Tsunami evacuation planning has relied on static maps generated by Least Cost Distance models, which calculate optimal routes based on street network lengths. However, by focusing on average evacuation times, these methods present limitations by ignoring the complexity of human behavior and failing to identify which variables are crucial to understand evacuation times. This suggests that current evacuation maps require improvement through the integration of simulation analysis to address underestimate risks in uncertain scenarios. This research performs a massive simulation analysis by integrating the Social Force Model with high-performance multi-threaded computing to generate comprehensive scenarios with different evacuation times.

The analysis is applied to the vulnerable coastal zone of Las Brisas de Villa in Chorrillos, Lima. Stochastic scenarios were executed by varying the initial population placement. The study focuses on analyzing the resulting distribution of high evacuation times to reveal scenarios representing low probability but high-impact events. By isolating the simulation seeds of these critical outliers, the specific spatial arrangements were reconstructed and examined.

Preliminary findings indicate that risks are driven by specific urban spatial configurations. These results demonstrate that evacuation times are dependent on the urban spatial configuration. Consequently, the identification of statistical outliers in evacuation time distributions is crucial for mitigating hidden spatial configurations that average-based models fail to detect.

Extreme heat events pose significant challenges for Mediterranean cities. This study evaluates the influence of vegetation and urban morphology on thermal comfort during an extreme heat episode in Málaga (Spain). Air temperature, relative humidity, land-surface temperature (LST), and the Temperature–Humidity Index (THI) were assessed across 13 green and grey infrastructures.

Microclimatic measurements were conducted in situ during a terral event in August 2024, a local hot-and-dry wind phenomenon. Air temperature and relative humidity were recorded every two hours using a thermo-hygrometer, while surface temperature was assessed every four hours using infrared thermography. A Bayesian linear modeling framework was applied to estimate posterior means and credibility intervals to evaluate spatial and temporal variability.

The results revealed marked thermal heterogeneity. Sites with continuous tree canopy or shading structures exhibited lower air and surface temperatures and more favorable THI values than exposed impervious surfaces. In contrast, children’s playgrounds, bus shelters, and sports facilities reached critical surface temperatures and experienced elevated thermal discomfort for prolonged periods. Narrow streets exhibited relatively favorable thermal conditions due to self-shading, even in the absence of tree cover, indicating a complementary effect of urban morphology.

These findings underscore the importance of integrating vegetation and urban form into climate-adaptive planning strategies. The study provides empirical evidence supporting the prioritization of thermally vulnerable urban typologies. It reinforces the role of green infrastructure and passive design strategies in enhancing the thermal resilience of Mediterranean cities.

Natural and man-made disasters at the urban level represent a major challenge to increasing resilience. According to the UN Agenda 2030, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is a priority at the global level. Different actions can be planned and implemented before and after a disastrous event. The focus of this research is on actions to take before the event to increase preparedness. This paper focuses on exercises and training activities designed to reduce the gaps between actions performed before and after disastrous events. These actions include discussion-based and operation-based actions, classified by increasing levels of complexity and capability. Serious Games (SG) represent a discussion-based action with the greatest level of complexity and capability. The objective of this paper is to investigate the potential contribution of SG to increasing preparedness for implementing evacuation procedures and thereby enhancing urban resilience. This implies the knowledge of urban mobility in evacuation conditions. This class of SGs combines Transport Risk Analysis (TRA), Transport System Models (TSMs), and emerging Information and Communication Technology (e-ICT) to reproduce, in a virtual environment, a transport system under evacuation conditions. In this way, it is possible to experiment with evacuation planning procedures in a virtual environment. The principal results of a pilot experiment are presented. The SG framework and its pilot implementation show how the potential contribution to increasing awareness and reducing exposure at the urban level can be quantified. The paper is of interest to urban scientists and public and private decision-makers involved in disaster risk planning processes.

Public space plays a fundamental role in the construction of livable cities, as it promotes social interaction, permanence, and the development of everyday life. However, not all parks activate these dynamics with the same intensity, as they present different levels of use and appropriation. In this context, the research aimed to identify which of the parks in the Jardines de Virú sector, located in the district of Bellavista, Callao, presents higher levels of habitability and urban quality. Likewise, the characteristics that influence these conditions were analyzed.

This research applied Jean Gehl’s methodology in The Human Dimension of Public Space (2017). First, visits were conducted to the parks to record user attendance and the activities carried out. Based on this, behavioral mappings were developed to identify patterns of permanence, movement paths, and areas of greater or lesser occupancy. Then, the physical conditions of each park were evaluated, considering accessibility, visibility, furniture, and vegetation. Finally, surveys and interviews were conducted with users, which made it possible to identify who inhabits these spaces, the reasons for their use, and their level of satisfaction.

The results indicated that Virgen de Fátima Park presents better habitability conditions in Jardines de Virú. It stands out for its large green areas and spaces with natural shade. In addition, it has facilities that the other parks do not have, such as a senior center, a playground area, and a security booth. These characteristics, together with adequate accessibility, favor greater permanence and user diversity, consolidating this park as the highest-quality public space in the sector.

Climate change is accelerating extreme phenomena, including rising urban temperatures, which are particularly pronounced in densely urbanised areas. Like many Mediterranean metropolises, Naples is subject to severe heat waves that negatively affect urban quality of life, thermal comfort, and public health. The Vasto district, located in the heart of Naples, is a historic, high-density residential area characterised by a high degree of soil impermeabilisation, which intensifies the Urban Heat Island effect.

The study focuses on three experimental scenarios for the Vasto district, modelled through microclimatic simulations using the ENVI-met software, which enables detailed analysis of thermal and environmental variables. The three scenarios examined are: the baseline condition, reflecting the current state of the neighbourhood in the absence of any greening interventions; a green roofs-only scenario, in which vegetated coverings are applied to building rooftops; and an integrated scenario, combining green roofs with the introduction of street trees, to maximise the effectiveness of urban greenery in terms of heat reduction, thermal comfort improvement, and air quality enhancement.

The research aims to quantify the benefits of different greening strategies in improving local microclimatic conditions, with a particular focus on the variables of Mean Radiant Temperature and Potential Air Temperature. The simulations reveal that although green roofs alone yield positive effects, their integration with street trees is the most effective solution for reducing local temperatures and improving liveability. The results obtained provide a basis for urban policies aimed at enhancing the climate resilience of the Vasto district, suggesting integrated approaches that combine green infrastructure in a complementary and synergistic manner.

This study offers practical guidance for implementing nature-based strategies, proposing replicable solutions for other Mediterranean urban areas increasingly exposed to escalating climatic challenges.

Introduction: This research addresses the challenge of "slow disasters"—the chronic, incremental degradation of urban ecosystems and social fabrics—within marginalized residential areas. While Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are often applied to new developments, their role in rehabilitating early 20th-century urban heritage remains under-explored. This study examines how NbS can be integrated with cultural memory to foster resilience in the specific contexts of Budapest and Bucharest.

Methods: The study employs a multi-disciplinary approach combining circular economy principles with digital humanities. I utilize StoryMaps as a phenomenological mapping tool to overlay technical environmental data with narrative storytelling. This "Architecture of Convalescence" methodology treats the city as a recovering organism, using heritage documentation to identify sites where green interventions can repair both ecological and psychological "mental maps."

Results: The findings indicate that rehabilitating existing residential heritage through NbS (such as green courtyards and permeable surfaces) is more carbon-efficient than reconstruction. In the Budapest-Bucharest axis, marginalized spaces often coincide with high-density 20th-century housing. My mapping reveals that integrating "slow tourism" and cultural routes into these areas transforms them from isolated hazard zones into resilient, productive landscapes that mitigate urban heat and improve inhabitant well-being.

Conclusions: The research concludes that NbS are most effective when grounded in the "spirit of the place." By linking ecological restoration with cultural sustainability, cities can move beyond temporary fixes to long-term systemic resilience. This holistic framework provides a scalable model for Central and Eastern European cities to address the dual pressures of climate change and heritage decay.

Urban resilience requires the integration of ecological, social, and functional capacities. However, existing approaches in urban design favor specialized methodologies that are, at the same time, often characterized by a sectoral and siloed approach, lacking diagnostic tools that capture cross-dimensional interdependencies across spatial scales. This study develops a Creative Diversity framework that unifies these dimensions into a coherent analytical structure for diagnosing resilience deficits in adaptive urban transformation processes. Creative Diversity is articulated through three conceptual dimensions: Space for Nature, addressing ecological connectivity and environmental performance; Space for Community, addressing social inclusivity and cultural identity; and Space for Function, addressing functional flexibility and economic viability. The framework intersects these dimensions with two fundamental resilience capacities: adaptive capacity to absorb disturbances and transformative capacity to reorganize toward new pathways. This intersection forms a diagnostic matrix that systematically identifies resilience deficits across scales. The framework was validated through a case study of Villa Guzzi and its surrounding neighborhood in Lecco, Italy, using multi-scale spatial evidence including geospatial analysis, municipal planning data, and on-site survey. The assessment revealed that resilience deficits across the six dimensions are structurally interconnected, with weaknesses in one dimension reinforcing deficits in others. Cultural identity was the only dimension to reach the acceptable baseline, yet this isolated strength did not generate systemic resilience. This pattern was consistent across both neighborhood and site scales, confirming that multi-scale and cross-dimensional diagnosis is essential for understanding the compounding nature of urban vulnerability. These findings demonstrate that effective urban resilience assessment requires diagnostic tools capable of integrating ecological, social, and functional dimensions within a unified structure. The Creative Diversity framework provides such a methodology, contributing to integrated approaches for adaptive urban transformation.

Trees mitigate climate change and enhance urban livability, though their effectiveness depends on health and growth. While exposed to altered climates and pollution, urban tree responses remain insufficiently quantified. This dendroecological study assesses how climate and pollution shape tree performance across contrasting contexts in central Italy, investigating peri-urban, traffic-dominated, and airport-influenced sites in Florence and Pisa. Tree-ring width (TRW) was measured to quantify growth variability, while stable carbon (δ¹³C) and oxygen (δ¹⁸O) isotopes were analyzed to infer changes in intrinsic water-use efficiency, photosynthetic activity, and stomatal regulation. Nitrogen stable isotopes (δ¹⁵N) traced pollution inputs from vehicular emissions. Additionally, macronutrients, trace elements, and heavy metals were determined using Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to characterize spatial patterns of elemental accumulation linked to local pollution. A previous study showed that in urban parks, high temperatures and low rainfall affected tree physiology more than pollution, even though overall growth was not directly impaired. Carbon and oxygen isotopes highlighted this sensitivity to heat and drought, while the pollution indicator remained similar across urban and periurban parks. By integrating growth, stable isotopes, and elemental analyses, the present study demonstrates the potential of urban trees as effective long-term bioindicators of climatic stress and pollution. We expect reduced growth rates and higher intrinsic water-use efficiency in urban trees, reflecting heat and drought stress, alongside enriched δ¹⁵N and elevated heavy metal concentrations. Ultimately, this study aims to emphasize the need to select climate-adapted species to maximize urban ecosystem services. Because cities currently experience the hotter, drier conditions expected globally in the future, they act as living laboratories for studying plant responses to climate change.

This paper showcases adaptive community arrangements regarding land use transformation in coastal informal settlements. The specific focus was to ascertain the level of access of residents' land ownership and uses over decades against different external interventions. The paper also presents processes of adaptation and modification evolving as part of the interactions among stakeholders in dealing with basic infrastructure issues and related problems in the area caused by such land arrangements. Set against a backdrop of addressing gaps in formal planning systems which impose a ‘one size fits all’ approach in developing typology of land use change over time, this study outlines the importance of human-scale mapping and planning in informal settlements to understand local contexts and provide accurate baseline data and information to utilize in basic infrastructure planning and development in the Global South. In addition, the paper expands methods in spatial and social mapping as effective tools to analyze land use change and interconnected variables influencing development in response to lack of details acquired by conventional mapping tools. Utilising a case study of coastal seaweed farming settlements, the methods applied include the use of human-scale mapping documenting 3D typology of the settlements as well as social-economic and cultural attributes in order to develop a comprehensive information regarding land use transformation.

Cabanatuan City, one of the Philippines' prime cities experiencing rapid urbanization, has contributed to the ecological degradation of Nabao Creek, an underutilized urban waterway with considerable potential for environmental restoration and public space activation. This study proposes revitalizing Nabao Creek as a walkable urban spine through the B.A.Y.A.N. Framework, which integrates five key dimensions: Bayanihan (Stakeholder Involvement), Accessibility (Movescape), Yaman Inprastraktura (Blue–Green Infrastructure), Adaptability (Governance and Policy Making), and Nature-Based Solutions. The framework aims to reconnect the waterway with surrounding communities while enhancing ecological performance and public accessibility. Drawing insights from Singapore’s Active, Beautiful, Clean (ABC) Waters Programme and the principles of Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD), the research develops a context-sensitive WSUD–BAYAN. This combined framework is tailored to the conditions of rapidly urbanizing Philippine cities. The methodology uses comparative case analysis of international and local precedents to identify transferable strategies in ecological restoration, public space design, and water-sensitive planning. The proposed framework stresses blue–green infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and community- oriented governance to restore ecological functions, improve flood resilience, and encourage inclusive public spaces. By transforming Nabao Creek into a multifunctional ecological corridor, the project demonstrates how neglected waterways can support urban resilience, environmental sustainability, and active public life. Ultimately, the study positions Nabao Creek as a replicable model for sustainable urban waterway revitalization in rapidly urbanizing Philippine cities.