At the end of 2019, during the outbreak of COVID-19, the Chinese government and media used social media extensively to release emergency information. Once this information was released, it immediately attracted significant public attention. This study used a questionnaire survey to determine social media users’ habits during the COVID-19 outbreak. The results indicated that in the case of community closure during sudden public health events, the majority of respondents use social media to obtain information to understand the development trends of an epidemic, the government’s emergency strategy, scientific epidemic prevention knowledge, and accurate information. Based on the survey results, this study considers the value of social media for emergency information, which is both a tool and a new trend in information dissemination in the context of emergencies.

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The Taiwan high speed rail (HSR) system has been in commercial operation since January 2007. Based on the experience of previous freeway development in the area, HSR has the potential to significantly influence local development in western Taiwan. This study focused on the impact of the Taiwan HSR system on local development. Simultaneous equation modeling was applied to analyze the associations among development sectors, and is calibrated using samples of 323 villages, towns or cities in Taiwan. The calibrated model is used as a basis for analyzing and discussing the influences of improving accessibility, increasing land supply for urban development, and various other strategies related to the HSR system. This work reached the following conclusions: improving accessibility and increasing urban development land supply influences local population and employment distributions; improving connections between HSR stations and the central city benefits the development of the central city rather than HSR station area; improving connections between HSR stations and individual districts within the metropolitan area increases the HSR service area and balances development among districts, and promoting station area development projects contributes significantly to local development.

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The widespread application of social media in the field of crisis management has been adopted globally. In recent years, the role of social media in emergencies has grown, especially during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study explores the different roles played by social media in the government, the media, and the public during the pandemic through the key nodes of information dissemination at each developmental stage of crisis risk communication. The results indicate that in a government-led environment, in which social media is the link and the public is the core, attention must be directed towards the key role of social media as a “whistleblower” during the incubation period of a crisis event. Moreover, a new gatekeeping mechanism that integrates the public, the media, and the government should be formed to improve emergency management during crises.

The focus of this study is to assess regional ecological security, based on a method of combining the ecological sensitivity evaluation and the ecosystem services evaluation of Tongling City, China. This approach may reduce the possible errors caused by basing the assessment on only one of these two evaluation methods. The PCA (Principal Component Analysis) and rectified ESV (Ecosystem Services Value) methods were employed in this study with the support of SPSS, RS and ARCGIS. The study showed the following results: the ecological sensitive area is mainly located among the wetland concentrated areas along the river in the north and the forested and green spaces within and around the city, and the area with the highest value is the mountainous areas in the south; the northern wetland area along the river and the southern forested mountain area have high ecosystem services value. Finally, the study identified the ecologically fragile and important services areas, and offered a reliable reference for Tongling's ecological protection and urban growth decisions by dividing the ecological security evaluation areas into areas with low, mid and high ecological security levels.

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