Integrating ‘weighted views’ to quantitative 3D visibility analysis as a predictive tool for perception of space

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dafna Fisher-Gewirtzman
Keyword(s):  
Relative Weight ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Line Of Sight ◽  
Relative Impact ◽  
Predictive Tool ◽  
Visibility Analysis ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
The Impact

The ability to predict the human perception of space in dense urban environments would have a vast impact on planning and design processes. Many analytical models, methods and tools have been developed to describe and predict human perception and behaviour in the urban environment, and academic papers have addressed the issue of the view in urban environments as a significant variant influencing perception and quality of life. In the present paper, we introduce the integration of weighted views (the relative impact of a view on a viewer) in a 3D Line of Sight visibility analysis as a predictive tool for perceptions of space focusing on ‘perceived density’. The integration of subjective qualitative information with objective measurements of the volume of visible space may bring evaluations closer to human perceptions of space. The research background consists of state-of-the-art visibility analysis and research concerned with the impact of the view on perceptions of space. An experiment in a visualization laboratory explored the relative impact of various views on the ‘perceived density’ and ‘visual privacy’ of 100 participants. The relative weight of each view presented to the subjects was based on the statistical results of the experiment. The weights were integrated into the 3D Line of Sight visibility analysis and the model is applied in a case study. The integrated 3D Line of Sight visibility analysis currently runs with off-the-shelf software available to all practicing architects and planners. It is expected that in the near future, the tool developed in this work will become an important aid to all practitioners, the method becoming a valuable evaluation tool in planning and design processes. Considering design alternatives, it may become a stepping stone for design principles and regulations.

LUMANA'I

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Savanah Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Culturally Appropriate ◽  
Spatial Concepts ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
The People ◽  
Indigenous Group ◽  
Strategic Foundation ◽  
New Framework

<p><b>The rise of a new pan-Pasifika identity suggests optimistically that New Zealand is becoming more Pasifika today. With significant importance to reflect the Pasifika identity into our built and urban environments in Aotearoa, there is much discussion surrounding how ‘Pasifika’ can be accurately interpreted through spatial practices. Cultural design frameworks are tools that designers and non-designers can adopt and apply into conceptual developments of architectural projects to accurately reflect Indigenous culture. Spatial Frameworks for Mātauranga Māori are constructed by the collaboration of iwi/hapū and designers to gain a better understanding about the unique contexts and characteristics of the people and place. These frameworks aid development and achieve better quality urban environments by creating spaces and places that are suitable to Māori. The frameworks are composed by a series of cultural principles that are derived from core values and concepts of the indigenous group. The principles guide culturally appropriate design processes and responses and are used a strategic foundation to generate spaces.</b></p> <p>This thesis is grounded upon the experience of what it is like living in Aotearoa as a Pasifika person. This design-through-research project investigates how Pasifika principles can be integrated into the development of a Pasifika design framework to inform accurate spatial concepts for the Pasifika community in Aotearoa. The project assesses existing design frameworks for Mātauranga Māori to inform the approach for developing a new framework for Pasifika. This research aims to articulate existing Pasifika principles as outcome-orientated design guidelines that may be applied to reflect the identity of Pasifika. The research proposes a series of spatial guidelines for better-designed environments for Pasifika communities in Aotearoa. The proposition explores how cultural principles can help resolve spatial issues within our cities’ planning and design processes.</p>

scholarly journals LUMANA'I

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Savanah Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Culturally Appropriate ◽  
Spatial Concepts ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
The People ◽  
Indigenous Group ◽  
Strategic Foundation ◽  
New Framework

<p><b>The rise of a new pan-Pasifika identity suggests optimistically that New Zealand is becoming more Pasifika today. With significant importance to reflect the Pasifika identity into our built and urban environments in Aotearoa, there is much discussion surrounding how ‘Pasifika’ can be accurately interpreted through spatial practices. Cultural design frameworks are tools that designers and non-designers can adopt and apply into conceptual developments of architectural projects to accurately reflect Indigenous culture. Spatial Frameworks for Mātauranga Māori are constructed by the collaboration of iwi/hapū and designers to gain a better understanding about the unique contexts and characteristics of the people and place. These frameworks aid development and achieve better quality urban environments by creating spaces and places that are suitable to Māori. The frameworks are composed by a series of cultural principles that are derived from core values and concepts of the indigenous group. The principles guide culturally appropriate design processes and responses and are used a strategic foundation to generate spaces.</b></p> <p>This thesis is grounded upon the experience of what it is like living in Aotearoa as a Pasifika person. This design-through-research project investigates how Pasifika principles can be integrated into the development of a Pasifika design framework to inform accurate spatial concepts for the Pasifika community in Aotearoa. The project assesses existing design frameworks for Mātauranga Māori to inform the approach for developing a new framework for Pasifika. This research aims to articulate existing Pasifika principles as outcome-orientated design guidelines that may be applied to reflect the identity of Pasifika. The research proposes a series of spatial guidelines for better-designed environments for Pasifika communities in Aotearoa. The proposition explores how cultural principles can help resolve spatial issues within our cities’ planning and design processes.</p>

scholarly journals Energy-Efficient Autonomous Navigation of Solar-Powered UAVs for Surveillance of Mobile Ground Targets in Urban Environments

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 5563
Author(s):  
Hailong Huang ◽  
Andrey V. Savkin
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Autonomous Navigation ◽  
Optimization Problem ◽  
Tall Buildings ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Line Of Sight ◽  
Nearest Neighbour ◽  
Solar Powered ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Navigation Method

In this paper, we consider the navigation of a group of solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for periodical monitoring of a set of mobile ground targets in urban environments. We consider the scenario where the number of targets is larger than that of the UAVs, and the targets spread in the environment, so that the UAVs need to carry out a periodical surveillance. The existence of tall buildings in urban environments brings new challenges to the periodical surveillance mission. They may not only block the Line-of-Sight (LoS) between a UAV and a target, but also create some shadow region, so that the surveillance may become invalid, and the UAV may not be able to harvest energy from the sun. The periodical surveillance problem is formulated as an optimization problem to minimize the target revisit time while accounting for the impact of the urban environment. A nearest neighbour based navigation method is proposed to guide the movements of the UAVs. Moreover, we adopt a partitioning scheme to group targets for the purpose of narrowing UAVs’ moving space, which further reduces the target revisit time. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified via computer simulations.

scholarly journals Urban Heat Islands and Thermal Comfort: A Case Study of Zorrotzaurre Island in Bilbao

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6106
Author(s):  
Irantzu Alvarez ◽  
Laura Quesada-Ganuza ◽  
Estibaliz Briz ◽  
Leire Garmendia
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Comfort ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Heat Islands ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Climate Index ◽  
Physiological Equivalent Temperature ◽  
Heat Islands ◽  
The North ◽  
The Impact

This study assesses the impact of a heat wave on the thermal comfort of an unconstructed area: the North Zone of the Island of Zorrotzaurre (Bilbao, Spain). In this study, the impact of urban planning as proposed in the master plan on thermal comfort is modeled using the ENVI-met program. Likewise, the question of whether the urbanistic proposals are designed to create more resilient urban environments is analyzed in the face of increasingly frequent extreme weather events, especially heat waves. The study is centered on the analysis of temperature variables (air temperature and average radiant temperature) as well as wind speed and relative humidity. This was completed with the parameters of thermal comfort, the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) and the Universal Temperature Climate Index (UTCI) for the hours of the maximum and minimum daily temperatures. The results demonstrated the viability of analyzing thermal comfort through simulations with the ENVI-met program in order to analyze the behavior of urban spaces in various climate scenarios.

scholarly journals Breathing space: deoxygenation of aquatic environments can drive differential ecological impacts across biological invasion stages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. E. Dickey ◽  
Neil E. Coughlan ◽  
Jaimie T. A. Dick ◽  
Vincent Médoc ◽  
Monica McCard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Oxygen Saturation ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Neogobius Melanostomus ◽  
Aquatic Environments ◽  
Relative Impact ◽  
Low Oxygen ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Prey Populations

AbstractThe influence of climate change on the ecological impacts of invasive alien species (IAS) remains understudied, with deoxygenation of aquatic environments often-overlooked as a consequence of climate change. Here, we therefore assessed how oxygen saturation affects the ecological impact of a predatory invasive fish, the Ponto-Caspian round goby (Neogobius melanostomus), relative to a co-occurring endangered European native analogue, the bullhead (Cottus gobio) experiencing decline in the presence of the IAS. In individual trials and mesocosms, we assessed the effect of high, medium and low (90%, 60% and 30%) oxygen saturation on: (1) functional responses (FRs) of the IAS and native, i.e. per capita feeding rates; (2) the impact on prey populations exerted; and (3) how combined impacts of both fishes change over invasion stages (Pre-invasion, Arrival, Replacement, Proliferation). Both species showed Type II potentially destabilising FRs, but at low oxygen saturation, the invader had a significantly higher feeding rate than the native. Relative Impact Potential, combining fish per capita effects and population abundances, revealed that low oxygen saturation exacerbates the high relative impact of the invader. The Relative Total Impact Potential (RTIP), modelling both consumer species’ impacts on prey populations in a system, was consistently higher at low oxygen saturation and especially high during invader Proliferation. In the mesocosm experiment, low oxygen lowered RTIP where both species were present, but again the IAS retained high relative impact during Replacement and Proliferation stages at low oxygen. We also found evidence of multiple predator effects, principally antagonism. We highlight the threat posed to native communities by IAS alongside climate-related stressors, but note that solutions may be available to remedy hypoxia and potentially mitigate impacts across invasion stages.

scholarly journals Testing the Effect of Hedge Height on Perceived Safety—A Landscape Design Intervention

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5063
Author(s):  
Katinka H. Evensen ◽  
Helena Nordh ◽  
Ramzi Hassan ◽  
Aslak Fyhri
Keyword(s):  
Field Study ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Landscape Design ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Space Management ◽  
Perceived Safety ◽  
Urban Green Spaces ◽  
Outdoor Spaces ◽  
Surrounding Areas ◽  
The Impact

Access to safe, green urban environments is important for quality of life in cities. The objective of this study is to explore the impact of a safety-enhancing landscape design measure on visitors’ experiences in an urban park. Additionally, this paper combines the use of field and virtual reality (VR) experiments, contributing methodological insights into how to evaluate safety measures in green space management and research on perceived safety. In a field experiment (n = 266), we explored whether the height of a hedge along a pathway influenced perceived safety among users. The field study showed that cutting down the hedge improved the perceived prospect of the immediate surrounding areas for female users, which again made them feel safer in the park. We developed a VR experiment for an evening scenario in the same environment (n = 19) to supplement the field study and test the effect of the intervention further. The VR experiment also found a gender effect on perceived safety, with females reporting lower perceived safety, but no effect was shown for the height of the hedge. The results in this study show that environmental attributes such as perceived prospect and concealment should be considered in the design and management of urban green spaces. Additionally, this research demonstrates an approach to conducting field experiments to test the effects of actual design interventions and then further developing these experiments using VR technology. Further research on perceived safety in outdoor spaces is needed to make use of this combined method’s potential.

scholarly journals A Review of Photocatalytic Materials for Urban NOx Remediation

Catalysts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 675
Author(s):  
Hugo Savill Russell ◽  
Louise Bøge Frederickson ◽  
Ole Hertel ◽  
Thomas Ellermann ◽  
Steen Solvang Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Photocatalytic Oxidation ◽  
Urban Air Pollution ◽  
Field Trials ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Physical Parameters ◽  
Nox Removal ◽  
Removal Efficiencies ◽  
The Impact ◽  
By Products ◽  
Photocatalytic Materials

NOx is a pervasive pollutant in urban environments. This review assesses the current state of the art of photocatalytic oxidation materials, designed for the abatement of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the urban environment, and typically, but not exclusively based on titanium dioxide (TiO2). Field trials with existing commercial materials, such as paints, asphalt and concrete, in a range of environments including street canyons, car parks, tunnels, highways and open streets, are considered in-depth. Lab studies containing the most recent developments in the photocatalytic materials are also summarised, as well as studies investigating the impact of physical parameters on their efficiency. It is concluded that this technology may be useful as a part of the measures used to lower urban air pollution levels, yielding ∼2% NOx removal in the immediate area around the surface, for optimised TiO2, in some cases, but is not capable of the reported high NOx removal efficiencies >20% in outdoor urban environments, and can in some cases lower air quality by releasing hazardous by-products. However, research into new material is ongoing. The reason for the mixed results in the studies reviewed, and massive range of removal efficiencies reported (from negligible and up to >80%) is mainly the large range of testing practices used. Before deployment in individual environments site-specific testing should be performed, and new standards for lab and field testing should be developed. The longevity of the materials and their potential for producing hazardous by-products should also be considered.

scholarly journals Out of sight, out of mind? The impact of correlated clustering in substructure lensing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandres Lazar ◽  
James S Bullock ◽  
Michael Boylan-Kolchin ◽  
Robert Feldmann ◽  
Onur Çatmabacak ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dark Matter ◽  
Principal Axis ◽  
Major Axis ◽  
Line Of Sight ◽  
Gravitational Lenses ◽  
Local Clustering ◽  
Analytic Expression ◽  
Halo Masses ◽  
The Impact

Abstract A promising route for revealing the existence of dark matter structures on mass scales smaller than the faintest galaxies is through their effect on strong gravitational lenses. We examine the role of local, lens-proximate clustering in boosting the lensing probability relative to contributions from substructure and unclustered line-of-sight (LOS) haloes. Using two cosmological simulations that can resolve halo masses of Mhalo ≃ 109 M⊙ (in a simulation box of length Lbox ∼ 100 Mpc) and 107 M⊙ (Lbox ∼ 20 Mpc), we demonstrate that clustering in the vicinity of the lens host produces a clear enhancement relative to an assumption of unclustered haloes that persists to &gt;20 Rvir. This enhancement exceeds estimates that use a two-halo term to account for clustering, particularly within 2 − 5 Rvir. We provide an analytic expression for this excess, clustered contribution. We find that local clustering boosts the expected count of 109 M⊙ perturbing haloes by ${\sim }35{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ compared to substructure alone, a result that will significantly enhance expected signals for low-redshift (zl ≃ 0.2) lenses, where substructure contributes substantially compared to LOS haloes. We also find that the orientation of the lens with respect to the line of sight (e.g. whether the line of sight passes through the major axis of the lens) can also have a significant effect on the lensing signal, boosting counts by an additional $\sim 50{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ compared to a random orientations. This could be important if discovered lenses are biased to be oriented along their principal axis.

scholarly journals The impact of line-of-sight structures on measuring H0 with strong lensing time delays

2021 ◽  
Vol 504 (2) ◽  
pp. 2224-2234
Author(s):  
Nan Li ◽  
Christoph Becker ◽  
Simon Dye
Keyword(s):  
Time Delays ◽  
Line Of Sight ◽  
Lens Model ◽  
Local Universe ◽  
Significant Discrepancy ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Strong Lensing ◽  
Systematic Effects ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Realistic Line

ABSTRACT Measurements of the Hubble–Lemaitre constant from early- and local-Universe observations show a significant discrepancy. In an attempt to understand the origin of this mismatch, independent techniques to measure H0 are required. One such technique, strong lensing time delays, is set to become a leading contender amongst the myriad methods due to forthcoming large strong lens samples. It is therefore critical to understand the systematic effects inherent in this method. In this paper, we quantify the influence of additional structures along the line of sight by adopting realistic light-cones derived from the cosmoDC2 semi-analytical extragalactic catalogue. Using multiple-lens plane ray tracing to create a set of simulated strong lensing systems, we have investigated the impact of line-of-sight structures on time-delay measurements and in turn, on the inferred value of H0. We have also tested the reliability of existing procedures for correcting for line-of-sight effects. We find that if the integrated contribution of the line-of-sight structures is close to a uniform mass sheet, the bias in H0 can be adequately corrected by including a constant external convergence κext in the lens model. However, for realistic line-of-sight structures comprising many galaxies at different redshifts, this simple correction overestimates the bias by an amount that depends linearly on the median external convergence. We therefore conclude that lens modelling must incorporate multiple-lens planes to account for line-of-sight structures for accurate and precise inference of H0.

A case study of noise pollution levels during the restrictions period due to COVID-19.

2021 ◽  
Vol 263 (6) ◽  
pp. 206-214
Author(s):  
David Montes-González ◽  
Juan Miguel Barrigón-Morillas ◽  
Ana Cristina Bejarano-Quintas ◽  
Manuel Parejo-Pizarro ◽  
Guillermo Rey-Gozalo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Acoustic Measurements ◽  
Pollution Levels ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) led to the need for drastic control measures around the world to reduce the impact on the health of the population. The confinement of people in their homes resulted in a significant reduction in human activity at every level (economic, social, industrial, etc.), which was reflected in a decrease in environmental pollution levels. Studying the evolution of parameters, such as the level of environmental noise caused by vehicle traffic in urban environments, makes it possible to assess the impact of this type of measure. This paper presents a case study of the acoustic situation in Cáceres (Spain) during the restriction period by means of long-term acoustic measurements at various points of the city.

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