Local climate zones datasets from five Southern European cities: Copernicus based classification maps of Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Marseille and Naples.

Here, we provide Local Climate Zones (LCZ) map datasets from five Southern European Mediterranean cities: Athens (Greece), Barcelona (Spain), Lisbon (Portugal), Marseille (France) and Naples (Italy). The maps were produced according to a geographic information system (GIS)-based classification method, using freely available Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) input data. Several maps are provided: (i) five maps (one per city) depicting urban LCZ's aggregated by density (no building height information); (ii) five maps (one per city), identical to the previously mentioned ones, with tree cover LCZ classes A and B reclassification according to the Dominant Leaf Type (DLT) (deciduous or coniferous); (iii) two maps (Athens and Lisbon) distinguishing urban LCZ classes 123 and 456 according to the dominant building height (BH); and (iv) two maps (Athens and Lisbon) identical to the previous ones with added DLT-based land cover classification.

Smart and Regenerative Urban Growth: A Literature Network Analysis.

"Smart city", "sustainable city", "ubiquitous city", "smart sustainable city", "eco-city", "regenerative city" are fuzzy concepts; they are established to mitigate the negative impact on urban growth while achieving economic, social, and environmental sustainability. This study presents the result of the literature network analysis exploring the state of the art in the concepts of smart and regenerative urban growth under urban metabolism framework. Heat-maps of impact citations, cutting-edge research on the topic, tip-top ideas, concepts, and theories are highlighted and revealed through VOSviewer bibliometrics based on a selection of 1686 documents acquired from Web of Science, for a timespan between 2010 and 2019.

A comprehensive approach to understanding flood risk drivers at the municipal level.

During the period 1998-2017, floods were responsible for 11% of the loss of life and 23% of the economic loss caused by climate-related and geophysical-related disasters worldwide. An integrated and effective definition of flood risk management strategies therefore still requires synthesized and comprehensive knowledge about the driving forces of flood risk. In this study, 278 Portuguese municipalities are analyzed and classified according to flood hazard, exposure, and vulnerability.

Defining evacuation travel times and safety areas in a debris flow hazard scenario.

Debris flows are one of the most hazardous types of landslides in mountain regions. In the upper part of the Zêzere valley (Serra da Estrela, Portugal) several debris flows events occurred in the last 200 years, some of them causing loss of lives and material damages. In this work, a methodology for pedestrian evacuation modelling, in a debris flow hazard scenario, was implemented.

A flood susceptibility model at the national scale based on multicriteria analysis.

River flooding is a specific worldwide type of flooding responsible for considerable human and material losses. An extensive knowledge about flood conditioning factors and a diverse set of methodologies for flood susceptibility evaluations are available, although there is still field for improvement regarding methodologies for small-scale flood susceptibility assessment, particularly relevant in data-scarce contexts. This research applied to mainland Portugal, introduces a multicriteria methodology to assess flood susceptibility at national scale considering three flood-conditioning factors: flow accumulation, average slope angle and average relative permeability.

Assessing fire hazard potential and its main drivers in Mazandaran province, Iran: a data-driven approach.

Fires are a major disturbance to forest ecosystems and socioeconomic activities in Mazandaran province, northern Iran, particularly in the Hyrcanian forest sub-region. Mapping the spatial distribution of fire hazard levels and the most important influencing factors is crucial to enhance fire management strategies. In this research, MODIS hotspots were used to represent fire events covering Mazandaran Province over the period 2000-2016.

The provision of urban green space and its accessibility: Spatial data effects in Brussels.

Urban green space (UGS) has many environmental and social benefits. UGS provision and access are increasingly considered in urban policies and must rely on data and indicators that can capture variations in the distribution of UGS within cities. There is no consensus about how UGS, and their provision and access, must be defined from different land use data types.

Mapping wildfire vulnerability in Mediterranean Europe. Testing a stepwise approach for operational purposes.

Vulnerability assessment is a vital component of wildfire management. This research focused on the development of a framework to measure and map vulnerability levels in several areas within Mediterranean Europe, where wildfires are a major concern. The framework followed a stepwise approach to evaluate its main components, expressed by exposure, sensitivity and coping capacity.

Geographical accessibility to community pharmacies by the elderly in metropolitan Lisbon.

Background: In ageing societies, community pharmacies play an important role in delivering medicines, responsible advising, and other targeted services. Elderly people are among their main consumers, as they use more prescription drugs, need more specific health care, and experience more mobility issues than other age groups. This makes geographical accessibility a relevant concern for them.

Mapping landslide susceptibility using data-driven methods.

Most epistemic uncertainty within data-driven landslide susceptibility assessment results from errors in landslide inventories, difficulty in identifying and mapping landslide causes and decisions related with the modelling procedure. In this work we evaluate and discuss differences observed on landslide susceptibility maps resulting from: (i) the selection of the statistical method; (ii) the selection of the terrain mapping unit; and (iii) the selection of the feature type to represent landslides in the model (polygon versus point). The work is performed in a single study area (Silveira Basin - 18.

Topographic and geomorphologic controls on the distribution of vegetation formations in Elephant Point (Livingston Island, Maritime Antarctica).

This article focuses on the spatial distribution of vegetation formations in Elephant Point, an ice-free area of 1.16km located in Livingston Island (South Shetland Islands, Antarctica). Fieldwork carried out in January 2014 consisted of floristic surveys and designation of a vegetation map.

An integrated approach for the assessment of the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus global spatial distribution, and determination of the zones susceptible to the development of Zika virus.

The Zika virus, one of the new epidemic diseases, is reported to have affected millions of people in the past year. The suitable climate conditions of the areas where Zika virus has been reported, especially in areas with a high population density, are the main cause of the current outbreak and spread of the disease. Indeed, the suitable climatic conditions of certain territories constitute perfect breading nest for the propagation and outbreak of worldwide diseases.

Floristic and vegetation successional processes within landslides in a Mediterranean environment.

Floristic and vegetation analysis in seven Mediterranean landslides led to the understanding of the successional processes occurring in different landslide disturbed sectors. Our study showed that in landslides that occurred between 1996 and 2010 there is a clear differentiation between the three main landslide sectors (scarp, main body and foot) concerning floristic composition, vegetation structure, floristic richness, successional processes and plant functional type. Additional differences were found between landslide areas and undisturbed agricultural areas adjacent to landslides.

Multidimensional Approach for Tsunami Vulnerability Assessment: Framing the Territorial Impacts in Two Municipalities in Portugal.

This study presents a new multidimensional methodology for tsunami vulnerability assessment that combines the morphological, structural, social, and tax component of vulnerability. This new approach can be distinguished from previous methodologies that focused primarily on the evaluation of potentially affected buildings and did not use tsunami numerical modeling. The methodology was applied to the Figueira da Foz and Vila do Bispo municipalities in Portugal.

Housing land transaction data and structural econometric estimation of preference parameters for urban economic simulation models.

This paper describes a dataset of 6284 land transactions prices and plot surfaces in 3 medium-sized cities in France (Besançon, Dijon and Brest). The dataset includes road accessibility as obtained from a minimization algorithm, and the amount of green space available to households in the neighborhood of the transactions, as evaluated from a land cover dataset. Further to the data presentation, the paper describes how these variables can be used to estimate the non-observable parameters of a residential choice function explicitly derived from a microeconomic model.

Mortality Patterns of Hydro-Geomorphologic Disasters.

Social impacts caused by floods and landslides in Portugal in the period of 1865-2010 are gathered in the DISASTER database. This database contains 1,902 hydro-geomorphologic cases that caused 1,248 fatalities (81% and 19% associated with floods and landslides, respectively). The use of the DISASTER database allowed for: (i) the analysis of the frequency and the temporal evolution of fatal floods and landslides; (ii) the analysis of the spatio-temporal distribution of fatalities; (iii) the identification of the most deadly flood and landside types; (iv) the verification of gender tendencies in mortalities; and (v) the evaluation of individual and societal risk.

Land use and land cover changes in Zêzere watershed (Portugal)--Water quality implications.

To understand the relations between land use allocation and water quality preservation within a watershed is essential to assure sustainable development. The land use and land cover (LUC) within Zêzere River watershed registered relevant changes in the last decades. These land use and land cover changes (LUCCs) have impacts in water quality, mainly in surface water degradation caused by surface runoff from artificial and agricultural areas, forest fires and burnt areas, and caused by sewage discharges from agroindustry and urban sprawl.

Landslide susceptibility assessment and validation in the framework of municipal planning in Portugal: the case of Loures Municipality.

The legislation that demands the evaluation of landslide susceptibility in Portugal at the municipal level is the National Ecological Reserve (NER). A methodology for the evaluation of landslide susceptibility to be used in municipal planning is applied in Loures Municipality (169.3 km²) located north of Lisbon (Portugal).