Search results for: urban clusters

Authors: Monika Chuchro

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This paper presents a preliminary attempt to apply classification of time series using meta-clusters in order to improve the quality of regression models. In this case, clustering was performed as a method to obtain a subgroups of time series data with normal distribution from inflow into waste water treatment plant data which Composed of several groups differing by mean value. Two simple algorithms: K-mean and EM were chosen as a clustering method. The rand index was used to measure the similarity. After simple meta-clustering, regression model was performed for each subgroups. The final model was a sum of subgroups models. The quality of obtained model was compared with the regression model made using the same explanatory variables but with no clustering of data. Results were compared by determination coefficient (R2), measure of prediction accuracy mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and comparison on linear chart. Preliminary results allows to foresee the potential of the presented technique.

Keywords: clustering, data analysis, data mining, predictive models

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Authors: Seyedeh Samaneh Hosseini Yousefi

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Space does not play role just in mentioning the place or locations. It also takes part in people attendance and social structures. Urban space is of substantial aspects of city which is a public sphere for free and unlimited appearance of citizens. Along with such appearances and regarding physical, environmental and functional conditions, different personal and social behaviors can be seen and analyzed toward people. The main principle of an urban space is including social relations and communications. In this survey, urban space has been referred to one in which physical, environmental and functional attractions cause pause and staying of people. Surveys have shown that urban designers have discussed about place more than architects or planners. With attention to mutual relations between urban space, society and civilization, proper policy making and planning are essential due to achieving an ideal urban space. The survey has been decided to analyze the effect of functional and physical structure of urban spaces on citizens' social behaviors. Hence, Valiasr crossroads, Tehran identified public space, has been selected in which analytic-descriptive method utilized. To test the accuracy of assumptions, statistical test has been accomplished by SPSS. Findings have shown that functional structure affects social behaviors, relations, integration and participation more than physical structure does.

Keywords: citizens' social behavior, functional structure, physical structure, urban space

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Authors: Wang Zhiwei, Wang Weiwu

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The process of urbanization in China has entered a critical period of transformation from urban expansion and construction to delicate urban design, thus forming a new direction in the field of urban design. So far, catalyst theory has become a prominent guiding strategy in urban planning and design. In this paper, under the background of urban renewal, catalyst theory is taken as the guiding ideology to explore the method of urban design in shouxian county. Firstly, this study briefly introduces and analyzes the catalyst theory. Through field investigation, it is found that the city has a large number of idle Spaces, such as abandoned factories and schools. In the design, the idle Spaces in the county town are utilized and interlinked in space, and functional interaction is carried out from the pattern of the county town. On the one hand, the results showed that the catalyst theory can enhance the vitality of the linear street space with a small amount of monomer construction. On the other hand, the city can also increase the cultural and economic sites of the city without damaging the historical relics and the sense of alterations of the ancient city, to improve the quality of life and quality of life of citizens. The city micro-transformation represented by catalyst theory can help ancient cities like shouxian to realize the activation of the old city and realize the gradual development.

Keywords: catalytic theory, urban design, China's ancient city, Renaissance

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Authors: Jerzy Bański

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The purpose of the paper is to describe the role of urban-rural partnership in social and economic development. The concept of urban-rural collaboration is relatively new and assumes the need to link large metropolitan areas with surrounding rural areas in a number of ways. It is strongly related to the existing concept of polycentric spatial development. At the European Union level, the first document to address the need for urban-rural partnerships was the European Spatial Development Perspective from 1999. The paper focuses on factors that generate social and economic success on examples of several metropolitan territories in Poland (Warsaw, Poznan, Wroclaw, Krakow). A survey focused on rural communes made it possible to assess key success factors (location, social and economic, technological and organizational) that could be later used to determine the right course of action in the area of urban-rural cooperation, with the desired outcome being effective metropolitan area development. The main challenges to urban-rural partnership are issues associated with spatial planning, infrastructure and public services. These are areas of the greatest conflict of interest, too. Any analysis of urban-rural cooperation in metropolitan areas really needs to focus on the unique nature of this type of relationship. This includes issues such as commuting to work in the urban core and vice versa, complementarity of technical infrastructure, and joint strategic planning. Other forms of cooperation should focus on the tourist and recreational aspects of areas surrounding the urban core.

Keywords: partnership, rural areas, urbanization, metropolitan areas, Poland

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Authors: Khaled Selatnia

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Nowadays, the traffic congestion becomes increasingly a chronic problem. Sometimes, the cause is attributed to the recurrent road works that create barriers to the efficient movement. But congestion, which usually occurs in cities, can take diverse forms and magnitudes. The case study of Biskra city in Algeria and the diagnosis of its road network show that throughout all the micro regional system, the road network seems at first quite dense. However, this density although it is important, does not cover all areas. A major flow is concentrated in the axis Sidi Okba – Biskra – Tolga. The largest movement of people in the Wilaya (prefecture) revolves around these three centers and their areas of influence. Centers farthest from the trio are very poorly served. This fact leads us to ask questions about the extent of congestion in Biskra city and its relationship to the imbalance of the urban framework. The objective of this paper is to highlight the impact of the urban fact on the traffic congestion.

Keywords: congestion, urban framework, regional, urban and regional studies

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Authors: Akshaya P., Priyanjali Prabhkaran

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The paper examines the formulation of strategies to develop a comprehensive model of city level water utility management to addressing urban sanitation issues. The water is prime life sustaining natural resources and nature’s gifts to all living beings on the earth multiple urban sanitation issues are addressed in the supply of water in a city. Many of these urban sanitation issues are linked to population expansion and economic inequity. Increased usage of water and the development caused water scarcity. The lack of water supply results increases the chance of unhygienic situations in the cities. In this study, the urban sanitation issues are identified with respect to water supply and utility management. The study compared based on their best practices and initiatives. From this, best practices and initiatives identify suitable sustainable measures to address water supply issues in the city level. The paper concludes with the listed provision that should be considered suitable measures for water supply and utility management in city level to address the urban sanitation issues.

Keywords: water, benchmarking water supply, water supply networks, water supply management

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Authors: Philip Speranza

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As everyday transit options are shifting from autocentric to pedestrian and bicycle oriented modes for healthy living, downtown streets are becoming more attractive places to live. However, tools and methods to measure the natural environment at the small scale of streets do not exist. Fortunately, a combination of mobile data collection technology and parametric urban design software now allows an interface to relate urban ecological conditions. This paper describes creation of an interactive tool to measure urban phenomena of air, water, and heat/light at the scale of new three-by-three block pedestrianized areas in Barcelona called Superilles. Each Superilla limits transit to the exterior of the blocks and to create more walkable and bikeable interior streets for healthy living. The research will describe the integration of data collection, analysis, and design output via a live interface using parametric software Rhino Grasshopper and the Human User Interface (UI) plugin.

Keywords: transit, urban design, GIS, parametric design, Superilles, Barcelona, urban ecology

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Authors: Mehdi Moeinaddini, Zohreh Asadi-Shekari, Muhammad Zaly Shah, Amran Hamzah

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Currently, planners try to have more green travel options to decrease economic, social and environmental problems. Therefore, this study tries to find significant urban travel factors to be used to increase the usage of alternative urban travel modes. This paper attempts to identify the relationship between prominent urban mobility indicators and daily trips by public transport in 30 cities from various parts of the world. Different travel modes, infrastructures and cost indicators were evaluated in this research as mobility indicators. The results of multi-linear regression analysis indicate that there is a significant relationship between mobility indicators and the daily usage of public transport.

Keywords: green travel modes, urban travel indicators, daily trips by public transport, multi-linear regression analysis

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Authors: Xu Xiao China, Xu Lei China

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After the 1990s, the concept of urban sustainable development has been increasing attention in urban planning and urban design. High carbon city, not a sustainable city construction model, has become an important problem which restricts the sustainable development of the city. Therefore, low-carbon city construction is the urgent need to solve the problem, and China is one of the core areas of low-carbon city construction in the world. The research work of low-carbon cities were participated by the Chinese government and academic institutes on theory and practice since 2007, and nowadays it comes to a practice stage with six low-carbon pilot provinces and 36 low-carbon pilot cities identified. To achieve the low-carbon target, developing low-carbon energy, adopting non-pollution technique, constructing green buildings and adopting ecolife-style are suggest by the government. Meanwhile, besides a new standard system and a new eco-environmental status evaluation method, the government also established the Chinese urban development institute including the Low-Carbon City Group. Finally, we want to transform the modern industrial civilization into an ecological civilization and realize sustainable urban development.

Keywords: low-carbon city, China, development practice, system construction, urban sustainability

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Authors: To Quyen Le, Oswald Devisch, Tu Anh Trinh, Els Hannes

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Urban centres worldwide are affected differently by flooding. In Vietnam this impact is increasingly negative caused by a process of rapid urbanisation. Traditional spatial planning and flood mitigation planning are not able to deal with this growing threat. This article therefore proposes to focus on increasing the participation of local communities in flood control and management. It explores, on the basis of a design studio exercise, how lay knowledge on flooding can be integrated within planning processes. The article presents a theoretical basis for the structured criterion for site selection for a flood resilient urban park from the perspective of science, then discloses the tacit and explicit knowledge of the flood-prone area and finally integrates this knowledge into the design strategies for flood resilient urban park design.

Keywords: analytic hierarchy process, AHP, design resilience, flood resilient urban park, knowledge integration

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Authors: Philna Coetzee, Clara Msiza

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In modern society, audit committees are seen as the custodians of accountability and the conscience of management and the board. But who holds the audit committee accountable for their actions or non-actions and how do we know what they are supposed to be doing and what they are doing? The purpose of this article is to provide greater insight into the latter part of this problem, namely, determine what best practises for audit committees and the disclosure of what is the realities are. In countries where governance is well established, the roles and responsibilities of the audit committee are mostly clearly guided by legislation and/or guidance documents, with countries increasingly providing guidance on this topic. With high cost involved to adhere to governance guidelines, the public (for public organisations) and shareholders (for private organisations) expect to see the value of their ‘investment’. For audit committees, the dividends on the investment should reflect in less fraudulent activities, less corruption, higher efficiency and effectiveness, improved social and environmental impact, and increased profits, to name a few. If this is not the case (which is reflected in the number of fraudulent activities in both the private and the public sector), stakeholders have the right to ask: where was the audit committee? Therefore, the objective of this article is to contribute to the body of knowledge by comparing the adherence of audit committee to best practices guidelines as stipulated in the King Report across public listed companies, national and provincial government departments, state-owned enterprises and local municipalities. After constructs were formed, based on the literature, factor analyses were conducted to reduce the number of variables in each construct. Thereafter, cluster analyses, which is an explorative analysis technique that classifies a set of objects in such a way that objects that are more similar are grouped into the same group, were conducted. The SPSS TwoStep Clustering Component was used, being capable of handling both continuous and categorical variables. In the first step, a pre-clustering procedure clusters the objects into small sub-clusters, after which it clusters these sub-clusters into the desired number of clusters. The cluster analyses were conducted for each construct and the measure, namely the audit opinion as listed in the external audit report, were included. Analysing 228 organisations' information, the results indicate that there is a clear distinction between the four spheres of business that has been included in the analyses, indicating certain strengths and certain weaknesses within each sphere. The results may provide the overseers of audit committees’ insight into where a specific sector’s strengths and weaknesses lie. Audit committee chairs will be able to improve the areas where their audit committee is lacking behind. The strengthening of audit committees should result in an improvement of the accountability of boards, leading to less fraud and corruption.

Keywords: audit committee disclosure, cluster analyses, governance best practices, strengths and weaknesses

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Authors: Mustahsan Mir, Ahmed Hassanin, Mohammed A. Al-Saleh

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The layout optimization of building blocks of unequal areas has applications in many disciplines including VLSI floorplanning, macrocell placement, unequal-area facilities layout optimization, and plant or machine layout design. A number of heuristics and some analytical and hybrid techniques have been published to solve this problem. This paper presents an efficient high-quality building-block layout design technique especially suited for solving large-size problems. The higher efficiency and improved quality of optimized solutions are made possible by introducing the concept of Promising Infant Clusters in a constructive placement procedure. The results presented in the paper demonstrate the improved performance of the presented technique for benchmark problems in comparison with published heuristic, analytic, and hybrid techniques.

Keywords: block layout problem, building-block layout design, CAD, optimization, search techniques

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Authors: Rajkumar Ghosh

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Urban flooding is a common occurrence throughout Asia. Almost every city is vulnerable to urban floods in some fashion, and city people are particularly vulnerable. Pluvial and fluvial flooding are the most prominent causes of urban flooding in the Gomti Nagar region of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. The pluvial flooding is regarded to be less damaging because it is caused by heavy rainfall, Seasonal rainfall fluctuations, water flows off concrete infrastructures, blockages of the drainage system, and insufficient drainage capacity or low infiltration capacity. However, this study considers pluvial flooding in Lucknow to be a significant source of cumulative damage over time, and the risks of such events are increasing as a result of changes in ageing infrastructure, hazard exposure, rapid urbanization, massive water logging and global warming. As a result, urban flooding has emerged as a critical field of study. The popularity of analytical approaches to project the spatial extent of flood dangers has skyrocketed. To address future urban flood resilience, more effort is needed to enhance both hydrodynamic models and analytical tools to simulate risks under present and forecast conditions. Proper urban planning with drainage system and ample space for high infiltration capacity are required to reduce urban flooding. A better India with no urban flooding is a pipe dream that can be realized by putting household rooftop rainwater collection systems in every structure. According to the current study, domestic RTRWHs are strongly recommended as an alternative source of water, as well as to prevent surface runoff and urban floods in this region of Lucknow, urban areas of India.

Keywords: rooftop rainwater harvesting, urban flood, pluvial flooding, fluvial flooding

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Authors: Rayeheh Khatami, Toktam Hanaei, Mohammad Reza Mansouri Daneshvar

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Today, many local and national governments are developing urban agriculture as an effective tool in responding to challenges such as food security, poverty and environmental problems. In fact, urban agriculture plays an important role in food system, which can provide citizens' income and become one of the components of economic, social and environmental systems. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the urban agriculture and urban food systems in order to understand the impact of urban foods production on environmental planning in non-western city region context. To achieve such objective, we carry out a case study in Mashhad city of Iran by using qualitative approaches. A survey on documentary studies and planning tools integrate with face to face interview with experts which explain the role of food system in environmental planning process. The paper extends the use of food in the environmental planning, specifically to examine this role to create agricultural garden as a mean to improve agricultural system in non-western country. The paper is concluded with a set of recommendations for researchers and policymakers who seek to create spaces in order to implement urban agriculture in cities for food justice.

Keywords: urban agriculture , agricultural park, city region food system, Mashhad

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Authors: Frederico Fialho Teixeira, Islam Mashaly, Maryam Shafiei, Jurij Karlovsek

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The ubiquity of data gathering and smart technologies, advancements in virtual technologies, and the development of the internet of things (IoT) have created urgent demands for the development of frameworks and efficient workflows for data collection, visualisation, and analysis. Digital twin, in different scales of the city into the building, allows for bringing together data from different sources to generate fundamental and illuminating insights for the management of current facilities and the lifecycle of amenities as well as improvement of the performance of current and future designs. Over the past two decades, there has been growing interest in the topic of digital twin and their applications in city and building scales. Most such studies look at the urban environment through a homogeneous or generalist lens and lack specificity in particular characteristics or identities, which define an urban university campus. Bridging this knowledge gap, this paper offers a framework for developing a digital twin for a university campus that, with some modifications, could provide insights for any large-scale digital twin settings like towns and cities. It showcases how currently unused data could be purposefully combined, interpolated and visualised for producing analysis-ready data (such as flood or energy simulations or functional and occupancy maps), highlighting the potential applications of such a framework for campus planning and policymaking. The research integrates campus-level data layers into one spatial information repository and casts light on critical data clusters for the digital twin at the campus level. The paper also seeks to raise insightful and directive questions on how digital twin for campus can be extrapolated to city-scale digital twin. The outcomes of the paper, thus, inform future projects for the development of large-scale digital twin as well as urban and architectural researchers on potential applications of digital twin in future design, management, and sustainable planning, to predict problems, calculate risks, decrease management costs, and improve performance.

Keywords: digital twin, smart campus, framework, data collection, point cloud

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Authors: U. Schmidt, D. Dannehl, I. Schuch, J. Suhl, T. Rocksch, R. Salazar-Moreno, E. Fitz-Rodrigues, A. Rojano Aquilar, I. Lopez Cruz, G. Navas Gomez, R. A. Abraham, L. C. Irineo, N. G. Gilberto

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The integration of agricultural production systems into urban areas is a challenge for the coming decades. Because of increasing greenhouse gas emission and rising resource consumption as well as costs in animal husbandry, the dietary habits of people in the 21st century have to focus on herbal foods. Intensive plant cultivation systems in large cities and megacities require a smart coupling of information, material and energy flow with the urban infrastructure in terms of Horticulture 4.0. In recent years, many puzzle pieces have been developed for these closed processes at the Humboldt University. To compile these for an urban plant production, it has to be optimized and networked with urban infrastructure systems. In the field of heat energy production, it was shown that with closed greenhouse technology and patented heat exchange and storage technology energy can be provided for heating and domestic hot water supply in the city. Closed water circuits can be drastically reducing the water requirements of plant production in urban areas. Ion sensitive sensors and new disinfection methods can help keep circulating nutrient solutions in the system for a longer time in urban plant production greenhouses.

Keywords: semi closed, greenhouses, urban farming, solar heat collector, closed water cycles, aquaponics

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Authors: Sandeep J. Kumar

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Urbanisation is considered as the primary driver of land use and land cover change that has direct link to population and economic growth. In India, as well as in other developing countries, cities are urbanizing at an alarming rate. This unprecedented and uncontrolled urbanisation can result in urban sprawl. Due to a number of factors, urban sprawl is recognised to be a result of poor planning, inadequate policies, and poor governance. Urban sprawl may be seen as posing a threat to the development of sustainable cities. Hence, it is very essential to manage this. Planning for predicted future growth is critical to avoid the negative effects of urban growth at the local and regional levels. Thiruvananthapuram being the capital city of Kerala is a city of economic success, challenges, and opportunities. Urbanization trends in the city have paved way for Urban Sprawl. This thesis aims to formulate a framework to combat the emerging urban sprawl in the city of Thiruvananthapuram. For that, the first step was to quantify trends of urban growth in Thiruvananthapuram city using Geographical Information System(GIS) and remote sensing techniques. The technique and results obtained in the study are extremely valuable in analysing the land use changes. Secondly, these change in the trends were analysed through some of the critical factors that helped the study to understand the underlying issues of the existing city structure that has resulted in urban sprawl. Anticipating development trends can modify the current order. This can be productively resolved using regional and municipal planning and management strategies. Hence efficient strategies to curb the sprawl in Thiruvananthapuram city have been formulated in this study that can be considered as recommendations for future planning.

Keywords: urbanisation, urban sprawl, geographical information system(GIS), thiruvananthapuram

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Authors: Qiang Zhang, Xiaojian Hu

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Aiming at the problem of the existing real-time evaluation methods for traffic safety status, a video information-based urban road section traffic safety status evaluation method was established, and the rapid detection method of traffic flow parameters based on video information is analyzed. The concept of the speed dispersion of the road section that affects the traffic safety state of the urban road section is proposed, and the method of evaluating the traffic safety state of the urban road section based on the speed dispersion of the road section is established. Experiments show that the proposed method can reasonably evaluate the safety status of urban roads in real-time, and the evaluation results can provide a corresponding basis for the traffic management department to formulate an effective urban road section traffic safety improvement plan.

Keywords: intelligent transportation system, road traffic safety, video information, vehicle speed dispersion

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Authors: Elżbieta Antczak

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Cities offer important opportunities for economic development and for expanding access to basic services, including health care and education, for large numbers of people. Moreover, green areas (as an integral part of sustainable urban development) present a major opportunity for improving urban environments, quality of lives and livelihoods. This paper examines, using spatial concentration and spatial taxonomic measures, regional diversification of greenery in the cities of Poland. The analysis includes location quotients, Lorenz curve, Locational Gini Index, and the synthetic index of greenery and spatial statistics tools: (1) To verify the occurrence of strong concentration or dispersion of the phenomenon in time and space depending on the variable category, and, (2) To study if the level of greenery depends on the spatial autocorrelation. The data includes the greatest Polish cities, categories of the urban greenery (parks, lawns, street greenery, and green areas on housing estates, cemeteries, and forests) and the time span 2004-2015. According to the obtained estimations, most of cites in Poland are already taking measures to become greener. However, in the country there are still many barriers to well-balanced urban greenery development (e.g. uncontrolled urban sprawl, poor management as well as lack of spatial urban planning systems).

Keywords: greenery, urban areas, regional spatial diversification and concentration, spatial taxonomic measure

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Authors: Mehrzad Soltani, Pegah Rezaei

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In the endeavor to construct cities that are not only thriving but also environmentally responsible, effective urban planning and architectural design assume paramount significance. The focal point of this pursuit is the harnessing of urban renewable energy. By embracing sustainable practices such as the integration of solar panels into the urban landscape and the establishment of smart grids, cities are poised to confront head-on the dual challenge of surging energy demands and pressing environmental concerns. Urban renewable energy solutions offer a multifaceted approach to these issues. Firstly, they usher in a clean and sustainable source of energy, reducing the cities' ecological footprint while ensuring a continuous power supply. This transition to eco-friendly energy is also intrinsically linked to enhanced spatial utilization, thereby streamlining the efficiency of urban areas. Moreover, it spurs the adoption of sustainable transportation alternatives, diminishing the reliance on fossil fuels and mitigating air pollution. However, the significance of integrating renewable energy solutions transcends the realm of urban sustainability. It embodies a holistic approach towards creating cities that harmoniously coexist with the natural environment while catering to the needs and aspirations of their inhabitants. In essence, prioritizing sustainability in urban planning and architectural design has evolved from a choice to a necessity, one that not only safeguards the cities' well-being but also fosters a better quality of life for their residents. Thus, it is imperative that we acknowledge the transformative potential of these innovations as we pave the way towards the cities of the future.

Keywords: sustainability, smart grids, solar panel, urban planning, environmental concerns

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Authors: Ali Asheibi

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The rapid increase in the size of databases required to store power quality monitoring data has demanded new techniques for analysing and understanding the data. One suggested technique to assist in analysis is data mining. Preparing raw data to be ready for data mining exploration take up most of the effort and time spent in the whole data mining process. Clustering is an important technique in data mining and machine learning in which underlying and meaningful groups of data are discovered. Large amounts of harmonic data have been collected from an actual harmonic monitoring system in a distribution system in Australia for three years. This amount of acquired data makes it difficult to identify operational events that significantly impact the harmonics generated on the system. In this paper, harmonic data preparation processes to better understanding of the data have been presented. Underlying classes in this data has then been identified using clustering technique based on the Minimum Message Length (MML) method. The underlying operational information contained within the clusters can be rapidly visualised by the engineers. The C5.0 algorithm was used for classification and interpretation of the generated clusters.

Keywords: data mining, harmonic data, clustering, classification

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Authors: A. Abdulla Khairi Mohamed, Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem, Gehan Selim

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Walkability in civic and public spaces in Libyan cities is challenging due to the lack of accessibility design, informal merging into car traffic, and the general absence of adequate urban and space planning. The lack of accessible and pedestrian-friendly public spaces in Libyan cities has emerged as a major concern for the government if it is to develop smart and sustainable spaces for the 21st century. A walkable urban space has become a driver for urban development and redistribution of land use to ensure pedestrian and walkable routes between sites of living and workplaces. The characteristics of urban open space in the city centre play a main role in attracting people to walk when attending their daily needs, recreation and daily sports. There is significant gap in the understanding of perceptions, feasibility and capabilities of Libyan urban space to accommodate enhance or support the smart design of a walkable pedestrian-friendly environment that is safe and accessible to everyone. The paper aims to undertake observations of walkability and walkable space in the city of Tripoli as a benchmark for Libyan cities; assess the validity and consistency of the seven principal aspects of smart design, safety, accessibility and 51 factors that affect the walkability in open urban space in Tripoli, through the analysis of 10 local urban spaces experts (town planner, architect, transport engineer and urban designer); and explore user groups’ perceptions of accessibility in walkable spaces in Libyan cities through questionnaires. The study sampled 200 respondents in 2015-16. The results of this study are useful for urban planning, to classify the walkable urban space elements which affect to improve the level of walkability in the Libyan cities and create sustainable and liveable urban spaces.

Keywords: walkability, sustainability, liveability, accessibility

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Authors: Bethany Leake, Samantha Caton, Paul Norman, Jill Edmondson

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With the majority of the UK population residing in urban areas and with the pressures both environmentally and socially on rural agriculture, the role of urban food production, particularly urban horticulture (UH), is increasingly important in the future of UK food security. UH has the potential to provide an important contribution to urban diets and to provide additional benefits to human health and well-being. While allotments are the traditional focus of UH and play an important role, as access to this type of land is limited and unequal across cities, other forms of UH space, such as domestic growing, will need to be utilized to provide a significant contribution to urban diets. It is theorized that this smaller scale of growing may also be a more accessible way of engaging novice growers in UH. A collaborative research project, Urban Harvest, was designed between the University of Sheffield and Sheffield-based food organizations, which aimed to engage inexperienced gardeners in UH by providing them with home food-growing kits (Grow-Kits). Grow-Kits were provided to 189 participants across Sheffield in 2022, 48% of whom had never grown food before. Data collected through surveys and interviews will help us to evaluate the effect of small-scale food growing on health and wellbeing and the potential of this type of scheme to encourage future UH engagement. This data and increasing evidence on the co-benefits of UH have important implications not only for local food security but also for urban health inequalities and the potential use of this activity for preventative healthcare.

Keywords: urban horticulture, health and wellbeing, food security, nutrition

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Authors: Carmen Cantuarias-Villessuzanne, Jeffrey Blain, Radmila Pineau

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Our research project aims at analyzing the sensitiveness of French households to urban biodiversity and urban ecosystem services (UES). Opinion surveys show that the French population is sensitive to biodiversity and ecosystem services loss, but the value given to these issues within urban fabric and real estate market lacks evidence. Using GIS data and economic evaluation, by hedonic price methods, weassess the isolated contribution of the explanatory variables of biodiversityand UES on the price of residential real estate. We analyze the variation of the valuefor three urban ecosystem services - flood control, proximity to green spaces, and refreshment - on the price of real estate whena property changes ownership. Our modeling and mapping focus on the price at theIRIS scale (statistical information unit) from 2014 to 2019. The main variables are internal characteristics of housing (area, kind of housing, heating), external characteristics(accessibility and infrastructure, economic, social, and physical environmentsuch as air pollution, noise), and biodiversity indicators and urban ecosystemservices for the Ile-de-France region. Moreover, we compare environmental values on the enhancement of greenspaces and their impact on residential choices. These studies are very useful for real estate developers because they enable them to promote green spaces, and municipalities to become more attractive.

Keywords: urban ecosystem services, sustainable real estate, urban biodiversity perception, hedonic price, environmental values

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Authors: Suikinai Nobre Santos, Ranko Gacesa, Paul F. Long, Itamar Soares de Melo

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Extremophilic microorganism are adapted to biotopes combining several stress factors (temperature, pressure, radiation, salinity and pH), which indicate the richness valuable resource for the exploitation of novel biotechnological processes and constitute unique models for investigations their biomolecules (1, 2). The above information encourages us investigate bioprospecting synthesized compounds by a noval actinomycete, designated thermotolerant Streptomyces caatingaensis CMAA 1322, isolated from sample soil tropical dry forest (Caatinga) in the Brazilian semiarid region (3-17°S and 35-45°W). This set of constrating physical and climatic factores provide the unique conditions and a diversity of well adapted species, interesting site for biotechnological purposes. Preliminary studies have shown the great potential in the production of cytotoxic, pesticidal and antimicrobial molecules (3). Thus, to extend knowledge of the genes clusters responsible for producing biosynthetic pathways of natural products in strain CMAA1322, whole-genome shotgun (WGS) DNA sequencing was performed using paired-end long sequencing with PacBio RS (Pacific Biosciences). Genomic DNA was extracted from a pure culture grown overnight on LB medium using the PureLink genomic DNA kit (Life Technologies). An approximately 3- to 20-kb-insert PacBio library was constructed and sequenced on an 8 single-molecule real-time (SMRT) cell, yielding 116,269 reads (average length, 7,446 bp), which were allocated into 18 contigs, with 142.11x coverage and N50 value of 20.548 bp (BioProject number PRJNA288757). The assembled data were analyzed by Rapid Annotations using Subsystems Technology (RAST) (4) the genome size was found to be 7.055.077 bp, comprising 6167 open reading frames (ORFs) and 413 subsystems. The G+C content was estimated to be 72 mol%. The closest-neighbors tool, available in RAST through functional comparison of the genome, revealed that strain CMAA1322 is more closely related to Streptomyces hygroscopicus ATCC 53653 (similarity score value, 537), S. violaceusniger Tu 4113 (score value, 483), S. avermitilis MA-4680 (score value, 475), S. albus J1074 (score value, 447). The Streptomyces sp. CMAA1322 genome contains 98 tRNA genes and 135 genes copies related to stress response, mainly osmotic stress (14), heat shock (16), oxidative stress (49). Functional annotation by antiSMASH version 3.0 (5) identified 41 clusters for secondary metabolites (including two clusters for lanthipeptides, ten clusters for nonribosomal peptide synthetases [NRPS], three clusters for siderophores, fourteen for polyketide synthetase [PKS], six clusters encoding a terpene, two clusters encoding a bacteriocin, and one cluster encoding a phenazine). Our work provide in comparative analyse of genome and extract produced (data no published) by lineage CMAA1322, revealing the potential of microorganisms accessed from extreme environments as Caatinga” to produce a wide range of biotechnological relevant compounds.

Keywords: caatinga, streptomyces, environmental stresses, biosynthetic pathways

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Authors: Paul Shize Li, Frank Alber

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A fundamental task of clinical genomics is to unravel the functions of genes and their associations with disorders. Although experimental biology has made efforts to discover and elucidate the molecular mechanisms of individual genes in the past decades, still about 40% of human genes have unknown functions, not to mention the diseases they may be related to. For those biologists who are interested in a particular gene with unknown functions, a powerful computational method tailored for inferring the functions and disease relevance of uncharacterized genes is strongly needed. Studies have shown that genes strongly linked to each other in multiple biological networks are more likely to have similar functions. This indicates that the densely connected subgraphs in multiple biological networks are useful in the functional and phenotypic annotation of uncharacterized genes. Therefore, in this work, we have developed an integrative network approach to identify the frequent local clusters, which are defined as those densely connected subgraphs that frequently occur in multiple biological networks and consist of the query gene that has few or no disease or function annotations. This is a local clustering algorithm that models multiple biological networks sharing the same gene set as a three-dimensional matrix, the so-called tensor, and employs the tensor-based optimization method to efficiently find the frequent local clusters. Specifically, massive public gene expression data sets that comprehensively cover dynamic, physiological, and environmental conditions are used to generate hundreds of gene co-expression networks. By integrating these gene co-expression networks, for a given uncharacterized gene that is of biologist’s interest, the proposed method can be applied to identify the frequent local clusters that consist of this uncharacterized gene. Finally, those frequent local clusters are used for function and disease annotation of this uncharacterized gene. This local tensor clustering algorithm outperformed the competing tensor-based algorithm in both module discovery and running time. We also demonstrated the use of the proposed method on real data of hundreds of gene co-expression data and showed that it can comprehensively characterize the query gene. Therefore, this study provides a new tool for annotating the uncharacterized genes and has great potential to assist clinical genomic diagnostics.

Keywords: local tensor clustering, query gene, gene co-expression network, gene annotation

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Authors: Juni C. Kim, Anna R. Robuck, Douglas I. Walker

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The human exposome, which includes chemical exposures over the lifetime and their effects, is now recognized as an important measure for understanding human health; however, the complexity of the data makes the identification of environmental chemicals challenging. The goal of our project was to establish a computational workflow for the improved identification of environmental pollutants containing chlorine or bromine. Using the “pattern. search” function available in the R package NonTarget, we wrote a multifunctional script that searches mass spectral clusters from untargeted gas-chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS) for the presence of spectra consistent with chlorine and bromine-containing organic compounds. The “pattern. search” function was incorporated into a different function that allows the evaluation of clusters containing multiple analyte fragments, has multi-core support, and provides a simplified output identifying listing compounds containing chlorine and/or bromine. The new function was able to process 46,000 spectral clusters in under 8 seconds and identified over 150 potential halogenated spectra. We next applied our function to a deidentified dataset from patients diagnosed with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), and healthy controls. Twenty-two spectra corresponded to potential halogenated compounds in the PSC and PBC dataset, including six significantly different in PBC patients, while four differed in PSC patients. We have developed an improved algorithm for detecting halogenated compounds in GC-HRMS data, providing a strategy for prioritizing exposures in the study of human disease.

Keywords: exposome, metabolome, computational metabolomics, high-resolution mass spectrometry, exposure, pollutants

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Authors: Xuan Li, Lei Xu

Abstract:

By the end of 2014, China has an urban population of 749 million, reaching the urbanization rate of 54.77%. Dense and vertical urban structure has become a common choice for China and most of the densely populated Asian countries for sustainable development. This paper focuses on the most conspicuous urban change period in China, from 2000 to 2010, during which China's population shifted the fastest from rural region to cities. On one hand, the 200 million nationwide "new citizen" along with the 456 million "old citizen" explored in the new-century city for new urban lifestyle and livable built environment; On the other hand, however, large-scale rapid urban constructions are confined to the methods of traditional two-dimensional architectural thinking. Human-oriented design and system thinking have been missing in this intricate postmodern urban condition. This phenomenon, especially the gap and spark between the solid, huge urban physical system and the rich, subtle everyday urban life, will be studied in depth: How the 20th-century high-rise residential building "spontaneously" turned into an old but expensive multi-functional high-rise complex in the 21st century city center; how 21st century new/late 20th century old public buildings with the same function integrated their different architectural forms into the new / old city center? Finally the paper studies cases in Hangzhou: 1) Function Evolve–downtown high-rise residential building “International Garden” and “Zhongshan Garden” (1999). 2) Form Compare–Hangzhou Theater (1998) vs Hangzhou Grand Theatre (2004), Hangzhou City Railway Station (1999) vs Hangzhou East Railway Station (2013). The research aims at the exploring the essence of city from the building form dispel and urban program re-configuration approach, gaining a better consideration of human behavior through compact urban design effort for improving urban intertextuality, searching for a sustainable development path in the crucial time of urban population explosion in China.

Keywords: architecture form dispel, compact urban design, urban intertextuality, urban program re-configuration

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Authors: M. Pena, J. Shin, H. Park

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The main objective of any engineering activity is the development of a system that fulfills the specific economic, social or environmental needs. Green growth policies, as a system, targets to satisfy two main needs: economic and environmental growth. Cities are complex systems composed of varied characteristics such as differences in socio-environmental conditions and local affordability, among others. Thus, commissioned policies are required to address these differences and to ensure green development. A more maintainable and justifiable, resource-efficient green growth can be obtained in urban areas if multi-criteria framework of policies relevant to green buildings is designed. Reason is that, this approach fits to target the differences and unique conditions of urban areas. By following the principles of axiomatic design, this paper urges to derive a framework for the application of green buildings policies in urban areas with distinctive socio-economic and environmental characteristics. Functional requirements defined as principles to ensure green growth and design parameters are identified in each set of conditions. Design matrices are constructed for each group of urban areas. Thus, the understanding of the needs and differences for each group of urban areas and the methodology to ensure green buildings is achieved.

Keywords: axiomatic design, green growth, sustainable development, urban planning

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Authors: Joana Mourão

Abstract:

Transition to a low carbon economy requires changes in consumption and production patterns, including the improvement of existing buildings’ environmental performance. Urban rehabilitation is a top policy priority in Europe, creating an opportunity to increase this performance. However, urban rehabilitation comprises different typologies of interventions with distinct levels of consideration for cultural urban heritage values and for environmental values, thus with different impacts. Cities rely on both material and non-material forms of heritage that are deep-rooted and resilient. One of the most relevant parts of that urban heritage is the historical pre-industrial housing stock, with an extensive presence in many European cities, as Lisbon. This stock is rehabilitated and transformed at the framework of urban management and local governance traditions, as well as the framework of the global economy, and in that context, faces opportunities and threats that need evaluation and control. The scope of this article is to define methodological bases and research lines for the assessment of impacts that urban rehabilitation initiatives set on the vulnerable and historical pre-industrial urban housing stock, considering it as an environmental and cultural unreplaceable material value and resource. As a framework, this article reviews the concepts of urban regeneration, urban renewal, current buildings conservation and refurbishment, and energy refurbishment of buildings, seeking to define key typologies of urban rehabilitation that represent different approaches to the urban fabric, in terms of scope, actors, and priorities. Moreover, main types of interventions - basing on a case-study in a XVIII century neighborhood in Lisbon - are defined and analyzed in terms of the elements lost in each type of intervention, and relating those to urbanistic, architectonic and constructive values of urban heritage, as well as to environmental and energy efficiency. Further, the article overviews environmental cultural heritage assessment and life-cycle assessment tools, selecting relevant and feasible impact assessment criteria for urban buildings rehabilitation regulation, focusing on multi-level urban heritage integrity. Urbanistic, architectonic, constructive and energetic integrity are studied as criteria for impact assessment and specific indicators are proposed. The role of these criteria in sustainable urban management is discussed. Throughout this article, the key challenges for urban rehabilitation planning and management, concerning urban built heritage as a resource for sustainability, are discussed and clarified.

Keywords: urban rehabilitation, impact assessment criteria, buildings integrity, embodied energy

Procedia PDF Downloads 172