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The innovation process is central to effective adaption to climate change and development challenges, but models from business and management tend to dominate innovation theory, which sits outside the adaption-development paradigm. This paper presents an alternative conceptual framework to visualize innovations as pathways across the adaption-development landscape for humanitarian and development goals. This useful tool can reveal, map and coordinate innovation strategy. To demonstrate and validate this approach, we analyze a case study of innovation in aftershock forecasting for humanitarian decision-making and show that the most effective strategy is for multiple innovation strands and hubs to move concurrently and cumulatively towards transformative humanitarian and development goals.

This paper explores buying versus renting as an investment decision for a prospective Australian first home buyer, by comparing the net present values of buying and renting. An ex‐post analysis for overlapping 10‐year periods from 1983 to 2015 for Australia's eight capital cities suggests that buying was financially more favourable than renting over most of the study period. Renting was favourable in some capital cities for the decade from 1983, but buying was clearly favourable from the early 1990s to early 2000s in all capital cities. An ex‐ante analysis suggests that buying is currently favourable in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Darwin.

This paper contains a critical exploration of the social dimensions of the science-humanitarian relationship. Drawing on literature on the social role of science and on the social dimensions of humanitarian practice, it analyses a science-humanitarian partnership for disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Padang, Sumatra, Indonesia, an area threatened by tsunamigenic earthquakes. The paper draws on findings from case study research that was conducted between 2010 and 2011. The case study illustrates the social processes that enabled and hindered collaboration between the two spheres, including the informal partnership of local people and scientists that led to the co-production of earthquake and tsunami DRR and limited organisational capacity and support in relation to knowledge exchange. The paper reflects on the implications of these findings for science-humanitarian partnering in general, and it assesses the value of using a social dimensions approach to understand scientific and humanitarian dialogue.

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