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The need to understand what land use is has motivated the development of programmes that aims to identify it and quantify it-CORINE Land Cover (CLC) in 1985. From this official and open geodatabase-through the using of geographic information system (GIS) tools-the amount of area established for each land use has been identified in all the 28 member states of the EU. This mostly corresponds to agricultural and forestry uses. Between 1990 and 2012, it was possible to determine countries with variable land use models such as Finland, Latvia, Portugal and Spain-the rest of the states presenting stable land use models. Additionally, some countries are characterized by the predominance of one or two land uses. Contextually, the proposal aims to develop a retrospective study regarding the land-use changes in the EU territories from 1990 to 2012, through the available tools such as CLC.

Considering the complex dynamics, patterns, and particularities that peripheral and insular territories/regions present-e.g., as the fragility, they show to achieve a sustainable development and growth-a study that analyzes the land uses of this territories is seen as pivotal to identify barriers and opportunities for a long-term sustained development. Contextually, a general analysis was carried out through case study research methods covering those territorial typologies of the insular territory of Madeira Island, Portugal. The study, which was carried out through GIS mapping tools, enabled us to identify the land use changes in the last decades over the territory-allowing to establish a relation and identification of the associated barriers and opportunities presented by the territories to face the emerging sustainable development challenges. The study reveals the evident limitations of "ultra-peripheral" territories not only by the physical spatial dimensions but also by the difficulty to reconvert land uses. Thus, the main actors and their policies over the territory are even more relevant and need to be conducted in a more reasonable way-considering the fragility of this regions; such actions present higher impact over the territory and over their inhabitants' life's quality standards and finally on the long-term sustainability.

The corrosion of the steel reinforcement affects drastically the long-term durability of many reinforced concrete (RC) structures in the world, especially the ones near the sea. When this problem is detected at early stages, it is possible and important to repair the structure in order to restore its safety and avoid future hazards and more expensive interventions. The research work described in this paper is inspired on these cases as it proposes a rehabilitation solution to replace the tension steel reinforcement of a RC beam with GFRP bars, which is a material immune to corrosion.The experimental study consisted on six full-scale RC beams subjected to a three-point bending test until failure. The specimens had stirrups without the bottom branch and were casted in two phases to simulate the replacement of the corroded and cracked bottom concrete. Two different GFRP reinforcement ratios were tested to assess the behaviour of the repaired beam regarding its service and ultimate states in comparison with the original beam with steel reinforcement. The results are presented and discussed in terms of flexural capacity, failure modes, deflection, crack pattern, mid-span crack width and reinforcement strains. It was concluded that the presented rehabilitation solution is easy to implement, can be designed according to general FRP design guidelines, and is able to restore the serviceability and ultimate limit states of the original RC beam.

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