban policies aimed at supporting and promoting the social inclusion of street vendors, particularly migrant and women vendors.

This research represents one of the early attempts to explore the adverse effects of a public health crisis on migrant street vendors and to examine whether the crisis disproportionately affected vendors from different genders and educational backgrounds. It also examines their business recovery in the “new normal.”

Earthquakes pose a significant challenge to human safety and the durability of infrastructure, highlighting the urgent need for innovative disaster management strategies. This study addresses the gap in current earthquake disaster management approaches, which are often related to issues of transparency, centralization and sluggish response times. By exploring the integration of blockchain technology into seismic hazard management, the purpose of the research is to overcome these limitations by offering a novel framework for integrating blockchain technology into earthquake risk mitigation and disaster management strategies of smart cities.

This study develops an innovative approach to address these issues by introducing a blockchain-based seismic monitoring and automated decision support system for earthquake disaster management in smart cities. This research aims to capitalize on the benefits of blockchain technology, specifically its real-time data accessibility, decentralization and automation capabilities, to enhance earthquake disaster management. The methodology employed integrates seismic monitoring data into a blockchain framework, ensuring accurate, reliable and comprehensive information. Additionally, smart contracts are utilized to handle decision-making and enable rapid responses during earthquake disasters, offering an effective alternative to traditional approaches.

The study results highlight the system’s potential to foster reliability, decentralization and efficiency in earthquake disaster management, promoting enhanced collaboration among stakeholders and facilitating swift actions to minimize human and capital loss. This research lays the foundation for further exploration of blockchain technology’s practical applications in other disaster management contexts and its potential to transform traditional practices.

Current methodologies, while contributing to the reduction of earthquake-related impacts, are often hindered by limitations such as lack of transparency, centralization and slow response times. In contrast, the adoption of blockchain technology can address these challenges and offer benefits over various aspects, including decentralized control, improved security, real-time data accessibility and enhanced inter-organizational collaboration.

Remote working has brought forward many challenges for employees as the phenomenon is still new for most employees across the globe. Some of these challenges may be addressed by the recent adoption of digital technologies by organizations. In this vein, our study explores the impact of digital platform capability on the creativity of employees through the mediating mechanism of explicit and tacit knowledge sharing.

The data were gathered from higher education institutes (HEIs) in a developing country, Pakistan which recently saw a major disruption during the Covid-19 pandemic. The proposed hypotheses were tested through Structural Equational Modeling (SEM) and the results confirmed our hypotheses.

The findings confirmed that the digital platform capabilities impact both tacit and explicit knowledge sharing among these remote employees. Likewise, the results also supported the mediating role of both explicit and tacit knowledge sharing on the creativity of these remote workers.

Our results are significant as they confirm the impact of digitalization on remote workers’ creativity predisposition. We thus advance the academic debate on the problems of knowledge sharing in remote working. We prove that digital capabilities outweigh the challenges created due to new forms of work driven by the pandemic. It further highlights the important areas to focus on while planning human resource policies in the new normal.

Today’s world is struggling with the hardship of climate change that has drastically disturbed human life, wildlife and the earth’s biological system. This study aims to show how implementing climate change mitigation strategies and environmental protection measures can ensure sustainable development through collaborative efforts between governmental authorities and the nation’s populace.

An extensive literature review of studies is conducted from across the world concentrating on holistic, sustainable development, enabling a showcase of various conferences, action plans initiated and resolutions passed. VOSviewer software is used to quantify the results of bibliometric analysis and cluster analysis. A total of 260 research studies released between 1993 and 2022 on the Scopus platform are quantified in terms of topmost publications, collaborations among authors, citations index and year-wise publication. The search string has keywords including “climate change,” “sustainable development” and “environment protection.”

The study results revealed a steep increase in research publications in the last three years, from 2017 to 2021, which serves as the basis of the emergence of high-impact articles. The most cited document in this context throws light on assessing vulnerability to climatic risk and building adaptive capacity. It also draws attention to voluntary carbon markets’ rationale while condemning emission trading systems for climate change due to structural flaws, negative consequences and questionable emission-cutting effectiveness. Low energy demand, zero energy buildings and shared socioeconomic pathways should be implemented as strategies for sustainable development.

This study provides a significant opportunity to construct a valuable addition to mitigate climate change. Also, it shows a positive and significant correlation between mitigation and adaptation policies by analyzing publication efforts worldwide considering local climate risks and national adaptation mandates.

The originality of this study lies in its comprehensive approach, combining literature review, bibliometric analysis and cluster analysis to provide insights into current research trends, challenges and potential strategies for addressing climate change and promoting sustainable development. The study’s emphasis on the correlation between mitigation and adaptation policies adds practical significance to its findings.

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.

This study aims to develop the application of the strategic choice approach (SCA) in Karaj City (Iran) as the case study for facilitating the decision-making process concerning uncertainties associated with determining fault trace, fault buffer zone and fault setback, as well as inherent uncertainties related to urban issues – known as wicked problems – which make a clear definition unachievable for them.

The SCA was recycled in this study to manage uncertain situations in planning. It is designed to deal with problems caused by uncertainty, insufficient knowledge and unpredictable policy outcomes. In combination with the risk-based planning approach, the paper proposes a new model to deal with uncertainty and hazard risk at the same time.

The results indicated that such decision-making tools are helpful for urban planners who impose changes in the fault zone to save lives and properties where the process seems problematic and ambiguous. Further analysis from the SCA development not only shows that urban planning restrictions should be applied gradually and in pace with the completion of fault displacement geological data but also reveals that defining the implementation process and institutional structure is as important as the preparation of binding fault zoning documents.

The paper will push forward global research and practice because the results can be generalized for use in other earthquake-prone countries, as the considerations and obstacles have a universal character and more specifically because many earthquake-prone countries have not started to define fault avoidance zone restrictions up to now.

Sacred forests are biocultural landscapes deeply rooted in centuries-old traditions of spiritual veneration. These sacred sites, including shrines, temple forests churches and graveyards, have historically been significant reservoirs of traditional resource management practices underpinned by spiritual reverence. However, despite their cultural and ecological importance, the cultural ecosystem services inherent to these sacred forests remain unexplored, particularly in urban settings.

This study focused on six sacred sites within Kanazawa City, Japan, using a meticulous face-to-face survey with 342 participants. We collected data on the extent of forest utilisation, the breadth of activities engaged in by visitors and their holistic appraisal of the rendered cultural ecosystem services. The findings illustrate the multifaceted benefits of urban sacred forests, encompassing participation in religious ceremonies, cultural events and festivals, complemented by educational programming that elucidates the historical and traditional underpinnings of the shrines and their surrounding communities.

It has been observed that urban forests have a crucial role in providing spiritual and communal connectivity, preserving traditional heritage, offering vital aesthetic values as green spaces and making visitors connected with nature while they are in the urban landscape. However, a concerning trend has emerged, as the younger demographic appears to lack interest in participating in the stewardship and cultural activities associated with these biocultural landscapes. Community engagement strategies must be strengthened, conservation measures should be implemented and cultural awareness programs need to be established to ensure the perpetuation and appreciation of these valuable urban sacred forests.

This study provides original perspectives on the measurable cultural ecosystem services and intangible values associated with urban sacred forests using the sacred forests in Kanazawa City, Japan. Our research illuminates the various advantages that visitors derive by examining the intersection of spiritual traditions, resource management practices and cultural significance, which has been relatively unexplored. The present study provides a significant basis for establishing initiatives that seek to promote the cultivation of respect and responsibility towards urban sacred forests.