Rethinking Rural
Data-Driven Approaches for Sustainable Development
- 1st Edition - April 1, 2026
- Latest edition
- Editor: Luca Salvati
- Language: English
Rethinking Rural: Data-Driven Approaches for Sustainable Development offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary exploration of sustainable rural development through a quanti… Read more
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 socio-ecological and socio-economic 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 socio-economic 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.
Ideal for academics, researchers, and students in spatial planning, applied economics, environmental science, GIS, ecology, agronomy, demography, rural sociology, and geography, this volume equips readers with innovative methodologies and case studies to understand and shape sustainable rural futures.
Structured in three parts, the book first presents integrated perspectives on rural system evolution, including climate change impacts, land use, and socio-economic 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.
Ideal for academics, researchers, and students in spatial planning, applied economics, environmental science, GIS, ecology, agronomy, demography, rural sociology, and geography, this volume equips readers with innovative methodologies and case studies to understand and shape sustainable rural futures.
- Assesses complex, multidisciplinary issues, with case studies spanning from agronomy to demography, from ecology to economics, all connected under a conceptual umbrella of Sustainable Development Goals and resilience thinking
- Addresses key challenges such as climate change, land-use change, urbanization, resilience, complexity, adaptive system thinking, and economic development, with an operational, policy-planning approach toward peripheral, rural, and disadvantaged areas and landscapes
- Applies a comparative approach, deriving general notions and operational outcomes from comparative cases and quali-quantitative studies with extensive geographical coverage and specific quantitative techniques
Academics and students studying spatial planning, applied economics, environmental monitoring and assessment, geographical information systems, ecology, agronomy, forest science, soil science, demography, rural sociology, regional science, land-use science, agricultural economics, geography, urban-rural studies
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
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
- Edition: 1
- Latest edition
- Published: April 1, 2026
- Language: English
LS
Luca Salvati
Luca Salvati is an adjunct professor and staff researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. Since 2001 he has been staff researcher at the National Council for Research in Agriculture and the Analysis of Agricultural Economics (CREA). He is an expert in official statistics, spatial statistics, Geographic Information Systems and Remote sensing applied to socioeconomic and environmental issues. He has conducted studies on topics of economic statistics, urban economics, regional demography, and sustainable development, using exploratory multivariate statistics and geographic information systems for decision support. He has held courses in Economic Statistics (University of Rome Tor Vergata), Basic Mathematics (University of Rome La Sapienza), Multivariate Statistics (University of Roma Tre), Regional Economics (University of Camerino, University of Eastern Piedmont), Strategic Evaluation of environmental impact (University of Roma Tre). He has supervised master's and doctoral theses and has published more than 30 printed books and over 600 scientific publications in English.
Affiliations and expertise
Adjunct Professor and Staff Researcher, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy; CREA, Rome, Italy