City Vertical Gardening

The countermeasures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic opened discussions regarding their status as temporal or ephemeral as they designated the positive environmental effects of the COVID-19 anthropause. The necessity to think about city transformation in times of environmental and health crises has revealed a number of digital tools and greening practices that might shape new policy and planning models to affront global challenges. Among these tools, a number of ‘urban acupuncture' activities have revealed the role of greening and gardening in urban spaces and how they assist in tackling challenges of environmental sustainability and city resilience. The authors investigate the contribution of vertical gardening (VG) as urban health enhancer and its prospects within smart city. They select and assess two case studies that integrate synergies between VG and machine learning (ML) approaches in an effort to showcase the tools' combined effect in realizing environmental control. These experiments imply hints for potential future research and implementation to broaden environments.

Climate Resilience and Regeneration: How Precincts Can Adapt to and Mitigate Climate Change

Healthy urban ecosystems are increasingly recognised as important for resilient cities and need to be considered as part of GPR. Urban nature-based solutions (NBS) comprising green (vegetation) and blue (water) infrastructure need to be considered at multiple scales from the bioregions, through to catchments, neighbourhoods/precincts, blocks, streets, and buildings, including linkages through and in GPR areas. This chapter describes how climate change—particularly extreme urban heat—is expected to affect Australian cities, and how green and blue infrastructure can help GPR to be incorporated into urban adaptation and mitigation solutions. Topics covered include water-sensitive urban design, nature-based solutions, and urban cooling. The chapter outlines how nature-based solutions can be incorporated into higher-density regenerative urban redevelopment through new technologies and supported by planning models, many of which can be best designed and managed at precinct scale. The ‘additionality’ of green and blue nature-based solutions can offer residents of GPR areas increased liveability and enhanced resilience in both normal and extreme weather.

Assessing the patient's needs and planning effective care

Nurses have an essential role to play in the assessment and planning of patient care. This is emphasised in the Nursing and Midwifery Council's 2018 Future Nurse proficiency standards. In this article, the author discusses the importance of person-centred care in assessing needs and highlights the need for all nursing interventions to be evidence based. The topics covered include assessing people's needs, care planning, stages of care planning, benefits of care planning, models of care, care pathways, and care clustering in mental health care. The article also highlights the significance of record-keeping.

What determines a boundary for navigating a complex street network: evidence from London taxi drivers

Spatial boundaries play an important role in defining spaces, structuring memory and supporting planning during navigation. Recent models of hierarchical route planning use boundaries to plan efficiently first across regions and then within regions. However, it remains unclear which structures (e.g. parks, rivers, major streets, etc.) will form salient boundaries in real-world cities. This study tested licensed London taxi drivers, who are unique in their ability to navigate London flexibly without physical navigation aids. They were asked to indicate streets they considered as boundaries for London districts or dividing areas. It was found that agreement on boundary streets varied considerably, from some boundaries providing almost no consensus to some boundaries consistently noted as boundaries. Examining the properties of the streets revealed that a key factor in the consistent boundaries was the near rectilinear nature of the designated region (e.g. Mayfair and Soho) and the distinctiveness of parks (e.g. Regent's Park). Surprisingly, the River Thames was not consistently considered as a boundary. These findings provide insight into types of environmental features that lead to the perception of explicit boundaries in large-scale urban space. Because route planning models assume that boundaries are used to segregate the space for efficient planning, these results help make predictions of the likely planning demands of different routes in such complex large-scale street networks. Such predictions could be used to highlight information used for navigation guidance applications to enable more efficient hierarchical planning and learning of large-scale environments.

Reconsidering green belts, green wedges and greenways

Facing accelerated urbanization and landscape alteration, cities expand on the territory showing better or worse relationships between built environment and green spaces. Based on recent literature review, this article discusses the green wedges, green belts and greenway planning models in order to evaluate their capability in answering contemporary ecological and social issues. The article presents a conceptual overview of the selected planning models through a recent literature review, looking at the fundamental concepts of green infrastructure; then, it enlightens the connections between the spatial forms and the functions derived of these forms. These three models are connected infrastructures, varying between the ring, the star or linear forms. What differs the most is the capacity to encompass existing patches like forests or other valuable areas and the proximity and distribution of green spaces throughout the city. Whilst green belts, for their fringe condition, distance itself from the majority of inner-city dwellers, both green wedges and greenways can cross the urban fabric, and reach a greater number of neighborhoods, although the simple existence of these features does not guarantee their social functions. These findings have significant implications for the design of city expansions and can help to configure better neighborhoods in growing cities.

Technical staff structure, planning methods, methodological practices and load management in soccer (Estructura de los cuerpos técnicos, métodos de planificación, prácticas metodológicas y gestión de la carga en fútbol)

Soccer performance depends on several interrelated factors regarding technical, tactical, physical and psychological areas. Over the last decades there was an increase in match congestion. The increased match frequency and the associated injury risk have highlighted the importance of physical condition, increasing the need to implement new training methodologies with a special focus on load and fatigue management, as well as non-specific complementary training. The main objective of this study was to provide information on the structure and characteristics of the technical staffs, the methodological training practices, as well as the workload and fatigue control methods used in soccer, examining possible differences based on gender, category and competitive level. 190 soccer teams from 20 different countries participated in the study, by answering a survey. The results reveal that there are differences in the structure of the technical staff, the planning models, the methodology and the workload control depending on the category and the competitive level. Gender only appears as a discriminating variable, in relation to the most used complementary training contents. The weekly microcycle is the preferred planning model (80.89%), regardless the competitive level. However, in lower categories, medium and long term periodization are also used (23.80%). The weekly volume of complementary training increases as category (p=0.000) and competitive level (p=0.000) does. Strength training is the most used non-specific content (84.89%). However, its importance is reduced in lower categories (38.5%). Load and fatigue control are only extended among teams of superior category (p=0.000) and competitive level (p=0.000). Resumen. El rendimiento en fútbol depende de varios factores interrelacionados entre los que encontramos las áreas técnica, táctica, física y psicológica. Durante las últimas décadas ha existido un aumento en la congestión de partidos. La mayor frecuencia de partidos y el riesgo de lesión asociado han puesto de manifiesto la importancia de la condición física, aumentando la necesidad de implementar nuevas metodologías de entrenamiento con especial énfasis en el manejo de la carga y la fatiga, así como entrenamientos complementarios. El objetivo principal de este estudio fue brindar información sobre la estructura y características de los cuerpos técnicos y las prácticas metodológicas de entrenamiento, así como los métodos de control de la carga de trabajo y la fatiga utilizados en el fútbol, ​​examinando posibles diferencias por género, categoría y nivel competitivo. 190 equipos de fútbol de 20 países diferentes participaron en el estudio, respondiendo a una encuesta. Los resultados revelan que existen diferencias en la estructura de los cuerpos técnicos, los modelos de planificación, la metodología y el control de la carga de entrenamientos y partidos según la categoría y el nivel competitivo. El género solo aparece como variable discriminante en relación con los contenidos complementarios de entrenamiento más utilizados. El microciclo semanal es el modelo de planificación preferido (80.89%), independientemente del nivel competitivo. Sin embargo, en categorías inferiores también se utiliza la periodización a medio y largo plazo (23.80%). El volumen semanal de entrenamiento complementario aumenta a medida que lo hace la categoría (p<.001) y el nivel competitivo (p<.001). El entrenamiento de fuerza es el contenido de entrenamiento complementario más utilizado (84.89%). Sin embargo, su importancia se reduce en categorías inferiores (38.5%). El control de la carga y la fatiga solo se extiende entre equipos de categoría y nivel competitivo superior (p<.001).