The issue of achieving sustainable livelihoods (SL) is a persistent problem that has gained significant interest for all countries. Even though contexts of vulnerability have been highlighted to be critical to SL, the difference of SL under vulnerability contexts, particularly disaster, has been ignored. As one disaster-prone area, there is an urgent need to conduct studies on SL in Shenzha, within the context of the construction of a national park. This paper proposes to address this research gap by evaluating SL under various disaster contexts in Shenzha, China. According to the frequency of natural disasters, towns in Shenzha can be divided into three groups: Snowstorm and windstorm-dominated towns (SWT), mixed towns (MT) and drought-dominated towns (DT). The results showed that (1) a great disparity of SL can be observed among the three vulnerability groups. The scores of these SL were sorted into descending order as: DT > SWT > MT. (2) In detail, herdsmen in DT have a high value of SL because they have high livelihood assets, livelihood strategies and disaster management capabilities. (3) Herdsmen in SWT have high livelihood assets, particularly human and financial assets, and livelihood strategies. (4) The low livelihood assets and livelihood strategies have restricted the SL of herdsmen in MT. An analysis of SL under various disaster contexts helped to depict the characteristics of SL. Accordingly, targeted policies were developed for the development of SL under various disaster contexts.

Aviation transport is one of the most important and critical infrastructures in today’s global economy. Failure in its proper operations can seriously impact regional economic development, which is why it is important to evaluate network robustness. Previous analyses of robustness have mainly been conducted with an unweighted approach. In the development of air transport, however, the demand for route configuration has gradually decreased, while the demand for flight adjustments has increased. Consequently, the aviation network has developed unevenly, so adhering to a uniform approach for evaluating network robustness may lead to inaccurate results. Therefore, we examined which centrality sequence is the most sensitive to network robustness in both unweighted and weighted approaches. The air transport network selected for the case study comprised the six subregions of the Eurasian landmass of the Belt and Road region. The study results showed the following: (a) in the network constructed as an unweighted one, betweenness, and degree centrality had higher priorities in preserving network functionalities than eigenvector and closeness centrality; (b) in the network constructed as a weighted one, recursive power had a higher priority in preserving network functionalities than recursive centrality; and (c) no particular centrality measurement had a significant advantage in representing the totality of robustness. The betweenness centrality sequence was sensitive to the average shortest path length and global efficiency; the recursive power sequence was sensitive to the clustering coefficient, while degree centrality was sensitive to graph diversity. The findings of this study support the decisions about managing air transportation in the Belt and Road region.

Illness and poverty have been identified to be mutually influential, thereby forming a vicious cycle. Cutting off this vicious circle will be of great significance in the long-term planning of rural poverty reduction. Most of the existing studies have been conducted in proposing medical policies. Thus, these policies neglect the ability of the poor themselves. In oasis agricultural areas, the land is the critical resource, and improving land-use efficiency has been proposed as the key entry point for breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and illness. This article summarizes the success achieved in fighting health-related poverty in South Xinjiang, China, which can be attributed to a three-pronged approach that addresses the construction of the living, production, and ecological spaces. (1) Construction of the living space should be the first step in breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and illness since it can improve the medical and basic living infrastructure. (2) Construction of the production space is critical for breaking the vicious cycle since it can directly increase the income of the poor. Specifically, the profit can be improved by increasing crop yields, developing animal husbandry, and participating in land circulation and rural cooperatives. Additionally, the construction of township enterprises can provide employment to the poor. (3) In regard to the construction of the ecological space, preventing and controlling desertification, as well as renovating the village environment, is essential for providing a good living environment that is conducive to the improvement of physical fitness. Constructing the multi-spaces of “living–production–ecological” has important implications in terms of transforming the vicious cycle into a virtuous one, which is crucial for designing national poverty reduction policies.

Studies on the distribution of retail outlets are crucial for optimizing urban resource allocation, and their rationalized layout plays an important role in developing urban economies and meeting consumer demand. However, the literature on the subject has been limited by data collection. In the era of big data, there has been an emergence of geo-referenced data that are more accurate and convenient and thus more able to be applied in the retail analysis. This study addresses this lacuna by exploring the spatial distribution of various retail outlets with the application of points of interest. Our study demonstrates that (1) the retail outlets in Urumqi are concentrated in the inner city. The inner-city area has a higher density distribution of retail outlets, and the development of the retail function is more mature. (2) Various categories of retail outlets display dissimilar agglomeration characteristics and hot spots. Specialty stores, clothing and footwear stores, convenience stores, and home-building material markets have lower average nearest-neighbor distances. (3) The retail outlets in the subject area are directionally distributed in the northwest–southeast direction, which is the result of both the topographical condition and government intervention in Urumqi. (4) Various categories of retail outlets tend to agglomerate at different scales. These results are conducive to the exploration of the location rules and layout preferences of retail locations, and they provide a reference for guiding the adjustment and optimization of retail layouts.

Air‐passenger flow, denoting intercity connections, has been a focal point of studies pertaining to urban networks. While most existing studies include only the geoeconomic characteristics of nodes as explanatory variables, this analysis developed a gravity model by incorporating further factors (e.g., cultural disparity and institutional disparity) that might influence air‐passenger flows in the “Belt and Road” region. The primary findings are as follows: (1) The cultural and institutional disparities correlate negatively with the air‐passenger flows in this region; (2) air‐passenger flows are positively related to border, population and economy size, and economic disparity; (3) flows tend to first increase and then subsequently decrease as geographical distance increases; (4) the impact of the factors on the flows varies by subregion. This study could serve as a reference for those interested in gaining a greater insight into air‐passenger flows and could also help improve regional strategies for air‐transportation development.