Distribution of archaeological material scatters and soils at the site of Abila of the Decapolis, northern Jordan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Lucke ◽  
Jago Birk ◽  
Michael Zech ◽  
Nora Voss ◽  
Günther Schörner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
City Center ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
N Isotopes ◽  
Land Surfaces ◽  
Soil Distribution ◽  
The City ◽  
Biblical Sources

<p>Patterns and intensities of past land use are mostly unknown. However, soils in the vicinity of archaeological sites usually carry significant amounts of material culture (mostly pottery sherds) which testify to past human activity. We surveyed surface transects of material culture and soil distribution, radiating from the city center of ancient Abila of the Decapolis. The city had been abandoned during the Medieval and was never resettled, which minimizes the presence of material culture from younger periods. In addition, earlier studies suggested that soil erosion of the rather level limestone plateau surrounding the site was rather limited, indicating that actual land surfaces largely represent those of antiquity. Our survey encountered strongly varying quantities of material culture, which correspond to some soil properties such as concentrations of faeces biomarkers of pork excrements. As the material culture mainly dates to Late Antiquity, and as pork consumption during the Islamic periods is rather unlikely, this indicates that the distribution of the archaeological material was to some degree connected with pig breeding during Antiquity. A possible practice leading to sherd deposition on fields could be manuring, such as from applying dung including pork excrements, but ratios of N-isotopes do not suggest that fields surrounding Abila were subject to application of larger amounts of manure. Therefore, it seems very likely that material culture deposition on the land surrounding Abila was partly connected with the herding of pigs, a land use practice that is attested in Biblical sources on the region.</p>

Localization of Relevant Urban Micro-Consolidation Centers for Last-Mile Cargo Bike Delivery Based on Real Demand Data and City Characteristics

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812110363
Author(s):  
Christian Rudolph ◽  
Alexis Nsamzinshuti ◽  
Samuel Bonsu ◽  
Alassane Ballé Ndiaye ◽  
Nicolas Rigo
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
City Center ◽  
Analytical Hierarchical Process ◽  
Logistics Service ◽  
Last Mile ◽  
Logistics Service Provider ◽  
Cargo Bike ◽  
The City ◽  
Weight Allocation ◽  
Use Category

The use of cargo cycles for last-mile parcel distribution requires urban micro-consolidation centers (UMC). We develop an approach to localize suitable locations for UMCs with the consideration of three criteria: demand, land use, and type of road. The analysis considers metric levels (demand), linguistic levels (land use), and cardinal levels (type of road). The land-use category is divided into commercial, residential, mixed commercial and residential, and others. The type of road category is divided into bicycle road, pedestrian zone, oneway road, and traffic-calmed road. The approach is a hybrid multi-criteria analysis combining an Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and PROMETHEE methods. We apply the approach to the city center of Stuttgart in Germany, using real demand data provided by a large logistics service provider. We compared different scenarios weighting the criteria differently with DART software. The different weight allocation results in different numbers of required UMCs and slightly different locations. This research was able to develop, implement, and successfully apply the proposed approach. In subsequent steps, stakeholders such as logistics companies and cities should be involved at all levels of this approach to validate the selected criteria and depict the “weight” of each criterion.

Understanding the Shared E-scooter Travels in Austin, TX

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junfeng Jiao ◽  
Shunhua Bai
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Operation Time ◽  
Street Connectivity ◽  
Travel Patterns ◽  
City Center ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This paper investigated the travel patterns of 1.7 million shared E-scooter trips from April 2018 to February 2019 in Austin, TX. There were more than 6000 active E-scooters in operation each month, generating over 150,000 trips and covered approximately 117,000 miles. During this period, the average travel distance and operation time of E-scooter trips were 0.77 miles and 7.55 min, respectively. We further identified two E-scooter usage hotspots in the city (Downtown Austin and the University of Texas campus). The spatial analysis showed that more trips originated from Downtown Austin than were completed, while the opposite was true for the UT campus. We also investigated the relationship between the number of E-scooter trips and the surrounding environments. The results show that areas with higher population density and more residents with higher education were correlated with more E-scooter trips. A shorter distance to the city center, the presence of transit stations, better street connectivity, and more compact land use were also associated with increased E scooter usage in Austin, TX. Surprisingly, the proportion of young residents within a neighborhood was negatively correlated with E-scooter usage.

scholarly journals Spatial Assessment of Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity in the Tropical Littoral City of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Nwaerema ◽  
Ojeh N. Vincent ◽  
C. Amadou ◽  
Atuma, I. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Surface Temperature ◽  
Land Surface Temperature ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Dry Season ◽  
Wet Season ◽  
City Center ◽  
Multiple Wavelength ◽  
Port Harcourt ◽  
Land Surfaces ◽  
The City

The study examined Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Land Surface Emissivity (LSE) in a tropical coastal city of Port Harcourt and its environs. Satellite remote sensing of multiple-wavelength origin was employed to derive data from the Landsat Enhance Thematic Mapper (ETM+). Statistical mean and range were used to show pattern of LST and LSE. The study established the relationship and characteristics of land use land cover, built-up area and influence of population on land surfaces. With population of over 3,095,342 persons occupying surface area of approximately 458,28 Km2, rapid vegetal and water body lost have put the city area under pressure of 4.7°C heat bias at the interval of 15 years. From rural fringes to the city center, LST varies with 9.3°C in wet season and 4.8°C in the dry season. During the dry season, LSE is severe in the southern part of the city contributed by water bodies, more vegetal cover and urban pavement materials. Emissivity in the wet season varied with 0.0136 and 0.0006 during the dry season but differs with 0.0165 between the two seasons. One critical finding is that LSE decreases from the rural fringes to the city center and LST increases from the rural fringes to the city center. It is recommended that urban greening at the city center should be practiced and the rural fringes should be explored by decongesting activities at the city center to the outskirts in order to ameliorate the effects of urban heat bias without further delay.

scholarly journals A Satellite-Based Land Use Regression Model of Ambient NO2 with High Spatial Resolution in a Chinese City

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 397
Author(s):  
Lina Zhang ◽  
Changyuan Yang ◽  
Qingyang Xiao ◽  
Guannan Geng ◽  
Jing Cai ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Model Fitting ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Epidemiological Studies ◽  
City Center ◽  
Land Use Regression ◽  
Emission Data ◽  
The City ◽  
Density Population

Previous studies have reported that intra-urban variability of NO2 concentrations is even higher than inter-urban variability. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have developed satellite-derived land use regression (LUR) models to predict ground-level NO2 concentrations, though only a few have been conducted at a city scale. In this study, we developed a satellite-derived LUR model to predict seasonal NO2 concentrations at a city scale by including satellite-retrieved NO2 tropospheric column density, population density, traffic indicators, and NOx emission data. The R2 of model fitting and 10-fold cross validation were 0.70 and 0.61 for the satellite-derived seasonal LUR model, respectively. The satellite-based LUR model captured seasonal patterns and fine gradients of NO2 variations at a 100 m × 100 m resolution and demonstrated that NO2 pollution in winter is 1.46 times higher than that in summer. NO2 concentrations declined significantly with increasing distance from roads and with increasing distance from the city center. In Suzhou, 84% of the total population lived in areas with NO2 concentrations exceeding the annual-mean standard at 40 μg/m3 in 2014. This study demonstrated that satellite-retrieved data could help increase the accuracy and temporal resolution of the traditional LUR models at a city scale. This application could support exposure assessment at a high resolution for future epidemiological studies and policy development pertaining to air quality control.

scholarly journals Risk Assessment of Shanghai Extreme Flooding Under the Land Use Change Scenario

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinmeng Shan ◽  
Jie Yin ◽  
Jun Wang
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
Public Service ◽  
City Center ◽  
Industrial Land ◽  
Flood Risks ◽  
Extreme Flooding ◽  
The City ◽  
Huangpu River

Abstract Environmental changes have led to non-stationary flood risks in coastal cities. How to quantitatively characterize the future change trend and effectively adapt is a frontier scientific problem that needs to be solved urgently. To this end, this study uses the 2010 Shanghai land use data as the base and uses the GeoSOS-FLUS model to simulate future land use change scenarios (2030, 2050, and 2100). Based on the results of storm and flood numerical simulations, probabilistic risk, and other multidisciplinary methods, extreme storm and flood risks of various land uses (residential land, commercial and public service land, industrial land, transportation land, agricultural land, and other land) in Shanghai are analyzed and 4 adaptation strategies to deal with extreme flooding have been developed. The research results show that: 1) Under the two emission scenarios, residential, commercial and public service, and industrial land have the highest exposure assets. Under the RCP8.5 scenario, the exposure of assets in 2100, 2050, and 2030 will be 1.7 times, 1.5 times, and 1.3 times that in 2010 for 1/1000-year, respectively; the losses will be 2.7 times, 2.0 times, and 1.8 times that in 2010, respectively. 2) The spatial pattern of loss, which forms the scattered distribution of 1/10-year, is mainly distributed on both sides of the Huangpu River. For 1/1000-year, which is mainly gradually showed a strip distribution, continuous distribution of the city center, and the Qingpu-Songjiang depression in the southwest are high-risk areas for storm floods. 3) The risks are mainly distributed in the city center, the lower reaches of the Huangpu River, the northern shore of Hangzhou Bay, the Qingpu-Songjiang depression in the southwest, and Chongming Island (southwest and northeast). Our work can provide decision-making basis for risk-sensitive based urban planning, flood risk adaptation, and resilience building in Shanghai. The methodology can also provide a reference for risk assessment in other coastal areas.

scholarly journals Mapping the morphology of sprawl and blight: A note on entropy

GeoScape ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Reza Banai ◽  
Anzhelika Antipova ◽  
Ehsan Momeni
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Entropy Change ◽  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
List Type ◽  
Block Group ◽  
City Region ◽  
City Center ◽  
The City

Abstract The urban expansion from the city center to the suburb and beyond is indicated by Shannon entropy, a robust and versatile measure of sprawl. However, the metropolitan regionwide entropy masks the morphology of land cover and land use consequential to urban expansion within the city-region. To surmount the limitation, we focus on the block-group, which is a US census defined socio-spatial unit that identifies the metropolitan region’s development pattern structurally, forming tracts that comprise neighborhoods. The concentration and dispersion of land use and land cover by block-group reveals a North American metropolitan region’s commonly known but rarely measured spatial structure of its urban and suburban sprawl. We use parcel data from county assessor of property (GIS) and land cover pixel data from the National Land Cover Data (NLCD) to compute block-group land-use and land-cover entropy. The change in block group entropy over a decade indicates whether the city- region’s land use and land cover transition to a concentrated or dispersed pattern. Furthermore, we test a hypothesis that blight correlates with sprawl. Blight and sprawl are among the key factors that plague the metropolitan region. We determine the correlations with household income as well as (block group) distance from the city center. It turns out, blight is among the universally held distance-decay phenomena. The share of the block group’s blighted properties decays (nonlinearly) with distance from the city center. Highlights for public administration, management and planning: • The metropolitan region’s outward growth is highlighted by mapping the changing morphology of the block group within the city-region. • The block group entropy is computed with land use (parcel) and land cover (pixel) data. • The block group entropy change indicates the pattern of the land use and land cover transition with concentration or dispersion. • We test the hypothesis that blight correlates with sprawl with statistical models. • The block group’s blighted properties decrease (nonlinearly) with distance from the city center.

scholarly journals A Citizen-Contributed GIS Approach for Evaluating the Impacts of Land Use on Hurricane-Harvey-Induced Flooding in Houston Area

Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Yang ◽  
Anni Yang ◽  
Han Qiu ◽  
Yao Zhou ◽  
Hannah Herrero ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Urban Resilience ◽  
City Center ◽  
Land Use Patterns ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
Flash Flooding ◽  
Flooding Events ◽  
The City

Hurricane Harvey (2017) caused widespread flash flooding by extremely heavy rainfall and resulted in tremendous damage, including 82 fatalities and huge economic loss in the Houston, Texas area. To reduce hazards, loss, and to improve urban resilience, it is important to understand the factors that influence the occurrence of flooding events. People rely on natural resources and different land uses to reduce the severity of flood impacts and mitigate the risk. In this study, we focused the impacts of land use on Hurricane-Harvey-induced flooding inside and outside the Houston city center. With the recent trend that more citizen scientists serve in delivering information about natural disaster response, local residents in Houston areas participated in delineating the flooded areas in Hurricane Harvey. The flooding information used here generated a published map with citizen-contributed flooding data. A regional model framework with spatial autocovariates was employed to understand those interactions. Different land use patterns and types affected the potential of flooding events differently inside and outside Houston’s city center. Explicitly, we found agricultural and open space were associated with high risk of flooding outside the city center, industrial lands increased the high risk of flooding in city center, and residential areas reduced the potential of flooding both inside and outside the city center. The results can assist with future land use strategy in Houston and other areas, and mitigate potential flash flooding. This study also highlighted the contribution of citizen science to responses to natural hazards.

A new bath complex in Late Roman Dyrrachium (Albania)

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Brikena Shkodra-Rrugia
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Design Principles ◽  
City Center ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Limited Knowledge ◽  
Architectural Characteristics ◽  
The City ◽  
Limited Scope ◽  
Late Roman

Abstract This note considers a Late Roman bath building recently discovered in Durrës, Albania (ancient Dyrrachium), near the presumed Roman city center. This discovery is particularly interesting given our limited knowledge of the urban layout and of bathhouses during this important phase of the city. Despite the limited scope of the excavations, the layout of the complex, as well as certain architectural characteristics, suggests the use of design principles based on Imperial baths. The exclusive use of bricks is significant for this area in Late Antiquity. The imposing monumentality of the structures is comparable to baths in cities with Imperial authority. In the absence of stratified layers linked to this structure, moldmade marks on the bricks and decorative features from the marble facing provide a chronological window between the last quarter of the 4th c. and around the middle of the 5th c. CE for its construction.

scholarly journals Review of Experience in Recent Studies on the Dynamics of Land Urbanisation

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1117
Author(s):  
Andrzej Biłozor ◽  
Iwona Cieślak
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Spatial Diffusion ◽  
City Center ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Correct Direction ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The City ◽  
Alternative Solutions

Urbanisation rapidly accelerated in the 20th century. Along with the increasing dynamics of this phenomenon, the desire to know its origins and its course as well as to anticipate its effects is also growing. Investigations into the mechanisms governing urbanisation have become the subject of numerous studies and research projects. In addition, there has been a rapid increase in the number of tools and methods used to track and measure this phenomenon. However, new methods are still being sought to identify changes in space caused by urbanisation. Some of the indicators of urbanisation processes taking place include quantitative, qualitative and structural changes in land use, occurring at a certain time and place. These processes, related to human activity at a given time and in a given area, are determined by spatial diffusion, usually spreading from the city center towards the peripheral zones. Changes in land use involve the transition from less intensive to more intensive forms of land use. The constant effort to acquire new land for development, the search for alternative solutions for the location of investments and the need to determine the correct direction of development generates the need to constantly apply newer methods in the study of the dynamics of urbanisation processes. This paper presents an overview of recent studies and the most interesting—in the authors’ opinion—methods used in research into the dynamics of urbanisation processes. The main objective of the authors was to produce a compendium to guide the reader through the wide range of topics and to provide inspiration for their own research.

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