scholarly journals Land Use Change Ontology and Traffic Prediction through Recurrent Neural Networks: A Case Study in Calgary, Canada

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 358
Author(s):  
Abul Azad ◽  
Xin Wang

Land use and transportation planning have a significant impact on the performance of cities’ traffic conditions and the quality of people’s lives. The changing characteristics of land use will affect and challenge how a city is able to manage, organize, and plan for new developments and transportation. These challenges can be better addressed with effective methods of monitoring and predicting, which can enable optimal efficiency in how a growing city like Calgary, Canada, can perform. Using ontology in land use planning is a new initiative currently being researched and explored. In this regard, ontology incorporates relationships between the various entities of land use. The aim of this study is to present Land Use Change Ontology (LUCO) with a deep neural network for traffic prediction. We present a Land Use Change Ontology (LUCO) approach, using expressions of how the semantics of land use changes relate to the integration of temporal land use information. This study examines the City of Calgary’s land use data from the years 2001, 2010, and 2015. In applying the LUCO approach to test data, experimental outcomes indicated that from 2001 to 2015 residential land use increased by 30% and open space decreased by 40%. Forecasting traffic is increasingly essential for successful traffic modelling, operations, and management. However, traditional means for predicting traffic flow have largely assumed restrictive model architectures that have not controlled for the amounts of land use change. Inspired by deep learning methods and effective data mining computing capabilities, this paper introduces the deep learning Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) to predict traffic while considering the impact of land use change. The RNN was successful in learning the features of traffic flow under various land use change situations. Experimental results indicated that, with the consideration of LUCO, the deep learning predictors had better accuracy when compared with other existing models. Success of our modeling approach indicates that cities could apply this modeling approach to make land use transportation planning more efficient.

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
James Rodríguez-Echeverry ◽  
Rodrigo Fuentes ◽  
Margareth Leiton ◽  
Edilia Jaque

AbstractThe forest landscape of southern Chile, which includes Chilean temperate forest ecosystem, has been designated as a hotspot for biodiversity conservation. However, this landscape has been transformed by land-use change. A proper knowledge about how land-use change impact this ecosystem would provide crucial information for planning conservation strategies. At the commune of Arauco – Chile, the impact of the land-use change on the spatial pattern of native forest ecosystem from 1990 to 2010 was evaluated at the landscape level. This evaluation was carried out using satellite images, landscape metrics and spatially explicit models. The loss of native forest ecosystem was of 40.7% (loss rate of 4.39% per year). Conversely, the exotic species plantations increased more than 150%. The number patches of native forest ecosystem increased more than 130%. The size distribution of patches (<100 ha) increased more than 22%. The aggregation index of native forest ecosystem decreased from 62.5 to 40.1. The loss of native forest ecosystem was caused by the expansion of exotic species plantations, which was associated with substantial changes in the spatial pattern of the forest landscape. As a strategy for conservation of the native forest ecosystem we suggest a landscape approach, using the corridor–patch–matrix model. We recommend that this strategy be complemented with land-use planning. Moreover, this strategy must be supported by a framework of environmental policies. We also recommend strengthening the existing ecological restoration programmes and developing new programmes to restore the native forest ecosystem.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (15) ◽  
pp. 4953
Author(s):  
Sara Al-Emadi ◽  
Abdulla Al-Ali ◽  
Abdulaziz Al-Ali

Drones are becoming increasingly popular not only for recreational purposes but in day-to-day applications in engineering, medicine, logistics, security and others. In addition to their useful applications, an alarming concern in regard to the physical infrastructure security, safety and privacy has arisen due to the potential of their use in malicious activities. To address this problem, we propose a novel solution that automates the drone detection and identification processes using a drone’s acoustic features with different deep learning algorithms. However, the lack of acoustic drone datasets hinders the ability to implement an effective solution. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by introducing a hybrid drone acoustic dataset composed of recorded drone audio clips and artificially generated drone audio samples using a state-of-the-art deep learning technique known as the Generative Adversarial Network. Furthermore, we examine the effectiveness of using drone audio with different deep learning algorithms, namely, the Convolutional Neural Network, the Recurrent Neural Network and the Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network in drone detection and identification. Moreover, we investigate the impact of our proposed hybrid dataset in drone detection. Our findings prove the advantage of using deep learning techniques for drone detection and identification while confirming our hypothesis on the benefits of using the Generative Adversarial Networks to generate real-like drone audio clips with an aim of enhancing the detection of new and unfamiliar drones.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Rolinski ◽  
Alexander V. Prishchepov ◽  
Georg Guggenberger ◽  
Norbert Bischoff ◽  
Irina Kurganova ◽  
...  

AbstractChanges in land use and climate are the main drivers of change in soil organic matter contents. We investigated the impact of the largest policy-induced land conversion to arable land, the Virgin Lands Campaign (VLC), from 1954 to 1963, of the massive cropland abandonment after 1990 and of climate change on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan. We simulated carbon budgets from the pre-VLC period (1900) until 2100 using a dynamic vegetation model to assess the impacts of observed land-use change as well as future climate and land-use change scenarios. The simulations suggest for the entire VLC region (266 million hectares) that the historic cropland expansion resulted in emissions of 1.6⋅ 1015 g (= 1.6 Pg) carbon between 1950 and 1965 compared to 0.6 Pg in a scenario without the expansion. From 1990 to 2100, climate change alone is projected to cause emissions of about 1.8 (± 1.1) Pg carbon. Hypothetical recultivation of the cropland that has been abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union until 2050 may cause emissions of 3.5 (± 0.9) Pg carbon until 2100, whereas the abandonment of all cropland until 2050 would lead to sequestration of 1.8 (± 1.2) Pg carbon. For the climate scenarios based on SRES (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) emission pathways, SOC declined only moderately for constant land use but substantially with further cropland expansion. The variation of SOC in response to the climate scenarios was smaller than that in response to the land-use scenarios. This suggests that the effects of land-use change on SOC dynamics may become as relevant as those of future climate change in the Eurasian steppes.


Author(s):  
Allison Neil

Soil properties are strongly influenced by the composition of the surrounding vegetation. We investigated soil properties of three ecosystems; a coniferous forest, a deciduous forest and an agricultural grassland, to determine the impact of land use change on soil properties. Disturbances such as deforestation followed by cultivation can severely alter soil properties, including losses of soil carbon. We collected nine 40 cm cores from three ecosystem types on the Roebuck Farm, north of Perth Village, Ontario, Canada. Dominant species in each ecosystem included hemlock and white pine in the coniferous forest; sugar maple, birch and beech in the deciduous forest; grasses, legumes and herbs in the grassland. Soil pH varied little between the three ecosystems and over depth. Soils under grassland vegetation had the highest bulk density, especially near the surface. The forest sites showed higher cation exchange capacity and soil moisture than the grassland; these differences largely resulted from higher organic matter levels in the surface forest soils. Vertical distribution of organic matter varied greatly amongst the three ecosystems. In the forest, more of the organic matter was located near the surface, while in the grassland organic matter concentrations varied little with depth. The results suggest that changes in land cover and land use alters litter inputs and nutrient cycling rates, modifying soil physical and chemical properties. Our results further suggest that conversion of forest into agricultural land in this area can lead to a decline in soil carbon storage.


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