scholarly journals Exploring the Correlation between Block Vitality and Block Environment Based on Multisource Big Data: Taking Wuhan City as an Example

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 984
Author(s):  
Yunzi Yang ◽  
Yuanyuan Ma ◽  
Hongzan Jiao

Block is the basic unit for studying the urban activities of residents, and block vitality is the concrete expression of urban dynamics at the block level. The quality of the block’s residential environment is a crucial medium to satisfy the residents’ pursuit of high-quality life; good block quality is essential for fostering the block vitality and further enhancing the overall vitality of the city. This study used the distribution density of cellular signaling data to quantify block vitality and constructed a block environment index system covering four dimensions—block accessibility, block function, block development degree, and human perception of block environment—innovatively introducing the elements of block environment from the human perspective. Considering the variability of block vitality between workdays and weekends, and between downtown and suburban blocks, this study used a geographically weighted regression model to show the mechanism of the spatial and temporal influence of indicators on block vitality, as well as to suggest how to enhance block vitality at different times of the day based on the influence mechanism. This study was conducted in Wuhan, China. The findings suggest that block vitality exhibited significant spatial and temporal heterogeneity. A high-vitality block can be created by enhancing the block’s accessibility, increasing the degree of block construction, and enriching the functional density and mix of functions in the block. A pleasantly green environment with a moderate degree of openness exerted a significant impact on promoting human activity and enhancing block vitality. The creation of high-vitality blocks should also consider the differences in the impact of various elements on block vitality between weekend and workday. For example, amid the surge in travel demand for education venues on weekends, enhancing the accessibility of blocks can significantly increase the vitality of blocks on weekends. We can truly realize the people-oriented approach to build a livable and high-vitality city by adapting to local conditions and time.

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 711-725
Author(s):  
Dragana Petrović ◽  
Ivan Ivanović ◽  
Vladimir Đorić ◽  
Jadranka Jović

This paper presents an overview of the applied research methodologies and developed travel demand models that take weather impact into account. The paper deals with trip generation and modal split as elements of travel demand that best describe changes in the travel behaviour in different weather conditions. The authors herein emphasize the importance of research in local conditions in all climate zones, especially in areas where climate and modal split characteristics are different from those in common research areas. This review is designed as a brief guide on how the impact of weather can be explored in order to encourage conducting research even in the countries where there is no systematic traffic and travel data collection. The stated adaptation technique followed by the panel household travel surveys may be particularly appropriate for those countries. It is concluded that small budgets should not be considered an obstacle, because it is possible to draw reliable conclusions based even on small samples. Moreover, modern research methods enable a cheaper survey process together with the possibility of obtaining higher quality of results. The increasing popularity of research in this field should contribute to the creation of more resilient transport systems all over the world. A special contribution of this paper is the review of research studies carried out in central, western and southern Europe and not mentioned in any review paper before.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-397
Author(s):  
Chunyang Wang

This paper measures the spatial evolution of urban agglomerations to understand be er the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) construction, based on panel data from fi ve major urban agglomerations in China for the period 2004–2015. It is found that there are signi ficant regional diff erences of HSR impacts. The construction of HSR has promoted population and economic diff usion in two advanced urban agglomerations, namely the Yang e River Delta and Pearl River Delta, while promoting population and economic concentration in two relatively less advanced urban agglomerations, e.g. the middle reaches of the Yang e River and Chengdu–Chongqing. In terms of city size, HSR promotes the economic proliferation of large cities and the economic concentration of small and medium-sized cities along its routes. HSR networking has provided a new impetus for restructuring urban spatial systems. Every region should optimize the industrial division with strategic functions of urban agglomeration according to local conditions and accelerate the construction of inter-city intra-regional transport network to maximize the eff ects of high-speed rail across a large regional territory.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (S1) ◽  
pp. 123-123
Author(s):  
Ken Schwartz ◽  
Robert Madan ◽  
Anna Berall ◽  
Marsha Natadira ◽  
Anna Santiago

Background:Responsive behaviours in dementia are associated with poor outcomes for the person with dementia (PWD) and caregiver burnout. Family caregivers need a variety of tools to manage responsive behaviours. The Baycrest Quick-Response Caregiver Tool was developed to provide caregivers with a tool that can be used in real time. In this study, the feasibility, impact, and effectiveness of this new tool were studied in family caregivers and health care providers (HCP) using quantitative and qualitative measures.Methods:Family caregivers were recruited and were asked to complete a pre-survey before being sent the link to the educational tool. One month after the telephone survey, caregivers were sent an online post-survey to gather their feedback on the tool and the impact of the tool on caregiver well -being. Healthcare providers were also recruited and reviewed the tool through an online feedback survey. The feasibility, impact, and effectiveness of the tool were assessed using quantitative and qualitative measures.Results:Caregivers had a moderate degree of and reported a high level of competence - these scores were maintained throughout the study. Caregivers reported that tool positively impacted their compassion towards the person with dementia (PWD), and that their interactions with improved. 100% of HCP who completed the feedback survey would recommend the tool to other HCP and to caregivers of PWD. The caregivers and HCP provided specific suggestions for improvement.Conclusions:The Baycrest Quick-Response Caregiver Tool was found to be feasible and helpful. It provides caregivers and HCP with an additional approach for responsive behaviours.


Author(s):  
Francesco Mancini ◽  
Raffaele De Giorgi ◽  
Alessandro Ludovisi ◽  
Salvatrice Vizzini ◽  
Giorgio Mancinelli

AbstractThe introduction of the amphipod Dikerogammarus villosus in European fresh waters is to date recognized as a threat to the integrity of invaded communities. Predation by D. villosus on native benthic invertebrates is assumed as the key determinant of its ecological impact, yet available information describe the species as a primary consumer as well as a carnivore depending on local conditions. Here, we assessed the trophic position (TP) of D. villosus in Lake Trasimeno, a recently invaded lentic system in central Italy, using the CN isotopic signatures of individuals captured in winter spanning two orders of magnitude in body size. TP estimations were compared with those characterizing the native amphipod Echinogammarus veneris and other representative invertebrate predators. On average, D. villosus showed a trophic position higher than E. veneris, and comparable with that of odonate nymphs. An in-depth analysis revealed that large-sized individuals had a trophic position of 3.07, higher than odonates and close to that of the hirudinean predator Erpobdella octoculata, while small-sized specimens had a trophic position of 2.57, similar to that of E. veneris (2.41). These findings indicate that size-related ontogenetic shifts in dietary habits may per se vary the nature of the interaction between Dikerogammarus villosus and native invertebrates from competition to predation. Information collated from published isotopic studies corroborated the generality of our results. We conclude that intra-specific trophic flexibility may potentially amplify and make more multifaceted the impact of the species on other invertebrate species in invaded food webs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 525
Author(s):  
Yann Forget ◽  
Michal Shimoni ◽  
Marius Gilbert ◽  
Catherine Linard

By 2050, half of the net increase in the world’s population is expected to reside in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), driving high urbanization rates and drastic land cover changes. However, the data-scarce environment of SSA limits our understanding of the urban dynamics in the region. In this context, Earth Observation (EO) is an opportunity to gather accurate and up-to-date spatial information on urban extents. During the last decade, the adoption of open-access policies by major EO programs (CBERS, Landsat, Sentinel) has allowed the production of several global high resolution (10–30 m) maps of human settlements. However, mapping accuracies in SSA are usually lower, limited by the lack of reference datasets to support the training and the validation of the classification models. Here we propose a mapping approach based on multi-sensor satellite imagery (Landsat, Sentinel-1, Envisat, ERS) and volunteered geographic information (OpenStreetMap) to solve the challenges of urban remote sensing in SSA. The proposed mapping approach is assessed in 17 case studies for an average F1-score of 0.93, and applied in 45 urban areas of SSA to produce a dataset of urban expansion from 1995 to 2015. Across the case studies, built-up areas averaged a compound annual growth rate of 5.5% between 1995 and 2015. The comparison with local population dynamics reveals the heterogeneity of urban dynamics in SSA. Overall, population densities in built-up areas are decreasing. However, the impact of population growth on urban expansion differs depending on the size of the urban area and its income class.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 444
Author(s):  
Xucai Zhang ◽  
Yeran Sun ◽  
Ting On Chan ◽  
Ying Huang ◽  
Anyao Zheng ◽  
...  

Urban vibrancy contributes towards a successful city and high-quality life for people as one of its vital elements. Therefore, the association between service facilities and vibrancy is crucial for urban managers to understand and improve city construction. Moreover, the rapid development of information and communications technology (ICT) allows researchers to easily and quickly collect a large volume of real-time data generated by people in daily life. In this study, against the background of emerging multi-source big data, we utilized Tencent location data as a proxy for 24-h vibrancy and adopted point-of-interest (POI) data to represent service facilities. An analysis framework integrated with ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) models is proposed to explore the spatiotemporal relationships between urban vibrancy and POI-based variables. Empirical results show that (1) spatiotemporal variations exist in the impact of service facilities on urban vibrancy across Guangzhou, China; and (2) GTWR models exhibit a higher degree of explanatory capacity on vibrancy than the OLS models. In addition, our results can assist urban planners to understand spatiotemporal patterns of urban vibrancy in a refined resolution, and to optimize the resource allocation and functional configuration of the city.


Author(s):  
Shunhua Bai ◽  
Junfeng Jiao

Travel demand forecast plays an important role in transportation planning. Classic models often predict people’s travel behavior based on the physical built environment in a linear fashion. Many scholars have tried to understand built environments’ predictive power on people’s travel behavior using big-data methods. However, few empirical studies have discussed how the impact might vary across time and space. To fill this research gap, this study used 2019 anonymous smartphone GPS data and built a long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network (RNN) to predict the daily travel demand to six destinations in Austin, Texas: downtown, the university, the airport, an inner-ring point-of-interest (POI) cluster, a suburban POI cluster, and an urban-fringe POI cluster. By comparing the prediction results, we found that: the model underestimated the traffic surge for the university in the fall semester and overestimated the demand for downtown on non-working days; the prediction accuracy for POI clusters was negatively related to their adjacency to downtown; and different POI clusters had cases of under- or overestimation on different occasions. This study reveals that the impact of destination attributes on people’s travel demand can vary across time and space because of their heterogeneous nature. Future research on travel behavior and built environment modeling should incorporate the temporal inconsistency to achieve better prediction accuracy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelika Nieszała ◽  
Daniel Klich

AbstractThe methods used to assess the significance of land cover in the vicinity of a road for the mortality of mesopredators are diverse. In assessing the effect of land cover along the road on road causalities, scientists use various buffer sizes, or even no buffer along the road. The aim of this study was to verify how results of land cover effects on the mortality of mesopredators on roads may differ when analyzing various buffer sizes from the road. We assessed road causalities in the Warmian-Masurian voivodeship (Poland) from 3 consecutive years: 2015, 2016, and 2017. The roads were divided into equal sections of 2000 m each with buffer size of radius: 10, 250, 500, and 1000 m. We analyzed the number of road kills of red fox and European badger separately in a generalized linear model, whereas explanatory variables we used land cover types (based on the Corine Land Cover inventory) and traffic volume. Mean annual mortality from road collisions amounts to 2.36% of the red fox population and 3.82% of the European badger population. We found that the buffer size determines the results of the impact of land cover on mesocarnivore mortality on roads. The red fox differed from the European badger in response to land cover depending on the buffer size. The differences we have shown relate in particular to built-up areas. Our results indicate a 500-m buffer as best reflecting the land cover effects in road kills of both species. This was confirmed by model evaluation and a tendency to use or avoid the vicinity of human settlements of the analyzed species. We concluded that buffer size will probably affect mostly the significance of cover types that are spatially correlated with roads, positively or negatively. We suggest that the home range size of given species in local conditions should be assessed before determining the size of the buffer for analysis.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 181-200
Author(s):  
David Arnold

ABSTRACTIn India the 1918–19 influenza pandemic cost at least twelve million lives, more than in any other country; it caused widespread suffering and disrupted the economy and infrastructure. Yet, despite this, and in contrast to the growing literature on recovering the ‘forgotten’ pandemic in other countries, remarkably little was recorded about the epidemic in India at the time or has appeared in the subsequent historiography. An absence of visual evidence is indicative of a more general paucity of contemporary material and first-hand testimony. In seeking to explain this absence, it is argued that, while India was exposed to influenza as a global event and to the effects of its involvement in the Great War, the influenza episode needs to be more fully understood in terms of local conditions. The impact of the disease was overshadowed by the prior encounter with bubonic plague, by military recruitment and the war, and by food shortages and price rises that pushed India to the brink of famine. Subsumed within a dominant narrative of political unrest and economic discontent, the epidemic found scant expression in official documentation, public debate and/or even private correspondence.


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