Urban Esthetic Benefits of Undergrounding Utility Lines in Consideration of the Three-Dimensional Landscape

Since the relative weight of form to function has been increasing in urban planning, from the esthetic viewpoint, many cities in the world have been actively pursuing the undergrounding of overhead utility lines. Esthetic factors are urban externalities in the sense that they are not directly traded in markets. Therefore, we need to control them optimally based on their benefits. In this study, we appraise the benefits of undergrounding utility lines in Japan and clarify the dependency of the residents’ willingness to pay (WTP) on the road width and building height. Our results show that the WTP for undergrounding utility lines is lower as the road becomes wider and the buildings along the road become higher. However, when the road is wide, the WTP does not change much regardless of the height of the buildings. In addition, the average value of the benefit–cost ratios of previous undergrounding projects is from approximately 2.27 to 2.65. However, 3–17% of these projects have benefit–cost ratios of less than 1.

Ophiophagy by banded krait (Bungarus fasciatus) exposed by a road kill

Bungarus fasciatus (Schneider, 1801) is a nocturnal, large bodied krait species, widely distributed throughout South and Southeast Asia. It is found at a variety of habitats with relatively large home ranges. The ophiophagous diet of this venomous snake comprises a broad spectrum of prey items, even including its congener B. caeruleus. It also preys on skinks, fish, frogs, and eggs of snakes. On 16 June 2021, at 2105 h, a fresh road-kill of an adult male B. fasciatus (total length 1.46 m) was observed on a newly constructed tarmac road (width of road ~6 m) at New Khawlek (23°19'16.00"N, 92°38'36.95"E; alt. 715 m a.s.l.), Lunglei District, Mizoram, India. It seems the krait remained vulnerably exposed on the motorway while consuming a redtail pit-viper, Trimeresurus erythrurus (Cantor, 1839) (total length 48.8 cm), and was fatally run over while busy swallowing more than half of the length of its prey, most probably a few minutes prior to our arrival at the site.

Semi-Automatic Extraction of Rural Roads under the Constraint of Combined Geometric and Texture Features

The extraction of road information from high-resolution remotely-sensed images has important application value in many fields. Rural roads have the characteristics of relatively narrow widths and diversified pavement materials; these characteristics can easily lead to problems involving the similarity of the road texture with the texture of surrounding objects and make it difficult to improve the automation of traditional high-precision road extraction methods. Based on this background, a semi-automatic rural road extraction method constrained by a combination of geometric and texture features is proposed in this paper. First, an adaptive road width extraction model is proposed to improve the accuracy of the initial road centre point. Then, aiming at the continuous change of curvature of rural roads, a tracking direction prediction model is proposed. Finally, a matching model under geometric texture constraints is proposed, which solves the problem of similarity between road and neighbourhood texture to a certain extent. The experimental results show that by selecting different types of experimental scenes or remotely sensed image data, compared with other methods, the proposed method can not only guarantee the road extraction accuracy but also improve the degree of automation to a certain extent.

DETERMINANTS OF PUBLIC ASSET VALUE FOR LAND PROPERTY: A STUDY IN THE CITY OF TANGERANG, INDONESIA

Public lands take a huge portion of the government balance sheet in many countries, necessitating the need to reevaluate public assets for accurate financial reports, informed decisions, and optimized performance in strategic asset management. This study aimed to determine how the land area, location, shape, road width, and distance to the CBD affect the value of public land. A quantitative method with multiple regression was used to analyze primary data collected from the Public Asset Revaluation Report in the City of Tangerang from 2017 to 2018. The subject was made of 62 plots of public land chosen through population sampling. The results showed that land area and distance to the CBD significantly and negatively affected the public property value, while the road width had a positive effect. However, the location and shape of the public land did not affect its value.

Driving Assistance System for Security and Safety

The increase in the number of vehicles increases the number of accidents. India ranks first in the world by 11% where a greater number of accidents occur followed by China and the USA. Most road accidents occur due to human errors. The Advanced Driver Assistant System is developed to Automate, Adapt and increase the safety of the vehicle and driver and also to ensure better driving. The safety features in this system are designed and developed to avoid collision by using technologies that give an indication or alert to the driver regarding problems, implementing safe grounds, and controlling the vehicle if necessary. In recent years Ultrasonic sensor-based systems and the rear-view camera-based system is been used by different car manufacturers which are available only on higher-end vehicles. In the proposed system we calculate the frontal road width by capturing an image using a Vehicle Frontal Camera(VFC) and processing it for proper judgment of space available for the vehicle to pass, with that surround space detection is achieved by using LIDAR and detection of unattended pets/child inside the vehicle by using IR proximity sensors and identification of pets/objects under the vehicle using Chassis level camera when parked in a remote location or cities to avoid loss of life of animals and to avoid the damage caused to the vehicle.

A Sustainable Design Strategy Based on Building Morphology to Improve the Microclimate of University Campuses in Cold Regions of China Using an Optimization Algorithm

The microclimate affects the quality and efficiency of outdoor spaces of campuses, especially in the cold regions of China. In this paper, we propose a multiobjective optimization method to improve the thermal comfort of the outdoor environment of university campuses in severe cold regions. We used morphology data from 41 universities in the cold region of China to create a layout prototype of a campus cluster. Multiobjective optimization was used, and the effects of sunlight, solar radiation, and wind on the outdoor thermal comfort in winter were considered. A parameterized platform was established for the multiobjective optimization of the microclimate of the simplified model of the campus. A multiobjective optimization based on an evolutionary algorithm was used to obtain 108 groups of nondominated solutions. The optimum outdoor microclimate of the campus was obtained at a building density of 0.21–0.23, a plot ratio of 1.51–1.88, and a road width of 11–14 m. We recommend that buildings are designed based on the wind direction in winter and that the space between buildings is increased.

Development of automatic road width and pothole size estimation method from dashcam video for under developing countries

Road condition monitoring usually requires extremely expensive special vehicles, equipment, or many human resources. On the other hand, with the development of ICT and data science technologies in recent years, there are several research trials in which the heavy technical tasks of road asset condition monitoring are replaced by automatic inspection systems consisting of common devices such as smartphones and dashcam videos. As the system consists of low-price devices, it also suitable for developing countries. However, there are many differences in the situation and the inspection items on road condition monitoring between advanced countries and developing countries. There are few trials to develop such a road condition monitoring system in developing countries. Our project is developing an integrated road condition monitoring system focusing on developing countries like Timor-Leste. In developing countries, many parts of the road are still unpaved, and the “road width” is an important item to be inspected. In this paper, we discuss the road width and pothole size estimation as a part of the integrated system we are developing. We survey the road width of both paved and unpaved roads. We use a common dashcam to take video along the road. The estimated values are integrated into a database with GPS information and visualized in Google Map, QGIS, or the original visualization system which we developed. To estimate the real width of the road and pothole size, we need to transform the captured forward view image of dashcam video into bird’s-eye-view. For the transformation, we need to estimate the vanishing point in a captured image. However, unlike the advanced countries, it is difficult to detect the vanishing point in developing countries because there are usually no straight lines in the images in the unpaved road of the province. In this study, we propose to use the optical flow method to detect the vanishing point in the rural road. To identify the area of road and the existence of potholes in images, we apply state-of-the-art semantic segmentation using deep learning.