GeoAI and geospatial foundation models (GeoFMs) are fundamentally reshaping how geospatial scientists analyze data, model spatial processes, and support decisions. However, the rapid expansion of this field renders static literature reviews quickly obsolete. A timely and dynamic review is therefore crucial for accurately capturing the current research landscape and projecting future trajectories in GeoAI and GeoFM research. This systematic review synthesizes 1,122 peer-reviewed manuscripts to address a central question: are current methodologies becoming truly spatially explicit? Adhering to a PRISMA-guided workflow, we retrieved records from the Web of Science and DBLP, conducted structured human screening, and extracted standardized study metadata, including methodological labels, from full texts. This extraction utilized a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) workflow with rigorous manual validation, achieving over 90% agreement in a 5% random audit. The results reveal a research landscape dominated by remote sensing and raster data, with a technical mainstream centered on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and transformers targeting classification, segmentation, and representation learning tasks. Nevertheless, most methodological novelty remains framed as application-driven or as non-theory-driven structural modifications. Designs explicitly grounded in geographic knowledge, geospatial pretraining, and genuine GeoFM innovations remain comparatively limited. We conclude by presenting a practical roadmap that offers insights into data demands, GeoAI/GeoFM development, educational paradigms, and industry evolution, all of which are critical for advancing the next generation of spatially explicit GeoAI and GeoFMs.
Ireland has historically relied heavily on the State pension as the primary source of income in retirement. While occupational pension coverage has risen steadily in recent years, a substantial share of older employees still approach retirement without supplementary pension provision. Understanding how occupational pension coverage relates to both the timing of retirement and income adequacy in retirement is critical in the context of population ageing, pressures on the public finances, and the introduction of auto-enrolment in 2026. This paper examines planned and actual retirement ages for those with and without an occupational pension, using data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) covering the period 2010–2018. We focus on a homogeneous sample of employees and former employees with sufficient PRSI contributions to qualify for the State Pension (Contributory), and explore heterogeneity of outcomes by sociodemographic groups, including sex, education, employment sector and region. We find clear differences in planned retirement ages between sociodemographic groups. Individuals with occupational pension coverage plan to retire earlier, at around 63.5 years of age, while those without coverage typically plan to retire close to the State pension age of 66. In practice, however, both groups retire at broadly similar ages, at around 61 on average. As a result, employees without occupational pension coverage experience a substantially larger gap between planned and actual retirement ages – almost 5 years on average – compared with a gap of under 3 years for those with occupational pension coverage. These differences are statistically significant and are driven primarily by differences in planned, rather than actual, retirement ages. The retirement age gap is especially pronounced among women without occupational pension coverage. This group retire at a much younger age, on average around 58.5, despite planning to retire close to 66, resulting in a gap of almost seven years. By contrast, women with occupational pension coverage both plan and retire earlier, and have retirement age gaps similar to men. Regression analysis shows that occupational pension coverage reduces both planned and actual retirement ages. While retirement timing is similar across groups, retirement incomes differ sharply. Individuals with occupational pension coverage retire to substantially higher incomes than those without coverage. Median total weekly retirement income is approximately €460 for those with occupational pension coverage, compared with €230 for those without. State pension and benefit incomes are similar across groups; the large gap in total income is driven almost entirely by occupational pension coverage. Consistent with previous ESRI research, we find that the gender pension gap is due to the lower rate of occupational pension coverage for women as well as lower occupational pension amounts when covered: men with coverage receive much higher retirement incomes than women with coverage, while men and women without coverage have similarly low retirement incomes. Previous ESRI research found that the biggest contribution to the gender pension gap is years spent working. Although occupational pension coverage does not appear to substantially delay retirement from the labour market, it plays a crucial role in determining living standards in retirement. Those without occupational pension coverage not only retire earlier than planned but do so with significantly lower incomes, raising concerns about poverty and financial insecurity in older age, particularly for women. Moreover, widespread early retirement relative to the State pension age implies foregone tax and PRSI revenue and increased pressure on public spending. Overall, the results suggest that occupational pension coverage matters far more for retirement income adequacy than for retirement timing. As Ireland rolls out auto-enrolment in MyFutureFund, future research will be needed to assess whether expanded coverage improves resilience to involuntary retirement and reduces inequalities in retirement outcomes, especially for women.
Since 2019 the growth in national income in Ireland has been impressive, averaging almost 5 per cent a year. We investigate the drivers of this growth and the extent to which growth is translating into higher standards of living for those living in Ireland. Net national income (NNI) is preferred as an estimate of the income available to those living in Ireland. Unlike modified gross national income (GNI*), it excludes the capital used up in producing Ireland’s national income – depreciation.1 In addition, our approach allows for national income to be split out, both by sector and into the contributions from the domestic and foreign sectors of the economy. We also isolate the impact of windfall corporation taxes on growth in national income over the past decade. Average annual growth in national income would have been one percentage point lower in the period since 2019 without windfall corporation taxes. Much of the apparent shift in the structure of the economy towards the foreign sector is also explained by windfall corporation tax receipts. The domestic productive sector shows up as playing a larger role in recent growth when windfall corporation tax receipts are removed. This contribution extends the focus on windfall corporation tax receipts beyond their impact on the public finances. In particular, they are shown to materially affect both the share of national income coming from foreign sectors and the overall growth rate of the economy in the 2020s.
To support conservation-focused research and management we developed a new 30-m resolution polygon data layer of the nonlacustrine and nonriverine islands of the United States, with associated attributes describing key physical and conservation geography characteristics. Islands were grouped into a three-tiered hierarchy of island regions (twelve), island provinces (twenty-eight), and individual islands (19,023). Islands were classified as either continental or oceanic based on their physiographic position relative to the North America continental shelf, and estuarine versus nonestuarine depending on their location within or external to estuaries. For each island we assessed the diversity of terrestrial and coastal ecosystems, the number of threatened and endangered (T&E) species listed under the Endangered Species Act, the number of T&E species critical habitats, the number of migratory bird species listed under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the number of Key Biodiversity Areas, and the number of and management responsibility for protected areas. We conclude that the conservation importance of islands is disproportionate to their total area as, for example, islands contain 52 percent of the T&E species yet their total area is only 2 percent of the area of the continental mainland. Similarly, of the global total of 431 World Terrestrial Ecosystems, 201 (47 percent) occur on U.S. islands compared with 286 (66 percent) that occur on the U.S. continental mainland.
Energy poverty is a persistent policy issue across Europe, one which will become increasingly relevant in the face of energy price volatility, climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, and the need for a just transition. Measuring energy poverty is vital for policymaking as it identifies vulnerable households, guides targeted supports and tracks progress, enabling timely adjustments to address rising energy costs, climate goals and changing household conditions. Energy poverty refers to a household’s lack of access to essential energy services that ensure a basic standard of living and health. It can be experienced in multiple ways. Energy bills might be too expensive, representing a high share of household’s income or limiting their capacity to afford other essentials. Alternatively, households may be forced to behave in ways that reduce their energy consumption to a point where their physical and mental health is compromised. Energy poverty stems from insufficient disposable income to afford adequate energy services, rendering it highly context-dependent and closely intertwined with a range of socio-economic issues and forms of hardship (Estévez and Tovar, 2024). It is also shaped by broader structural factors, including wage levels, income inequality, housing quality, corporate taxation, access to affordable energy, and the energy efficiency of the dwelling stock. Beyond national contexts, systemic and geopolitical factors such as extractivism, global inequalities, and the legacies of colonialism influence energy access, prices and infrastructure (Bouzarovski et al., 2025). In this sense, energy poverty is not simply an individual or household problem, but a multidimensional justice issue embedded in both national and global social, economic and political structures. The European Union has placed this challenge firmly on their policy agenda: Current directives require Member States not only to monitor energy poverty but also to design and evaluate measures that protect people experiencing energy poverty and vulnerable consumers, ensuring that affordability risks are systematically addressed. In Ireland, these aims have been incorporated into the Energy Poverty Action Plan (EPAP) and the National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP). In this report, we address key questions related to energy poverty and affordability.
