The future of urban green space might be written in code, according to research in the International Journal of Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems. The age-old image of the landscape architect, sketchbook in hand, guided by intuition and a feel for the land, is being dug over by digital disruption. The work suggests that for city and town planners facing increasingly dense populations and the problems that climate change brings, the art of urban garden design needs reseeding with modern tools to fertilise new ideas.

Urban green spaces are now recognised as increasingly important for the recreation, enjoyment, and wellbeing of city dwellers, Moreover, such as spaces and in particular the protective effects of trees during scorching summers and the atmospheric cleansing they bring are no longer an aesthetic luxury but an essential part of the modern cityscape. The concrete jungle needs to go green, and an algorithmic augmentation of human intuition can help balance the competing pressures in landscaping our urban spaces.

The researchers talk of "landscape optimization" wherein a green space or garden is not simply a canvas on which to paint trees, lawns and shrubberies, but a complex data problem that can be more effectively solved algorithmically without compromising art nor beauty. The team merging aesthetics and ecology reframe the problem into a "rationality index" which considers the terrain profile, soil health, and the local climate to provide the computer with a unified metric it can interpret and from which it can provide novel design solutions using various algorithms based on natural systems such as honeybee behaviour and ant colonies.

In preliminary tests, the team found that their hybrid algorithmic approach worked better than conventional methods used to calculate land-use efficiency. They emphasise that by treating landscape design as an optimizable process, city planners can produce evidence-based layouts that are reproducible, resilient, and reliable. While the immediate focus is on gardens, the implications for wider urban planning are significant. As public authorities face mounting pressure to meet sustainability targets, the "intuition" of the past may soon give way to the "optimization" of the future.

In terms of sustainability and competitiveness, modern agriculture depends on information across the whole of food-production. Research in the International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology has looked at how data, innovation, and collaboration shape farm performance in the facing of growing climate change issues and under diverse market pressures. The work suggests that without knowledge frameworks, policies and technologies designed to improve resilience are likely to underperform.

The researchers show that information quality is a decisive factor linking farm-level decisions to wider economic and environmental outcomes. Data on production volumes, input costs, as well as resource use can be combined with national statistics and market intelligence to help farmers and policymakers to respond to price signals, supply chain disruption, and climate stress. Unfortunately, many farms still operate without formal accounting systems or even consistent record-keeping, which means their decision-making is not clear. Moreover, a lack of detailed economic awareness might be limiting the capacity of many farms to adapt production in response to changing conditions.

The detrimental effects of this information gap are worsened by social and organisational factors within the sector. Farmers' associations, cooperatives, and informal networks can play a role in knowledge exchange, but many farmers do not make full use of such networks, with differences in uptake being linked to farm size, education level, and age. The team adds that the retention of younger people in rural areas emerges is a major concern, as demographic decline threatens the sector's capacity to absorb new skills and sustain innovation over time.

The bottom line is that digitalisation, used systematically, rather than casually, might offer a structural shift in how agriculture is managed that could help overcome some of these problems. Digital systems can reduce wasted resources and wasted effort. With improved resource efficiency and decision-making supported by data in a sector where timing is often critical, farming practices might be improved. Ultimately, there is a need to embed this digitalisation within farming networks supported by leadership, coherent policy and trained personnel.

Inderscience is pleased to announce that the following journals are increasing their issue frequency from 2026:

International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics
Increasing from 6 to 8 issues per year

International Journal of Electronic Business
Increasing from 4 to 8 issues per year

International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing
Increasing from 6 to 8 issues per year

International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics
Increasing from 6 to 8 issues per year

Prof. Sangbing (Jason) Tsai from the International Engineering and Technology Institute in China has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Ultra Wideband Communications and Systems.

Prof. Yiping Wang from Wuhan University of Technology in China has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Aerodynamics.

Prof. Shancang Li from Cardiff University in the UK has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Information Privacy, Security and Integrity.

Prof. Chi-Yuan Chen from National Ilan University and Fo Guang University in Taiwan ROC has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Computational Intelligence Studies.

Dr. Hsin-Hung Cho from National Ilan University in Taiwan has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Information Quality.

Dr. Noman Sohail from Linköping University in Sweden has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Computational Medicine and Healthcare.