Search results for: city image

Authors: Sherehan Hamdalla

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Egypt has experienced a series of terrifying love crimes in the last few months. This ‘trend’ of love crimes started with a young man caught on video slaughtering his ex-girlfriend in the street in the city of El Mansoura. The crime shocked all Egyptian citizens at all levels; unfortunately, not less than three similar crimes took place in other different Egyptian cities with the same killing trigger. The characteristics and easy access and reach of social media consider the reason why it is one of the most crucial online communication channels; users utilize social media platforms for sharing and exchanging ideas, news, and many other activities; they can freely share posts that reflect their mindset or personal views regarding any issues, these posts are going viral in all social media account by reposting or numbers of shares for these posts to support the content included, or even to attack. The repetition of sharing certain posts could mobilize other supporters with the same point of view, especially when that crowd’s online participation is confronting a public opinion case’s consequences. The death of that young woman was followed by similar crimes in other cities, such as El Sharkia and Port Said. These love crimes provoked a massive wave of contention among all social classes in Egypt. Strangely, some were supporting the criminal and defending his side for several reasons, which the study will uncover. Facebook, the most popular social media platform for Egyptians, reflects the debate between supporters of the victim and supporters of the criminal. Facebook pages were created specifically to disseminate certain viewpoints online, for example, asking for the maximum penalty to be given to criminals. These pages aimed to mobilize the maximum number of supporters and to affect the outcome of the trials.

Keywords: love crimes, victim, criminal, social media

Procedia PDF Downloads 80

Authors: Ebasa Girma, Nathnael Minyelshowa, Lebsework Negash

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The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in precision agriculture has seen a huge increase recently. As such, systems that aim to apply various algorithms on the field need a structured framework of abstractions. This paper defines the various tasks of the UAVs in precision agriculture and models them into an architectural framework. The presented architecture is built on the context that there will be minimal physical intervention to do the tasks defined with multiple coordinated and cooperative UAVs. Various tasks such as image processing, path planning, communication, data acquisition, and field mapping are employed in the architecture to provide an efficient system. Besides, different limitation for applying Multi-UAVs in precision agriculture has been considered in designing the architecture. The architecture provides an autonomous end-to-end solution, starting from mission planning, data acquisition, and image processing framework that is highly efficient and can enable farmers to comprehensively deploy UAVs onto their lands. Simulation and field tests show that the architecture offers a number of advantages that include fault-tolerance, robustness, developer, and user-friendliness.

Keywords: deep learning, multi-UAVs, precision agriculture, UAVs architecture

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Authors: Anne Hovgaard Jorgensen

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This study investigates how Muslim fathers in Denmark are struggling to overcome notions of mistrust from teachers and educators. Starting from school-home-cooperation (parent conferences, school-home communication, etc.), the study finds that many Muslim fathers do not feel acknowledged as a resource in the upbringing of their children. To explain these experiences further, the study suggest the notion of ‘mistrusted masculinity’ to grasp the controlling image these fathers meet in various schools and child-care-institutions in the Danish Welfare state. The paper is based on 9 months of fieldwork in a Danish school, a social housing area and in various ‘father groups’ in Denmark. Additional, 50 interviews were conducted with fathers, children, mothers, schoolteachers, and educators. By using Connell's concepts 'hegemonic' and 'marginalized' masculinity as steppingstones, the paper argues that these concepts might entail a too static and dualistic picture of gender. By applying the concepts of 'emergent masculinity' and 'emergent fatherhood' the paper brings along a long needed discussion of how Muslim men in Denmark are struggling to overcome and change the controlling images of them as patriarchal and/or ignorant fathers regarding the upbringing of their children. As such, the paper shows how Muslim fathers are taking action to change this controlling image, e.g. through various ‘father groups’. The paper is inspired by the phenomenological notions of ‘experience´ and in the light of this notion, the paper tells the fathers’ stories about their upbringing of their children and aspirations for fatherhood. These stories share light on how these fathers take care of their children in everyday life. The study also shows that the controlling image of these fathers have affected how some Muslim fathers are actually being fathers. The study shows that fear of family-interventions from teachers or social workers e.g. have left some Muslim fathers in a limbo, being afraid of scolding their children, and being confused of ‘what good parenting in Denmark is’. This seems to have led to a more lassie fair upbringing than these fathers actually wanted. This study is important since anthropologists generally have underexposed the notion of fatherhood, and how fathers engage in the upbringing of their children. Over more, the vast majority of qualitative studies of fatherhood have been on white middleclass fathers, living in nuclear families. In addition, this study is crucial at this very moment due to the major refugee crisis in Denmark and in the Western world in general. A crisis, which has resulted in a vast number of scare campaigns against Islam from different nationalistic political parties, which enforces the negative controlling image of Muslim fathers.

Keywords: fatherhood, Muslim fathers, mistrust, education

Procedia PDF Downloads 194

Authors: Saeed Eskandari, Seyed Rasoul Mehdikhani

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Radiation sources have been used in many industries, such as gamma sources in medical imaging. These waves have destructive effects on humans and the environment. It is very important to detect and find the source of these waves because these sources cannot be seen by the eye. A portable robot has been designed and built with the purpose of revealing radiation sources that are able to scan the place from 5 to 20 meters away and shows the location of the sources according to the intensity of the waves on a two-dimensional digital image. The operation of the robot is done by measuring the pixels separately. By increasing the image measurement resolution, we will have a more accurate scan of the environment, and more points will be detected. But this causes a lot of time to be spent on scanning. In this paper, to overcome this challenge, we designed a method that can optimize this time. In this method, a small number of important points of the environment are measured. Hence the remaining pixels are predicted and estimated by regression algorithms in machine learning. The research method is based on comparing the actual values of all pixels. These steps have been repeated with several other radiation sources. The obtained results of the study show that the values estimated by the regression method are very close to the real values.

Keywords: regression, machine learning, scan radiation, robot

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Authors: G. Ghamrawi, Y. Abunnasr, M. Fawaz, S. Yazigi

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Coastal cities are constantly exposed to environmental degradation and economic regression fueled by rapid and uncontrolled urban growth as well as continuous resource depletion. This is the case of the City of Mina in Tripoli (Lebanon), where lack of awareness to preserve social, ecological, and historical assets, coupled with the increasing development pressures, are threatening the socioeconomic status of the city residents, the quality of life and accessibility to the coast. To address these challenges, a holistic coastal urban design and planning approach was developed to analyze the environmental, political, legal, and socioeconomic context of the city. This approach aims to investigate the potential of balancing urban development with the protection and enhancement of cultural, ecological, and environmental assets under an integrated coastal zone management approach (ICZM). The analysis of Mina's different sectors adopted several tools that include direct field observation, interviews with stakeholders, analysis of available data, historical maps, and previously proposed projects. The findings from the analysis were mapped and graphically represented, allowing the recognition of character zones that become the design intervention units. Consequently, the thesis proposes an urban, city-scale intervention that identifies 6 different character zones (the historical fishing port, Abdul Wahab island, the abandoned Port Said, Hammam el Makloub, the sand beach, and the new developable area) and proposes context-specific design interventions that capitalize on the main characteristics of each zone. Moreover, the intervention builds on the institutional framework of ICZM as well as other studies previously conducted for the coast and adopts nature-based solutions with hybrid systems for providing better environmental design solutions for developing the coast. This enables the realization of an all-inclusive, well-connected shoreline with easy and free access towards the sea; a developed shoreline with an active local economy, and an improved urban environment.

Keywords: blue green infrastructure, coastal cities, hybrid solutions, integrated coastal zone management, sustainable development, urban planning

Procedia PDF Downloads 164

Authors: X. Wang

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Timely and accurate information on urban building damage caused by earthquake is important basis for disaster assessment and emergency relief. Very high resolution (VHR) remotely sensed imagery containing abundant fine-scale information offers a large quantity of data for detecting and assessing urban building damage in the aftermath of earthquake disasters. However, the accuracy obtained using spectral features alone is comparatively low, since building damage, intact buildings and pavements are spectrally similar. Therefore, it is of great significance to detect urban building damage effectively using multi-source data. Considering that in general height or geometric structure of buildings change dramatically in the devastated areas, a novel multi-stage urban building damage detection method, using bi-temporal spectral, height and corner information, was proposed in this study. The pre-event height information was generated using stereo VHR images acquired from two different satellites, while the post-event height information was produced from airborne LiDAR data. The corner information was extracted from pre- and post-event panchromatic images. The proposed method can be summarized as follows. To reduce the classification errors caused by spectral similarity and errors in extracting height information, ground surface, shadows, and vegetation were first extracted using the post-event VHR image and height data and were masked out. Two different types of building damage were then extracted from the remaining areas: the height difference between pre- and post-event was used for detecting building damage showing significant height change; the difference in the density of corners between pre- and post-event was used for extracting building damage showing drastic change in geometric structure. The initial building damage result was generated by combining above two building damage results. Finally, a post-processing procedure was adopted to refine the obtained initial result. The proposed method was quantitatively evaluated and compared to two existing methods in Port au Prince, Haiti, which was heavily hit by an earthquake in January 2010, using pre-event GeoEye-1 image, pre-event WorldView-2 image, post-event QuickBird image and post-event LiDAR data. The results showed that the method proposed in this study significantly outperformed the two comparative methods in terms of urban building damage extraction accuracy. The proposed method provides a fast and reliable method to detect urban building collapse, which is also applicable to relevant applications.

Keywords: building damage, corner, earthquake, height, very high resolution (VHR)

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Authors: Endrick Barnacin, Jean-Luc Henry, Jimmy Nagau, Jack Molinie

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Being able to identify biological particles such as spores, viruses, or pollens is important for health care professionals, as it allows for appropriate therapeutic management of patients. Optical microscopy is a technology widely used for the analysis of these types of microorganisms, because, compared to other types of microscopy, it is not expensive. The analysis of an optical microscope slide is a tedious and time-consuming task when done manually. However, using machine learning and computer vision, this process can be automated. The first step of an automated microscope slide image analysis process is segmentation. During this step, the biological particles are localized and extracted. Very often, the use of an automatic thresholding method is sufficient to locate and extract the particles. However, in some cases, the particles are not extracted individually because they are stuck to other biological elements. In this paper, we propose a stuck particles separation method based on the use of the Sobel operator and thresholding. We illustrate it by applying it to the separation of 813 images of adjacent pollen grains. The method correctly separated 95.4% of these images.

Keywords: image segmentation, stuck particles separation, Sobel operator, thresholding

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Authors: Ashwani Kumar Aggarwal

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NIR Light is non-ionizing and can pass easily through living tissues such as breast without any harmful effects. Therefore, use of NIR light for imaging the biological tissue and to quantify its optical properties is a good choice over other invasive methods. Optical tomography involves two steps. One is the forward problem and the other is the reconstruction problem. The forward problem consists of finding the measurements of transmitted light through the tissue from source to detector, given the spatial distribution of absorption and scattering properties. The second step is the reconstruction problem. In X-ray tomography, there is standard method for reconstruction called filtered back projection method or the algebraic reconstruction methods. But this method cannot be applied as such, in optical tomography due to highly scattering nature of biological tissue. A hybrid algorithm for reconstruction has been implemented in this work which takes into account the highly scattered path taken by photons while back projecting the forward data obtained during Monte Carlo simulation. The reconstructed image suffers from blurring due to point spread function. This blurred reconstructed image has been enhanced using a digital filter which is optimal in mean square sense.

Keywords: least-squares optimization, filtering, tomography, laser interaction, light scattering

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Authors: Evren Aysev Denec

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As an urban settlement dating as early as 8000 years and the capital for Byzantine and Ottoman empires; İstanbul has been a significant global city throughout history. The most drastic changes in the macro form of Istanbul have taken place in the last seven decades; starting from 1950’s with rapid industrialization and population growth; pacing up after the 1980’s with the efforts of integration to the global capitalist system; reaching to a climax in the 2000’s with the adaptation of a neoliberal urban regime. Today, the rate of urbanization together with land speculation and real estate investment has been growing enormously. Every inch of urban land is conceptualized as a commodity to be capitalized. This neoliberal mindset has many controversial implementations, from the privatization of public land to the urban transformation of historic neighbourhoods and consumption of natural resources. The planning decisions concerning the city have been mainly top down initiations; conceptualising historical, cultural and natural heritage as commodities to be capitalised and consumed in favour of creating rent value. One of the most crucial implementations of this neoliberal urban regime is the project of establishing a ‘new city’ around northern Istanbul; together with a number of large-scale infrastructural projects such as the Third Bosporus Bridge; a new highway system, a Third Airport Project and a secondary Bosporus project called the ‘Canal Istanbul’. Urbanizing northern Istanbul is highly controversial as this area consists of major natural resources of the city; being the northern forests, water supplies and wildlife; which are bound to be destroyed to a great extent following the implementations. The construction of the third bridge and the third airport has begun in 2013, despite environmental objections and protests. Over five hundred thousand trees are planned be cut for solely the construction of the bridge and the Northern Marmara Motorway. Yet the real damage will be the urbanization of the forest area; irreversibly corrupting the natural resources and attracting millions of additional population towards Istanbul. Furthermore, these projects lack an integrated planning scope as the plans prepared for Istanbul are constantly subjected to alterations forced by the central government. Urban interventions mentioned above are executed despite the rulings of Istanbul Environmental plan, due to top down planning decisions. Instead of an integrated action plan that prepares for the future of the city, Istanbul is governed by partial plans and projects that are issued by a profit based agenda; supported by legal alterations and laws issued by the central government. This paper aims to discuss the ongoing implementations with regards to northern Istanbul; claiming that they are not merely infrastructural interventions but parts of a greater neoliberal urbanization strategy. In the course of the study, firstly a brief account on the northern forests of Istanbul will be presented. Then, the projects will be discussed in detail, addressing how the current planning schemes deal with the natural heritage of the city. Lastly, concluding remarks on how the implementations could affect the future of Istanbul will be presented.

Keywords: Istanbul, urban design, urban planning, natural resources

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Authors: Piyush Sharma, Devi Prasad Sharma, Sulabh Bansal

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Diseases are fairly common in fruits and vegetables because of the changing climatic and environmental circumstances. Crop diseases, which are frequently difficult to control, interfere with the growth and output of the crops. Accurate disease detection and timely disease control measures are required to guarantee high production standards and good quality. In India, apples are a common crop that may be afflicted by a variety of diseases on the fruit, stem, and leaves. It is fungi, bacteria, and viruses that trigger the early symptoms of leaf diseases. In order to assist farmers and take the appropriate action, it is important to develop an automated system that can be used to detect the type of illnesses. Machine learning-based image processing can be used to: this research suggested a system that can automatically identify diseases in apple fruit and apple plants. Hence, this research utilizes the hybrid SVM-RBN model. As a consequence, the model may produce results that are more effective in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 Score, with respective values of 96%, 99%, 94%, and 93%.

Keywords: fruit plant disease, crop disease, machine learning, image processing, SVM-RBN

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Authors: Chondrogianni Dimitra, Yorgos J. Stephanedes

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The impact of the economic crisis, coupled with the aging of the city's old core, is reflected in central Athens. Public and private users, residents, employees, visitors desire the quality upgrading of abandoned buildings and public spaces through environmental upgrading and sustainable mobility, and promotion of the international metropolitan character of the city. In the study, a strategy for reshaping the character and function of the historic Athenian triangle is proposed, aiming at its economic, environmental, and social sustainable development through feasible, meaningful, and non-landscaping solutions of low cost and high positive impact. Sustainable mobility is the main principle in re-planning the study area and transforming it into a “Low Pollution and Limited Vehicle Traffic Zone” is the main strategy. Τhe proposed measures include the development of pedestrian mobility networks by expanding the pedestrian roads and limited-traffic routes, of bicycle networks based on the approved Metropolitan Bicycle Route of Athens, of public transportation networks with new lines of electric mini-buses, and of new regulations for vehicle mobility in the historic triangle. In addition, complementary actions are proposed regarding the provision of Wi-Fi on fixed track media, development of applications that facilitate combined travel and provide real-time data, integration of micromobility (roller skates, Segway, Hoverboard), and its enhancement as a flexible means of personal mobility, and development of car-sharing, ride-sharing and dynamic carpooling initiatives.

Keywords: regeneration plans, sustainable mobility, environmental upgrading, athens historical triangle

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Authors: George Lin

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This study examines a practice in which Chinese municipal governments actively pursue momentary and spectacular urbanism through the hosting of mega-events as an instrument to reproduce urban space for the enhancement of place competitiveness and advancement of political career. Practicing event-driven spectacular urbanism is found to have a short-term impact upon the economy and an effect upon the career advancement of the party secretary more than the mayor. Hosting mega-events has been used as a means to create “a harmonious society” and unified social space whereby grievance and discontents are grossed over, ignored, excluded and marginalized. Geographically, a new urban space has been created for the central city to reassert/consolidate its leading competitive position in the regional and national economy at the expense of the disadvantaged and marginalized. Findings of this research call for a critical re-evaluation of the sophisticated state-space inter-relations in the ongoing processes of planetary urbanization and global urban revolution in which China has taken an important part.

Keywords: Chinese cities, mega events, urbanism, urbanization

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Authors: F. Esfandyari Darabad, Z. Samadi

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The volume of runoff caused by rainfall in the river basin has enticed the researchers in the fields of the water management resources. In this study, first of the hydrological data such as the rainfall and discharge of the Khiyav river basin of Meshkin city in the northwest of Iran collected and then the process of analyzing and reconstructing has been completed. The soil conservation service (scs) has developed a method for calculating the runoff, in which is based on the curve number specification (CN). This research implemented the following model in the Khiyav river basin of Meshkin city by the GIS techniques and concluded the following fact in which represents the usage of weight model in calculating the curve numbers that provides the possibility for the all efficient factors which is contributing to the runoff creation such as; the geometric characteristics of the basin, the basin soil characteristics, vegetation, geology, climate and human factors to be considered, so an accurate estimation of runoff from precipitation to be achieved as the result. The findings also exposed the accident-prone areas in the output of the Khiyav river basin so it was revealed that the Khiyav river basin embodies a high potential for the flood creation.

Keywords: curve number, khiyav river basin, runoff estimation, SCS

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Authors: Cosmin-Gabriel Porumb-Ghiurco, Dumitrana Fiț-Iordache, Szőke Árpád

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The literature incorporating geographical or tourist-geographical themes and explicit references to the Carpathian area is extremely abundant. Through this paper, we attempt to “undermine” the traditional, tourist-geographical approaches of the Carpathian Arch by targeting an aspect often regarded as marginal but which, if examined, even only empirically, takes the form of a vast problem with multidisciplinary vocation. Therefore, we propose a more extravagant yet pro-touristic approach to the Romanian Carpathian geo-space. Consequently, the explicit goal of this approach consists precisely in broadening the multidisciplinary, essentially geographic scope of the research, the vision and mental representation of the Carpathian area by advancing a lever that would symbolize a different kind of unification between geography and tourism on a more intimate, subtle, mythological and archetypal level. The spiritual and mercantile dimensions of the tourism field in general and of the local Carpathian tourism can meld harmoniously together in order to create a common territorial reality of referral and favorable perspectives for the consolidation of their symbiotic relationship.

Keywords: tourist image, mythical geography, collective imaginary, spiritual patrimony, Carpathians

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Authors: Emmanuel Havugimana

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If there is a natural phenomenon that could endanger the lives of countless people in Central Africa, it is the possible eruption of the Nyiragongo Volcano. This one is 3,470 m above sea level and has a summit formed by a crater 1.2 km in diameter. Its composite is made up of many layers of lava and tephras from the Great Rift Valley located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is also located in the region of the volcanic mountains near the city of Goma in Congo and near the city of Gisenyi in Rwanda. Nyiragongo represents an imminent danger considering that its magma has a very low silica content and is thus quite fluid. Its slopes are also high and slippery, and the lava takes advantage of this to flow up to 100 km. Lately, its eruptions took place in May 2002, resumed in May 2021, and they were faster than before. The volcano remains active even today. All these factors make it among the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. On top of that, no one knows when the next eruption will take place, especially since it can also occur without any warning signs. Unfortunately, volcanological monitoring services in Congo are non-existent, and that is why this document concludes that Nyiragongo could if nothing is done in this regard, ravage the two neighboring towns: Goma in Congo and Gisenyi in Rwanda. It also proposes solutions that may contribute to preventing the expected dangers in this context.

Keywords: Nyiragongo, volcanic eruption, precursor signs, active volcano

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Authors: Mohammad Hossain Mohammadi, Saif Al Ameri, Sana Ziaei, Jinane Mounsef

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Automated enumeration of the number of hand fingers is widely used in several motion gaming and distance control applications, and is discussed in several published papers as a starting block for hand recognition systems. The automated finger enumeration technique should not only be accurate, but also must have a fast response for a moving-picture input. The high performance of video in motion games or distance control will inhibit the program’s overall speed, for image processing software such as Matlab need to produce results at high computation speeds. Since an automated finger enumeration with minimum error and processing time is desired, a comparative study between two finger enumeration techniques is presented and analyzed in this paper. In the pre-processing stage, various image processing functions were applied on a real-time video input to obtain the final cleaned auto-cropped image of the hand to be used for the two techniques. The first technique uses the known morphological tool of skeletonization to count the number of skeleton’s endpoints for fingers. The second technique uses a radial distance method to enumerate the number of fingers in order to obtain a one dimensional hand representation. For both discussed methods, the different steps of the algorithms are explained. Then, a comparative study analyzes the accuracy and speed of both techniques. Through experimental testing in different background conditions, it was observed that the radial distance method was more accurate and responsive to a real-time video input compared to the skeletonization method. All test results were generated in Matlab and were based on displaying a human hand for three different orientations on top of a plain color background. Finally, the limitations surrounding the enumeration techniques are presented.

Keywords: comparative study, hand recognition, fingertip detection, skeletonization, radial distance, Matlab

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Authors: Ferhati Ahmed, Fillali Ahmed, Oulhadj Younsi

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delimitation of the perimeters of protection in the catchment area of the city of Adrar, which are established around the sites for the collection of water intended for human consumption of drinking water, with the objective of ensuring the preservation and reducing the risks of point and accidental pollution of the resource (Continental Intercalar groundwater of the Northern Sahara of Algeria). This wellfield is located in the northeast of the city of Adrar, it covers an area of 132.56 km2 with 21 Drinking Water Supply wells (DWS), pumping a total flow of approximately 13 Hm3/year. The choice of this wellfield is based on the favorable hydrodynamic characteristics and their location in relation to the agglomeration. The vulnerability to pollution of this slick is very high because the slick is free and suffers from the absence of a protective layer. In recent years, several factors have been introduced around the field that can affect the quality of this precious resource, including the presence of a strong centre for domestic waste and agricultural and industrial activities. Thus, its sustainability requires the implementation of protection perimeters. The objective of this study is to set up three protection perimeters: immediate, close and remote. The application of the Wyssling method makes it possible to calculate the transfer time (t) of a drop of groundwater located at any point in the aquifer up to the abstraction and thus to define isochrones which in turn delimit each type of perimeter, 40 days for the nearer and 100 days for the farther away. Special restrictions are imposed for all activities depending on the distance of the catchment. The application of this method to the Adrar city catchment field showed that the close and remote protection perimeters successively occupy areas of 51.14 km2 and 92.9 km2. Perimeters are delimited by geolocated markers, 40 and 46 markers successively. These results show that the areas defined as "near protection perimeter" are free from activities likely to present a risk to the quality of the water used. On the other hand, on the areas defined as "remote protection perimeter," there is some agricultural and industrial activities that may present an imminent risk. A rigorous control of these activities and the restriction of the type of products applied in industrial and agricultural is imperative.

Keywords: continental intercalaire, drinking water supply, groundwater, perimeter of protection, wyssling method

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Authors: Hachaichi Mohamed Nour El-Islem, Baouni Tahar

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Environmental sustainability rather than a trans-disciplinary and a scientific issue, is the main problem that characterizes all modern cities nowadays. In developing countries, this concern is expressed in a plethora of critical urban ills: traffic congestion, air pollution, noise, urban decay, increase in energy consumption and CO₂ emissions which blemish cities’ landscape and might threaten citizens’ health and welfare. As in the same manner as developing world cities, the rapid growth of Algiers’ human population and increasing in city scale phenomena lead eventually to increase in daily trips, energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. In addition, the lack of proper and sustainable planning of the city’s infrastructure is one of the most relevant issues from which Algiers suffers. The aim of this contribution is to estimate the carbon deficit of the City of Algiers, Algeria, using the Ecological Footprint Model (carbon footprint). In order to achieve this goal, the amount of CO₂ from fuel combustion has been calculated and aggregated into five sectors (agriculture, industry, residential, tertiary and transportation); as well, Algiers’ biocapacity (CO₂ uptake land) has been calculated to determine the ecological overshoot. This study shows that Algiers’ transport system is not sustainable and is generating more than 50% of Algiers total carbon footprint which cannot be sequestered by the local forest land. The aim of this research is to show that the Carbon Footprint Assessment might be a relevant indicator to design sustainable strategies/policies striving to reduce CO₂ by setting in motion the energy consumption in the transportation sector and reducing the use of fossil fuels as the main energy input.

Keywords: biocapacity, carbon footprint, ecological footprint assessment, energy consumption

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Authors: A. C. Galvis-Castro, R. D. Tovar, R. Salgado, M. Prezzi

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It is generally accepted that the shaft capacity of piles in the sand is lower for tensile loading that for compressive loading. So far, very little attention has been paid to the role of the influence of the installation method on the tensile to compressive shaft capacity ratio. The objective of this paper is to analyze the effect of installation method on the tensile to compressive shaft capacity of piles in dense sand as observed in tests on half-circular model pile tests in a half-circular calibration chamber with digital image correlation (DIC) capability. Model piles are either monotonically jacked, jacked with multiple strokes or pre-installed into the dense sand samples. Digital images of the model pile and sand are taken during both the installation and loading stages of each test and processed using the DIC technique to obtain the soil displacement and strain fields. The study provides key insights into the mobilization of shaft resistance in tensile and compressive loading for both displacement and non-displacement piles.

Keywords: digital image correlation, piles, sand, shaft resistance

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Authors: Thanh Noi Phan, Martin Kappas, Jan Degener

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The currently launched Sentinel 2 (S2) satellite (June, 2015) bring a great potential and opportunities for land use/cover map applications, due to its fine spatial resolution multispectral as well as high temporal resolutions. So far, there are handful studies using S2 real data for land cover classification. Especially in northern Vietnam, to our best knowledge, there exist no studies using S2 data for land cover map application. The aim of this study is to provide the preliminary result of land cover classification using Sentinel -2 data with a rising state – of – art classifier, Random Forest. A case study with heterogeneous land use/cover in the eastern of Hanoi Capital – Vietnam was chosen for this study. All 10 spectral bands of 10 and 20 m pixel size of S2 images were used, the 10 m bands were resampled to 20 m. Among several classified algorithms, supervised Random Forest classifier (RF) was applied because it was reported as one of the most accuracy methods of satellite image classification. The results showed that the red-edge and shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands play an important role in land cover classified results. A very high overall accuracy above 90% of classification results was achieved.

Keywords: classify algorithm, classification, land cover, random forest, sentinel 2, Vietnam

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Authors: Yuyun, Fritz Akhmad Nuzir, Bart Julien Dewancker

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Check-in locations on social media provide information about an individual’s location. The millions of units of data generated from these sites provide knowledge for human activity. In this research, we used a geolocation service and users’ texts posted on Twitter social media to analyze human mobility. Our research will answer the questions; what are the movement patterns of a citizen? And, how far do people travel in the city? We explore the people trajectory of 201,118 check-ins and 22,318 users over a period of one month in Makassar city, Indonesia. To accommodate individual mobility, the authors only analyze the users with check-in activity greater than 30 times. We used sampling method with a systematic sampling approach to assign the research sample. The study found that the individual movement shows a high degree of regularity and intensity in certain places. The other finding found that the average distance an urban inhabitant can travel per day is as far as 9.6 km.

Keywords: mobility, check-in, distance, Twitter

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Authors: Mingxin Li, Liya Ni

Abstract:

Autonomous parking is a valuable feature applicable to many robotics applications such as tour guide robots, UV sanitizing robots, food delivery robots, and warehouse robots. With auto-parking, the robot will be able to park at the charging zone and charge itself without human intervention. As compared to self-driving vehicles, auto-parking is more challenging for a small-scale mobile robot only equipped with a front camera due to the camera view limited by the robot’s height and the narrow Field of View (FOV) of the inexpensive camera. In this research, auto-parking of a small-scale mobile robot with a front camera only was achieved in a four-step process: Firstly, transfer learning was performed on the AlexNet, a popular pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN). It was trained with 150 pictures of empty parking slots and 150 pictures of occupied parking slots from the view angle of a small-scale robot. The dataset of images was divided into a group of 70% images for training and the remaining 30% images for validation. An average success rate of 95% was achieved. Secondly, the image of detected empty parking space was processed with edge detection followed by the computation of parametric representations of the boundary lines using the Hough Transform algorithm. Thirdly, the positions of the entrance point and center of available parking space were predicted based on the robot kinematic model as the robot was driving closer to the parking space because the boundary lines disappeared partially or completely from its camera view due to the height and FOV limitations. The robot used its wheel speeds to compute the positions of the parking space with respect to its changing local frame as it moved along, based on its kinematic model. Lastly, the predicted entrance point of the parking space was used as the reference for the motion control of the robot until it was replaced by the actual center when it became visible again by the robot. The linear and angular velocities of the robot chassis center were computed based on the error between the current chassis center and the reference point. Then the left and right wheel speeds were obtained using inverse kinematics and sent to the motor driver. The above-mentioned four subtasks were all successfully accomplished, with the transformed learning, image processing, and target prediction performed in MATLAB, while the motion control and image capture conducted on a self-built small scale differential drive mobile robot. The small-scale robot employs a Raspberry Pi board, a Pi camera, an L298N dual H-bridge motor driver, a USB power module, a power bank, four wheels, and a chassis. Future research includes three areas: the integration of all four subsystems into one hardware/software platform with the upgrade to an Nvidia Jetson Nano board that provides superior performance for deep learning and image processing; more testing and validation on the identification of available parking space and its boundary lines; improvement of performance after the hardware/software integration is completed.

Keywords: autonomous parking, convolutional neural network, image processing, kinematics-based prediction, transfer learning

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Authors: Elizabeth Malebogo Mosepele

Abstract:

Road transport has become increasingly common in the world; people rely on road networks for transportation purpose on a daily basis. However, environmental impact of roads on surrounding landscapes extends their potential effects even further. This study investigates the impact of road network on natural vegetation. The study will provide baseline knowledge regarding roadside vegetation and would be helpful in future for conservation of biodiversity along the road verges and improvements of road verges. The general hypothesis of this study is that the amount and condition of road side vegetation could be explained by road network conditions. Remote sensing techniques were used to analyze vegetation conditions. Landsat 8 OLI image was used to assess vegetation cover condition. NDVI image was generated and used as a base from which land cover classes were extracted, comprising four categories viz. healthy vegetation, degraded vegetation, bare surface, and water. The classification of the image was achieved using the supervised classification technique. Road networks were digitized from Google Earth. For observed data, transect based quadrats of 50*50 m were conducted next to road segments for vegetation assessment. Vegetation condition was related to road network, with the multinomial logistic regression confirming a significant relationship between vegetation condition and road network. The null hypothesis formulated was that 'there is no variation in vegetation condition as we move away from the road.' Analysis of vegetation condition revealed degraded vegetation within close proximity of a road segment and healthy vegetation as the distance increase away from the road. The Chi Squared value was compared with critical value of 3.84, at the significance level of 0.05 to determine the significance of relationship. Given that the Chi squared value was 395, 5004, the null hypothesis was therefore rejected; there is significant variation in vegetation the distance increases away from the road. The conclusion is that the road network plays an important role in the condition of vegetation.

Keywords: Chi squared, geographic information system, multinomial logistic regression, remote sensing, road side vegetation

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Authors: Seong Woon Lee, Soo Min Lim, Sung Sik Jeong, Jung Hoon Park

Abstract:

The atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gas (GHG, Green House Gas) is increasing continuously as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels and industrial development. In response to this trend, many researches have been conducted on the reduction of GHG. Landfill gas (LFG, Land Fill Gas) is one of largest sources of GHG emissions containing the methane (CH₄) as a major constituent and can be considered renewable energy sources as well. In order to use LFG by connecting to the city pipe network, it required a process for removing impurities. In particular, oxygen must be removed because it can cause corrosion of pipes and engines. In this study, methane oxidation was used to eliminate oxygen from LFG and perovskite-type ceramic catalysts of La-Sr-Co-Fe-O composition was selected as a catalyst. Hollow fiber catalysts (HFC, Hollow Fiber Catalysts) have attracted attention as a new concept alternative because they have high specific surface area and mechanical strength compared to other types of catalysts. HFC was prepared by a phase-inversion/sintering technique using commercial La-Sr-Co-Fe-O powder. In order to measure the catalysts' activity, simulated LFG was used for feed gas and complete oxidation reaction of methane was confirmed. Pore structure of the HFC was confirmed by SEM image and perovskite structure of single phase was analyzed by XRD. In addition, TPR analysis was performed to verify the oxygen adsorption mechanism of the HFC. Acknowledgement—The project is supported by the ‘Global Top Environment R&D Program’ in the ‘R&D Center for reduction of Non-CO₂ Greenhouse gases’ (Development and demonstration of oxygen removal technology of landfill gas) funded by Korea Ministry of Environment (ME).

Keywords: complete oxidation, greenhouse gas, hollow fiber catalyst, land fill gas, oxygen removal, perovskite catalyst

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Authors: Lutfi AuliaRahman, Hari Rizki Ananda

Abstract:

The traditional food is a typical food of a certain region that has a taste of its own unique and typically consumed by a society in certain areas, one of which is Gudeg, a regional specialties traditional food of Yogyakarta and Central Java which is made of young jackfruit cooked in coconut milk, edible with rice and served with thick coconut milk (areh), chicken, eggs, tofu and sambal goreng krecek. However, lately, the image of traditional food has declined among people, so with gudeg, which today's society, especially among young people, tend to prefer modern types of food such as fast food and some other foods that are popular. Moreover, traditional food usually only preferred by consumers of local communities and lack of demand by consumers from different areas for different tastes. Thus, the traditional food producers increasingly marginalized and their consumers are on the wane. This study aimed to evaluate the management used by producers of traditional food with a case study of Gudeg Sagan which located in the city of Yogyakarta, with the ability of their management in creating core competencies, which includes the competence of cost, competence of flexibility, competence of quality, competence of time, and value-based competence. And then, in addition to surviving and continuing to exist with the existing external environment, Gudeg Sagan can increase the number of consumers and also reach a broader segment of teenagers and adults as well as consumers from different areas. And finally, in this paper will be found positive impact on the creation of the core competencies of the existence and progress of the traditional food business based on case study of Gudeg Sagan.

Keywords: Gudeg Sagan, traditional food, core competencies, existence

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Authors: Shishay T. Kidanu

Abstract:

The study area is located in Southwestern Missouri and is mainly underlain by Mississippian Age limestone which is highly susceptible to karst processes. The area is known for the presence of various karst features like caves, springs and more importantly Sinkholes. Sinkholes are one of the most common karst features and the primary hazard in karst areas. Investigating the subsurface structure and development mechanism of existing sinkholes enables to understand their long-term impact and chance of reactivation and also helps to provide effective mitigation measures. In this study ERT (Electrical Resistivity Tomography), MASW (Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves) and borehole control data have been used to image the subsurface structure and investigate the development mechanism of a sinkhole in Southwestern Missouri. The study shows that the main process responsible for the development of the sinkhole is the downward piping of fine grained soils. Furthermore, the study reveals that the sinkhole developed along a north-south oriented vertical joint set characterized by a vertical zone of water seepage and associated fine grained soil piping into preexisting fractures.

Keywords: ERT, Karst, MASW, sinkhole

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Authors: Marlon P. Perez

Abstract:

The study intended to determine the level of occupational stress that was experienced by faculty members of private and public business schools in Batangas City with the end in view of proposing organizational development interventions in managing occupational stressors. Stressors such as factors intrinsic to the job, role in the organization, relationships at work, career development and organizational structure and climate were used as determinants of occupational stress level. Descriptive method of research was used as its research design. There were only 64 full-time faculty members coming from private and public business schools in Batangas City – University of Batangas, Lyceum of the Philippines University-Batangas, Golden Gate Colleges, Batangas State University and Colegio ng Lungsod ng Batangas. Survey questionnaire was used as data gathering instrument. It was found out that all occupational stressors were assessed stressful when grouped according to its classification of tertiary schools while response of subject respondents differs on their assessment of occupational stressors. Age variable has become significantly related to respondents’ assessments on factors intrinsic to the job and career development; however, it was not significantly related to role in the organization, relationships at work and organizational structure and climate. On the other hand, gender, marital status, highest educational attainment, employment status, length of service, area of specialization and classification of tertiary school were revealed to be not significantly related to all occupational stressors. Various organizational development interventions have been proposed to manage the occupational stressors that are experienced by business faculty members in the institution.

Keywords: occupational stress, business school, organizational development, intervention, stressors, faculty members, assessment, manage

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Authors: Sayyed Yaghoub Zolfegharifar, Khairul Anuar Kassim, Hossein Khoramrooz, Khodayar Farhadiasl, Sadegh Jahan

Abstract:

Iran is one of the world's seismically active countries so that it experiences many small to medium earthquakes annually and a large earthquake every ten years. Due to seism tectonic conditions and special geographical and climatic position, Iran has the potential to create numerous severe earthquakes. Therefore, seismicity studies and seismic zonation of seismic zones of the country are necessary. In this article, the effect of local site conditions on the characteristics of seismic design in Rahmormoz will be examined. After analyzing the seismic hazard for Rahmormoz through deterministic and statistical methods and preparing the necessary geotechnical models based on available data, the ground response will be analyzed for different parts of the city based on four inputs and acceleration level estimated for bedrock through the equivalent linear method and by means of Deep Soil program. Finally, through the analysis of the obtained results, the seismic profiles of the ground surface for different parts of the city will be presented.

Keywords: seismic microzonation, ground response, resonance spectrum, period, site conditions

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Authors: Ghulam Haider Haidaree, Nsenda Lukumwena

Abstract:

Most developing nations face energy production and supply problems. This is also the case of Afghanistan whose generating capacity does not meet its energy demand. This is due in part to high security and risk caused by war which deters foreign investments and insufficient internal revenue. To address the issue above, this paper would like to suggest an alternative and affordable way to deal with the energy problem. That is by converting Solid Waste to energy. As a result, this approach tackles the municipal solid waste issue (potential cause of several diseases), contributes to the improvement of the quality of life, local economy, and so on. While addressing the solid waste problem in general, this paper samples specifically one municipality which is District-12, one of the 22 districts of Kabul city. Using geographic information system (GIS) technology, District-12 is divided into nine different zones whose municipal solid waste is respectively collected, processed, and converted into electricity and distributed to the closest area. It is important to mention that GIS has been used to estimate the amount of electricity to be distributed and to optimally position the production plant.

Keywords: energy problem, estimation of electricity, GIS zones, solid waste management system

Procedia PDF Downloads 340

Authors: Hayder H. Kareem, Shunqi Pan

Abstract:

Groundwater is a vital water resource in many areas in the world, particularly in the Middle-East region where the water resources become scarce and depleting. Sustainable management and planning of the groundwater resources become essential and urgent given the impact of the global climate change. In the recent years, numerical models have been widely used to predict the flow pattern and assess the water resources security, as well as the groundwater quality affected by the contaminants transported. In this study, MODFLOW is used to study the current status of groundwater resources and the risk of water resource security in the region centred at Al-Najaf City, which is located in the mid-west of Iraq and adjacent to the Euphrates River. In this study, a conceptual model is built using the geologic and hydrogeologic collected for the region, together with the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data obtained from the "Global Land Cover Facility" (GLCF) and "United State Geological Survey" (USGS) for the study area. The computer model is also implemented with the distributions of 69 wells in the area with the steady pro-defined hydraulic head along its boundaries. The model is then applied with the recharge rate (from precipitation) of 7.55 mm/year, given from the analysis of the field data in the study area for the period of 1980-2014. The hydraulic conductivity from the measurements at the locations of wells is interpolated for model use. The model is calibrated with the measured hydraulic heads at the locations of 50 of 69 wells in the domain and results show a good agreement. The standard-error-of-estimate (SEE), root-mean-square errors (RMSE), Normalized RMSE and correlation coefficient are 0.297 m, 2.087 m, 6.899% and 0.971 respectively. Sensitivity analysis is also carried out, and it is found that the model is sensitive to recharge, particularly when the rate is greater than (15mm/year). Hydraulic conductivity is found to be another parameter which can affect the results significantly, therefore it requires high quality field data. The results show that there is a general flow pattern from the west to east of the study area, which agrees well with the observations and the gradient of the ground surface. It is found that with the current operational pumping rates of the wells in the area, a dry area is resulted in Al-Najaf City due to the large quantity of groundwater withdrawn. The computed water balance with the current operational pumping quantity shows that the Euphrates River supplies water into the groundwater of approximately 11759 m3/day, instead of gaining water of 11178 m3/day from the groundwater if no pumping from the wells. It is expected that the results obtained from the study can provide important information for the sustainable and effective planning and management of the regional groundwater resources for Al-Najaf City.

Keywords: Al-Najaf city, conceptual modelling, groundwater, unconfined aquifer, visual MODFLOW

Procedia PDF Downloads 218