**Socio-Environmental Vulnerability Assessment for Sustainable Management**

Editors

**Szymon Szewra ´nski Jan K. Kazak**

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*Editors* Szymon Szewranski ´ Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences Poland

Jan K. Kazak Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences Poland

*Editorial Office* MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland

This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal *Sustainability* (ISSN 2071-1050) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/ special issues/Socio-environmental Vulnerability Assessment Sustainable Management).

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### **Contents**



### **About the Editors**

**Szymon Szewra ´nski** Full Professor—Director of the Institute of Spatial Management, Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences (Wrocław, Poland). He graduated in environmental engineering. Experienced in research on GIS, decision support systems, sustainable development, environmental and spatial management, environmental law and policy, and environmental impact assessments. He has practical experience in business intelligence and GIS combined systems, such as Tableau and ArcGIS/QGIS. He completed postgraduate study in spatial planning, urban designing, geographical information systems, and environmental law, as well as an Executive MBA. He is a certified tutor and also graduated in pedagogical studies.

**Jan K. Kazak** Associate Professor at the Institute of Spatial Management at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences (Wrocław, Poland). He holds a PhD in environmental sciences and a DSc in engineering and technology sciences. His research interests cover, among other things, sustainable urban and regional management, urban adaptation to climate change, energy performance and policymaking process, decision support systems, and environmental impact assessments. He broadened his scientific and technical experience during internships in the Netherlands, Spain, Scotland (UK), and Australia. Since 2018, he has served as a Management Committee member in the European Network COST Action 17133: implementing nature-based solutions for creating a resourceful circular city. Currently, he is the leader of the leading research group, Sustainable Cities and Regions (https://upwr.edu.pl/en/research/leading-research-group/ sustainable-cities-and-regions-scr), where he coordinates the work of an interdisciplinary team of urban planners, landscape architects, geographers, economists, real estate professionals, and IT experts to solve key problems in the functioning of socio-environmental systems.

### **Preface to "Socio-Environmental Vulnerability Assessment for Sustainable Management"**

In the face of the global challenges encountered by human civilization in the 21st century, it is necessary to develop new study areas in the context of social and environmental systems. The ongoing parallel processes of urbanization, the aging of society, population growth, and increasing consumption interplay with threats caused by climate change, extreme weather events, and the depletion of resources. As climate-related hazards impact both human and environmental elements, there is a need to explore, analyze, and understand the vulnerability of socio-environmental systems. Therefore, adaptation to climate change as well as sustainable development require a knowledge-based approach and intelligent solutions for the integrated assessment of the state of the environment and society. The new complex approach incorporates studies on environmental impact assessment, human impact assessment, and adaptation to climate change; energy poverty and climate justice; the aging of society, environmental threats, and sustainability risk assessment; resilience assessment and mapping, supported by geospatial and artificial intelligence tools. The common framework should be attractive for a wide spectrum of specialists in the domains of environmental engineering, urban planning, geography, public policy, and other disciplines and cross-disciplinary fields.

> **Szymon Szewra ´nski, Jan K. Kazak** *Editors*

### *Editorial* **Socio-Environmental Vulnerability Assessment for Sustainable Management**

#### **Szymon Szewra ´nski \* and Jan K. Kazak**

Institute of Spatial Management, Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, ul. Grunwaldzka 55, 50-357 Wrocław, Poland; jan.kazak@upwr.edu.pl

**\*** Correspondence: szymon.szewranski@upwr.edu.pl

Received: 15 September 2020; Accepted: 18 September 2020; Published: 24 September 2020

Research on complex socio-environmental systems (also known as socio-ecological systems) has a long tradition in scientific considerations. Their theoretical basis was defined already in the 1970s [1]. In the following decades, the concept of a holistic consideration of complex interactions between social, economic, and environmental systems became permanently embedded in the paradigm of sustainable development. In the 21st century, in the face of global challenges faced by human civilization, it was necessary to develop new study areas in the context of research on social and environmental systems. Such concepts as resilience, integrated assessment of ecosystem services, socio-ecological system frameworks, coupled human and natural systems, and vulnerability frameworks appeared [2].

The conceptual framework that considers the vulnerability of complex human–environment systems proposed by Turner et al. (2003) is a rapidly developing research perspective [3]. In the context of the latest research, it has become crucial to seek answers to the question of who or what is most vulnerable to global environmental changes and where this vulnerability is the most crucial in terms of the geo-spatial point of view. Research conducted all over the world indicates that vulnerability to change is not a simple function of exposure to hazards, but also depends on the sensitivity and resilience of complex systems at a particular place and time [4].

Ongoing parallel processes of urbanization, aging of society, population growth, and increasing consumption interplay with threats caused by climate change, extreme weather events, and depletion of resources. As climate-related hazards impact both human and environmental elements, there is a need to explore, analyze, and understand the vulnerability of socio-environmental systems. Therefore, adaptation to climate change as well as sustainable development required a knowledge-based approach and intelligent solutions for integrated assessment of the state of the environment and society. With the purpose of illustrating the dynamics of research on the vulnerability of socio-environmental systems, we have conducted a query of the term "socio-environmental vulnerability" in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Since 2006, we have observed a gradual increase in interest in the problem of socio-environmental vulnerability. In recent years, on average, six to eight works indexed in databases have appeared annually (Figure 1). Finally, we identified 53 articles in Web of Science and 57 in the Scopus database.

According to the classification of research areas in Web of Science, the largest number of works had been assigned to Environmental Sciences (and Studies) (30%), Geography (25%) and Public, Environmental, and Occupational Health (19%). A total of 11% of the papers were in the field of Green and Sustainable Science and Technology and 8% in Education Research. Some articles (4%) had been tagged as Biodiversity Conservation, Economics, Law, Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary, and Urban Studies. Regarding the Scopus classification, Social Sciences covered 58% of the papers. In Environmental Science, it was 47%, while in Medicine, it was about 25%. Some papers had been assigned to Agricultural and Biological Sciences (14%), Earth and Planetary Sciences, or Energy (11%). In the field of Business, Management, and Accounting, there were 9% of the publications. Decision

Sciences covered 5%, and Arts and Humanities covered 4%. Among all records, 5% were recognized as Engineering.

**Figure 1.** The annual and the running total numbers of scientific publications tagged literally with "socio-environmental vulnerability" in Web of Science and Scopus databases.

The interdisciplinary research conducted in this domain addresses such issues as evaluation of the quality of life in urban and suburban environments [5,6], issues related to public health protection [7,8], environmental injustice [9], engineering and infrastructure safety [10–12], energy security [13], income and environmental risk [14,15], hydrological and climate change risks [16–18], and mapping techniques [19–22]. All of them had been incorporated into socio-environmental vulnerability assessments, which present a broad perspective of this domain.

This Special Issue also explores cross-disciplinary approaches, methodologies, and applications of socio-environmental vulnerability assessments that can be incorporated into sustainable management. The volume collects 20 different points of view, which cover environmental protection and development, urban planning, geography, public policymaking, participation processes, and other cross-disciplinary fields (Figure 2).

**Figure 2.** Word cloud generated from 20 publications collected in the Special Issue on "Socio-Environmental Vulnerability Assessment for Sustainable Management" in *Sustainability*.

The articles collected in this volume come from all over the world and seek answers to multidimensional questions.


These and other questions will be answered in this Special Issue. We hope that dissemination of this broad spectrum to the scientific community will be helpful and may possibly open new horizons for future research.

**Acknowledgments:** The work has been created as a result of scientific activity conducted within the Leading Research Group: Sustainable Cities and Regions at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences. **Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

*Article*
