Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings

Modern cities are facing the challenge of combining competitiveness on a global city scale and sustainable urban development to become smart cities [...]

PERFORMANCE OF CZECH FOOTBALL CLUBS: MALMQUIST INDEX APPROACH

Sport has become an important part of our lives in the modern times and sporting sites contribute significantly to the image and texture of modern cities. Regarding the popularity of sport, and football in particular, it has become an important modern place where specific types of economic and social interaction take place. The aim of this article is to propose a method for evaluating the performance of football clubs based on DEA and Malmquist index. Professional Czech football clubs playing in the Czech football competition Fortuna:Liga were selected for empirical analysis. To analyze the relative efficiency of football clubs, BCC and CCR models were employed. The study was conducted on a sample of 20 clubs through 2 inputs and 1 output collected during the 2015/16 – 2019/20 seasons. For some clubs the values of the Malmquist index were calculated. With help of MI it was possible to quantify the total productivity change factor and to decompose it to technological change and technical efficiency change. The results show that Czech football clubs achieved a relatively high level of efficiency in the period monitored and that traditional clubs achieved the highest efficiency score. These results could help club managers improve the performance of their teams.

Towards a Novel Air–Ground Intelligent Platform for Vehicular Networks: Technologies, Scenarios, and Challenges

Modern cities require a tighter integration with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for bringing new services to the citizens. The Smart City is the revolutionary paradigm aiming at integrating the ICT with the citizen life; among several urban services, transports are one of the most important in modern cities, introducing several challenges to the Smart City paradigm. In order to satisfy the stringent requirements of new vehicular applications and services, Edge Computing (EC) is one of the most promising technologies when integrated into the Vehicular Networks (VNs). EC-enabled VNs can facilitate new latency-critical and data-intensive applications and services. However, ground-based EC platforms (i.e., Road Side Units—RSUs, 5G Base Stations—5G BS) can only serve a reduced number of Vehicular Users (VUs), due to short coverage ranges and resource shortage. In the recent past, several new aerial platforms with integrated EC facilities have been deployed for achieving global connectivity. Such air-based EC platforms can complement the ground-based EC facilities for creating a futuristic VN able to deploy several new applications and services. The goal of this work is to explore the possibility of creating a novel joint air-ground EC platform within a VN architecture for helping VUs with new intelligent applications and services. By exploiting most modern technologies, with particular attention towards network softwarization, vehicular edge computing, and machine learning, we propose here three possible layered air-ground EC-enabled VN scenarios. For each of the discussed scenarios, a list of the possible challenges is considered, as well possible solutions allowing to overcome all or some of the considered challenges. A proper comparison is also done, through the use of tables, where all the proposed scenarios, and the proposed solutions, are discussed.

The Sensorial Latency of Urban Spaces

<p>Architecture provides the platform for the inherent connections between people and their city to flourish. The urban realm naturally invites diverse people to inhabit and interact together, giving city life its vibrancy. Urban spaces encourage spontaneous interactions between people and with architecture, to produce creative acts of play and liberating moments of leisure. It has been suggested that these events encapsulate the everyday performance of the city and are the antithesis to everyday life. It is argued this performance is often ignored in modern urban design. It has been noted that Wellington’s waterfront offers areas where momentary and impotent engagement can be developed into meaningful experiences. Simultaneously, the importance and potency of sound within urban spaces may be undervalued. It is often argued that modern cities assault our senses with sounds leading to discomfort and distracted inhabitation, contributing to a lack of engagement. Urban sounds are commonly dampened in public spaces to combat this assault, but with more thoughtful design these sounds can be reinterpreted to augment the innate everyday performances. This thesis proposes that controlling how people experience urban sounds through architecture can create a deep sensory performance that increases engagement, awareness and interaction. This research explores ways to harness the latent sounds of the city to form meaningful connections between people and their city while providing moments of play and leisure. Once isolated and harnessed, the urban sounds’ unique and intrinsic power can aid the development of urban spaces, thus producing greater significance within the urban fabric. There will be focus on the connection between the senses, performance and the urban context. The opportunity to enable the acceptance of the environment and reflection on their city marks an important role within the urban fabric. Concurrently, this research explores how an intuitive drawing-led process can integrate and challenge the boundaries of both interior and the exterior urban realm. Other interior architectural strategies, together with soundscape design and urban interior principles aid this interdisciplinary exploration.</p>

The Sensorial Latency of Urban Spaces

<p>Architecture provides the platform for the inherent connections between people and their city to flourish. The urban realm naturally invites diverse people to inhabit and interact together, giving city life its vibrancy. Urban spaces encourage spontaneous interactions between people and with architecture, to produce creative acts of play and liberating moments of leisure. It has been suggested that these events encapsulate the everyday performance of the city and are the antithesis to everyday life. It is argued this performance is often ignored in modern urban design. It has been noted that Wellington’s waterfront offers areas where momentary and impotent engagement can be developed into meaningful experiences. Simultaneously, the importance and potency of sound within urban spaces may be undervalued. It is often argued that modern cities assault our senses with sounds leading to discomfort and distracted inhabitation, contributing to a lack of engagement. Urban sounds are commonly dampened in public spaces to combat this assault, but with more thoughtful design these sounds can be reinterpreted to augment the innate everyday performances. This thesis proposes that controlling how people experience urban sounds through architecture can create a deep sensory performance that increases engagement, awareness and interaction. This research explores ways to harness the latent sounds of the city to form meaningful connections between people and their city while providing moments of play and leisure. Once isolated and harnessed, the urban sounds’ unique and intrinsic power can aid the development of urban spaces, thus producing greater significance within the urban fabric. There will be focus on the connection between the senses, performance and the urban context. The opportunity to enable the acceptance of the environment and reflection on their city marks an important role within the urban fabric. Concurrently, this research explores how an intuitive drawing-led process can integrate and challenge the boundaries of both interior and the exterior urban realm. Other interior architectural strategies, together with soundscape design and urban interior principles aid this interdisciplinary exploration.</p>

WAYS OF FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN URBAN LANDSCAPE

The analysis of advanced trends in the development of the current modern landscape, the problems faced by modern cities and ways to solve them — allowed us to formulate the main trends in the development of the urban landscape.

Main aspects of environmental protection from urban noise

The main sources of noise pollution in modern cities, that generate significant levels of sound pressure, which significantly, sometimes at times exceed permissible noise levels have been identified. The consequences of the negative impact of noise of the urban environment on the human body, fauna and flora are described. The sanitary-hygienic, engineering-technical, architectural-planning, construction-acoustic and economic-social aspects of scientific researches concerning protection of the environment from noise pollution are singled out. The main methods and ways to reduce urban noise are described, among which are: reducing the sound power level of existing equipment and vehicles, or replacing them with less noisy ones, and during design-taking measures to minimize noise emissions from machines; carrying out timely cleaning, adjustment, repair of machines, mechanisms and equipment, restriction or complete prohibition of noisy works and operation of the most intensive noise sources at night; rational orientation of the noise source or place of noise radiation, taking into account the direction indicator; placement of noise sources and objects of protection – at the maximum possible distance from each other; the use of building structures with improved sound insulation, the use of sound-absorbing materials for lining the enclosing structures of buildings and structures; zoning of sources and objects of protection, application of territorial gaps, noise protection buildings, acoustic screens and strips of greenery. It was found that the maximum possible impact on noise pollution of modern cities and surrounding areas can be achieved in the case of integrated application of methods, means of protection against acoustic blocking of the duration, direction and use of noise emissions in its sources and through noise level on the way to its spread, as well as through the implementation of appropriate organizational and technical measures.

Police Force in the Formation of the Modern State: Development and Transformation of the Police Force in Iran

Public security was unable to achieve any systematic order until the start of urbanization. With the formation of modern cities, the need to ensure the security of people and their living spaces were met primarily by city administrators and then by regular internal security organizations. This article discusses Iran’s security system as it existed in the pre-modern period and the internal security strategies that transformed in line with the modern understanding of the state. The concept of internal security in Iran has gone through the following four main phases: (1) military methods that had been applied by the senior administrators of the states that had ruled the region before the Qajar Dynasty, (2) the first professionalization that saw the Nazmiyya Organization established in the Qajar Dynasty through efforts to separate policing from military service, (3) the re-militarization of internal security services and focus on intelligence activities during the Pahlavi Dynasty that had been established after the Rıza Han coup, and (4) the ideological appearance of the police organization accompanied by the theo-political orientation that emerged after the 1979 Revolution. This text discusses these four phases in detail.

Analysis of available shared transport solutions in Krakow

Sharing modes of transport in Kraków: in the context of the transport policy of large cities, it is worth noting sharing as an increasingly common method of transport. The policy of sharing: cars, scooters, bicycles and motor scooter has become an important way to complement public transport. The aim of this paper is to analyse the available shared transport modes used by Krakow residents and their impact on the environment, over the last few years. The increase in popularity of available shared transport solutions is due, among other things, to their availability and relatively low cost of use. This solution is a response to the needs of modern cities and has a positive impact on the environment.

An Analysis on Water Management System in India and Its Repercussions on the Availability

India is the largest growing population where water is emerging as a problem , there is water crisis in the country , with lack of professional people to management water resource, treat waste water and water conservation which has prevailed in India since Indus valley civilization has lost its importance over the years .90% of the water is sued for agriculture , people are facing shortage of drinking water , 70% of the polluted water which is been drunk by millions of people are resulting in the death of lacs of people . Today individual states have taken up the initiative to preserve water through adopting traditional method or the use of green technology .Modern cities are facing scarcity of water , they are dependent on water tanks , the groundwater is over in many cities . On the other hand India is the largest exporter of water in particular to China , India needs to increase its export taxes to increase the revenue , it should adopt new technologies and save water , build more plants and forest across the country to recharge groundwater and make India a water secured country. Keywords: Population, India , water conservation , water management , traditional methods , green technology , taxes , revenue