Adaptation to the impacts of climate change from the perspective of the city of Recife master plan

Defining measures for climate change adaptation is a complex task given the existence of social, environmental, and economic demands, particularly in cities with poor urban infrastructure. As a result of analyzing the revision process of the Recife Master Plan, it is possible to observe that a reduction in the social and environmental vulnerabilities has implied carrying out more consistent studies, which may entail the implementation of structuring measures, and that environmental sustainability requires multilevel governance, with policy reforms on a global, regional and local scale, difficult to implement in the short term, although necessary for refocusing climate policies and for overcoming the inability to provide resources for a tailored adaptation infrastructure. The path to building a resilient city that provides a safer environment for the future depends on an inclusive development model, which enables the population to improve urban conditions and minimize the impacts brought about by extreme weather events.

Quantitative assessment of renovation of “Petmol” plant in Saint-Petersburg

The standardized harmful effect of industrial production on buildings is one of the reasons for the plant withdrawal to the outskirts. The paper examines a particular case of renovation of the urban industrial area for residential commercial development. The energy consumption, environmental pollution, demographic burden, drains. and other indicators are analyzed. The calculation results show that restrained urban conditions can surpass the industrial in terms of the negative impact on the environment, and therefore renovation leads to an increase in resource consumption and deterioration of the environmental situation. Air monitoring data are used to confirm the correctness of the calculations.

Approaching Healthy City Ontology: First-Level Classes Definition Using BFO

In recent decades, the concept of the healthy city (HC) has become more and more relevant in many fields, such as city administration and scientific environment, and has become a commonly understood concept in the general public. Due to the breakneck growth of people living in urban contexts, the subsequent necessity to guarantee good urban conditions for all kinds of citizens, and the general deterioration of the hearth environment caused by human activities (concentrated in urban settlements), this issue is increasing in its relevance. In this paper, the authors discuss the concept of the HC from an ontological point of view to organize the highly complex system of elements and the mutual relations that constitute the idea of HC. The main goals of an HC are quite intuitive, but the number of components that define and manage it is vast and related to different disciplines: sustainability, urban management, urban planning, and health and social studies. With the presented research, the authors intend to start an organizational definition of the HC using basic formal ontology (BFO). Considering the definition of HC, the authors focus on the ontology process and the different typologies of ontological structures. Then, the authors describe a first-level scheme of HC ontology and, finally, discuss possible applications of the presented study and next research steps.

Vepsian Literature as an Aspiration to the Revival of the People (“Up the Stairs Leading Down”?)

The article is devoted to the development of the literature of the Vepsians of the early written people of Russia, whose language is included in the Red Book of the Languages of the Peoples of Russia (the number of people in 2010 was 5936 people). Despite the negative forecasts, the Vepsianlanguage literature is currently successfully developing. The most popular is poetry, represented by the poems of the national writer of Karelia Nikolai Abramov, known in the Finno-Ugric world and beyond. The first generation of authors developed the forms of Vepsian poetry, its rhyme and style, and young authors, first of all Olga Zhukova, Galina Baburova, proved that in urban conditions it is possible to find opportunities for poetry in their native language. The article shows the connection with oral folk art, mythology, philosophy of Vepsian life, which manifested itself in the Vepsian epic Virantanaz by Nina Zaitseva, in the verses of Alevtina Andreeva, reminiscent of a kind of conspiracies or prayers, and in the prose of Valentina Lebedeva. Creating in close collaboration with scientists who claim that the Vepsian language has perfectly preserved both its grammar and vocabulary, which is easily replenished thanks to the rich word-formation system of the Vepsian language, they strive, without discouragement, to go up the stairs leading down.

MIRNY. The Prison of Time

<p>Speculative architecture is sometimes used by speculative architects to enhance our awareness of dystopian elements that thread their way through societies, even when a society is striving for utopian ideals. This contradiction exists because a dystopia to one person may be viewed as a utopia to another – and dystopian conditions can sometimes become so commonplace that they are no longer viewed as out of the ordinary. The site for this design research investigation is Mirny, Yakutia, Siberia, located 450 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle – a city of almost one million people with no access by road, set in permafrost year-round. The city developed around the open pit Mirny diamond mine that once brought wealth to the community; but while the diamonds are now mostly gone, the mine remains – one of the largest, toxic open holes in the world. With the depletion of diamonds, the city became largely forgotten, but the population remained. Yakutia is defined by the enormous pit and its decades-old, never-changing, Soviet-era architecture – lost in time. The utopian ideal from which the city was born is now shrouded in dystopian conditions. But the people, those born in the city who have lived there all their lives, have known nothing else; they remain unaware of the utopian/dystopian contradiction. This thesis looks at how transformations within our evolving built environments can result in contradiction. It challenges speculative architecture to enhance our ability to recognise such contradictions, distinguishing between utopian and dystopian urban conditions when they simultaneously define a city.</p>

MIRNY. The Prison of Time

<p>Speculative architecture is sometimes used by speculative architects to enhance our awareness of dystopian elements that thread their way through societies, even when a society is striving for utopian ideals. This contradiction exists because a dystopia to one person may be viewed as a utopia to another – and dystopian conditions can sometimes become so commonplace that they are no longer viewed as out of the ordinary. The site for this design research investigation is Mirny, Yakutia, Siberia, located 450 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle – a city of almost one million people with no access by road, set in permafrost year-round. The city developed around the open pit Mirny diamond mine that once brought wealth to the community; but while the diamonds are now mostly gone, the mine remains – one of the largest, toxic open holes in the world. With the depletion of diamonds, the city became largely forgotten, but the population remained. Yakutia is defined by the enormous pit and its decades-old, never-changing, Soviet-era architecture – lost in time. The utopian ideal from which the city was born is now shrouded in dystopian conditions. But the people, those born in the city who have lived there all their lives, have known nothing else; they remain unaware of the utopian/dystopian contradiction. This thesis looks at how transformations within our evolving built environments can result in contradiction. It challenges speculative architecture to enhance our ability to recognise such contradictions, distinguishing between utopian and dystopian urban conditions when they simultaneously define a city.</p>

Modeling Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2019 (SARS-CoV-19) Incidence across Conterminous US Counties: A Spatial Perspective

This study examines the spatial distribution of COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates across the counties in the conterminous US in the first 604 days of the pandemic. The dataset was acquired from Emory University, Atlanta, United States, which includes socio-economic variables and health outcomes variables (N = 3106). OLS estimates accounted for 31% of the regression plain (adjusted R2 = 0.31) with AIC value of 9263, and Breusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity indicated 472.4, and multicollinearity condition number of 74.25. This result necessitated spatial autoregressive models, which were performed on GeoDa 1.18 software. ArcGIS 10.7 was used to map the residuals and selected significant variables. Generally, the Spatial Lag Model (SLM) and Spatial Error Model (SEM) models accounted for substantial percentages of the regression plain. While the efficiency of the models is the order of SLM (AIC: 8264.4: BreucshPagan test: 584.4; Adj. R2 = 0.56) > SEM (AIC: 8282.0; Breucsh-Pagan test: 697.2; Adj. R2 = 0.56). In this case, the least predictive model is SEM. The significant contribution of male, black race, poverty and urban and rural dummies to the regression plain indicated that COVID-19 transmission is more of a function of socio-economic, and rural/urban conditions rather than health outcomes. Although, diabetes and obesity showed a positive relationship with COVID-19 incidence. However, the relationship was relatively low based on the dataset. This study further concludes that the policymakers and health practitioners should consider spatial peculiarities, rural-urban migration and access to resources in reducing the transmission of COVID-19 disease.

STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VEHICLE MAINTENANCE AND FUEL CONSUMPTION

A contemporary road vehicle (RV) is a rather complex system, consisting of a large number of subsystems, assemblies, units, and elements (parts). While operating, an RV interacts with the environment, and its elements interact with each other. Consequently, the properties (parameters) of these elements change in the process - hardness, roughness, size, relative position, gapping, etc. A partial solution to the presented problems can be the search for a technique for assessing the RV technical condition by a generalised criterion, which is quite sensitive to changes in the technical state. One of these criteria may be fuel consumption in litres per 100 kilometres. This paper investigates the possibilities of using the fuel consumption indicator as a criterion for assessing the technical condition of the vehicle and the vehicle maintenance and repair technologies have been generalised to obtain a given technical solution. Thus, the possibility of using the fuel consumption indicator as a criterion for assessing the technical condition of the vehicles was explored using the Volkswagen Touran 1.9 TDI operating in urban conditions using a driving cycle. A clear correlation between the fuel consumption and the service lifetime of the vehicle has been established; therefore, it depends on the frequency and quality of the maintenance and repair (MR). The vehicle MR technology has been generalised to obtain a specified technical solution. The process of creating an RV MR Technology model is implemented based on an iterative approach (repetition) with the possibility to specify their features.