The urgency of the problem is grounded in a shifting hazard landscape. Climate change is intensifying climate-driven natural hazards, and these events increasingly strike simultaneously, in quick succession, or trigger one another in cascading chains. Recent studies cited by the authors show that multi-hazard events are becoming more frequent across Europe and globally. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction defines multi-hazards as the selection of multiple major hazards a country faces, considering the specific contexts where hazardous events may occur simultaneously, cascadingly or cumulatively over time, taking into account their potential interrelated effects. In response, risk research has been shifting from single-hazard to multi-hazard thinking, yet most large-scale assessments remain dominated by quantitative methods such as machine learning, and data gaps often force studies into narrow approaches that exclude low- and middle-income countries.

The difficulty, the authors argue, is that multi-hazard risk assessment is inherently complex. It demands data, a deep understanding of how risks interact across space and time, and awareness of the local context in which disasters actually unfold. Decision makers face competing adaptation priorities and potential conflicts between measures designed for different hazard types. Moreover, the effectiveness of any disaster risk reduction strategy depends on how communities perceive and respond to risk, a dimension that standardized quantitative methods aimed at larger scales routinely miss. Risk perception, the essay notes, does not always align with modelled risk. A study in Bangladesh combining media narratives, interviews and field observations found that risk perception is often ignored in local adaptation planning, while research on coastal property markets in the United States shows that despite growing hazards, coastal properties continue to rise in value.

The temporal dynamics of perception are equally striking. Immediately after a flood event, property prices in inundated areas drop by an average of 24.9 percent compared to non-flooded properties, yet that discount loses statistical significance within five years. In multi-hazard contexts there is a further complication: focusing on one hazard can decrease people’s attention to the risk posed by another. To structure their investigation of these dynamics, the researchers anchored their survey work in Protection Motivation Theory, a psychological framework with two key components. Threat appraisal addresses how likely people believe an event is and how severely they expect to be hit, while coping appraisal probes whether people believe anything can be done, whether it is affordable, and whether government adaptation measures would actually work.

Mixed-methods research, defined as projects that bring together qualitative approaches such as interviews with quantitative techniques such as risk modelling and survey analysis, is not new. Greene and colleagues laid the terminological foundations in 1989, reviewing studies that already combined methodologies, and interest has grown notably over the past decade, particularly in the social sciences. The main designs include convergent parallel, explanatory sequential and exploratory sequential approaches. What García Álvarez and de Ruiter propose is a simultaneous, iterative process in which quantitative and qualitative strands inform each other continuously. A qualitative interview can improve the interpretation of structured survey data or reshape the survey itself for later stages, as stakeholders identify problems the researchers had not anticipated. Quantitative results, in turn, can guide which questions matter most in interviews and which adaptation solutions to model.

The framework was tested during a ten-day fieldwork trip to Tenerife in March 2025, an island the authors describe as a complex multi-hazard environment exposed to volcanic eruptions, coastal hazards, wildfires and landslides. Recent events, including the devastating 2023 wildfires and the 2021 eruption on the neighboring island of La Palma, have highlighted gaps in preparedness. The team applied a sequential design in which quantitative methods influenced qualitative instruments and vice versa: GIS-based observations and survey results shaped interview questions, while exploratory interviews determined which key questions to address quantitatively and which adaptation solutions to model. A total of 174 respondents completed a 25-question survey, administered in person and online in Spanish and English versions, coded in KoboToolbox and analyzed in Python to test Protection Motivation Theory hypotheses. Five semi-structured interviews targeted three key economic sectors highly exposed to climate risk: agriculture, tourism and critical infrastructure, with thematic analysis covering risk perception, adaptation levels and trust in authorities.

The complementarity of the methods surfaced repeatedly. Desktop analysis and GIS-based exposure mapping provided an initial understanding of each region and identified locations to verify in the field, where observations revealed missing infrastructure, unregistered buildings and local bottlenecks. Several regions of the island contained buildings absent from Google Maps that would have been neglected in modelling otherwise. Questionnaire results showed that respondents were unaware of any emergency plan for most climate hazards despite recent wildfires and coastal storms, yet residents knew volcanic eruption procedures because drills had been conducted by some municipalities after the La Palma eruption. That contrast, the authors suggest, could directly shape future emergency communication plans. In the northern town of Tegueste, nestled in a valley between forested mountains and exposed to wildfires and flooding from steep ravines called barrancos, field observations confirmed residential areas and infrastructure inside high-risk zones, along with accumulated vegetation and debris that could block water flows.

Interviews then revealed opportunities invisible to any dataset. Conversations with locals and field observations uncovered large areas of abandoned agricultural terraces near Taganana, offering low-conflict sites for reforestation, since converting productive farmland to nature-based solutions would require compensating farmers. For Tegueste specifically, the survey confirmed that locals ranked wildfires as the top perceived hazard following the nearby 2023 blaze, and econometric analysis showed that residents with prior hazard experience were more likely to have taken adaptive measures. Yet overall worry levels were low, a contrast between perceived and modelled risk that the authors say reveals communication and awareness gaps pure modelling would overlook. The final recommendations combined these strands: clearing vegetation at barranco bottlenecks, installing five small retention basins to slow runoff, and introducing grazing herbivores to manage vegetation regrowth.

The approach carries particular weight for nature-based solutions, defined by the European Commission as solutions inspired and supported by nature that are cost-effective while providing environmental, social and economic benefits. Their feasibility depends on community acceptance and perceived co-benefits, dimensions that are difficult to quantify but critical for uptake, and the lack of standardized indicators has limited both the evidence base and private investment. Mixed-methods can monetize non-market co-benefits through tools such as choice experiments and contingent valuation, feeding into cost-benefit analysis, while also exposing inequities, since nature-based solutions can raise property prices and displace lower-income residents. In one Dutch study cited by the authors, conversations with waterboard members revealed land-use conflicts that led researchers to add agricultural land conversion as a survey attribute, uncovering a significant decline in respondent utility as more farmland was converted, an insight that would otherwise have been missed. The framework also aligns with the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions, addressing criteria on societal challenges, local context, economic viability, inclusive governance and trade-offs.

The authors are candid about the costs and pitfalls. Fieldwork is resource-intensive and time-bounded; access to key locations was sometimes blocked by private property, forcing contingency plans. Time constraints limited questionnaire numbers and raised sampling bias risks, since environmentally engaged residents were more willing to participate, and any mid-fieldwork survey revision cost a full day of data. Language barriers complicated interviews with stakeholders uncomfortable speaking English, and technical terms such as multi-hazards and nature-based solutions required clarification. Integrating diverse data types, from ecological measurements to soil stability and tourism impacts, into a coherent framework risks inconsistencies, and local results resist generalization. Their research agenda responds with concrete prescriptions: interdisciplinary teams familiar with the region, standardized mixed-methods protocols for local multi-hazard risk, pre-testing surveys before fieldwork begins, preliminary analysis during the trip to catch data problems while they can still be fixed, and genuine incorporation of local knowledge. Done well, they conclude, the iterative integration of methods bridges the gap between scientific modelling and community realities, producing adaptation strategies that are simultaneously evidence-based, socially equitable and, crucially, accepted by the people they are meant to protect.

Subject of Research: Mixed-methods approaches to local multi-hazard climate risk assessment and nature-based solutions in Tenerife

Article Title: Breaking the methodological silos: Integrating Mixed-Methods in Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment Lessons learnt from fieldwork in Tenerife

Article References: García Álvarez, G., & de Ruiter, M. C. (2026). Breaking the methodological silos: Integrating Mixed-Methods in Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment Lessons learnt from fieldwork in Tenerife. PLOS Climate, 5(10), e0001070. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0001070

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pclm.0001070

Keywords: multi-hazard risk, mixed methods, Tenerife, nature-based solutions, climate adaptation, risk perception, disaster risk reduction, fieldwork, stakeholder interviews, GIS mapping, PLOS Climate, Canary Islands

The research team, led by Faduma Jama Hussein of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, together with Omar Arabow Addan and Hibo Ilyas Ahmed, adopted a qualitative phenomenological design to capture how stakeholders experience participation from the inside. Rather than measuring project outputs with external indicators, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 purposively selected participants, including community leaders, civil society representatives, municipal officials, and community members. This approach allowed them to reconstruct the lived sequence of development initiatives in Mogadishu—planning, implementation, monitoring, and continuity—and to trace how perceptions of involvement shifted across each stage.

Thematic analysis of the interview material revealed a striking pattern: participation in Mogadishu is stage-specific and context-dependent. Participants most consistently identified early planning and priority-setting as the critical entry point. When residents were consulted before budgets were drafted and objectives were fixed, projects were perceived to align far more closely with local needs. Once that window closed, later opportunities for involvement tended to produce weaker effects, because the fundamental direction of the initiative had already been decided. In other words, consultation after the fact could inform communities about decisions, but it rarely changed them.

The implementation stage emerged as the phase that converted consultation into something more durable: cooperation. Participants described how involving residents during execution encouraged local contributions of labor, materials, and local knowledge, and enabled practical problem-solving when obstacles arose on the ground. In a city where formal institutional capacity is limited, this community-level improvisation appears to function as an informal resilience mechanism, keeping projects moving through disruptions that would otherwise stall them. The researchers found that implementation-phase participation transformed residents from passive beneficiaries into active partners with a stake in the outcome.

Community monitoring, by contrast, presented a more complicated picture. Participants regarded resident oversight of ongoing projects as valuable for accountability and quality control, yet the study found that monitoring was the least consistently institutionalized stage of participation. Where mechanisms for community-based monitoring existed, they were often informal, dependent on individual goodwill rather than embedded procedures. The authors suggest that this gap represents one of the most promising targets for reform, because sustained monitoring with transparent reporting could extend the benefits of early participation across the entire life cycle of a project.

The study also mapped the conditions that enable or constrain participation, and the results read as a diagnostic checklist for anyone working in fragile urban settings. Transparent communication, inclusive representation, institutional responsiveness, and trust emerged as the strongest enablers of engagement. Conversely, inadequate information, socioeconomic pressures on households, unequal inclusion of marginalized groups, limited institutional capacity, mistrust between communities and authorities, and persistent security constraints all weakened participation. In Mogadishu, where security considerations shape daily movement and where trust in public institutions remains fragile, these barriers are not abstract—they determine who shows up, who speaks, and whose concerns are recorded.

Perhaps the most sobering finding concerns the depth of participation itself. Drawing on the established typology of participatory development, the researchers observed that participation in Mogadishu occurred mainly through consultation and collaboration. Evidence of full community control over decisions and resources—the highest rung of the participation ladder—was limited. Residents were frequently asked for their views, and sometimes invited to work alongside implementing agencies, but they rarely held final authority over budgets, design choices, or resource allocation. This distinction matters theoretically: the study extends participatory development theory by showing that consultation produces stronger perceived benefits precisely when community input demonstrably affects decisions and is sustained through implementation and monitoring, rather than ending at the town-hall stage.

The authors are careful about the limits of their evidence. Because the study relies on stakeholder accounts rather than objective project indicators or a counterfactual design, its findings concern perceived relationships and mechanisms, and they do not establish causal effects. A community that feels ownership of a water project, for example, may report better outcomes even if measured service metrics are unchanged. Still, in a context where reliable administrative data are scarce, systematically gathering the perceptions of those closest to the projects provides an evidence base that conventional evaluations often miss, and it illuminates the mechanisms through which participation is thought to work.

The ethical architecture of the research reflects the sensitivity of the setting. The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the SIMAD University Institutional Review Board, and all participants provided informed consent before data collection. Written consent was documented through signed forms where participants were comfortable signing; where anonymity or security concerns made signing risky, verbal consent was documented instead. Participation was voluntary, withdrawal carried no penalty, and all responses were anonymized. These procedures underscore a broader point for the field: conducting rigorous social research in fragile cities requires methodological flexibility without compromising the protection of human participants.

The practical implications are concrete. The authors recommend early participatory planning as the non-negotiable first step, paired with documented feedback loops so communities can see how their input shaped final decisions. Inclusive project committees, deliberately structured to bring marginalized voices to the table, would address the unequal inclusion that participants identified as a persistent barrier. Finally, community-based monitoring with transparent reporting would institutionalize the oversight role that residents already value but rarely get to perform systematically. For Mogadishu, and for other post-conflict cities wrestling with how to make aid and municipal investment stick, the message is clear: sustainable development is not something delivered to communities, but something built with them, beginning on the very first day of planning and continuing long after the ribbon is cut. The research was supported by SIMAD University, and the article is available open access, making its insights accessible to the practitioners, municipal officials, and community organizers who need them most.

Subject of Research: Community participation in sustainable development in Mogadishu, Somalia

Article Title: Exploring the role of community participation in promoting sustainable development in Mogadishu, Somalia

Article References: Hussein, F. J., Addan, O. A., & Ahmed, H. I. (2026). Exploring the role of community participation in promoting sustainable development in Mogadishu, Somalia. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04881-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04881-4

Keywords: community participation, sustainable development, Mogadishu, Somalia, participatory governance, post-conflict cities, qualitative research, community monitoring, stakeholder interviews, fragile states, urban development, Discover Sustainability

The study was carried out as part of the PharGTrans project, funded by the Research Council of Finland, and took the form of an interview study rather than a survey or laboratory analysis. Researchers spoke with stakeholders drawn from seven European countries, capturing perspectives from inside pharmaceutical companies, industry associations, non-governmental organisations, public authorities and academia. This breadth matters, because chemicals legislation does not land on all actors equally. A regulator interpreting a directive, an NGO campaigning for stricter limits and a manufacturer re-engineering a production line all experience the same legal text in profoundly different ways, and the study set out to document precisely those divergent experiences.

Among the reforms attracting the most attention was the proposed restriction of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFASs, under the REACH Regulation, the EU’s flagship framework for the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. PFASs are a vast family of synthetic compounds prized for their chemical and thermal stability, which is exactly what makes them so persistent in the environment and so difficult to replace in industrial processes. Many stakeholders interviewed for the study viewed the proposed restriction, alongside the Regulation on Packaging and Packaging Waste, as a genuine push in the right direction for the sector’s green transformation.

According to the researchers, these regulations are encouraging the development of environmentally less harmful compounds that could, in the future, replace substances of concern used in pharmaceutical production processes. They are also expected to increase the use of recycled materials in pharmaceutical packaging, an area where the industry has historically lagged behind consumer sectors. Changes aimed at improving information sharing and transparency, such as the regulation establishing a common data platform on chemicals, were likewise seen as supportive, since better data flows can help companies identify hazardous inputs earlier and plan substitutions more strategically.

Yet the same instruments that inspire hope in some corners of the sector provoke alarm in others. Doctoral Researcher Sanja Riikonen of the University of Eastern Finland, who led the interviews, noted that the PFAS restriction and the recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive prompted considerable discussion, particularly among interviewees from pharmaceutical companies and industry associations. The tension is not simply resistance to change; it reflects a technical reality about how deeply certain substances are woven into modern pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Although the proposed PFAS restriction does not apply to active pharmaceutical ingredients, the pharmaceutical industry relies on many PFAS-containing materials in its production processes. These compounds can appear in equipment linings, filters, tubing, gaskets and other critical components where their resistance to aggressive chemicals and high temperatures is difficult to replicate. The interviewees viewed a rapid transition to alternative materials as challenging, and their concern highlights a recurring dilemma in green chemistry policy: banning a problematic substance class is straightforward on paper, but qualifying and validating replacements in a sector governed by strict quality and safety requirements can take years of testing and regulatory approval.

The recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive introduces a different kind of pressure through its extended producer responsibility scheme. Under this scheme, the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries are required to cover a large proportion of the costs associated with upgrading wastewater treatment processes in EU Member States. The logic is that manufacturers should bear some responsibility for the residues their products leave in water systems, where trace pharmaceutical compounds can affect aquatic ecosystems. But the interviewees found that requiring industry to bear these costs could divert companies’ resources and attention away from other measures that promote sustainability, effectively pitting one environmental goal against another within the same corporate budgets.

This tension between well-intentioned instruments is one of the study’s most significant findings. A company spending heavily on wastewater treatment levies may have less capacity to invest in greener synthesis routes, safer packaging or substitution programmes. Stakeholders questioned whether some of the legislative changes would genuinely advance the green transformation at all, suggesting that the cumulative burden of overlapping requirements could slow the very transition the legislation is meant to accelerate. The finding underscores a broader lesson in environmental governance: the aggregate effect of individually reasonable policies can be unbalanced if their interactions are not carefully assessed.

In response, the study points toward a clear remedy: closer collaboration between different policy sectors and stakeholder groups throughout the legislative drafting process. Several stakeholders highlighted challenges arising from shortcomings in communication and a limited understanding of the broader picture across sectors. According to the interviewees, more transparent preparatory processes, better information-sharing and more inclusive dialogue could reduce inconsistencies between regulations affecting the chemicals, environmental and pharmaceutical sectors and promote more coherent decision-making. In practice, this would mean regulators consulting more systematically with the industries and communities their rules affect, and vice versa, before texts are finalised rather than after implementation problems emerge.

Riikonen’s concluding message reaches beyond the pharmaceutical sector to anyone shaping environmental regulation. The effects of regulation supporting the green transformation on different stakeholders, she argues, should be taken into account more effectively, because doing so could help avoid unintended consequences that may even slow down the green transformation the rules are intended to advance. As the EU continues to revise its chemicals framework in pursuit of a non-toxic environment, the Finnish study offers a grounded reminder that the path to greener pharmaceuticals runs not through legislation alone, but through legislation designed with a clear-eyed understanding of the laboratories, factories and treatment plants where it will ultimately take effect.

Subject of Research: Stakeholder perceptions of EU chemicals legislation reforms and their effects on green transformation in the pharmaceutical sector

Article Title: Pharmaceutical sector stakeholders see changes to EU chemicals legislation as presenting both opportunities and challenges for the green transformation

Article References: Pharmaceutical sector stakeholders see changes to EU chemicals legislation as presenting both opportunities and challenges for the green transformation. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: EU chemicals legislation, pharmaceutical sector, green transformation, REACH Regulation, PFAS restriction, Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, extended producer responsibility, sustainable chemistry, pharmaceutical packaging, stakeholder interviews, environmental policy, University of Eastern Finland

The research team, led by Panithi Nakhonthong and Preenithi Aksorn of Khon Kaen University, examined the Nakhon Pathom–Nong Plalai section of the Nakhon Pathom–Hua Hin double-track railway project, a State Railway of Thailand undertaking spanning roughly 93 kilometres across three provinces with a construction budget of about 8.20 billion Thai baht. Using a process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) following the ISO 14040 and 14044 frameworks, they compiled a cradle-to-gate inventory covering raw material extraction, material production, transport to site, on-site construction, and equipment energy use. The functional unit was the construction of the entire 93-kilometre section, with results reported both as total emissions and as a normalized intensity per kilometre to allow comparison with international benchmarks.

The headline numbers are striking. Building the line generated approximately 0.27 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, or about 2,941 tonnes of CO2-equivalent per kilometre. Structural work—bridges, overpasses, and other reinforced concrete and steel elements—was the single largest hotspot, contributing 67.05 percent of the total, followed by track work at 19.75 percent, station work at 10.30 percent, and earthwork at just 2.90 percent. Within the material inventory, reinforcing steel alone contributed roughly 110,535 tonnes of CO2-equivalent, rails added nearly 49,000 tonnes, and cement more than 45,000 tonnes. Ballast, hauled in enormous quantities for the track bed, contributed about 29,378 tonnes. By contrast, all the diesel fuel burned by construction machinery—more than three million litres of off-road diesel—produced only about 8,300 tonnes.

These results echo a consistent pattern documented across transportation infrastructure worldwide. Chang and Kendall’s landmark assessment of California’s high-speed rail showed that material production dominated construction emissions, and subsequent studies of Korean and Chinese high-speed lines confirmed that bridges, rails, sleepers, and concrete structures are the principal hotspots. The Thai case extends this evidence to a conventional double-track railway delivered under local procurement and supply-chain conditions, using domestic emission factors from the Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organization and the Thai Life Cycle Inventory database, supplemented by the international Inventory of Carbon and Energy. The consistency across such different contexts suggests that embodied carbon in steel and cement is a universal challenge for infrastructure decarbonization, not a quirk of any single country’s construction practices.

One of the study’s most instructive comparisons involves emission intensity. The Thai line’s 2,941 tonnes of CO2-equivalent per kilometre sits far below the figures reported for high-speed railways, which range from about 3,310 to a staggering 32,790 tonnes per kilometre. But the researchers caution against reading this as evidence of superior environmental performance. The decisive variable is structural composition: the Thai conventional line has an estimated bridge share of only about 10 percent, whereas the high-speed benchmarks carry 15 to 75 percent of their length on elevated structures. Bridges demand vastly more concrete and steel, and therefore vastly more embodied carbon. Headline intensity figures, the authors argue, are meaningless without accounting for what a railway is actually made of—a lesson for any policymaker tempted to rank projects by a single number.

What distinguishes this study from earlier railway LCAs is not the hotspot identification itself but the bridge it builds from measurement to management. The researchers recognize that an LCA result, however precise, does not by itself determine who should act, whether an alternative is feasible, or when an intervention should occur. To address this, they conducted semi-structured interviews with 40 experienced stakeholders—project managers, engineers, inspectors, and technicians—directly involved in the project, eliciting their views on practical mitigation measures across five life-cycle stages, from initial design through post-construction evaluation. From the literature and field observations, the team synthesized thirteen environmental intervention factors, spanning appropriate design, low-carbon and recycled material selection, construction-method choice, local sourcing to shorten transport distances, equipment efficiency, monitoring, and post-project assessment.

The interviews revealed a clear pattern of perceived priority. Early-stage measures dominated: appropriate structural design ranked first with 115 quotations, followed closely by environmentally friendly or recycled material selection with 112, and construction-method selection with 101. Exploratory correlation analysis showed strong co-occurrence among these themes, with the strongest relationship—between appropriate design and green material selection—reaching a Pearson coefficient of 0.9098. Construction-stage measures such as machine efficiency and green technology innovation, along with post-construction equipment management, attracted far less attention. The researchers are careful to stress that quotation frequency reflects perceived priority within this sample, not measured carbon savings or population-wide agreement.

The methodological heart of the paper is an intervention-screening matrix that cross-classifies LCA hotspot magnitude against stakeholder priority, assigning each combination a distinct next step. Measures that are both environmentally significant and strongly supported—such as steel- and cement-efficient structural design or lower-carbon material options—proceed immediately to quantitative LCA scenario testing and engineering feasibility assessment, and may be adopted only if a net greenhouse gas reduction is demonstrated. High-emission inputs that lack implementation support trigger a barrier, responsibility, and supply review before any scenario analysis, with the explicit rule that a measured hotspot must not be deprioritized simply because stakeholders mentioned it less often. Conversely, actions that stakeholders rate highly but which touch only minor emission flows—equipment upgrades, training, monitoring—require verification of their actual environmental leverage before any savings can be claimed. Low-priority items on both dimensions remain under periodic monitoring. This decision logic preserves the independence of the two evidence streams while preventing either from masquerading as the other.

A one-way sensitivity analysis reinforced the robustness of the core conclusions. Varying the combined reinforcing and structural steel emission factor by plus or minus 20 percent produced the largest absolute response—a 20 percent increase raising the total by roughly 31,811 tonnes of CO2-equivalent—while cement quantity changes of plus or minus 10 percent and a 50 percent proportional variation in ballast-related transport activity had smaller effects. Crucially, across all tested ranges, structural work remained the largest work-category hotspot, meaning the prioritization conclusion held even as the magnitude of the estimate shifted. The authors acknowledge limitations: the cradle-to-gate boundary excludes operation, maintenance, and end-of-life phases; the analysis rests on a single Thai project; and the deterministic stress tests provide directional sensitivity rather than statistical confidence intervals.

The practical implications reach well beyond one railway. For designers, the message is that structural optimization and material-efficient engineering offer the greatest carbon leverage, particularly for bridges and elevated structures. For contractors, the findings suggest that waste reduction, logistics planning, and rework minimization matter mainly because they curb demand for carbon-intensive materials rather than because of fuel savings. For project owners and policymakers, the framework offers a template for embedding life cycle thinking into procurement: require a baseline LCA, identify material hotspots, apply the screening matrix, and commission comparative scenarios for technical alternatives before contracts are signed. The authors emphasize that the numerical priorities cannot simply be transferred to other countries or infrastructure types—each application demands a new local inventory, context-specific thresholds, and fresh feasibility checks. But the underlying logic, that measured environmental significance and stakeholder feasibility must be kept distinct and then deliberately combined, offers a transparent and reproducible pathway for any material-intensive infrastructure project seeking genuine, verifiable carbon reductions rather than well-intentioned gestures.

Subject of Research: Life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from conventional double-track railway construction in Thailand and stakeholder-informed screening of low-carbon management responses

Article Title: Environmental challenges of railway infrastructure: linking life cycle assessment with management responses for low-carbon construction

Article References: Nakhonthong, P., & Aksorn, P. (2026). Environmental challenges of railway infrastructure: linking life cycle assessment with management responses for low-carbon construction. Environmental Challenges, 25, Article 101660. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envc.2026.101660

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.envc.2026.101660

Keywords: railway infrastructure, life cycle assessment, embodied carbon, greenhouse gas emissions, steel and cement, sustainable construction, Thailand, double-track railway, stakeholder interviews, low-carbon materials, procurement, carbon footprint

The problem the researchers set out to solve is a paradox familiar to environmental agencies across Europe. Everyone agrees that recreation can harm freshwater life, yet under the European Water Framework Directive, recreational activities are not even recognised as a distinct pressure category. Their effects get folded invisibly into broader categories such as hydromorphological alteration or biological disturbance, which means they are routinely underrepresented in official pressure assessments compared with pollution, water abstraction or land-use change. Managers facing the Directive’s requirement to produce cost-effective Programmes of Measures are left guessing where to act, often relying on unstructured expert judgement and reacting site by site rather than planning at the scale of the whole basin. Worse, uncoordinated local restrictions can simply push crowds from a regulated site to an unregulated one downstream, displacing the problem rather than solving it.

The scientific literature has not helped. Angling and navigation have attracted thousands of publications per year, while bathing and canyoning, despite booming in popularity and often being intensely concentrated in space, generate fewer than ten studies annually. This imbalance matters because the impacts differ sharply by activity. Canyoning, with its repeated walking, climbing and sliding along stream channels, tramples riverbeds, mobilises sediment and damages riparian vegetation, reducing the abundance and diversity of benthic macroinvertebrates. Bathing raises turbidity and nutrient concentrations and introduces sunscreen chemicals, although measured concentrations often fall below toxicity thresholds; bathers can also shift the composition of benthic bacterial communities, with unknown consequences for ecosystem functioning. Motorised navigation adds fuel and hydrocarbon contamination, sediment resuspension and noise, while boats and fishing gear alike can spread invasive species. In Mediterranean rivers, where summer crowds coincide with the lowest flows of the year, these disturbances hit ecosystems at their most vulnerable moment.

To build a workable assessment, the team combined hard data with structured human knowledge. They compiled spatial layers for all four activities from official cartography, navigation declarations, environmental informant programmes, federation databases and even georeferenced swimming spots scraped from Google Maps and Wikiloc. Thirty-four semi-structured interviews with stakeholders drawn from an initial pool of 1,558 actors, including administrators, user organisations, companies and researchers, supplied context on where activities peak, what impacts people observe and which measures are realistic. Crucially, the interviews never replaced quantitative data; they complemented it, flagging data gaps and grounding the scoring of management options in practical experience rather than theory.

The quantitative core of the method is elegantly simple in concept: pressure equals the intensity of recreational use relative to the capacity of the receiving water body. Angling pressure, for example, was calculated from daily licence equivalents weighted by fishing modality, with salmonid harvest zones weighted twenty times more than catch-and-release zones, then normalised by river length and mean annual discharge estimated with a calibrated SWAT+ hydrological model. Navigation pressure weighted internal combustion engines twenty times more than rowing or sailing. Each water body was then classified as having null, low, moderate or high pressure using the Jenks natural breaks algorithm, with a separate ‘no data’ category preserving uncertainty rather than pretending absent evidence means absent pressure.

The results confirmed strong spatial clustering. Angling was the most widespread activity, yet only 5 percent of water bodies reached high pressure, concentrated in salmonid harvest reaches and intensively fished reservoirs. Navigation was overwhelmingly benign: 90 percent of water bodies showed null pressure, with the few high-pressure cases tied to reservoirs permitting motorised boats. The real story lay in the data gaps. Bathing was identified in 97 water bodies, but visitor counts existed for only 14 of them, leaving 86 percent unquantifiable. Canyoning fared similarly, with 74 percent of affected water bodies lacking descent data. In other words, the activities growing fastest and least studied are precisely those managers cannot currently measure, a systematic blind spot that likely leads to underestimating total recreational pressure.

From the assessment, the researchers compiled 26 candidate management measures, each summarised in a standardised factsheet covering cost, complexity, implementation time, social acceptance and expected effectiveness. Two composite indices, one for effectiveness and one for difficulty, then ranked the options. The winners combined broad reach with low barriers: extending the criteria for prohibiting bathing, awareness campaigns on bathing impacts, banning internal combustion engines across all reservoirs, and prohibiting fishing in trout genetic reserves all scored highly. At the bottom sat expensive infrastructure projects such as artificial channels for water skiing and adaptation of public swimming pools, whose difficulty was driven mainly by economic cost. Notably, difficulty was shaped more by cost and social acceptance than by technical complexity or time, a finding with clear implications for what agencies can realistically deliver.

The final piece is a rule-based decision-support algorithm that walks each water body through a logical sequence. Low or null pressure means maintaining current regulation. Moderate or high pressure triggers impact monitoring, scaled up for specially protected sites. If significant ecological impacts are confirmed, specially protected water bodies move toward eliminating the pressure entirely, while unprotected ones receive pressure-reduction measures; where impacts are not significant, precautionary reduction applies in protected areas and continued monitoring elsewhere. The algorithm was reviewed by basin technicians and reproduced the decision logic managers already use informally, but now in a transparent, reproducible form. When unquantified bathing or canyoning activity was conservatively treated as high pressure, the framework correctly flagged that data collection, not regulation, should come first.

Prioritisation across the basin distilled the message further: roughly 10 percent of water bodies, those combining aggregated pressure of four or higher with at least one conservation designation such as protected natural areas, fluvial natural reserves or trout genetic reserves, emerge as the prime targets for intervention. The authors are candid about limitations. Annual-average indicators miss the seasonal intensity of summer low-flow peaks, the stakeholder sample is purposive rather than statistically representative, and bathers’ informal perspectives were harder to capture than those of organised angling clubs. The algorithm has been validated qualitatively, not against historical management outcomes, because no such systematic records exist. Yet the framework’s modular design, built from data types most regions already possess or can generate cheaply, makes it transferable to any water-scarce, tourism-intensive basin where recreational pressure is outpacing management capacity. Its deepest insight may be the simplest: in data-poor conservation, knowing what you do not know is itself a management action, and spending a little on counting swimmers and canyoners may buy more ecological protection than any single restrictive rule.

Subject of Research: Prioritising recreational pressures on freshwater ecosystems for management action under uncertainty

Article Title: From pressure indicators to management action: prioritising recreational pressures in freshwater ecosystems under uncertainty

Article References: Pueyo-Ros, J., Acuña, V., & Freixa, A. (2026). From pressure indicators to management action: prioritising recreational pressures in freshwater ecosystems under uncertainty. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 32, Article 101535. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2026.101535

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.indic.2026.101535

Keywords: freshwater ecosystems, recreational pressures, Water Framework Directive, bathing, angling, canyoning, navigation, decision-support algorithm, Mediterranean rivers, pressure indicators, stakeholder interviews, environmental management

The relationship between the urban environment and public health is one of the most robustly established findings in modern epidemiology. The quality of housing, the design of transport infrastructure, the availability of green space and the walkability of neighbourhoods all measurably influence the risk that residents will develop life-threatening conditions. Poorly connected communities with limited access to parks and active travel options show elevated rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness and several cancers. Yet despite decades of evidence, improving urban environments as a preventative public health measure remains extraordinarily complex, because it demands coordinated action from multiple actors with different mandates, budgets and priorities. Planning authorities, housing developers, transport agencies and health services each hold only part of the levers required to create healthier places, and no single organisation bears the full cost of the diseases that bad design can produce.

It is precisely this fragmentation that the researchers set out to address. To assess how economic evidence could support more integrated decision-making, the team conducted 167 qualitative interviews with key stakeholders drawn from across England’s urban development system, spanning national and local government, private industry and civil society. The interviews explored in depth how the HAUS tool could support collaboration and informed decision-making across sectors that rarely share a common evidence base or a common metric of success. What emerged was a striking consensus: stakeholders recognised the value of HAUS as a new way to support shared decision-making and to create incentives for organisations to work together toward better health outcomes, precisely because it assigns an economic value to impacts that have historically been invisible in development appraisals.

The technical core of HAUS is a valuation model that links specific features of the environment to health outcomes and their associated economic costs. The tool quantifies and monetises changes in disease occurrence and premature mortality linked with different urban development interventions and affecting local populations. In practical terms, a proposal to add walkable streets, expand green infrastructure or improve housing quality can be assessed not only in terms of construction costs and property values, but also in terms of the expected reduction in NHS treatment costs, productivity losses and the broader societal burden of illness. By translating health outcomes into economic terms, the tool helps decision-makers grasp the long-term value of healthier urban environments and supports more informed investment and planning decisions that might otherwise be dismissed on short-term financial grounds.

The tool did not appear from nowhere. It was initially developed during an earlier research pilot and was further refined throughout the project in collaboration with the UK’s Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, giving it an unusually direct route from academic prototype to policy application. That collaboration has now borne institutional fruit: the ministry has adopted HAUS in its appraisal guides for local authorities, embedding health valuation into the standard machinery of English planning assessment. For a field in which public health arguments have long struggled to compete with housing delivery targets and economic growth imperatives, this represents a significant shift in what evidence counts when the future of a city is decided.

Dr Andrew Barnfield, Senior Lecturer in public health at the University of East London and co-author of the study, emphasised that the tool changes what decision-makers are able to see. ‘The HAUS tool enables decision makers to account for health costs that are linked with the urban environment,’ he said. ‘As our work shows, this is vital for making healthier and more equitable places.’ The equity dimension matters because the health burden of poor urban design falls disproportionately on disadvantaged communities, which are more likely to live near major roads, in lower-quality housing and with limited access to green space. By making these costs explicit, HAUS gives advocates for those communities a quantitative argument that resonates in boardrooms and town halls alike.

Professor Sarah Ayres, from the University of Bristol’s School for Policy Studies, framed the development as a genuine methodological milestone. ‘The collaboration between TRUUD and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has created a version of the Health Appraisal of Urban Systems model which is to be used for housing, community and local government interventions,’ she said. ‘For the first time, there are now methods to quantify and value the potential health impacts of urban interventions for specific populations.’ The reference to TRUUD, the research consortium on urban health decarbonisation and decision-making of which the three universities are part, underlines the scale of the effort required to move such tools from theory into the working routines of government.

Dr Geoff Bates, from the University of Bath’s Institute for Policy Research, argued that the economic framing is not a concession to fiscal orthodoxy but a strategic necessity. ‘Making the economic case to pursue preventative policies is one way that can persuade policymakers to act to improve long-term health and wellbeing,’ he said. ‘Improving policymaker access to evidence and tools like HAUS that demonstrate the savings to the public purse from investing in healthier housing and urban environments is a step towards improving public health.’ The logic is familiar from other domains of preventative policy: the costs of disease are diffuse and delayed, while the costs of intervention are immediate and concentrated, and only tools that render future savings visible can rebalance that asymmetry in political decision-making.

The findings arrive at a moment when the pressures on urban systems are intensifying. Rising obesity rates, an ageing population, persistent air pollution and the health impacts of climate change all converge on the built environment, and health services across the developed world are increasingly looking upstream toward prevention. The researchers conclude that HAUS provides valuable evidence to encourage cross-sector collaboration and to embed preventative public health into urban development decisions, shifting the question from whether cities can afford to prioritise health to whether they can afford not to. If the tool’s adoption by national government spreads through local authority practice, the healthier city may cease to be an aspiration and become, at last, an audited line in the appraisal.

Subject of Research: Economic valuation of public health impacts in urban development decision-making

Article Title: Economic tool could help cities prioritize public health in urban development

Article References: Economic tool could help cities prioritize public health in urban development. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: urban development, public health, HAUS tool, economic valuation, planning policy, prevention, health equity, built environment, stakeholder interviews, England, University of East London, ministry adoption