This paper provides a state of the art of contemporary Digital Twins (DTs) projects for urban planning at an international level. The contribution investigates the evolution of the DT concept and contextualises this tool within the scientific-cultural debate, highlighting the interconnection between global policies and local needs/wishes. Specifically, six case studies of DTs are compared, illustrating their application, content, technological infrastructure, and priority results. The projects presented provide an overview of the existing DT typologies, focusing on the evaluative/prefigurative use and the limits/potential of the tool in light of the socio-health, climate, and environmental crises. Reflections on DT reveal, on the one hand, its potential role in supporting decision-making and participatory processes and, on the other, the potential utopian trend of data-driven planning encouraged by public–private investments in the smart city/twin city sector. In conclusion, the study underlines the innovative role of DT as a cutting-edge scientific format in the disciplinary framework but highlights that the practical use of the tool is still in an experimental research-action phase. From this theoretical-critical review, it is possible to hypothesise new research paths to implement the realism and application potential of DTs for urban planning and urban governance.

This paper presents a new methodological approach for analysing the impacts of climate change on the urban habitat and improving the quality of life for citizens. The study falls within the diagnostic phase of the Climate Change and Urban Health Resilience (CCUHRE) research project applied to the rationalist neighbourhood of Monticelli, a suburb of Ascoli Piceno (Italy). The methodological approach tests innovative and multidisciplinary cognitive tools to quantify the impacts of climate change and create refined risk maps combining remote sensing, spatial data, satellite images, and thermal fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations. These tools created an atlas of green areas and surfaces using scientific indexes that describe the relationship between the urban form and heat and between the type of ground and materials. The information yielded by geoprocessing will allow critical aspects in the context to be addressed with site-specific strategies. In fact, through downscaling, it is possible to analyse the thermal fluid dynamics characteristics of the most significant urban areas and identify the related weather/climate characteristics, perceptual scenarios, and thermal stressed regions. The results have provided a dataset that defines the degree of vulnerability of the neighbourhood and identifies the areas exposed to thermal risk.

This article presents the main contents, methods, and results of the European project EDUSCAPE (Erasmus+) developed by a team of international researchers from four countries, just over a year and a half after its launch with a focus on SAAD/UNICAM contributions. Into the scientific-disciplinary frame of environmental education and climate adaptation, EDUSCAPE aims to integrate the polysemic, transversal, and multidisciplinary concept of landscape and its decline, as a promoter of new forms of knowledge in response to emerging dynamics, within the educational offer of school programs (6–15 years). This paper presents the general structure of the project, the methodology experimented (PBL educational approach), and the qualitative and quantitative intermediate results obtained so far (literature review, curriculum analysis, and needs analysis). To integrate landscape into school curricula and renew them, EDUSCAPE is preparing Didactic Units (DUs) as the final result of the project to provide theoretical foundations and practical solutions supporting teaching which will be tested in the schools of the partnership network. In general, this paper explores the possibility to disseminate the pedagogical and social role of the landscape through a new way of teaching based on a deeper exploration of the theme that can stimulate critical thinking in current and future generations regarding the global/local challenges of the 21st century.

The authors would like to make the following corrections to the published paper

The paper presents a study on the landscape system, understanding the landscape in the broadest sense of heritage and common good, with a focus on the identification, analysis, and critical evaluation of the coastal Landscape Systems (LSs) of Guinea-Bissau (GB) in north-western Africa. It examines the major spatial and temporal transformations of a rapidly evolving landscape, particularly in recent years, due to socio-economic dynamics and the impacts of climate change, including a specific assessment of climate change effects on coastal landscape quality. The analysis was conducted at the geographical-territorial scale using the traditional landscape approach in order to highlight homogeneous landscape systems and subsystems, and to propose a coastal perimeter for landscape management in at-risk areas of GB. The research aims to protect and enhance the GB landscape, as well as to manage the territory and its botanical-ecological and historical-cultural heritage. Specifically, it supports coastal-landscape planning towards climate resilience and the safety of communities in the coastal area, from the perspective of sustainable development, which in this context is particularly significant given the widespread poverty, administrative-financial and socio-health challenges, as well as the absence of up-to-date data, studies, or projects on the coastal landscape. The study further develops two complementary GIS-based scenarios: one describing socio-cultural and spatial trends in the absence of planning initiatives, and another resilience-oriented scenario focused on coastal safety, the enhancement of natural and cultural heritage, and the improvement of quality of life.