Search Results (1,549)

Beyoğlu emerged as one of the principal centers of Western influence in the late Ottoman Empire due to the presence of Levantine communities and European institutions. This study investigates the role of the Sixth Municipal Department, the first modern municipal organization in the Ottoman Empire, in shaping urban governance, architecture, and cultural transformation in Beyoğlu. Using a historical-analytical approach, the research examines Ottoman archival documents, travelogues, memoirs, contemporary newspapers, architectural evidence, and secondary literature. The findings demonstrate that Levantines occupied influential positions within the municipal administration and significantly shaped urban development through investments in transportation, lighting, sanitation, public spaces, and architectural projects. However, municipal services were distributed unevenly and primarily benefited affluent Levantine and European residents, while poorer Muslim and non-Muslim neighborhoods received limited attention. The study further reveals that the Sixth Municipal Building, designed in a European Neo-Classical style, symbolized the institutional and architectural dimensions of Ottoman Westernization. Beyond urban administration, Levantine influence contributed to transformations in social life, consumption patterns, language, and architectural culture. The article concludes that the Sixth Municipal Department played a pioneering role in the emergence of modern municipal governance in the Ottoman Empire, while simultaneously reflecting the social inequalities and cultural dynamics that accompanied the Westernization process. Full article

The MENRO: Monitoring and Management System is a digital solution developed to modernize the manual operations of the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office (MENRO). The system provides a secure and user-friendly platform designed to streamline document handling, automate monitoring tasks, and ensure accurate environmental data management. This project specifically aims to: (1) develop a user-friendly interface that enables seamless document and record management, allowing administrators to effortlessly add, edit, update, and store essential information, and (2) design a system that is capable of automatically generating comprehensive lists of apprehension receipts, including violations and penalties issued to establishments under MENRO’s jurisdiction. These functions address long-standing inefficiencies in manual monitoring, recordkeeping, and compliance tracking. The system was evaluated using the ISO/IEC 25010:2011 software quality standards, focusing on functional suitability, performance efficiency, reliability, usability, compatibility, maintainability, portability, and security. Results show high usability and strong security features, ensuring that the platform meets operational needs while safeguarding sensitive environmental and legal records. By integrating real-time data access, automated reporting, and digitized forms used in environmental compliance checks, the system enhances MENRO’s capability to uphold environmental governance with greater transparency, accuracy, and accountability. Full article

Lethal foodborne illness outbreaks represent a critical intersection of public health surveillance, environmental health, and forensic toxicology. When acute gastrointestinal syndromes lead to sudden death, traditional postmortem investigation techniques are often hindered by tissue autolysis and the overgrowth of putrefactive microflora, which complicate conventional microbiological assays. This review establishes a comprehensive framework for chemical forensics by evaluating the utility of stable isotope analysis (SIA) as a supportive, probabilistic chemical proxy to complement traditional epidemiological investigations of postmortem food contamination sources. Following JBI scoping review guidelines and the PRISMA-ScR reporting framework, data from 42 peer-reviewed articles (2000–2026) were charted and synthesized to map natural isotopic variations (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N, δ¹⁸O, δ²H and δ³⁴S) across both forensic decedents and environmental reservoirs. The findings outline a structured, multi-tissue diagnostic cascade governed by biological metabolic turnover rates: unabsorbed gastric chyme provides a direct chemical match to contaminated source food items within a hyper-acute 0–6 h window; high-turnover visceral matrices (liver, blood plasma) shift to reflect acute exposure profiles within 1–7 days; and continuously fixed keratinized matrices (hair, nails) archive multi-month dietary and transcontinental transit histories. Furthermore, compound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) of individual amino acids offers unprecedented structural resolution, utilizing the carbon discrimination metric (Δ¹³C_glu-phe) to differentiate pristine agricultural signatures from endogenous metabolic distortions while biochemically verifying pre-mortem physiological stress and hyper-catabolic muscle wasting. Taphonomic thresholds were explicitly defined, establishing that bulk visceral soft tissues remain isotopically stable (±0.3‰) for up to 48 h at room temperature (~21 °C) before microbially induced nitrogen enrichment (δ¹⁵N > +2.8‰) alters native profiles, whereas hair and nail keratin maintain absolute isotopic stability for over 180 days postmortem. When pristine multi-isotope signatures are coupled with mandatory chloroform–methanol lipid extraction and processed through spatial Bayesian assignment models, geographic provenance tracking via environmental isoscapes achieves a predictive accuracy of 97%. This review introduces a standardized environmental health protocol designed to harmonize field environmental sampling with medical autopsies. This protocol provides a legally robust strategy for investigating unresolved lethal foodborne illness case-outbreaks, particularly those involving pediatric mortalities linked to the consumption of counterfeit or fraudulent food products in low- and middle-income countries. Furthermore, it aims to strengthen national and municipal legal frameworks and international biosecurity enforcement. Full article

South Africa possesses substantial bioenergy potential derived from agricultural residues, forestry by-products, municipal organic waste, wastewater sludge, and dedicated energy crops, positioning bioenergy as a potentially important contributor to the country’s low-carbon energy transition. Despite more than two decades of supportive policy, modern bioenergy remains a marginal contributor to the country’s energy system. Although previous studies have examined individual bioenergy technologies, feedstocks, environmental impacts, or policy frameworks, a comprehensive assessment of the alignment between policy ambition, technological readiness, implementation outcomes, and emerging sustainable development opportunities in South Africa remains lacking. This review presents a systematic integrative review of bioenergy development in South Africa, evaluating the alignment between policy ambition, technological readiness, and implementation outcomes. Literature published between 2000 and 2025 was systematically reviewed using Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and institutional publications. A PRISMA-informed screening process identified 427 records, of which 116 studies met the inclusion criteria for detailed synthesis. Evidence was synthesized across three interconnected dimensions: (i) policy and regulatory frameworks, (ii) feedstock availability and technological readiness, and (iii) deployment outcomes, implementation challenges, and future development opportunities. The findings reveal a persistent implementation gap despite abundant biomass resources and commercially established bioenergy conversion technologies Although global biofuel production exceeded 180 billion liters in 2023, South Africa’s installed bioenergy electricity capacity remains approximately 265 MW, representing less than 0.5% of the country’s approximately 60 GW installed electricity generation capacity. By comparison, installed solar and wind capacities exceed 8 GW and 3 GW, respectively. The review identifies fragmented governance, limited investment incentives, regulatory uncertainty, infrastructure constraints, and inadequate integration of bioenergy into national energy planning as the principal barriers to deployment. The review concludes that South Africa’s principal challenge is not biomass availability or technological capability, but translating policy ambition into coordinated implementation capable of scaling sustainable bioenergy deployment. Full article

Bryophytes possess a gene family repertoire substantially larger than vascular plants, yet the functional evolution of their transcription factors remains poorly understood. We conducted a nested analysis across 144 bryophyte genomes, cataloging 58 transcription factor families and deeply characterizing the C2H2 zinc-finger protein family. We identified 8246 C2H2 zinc-finger genes classified into four structural types based on zinc-finger architecture. Domain-level scanning of 11,565 zinc fingers revised Z-type frequency from ~20% to 4.2%. The plant-specific Q-type was most prevalent in mosses and least prevalent in liverworts, with the major Q-type radiation occurring in seed plants. C2H2 zinc-finger gene expansion in mosses was driven by whole-genome duplication, and gene count correlated with genome size. Through re-analysis of publicly available RNA-seq datasets, cross-species expression profiling showed that mosses mobilized 23–28% of their C2H2 zinc-finger repertoires under dehydration, whereas the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha showed no significant response to osmotic stress and only a weak, transient response to salt. Notably, the aluminum-tolerance regulator STOP1 was downregulated under dehydration. Together, these results suggest a marked divergence in stress-responsive C2H2-ZFP deployment between mosses and liverworts, although the underlying mechanisms remain to be validated functionally. Full article

Municipal conversion of dog shelters from contracted to direct operation often coincides with changes in facilities, staffing, veterinary access, adoption practices, euthanasia policy, and record keeping. The primary objective was to evaluate associations with municipality-level disposition and throughput outcomes; a secondary exploratory objective examined dog-level adoption and euthanasia pathways. We analyzed 68,032 dogs from 22 municipalities in Gyeongsangbuk-do, Korea, during 2016–2025. The primary difference-in-differences comparison included four municipalities that converted around 2021 and nine contracted controls. Event-study, exact label-permutation, and comparison-pool analyses served as diagnostics. Estimates were imprecise, no exact permutation p-value was below 0.05, and adoption and euthanasia had different pre-conversion trends. Excluding five newly digitized controls changed the adoption estimate from +4.65 to −1.86 percentage points. Censor-aware analysis estimated 13.33 additional days without a recorded disposition during the first year, but uncertainty was wide and the day-365 unresolved difference was small. In the secondary 35,366-dog subframe, mixed/Jindo-type outdoor dogs had a lower adoption hazard ratio (HR, 0.39; 95% CI, 0.35–0.45) and a higher euthanasia HR (1.61; 95% CI, 1.37–1.90). Direct operation was not supported as a uniform causal intervention; municipalities should evaluate welfare and management components and target support to dogs at elevated risk. Full article

Open Government Data (OGD) has the potential to support urban planning by increasing transparency, improving evidence-based decision-making, enhancing public participation, and monitoring progress toward sustainability goals. Despite this potential, the extent to which OGD supports planning and sustainability in practice remains unclear. This study evaluates the user-friendliness of OGD portals in 19 U.S. cities using four criteria identified in the literature: breadth of portal content, structure of governance, user-friendly support, and equitable user access. It also examines how cities incorporate OGD into OGD policies, general plans, and sustainability/climate action plans. This study was designed as an exploratory comparative case study of OGD practices, and the methods included portal assessment using four criteria, content analysis of OGD policies and plans, and semi-structured interviews with OGD and planning experts. The findings indicate that most OGD portals function primarily as data repositories, rather than as planning support tools, and vary considerably in portal content, governance, and user support, affecting their usefulness for planning and sustainability efforts. OGD policies are often absent or underdeveloped and typically emphasize transparency rather than planning applications or public engagement. Only nine cities identified a role for OGD in at least one planning-related document. Interviewees identified low public awareness, limited user capacity, and insufficient integration of data into decision-making as key barriers. The findings identify practical strategies that cities can adopt to better integrate OGD into urban planning and sustainability, including proactive identification of datasets and indicators that will be of interest to various stakeholders, improved stakeholder engagement, data standardization, use of graphics to highlight policy-relevant data trends, improved OGD management, and closer alignment between OGD initiatives and action-oriented planning processes. Full article

This systematic review examines the usefulness of geospatial data for localization and prioritization of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and where they are applicable to the local level. This study reviewed 147 peer-reviewed articles and identified 21 of the most significant sustainable development goals that use geospatial data for monitoring and evidence-based decision-making, strengthening the alignment between local development priorities and SDGs, including the difficulties in identifying and prioritizing SDG targets that are most relevant to local contexts. This study aims to extract and analyze data from the article corpus; assess the methodological quality of studies; identify major themes and research gaps; and synthesize knowledge on localization using geospatial data for the assessment and monitoring of SDGs. The study analyzes whether the scientific literature provides solid evidence to address the difficulties related to the use of geospatial data to support the process of evaluating SDGs at basic scales of governance systems. The methodologies are applied to carry out a categorization of articles into seven categories that present a series of considerations necessary for the implementation of SDGs at the local level. Then we characterize the types of geospatial data, methodological approaches, and analytical techniques used for local SDG assessment and monitoring. Finally, we will synthesize the contributions, limitations, and challenges associated with the use of geospatial data for SDG monitoring at the local scale. The results highlight that among the reviewed studies, almost all geospatial data are used to monitor purposes, while only a few support decision-making processes. This reflects the very limited use of geospatial data in the governance of SDGs at the local level. Furthermore, SDG indicators did not provide trends, and difficulties were noted in disaggregating the data at urban scales, particularly for social and economic SDGs. Multi-strategy approaches, including GeoAI and Geo big data, produce better results than the application of single strategies of geospatial data analysis for revealing whether the performance in the targeted territories of the SDGs is going well or not. The findings of this study will contribute to the growing body of knowledge related to sustainable development goals and provide practitioners with useful information retrieved from geospatial data and practical guidance when implementing sustainable development goals in large-scale territories, like municipalities and cities. Full article

This study contributes to the literature on sustainable international investment by examining how public data openness—treated as a non-rivalrous production factor—enables firms to overcome information asymmetries, reduce financing constraints, and catalyze innovation-driven overseas expansion. Grounded in China’s dual strategic imperatives of digital factor marketization and high-quality outbound investment, we exploit the staggered rollout of municipal public data platforms (2008–2023) as a quasi-natural experiment and apply a firm- and city-level staggered difference-in-differences (DID) design to a sample of A-share listed firms. Our findings demonstrate that public data openness significantly enhances the sustainability of outward investment, measured through improved capital allocation efficiency and long-term resilience. Mechanism tests reveal that innovation capacity and eased financing constraints serve as key transmission channels, with stronger effects observed in firms with higher human capital endowments, robust internal controls, and exposure to technologically dynamic sectors. Heterogeneity analyses further indicate that the sustainability impact is amplified under environmental uncertainty, suggesting that data openness acts as an institutional buffer. The results offer actionable policy implications for aligning digital governance with corporate sustainability goals, and provide empirical grounding for integrating open data infrastructure into national strategies for responsible internationalization. Full article

Upper Silesia, historically shaped by hard-coal mining and coal-based energy production, is undergoing a critical phase of just transition under the European Union’s 2050 climate-neutrality objective. This study examines the legal, institutional, and spatial conditions shaping this process and assesses declared social acceptance in seven mining subregions of the Silesian Voivodeship comprising 64 municipalities. The research combines structured desk research on European Union, national, and regional policy and legal instruments with a CATI survey of electricity consumers in the transformation area (N = 602). Particular attention is given to regulatory barriers affecting the revitalization and redevelopment of post-mining and post-industrial land. The document analysis reveals fragmented institutional responsibilities, weak coordination between sectoral strategies, and insufficient integration of mine-closure, revitalization, and spatial-planning regulations. The survey findings indicate that public support for the energy transition is conditional rather than unconditional. Respondents generally acknowledge the need for change; however, they expect the principal financial burden to be borne by the state budget and energy companies, while direct household financing receives only marginal support. The results also show that the survey measured self-reported familiarity with the term “energy transition” rather than objectively tested knowledge. The study contributes an integrated analytical framework linking governance, legal-regulatory constraints, post-mining land regeneration, and declared social acceptance in a coal region undergoing structural transformation. Full article

Energy planning should focus on actions to save energy and reduce consumption while also implementing renewable energy sources to support sustainable urban development. In addition to global regulations, individual countries also have documents that facilitate energy management at the local level. This is a particularly valuable source of information about resources that influence energy efficiency at the national level. This article analyzes the Low-Emission Economy Plans (LEEPs) developed for selected cities in Poland. Based on selected provisions, fuzzy modeling solutions are proposed to support energy decisions in municipalities. The research thesis assumes that the appropriate selection of criteria for emission reduction, as well as their objectification and hierarchization, when supported by fuzzy logic modeling and multi-criteria analysis, enables local governments to identify key variables and structures and compare decision scenarios relevant to local energy policies. To verify this thesis, an analysis of the LEEP provisions of four city municipalities located in the Kuyavian–Pomeranian Voivodeship was conducted. Based on these criteria, a set was identified, and diagrams were developed to identify variables and concepts that occupy key positions in the modeled pathways leading to emission reductions. Fuzzy logic modeling and multi-criteria analysis were used as decision-support tools in the research process. A comparison of the applied approaches enables the identification and prioritization of variables of greatest importance within the adopted set of criteria. The obtained results allow us to determine how the adopted energy strategies are linked to the implementation of local policy objectives and which relationships play a key role in the modeled decision-making structure. The analysis indicates that the decision-making variants differ in their impact on the paths leading to reduced final energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Variant W1, which is based on investments in renewable energy sources, is strongly associated with the path leading to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, while increased public awareness and acceptance also play a significant role in the model’s structure. The strongest relationships were identified between increased energy efficiency and building energy standards, between building energy standards and reduced final energy consumption, and between reduced final energy consumption and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The reasoning map thus highlighted the particular importance of the sequence of relationships linking energy efficiency, building energy standards, and reduced final energy consumption. The proposed approach can also provide a basis for further comparisons with solutions used in other countries, thus expanding the possibilities of analyzing low-emission policies at the local and national levels. Full article

The detection of organic carbon in wastewater is essential for process monitoring and regulatory assessment. Yet conventional chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total organic carbon (TOC) methods remain reagent-dependent, slow, and unsuitable for inline operation. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) sensing based on TiO₂ offers a reagent-free alternative, but its response to wastewater-relevant dissolved organic matter (DOM) and real effluent matrices is still poorly understood. In this study, a TiO₂-based PEC system was systematically evaluated using four representative model compounds—glucose, potassium hydrogen phthalate, L-tryptophan, and urea—covering major fractions typically present in municipal wastewater. For the first time, representative wastewater-associated organic compound classes, conductivity effects, and the transferability of the PEC response to real wastewater effluent were systematically investigated. The photocurrent response showed distinct, highly linear concentration–signal relationships for each substance, suggesting a dominant contribution of surface-associated electronic effects. Conductivity variations across a relevant range had no measurable influence on sensitivity or photocurrent magnitude, indicating that the PEC response is not governed by bulk ionic transport but primarily is an interfacial process at the site of TiO₂. When applied to real wastewater effluent, the sensor exhibited an excellent linear correlation with dilution level (R² = 0.9954), demonstrating a linear response within a defined matrix and an LOD of 1.12 mg L⁻¹ COD. For the investigated model compounds, LOD values ranged from 1.06 to 3.00 mg L⁻¹ COD, while a linear response was maintained up to approximately 80–100 mg L⁻¹ COD. These findings establish TiO₂-based PEC sensing as a promising platform for the reagent-free, online monitoring of organic loads in wastewater treatment. Full article

Despite growing evidence on sustainable food systems and children’s food choice behaviours, a persistent gap remains between research findings and their implementation in local institutional contexts, particularly in schools. Existing approaches often address behavioural, implementation, or governance dimensions separately, limiting real-world applicability. This conceptual review aimed to develop a theoretically grounded and practice-informed conceptual framework explaining how science–local government partnerships can support sustainable food system interventions in schools. An integrative conceptual approach was applied, combining a targeted narrative review of literature on sustainable food systems, consumer behaviour, and school-based interventions; theoretical integration of behavioural and implementation frameworks, including the COM-B model and Self-Determination Theory; and practice-informed implementation insights from a large-scale municipal nutrition education programme implemented in primary schools in Warsaw, Poland. Framework development involved component identification, domain synthesis, and model integration. The resulting Integrated Science–Policy–Practice (ISPP) Model integrates five interrelated components: Knowledge Translation, Institutional Embedding, Sustainability-Oriented Behavioural Activation Mechanisms, Multi-stakeholder Integration, and Feedback Loops. The model provides a system-level explanation of how evidence-informed interventions can be embedded within local governance structures and translated into mechanisms that may support responsible food-related behaviours. It offers implications for research, policy, and practice in sustainable school food systems. Full article

Low-emission zones (LEZs) require cities to define policy rules, predict effects before deployment, and verify outcomes afterwards, yet mobility, emissions, meteorology, exposure, data governance, and public communication are commonly handled in separate systems. This paper presents envair360, a Physical Intelligence architecture and a four-stage, evidence-gated LEZ methodology connecting project definition, baseline feasibility, digital-twin design, deployment, and verified impact closure. A design-science method is combined with an operational case study of Cartagena, Spain, because the research object is both a socio-technical artefact and a context-dependent municipal deployment. The technology chain is selected to bridge complementary scales and functions: SUMO for link- and vehicle-level traffic, WRF and CHIMERE for meteorology and regional chemistry, MUNICH and street-canyon parameterisation for computationally tractable street resolution, model-output calibration anchored to measurements, and FIWARE/NGSI-LD for governed context exchange. The manuscript distinguishes city observations, peer-reviewed component validation, demonstrated platform capabilities, and policy or engineering targets. A Murcia component study reports lower hourly than daily agreement after deep-learning calibration (NO₂: $r=0.79$ hourly and $0.94$ daily; O₃: $r=0.85$ hourly and $0.97$ daily), illustrating the importance of temporal aggregation and transfer limits. Digitisation of the prior Madrid ozone-density figure indicates modal shifts of approximately +32.0 and +27.8 source-axis units at two stations; the supplied source does not permit a numerical NO_x bias estimate. A separate six-city export audit covers 24,384 records and 4064 street segments and demonstrates a common model-output schema, not predictive validation. In Cartagena, project documentation reports elevated PM₁₀/PM_2.5, urban heat and solar-radiation stress, and a plausible role for dry-climate dust resuspension, supporting a superblock-oriented LEZ proposal with a long-term 30% vehicular CO₂ reduction target. The paper’s specific contribution is the governed orchestration, evidence taxonomy, quality gates, reproducible lineage, explicit policy-scenario representation, and portable city-onboarding protocol; it does not claim that the individual scientific models, the Cartagena deployment, or the cited project targets originated in this manuscript. Full article

Amid growing water stress in British Columbia caused by climate change, population growth, and rising demand, local governments in Canada are adopting water demand management and conservation policies as part of broader climate adaptation efforts to promote sustainable water use and optimize efficiency. Our objective was to understand the actions local governments are taking to address climate-related impacts on the water sector. Thus, the study assesses the implementation status and progress of water demand management in British Columbia by surveying water managers from 94 local jurisdictions across the province. Our analysis focuses on four key dimensions: prioritization, planning, investment, and implementation of water demand management policies. Results reveal that 84% of surveyed jurisdictions have water efficiency/conservation plans, and 55% of household water connections are metered. Commonly implemented measures include mandatory water restrictions, volumetric pricing, leak detection, and public education campaigns, with regional policies proving more prevalent than municipal-level initiatives. Despite notable progress, implementation remains uneven, with gaps in resource allocation and many household connections still without water meters. Tracking the progress of implementing best practices in water conservation is an essential part of local climate adaptation. Full article