Social media data shed light on air-conditioning interest of heat-vulnerable regions and sociodemographic groups.

Cooling homes with air conditioners is a vital adaptation approach, but the wider adoption of air conditioners can increase hydrofluorocarbon emissions that have high global warming potential and carbon emissions as a result of more fossil energy consumption. The scale and scope of future cooling demand worldwide are, however, uncertain because the extent and drivers of air-conditioning adoption remain unclear. Here, using 2021 and 2022 Facebook and Instagram data from 113 countries, we investigate the usability of social media advertising data to address these data gaps in relation to the drivers of air-conditioning adoption. We find that social media data might represent air-conditioning purchasing trends. Globally, parents of small children and middle-aged, highly educated married or cohabiting males tend to express greater interest in air-conditioning adoption. In regions with high heat vulnerability yet little empirical data on cooling demand (e.g., the Middle East and North Africa), these sociodemographic factors play a more prominent role. These findings can strengthen our understanding of future cooling demand for more sustainable cooling management.

A mini-review on household solid waste management systems in low-income developing countries: A case study of urban Harare City, Zimbabwe.

Among other African cities, in terms of solid waste management (SWM), Harare has been ranked as one of the poorest. The municipality struggles to efficiently provide SWM services to its residents. Considering that SWM systems are complex, the individual behaviour of its components (waste generation, collection, and disposal) determines the overall performance of the system. This mini-review thus aims to understand the management system of the urban city's biggest source of solid waste which is household solid waste (HSW). The systematic literature review methodology using NVIVO was used to analyse the literature. Out of a selected sample size of 500 journal articles, 26 were selected based on their relevance to the study. The uncertainty of the data provided by the Harare City Council (HCC) and of HSW generation data harvested in the literature was calculated. According to the HCC data records, Harare has an average daily waste generation per capita of on average 0.38±0.1 kg producing about 207, 635, 294±56, 027, 040 kg of HSW generated annually. With the waste collection efficiency in Harare at about 72.4%±7.5%, the city collects approximately 170, 385, 600±33 384 209 kg of HSW annually. All the collected HSW is disposed of in the city's major MSW dumpsite called Pomona and only about 23, 498, 400±3, 988, 817 kg MSW is recovered annually with the average recovery efficiency at around 9.5%±2.8%, where most of the waste recovery is done by the waste pickers.

Practice and perspectives in the validation of resource management models.

Quantitative modelling is commonly used to assist the policy dimension of sustainability problems. Validation is an important step to make models credible and useful. To investigate existing validation viewpoints and approaches, we analyse a broad academic literature and conduct a survey among practitioners. We find that empirical data plays an important role in the validation practice in all main areas of sustainability science. Qualitative and participatory approaches that can enhance usefulness and public reliability are much less visible. Data-oriented validation is prevalent even when models are used for scenario exploration. Usefulness regarding a given task is more important for model developers than for users. As the experience of modellers and users increases, they tend to better acknowledge the decision makers' demand for clear communication of assumptions and uncertainties. These findings provide a reflection on current validation practices and are expected to facilitate communication at the modelling and decision-making interface.