This paper outlines a semiotic approach to the study of civilizations by focusing on topological-existential sign systems that encode a people's stance to habitation. The notion of civilizational semiotopes is introduced to capture persisting systems of meaning that civilizations deploy toward the environment to form and reflect upon their topoi, both the physical spaces they occupy and the virtual landscapes they imagine and associate themselves with. There is a need to explicate how civilizations deploy such topological systems of representation to encode existential meaning about their world, and what happens to them as both civilizations and environments change. To account for this interrelatedness, the paper provides a semiotic account of the notion of civilization, which is positioned in a sign interrelationship with culture and nature. Civilization functions as the interpretant that enables culture to represent nature. Subsequently, the article proposes the new concept of civilizational semiotopes and describes their signification process along two individual-phenomenological and two collective-social elements as found in existential semiotics.

Airborne mineral dust poses a safety challenge for aviation. Several fatal accidents have happened in dust-laden air due to reduced visibility, strong gusty winds, and wind shear. Dust-induced icing also contributed at least to two fatal accidents. Furthermore, atmospheric dust has long- and short-term effects on aircraft operating conditions due to corrosion and abrasion on the aircraft surfaces and molten ingress deterioration of engine hot section components. The combined impact can increase operating and maintenance costs and increase the overall cost of ownership. While the scientific community has started preparing and providing products based on atmospheric dust modeling and observation, there are still important data and information gaps in the fundamental science. These include (i) insufficient data which could be used to better understand the effects of dust on aircraft as well as on ground systems and operations (e.g., four-dimensional information of dust mineralogy, cost-benefit analysis of the impact of dust on aviation along flight routes), (ii) the identification of airborne dust monitoring and modeling products and services that could enable the flow of relevant information in commercial aviation and in decision-making workflows, and (iii) the underdeveloped, unclear, or absent role of dust hazards in regulations and operational procedures as well as in the training, skill set, and knowledge base of pilots. This review is aimed at both academic and aviation stakeholders and presents the current state-of-the-art knowledge at the intersection of dust hazards, aviation safety, and impacts on flight operations and aircraft maintenance.

Computational planning support systems (CPSS) have been invaluable for the transparent and rational planning of climate‐resilient cities as they help clarify and optimise the trade‐offs between alternative choices. CPSS have shown great promise also as digital design boards for the co‐creation of new solutions. However, both as a tool and a theoretical stance to spatial planning, CPSS have suffered from top‐down representations of urban space. Bottom‐up, collective, and subjective processes essential for sustainable and climate‐resilient urbanism are often left unaccounted for. This article introduces one possible solution to this gap, namely structuring the information flows of CPSS according to the local climate zone framework, enriched with urban commons information. We illustrate our approach with data from the 29 largest Finnish municipalities. We combine OpenStreetMap and demographic information with local climate zone data to produce a socio‐spatially extended local climate zone typology of Finnish urban forms. The results delineate a Nordic angle to sustainable spatial planning—green and sparse, somewhat compact and mixed, but not comprehensively so, built environments—allowing a juxtaposition with normative ideas about sustainable cities. We furthermore propose a co‐design workflow that is based on our typology. The main practical applications of our work include vulnerability mapping and integrated impact assessment, multimodal communication of computer model output, and computationally‐assisted co‐design of built environments with a variety of stakeholders.

Aerosol reanalyses are a well-established tool for monitoring aerosol trends, for validation and calibration of weather chemical models, as well as for the enhancement of strategies for environmental monitoring and hazard mitigation. By providing a consistent and complete data set over a sufficiently long period, they address the shortcomings of aerosol observational records in terms of temporal and spatial coverage and aerosol speciation. These shortcomings are particularly severe for dust aerosols. A 10-year dust aerosol regional reanalysis has been recently produced on the Barcelona Supercomputing Center HPC facilities at the high spatial resolution of 0.1 $$^{\circ }$$ . Here we present a brief description and an initial assessment of this data set. An innovative dust optical depth data set, derived from the MODIS Deep Blue products, has been ingested in the dust module of the MONARCH model by means of a LETKF with a four-dimensional extension. MONARCH ensemble has been generated by applying combined meteorology and emission perturbations. This has been achieved using for each ensemble member different meteorological fields as initial and boundary conditions, and different emission schemes, in addition to stochastic perturbations of emission parameters, which we show is beneficial for dust data assimilation. We prove the consistency of the assimilation procedure by analyzing the departures of the assimilated observations from the model simulations for a two-month period. Furthermore, we show a comparison with AERONET coarse optical depth retrievals during a period of 2012, which indicates that the reanalysis data set is highly accurate. While further analysis and validation of the whole data set are ongoing, here we provide a first evidence for the reanalysis to be a useful record of dust concentration and deposition extending the existing observational-based information intended for mineral dust monitoring.

Borrowing from insights produced in urban planning, media and governance studies thereby leveraging the Ostrom-nian ideas of institutions and polycentricity, this paper examines how to govern commons in the smart city. It offers a reflection upon whether Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) could be a key notion for the commons discourse which centers around stakeholders, self-organization, and a rights-based framework. By decentralizing ledgers and enabling the interoperability of the various interfaces, DLTs make records more accessible, exchanges more transparent, and reduce costs while increasing efficiency, and permit automation, therefore commoning interactions both offline and online are facilitated. We argue that the use of DLTs to preserve the spatiotemporal integrity of key urban spaces is a common value question that needs to be elucidated or renegotiated in order to provide any useful guidance to DLTs integrity-preserving potential. In doing so, we draw attention to DLT-based urban commons and urban governance, and point to inherent incompatibilities that may lead to radical and not-so-smooth changes in urban institutions, while providing a way of thinking which can move the smart city closer towards a values-centered process and away from a preoccupation with technology and efficiency.

This paper approaches the interaction of a health professional with an AI system for diagnostic purposes as a hybrid decision making process and conceptualizes epistemo-ethical constraints on this process. We argue for the importance of the understanding of the underlying machine epistemology in order to raise awareness of and facilitate realistic expectations from AI as a decision support system, both among healthcare professionals and the potential benefiters (patients). Understanding the epistemic abilities and limitations of such systems is essential if we are to integrate AI into the decision making processes in a way that takes into account its applicability boundaries. This will help to mitigate potential harm due to misjudgments and, as a result, to raise the trust—understood here as a belief in reliability of—in the AI system. We aim at a minimal requirement for AI meta-explanation which should distinguish machine epistemic processes from similar processes in human epistemology in order to avoid confusion and error in judgment and application. An informed approach to the integration of AI systems into the decision making for diagnostic purposes is crucial given its high impact on health and well-being of patients.

In late March 2018, a large part of the Eastern Mediterranean experienced an extraordinary episode of African dust, one of the most intense in recent years, here referred to as the "Minoan Red" event. The episode mainly affected the Greek island of Crete, where the highest aerosol concentrations over the past 15 yeas were recorded, although impacts were also felt well beyond this core area. Our study fills a gap in dust research by assessing the multi-sectoral impacts of sand and dust storms and their socioeconomic implications. Specifically, we provide a multi-sectoral impact assessment of Crete during the occurrence of this exceptional African dust event. During the day of the occurrence of the maximum dust concentration in Crete, i.e. March 22nd, 2018, we identified impacts on meteorological conditions, agriculture, transport, energy, society (including closing of schools and cancellation of social events), and emergency response systems. As a result, the event led to a 3-fold increase in daily emergency responses compare to previous days associated with urban emergencies and wildfires, a 3.5-fold increase in hospital visits and admissions for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) exacerbations and dyspnoea, a reduction of visibility causing aircraft traffic disruptions (eleven cancellations and seven delays), and a reduction of solar energy production. We estimate the cost of direct and indirect effects of the dust episode, considering the most affected socio-economic sectors (e.g. civil protection, aviation, health and solar energy production), to be between 3.4 and 3.8 million EUR for Crete. Since such desert dust transport episodes are natural, meteorology-driven and thus to a large extent unavoidable, we argue that the efficiency of actions to mitigate dust impacts depends on the accuracy of operational dust forecasting and the implementation of relevant early warning systems for social awareness.

Abstract. One of the challenges in studying desert dust aerosol along with its numerous interactions and impacts is the paucity of direct in-situ measurements, particularly in the areas most affected by dust storms. Satellites typically provide columnintegrated aerosol measurements, but observationally-constrained continuous 3D dust fields are needed to assess dust variability, climate effects and impacts upon a variety of socio-economic sectors. Here, we present a high resolution regional reanalysis data set of desert dust aerosols that covers Northern Africa, the Middle East and Europe along with the Mediterranean sea and parts of Central Asia, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans between 2007 and 2016. The horizontal resolution is 0.1° latitude × 0.1° longitude, and the temporal resolution is 3 hours. The reanalysis was produced using Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (LETKF) data assimilation in the Multiscale Online Non-hydrostatic AtmospheRe CHemistry model (MONARCH) developed at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The assimilated data are coarse-mode dust optical depth retrieved from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Deep Blue Level 2 products. The reanalysis data set consists of upper air (dust mass concentrations and extinction coefficient), surface (dust deposition and solar irradiance fields, among them) and total column (e.g., dust optical depth and load) variables. Some dust variables, such as concentrations and wet and dry deposition, are expressed for a binned size distribution that ranges from 0.2 to 20 μm in particle diameter. Both analysis and first-guess (analysis-initialized simulation) fields are available for the variables that are diagnosed from the state vector. A set of ensemble statistics is archived for each output variable, namely the ensemble mean, standard deviation, maximum and median. The spatial and temporal distribution of the dust fields follows well-known dust cycle features controlled by seasonal changes in meteorology and vegetation cover. The analysis is statistically closer to the assimilated retrievals than the first-guess, which proves the consistency of the data assimilation method. Independent evaluation using AERONET dust-filtered optical depth retrievals indicates that the reanalysis data set is highly accurate (mean bias = −0.05, RMSE = 0.12, r = 0.81 when compared to retrievals from the spectral de-convolution algorithm on a 3-hourly basis). Verification statistics are broadly homogeneous in space and time with regional differences that can be partly attributed to model limitations (e.g., poor representation of small-scale emission processes), presence of aerosols other than dust in the observations used in the evaluation, and differences in the number of observations among seasons. Such a reliable high-resolution historical record of atmospheric desert dust will allow a better quantification of dust impacts upon key sectors of society and economy, including health, solar energy production and transportation. The reanalysis data set (Di Tomaso et al., 2021) is distributed via a Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Service (THREDDS) at BSC and freely available at http://hdl.handle.net/21.12146/c6d4a608-5de3-47f6-a004-67cb1d498d98.

This guide presents a joint effort of projects funded under the European Research Area for Climate Services (ERA4CS) (http://www.jpi-climate.eu/ERA4CS), a co- funded action initiated by JPI Climate with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462), 15 national public Research Funding Organisations (RFOs), and 30 Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) from 18 European countries. This guide sets out to increase the understanding of different pathways, methods, and approaches to improve knowledge co-production of climate services with users as a value-added activity of the ERA4CS Programme. Reflecting on the experiences of 16 of the 26 projects funded under ERA4CS, this guide aims to define and recommend good practices for transdisciplinary knowledge co-production of climate services to researchers, users, funding agencies, and private sector service providers. Drawing on responses from ERA4CS project teams to a questionnaire and interviews, this guide maps the diversity of methods for stakeholder identification, involvement, and engagement. It also conducts an analysis of methods, tools, and mechanisms for engagement as well as evaluation of co-production processes. This guide presents and discusses good practice examples based on the review of the ERA4CS projects, identifying enablers and barriers for key elements in climate service co-production processes. These were: namely (i) Forms of Engagement; (ii) Entry Points for Engagement; and, (iii) Intensity of Involvement. It further outlines key ingredients to enhance the quality of co-producing climate services with users and stakeholders. Based on the analysis of the lessons learned from ERA4CS projects, as well as a review of key concepts in the recent literature on climate service co-production, we provide a set of recommendations for researchers, users, funders and private sector providers of climate services.

Desert dust is the most abundant aerosol by mass residing in the atmosphere. It plays a key role in the Earth’s system by influencing the radiation balance, by affecting cloud formation and cloud chemistry, and by acting as a fertilizer for the growth of phytoplankton and for soil through its deposition over the ocean and land. Due to the nature of its emission and transport, atmospheric dust concentrations are highly variable in space and time and, therefore, require a continuous monitoring by measurements. Dust observations are best exploited by being combined with model simulations for the production of analyses and reanalyses, i.e., complete and consistent four dimensional reconstructions of the atmosphere. Existing aerosol (and dust) reanalyses for the global domain have been produced by total aerosol constraint and at relatively coarse spatial resolution, while regional reanalyses exclude some of the regions containing the major sources of desert dust in Northern Africa and the Middle East. We present here a 10-year reanalysis data set of desert dust at a horizontal resolution of 0.1°, and which covers the domain of Northern Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The reanalysis has been produced by assimilating in the MONARCH chemical weather prediction system (Di Tomaso et al., 2017) satellite retrievals over dust source regions with specific dust observational constraint (Ginoux et al., 2012; Pu and Ginoux, 2016). Furthermore, we describe its evaluation in terms of data assimilation diagnostics and comparison against independent observations. Statistics of analysis departures from assimilated observations prove the consistency of the data assimilation system showing that the analysis is closer to the observations than the first-guess. Temporal mean of analysis increments show that the assimilation led to an overall reduction of dust with pattern of systematic corrections that vary with the seasons, and can be linked primarily to misrepresentation of source strength. Independent evaluation of the analysis with AERONET observations indicates that the reanalysis data set is highly accurate, and provides therefore a reliable historical record of atmospheric desert dust concentrations in a recent decade. References Di Tomaso, E., Schutgens, N. A. J., Jorba, O., and Pérez García-Pando, C. (2017): Assimilation of MODIS Dark Target and Deep Blue observations in the dust aerosol component of NMMB-MONARCH version 1.0, Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 1107-1129. Ginoux, P., Prospero, J. M., Gill, T. E., Hsu, N. C. and Zhao, M. (2012): Global-Scale Attribution of Anthropogenic and Natural Dust Sources and Their Emission Rates Based on Modis Deep Blue Aerosol Products. Rev Geophys 50. Pu, B., and Ginoux, P. (2016). The impact of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation on springtime dust activity in Syria. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 16(21), 13431-13448. Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the DustClim project which is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), DLR (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union (435690462); PRACE (eDUST/eFRAGMENT1/eFRAGMENT2), RES (AECT-2020-3-0013/AECT-2019-3-0001/AECT-2020-1-0007) for awarding access to MareNostrum at BSC and for technical support.

Urbanization and ongoing climate change increase the exposure of the populations to heat stress, and the urban heat island (UHI) effect may magnify heat-related mortality, especially during heatwaves. We studied temperature-related mortality in the city of Helsinki—with urban and suburban land uses—and in the surrounding Helsinki-Uusimaa hospital district (HUS-H, excluding Helsinki)—with more rural types of land uses—in southern Finland for two decades, 2000–2018. Dependence of the risk of daily all-cause deaths (all-age and 75+ years) on daily mean temperature was modelled using the distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM). The modelled relationships were applied in assessing deaths attributable to four intensive heatwaves during the study period. The results showed that the heat-related mortality risk was substantially higher in Helsinki than in HUS-H, and the mortality rates attributable to four intensive heatwaves (2003, 2010, 2014 and 2018) were about 2.5 times higher in Helsinki than in HUS-H. Among the elderly, heat-related risks were also higher in Helsinki, while cold-related risks were higher in the surrounding region. The temperature ranges recorded in the fairly coarse resolution gridded datasets were not distinctly different in the two considered regions. It is therefore probable that the modelling underestimated the actual exposure to the heat stress in Helsinki. We also studied the modifying, short-term impact of air quality on the modelled temperature-mortality association in Helsinki; this effect was found to be small. We discuss a need for higher resolution data and modelling the UHI effect, and regional differences in vulnerability to thermal stress.

Sand and Dust Storms (SDS) are extreme meteorological phenomena associated with high amounts of atmospheric mineral dust. SDS are an essential element of the Earth’s natural biogeochemical cycles but are also partly caused by human factors including anthropogenic climate change and unsustainable land and water management; in turn, SDS contribute to climate change and air pollution. SDS have become a serious global concern in recent decades due to their significant impacts on the environment, health, agriculture, livelihoods, and the economy. The impacts are felt throughout the developed and developing world and their mitigation is aligned with several of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. There has been an ever-increasing need for accurate information and predictions on SDS—particularly over desert regions such as the Sahara and in the Middle East—to support early warning systems as well as preparedness and mitigation plans, in addition to growing interest from diverse stakeholders and policymakers in the solar energy, health, environment and aviation sectors. The ongoing ERA4CS ‘Dust Storms Assessment for the development of user-oriented Climate services in Northern Africa, the Middle East and Europe’ (DustClim) project is enhancing our knowledge of the ways SDS affect society by producing and delivering an advanced dust regional model reanalysis for N. Africa, the Middle East and Europe, based on the MONARCH chemical weather prediction system (Pérez et al. 2011; Di Tomaso et al. 2017) and satellite retrievals over dust source regions, and by developing dust-related services tailored to strategic planning, operations, and policy-making in the air quality, aviation, and solar energy sectors. In this contribution, we will present how the resulting dust reanalysis is used as the basis to understand the mid-to-long-term impacts and implications of operating (and regulating) in risky sand and dust environments, namely: (1) the mineral dust component of air quality and its health and regulatory implications; (2) aircraft and airport operations, maintenance and planning; (3) strategic investment and operations optimization in solar energy. We will present our development approach that integrates scientific, industrial and regulatory knowledge, addressing ‘objective threats’ in dialogue with industry partners and public stakeholders (Votsis et al. 2020). Finally, we present an overview of the developed portfolio of SDS climate services for the three aforementioned sectors. Acknowledgment The authors acknowledge DustClim project, part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), DLR (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union (435690462); PRACE (eDUST, eFRAGMENT1, eFRAGMENT2); RES (AECT-2020-3-0013) for awarding access to MareNostrum at BSC and for technical support. References Di Tomaso, E. et al. (2017): Assimilation of MODIS Dark Target and Deep Blue observations in the dust aerosol component of NMMB-MONARCH version 1.0, Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 1107-1129, doi:10.5194/gmd-10-1107-2017. Pérez, C. et al. (2011): An online mineral dust aerosol model for meso to global scales: Model description, annual simulations and evaluation, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 13001-13027, doi: 10.5194/acp-11-13001-2011. Votsis, A. et al. (2020): Operational risks of sand and dust storms in aviation and solar energy: the DustClim approach, FMI's Climate Bulletin: Research Letters 1/2020, doi: 10.35614/ISSN-2341-6408-IK-2020-02-RL.

A reanalysis-based study of desert dust in Northern Africa, the Middle East and Europe in a recent decade ENZA DI TOMASO1, JERÓNIMO ESCRIBANO1, PAUL GINOUX2, SARA BASART1, FRANCESCA MACCHIA1, FRANCESCA BARNABA3, MIGUEL CASTRILLO1, PAOLA FORMENTI4, ORIOL JORBA1, LUCIA MONA5, GILBERT MONTANÉ1, MICHAIL MYTILINAIOS5, VINCENZO OBISO1,6, NICK SCHUTGENS7, ATHANASIOS VOTSIS8, ERNEST WERNER9 AND CARLOS PÉREZ GARCÍAPANDO10,11 1Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) 2NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) 3Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche-Istituto di Scienze dell’Atmosfera e del Clima (CNR-ISAC) 4LISA, UMR CNRS 7583, Université Paris-Est-Créteil, Université de Paris, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) 5Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche-Istituto di Metodologie per l’Analisi Ambientale (CNR-IMAA) 6NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies 7Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit 8Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) 9State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) 10ICREA and Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) 11ICREA, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies Presenting Author: enza.ditomaso@bsc.es

Sand and Dust Storms (SDS) are extreme meteorological phenomena that can be associated with high amounts of atmospheric mineral dust. SDS are an essential element of the Earth’s natural biogeochemical cycles but are also caused in part by human-induced drivers including climate change, unsustainable land management, and water use; in turn, SDS contribute to climate change and air pollution. Over the last few years, there has been an increasing need for SDS accurate information and predictions, particularly over desert regions as the Sahara and in the Middle East and regions affected by long-range dust transport as Europe, to support early warning systems, and preparedness and mitigation plans in addition to growing interest from diverse stakeholders in the aviation sector, including airlines, airports, engine manufacturers, as well as the military. SDS affect aviation operations mainly through reduced visibility and several types of mechanical effects that impact different parts of the aircraft (Clarkson and Simpson 2017); these have significant mid- to long-term implications for issues such as engine and aircraft maintenance, airport operations and resilience, and flight route planning and optimization. In this contribution, we will present ongoing efforts on utilizing desert dust modelling products based on the MONARCH chemical weather prediction system and satellite observational constraint (Pérez et al, 2011; Di Tomaso et al., 2017) as the basis to understand the short- and long-term risks of operating in risky sand and dust environments. We will introduce two types of examples of the use of SDS information. First, a long-term assessment for Northern Africa, the Middle East and Europe of the SDS-threats surrounding visibility and aircraft/engine exposure to dust, based on a 10-year MONARCH dust reanalysis in the context of the EU ERA4CS DustClim project. We will subsequently revise the benefits of using daily dust forecasts based on MONARCH (the reference operational model of the WMO Barcelona Dust Forecast Center, https://dust.aemet.es/) for the early prediction of extreme events as the ones occurred in March 2018 in the Eastern Mediterranean and in February 2020 in the Canary Islands. Acknowledgement The authors acknowledge the DustClim project which is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET. COST Action inDust (CA16202) and the WMO SDS-WAS Regional Center are also acknowledged. We are thankful to T. Bolic for her suggestions and ideas regarding resilience of the aviation sector to SDS. References Clarkson, R., and Simpson, H., 2017: Maximising Airspace Use During Volcanic Eruptions: Matching Engine Durability against Ash Cloud Occurrence, NATO STO AVT-272 Specialists Meeting on “Impact of Volcanic Ash Clouds on Military Operations” Volume: 1. Di Tomaso et al., (2017): Assimilation of MODIS Dark Target and Deep Blue observations in the dust aerosol component of NMMB-MONARCH version 1.0, Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 1107-1129, doi:10.5194/gmd-10-1107-2017. Pérez et al.,: An online mineral dust aerosol model for meso to global scales: Model description, annual simulations and evaluation, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 13001-13027, doi: 10.5194/acp-11-13001-2011, 2011. Votsis et al., (2020), Operational risks of sand and dust storms in aviation and solar energy: the DustClim approach, FMI's Climate Bulletin: Research Letters 1/2020, DOI: 10.35614/ISSN-2341-6408-IK-2020-02-RL.

Exposure to heat stress varies due to the large-scale weather pattern and local factors such as the urban heat island effect, type of built environment, and-like in Helsinkiimpact of the sea and may vary significantly between heatwave events.Moreover, the vulnerability characteristics of the exposed population play a notable role in the health impacts.We present case studies of the socio-spatial exposure patterns to heat stress in the Helsinki metropolitan area during two hot days of the 2018 and 2019 heatwave events.

The current state of human–machine interaction has set forth a process of hybridization of human identity. Technology—and most notably AI—is used as an effective cognitive extender, which enables the extension of human personhood to include artificial elements, leading to the emergence of artificial identity. Discussing—and accommodating—anthropomorphization in human–machine interaction should no longer be the primary focus. Rather, the scope and quality of frameworks in which the hybridization of human identity occurs and evolves has significant ethical implications that pose very pragmatic challenges to users, the industry, and regulators. This paper puts forth a few main principles upon which such a discussion should evolve. We illustrate why disruptiveness can easily turn into human harm when the frameworks facilitating it overlook the human vulnerabilities that arise from hybrid identity, notably the asymmetric and asynchronous relationship between the human and artificial counterparts. Finally, we claim that these new types of vulnerabilities, to which a person is exposed due to the intimate degree of pairing with technology, justifies introducing and protecting artificial identity as well.

Advances in Digital Humanities are providing increasingly rich research material for understanding (1) the environmental and locational attributes of ancient settlements and (2) the regional structure of systems of settlements. Non-material records, in particular, provide information about the social and cultural drivers of human-landscape interaction in settlements that, when combined with material records, aid in refining existing models of settlement-landscape evolution and sustainability. We present a case study from Late Bronze Age Southeast Aegean that utilizes literary records, biogeophysical data and geoinformatics methods to offer insights into the abovementioned topics in that region. Specifically, we utilize a georeferenced version of the record of cities and their sociocultural and environmental descriptions, provided in the Catalog of Ships in Homer’s Iliad. We combine this information with datasets from the spatial (physiography, climatology) and temporal (continuities/discontinuities, population) context of those settlements. Ultimately, we are interested in deriving identifiable patterns in our dataset – more specifically, whether there exist patterns of settlement-environment interaction that are inherently more sustainable than others, as well as getting a glimpse into the hierarchy of values underlying this interaction.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly being implemented as suitable approaches for reducing vulnerability and risk of social-ecological systems (SES) to hydro-meteorological hazards. Understanding vulnerability and risk of SES is crucial in order to design and implement NBS projects appropriately. A systematic literature review was carried out to examine the suitability of, or gaps in, existing frameworks for vulnerability and risk assessment of SES to hydro-meteorological hazards. The review confirms that very few frameworks have been developed in the context of NBS. Most of the frameworks have emphasised social systems over ecological systems. Furthermore, they have not explicitly considered the temporal dimension of risk reduction measures. The study proposes an indicator-based vulnerability and risk assessment framework in the context of NBS (VR-NBS) that addresses both the above limitations and considers established NBS principles. The framework aims to allow for a better consideration of the multiple benefits afforded by NBS and which impact all the dimensions of risk. A list of 135 indicators is identified through literature review and surveys in NBS project sites. This list is composed of indicators representing the social sub-system (61% of total indicators) and the ecological sub-system (39% of total indicators). The list will act as a reference indicator library in the context of NBS projects and will be regularly updated as lessons are learnt. While the proposed VR-NBS framework is developed considering hydro-meteorological hazards and NBS, it can be adapted for other natural hazards and different types of risk reduction measures.