Publications Search

Local climate zone (LCZ) maps are increasingly being used to help understand and model the urban microclimate, but traditional land use/land cover map (LULC) accuracy assessment approaches do not convey the accuracy at which LCZ maps depict the local thermal environment. 17 types of LCZs exist, each having unique physical characteristics that...

Using “the sharing paradigm” as a guiding concept, this book demonstrates that “sharing” has much greater potential to make rural society resilient, sustainable and inclusive through enriching all four sharing dimensions: informal, mediated, communal and commercial sharing. The chapters are divided into two parts, one that focuses on case studies...

Although greenery in urban areas has many functions, such as mitigation of the urban heat island effect, and reduction of rainfall-induced surface runoff, it is difficult to secure the space required to plant trees in cities, which are crowded with buildings. Therefore, rooftop greening has attracted attention and many cities are adopting and...

Parks and other public green spaces (hereafter “urban green spaces”) provide many benefits to urban dwellers, but some residents receive few benefits due to a lack of urban green spaces nearby their home/workplace. Understanding spatial variations in urban green space accessibility is thus important for urban planning. As a case study, here we...

With the advent of high-spatial resolution (HSR) satellite imagery, urban land use/land cover (LULC) mapping has become one of the most popular applications in remote sensing. Due to the importance of context information (e.g., size/shape/texture) for classifying urban LULC features, Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) techniques are...

Groundwater is a de-facto source of water during drought and emergencies. In a broader perspective, the traditional short-term strategy of using groundwater to combat water deficits during drought needs revisiting. The objective of this paper is to examine the relevance and options for developing and adopting such groundwater-based natural...

The term of “Appropriate Technology (AT)”, introduced by Schumacher which refers to all kind of technologies including environmental technology, has been since developed into a global discourse on technology advancement and its impacts of implementation on human civilisation as seen from various perspectives. The technology could also relate to the...

Food production and productivity improvements have contributed to lifting millions of people out of poverty and reduced hunger and malnutrition, but are associated with patterns of land intensification that have degraded agricultural land and caused great environmental harm. Underlying drivers affecting land conversion to and from agriculture...

This Chapter highlights selected resilience and sustainability measures that can be implemented in cities and towns now to ensure that our communities, as well as future generations, will be able to deal with the difficult challenges our region faces. Sections 4.2 and 4.3 deal with building resilience of cities and towns to climate-related...

This fact sheet shows flood modeling results for the San Juan subwatershed of the Philippines. The flood-affected area is expected to increase by ~10% from 2015-2025 due to planned land-use changes.