scholarly journals Measuring Walkability with GIS—Methods Overview and New Approach Proposal

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1883
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Telega ◽  
Ivan Telega ◽  
Agnieszka Bieda

Cities occupy only about 3% of the Earth’s surface area, but half of the global population lives in them. The high population density in urban areas requires special actions to make these areas develop sustainably. One of the greatest challenges of the modern world is to organize urban spaces in a way to make them attractive, safe and friendly to people living in cities. This can be managed with the help of a number of indicators, one of which is walkability. Of course, the most complete analyses are based on spatial data, and the easiest way to implement them is using GIS tools. Therefore, the goal of the paper is to present a new approach for measuring walkability, which is based on density maps of specific urban functions and networks of generally accessible pavements and paths. The method is implemented using open-source data. Density values are interpolated from point data (urban objects featuring specific functions) and polygons (pedestrian infrastructure) using Kernel Density and Line Density tools in GIS. The obtained values allow the calculation of a synthetic indicator taking into account the access by means of pedestrian infrastructure to public transport stops, parks and recreation areas, various attractions, shops and services. The proposed method was applied to calculate the walkability for Kraków (the second largest city in Poland). The greatest value of walkability was obtained for the Main Square (central part of the Old Town). The least accessible to pedestrians are, on the other hand, areas located on the outskirts of the city, which are intended for extensive industrial areas, single-family housing or large green areas.

Author(s):  
Mohammed Moshabeb Al-Ali

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate applicability of geographical information system (GIS) tools in assessing performance of the transportation systems which integrate spatial and GIS parameters and indicators. Design/methodology/approach – In this context, performance measures have been objectively related to the strategic goals and objectives identified by policy makers in particular areas. Findings – Results suggest that as a result of on the characteristics of transportation system, further understanding and considerations have been achieved regarding the performance of the investigated transportation systems and the needed transport polices in the study areas. Originality/value – The integrating of spatial data with the conventional data to assess performance of the transportation system.


2018 ◽  
pp. 5-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. M. Grigoryev ◽  
V. A. Pavlyushina

The phenomenon of economic growth is studied by economists and statisticians in various aspects for a long time. Economic theory is devoted to assessing factors of growth in the tradition of R. Solow, R. Barrow, W. Easterly and others. During the last quarter of the century, however, the institutionalists, namely D. North, D. Wallis, B. Weingast as well as D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, have shown the complexity of the problem of development on the part of socioeconomic and political institutions. As a result, solving the problem of how economic growth affects inequality between countries has proved extremely difficult. The modern world is very diverse in terms of development level, and the article offers a new approach to the formation of the idea of stylized facts using cluster analysis. The existing statistics allows to estimate on a unified basis the level of GDP production by 174 countries of the world for 1992—2016. The article presents a structured picture of the world: the distribution of countries in seven clusters, different in levels of development. During the period under review, there was a strong per capita GDP growth in PPP in the middle of the distribution, poverty in various countries declined markedly. At the same time, in 1992—2016, the difference increased not only between rich and poor groups of countries, but also between clusters.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Stanojevic ◽  
Aleksandar Kekovic

Buildings preservation by the conversion of their function has become a domain of interest in the field of industrial heritage. Due to the need to expand existing housing capacities in urban areas, a large number of industrial buildings are nowadays converted into multi-family and single-family housing. The paper deals with the analysis of the functional and aesthetic internal transformation of industrial into housing spaces. The research goal is to determine the principles of conceptualization of housing functional plan within the framework of the original physical structure of the industrial building, at the architectonic composition level and housing unit (dwelling) level. Besides, the paper aims to check the existence of common patterns of the aesthetic transformation of converted spaces, examined through three epochs of the development of industrial architecture: the second half of the XIX century, the first half of the XX century and the post-WWII period.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Roxanne Lai ◽  
Takashi Oguchi

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Changing land use is an increasingly important issue as human habits, behaviors, and needs change. There has been an increase in land and agricultural abandonment in some places of the world. In Japan, movement of the population from rural to urban areas have resulted in much land and agricultural abandonment. In 2016, a land ministry survey showed that 4.1 million hectares of land in Japan had unclear ownership, with farmland making up 16.9% of the total. As vegetation cover changes after land abandonment, this temporal and spatial effect may have important effects on geomorphic processes such as landslide susceptibility and landslide kinematics.</p><p>Here we track long-term land use changes over vegetated landslide areas of the Sanbagawa and Mikabu Belts of Shikoku Island, Japan. The Sanbagawa and Mikabu Belts are metamorphic belts that run across Southwest Japan, and are home to numerous large crystalline schist landslides, including the widely-studied slow but continuously moving Zentoku landslide. Villages and communities have been built on these landslide areas due to historical and cultural factors, as well as the fertility of the soil. Consequently, given the changing land uses including land abandonment in these landslide areas over time, we use long-term high-resolution land cover vegetation datasets to examine first the long-term land use changes, and then use statistical methods to explore their relationships with landslide susceptibility and kinematics. Mapping of spatial data and their analysis using GIS constitute a core part of the research. The results suggest interconnections between land use changes and land movement.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Goddu Pavan Sai Goud ◽  
Ashutosh Bhardwaj

The use of remote sensing for urban monitoring is a very reliable and cost-effective method for studying urban expansion in horizontal and vertical dimensions. The advantage of multi-temporal spatial data and high data accuracy is useful in mapping urban vertical aspects like the compactness of urban areas, population expansion, and urban surface geometry. This study makes use of the ‘Ice, cloud, and land elevation satellite-2′ (ICESat-2) ATL 03 photon data for building height estimation using a sample of 30 buildings in three experimental sites. A comparison of computed heights with the heights of the respective buildings from google image and google earth pro was done to assess the accuracy and the result of 2.04 m RMSE was obtained. Another popularly used method by planners and policymakers to map the vertical dimension of urban terrain is the Digital Elevation Model (DEM). An assessment of the openly available DEM products—TanDEM-X and Cartosat-1 has been done over Urban and Rural areas. TanDEM-X is a German earth observation satellite that uses InSAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry) technique to acquire DEM while Cartosat-1 is an optical stereo acquisition satellite launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) that uses photogrammetric techniques for DEM acquisition. Both the DEMs have been compared with ICESat-2 (ATL-08) Elevation data as the reference and the accuracy has been evaluated using Mean error (ME), Mean absolute error (MAE) and Root mean square error (RMSE). In the case of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), RMSE values 5.29 m and 7.48 m were noted for TanDEM-X 90 and CartoDEM V3 R1 respectively. While the second site of Bellampalli Mandal rural area observed 5.15 and 5.48 RMSE values for the same respectively. Therefore, it was concluded that TanDEM-X has better accuracy as compared to the CartoDEM V3 R1.


Author(s):  
M. A. Dogon-Yaro ◽  
P. Kumar ◽  
A. Abdul Rahman ◽  
G. Buyuksalih

Mapping of trees plays an important role in modern urban spatial data management, as many benefits and applications inherit from this detailed up-to-date data sources. Timely and accurate acquisition of information on the condition of urban trees serves as a tool for decision makers to better appreciate urban ecosystems and their numerous values which are critical to building up strategies for sustainable development. The conventional techniques used for extracting trees include ground surveying and interpretation of the aerial photography. However, these techniques are associated with some constraints, such as labour intensive field work and a lot of financial requirement which can be overcome by means of integrated LiDAR and digital image datasets. Compared to predominant studies on trees extraction mainly in purely forested areas, this study concentrates on urban areas, which have a high structural complexity with a multitude of different objects. This paper presented a workflow about semi-automated approach for extracting urban trees from integrated processing of airborne based LiDAR point cloud and multispectral digital image datasets over Istanbul city of Turkey. The paper reveals that the integrated datasets is a suitable technology and viable source of information for urban trees management. As a conclusion, therefore, the extracted information provides a snapshot about location, composition and extent of trees in the study area useful to city planners and other decision makers in order to understand how much canopy cover exists, identify new planting, removal, or reforestation opportunities and what locations have the greatest need or potential to maximize benefits of return on investment. It can also help track trends or changes to the urban trees over time and inform future management decisions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Sonila Xhafa ◽  
Albana Kosovrasti

Geographic information systems can be defined as a intelligent tool, to which it relates techniques for the implementation of processes such as the introduction, recording, storage, handling, processing and generation of spatial data. Use of GIS in urban planning helps and guides planners for an orderly development of settlements and infrastructure facilities within and outside urban areas. Continued growth of the population in urban centers generates the need for expansion of urban space, for its planning in terms of physical and social infrastructures in the service of the community, based on the principles of sustainable development. In addition urbanization is accompanied with numerous structural transformations and functional cities, which should be evaluated in spatial context, to be managed and planned according to the principles of sustainable development. Urban planning connects directly with land use and design of the urban environment, including physical and social infrastructure in service of the urban community, constituting a challenge to global levels. Use of GIS in this field is a different approach regarding the space, its development and design, analysis and modeling of various processes occurring in it, as well as interconnections between these processes or developments in space.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikhail Permyakov ◽  
Alexander Ilyin ◽  
Tatyana Ivanchenko ◽  
Alexander Ivanchenko ◽  
Nikolai Kopeikin

This article focuses on ordinary, familiar to us structures and what other benefits, except for their intended use, they can bring. One of the most pressing problems of the modern world is the excessive use of non-renewable or hardly renewable natural resources. The key element necessary for the operation of transport is gasoline extracted from oil, which is a hardly renewable natural resource, at the moment the rate of consumption of oil significantly exceeds the rate of its occurrence in the natural environment. In addition, people use atomic power stations to produce energy used in everyday life, many plants and factories are built to produce various things necessary for life, and sometimes just to increase comfort. All this has a very negative impact on the environment, and to clean it after such pollution is a very difficult task. In this way, in the use of current energy sources, we distinguish 2 significant flaws – the exhaustion and difficulty of renewal of the key components necessary for obtaining energy and the negative impact on the world around us. Many states came to the conclusion that it would be much more rational to develop a new approach to energy production, based on the use of inexhaustible and environmentally friendly natural elements. The main example of this approach is the use of solar energy by converting it into electricity using solar panels. In this article, we will look at solar panels and their use in road construction as a way to generate energy and solve environmental problems.


Author(s):  
Y.-H. Lu ◽  
J.-Y. Han

Abstract. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is a matured modern technique for spatial data acquisition. Its performance has a great correlation with GNSS receiver position. However, high-density building in urban areas causes signal obstructions and thus hinders GNSS’s serviceability. Consequently, GNSS positioning is weakened in urban areas, so deriving proper improvement resolutions is a necessity. Because topographic effects are considered the main factor that directly block signal transmission between satellites and receivers, this study integrated aerial borne LiDAR point clouds and a 2D building boundary map to provide reliable 3D spatial information to analyze topographic effects. Using such vector data not only reflected high-quality GNSS satellite visibility calculations, but also significantly reduced data amount and processing time. A signal obstruction analysis technique and optimized computational algorithm were also introduced. In conclusion, this paper proposes using superimposed column method to analyze GNSS receivers’ surrounding environments and thus improve GNSS satellite visibility predictions in an efficient and reliable manner.


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