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Abstract Coal energy landscapes have changed dramatically over the last decades, including geographic shifts in production and consumption, technological changes that have reduced labour demand and led to relatively new mining practices (e.g. invasive mountain-top approaches), changed economic footprints, a shutdown of capacities or a complete end of mining in many regions with massive impacts on regional and local economies, community well-being, social capital, et cetera. Then the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia´s invasion of Ukraine have fundamentally affected the global economy, disrupted energy markets, and shattered existing estimates about development trends, challenging the progress and speed of the low-carbon energy transition and coal phase-out. This article provides a brief reflection on the changing landscapes of coal and their possible futures, and serves as an introduction to the Special Issue of Moravian Geographical Reports on “The death of coal in the energy transition? Regional perspectives”.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, ventilation in buildings was not always given its due importance. The World Health Organization has highlighted the important role of air exchange with the outdoors in improving the air quality in buildings; buildings should, therefore, be equipped with mechanical ventilation or adequate air conditioning systems. This paper aims to investigate different retrofit solutions for air conditioning, evaluating them in terms of energy consumption and cost and the impact of increased outdoor air exchange rates on countering the propagation of COVID-19; the latter is the main novelty of the paper. As a case study, we take an existing office building located in Central Italy that was previously not equipped with a mechanical ventilation system (a system with primary air was introduced during the study). The energy analysis was conducted using dynamic simulation software after validation through energy bills; energy and economic analyses were conducted considering different external-air exchange rates. An optimal number of outdoor air changes was found to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 infection, a finding in line with the international literature. The increase in air changes with outdoor air leads to a rise in energy consumption and costs. These values were evaluated for different air conditioning systems and operational schedules. These drawbacks can be made less significant by combining interventions in the system with energy-efficiency measures applied to the building envelope.

Starting from the relationship between urban planning and mobility management, TeMA has gradually expanded the view of the covered topics, always following a rigorous scientific in-depth analysis. This section of the Journal, Review Notes, is a continuous update about emerging topics concerning relationships among urban planning, mobility and environment thanks to a collection of short scientific papers written by young researchers. The Review Notes are made up of five parts. Each section examines a specific aspect of the broader information storage within the main interests of the TeMA Journal. In particular: The Town Planning International Rules and Legislation Overview section aims at presenting the latest updates in the territorial and urban legislative sphere. The Covid-19 pandemic is causing a major impact on energy systems. Improving the energy efficiency of urban areas is now the cornerstone of scientific community and the European Commission discussions. Thus, the content of this review note aims at carrying out an analysis of the latest documents of the European Commission before and during the slow recovery from Covid-19 with the aim of identifying the priorities and areas on which to intervene to reduce energy consumption in different territorial contexts. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, Vol 14 No 1 (2021): The city challenges and external agents. Methods, tools and best practices

Globally, more than 1.5 billion people have hearing loss. Unfortunately, most people with hearing loss reside in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where traditional face-to-face services rendered by trained health professionals are few and unequally dispersed. The COVID-19 pandemic has further hampered the effectiveness of traditional service delivery models to provide hearing care. Digital health technologies are strong enablers of hearing care and can support health delivery models that are more sustainable. The convergence of advancing technology and mobile connectivity is enabling new ways of providing decentralized hearing services. Recently, an abundance of digital applications that offer hearing tests directly to the public has become available. A growing body of evidence has shown the ability of several approaches to provide accurate, accessible, and remote hearing assessment to consumers. Further effort is needed to promote greater accuracy across a variety of test platforms, improve sensitivity to ear disease, and scale up hearing rehabilitation, especially in LMICs.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the first serious test of how science can inform decision-making in the face of an immediate global threat, yielding important lessons on how science, society and policy interact. The global societal and economic impact of COVID-19 has shown that we need to assess, plan and prepare for potential future changes. These insights are particularly important for the ocean science community because of the global connectivity of the ocean and its crucial role in the Earth's climate system and in supporting all life on Earth. With climate change already impacting society and ecosystems, implementing mitigation measures to avoid and reduce emissions of greenhouses gases is an immediate priority (IPCC, 2021). Irreversible changes are already underway in the oceans and their impacts over the coming decades will continue to affect human communities, requiring societal responses and adaptation across multiple scales (IPCC, 2019, 2021).

The food industry has recently been under unprecedented pressure due to major global challenges, such as climate change, exponential increase in world population and urbanization, and the worldwide spread of new diseases and pandemics, such as the COVID-19. The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) has been gaining momentum since 2015 and has revolutionized the way in which food is produced, transported, stored, perceived, and consumed worldwide, leading to the emergence of new food trends. After reviewing Industry 4.0 technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, smart sensors, robotics, blockchain, and the Internet of Things) in Part I of this work (Hassoun, Aït-Kaddour, et al. 2022. The fourth industrial revolution in the food industry-Part I: Industry 4.0 technologies. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 1-17.), this complimentary review will focus on emerging food trends (such as fortified and functional foods, additive manufacturing technologies, cultured meat, precision fermentation, and personalized food) and their connection with Industry 4.0 innovations. Implementation of new food trends has been associated with recent advances in Industry 4.0 technologies, enabling a range of new possibilities. The results show several positive food trends that reflect increased awareness of food chain actors of the food-related health and environmental impacts of food systems. Emergence of other food trends and higher consumer interest and engagement in the transition toward sustainable food development and innovative green strategies are expected in the future.

This study utilizes a recently developed framework for the well-being economy to evaluate the impacts of COVID-19 in the sparsely populated Westfjords region of northwestern Iceland. A total of 42 semi-structured interviews were conducted with a broad spectrum of local community members, nearly all undertaken in October 2021. Local impacts to human and social capital were very evident, whilst economic consequences to individuals and business were largely mitigated through national economic packages. The remoteness of the Westfjords and pre-existing challenges, such as exposure to nature disasters, a harsh climate, and limited infrastructure, provided a bedrock of resilience with which to tackle the pandemic. This underpinned the sustainability of the communities, and flexible approaches to work and education constrained some of the worst potential effects of social distancing and isolation. Nevertheless, some socio-demographic groups remained harder hit than others, including the elderly in nursing homes and non-Icelandic speaking foreigners, who were marginalized via isolation and lack of information provision in the early, most severe outbreaks of COVID-19. The study demonstrated the coping mechanisms and solutions that were adopted to sustain subjective and community well-being, whilst reinforcing the importance of utilizing local community strengths in tackling the many challenges induced by a pandemic crisis.

Urbanization is an onerous human activity: it affects municipal budget and foremost it costs the environment. Nevertheless, an ever-growing number of people (more than 75% of the European population) is living in cities and towns, so that identifying sustainable urban development solutions is a dramatically urgent need. Already in the 70s, some researches proposed parameters to evaluate urbanization costs in Italy, but they mainly focused on the economic and financial sustainability of real estate development. The land value capturing approaches proved to be inadequate when municipal budgets are facing growing social unbalances and critical environmental threats. The question being not just “where the money for urban infrastructures could come from”, but also “what could be a more sustainable development model”. In any case, now we are forced to rethink the whole organization of our urban life to defend ourselves from largely unknown threats, pandemics, COVID-19 being probably one among others that we could face in the near future. It is not yet clear if a link exists between the spread of the virus, the health consequences and the environmental conditions, but what probably will need to be assessed is the effect of population density on the spread of contamination. Even the traditional provision of services and public spaces will need to be defined again in order to protect and serve urban population. New evidences will force planners to redefine their thoughts and schemes. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 2020: Special Issue. Covid-19 vs City-20