An Innovative Air Purification Method and Neural Network Algorithm Applied to Urban Streets

In the present work, multiphysics modeling was used to investigate the feasibility of a photocatalysis-based outdoor air purifying solution that could be used in high polluted streets, especially street canyons. The article focuses on the use of a semi-active photocatalysis in the surfaces of the street as a solution to remove anthropogenic pollutants from the air. The solution is based on lamellae arranged horizontally on the wall of the street, coated with a photocatalyst (TiO2), lightened with UV light, with a dimension of 8 cm × 48 cm × 1 m. Fans were used in the system to create airflow. A high purification percentage was obtained. An artificial neural network (ANN) was used to predict the optimal purification method based on previous simulations, to design purification strategies considering the energy cost. The ANN was used to forecast the amount of purified with a feed-forward neural network and a backpropagation algorithm to train the model.

Application of GIS to assess the accessibility of urban streets in Baghdad city

Accessibility has an important impact on shaping human activity patterns on all of the spatial scales. This study presented an evaluation of accessibility levels with private to commercial centers for three selected routes in Baghdad city. The study involved more than 45 days transport survey for private vehicles in Baghdad city using Global Positioning System (GPS) probe for recording indicators of traffic performance. Gravity model was used to measure accessibility index as an implementation of GIS-based model by using link geography and the spatial boundary of analysis in order to build route networks at three routes in Baghdad City, Bayaa intersection - Bab Al-Muatham intersection (Route 1), Bayaa intersection - Bab Al-Muatham intersection (Route 2) and 14 Ramadan Street - Bab Al-Muatham intersection (Route 3). It was found that Route 1 has the high accessibility index with 0.67 in compare with Route 2 and 3 (0.58 and 0.59), respectively. The reason that Route 1 had the highest accessibility index due to the high access point and low traffic volume as compared with the other two routes.

Exploring the Characteristics of Urban Streets that Influence People’s Restorative Experience

Research about restorative quality of landscape can help to mitigate possible negative effects of urban densification on people. Previous studies discussed the restorative experience on natural environments or urban open space. However, further research is needed on the application of restorative experience in specific scenarios, for example streetscapes. There are a few studies that have explored the relationship between restorative quality and the landscape characteristics on streets context. However, there is little research on the practice of these theories. This article delves into the study of its predecessors and summarizes the primary factors that influence the restorative ability of streets. Then, using these data in a case study, consider if streets that provide a positive experience for people have these restorative street qualities in common. In addition, this article investigates the potential street characteristics that influence street restorative value and identifies areas for development in these situations. The findings could lead to a more commonly applied method for creating a psychologically sustainable streetscape.

A REVIEW OF SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT TOOLS ON PRIORITIZING PHYSICAL SAFETY AND COMFORT TO EFFECTIVELY CONTROL ACCIDENTS IN STREETS OF COLOMBO

The definition of sustainability has evolved since it was defined by the Brundtland commission in 1987, and become comprehensive over time with defined social, environmental and economy based ‘Sustainable Development Goals’. Today the necessity and feasibility of inclusion of safety and comfort as key components of sustainable development of urban streets has become vital considering the number of accidents and crimes taking place in urban contexts. High number of road accidents have been recorded in Colombo as noted from the report issued by the Sri Lanka Department of Census and Statistics. This is primarily due to lack of regulations or any ratification on enforcing physical safety and comfort aspects. Therefore considering the principles of sustainability, and sustainability rating being established an universal quality assessment tool, it is important to incorporate physical safety and comfort as an element of sustainability in designing urban streets. The analysis is done by defining sustainability through literature review, identifying the research gap on physical safety and comfort using VOSviewer software, and assessing the significance of safety and comfort in designing urban streets using available online data.

Lane Detection Aided Online Dead Reckoning for GNSS Denied Environments

With the emerging interest of autonomous vehicles (AV), the performance and reliability of the land vehicle navigation are also becoming important. Generally, the navigation system for passenger car has been heavily relied on the existing Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) in recent decades. However, there are many cases in real world driving where the satellite signals are challenged; for example, urban streets with buildings, tunnels, or even underpasses. In this paper, we propose a novel method for simultaneous vehicle dead reckoning, based on the lane detection model in GNSS-denied situations. The proposed method fuses the Inertial Navigation System (INS) with learning-based lane detection model to estimate the global position of vehicle, and effectively bounds the error drift compared to standalone INS. The integration of INS and lane model is accomplished by UKF to minimize linearization errors and computing time. The proposed method is evaluated through the real-vehicle experiments on highway driving, and the comparative discussions for other dead-reckoning algorithms with the same system configuration are presented.

Influence of the Lockdown on PM2.5 Concentrations around an Urban School in the South of Belgium

In 2020, the world was affected by an unprecedented health crisis. Europe had to close its internal and external borders, and the majority of countries had to impose lockdowns on their people. Shops, restaurants, building sites, and industries had to close, and working from home became the rule. This paper reflects a study conducted from 17 March to 25 June 2020, in which homemade low-cost devices measured PM2.5 concentrations at three different locations around a Belgian school and background concentrations. The period monitored covered seven reopening stages from lockdown to the reopening of borders. The overall analysis did not show any correlation between traffic and PM2.5 concentrations in the streets in any of the phases. However, the analysis of each reopening showed that it was possible to observe significant differences in the background concentrations measured in a rural town and on urban streets.