Navigating Earth governance: A cybernetic and pragmatic pathway to digital twin Earth

China is the world’s largest cement producer and consumer, contributing 58% of the world’s total cement production in 2020. The cement industry in China is associated with 4–5% of China’s total energy production and contributes 10–15% of national total CO2 emissions, ranking second only to the power industry, and also significant air pollutant discharges such as SO2, NOx and particulate matter (PM). Since China’s energy and environmental policies for the cement industry usually focus on specific energy/environment effects and a single manufacturing process, this study described the cradle-to-gate lifecycle covariation relationship of these effects and analyzed the potential transgression magnitude to related planetary boundaries to assist in designing low carbon and pollution industrial transition in Chinese cement industry. The multi-regional decomposition analysis model, the LMDI decomposition, and the SDA method were employed to identify the driving factors such as energy intensity, manufacturing technology, economic structure, intermediate demand and structure, and total demand. We found that the Chinese cement industry not only causes massive emissions directly but also imposes environmental burdens on other sectors through up- and downstream supply chains, especially in eastern and central regions. Scope 1 and 2 emissions decreased sharply for CO2, SO2, and PM thanks to stricter environmental regulations, but Scope 3 emissions of CO2 increased by approximately 30%, contributed by energy intensity and economic structural change. Although total emissions basically presented decline trends, several national and regional planetary boundaries might be transgressed under downscaling principles based on population, and gross value added. This work improves our understanding of lifecycle carbon emissions and pollution and related total environmental burden in terms of planetary boundaries, thus offering references for the implementation of energy conservation and environment policies in the Chinese cement industry.

The 59th LCA forum was held on 12 June, 2015 to discuss the situation with regard to national environmental footprints and their relation to planetary boundaries and to the global carrying capacity. This conference report presents the highlights of the LCA forum. Several approaches of how to quantify a safe operating space of the Earth were presented, such as the planetary boundary concept published by Rockstrom et al. (Nature 462:472–475, 2009) and the ecological footprint (Bastianoni et al. 2013). Several presenters showed how they transformed environmental planetary boundaries to national and per capita allowances. In a research project funded by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment safe and unsafe areas were determined by combining the level of overshoot, the level of confidence in the information and the trend in the environmental load. The areas of climate change, biodiversity losses and nitrogen losses show a large overshoot on a global level but also from the point of view of Swiss consumption. Other organizations use the planetary boundary concept to identify companies which qualify for environmentally sustainable funds. Finally, life cycle impact assessment methods are being developed using the planetary boundary concept. The weighting step is based on the level of overshoot, which is close to “distance to target” approaches. It was discussed that the nine planetary boundaries face some consistency and operationalisation problems. For instance, land use changes cause biodiversity losses, which is a planetary boundary parameter in its own. Chemical pollution on the other hand is a general topic, for which a quantification approach has to be developed first (load as well as its planetary boundary). The discussion forum showed that individual countries and political entities like the European Union start monitoring their consumption based environmental footprint. Within this context, approaches and concepts are needed to define the environmentally safe operating space. The LCA forum showed that there is still basic research needed to reliably and consistently quantify relevant planetary boundaries (avoiding overlapping indicators) and to transfer these boundaries to per capita allowances.

The interconnectedness of Earth’s ecological and social systems means that changes in one area invariably affect others. Human activities continue to push the planet beyond safe thresholds, threatening both environmental stability and human well-being. Despite decades of discourse, a universally recognized and operational definition of sustainability remains elusive. While frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals, Planetary Boundaries, and Decent Living Standards have advanced the conversation, none fully captures the complexities of socio-ecological interdependencies or provides actionable guidance. This paper outlines the historical and conceptual context of sustainability, including the shift from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, and critically reviews key frameworks such as the Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable Development Goals, Planetary Boundaries, Doughnut Economy, and Decent Living Standards. It identifies key gaps, including the misalignment between biophysical thresholds and social goals, lack of regional specificity, and missing mechanisms for translating global objectives into just and implementable policies. Building on this analysis, this paper proposes a more precise definition of sustainability: any action that accelerates planetary overshoot or impedes the achievement of a decent life must be considered unsustainable. By advancing this integrative definition, this paper seeks to inform academic discourse and support the development of more equitable and operational sustainability strategies, particularly in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. In doing so, it offers conceptual guidance to address persistent gaps in the SDG framework, with specific relevance to targets such as SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).

This study reviews the goals and achievements of Ameri-

Quantum computing is a threat to the existence of classical cryptographic authentication. Although quantum key distribution (QKD) has quantitative security, its real-life implementation is interfered with due to two reasons: the resource scalability and the availability of an authenticated classical channel. The presented paper proposes a new system, termed as Adaptive Hybrid Authentication Framework (AHAF), as a solution to these issues as it switches dynamically between classical, post-quantum, and quantum authentication protocols. An AHAF is based on a Reinforcement Learning (RL) based decision engine that transforms the problem of protocol selection into a Markov Decision Process (MDP). A multi-objective reward function is maximised by the RL agent, where the security posture, resources consumption in the system and performance are balanced according to real-time threats intelligence and resource availability. The AHAF was structured and verified in some high-fidelity simulation environment that incorporates NetSquid and NS-3. The findings clarify that the AHAF system is a capable solution that prevents a variety of simulated threats and meets the hypothesis of expected uptime (99.9 percent). This is achieved by carefully assigning expensive quantum protocols on a need-to-use basis and so providing QKD level of protection without incurring prohibitive performance cost of a fixed implementation. We have determined that an RL-based learning strategy most readily delivers workable and competitive road map towards feasible quantum-safe communication networks.

Abstract. In 2009, a group of prominent Earth scientists introduced the planetary boundaries (PB) framework: they suggested nine global control variables, and defined corresponding thresholds which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change. The concept builds on systems theory, and views Earth as a complex adaptive system in which anthropogenic disturbances may trigger non-linear, abrupt, and irreversible changes at the global scale, and push the Earth system outside the stable environmental state of the Holocene. While the idea has been remarkably successful in both science and policy circles, it has also raised fundamental concerns, as the majority of suggested processes and their corresponding planetary boundaries do not operate at the global scale, and thus apparently lack the potential to trigger abrupt planetary changes. This paper picks up the debate with specific regard to the planetary boundary on global freshwater use. While the bio-physical impacts of excessive water consumption are typically confined to the river basin scale, the PB proponents argue that water-induced environmental disasters could build up to planetary-scale feedbacks and system failures. So far, however, no evidence has been presented to corroborate that hypothesis. Furthermore, no coherent approach has been presented to what extent a planetary threshold value could reflect the risk of regional environmental disaster. To be sure, the PB framework was revised in 2015, extending the planetary freshwater boundary with a set of basin-level boundaries inferred from environmental water flow assumptions. Yet, no new evidence was presented, either with respect to the ability of those basin-level boundaries to reflect the risk of regional regime shifts or with respect to a potential mechanism linking river basins to the planetary scale. So while the idea of a planetary boundary on freshwater use appears intriguing, the line of arguments presented so far remains speculative and implicatory. As long as Earth system science does not present compelling evidence, the exercise of assigning actual numbers to such a boundary is arbitrary, premature, and misleading. Taken as a basis for water-related policy and management decisions, though, the idea transforms from misleading to dangerous, as it implies that we can globally offset water-related environmental impacts. A planetary boundary on freshwater use should thus be disapproved and actively refuted by the hydrological and water resources community.

To Achieve a Sustainable Blue Future, Progress Assessments Must Include Interdependencies between the Sustainable Development Goals

Doughnut Economics for Policymakers provides a brief overview of Doughnut Economics and its relevance for policymakers. The report explores how the key concepts embedded in the 'seven ways of thinking' in Doughnut Economics can help governments design and implement policies that enable humanity to thrive within planetary boundaries, and introduces a deep design framework to examine the internal governance transformation required for governments to better practice the seven ways of thinking. It provides the conceptual grounding for a web-based guide developed by Doughnut Economics Action Lab.

Geospatial simulation models can help us understand the dynamic aspects of Digital Earth. To implement high-performance simulation models for complex geospatial problems, grid computing and cloud computing are two promising computational frameworks. This research compares the benefits and drawbacks of both in Web-based frameworks by testing a parallel Geographic Information System (GIS) simulation model (Schelling's residential segregation model). The parallel GIS simulation model was tested on XSEDE (a representative grid computing platform) and Amazon EC2 (a representative cloud computing platform). The test results demonstrate that cloud computing platforms can provide almost the same parallel computing capability as high-end grid computing frameworks. However, cloud computing resources are more accessible to individual scientists, easier to request and set up, and have more scalable software architecture for on-demand and dedicated Web services. These advantages may attract more geospatial scientists to utilize cloud computing for the development of Digital Earth simulation models in the future.

In designing and implementing control systems, converting simulation based results to real life systems is often not straightforward and may need adaptation of the control approach to achieve similar performance levels to the simulation results. Such adaptations are usually required due to the fact that sensors and actuators have a number of imperfections such as delays, offsets and inherent noise processes. Here, such a problem in relation to the development of a lane keeping control algorithm is presented. An in-house developed lane keeping controller based on a high-fidelity simulation environment was planned to be transferred to a real demonstrator test vehicle. First tests showed significantly deteriorated and unstable performance results of the corresponding controller, which was due to sensor delays and actuator imperfections. After the diagnosis of the problem, an approach to mitigate these issues was undertaken by predicting the delayed sensor data utilizing a linear Kalman filter and an a-priori predictor. The Kalman filter and a-priori predictor design approach is based on a discrete-time version of the lane tracking model. The approach and the corresponding results were demonstrated using simulation and real vehicle implementation results that were evaluated in real driving conditions.

Depending on the economic situation, real estate policies have been announced with the goal of stabilizing real estate or revitalizing the economy. Before implementing real estate policies, effective operation and evaluation of government policies are essential. Real estate exhibits different regional variations due to its unique location fixity, and as a consumer and investment good, it is a commodity that is affected in a complex way, such as liquidity, supply, macroeconomics, and psychology. Real estate policies vary by tax policies such as holding tax and capital gains tax, and housing finance regulations (LTV, DTI). From this point of view, there is a need for a tool that can analyze the comprehensive policy effects including various types of real estate policies of the government. In this study, the available variables among the macroeconomic variables of the real estate market macroeconomic model designed on the premise of the ripple path following the implementation of real estate policies and the apartment sales transaction price index in the metropolitan area and nationwide, which is a proxy for apartment houses, were set as variables and analyzed through multivariate analysis. Analyze dynamic variations between variables. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of housing finance regulation on housing mortgage loans in the national and metropolitan areas among real estate policies and the effect of tax policies and mortgage loans on apartment house prices (apartment sale price index) among real estate policies. We would like to focus on analyzing the effectiveness of the policy.

Depending on the economic situation, real estate policies have been announced with the goal of stabilizing real estate or revitalizing the economy. Before implementing real estate policies, effective operation and evaluation of government policies are essential. Real estate exhibits different regional variations due to its unique location fixity, and as a consumer and investment good, it is a commodity that is affected in a complex way, such as liquidity, supply, macroeconomics, and psychology. Real estate policies vary by tax policies such as holding tax and capital gains tax, and housing finance regulations (LTV, DTI). From this point of view, there is a need for a tool that can analyze the comprehensive policy effects including various types of real estate policies of the government. In this study, the available variables among the macroeconomic variables of the real estate market macroeconomic model designed on the premise of the ripple path following the implementation of real estate policies and the apartment sales transaction price index in the metropolitan area and nationwide, which is a proxy for apartment houses, were set as variables and analyzed through multivariate analysis. Analyze dynamic variations between variables. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of housing finance regulation on housing mortgage loans in the national and metropolitan areas among real estate policies and the effect of tax policies and mortgage loans on apartment house prices (apartment sale price index) among real estate policies. We would like to focus on analyzing the effectiveness of the policy.

Realizing the health-related sustainable development goals (SDGs) requires integrated action on system-wide challenges.To address gaps in health service delivery, we need evidence on which government agencies, research institutions, donors and civil society can act. 1Unless research is relevant to specific health systems, the evidence that it generates can be dismissed by policy-makers. 2 For example, there is plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of standard interventions to prevent maternal and child deaths, but countries vary widely in the degree to which these interventions have been implemented. 3e argue that embedding of research in real world policy, practice and implementation is needed to strengthen health systems worldwide.Embedded research conducted in partnership with policymakers and implementers, integrated in different health system settings and that takes into account context-specific factors can ensure greater relevance in policy priority-setting and decision-making. 4ollaboration between researchers, implementers and policy-makers has been shown to improve uptake of health systems research. 5However, in many places, prioritization and conduct of research is often done solely by academics. 6ealth research is also largely focused on biomedical and clinical interventions, while health systems and implementation research remains underfunded globally. 7ften, knowledge translation is an add-on activity after the completion of research projects.The World Health Organization's report, Changing mindsets: strategy on health policy and systems research, called for the embedding of research into health systems processes. 6This report explained that when embedding happens, researchers and decision-makers are linked through a system in which the need for evidence to inform policy is understood by decision-makers.The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) developed a

Autonomous robotic systems that are weaponized need to be extremely accurate, make decisions in real time, and be capable of adapting to shifting situations. Dynamic threats, uncertainty in the environment, and the requirement for ongoing learning complicate the job of conventional control systems based on fixed path-planning algorithms or pre-programmed rules. These limitations hinder the deployment of fully autonomous systems in real-world defense contexts.We introduce the Adaptive Reinforcement-Controlled Navigation System (AR-CNS), an architecture for autonomous weapon systems based on Reinforcement Learning (RL) that seeks to overcome such challenges. By continuous exposure to complex simulated battle scenarios, the system employs Deep Q-Networks (DQN) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithms to gain knowledge about optimal paths of navigation, evasive maneuvers, and engagement protocols. By means of reward feedback on mission-targeted goals, such as target interception, threat evasion, and energy-saving maneuvering, the system learns with experience to accomplish context-aware control with no need for human intervention.In a bid to maximize mission success, AR-CNS translates real-time sensory data, including opponent positions, maps of obstacles, and terrain details, and dynamically alters control rules. It is implemented on a real-time control system integrated into robotic platforms following training within a high-fidelity simulation environment that simulates battlefield conditions. As per experimental outcomes, AR-CNS completes a successful mission rate of 94.8%, in contrast to rule-based navigation systems and conventional PID-based controllers at 78.6% and 85.1%, respectively. The proposed approach demonstrates superior path planning under dynamic conditions, lower collision rates, and robust generalization to novel scenarios. Such outcomes depict the manner in which adaptive control systems for future autonomous weapon navigation can be revolutionized by reinforcement learning.

Major constraints on understanding the diversity of human and all other life systems emerge at continental and global scales, where whole-system analyses are needed. It is proposed that at these scales, secure higher-level forums are necessary to employ holistic perspectives in facili tating the development, guidance and implementation of effective policy. Those I consider presently do not exist in any globally coordinated framework. Some may claim that key UN bodies, major NGOs and continentally linked government agencies and commissions, e.g. the EU or a federal government, satisfy this void. If this is so, why are we facing the current complex global predicament? The rigorous management of scale-linked issues at this nexus is crucial. This pre- liminary explora tion of research, oriented towards continental and planetary scales, interrogates the concept that the neglect of scale through ignorance, misunderstanding or under-recognition is a key factor in explaining why human society as we know it is not sustainable. This concept is supported by observations, which leads to new questions. The results of this paper point to the need for enduring and flexible higher-level forums. Here, emerging globally linked knowledge can be considered and effective procedures implemented that integrate this knowledge about planetary boundaries and continental relationships. Guiding agencies can be established that are empowered to ameliorate and remediate the scale-linked maladaptations of the past and seek to accommodate the challenges of the present and future.