Remote Sensing and Data Mining Techniques for Assessing the Urban Fabric Vulnerability to Heat Waves and UHI

Densely urbanized areas, with a low percentage of green vegetation, are highly exposed to Heat Waves (HW) which nowadays are increasing in terms of frequency and intensity also in the middle-latitude regions, due to ongoing Climate Change (CC). Their negative effects may combine with those of the UHI (Urban Heat Island), a local phenomenon where air temperatures in the compact built up cores of towns increase more than those in the surrounding rural areas, with significant impact on the quality of urban environment, on citizens health and energy consumption and transport, as it has occurred in the summer of 2003 on France and Italian central-northern areas. In this context this work aims at designing and developing a methodology based on aero-spatial remote sensing (EO) at medium-high resolution and most recent GIS techniques, for the extensive characterization of the urban fabric response to these climatic impacts related to the temperature within the general framework of supporting local and national strategies and policies of adaptation to CC. Due to its extension and variety of built-up typologies, the municipality of Rome was selected as test area for the methodology development and validation. First of all, we started by operating through photointerpretation of cartography at detailed scale (CTR 1: 5000) on a reference area consisting of a transect of about 5x20 km, extending from the downtown to the suburbs and including all the built-up classes of interest. The reference built-up vulnerability classes found inside the transect were then exploited as training areas to classify the entire territory of Rome municipality. To this end, the satellite EO HR (High Resolution) multispectral data, provided by the Landsat sensors were used within a on purpose developed "supervised" classification procedure, based on data mining and “object-classification” techniques. The classification results were then exploited for implementing a calibration method, based on a typical UHI temperature distribution, derived from MODIS satellite sensor LST (Land Surface Temperature) data of the summer 2003, to obtain an analytical expression of the vulnerability model, previously introduced on a semi-empirical basis.

Bimodal behavior in fabric drying kinetics: An interpretation of modes

Thermo-physiological comfort is an essential property attributed to fabrics. Perceived comfort can be related to the delay in the user experiencing the ambient conditions and the manner in which the fabric manages liquid water. A multitude of material characteristics, ranging from the surface chemistry of the fibers, yarn packing and knit geometry, affect perceived comfort. Standard measures of thermal and evaporative resistance characterize the fabric response at steady state and do not provide insight into the thermal/vapor balance kinetics under dynamic conditions. While investigating an existing dynamic test, International Organization for Standardization 13029:2012, for relating fabric properties to comfort, we observed that the fabric drying kinetics exhibited bimodal behavior. Here, we describe the mechanism that leads to the observed bimodal drying kinetics. While the standard measures the time taken to reach steady state, we use the power profile of the modes to derive quantitative metrics to characterize fabric properties. The derived metrics are based on the observation that the heat of wetting is nearly a constant for a given relative humidity for a material, and that the heat of sorption per unit of absorbed water is identical for a wide range of fabrics. The derived metrics distinguish different fiber types and fabric geometries. The proposed metrics are easily calculated from experimental observations without requiring any modification to the standard test.

Remote Sensing and Data Mining Techniques for Assessing the Urban Fabric Vulnerability to Heat Waves and UHI

Densely urbanized areas, with a low percentage of green vegetation, are highly exposed to Heat Waves (HW) which nowadays are increasing in terms of frequency and intensity also in the middle-latitude regions, due to ongoing Climate Change (CC). Their negative effects may combine with those of the UHI (Urban Heat Island), a local phenomenon where air temperatures in the compact built up cores of towns increase more than those in the surrounding rural areas, with significant impact on the quality of urban environment, on citizens health and energy consumption and transport, as it has occurred in the summer of 2003 on France and Italian central-northern areas. In this context this work aims at designing and developing a methodology based on aero-spatial remote sensing (EO) at medium-high resolution and most recent GIS techniques, for the extensive characterization of the urban fabric response to these climatic impacts related to the temperature within the general framework of supporting local and national strategies and policies of adaptation to CC. Due to its extension and variety of built-up typologies, the municipality of Rome was selected as test area for the methodology development and validation. First of all, we started by operating through photointerpretation of cartography at detailed scale (CTR 1: 5000) on a reference area consisting of a transect of about 5x20 km, extending from the downtown to the suburbs and including all the built-up classes of interest. The reference built-up vulnerability classes found inside the transect were then exploited as training areas to classify the entire territory of Rome municipality. To this end, the satellite EO HR (High Resolution) multispectral data, provided by the Landsat sensors were used within a on purpose developed "supervised" classification procedure, based on data mining and “object-classification” techniques. The classification results were then exploited for implementing a calibration method, based on a typical UHI temperature distribution, derived from MODIS satellite sensor LST (Land Surface Temperature) data of the summer 2003, to obtain an analytical expression of the vulnerability model, previously introduced on a semi-empirical basis.

Steady radial ice-sheet flow with fabric evolution

Reorientation of individual crystal glide planes, as isotropic surface ice is deformed during its passage to depth in an ice sheet, creates a fabric and associated anisotropy. We adopt an evolving orthotropic viscous law which was developed to reflect the induced anisotropy arising from the mean rotation of crystal axes during deformation. This expresses the deviatoric stress in terms of the strain rate, strain and three structure tensors based on the principal stretch axes, and involves one fabric response function which determines the strength of the anisotropy. The initial isotropic response enters as a multiplying factor depending on a strain-rate invariant and incorporating a temperature-dependent rate factor. The fabric response function has been constructed by correlations with complete (idealized) uniaxial compression and shearing responses for both ‘cold’ and ‘warm’ ice. The possible effects of such fabric evolution are now illustrated by determining steady radially symmetric flow solutions for an ice sheet with a prescribed temperature distribution and subject to an elevation-dependent surface accumulation/ablation distribution, zero basal melting and a prescribed basal sliding law. Comparisons are made with solutions for the conventional isotropic viscous law, for a flat bed, for a bed with a single modest slope hump and for a bed with a single modest slope hollow, for both cold and warm ice.

An Examination of the Hydroentangling Process Variables

Fabric response to hydroentangling process variables is usually presented as a plot of energy consumed / kg of fabric produced. This paper presents a simple mechanical model describing the transformation of a random fiber web into a hydroentangled fabric having a clearly defined cellular structure dependent on the forming wire. The model indicates that only a tiny fraction of the energy supplied by the entangling jets is consumed in the production of the fabric. Low speed hydroentangling data for nylon 66, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polypropylene terephthalate (PTT), and polypropylene (PP) fibers using very different forming wires indicate that force acting on the fiber, not energy, is the important variable.

Strain-rate formulation of ice fabric evolution

Reorientation of individual crystal-glide planes as isotropic surface ice is deformed during its passage to depth in an ice sheet, lattice rotation, creates a fabric and associated anisotropy. A simple macroscopic description is that these material glide planes are rotated towards planes normal to an axis of compression, and away from planes normal to an axis of extension, inducing an instantaneous orthotropic viscous response with reflexional symmetries in the planes orthogonal to the current principal stretch axes. An orthotropic viscous law is presented for the strain rate expressed in terms of the deviatoric stress, the deformation, and three structure tensors based on the principal stretch axes. This anisotropic relation is expressed in terms of a single fabric response function in addition to the isotropic ice viscosity. The predicted responses in uniaxial compression and simple shear are determined. While the uniaxial response yields an explicit relation between the axial strain rate and stress, it is found that the shear response is governed by three, complicated, coupled relations between the shear strain rate and three deviatoricstress components. The new result derived here is the solution of this system: an explicit relation between the shear strain rate and shear stress. Correlation of these relations with idealized uniaxial and shear responses is then used to determine the required fabric function in the model law.