Klappentext

Rethinking Rural: Data-Driven Approaches for Sustainable Development offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary exploration of sustainable rural development through a quantitative lens. Drawing on official statistics, spatial analysis, and refined indicators, this edited volume brings together leading scholars from ecology, economics, and planning to rethink the environmental-economic nexus shaping rural territories. With a focus on Europe and the Mediterranean, but applicable globally, the book emphasizes continuous, spatially explicit monitoring of socioecological and socioeconomic complexities to inform effective, place-specific policies that enhance sustainability and resilience.

Structured in three parts, the book first presents integrated perspectives on rural system evolution, including climate change impacts, land use, and socioeconomic drivers across diverse contexts such as Mediterranean landscapes and Colombia’s deforestation. The second part details traditional and advanced tools for monitoring rural environments, from territorial indicators to wildfire and habitat assessment. The final section addresses planning and policy challenges, evaluating natural disaster management, resilience strategies, environmental degradation costs, and socio-demographic influences on tourism insurance.

Inhalt

1. Local development and sustainability of rural systems: an integrated, multidisciplinary perspective

Part 1. Assessing the evolution of rural systems: theory and practice
2. Monitoring the Impact of Climate Change on Social and Economic Activities over time and space
3. Life under climate change: unravelling socioeconomic and bio-geophysical drivers of change in evolving Mediterranean landscapes
4. Coca cultivation and deforestation in Colombia: a paradigmatic example of unsustainable (local) development
5. Land consumption and food safety
6. The role of wildfires in rural development
7. Zoonosis and rural farming spaces evolving toward peri-urban

Part 2. Traditional and advanced tools for monitoring rural systems
8. Territorial indicators: toward an integrated analysis
9. Monitoring Forest Cover from a mix of Data Sources: A contribution to Landscape Analysis
10. Monitoring wildfires from a socioeconomic perspective: a spatially augmented Zipf’s law tells you more
11. Monitoring natural habitats

Part 3. Evaluating, understanding and planning socio-economic complexity in rural districts
12. Planning and policy of sustainable land management
13. Envisaging and planning Natural Disasters during the era of crisis in Greece
14. Resilience, indicators and policy evaluation: Monitoring EU-PNRR strategy in Italy
15. Data matters: Estimating monetary costs of a process of Environmental Degradation
16. Tourism Insurance and Socio-demographic Contexts in Iran: A Delphi Panel