scholarly journals Enhancing Sustainability and Resilience through Multi-Level Infrastructure Planning

Author(s):  
Jorge Salas ◽  
Víctor Yepes

Resilient planning demands not only resilient actions, but also resilient implementation, which promotes adaptive capacity for the attainment of the planned objectives. This requires, in the case of multi-level infrastructure systems, the simultaneous pursuit of bottom-up infrastructure planning for the promotion of adaptive capacity, and of top-down approaches for the achievement of global objectives and the reduction of structural vulnerabilities and imbalances. Though several authors have pointed out the need to balance bottom-up flexibility with top-down hierarchical control for better plan implementation, very few methods have yet been developed with this aim, least of all with a multi-objective perspective. This work addressed this lack by including, for the first time, the mitigation of urban vulnerability, the improvement of road network condition, and the minimization of the economic cost as objectives in a resilient planning process in which both actions and their implementation are planned for a controlled, sustainable development. Building on Urban planning support system (UPSS), a previously developed planning tool, the improved planning support system affords a planning alternative over the Spanish road network, with the best multi-objective balance between optimization, risk, and opportunity. The planning process then formalizes local adaptive capacity as the capacity to vary the selected planning alternative within certain limits, and global risk control as the duties that should be achieved in exchange. Finally, by means of multi-objective optimization, the method reveals the multi-objective trade-offs between local opportunity, global risk, and rights and duties at local scale, thus providing deeper understanding for better informed decision-making.

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 422-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takaaki Kato ◽  
◽  
Itsuki Nakabayashi ◽  
Taro Ichiko ◽  

The past post-disaster recovery process had many difficulties in planning. The importance of residents participatory urban planning is true of post-disaster planning and ordinary planning; however, there are difficult problems as follows: time-scale conflict between desire of affected households for swift recovery of their individual lives and enough consideration of urban planning to avoid speed-before-quality planning, unsmooth discussion and consensus building because of mutual conflict of their interest in the residents, and a shortage of professionals in the case that an earthquake disaster hits wide and high-density urbanized region. The concept of "pre-disaster planning" has been propounded as measures to deal with these serious situations after 1995 Hyogo-ken Nambu Earthquake in Japan. Actual measures including "neighborhood community-training program for post-disaster recovery" of Tokyo Metropolitan have been implemented in various approaches. This study has pioneering approach in this context. We focus on planning support technologies based on a geographic information system (GIS) and establish planning support system for post-disaster community-based urban planning, which will smooth discussion and increase efficiency of planning work. An introduction of the system will result in reduction of total time needed on the planning process and supplement of professionals. Though there are some problems that we identified, they will be solved in accumulated experiences such as the training program in the near future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5723
Author(s):  
Dina Margrethe Aspen ◽  
Andreas Amundsen

In this paper, we report on the application of systems engineering in initiating the synthesis of a participatory planning support system (PSS) for sustainable regional planning. The systems engineering SPADE approach is applied in a model-based fashion to define and link sustainable development goals (SDGs) to regional and urban planning policies in a co-creative multi-stakeholder environment. The approach is demonstrated through a case study from the interregional climate, land-use, and transportation planning process (PAKT) in the Ålesund region in Norway. The work was performed using focus groups with planning stakeholders over a series of workshops to analyze, design, verify and validate the problem structure. Our study shows that the approach is useful for integrating and operationalizing the SDGs in a planning context. The methodology also brings clarity and structure to planning problems and provides a pedagogical frame to engage stakeholders in co-creative PSS synthesis. Further research is necessary to explore how structured elements may be exploited in PSS synthesis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aija Staffans ◽  
Maarit Kahila-Tani ◽  
Stan Geertman ◽  
Pihla Sillanpää ◽  
Liisa Horelli

The complexity of the planning context has raised criticism against public participation for being a rigid top-down endeavour which does not recognize the different communicative needs and necessary working modes in the engagement of broad publics and collaborative small groups. Consequently, the problem is how to improve public participation so that it becomes more sensitive to the variety of communicative activities and knowledge needs involved in the design of urban planning processes. The aim of the article is to present and discuss, on the basis of two small case studies in the Finnish context, a revised model for a process-sensitive planning support system (PSS), with examples of several digital tools. The authors argue that besides broad public participation, more collaboration is needed to converge the diverse knowledge of planning in two-way communication and co-working settings which enable the analysis and design of living environments.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (8) ◽  
pp. 1326-1342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stan Geertman ◽  
John Stillwell

In this paper, we provide an update of recent developments and forthcoming challenges in the field of planning support systems, following earlier reviews in 2003 and 2009. The rationale for this update is the rapid development of information and communication technologies and their impact on planning support systems. After a brief retrospective assessment of past planning support system developments, the paper presents a synthesis of the experiences and views of a worldwide sample of invited planning support system experts, whose innovative contributions comprise a new Handbook of Planning Support Science. The developments documented by the experts together substantiate our impression that a fundamental transformation is taking place – a paradigm shift – wherein the field of planning support systems is maturing into a planning support science. From this perspective, it is expected that planning support systems will become indispensable instruments in the planning process in the not too distant future. The signs of this maturation are already visible in research, education and practice.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 3340
Author(s):  
Murel Truu ◽  
Ivar Annus ◽  
Janet Roosimägi ◽  
Nils Kändler ◽  
Anatoli Vassiljev ◽  
...  

Flood-resilient spatial planning in urban areas involves designing and implementing structural and nonstructural measures. For the latter, urban planners apply a precautionary principle, which is normally not grounded in the actual performance of the urban drainage system (UDS). This approach, however, fails during weather extremes with heavy precipitation. This paper presents a new concept for reducing pluvial flood risks in the urban planning process. The novelty of the developed planning support system named Extreme Weather Layer (EWL) is that it creates dynamic interlinkages between land developments, the performance of UDS, and other factors that contribute to flood risk. The EWL is built on the digital twin of the existing UDS and delivers an easy-to-use concept, where the end user can analyze hydraulic modelling results interlinked with climate scenarios using the GIS platform. This allows planning specialists to consider land use and soil types in the urban environment to simulate the response of the storm water system and the catchments to different rainfall events. This proposed approach was piloted in Haapsalu (Estonia) and Söderhamn (Sweden). The resulting planning support system, which performs as a set of layers within municipalities’ GIS, allows decision makers to understand and predict the impact of various spatial planning decisions on the pluvial flood risk.


2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-224
Author(s):  
Ge Zhang ◽  
Wenwen Zhang ◽  
Subhrajit Guhathakurta ◽  
Nisha Botchwey

Open data have come of age with many cities, states, and other jurisdictions joining the open data movement by offering relevant information about their communities for free and easy access to the public. Despite the growing volume of open data, their use has been limited in planning scholarship and practice. The bottleneck is often the format in which the data are available and the organization of such data, which may be difficult to incorporate in existing analytical tools. The overall goal of this research is to develop an open data-based community planning support system that can collect related open data, analyze the data for specific objectives, and visualize the results to improve usability. To accomplish this goal, this study undertakes three research tasks. First, it describes the current state of open data analysis efforts in the community planning field. Second, it examines the challenges analysts experience when using open data in planning analysis. Third, it develops a new flow-based planning support system for examining neighborhood quality of life and health for the City of Atlanta as a prototype, which addresses many of these open data challenges.


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