Activating transformation: integrating interior dimensions of climate change in adaptation planning

A Hybrid Modelling Framework for Ecosystem-Based Climate Change Adaptation Using System Dynamics and Bayesian Networks

The role of the chief scientist (CS), a key administrative position in various Israeli ministries, is to fund policy‐oriented research and support evidence‐based decision‐making. Has the CS's role promoted or constrained incorporation of scientific advice regarding climate change adaptation into governmental policy? Have administrative traditions affected the adaptation planning process in Israel? Analysis of documents and 26 in‐depth interviews with key stakeholders sheds light on the ongoing climate change adaptation policy formulation process. Our study reveals that the CS of the Ministry of Environmental Protection functions as a bridge at different interfaces and can be characterized as a boundary worker between institutions. The inherent independence of this position facilitates the CS's ability to initiate, foster, and prioritize complex issues such as adaptation. Our findings further suggest that the perception that Israel has already adapted, or will easily adapt, has negatively affected the adaptation process. 科学建议和行政传统：首席科学家在气候变化适应工作中的作用 首席科学家是以色列各部门的一个关键行政职务, 其具体作用是为政策性研究提供资金, 并支持循证决策。对于有关气候变化适应的科学建议, 首席科学家的作用是促进还是限制了其被纳入到政府政策中？行政传统是否影响了以色列的气候适应规划进程？通过文件分析及与关键利益相关者的26次深入访谈, 笔者揭示了正在进行的适应气候变化政策的制定过程。研究表明, 环保部门的首席科学家在不同的层面上起着桥梁作用, 在不同机构的分界线上工作以彼此连接。该职位的内在独立性能促进首席科学家在发起问题、培养和优先考虑包括适应气候等复杂问题的能力。研究进一步表明, 以色列已经适应了或即将轻易适应某些观点, 而这已经对气候适应过程产生了负面影响。 Asesoria cientifica y tradiciones administrativas: el papel que juegan los cientificos principales en la adaptacion al cambio climatico El papel que juegan los cientificos principales, un puesto administrativo clave en varios ministerios israelies, esta especificamente designado para el financiamiento de investigacion orientada hacia la politica y el apoyo a decisiones basadas en evidencia. ?El papel que juegan los cientificos principales ha promovido o limitado la incorporacion de asesoria cientifica en lo que concierne a la adaptacion al cambio climatico dentro de las politicas del gobierno? ?Las tradiciones administrativas han afectado el proceso de planeacion para la adaptacion en Israel? El analisis de los documentos en 26 entrevistas exhaustivas con partes afectadas clave ilustra el proceso de formulacion de las politicas de adaptacion al cambio climatico actual. Nuestro estudio revela que el Cientifico Principal del Ministerio de Proteccion Ambiental funciona como un puente para diferentes interfaces y puede ser caracterizado como un trabajador limitrofe entre las instituciones. La independencia inherente de esta posicion facilita la habilidad del cientifico principal para iniciar, fomentar y darle prioridad a complejos problemas como la adaptacion. Nuestros hallazgos sugieren que la percepcion de Israel ya se ha adaptado, o se adaptara facilmente, y ha afectado negativamente el proceso de adaptacion.

Particularists and Systemists: Perspectives on Effective Urban Climate Change Adaptation

As climate risks intensify globally, managed retreat is increasingly proposed as a necessary response to community displacement. Yet without explicit attention to equity and justice, such initiatives risk perpetuating historical and contemporary injustices. Drawing on Māori submissions to government policy-making processes regarding Aotearoa New Zealand's National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and the Inquiry into Community-based Retreat and Climate Adaptation as well as interviews with Māori involved in adaptation policy or projects, this paper examines how Māori frame climate adaptation through an Indigenous Climate Justice (ICJ) lens. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), our analysis identifies Māori demands spanning seven interconnected justice dimensions: procedural, distributive, recognitional, restorative, epistemic, multi-species, and intergenerational. Our findings reveal that Māori envision adaptation not merely as hazard management but as a profound opportunity to rectify colonial injustices, redistribute resources equitably, and embed Māori self-determination (rangatiratanga) in governance frameworks. Māori voices strongly critique conventional decision-making processes as inadequate and exclusionary, stressing the necessity of genuine partnership under Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi), integration of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems), and meaningful recognition of Indigenous authority and values. Managed retreat, in particular, is reframed as an opportunity for restorative action—returning land and governance authority, healing environments, and supporting Māori-led adaptation plans that maintain cultural continuity and intergenerational well-being. We argue that climate adaptation in settler-colonial contexts must explicitly centre Indigenous rights, knowledge systems, and worldviews to avoid reproducing colonial patterns of injustice. Māori perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand thus offer a transformative vision of climate adaptation—one grounded in restorative, collaborative models that prioritise Indigenous sovereignty, ecological integrity, and intergenerational flourishing for human and more-than-human communities alike.

Coastal cities are vulnerable to increasing flood risks caused by the combination of sea-level rise (SLR) and storm tides (STs), due to their low-lying topography and densely distributed assets. Faced with this challenge, comprehensive and integrated flood risk information is vital and fundamental for the planning, implementation and optimization of coastal risk adaptation and management. The goal of this study is to propose an integrated assessment approach to sea-level rise- and storm tide-induced flood risks on a coastal urban system by employing a wide range of indicators across ecological, physical and socio-economic dimensions. To demonstrate its applicability, a case study of Xiamen City, China was performed. The results show that this approach is applicable for assessing the specific flood risks on urban ecological, physical and socio-economic system, respectively. Under 4.75 ∼ 5.86 m extreme sea-level, 11 600 ∼ 17 100 ha land and 440 000 ∼ 720 000 population will be flooded in Xiamen City, with flood risks—measured by monetary—of 858 ∼ 1134 million, 4744 ∼ 10 590 million and 2537 ∼ 4175 million RMB of ecological, physical and economic systems, respectively. Coastal ecosystem will suffer flood risks on ecological services, mainly regulation service; and wetland is the dominant ecosystem that will be affected, which imply urgent needs to wetland conservation. Indirect risk on economy accounts for a large proportion of total risks, and should be given adequate weight in the decision-making process.

Outdoor thermal comfort in different settings of a tropical planning region: A study on Sriniketan-Santiniketan Planning Area (SSPA), Eastern India

Starting from a phenomenological understanding of the body, this article discusses the understanding of body awareness in health and illness. I question the common way to understand our relationship to our bodies in terms of subjective and objective perspectives on it, and furthermore, how this opposition has been used in the phenomenological literature to outline an understanding of health and illness as states where the body stays unnoticed versus resurfaces to our attention as dysfunctional. Using examples from an ongoing interview study, I argue for an understanding of the dialectical interplay between body and world in our awareness, and how it can be understood as an approaching or distancing movement to body and world. I furthermore describe how the interplay between body and world effects and is effected by our existence in health and illness. Finally, I suggest what implications this new way of understanding the lived body has for health care practice in general, and for the development of a person-centred care in particular. I suggest that we leave the dichotomous understanding of subjective and objective perspectives behind, and start to investigate how we move between different kinds of body awareness in health and illness. Illness, as a situation where that which has been taken for granted becomes questioned, can be said to be characterized by mistrust, and by a distancing from world and body. It is thus of importance for caregivers to provide the time, space and trusting atmosphere needed in order to make the approaching movement possible.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a unique adaptive path planning framework to address a new challenge known as the Unknown environment Persistent Monitoring Problem (PMP). To identify the unknown events’ occurrence location and likelihood, an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) equipped with a Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) and camera is used to record such events in agriculture land. A certain level of detecting capability must be the distinct monitoring priority in order to keep track of them to a certain distance. First, to formulate a model, we developed an event-oriented modelling strategy for unknown environment perception and the effect is enumerated by uncertainty, which takes into account the sensor’s detection capabilities, the detection interval, and monitoring weight. A mobile robot scheme utilizing LIDAR on integrative approach was created and experiments were carried out to solve the high equipment budget of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) for robotic systems. To map an unfamiliar location using the robotic operating system (ROS), the 3D visualization tool for Robot Operating System (RVIZ) was utilized, and GMapping software package was used for SLAM usage. The experimental results suggest that the mobile robot design pattern is viable to produce a high-precision map while lowering the cost of the mobile robot SLAM hardware. From a decision-making standpoint, we built a hybrid algorithm HSAStar (Hybrid SLAM & A Star) algorithm for path planning based on the event oriented modelling, allowing a UGV to continually monitor the perspectives of a path. The simulation results and analyses show that the proposed strategy is feasible and superior. The performance of the proposed hyb SLAM-A Star-APP method provides 34.95%, 27.38%, 33.21% and 29.68% lower execution time, 26.36%, 29.64% and 29.67% lower map duration compared with the existing methods, such as ACO-APF-APP, APFA-APP, GWO-APP and PSO-APP.

Assembling a coherent view of distributed heterogeneous information and their processing is challenging but important for inter-organizational business collaboration and service provision. However, traditional integration approaches do not consider dynamic and adaptive issues such as human intervention and exception handling. Therefore, we propose a Workflow-based Information Integration (WII) approach, which is particularly suitable in a loosely coupled Web services environment. Our implementation framework comprises five layers: semantic, application, workflow, service, and message. We focus on the workflow layer for providing adaptiveness from the aspects of various types of flows such as controlflows, data-flows, security-flows, exception-flows and semantic-flows by using the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL). We further extend this with our proposed data-integration, semantic-referencing, and exception-handling assertions in order to achieve dynamic and adaptive workflow-based information integration plans. We map information into SOAP messages and link the proposed exception-handling assertions in BPEL to SOAP-fault implementations. We also define semantic referencing in BPEL by using OWL Web Ontology Language. Lastly, we demonstrate the feasibility of our adaptive approach with an intelligence information integration case study at the application layer and examine some typical use cases of exception-handling with semantic support.

In 2005, an editorial was published in the Journal thataddressedthechangingemphasisanddirectionofappliedecol-ogy (Freckleton et al. 2005). This editorial proposed that theJournal should increasingly target papers that would havedirect relevance to ecological management and policy whilemaintainingastronglinktobasicecologicalconceptsandthe-ories. These core aspects are still true 5 years later, but withexpanding areas of research and new management challenges;todaymorethanevertheJournalmustreachoutandofferrealinsightandoptionsformanagement.Theaimsofthisnewedi-torialaretooutlinetoauthorsandreviewersthekeyattributesthat form the basis of the papers published in the Journal ofApplied Ecology and to announce new developments in linewith our strategic vision for the journal at the start of a newdecade.TheJournal’scriticalroleininfluencingpolicyisemphasizedby the looming deadline of the Convention on BiologicalDiversity which set the target of significantly reducing bio-diversity loss by 2010.A number of ecologicalaudits assessingbiodiversity loss have taken place, for example, the MilleniumEcosystem Assessment examined the consequences of ecosys-tem change for human well-being and concluded that, world-wide, 60% of ecosystem services had been degraded. Otherassessmentsareinprogress,forexample,theNationalEcosys-temAssessmentwillprovidethefirstanalysisoftheUK’snatu-ral environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society.Thesetargetsandauditsarenotenvironmentalniceties;ratherasstatedbytheUnitedNationsSecretary-GeneralKofiAnnanin 2005 ‘Failure to conserve and use biological diversity in asustainable manner would result in degrading environments,newandmorerampantillnesses,deepeningpovertyandacon-tinuedpatternofinequitableanduntenablegrowth’.Putprac-tically: biodiversity matters, it matters to the rich and to thepoor, to the developed and to the developing world. Appliedecologists are a crucial part of a multi-disciplinary groupengagedinmanaginghumanuseoftheenvironmenttopreventKofi Annan’s vision from materializing. Working proactivelywithenvironmentalmanagers,collaboratingwithcolleaguesinthe social and physical sciences, and holding two-way conver-sations with policy makers and the public are all in the jobdescriptionofthemodernappliedecologist.The Journal of Applied Ecology is one of the most highlyranked international journals in its field, with a reputation forpublishing papers that combine the highest standards of eco-logicalsciencewithdirectrelevancetoenvironmentalmanage-ment. Our remit is extremely large. Thus, we publish researchon animal, microbial and plant taxa across a broad range ofhabitats and ecosystems, and these papers span observational,experimental and theoretical studies. With the dramaticgrowth of applied ecological research in the last decade, theJournalneedstorefineitsscopetoensureweretainourdistinctidentity among ecology journals. To help potential authorsidentifywhethertheirpaperissuitableforthejournal,wehavedescribed below the types of papers we accept for publication.Ouracceptancerateischallenging(14AE5%in2008)andauthorsneed to be confident that their study fits our remit before sub-mission. As examples of good practice, we use papers thatprovedparticularly influentialorthatwereselectedastheEdi-tor’s choice. Editor’s choice is a new initiative begun in 2008and is used as a means of highlighting papers that are, espe-ciallytimely,particularlyhighqualityandmeetourkeycriteriaofecologicalstudieswithmanagementrelevance.

More than 940 million people (13% of the world population) do not have any access to electricity. Most of these people live in rural and remote areas, where the lack of electricity access is significantly damaging the quality of life, economic development and the environment. Distributed energy systems (DESs) (based on clean energy technologies) for energy access offer a potentially important strategy for pursuing environment-friendly sustainable development and poverty alleviation; especially in rural and remote communities. DESs are also helpful in reducing deforestation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as the fossil fuel-based energy production is among the largest contributors to GHG emissions. This paper presents the importance of energy access through DESs for resilient and sustainable development using two projects case studies from Pakistan. The first project case study is based on the Afghan refugee villages, where, currently, there is no electricity access. A baseline survey was conducted to assess the socio-economic conditions and energy demand of the refugees. This assessment is then used to devise clean energy solutions as per the local context. This project aims to improve the quality of life of the refugees by providing energy access. In the second case study, electricity access was provided to the local communities a few years ago. Analyses of primary data collected in this case study show that DES integrated with socio-economic and cultural systems can bring a significantly positive impact on the local communities, advancing all the sustainability development goals. This work concludes that DES can be significantly generative, if effectively integrated into socio-economic processes. This article is part of the theme issue 'Developing resilient energy systems'.

Sustainable development requires management of various threats related to climate change and risk assessment. Because of the continuous growth in the threats like climate change, sustainability will be more difficult to achieve in many locations and populations. Although, the developmental pathways of climate resilience are pursued the interconnectivity between climate resileince, climate change, and adaptability at global level. This type of inter-connectivity would allow the generation of mutual benefits of new approaches for sustainable development. Such type of sustainable development initiates the complex interactions between climates and social and socioeconomic systems. The instructional track of climate resilience pathway was initiated with a master plan of combined mitigation and adaptation with respect to realize the goal of sustainable development by avoiding anthropogenic interference of climate change. Strategic policies on the basis of scientific studies can be very much helpful in addressing the climate mitigation. In most of the cases, the adaptation strategy of sustainable development has also involved the appropriate risk assessment. It is exclusively summarized that the procedure of climate resilience would continually need the development in the management of climate change.KeywordsClimate changesClimate resilienceAdaptabilityVulnerabilityMitigationHuman-induced activityAnthropogenic causesNatural causes

Spinal muscular atrophy type 1 (SMA1) is a neuromuscular disorder that severely limits movement and autonomy in young children. Early powered mobility has proved to be a valuable intervention to promote participation, social engagement and emotional well-being. To understand the potential impact of powered mobility, it is critical to explore children and families' experiences with participatory methodologies, such as the photovoice method. To explore families' perceptions of powered mobility for participation in children with SMA Type 1, with a focus on emotional well-being, social engagement and accessibility. A qualitative descriptive study using the photovoice methodology was implemented, in which families documented their perceptions and experiences through photographs and reflective narratives over a period of 4 weeks. Children were encouraged to use a power mobility device in different activities in natural environments, after a training intervention of 12 weeks with power mobility. Families were asked to capture their experiences through photos and participate in different interviews to report their perceptions. Data was collected through photos documentation and during interviews. This study was conducted in natural environments, home and community, in Spain. The participants were six children with SMA1 (aged 13-28 months) and their families. Three major themes emerged: (1) Emotional and Social Engagement: Families reported that powered mobility enhanced children's confidence, emotional expression and ability to interact with family members and peers. (2) Barriers to Accessibility: Families encountered challenges such as limited home space, restricted public accessibility and the need for individualised adaptations. (3) Collaboration as a Key Factor: Parents emphasised the importance of collaboration with professionals in facilitating meaningful use of powered mobility. The findings align with previous research demonstrating the benefits of powered mobility in promoting independence, social interaction and participation. However, this study also highlights persistent environmental barriers that continue to limit full social inclusion. Addressing these challenges is crucial to maximising mobility-related gains. This study highlights the importance of addressing accessibility barriers and promoting interdisciplinary collaboration to maximise the benefits of powered mobility for children with SMA1. Incorporating participatory methodologies such as photovoice provides a powerful means for families to voice their experiences and advocate for inclusive mobility solutions. Families were actively involved in multiple stages of the study, including its design, data collection and interpretation and dissemination of the results. Using the photovoice method, parents documented their children's experiences with powered mobility through photographs and comments, highlighting both benefits and challenges. Their input was crucial in identifying real-life barriers and needs, ensuring that the study reflected the authentic experiences of families navigating powered mobility. Additionally, they provided valuable insights during interviews, contributing to a deeper understanding of the emotional, social and practical impacts of the intervention. Their perspectives helped to shape the analysis and reinforce the importance of personalised mobility solutions.

Decision letter for "The Relationship Between the Neighbourhood Environment and Mental Health: Integrating Subjective and Objective Perspectives"

Review for "The Relationship Between the Neighbourhood Environment and Mental Health: Integrating Subjective and Objective Perspectives"