Intensive livestock farming has raised issues about environmental impacts and food security during the past 20 years. As a consequence, there is a strong social demand for sustainable livestock systems. Sustainable livestock systems should indeed be environmentally friendly, economically viable for farmers, and socially acceptable, notably for animal welfare. For that goal, many sustainability indicators and methods have been developed at the farm level. The main challenge is using a transparent selection process to avoid assessment subjectivity. Here, we review typologies of sustainability indicators. We set guidelines for selecting indicators in a data-driven context, by reviewing selection criteria and discussing methodological issues. A case study is presented. The selected set of indicators mainly includes (1) environmental indicators focusing on farmer practices; (2) quantitative economic indicators; and (3) quantitative social indicators with a low degree of aggregation. The selection of indicators should consider (1) contextualization to determine purpose, scales, and stakeholders involved in the assessment; (2) the comparison of indicators based on various criteria, mainly data availability; and (3) the selection of a minimal, consistent, and sufficient set of indicators. Finally, we discuss the following issues: topics for which no indicators are measurable from available data should explicitly be mentioned in the results. A combination of means-based indicators could be used to assess a theme, but redundancy must be avoided. The unit used to express indicators influences the results and has therefore to be taken into account during interpretation. To compare farms from indicators, the influence of the structure on indicator values has to be carefully studied.

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Sustainability indicators for livestock farming. A review

Assessing sustainability at farm-level : Lessons learned from a comparison of tools in practice

Composite indicators are increasingly recognised as a useful tool in policy analysis and public communication. They provide simple comparisons of units that can be used to illustrate the complexity of our dynamic environment in wide-ranging fields, such as competitiveness, governance, environment, press, development, peacefulness, tourism, economy, universities, etc. Their construction has been dealt with from several angles. Some authors claim that MCDM techniques are highly suitable in multidimensional frameworks when aggregating single indicators into a composite one, since this process involves making choices when combining criteria of different natures, and it requires a number of steps in which decisions must be made. In this paper, we conduct a literature review of papers published after 2002 in leading international journals indexed in a recognised database (JCR), in order to identify the different MCDM methods used for aggregating single indicators into composite ones. They have been classified in five categories: the elementary methods, the value and utility based methods, the outranking relation approach, the data envelopment analysis based methods and the distance functions based methods. In general, our review has shown a clear tendency towards an increasing number of papers that use MCDM methods to construct composite indicators since 2014.

Building composite indicators using multicriteria methods: a review

Assessing innovative cropping systems with DEXiPM, a qualitative multi-criteria assessment tool derived from DEXi

A review of studies applying environmental impact assessment methods on fruit production systems

A methodological approach to assess and compare the sustainability level of agricultural plant production systems

Simple Summary We recorded 208 patients receiving treatment for AK and conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire-based study, which aimed to investigate patients’ perceptions of their illness. Our main objective was the detection not only of the illness perception of AK patients, but also of its influence on their perception of treatment and the correlation with patients’ demographic characteristics and history, as well as the readiness to use sunscreen. The rising incidence of AK and its socioeconomic burden place the illness perception of AK patients among the most important barriers to overcome for the effective management of the disease. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to attempt to unveil the illness perceptions of AK patients and their correlation with patients’ demographics and sunscreen use and the influence on AK treatment. We strongly support reinforcing the awareness of AK and the role of dermatologists is crucial for this direction. Abstract Background: Decreased illness perception among actinic keratoses (AK) patients is a major barrier to the effective management of AK. Objective: We aimed to investigate patients’ illness and treatment perceptions, their correlation to demographics and AK/skin cancer history, and secondarily the influence of these perspectives on treatment and sunscreen use. Materials and Methods: Participants completed questionnaires based on the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire and statistical analysis was performed. Results: In total, 208 AK patients were enrolled. A large proportion were poorly aware of the disease (41.4%), with less than half (43%) being familiar with AK. Patients were aware of the chronic nature of the disease and its correlation to sunlight regardless of demographic characteristics. The level of education played a role in disease awareness (p = 0.006), and treatment plan perception (p = 0.002). The increase in sunscreen protection after AK diagnosis was higher in women (p = 0.009) and younger patients (p = 0.044). Patients’ concerns regarding treatment were mainly related to the duration (30%) and effectivity (25%). Dermatologists’ statements highlighting that AK are precancerous lesions (86.2%) influenced patients’ willingness for treatment. Conclusion: Improved awareness of AK is necessary to increase treatment seeking and compliance, regarding both treatment and sunscreen use. Dermatologists’ statements may have critical influence on patients’ decisions to receive treatment for AK.

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Actinic Keratoses (AK): An Exploratory Questionnaire-Based Study of Patients’ Illness Perceptions

Dermoscopic features of actinic keratosis (AK) have been widely studied, but there is still little evidence for their diagnostic accuracy. Our study investigates whether established dermoscopic criteria are reliable predictors in differentiating non-pigmented actinic keratosis (NPAK) from pigmented actinic keratosis (PAK). For this purpose, dermoscopic images of 83 clinically diagnosed AK (45 NPAK, 38PAK) were examined, and the sensitivity (Se), specificity (Sp), positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were assessed. Features with statistical significance were the red pseudo-network (p = 0.02) for NPAK and the pigmented pseudo-network (p < 0.001) with a pigment intensity value even less than 10% for PAK (p = 0.001). Pigmented pseudo-network (Se: 89%, Sp: 77%, PPV: 77%, NPV: 89%) with a pigment intensity value of more than 10% (Se: 90%, Sp: 86%, PPV: 79%, NPV: 93%) had excellent diagnostic accuracy for PAK. Scale and widened follicular openings with yellowish dots surrounded by white circles were equally represented in both variants of AK. Linear wavy vessels and shiny streaks were more prominently observed in NPAK, as were rosettes in PAK, but these results failed to meet statistical significance. The red starburst pattern was near statistical significance for PAK. Therefore, pigmentation is the strongest dermoscopic predictor for the differentiation between NPAK and PAK.

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Eleni A. Polychronaki

Papers

A methodological approach to assess and compare the sustainability level of agricultural plant production systems

Actinic Keratoses (AK): An Exploratory Questionnaire-Based Study of Patients’ Illness Perceptions

Dermoscopy of Actinic Keratosis: Is There a True Differentiation between Non-Pigmented and Pigmented Lesions?