Collective Sensing: Integrating Geospatial Technologies to Understand Urban Systems—An Overview

A devastating cholera epidemic swept Zimbabwe in 2008, causing over 90,000 cases, and leaving more than 4,000 dead. The epidemic raged predominantly in urban areas, and the cause could be traced to the slow deterioration of Zimbabwe's water and sewerage utilities during the economic and political crisis that had gripped the country since the late 1990s. Rapid improvement was needed if the country was to avoid another cholera outbreak. In this context, donors, development agencies and government departments joined forces to work in a unique partnership, and to implement a programme of swift improvements that went beyond emergency humanitarian aid but did not require the time or massive investment associated with full-scale urban rehabilitation. The interventions ranged from supply of water treatment chemicals and sewer rods to advocacy and policy advice. The authors analyse the factors that made the programme effective and the challenges that partners faced. The case of Zimbabwe offers valuable lessons for other countries transitioning from emergency to development, and particularly those that need to take rapid action to upgrade failing urban systems. It illustrates that there is a ‘middle path’ between short-term humanitarian aid delivered in urban areas and large-scale urban rehabilitation, which can provide timely and highly effective results.

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Developing Inventory of Riparian Buffer Cover in L'Anguille River Watershed using Geospatial Technologies

10.13031/2013.27291 ◽

2009 ◽

Author(s):

Dharmendra Saraswat ◽

Naresh Pai

Keyword(s):

Riparian Buffer ◽

Geospatial Technologies ◽

River Watershed

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Landscape Design toward Urban Resilience: Bridging Science and Physical Design Coupling Sociohydrological Modeling and Design Process

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13094666 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (9) ◽

pp. 4666

Author(s):

Yoonshin Kwak ◽

Brian Deal ◽

Grant Mosey

Keyword(s):

Pilot Study ◽

Landscape Design ◽

Urban Systems ◽

Urban Resilience ◽

Planning Support Systems ◽

Creative Solutions ◽

Resilient Communities ◽

Study Support ◽

Key Variables ◽

Resilient Design

Given that evolving urban systems require ever more sophisticated and creative solutions to deal with uncertainty, designing for resilience in contemporary landscape architecture represents a cross-disciplinary endeavor. While there is a breadth of research on landscape resilience within the academy, the findings of this research are seldom making their way into physical practice. There are existent gaps between the objective, scientific method of scientists and the more intuitive qualitative language of designers and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to help bridge these gaps and ultimately support an endemic process for more resilient landscape design creation. This paper proposes a framework that integrates analytic research (i.e., modeling and examination) and design creation (i.e., place-making) using processes that incorporate feedback to help adaptively achieve resilient design solutions. Concepts of Geodesign and Planning Support Systems (PSSs) are adapted as part of the framework to emphasize the importance of modeling, assessment, and quantification as part of processes for generating information useful to designers. This paper tests the suggested framework by conducting a pilot study using a coupled sociohydrological model. The relationships between runoff and associated design factors are examined. Questions on how analytic outcomes can be translated into information for landscape design are addressed along with some ideas on how key variables in the model can be translated into useful design information. The framework and pilot study support the notion that the creation of resilient communities would be greatly enhanced by having a navigable bridge between science and practice.

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Modeling the Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles on Land Use Using a LUTI Model

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13041608 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (4) ◽

pp. 1608

Author(s):

Rubén Cordera ◽

Soledad Nogués ◽

Esther González-González ◽

José Luis Moura

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Urban Sprawl ◽

Autonomous Vehicles ◽

Interaction Model ◽

Urban Systems ◽

Unwanted Effect ◽

Urban Center ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Current Paradigm ◽

Shed Light

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) can generate major changes in urban systems due to their ability to use road infrastructures more efficiently and shorten trip times. However, there is great uncertainty about these effects and about whether the use of these vehicles will continue to be private, in continuity with the current paradigm, or whether they will become shared (carsharing/ridesharing). In order to try to shed light on these matters, the use of a scenario-based methodology and the evaluation of the scenarios using a land use–transport interaction model (LUTI model TRANSPACE) is proposed. This model allows simulating the impacts that changes in the transport system can generate on the location of households and companies oriented to local demand and accessibility conditions. The obtained results allow us to state that, if AVs would generate a significant increase in the capacity of urban and interurban road infrastructures, the impacts on mobility and on the location of activities could be positive, with a decrease in the distances traveled, trip times, and no evidence of significant urban sprawl processes. However, if these increases in capacity are accompanied by a large augment in the demand for shared journeys by new users (young, elderly) or empty journeys, the positive effects could disappear. Thus, this scenario would imply an increase in trip times, reduced accessibilities, and longer average distances traveled, all of which could cause the unwanted effect of expelling activities from the consolidated urban center.

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