Planning Adaptation: Accommodating Complexity in the Built Environment

Obsolescence and vacancy are part of the traditional building life cycle, as tenants leave properties and move to new ones. Flux, a period of uncertainty before the establishment of new direction, can be considered part of building DNA. What is new, due to structural disruptions in the way we work, is the rate and regularity of flux, reflected in obsolescence, vacancy, and impermanent use. Covid-19 has instantly accelerated this disruption. Retail failure has increased with even more consumers moving online. While employees have been working from home, rendering the traditional office building in the central business district, at least temporarily, obsolete. This article reflects on the situation by reporting findings from an 18-month research project into the practice of planning adaptation in the English built environment. Original findings based on interviews with a national sample of local authority planners, combined with an institutional analysis of planning practice since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, suggest that the discipline of planning in England is struggling with the reality of flux. There is a demand for planning to act faster, due to the speed of change in the built environment, and liberal political concerns with planning regulation. This is reflected in relaxations to permitted development rules and building use categories. However, participants also indicate that there is a concurrent need for the planning system to operate in a more measured way, to plan the nuanced complexity of a built environment no longer striated by singular use categories at the local level. This notion of flux suggests a process of perpetual change, turbulence, and volatility. However, our findings suggest that within this process, there is a temporal dialectic between an accelerating rate of change in the built environment and a concomitant need to plan in a careful way to accommodate adaptation. We situate these findings in a novel reading of the complex adaptive systems literature, arguing that planning practice needs to embrace uncertainty, rather than eradicate it, in order to enable built environment adaptation. These findings are significant because they offer a framework for understanding how successful building adaptation can be enabled in England, moving beyond the negativity associated with the adaptation of buildings in recent years. This is achieved by recognizing the complex interactions involved in the adaptation process between respective stakeholders and offering an insight into how respective scales of planning governance can coexist successfully.

Predicting emerging chemical content in consumer products using machine learning

Chemical ingredients in consumer products are continually changing. To understand our exposure to chemicals and their consequent risk, we need to know their concentrations in products, or chemical weight fractions. Unfortunately, manufacturers rarely report comprehensive weight fraction data on product labels. The goal of this study was to evaluate the utility of machine learning strategies for predicting weight fractions when chemical constituent data are limited. A “data-poor” framework was developed and tested using a small dataset on consumer products containing engineered nanomaterials to represent emerging substances. A second, more traditional framework was applied to a “data-rich” product dataset comprised of bulk-scale organic chemicals for comparison purposes. Feature variables included chemical properties, functional use categories (e.g., antimicrobial), product categories (e.g., makeup), product matrix categories, and whether weight fractions were manufacturer-reported or experimentally obtained. Classification into three weight fraction bins was done using a random forest or nonlinear support vector classifier. An ablation study revealed that functional use data improved predictive performance when included alongside chemical property data, suggesting the utility of functional use categories in evaluating the safety and sustainability of emerging chemicals. Models could roughly stratify material-product observations into order of magnitude weight fractions with moderate success; the best of these achieved an average balanced accuracy of 73% on the nanomaterials product data. Framework comparisons also revealed a positive trend in sample size versus average balanced accuracy, suggesting great promise for machine learning approaches with continued investment in chemical data collection.

Tree Diversity and Soil Characteristics in a Tea–Forest Interface in Southwest Sri Lanka

Fragmented and degraded ecosystems should be restored to ensure the biological connectivity among fragmented forest landscapes. The tropical rainforests of Southwestern Sri Lanka are highly degraded and fragmented due to plantation agriculture and human settlements. However, the high spatial variation in environmental factors and ecosystem functions challenge the success rate of restoration interventions. The aim of this study was to assess the vegetation composition and stand structure in relation to the spatial variation in key soil physicochemical parameters in the Endane Biodiversity Corridor that links peripheral forest reserve to the Sinharaja Rainforest Complex (SRC). The site that extends over 24 ha was classified into five land-use categories (productive tea lands, marginal tea lands, scrub—abandoned three years ago, and two woodlands—abandoned 15 years ago) in which the vegetation composition, stand structure, and physicochemical parameters of soil were assessed and mapped. Results revealed that the Shannon diversity index in the scrub and the woodlands were higher than in the tea lands. The diversity among the secondary forest patches was similar. However, with a mean record of 14 species, the species richness was high in sites close to the SRC. In comparison to the SRC (358 Mg ha−1), there was a substantial potential to sequester more carbon in the restoration sites (12–108 Mg ha−1). While explaining 31% of abundance and species distribution, the ordination results revealed a close relationship of the soil parameters to vegetation composition and species abundance. The calculated coefficient variation values for soil parameters (TN, EC, Av.P, Ex.K, OC, and BD) were beyond 12%, indicating high or moderate soil spatial variability among the land use categories. Coefficient of variation for soil pH was estimated to be 9%, revealing low soil spatial variability among the land use categories. The maps of these soil parameters corresponded with the type of land use and fertilizer application to tea fields. The highest and the lowest total N contents were observed in the scrub and woodlands, respectively, which appears to be mediated by the relative composition of N-fixing trees between the two groups. Our results facilitate effective matching of sites to species for restoration of the Endane Biodiversity Corridor that may be replicated in similar restoration contexts in tropical Asia.

Spatial distribution of land use concentration and land-use efficiency of the Kakodonga river basin, Assam

The Kakodonga river basin covers an area of about 1,113 km2. The average maximum temperature is 28.50C and the minimum temperature is 18.40C. The average rainfall of the basin is 1766 mm. The present paper is an attempt to analyze spatially land-use concentration and land-use efficiency of the Kakodonga river basin. For the preparation of thematic maps, Survey of India topographic sheets and IRS P6 LISS-III imagery (2011) data are used. The land-use categories data has been collected for three years (2012-2014) at the revenue circle level from the Economic and Statistical Department of Assam. To work out land-use concentration Bhatia’s (1965) method was adopted. The major land-use categories are forest cover, area put under non-agricultural use, barren lands, permanent pastures, and other grazing lands, miscellaneous trees and groves, culturable wasteland, current fallow land, other fallow lands, and the net area sown. The land-use efficiency has been worked out taking five positive variables are net sown area, total irrigated area, area irrigated more than once, the intensity of irrigation, and intensity of crops.

Colchicine Use and Risks of Stroke Recurrence in Acute Non-Cardiogenic Ischemic Stroke Patients: A Population-Based Cohort Study

Background: The objective is to study whether the cardiovascular protective effects of colchicines could be applied to non-cardiogenic ischemic stroke (IS) patients. Patients and Methods: Non-cardiogenic IS patients were identified from the National Health Insurance Research Database. Eligible patients were divided into chronic and non-chronic use categories based on their long-term status of colchicine use. The non-chronic use category was subdivided into (1) non-user and (2) new user groups while the chronic use category was divided into (3) former user and (4) long-term user groups according to the patient’s recent status of colchicine use. Inverse probability of treatment weights for propensity scores was used to balance the baseline characteristics. The primary outcome was recurrent IS, which was compared within the non-chronic use and chronic use categories. Results: In the non-chronic use category, the number of patients was 355,498 and 912 in the non-user and new user groups, respectively. In the chronic use category, the number of patients was 4737 and 4354 in the former user and long-term user groups, respectively. In the non-chronic use category, patients in the new user group had a marginally lower risk of recurrent IS at 6-months (subdistribution hazard ratio [SHR], 0.95; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.94–0.97) and 2-years (SHR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.91–0.93) follow up. In the chronic use category, patients in the long-term user group also had a marginally lower risk of recurrent IS at 6-months (SHR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.86–0.88) and 2-years (SHR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.86–0.88) follow up. The effect of colchicine on the reduced risk of recurrent IS was more favorable in patients who also used statins. Conclusions: Recent colchicine use in acute non-cardiogenic IS patients is associated with marginal fewer incidences of recurrent IS. Patients with concurrent statin use may have more profound protective effects.

Variations in Soil Organic Carbon Stocks under Different Land-Use Categories in Subtropical Ecosystems of Kashmir

Quantification of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in different land uses holds vital significance because of its implications regarding carbon sequestration as the largest terrestrial carbon pool. The current study was conducted to quantify and compare SOC stocks in forest land, agricultural land, and barren land-use categories in the subtropical ecosystems of the Himalayan foothills in Kashmir. Results showed the highest SOC value in the forest soil (75 ± 11.1 Mg C ha−1) followed by agricultural soil (58 ± 7.0 Mg C ha−1) and barren land (44 ± 6.5 Mg C ha−1). SOC stocks in different land uses showed broad variations with values as high as 106 ± 11.3 Mg C ha−1 (forest soils) and as low as 14.1 ± 7.1 Mg C ha−1 (barren land). The forest SOC values responded significantly to species composition with the highest values in Pinus roxburghii Sarg. pure stands as compared with broad leaved forests. Multivariate ordination analyses revealed that the variations in SOC stocks were significantly correlated with vegetation type, altitude, and soil bulk density. The study has identified anthropogenic disturbances as a major factor deteriorating local SOC stocks and recommends immediate soil restoration efforts to enhance the ecological significance of soils as vital regional carbon sinks. Study Implications The current study was designed to investigate the soil organic carbon (SOC) levels in different land uses of the Kashmir Himalayas, Pakistan. Results revealed forest soils as the major carbon sinks of the region, attributed to diverse species composition having a significant quantity of organic residues, followed by agricultural soils. Barren land-use class exhibited the lowest SOC values due to minimum vegetation cover, erosion, and degradation. Significant correlations of SOC stocks with geographical and edaphic variables were identified by multivariate ordination analysis in the investigated land-use classes. Results validate the significance of forests in enhancing SOC stocks, demanding forest restoration in the area by controlling the forest losses as well as afforestation. This article provides vital information required for better understanding of SOC stocks in different land-use classes in the subtropical ecosystems of the Kashmir region.

Land Use and Endemic Avian Biodiversity on Nusa Penida

Understanding anthropogenic alterations to land use and their effects can inform conservation efforts in tropical biodiversity hotspots. In 2004 the Indonesian Palau Penida Archipelago, off the coast of Bali, was established as an unofficial bird reserve; however, studies of the island's land use and avian biodiversity were never conducted and have not been monitored. I surveyed birds across 32 transects in land use categories designated: agriculture, deforested, developed, and forest. Forest transects presented the greatest endemic species richness, but overall, Shannon diversity different significantly among land use categories, particularly forested and deforested. ANOVA indicated exotic bird density was significantly higher than endemic bird density across all transects. Birds serve as a common biodiversity barometer and this study can serve to inform land use management decisions on the Archipelago and throughout reserves and protected areas throughout the tropics.