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Over the last five decades, there has been a decline of rural communities in Taiwan due to urbanization expansion. In the past 10 years, the central government has implemented the Rural Regeneration Project (RRP) aimed at revitalization and sustainable development in rural Taiwan. During the project’s implementation, communities have faced several disasters as a result of climate change-induced extreme rainfall events. Perceptions and adaptation practices of climate change-induced extreme events are critical to community sustainability and resilience. The gap between perceived and actual risks that communities experience creates challenges for policy-makers in achieving sustainability goals. This study aims to evaluate the perceived climate change-induced flooding hazard perceptions compared to the scientific projection and actual hazard events in 287 rural communities implementing the RRP. This study revealed consistency in risk perception, in that communities facing high potential exposure to extreme rainfall showed higher awareness of various impacts of climate change. However, when comparing climate actions, communities exposed to low-potential hazard areas had a relatively higher degree of recognition of the benefits of adaptation to climate change. Moreover, 59 rural communities with low awareness and exposed to high potentials of extreme events were widely distributed among hills of western, southern, and northern Taiwan, where compound disasters such as mudslides can occur. This research suggests that there is a need to integrate climate change planning and work with communities to bridge the gap between perceived and actual climate risks. In particular, capacity training, counseling services, and implementation of adaptation practices should be integrated into institutional planning and management for providing assistance in disaster prevention, relief, and post-event restoration; also, encouraging climate actions can directly improve community resilience toward climate change. While investing in the sustainable development of rural communities is largely based on revitalizing economic development, this study revealed the link to ensure resilience and social-ecological sustainability in rural communities under climate change impacts.

Embedded sensors are widely employed for the structural health monitoring of structures constructed with concrete or mortar. Despite embedded sensors being actively used, there has been no study on whether or not the sensor probe placement within structures made of concrete or mortar influences their structural stability. The strength of small structures in particular could be affected by sensor probes embedded within them. To address the lack of research in this area, this study analyzed the effect of embedding positions of sensor probes on the compressive strength development of mortar. After the production of mortar specimens with the depth of the embedded sensor being controlled by the developed mold, compressive strength tests were conducted, and then test results were verified through finite element analysis. For testing, copper–nickel-plated sensor probes were embedded within the mortar because these sensor probes are popular commercial probes. The test results show that the compressive strength was 7.1 MPa when the sensor probe was embedded at a depth of 5 mm. In contrast, the compressive strength was 28.2 MPa at a depth of 30 mm. Since the compressive strength without the embedded sensor probe was 29.8 MPa, considering the results of this study, it is highly recommended that copper–nickel-plated sensor probes be embedded at least 30 mm from the surface of mortar structures.

Issues of oil spills in various locations worldwide have been widely published in several studies. However, studies on policy management and strategies for handling cases related to oil spills are still limited. As one of the largest oil-producing countries with international shipping traffic, Indonesia is vulnerable to oil spills. Therefore, by drawing upon evidence from Bintan Island, this study aims to provide recommendations for stakeholders concerning governance and policy to address the oil spill case, which has had adverse social, economic, and environmental impacts. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion, observation, actual online news, and official government reports using a case study approach. The result indicates that the local government is slow in responding to Bintan Island’s reoccurring yearly oil spillage. Policy responses are still focused on repressive and conventional methods. Hence, preventive and multi-stakeholder governance is required to handle oil spills. Furthermore, this study provides an overview of the oil spill problem and its management strategy in developing countries, especially Indonesia.

A plethora of present studies has the purpose of analyzing the connection related to the effect of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) on business performance. However, it has still not been able to bring out comprehensive results because of using a single metric to measure performance. Due to that, this research will: (i) use the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to measure transportation firms’ performance and (ii) use OLS regression to explore the relationship between ESG combined score and business performance. In the first stage, we found out that 43 out of 56 firms work inefficiently. The managers of those companies should utilize their resources and refer to the benchmarking as a sample to follow. The environmental and social scores positively affect business performance in the second stage. Thus, managers should consider ESG as an investment, primarily when transportation is categorized as an “environmentally sensitive industry”. Besides, investors should pay more attention to a company that has ESG activities because that firm has the chance to improve its business performance and deal with its commitments.

Land use and land cover (LULC) robustly influence the delivery of the ecosystem services that humans rely on. This study used Kathmandu Valley as a study area which is a fast-growing and most vulnerable city to climate change. Remote sensing and GIS methods are the most significant methods for measuring the impact of LULC on the ecosystem service value (ESV). The satellite-based dataset was used for quantitative assessment of the LULC and ecosystem service value for 10-year intervals from the year 1989 to 2019. The result revealed that the area of forest cover, cropland, and waterbodies decreased by 28.33%, 4.35%, and 91.5%, respectively, whereas human settlement and shrubland increased by more than a hundred times and barren land by 21.14% at the end of the study period. This study found that Kathmandu valley lost 20.60% ESV over 30 years which dropped from USD 122.84 million to USD 97.54 million. The urban growth and extension of agricultural land to forest cover areas were found to be contributing factors for the reduction in ESV of Kathmandu valley. Cropland transformed into shrubland, bringing about an increase in ESV of some areas of the study region. In conclusion, the aggressive increase in population growth with inadequate urban planning and fragmentation of farmlands influenced the ESV of Kathmandu valley.

A new method for measuring the porosity of individual 2D raster patches in a GIS for characterizing the combined complexity of a shape’s edge in conjunction with its internal perforations is developed. The method is centered on comparing the number of cellular edge–edge joins relative to the theoretical maximum number of similar joins possible given a set number of cells comprising a landscape patch. As this porosity (Φ) increases, the patch (or shape) can be viewed as deviating from a maximally compact form, comprising higher edge complexity and internal heterogeneity (inclusion of perforations). The approach is useful for characterizing shapes for which a simple perimeter- or area-based metric misses the internal complexity and where the porosity of the patch may provide insight into spatial processes leading to the development of the landscape fabric. I present theoretical results to illustrate the mechanics of the approach and a small case study of boreal wildfire residual vegetation patches in Ontario, where real resulting wildfire process-driven landscape patches are assessed for their porosity at five spatial resolutions. The results indicate that naturally occurring and unsuppressed boreal wildfires in the study area typically produce residual vegetation patches with an average porosity of 17.6%, although this value varies slightly with the spatial resolution of the data representation.

Eco-innovation has gained considerable attention in the academic and corporate world due to its potential in mitigating a firm’s sustainability issues. Most previous studies focused on the reactive approaches of eco-innovation using primary data. This study mitigates the existing research gap by highlighting proactive eco-innovation and using a secondary panel dataset. The prime objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between proactive eco-innovation and firms’ financial performance. Hence, the study will introduce the proactive eco-innovation index with the help of secondary panel data. In addition to that, the paper will also explore how proactive eco-innovation relates to circular economy. The theory of Resource-Based View (RBV) was used to explain the relationship among the variables. This study was conducted on 31 Malaysian public listed energy companies from 2015 to 2019. A proactive eco-innovation index was inferred by adapting three dimensions of eco-innovation (product, process, and technology) which is applicable for the energy sector. By applying random-effects GLS regression equation modeling, it was found that proactive eco-innovation (product eco-innovation, process eco-innovation, and technology eco-innovation) has a direct effect on firm financial performance. Furthermore, product and process eco-innovation is directly related to a circular economy through a sustainable product development process. The findings suggest that policymakers in the firm should proactively adopt eco-innovative practices. It will positively affect the circular economy as it will be cost-effective and help to reduce potential industrial pollution in the environment.