In today’s urban environment, disasters are not isolated events but part of continuous, complex processes that threaten both sustainable urban development and effective emergency management. Traditional emergency management practices are hindered by departmental silos and fragmented information exchanges, which often lead to conflicting interests, unclear responsibilities, ineffective tools, and imprecise task divisions. In response, our study repositions emergency management within the broader context of sustainable urban development by emphasizing resource optimization, strengthened inter-agency coordination, and strategic decision support to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal 11. Based on observations from 31 departments in Dongtai City, we identified key contradictions within the current activity system. Guided by activity theory, we designed the Cross-Organizational Emergency Intelligence System (COEIS), which synchronizes real-time data across agencies via a novel information exchange mechanism. Implementation in a real-world setting and evaluation using grounded theory demonstrated that the COEIS enhances collaborative efficiency and decision support capabilities, thereby improving inter-organizational resilience. This study makes both theoretical and practical contributions by integrating the DSRM, activity theory, and grounded theory, offering a replicable pathway for transforming fragmented crisis management infrastructures into sustainable and resilient networks aligned with urban development strategies.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information is increasingly vital in driving capital markets to promote sustainable development. However, significant barriers remain in effectively transforming ESG information into intelligence that supports investor decision-making. Drawing upon information chain theory and intelligence transformation theory, this study constructs an ESG intelligence transformation model tailored for investor decision-making, aiming to address relevant challenges within China’s unique capital market environment. Through a mixed deductive-inductive content analysis of analyst reports issued by Chinese securities firms, this study identifies underlying issues in current ESG information utilization: excessive focus on social dimensions at the expense of integrated consideration of environmental and governance issues; inadequate conversion of environmental and governance data into decision-relevant information; and incomplete pathways for transforming ESG knowledge into intelligence supporting investment decisions. These constraints significantly undermine the potential of ESG information to guide sustainable investment strategies and support green economic transformation. To bridge these gaps, this study proposes an integrated multi-stakeholder optimization strategy encompassing: enhanced disclosure standards by regulators; greater corporate emphasis on environmental and governance disclosures; more sophisticated assessment techniques by rating agencies; and optimized information channels between corporations and investors by financial institutions. This study provides a theoretical foundation and practical pathways for enhancing the quality and utility of ESG information, contributing to sustainable finance research.

As digital government systems evolve, increasing complexity in information interactions has challenged traditional hierarchical governance models, which often struggle in dynamic and cross-sectoral contexts. This study aims to identify the structural patterns of government information interaction and to develop a testable adaptive governance approach that supports sustainable digital government evolution. Drawing on IT alignment theory and complex network analysis, this study reconceptualizes digital government as a complex adaptive system and reveals the heavy-tailed distribution, structural stability, and self-organizing tendencies of government information networks. Building on these findings, the study develops and operationalizes a self-organizing adaptive governance framework—featuring fractal design, dynamic alignment, and layered modular coordination—into 11 governance rules. By shifting the focus from static alignment to adaptive structural coordination, this research advances a new pathway for the sustainable and resilient evolution of digital government systems.

This study examined the global media citation network of COVID-19-related news at two stages of the pandemic alert phase, i.e., the national level alert stage and the global level alert stage. The findings reveal that the small-world pattern and scale-free property of media citation networks contributed to the rapid spread of COVID-19-related news around the world. Within the networks, a small number of media outlets from a few countries formed the backbone of the network to control the risk communication; meanwhile, many media of geographical and cultural similarities formed cross-border collaborative cliques in the periphery of the network. When the alert phase escalated from the national level to the global level, the network demonstrated a number of changes. The findings contribute to the understanding of risk communication for international public health emergencies by taking into account the network perspective and evolutionary nature of public health emergencies in analysis.

Public health emergencies of international concern (PHEIC) generate worldwide public health impacts, making the international dissemination of risk information critically important for both global health governance and sustainable development. The global media system facilitates this dissemination through collaborative and interdependent networks, enhancing mutual understanding and strengthening the resilience of global health communication systems. This study examines PHEIC-related information flows by constructing and analyzing news citation networks during multiple outbreaks to characterize patterns of information exchange between Africa and other regions. We identify key participants, analyze thematic structures, and investigate the structural determinants influencing information flow. The results reveal significant inequalities in public health risk information exchange between Africa and other world regions, evident in participant composition, engagement modes, thematic focus, and interaction intensity. These asymmetries reflect underlying disparities in global communication capacity and socioeconomic development, indicating that information inequality has become a critical dimension of global health and sustainability challenges. Promoting equitable access to public health information and strengthening Africa’s media and communication capacity are essential steps toward achieving inclusive, resilient, and sustainable global health governance.