Sustainable urban development in practice:the SAVE concept

The need for sustainable development of the urban environment presents the research community with a number of challenges and opportunities. A considerable volume of research has been undertaken into the constituent parts of this complex problem and a number of tool kits and methodologies have been developed to enable and encourage the application of specific aspects of research in practice. However, there is limited evidence of the holistic integration of the body of knowledge arising from the research within real-life decision-making practices. In this paper we present an overview of the existing body of knowledge relating to sustainable development of the urban environment and propose a generic framework for its integration within current practices. This framework recognises the need to: understand social, economic, and environmental issues; understand the decision-making processes; provide a means of measurement, assessment, or valuation of the issues; provide analytical methods for the comparative assessment of complex data to enable an evaluation of strategies and design options and to communicate effectively throughout the process with a wide range of stakeholders. The components of a novel sustainability assessment, visualisation and enhancement (SAVE) framework, developed by the authors to ‘operationalise’ the body of knowledge are presented and justified. These include: decision-mapping methods to identify points of intervention; indicator identification and measurement approaches; appropriate mathematical and analytical tools and an interactive simulation and visualisation platform which integrates and communicates complex multivariate information to diverse stakeholder groups. We report on the application of the SAVE framework to a major urban development project and reflect on its current and potential impact on the development. Conclusions are also drawn about its general applicability

Taxonomy, systematics and ecology of the phylum Tardigrada

This thesis is based on published papers, however there have been issues encountered with copyright permissions, therefore a fuller version may be submitted in the future.I conducted a series of research programmes on various aspects of Tardigrada biology. The published results of which are hereby presented as part fulfilment of my submission for a PhD by publications at Plymouth University. In this thesis my research publications are grouped into four chapters: Ecology & Faunistics, Alpha Taxonomy, Freshwater Fauna – a taxonomic challenge, and Superfamilies. In the first, I highlight my early papers which dealt with the faunistic surveys as I trained in systematics and taxonomy of the phylum. Amongst the key findings reported were the protozoan symphoriant, Pyxidium tardigradum van der Land, 1966, Marley and Wright (1994); a new addition to the reported fauna of the United Kingdom, Greaves & Marley(1996); and my first work on international samples from Arctic Canada, Sutcliffe et al.(2000). In the second chapter, Alpha Taxonomy, I have included five papers. The first, Marley and Wright (1996), illustrates my work with one of the Royal Museums of Scotland’s collections, where I updated the diagnoses of their specimens and described a new addition to the Icelandic fauna. The second paper, Russell, Marley & Hockings (2001), demonstrates how I was searching for new research methods to apply to tardigrades. It was because of similar exploration, with methods of SEM preparation, that I was invited to join the Australian-Anglo team working on sediment core samples from Antarctic freshwater lakes, Gibson et al. 2009. The remaining two papers in the chapter describe species new to science, Echiniscus ollantaytamboensis Nickel, Miller and Marley, 2001, and my first sole authored paper describing a species new to science, Platicrista ramsayi Marley, 2006. The third chapter, Freshwater Fauna – a taxonomic challenge, deals with a programme of research based initially on my findings at the Royal Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh. This then required subsequent visits the USA and Italy to work on the taxonomic issues with original authors on their more recently described genera. I prepared the original Case for the ICZN, but this was then held by the commission for several years pending their amendments to the Code. I then rewrote the Case into the final paper, Marley, Bertolani & Nelson (2008). The final chapter consists of two papers in which I worked on combining my expertise on the morphological characters of the buccal apparatus and claws, and combining this with new molecular dataset derived from sequencing individual specimens. My colleagues on these papers were Dr S.J. McInnes and Mr C.J. Sands, both from the British Antarctic Survey. Overall I am including 14 published papers and 5 published conference abstracts and three online articles. The following taxa were erected during this work: Pseudobiotus kathmanae, Echiniscus ollantaytamboensis, Platicrista ramsayi, Ramazzottidae, Isohypsibiidae, Macrobiotoidea, Eohypsibioidea, Hypsibioidea, and Isohypsibioidea. Plus the following taxa were re-described, Pseudobiotus, Thulinius, Thulinius augusti, Thulinius ruffoi, and Thulinius stephanae

From buildings to cities: techniques for the multi-scale analysis of urban form and function

The built environment is a significant factor in many urban processes, yet direct measures of built form are seldom used in geographical studies. Representation and analysis of urban form and function could provide new insights and improve the evidence base for research. So far progress has been slow due to limited data availability, computational demands, and a lack of methods to integrate built environment data with aggregate geographical analysis. Spatial data and computational improvements are overcoming some of these problems, but there remains a need for techniques to process and aggregate urban form data. Here we develop a Built Environment Model of urban function and dwelling type classifications for Greater London, based on detailed topographic and address-based data (sourced from Ordnance Survey MasterMap). The multi-scale approach allows the Built Environment Model to be viewed at fine-scales for local planning contexts, and at city-wide scales for aggregate geographical analysis, allowing an improved understanding of urban processes. This flexibility is illustrated in the two examples, that of urban function and residential type analysis, where both local-scale urban clustering and city-wide trends in density and agglomeration are shown. While we demonstrate the multi-scale Built Environment Model to be a viable approach, a number of accuracy issues are identified, including the limitations of 2D data, inaccuracies in commercial function data and problems with temporal attribution. These limitations currently restrict the more advanced applications of the Built Environment Model

Use of creative tools, technologies, processes and practices in the sectors of Art, Media, and Architecture: State-of the-Art and desired future scenarios

The aim of the paper is to analyse and present the preliminary findings of the EU FP7 funded CRe-AM project for the Art, Media, and Architecture sectors. This project bridges communities of technology providers and innovators with the creative industries, with the aim to build sector-specific dynamic roadmaps for the future of the European creative industries by examining the current state-of-the-art tools, technologies, processes, and practices supporting the creative process against the future scenarios envisioned by stakeholders in these sectors.This work was carried out as part of CRe-AM project, which is supported by European Commission (grant agreement n°612451)

Categorisation of visualisation methods to support the design of Human-Computer Interaction systems

During the design of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) systems, the creation of visual artefacts forms an important part of design. On one hand producing a visual artefact has a number of advantages: it helps designers to externalise their thought and acts as a common language between different stakeholders. On the other hand, if an inappropriate visualisation method is employed it could hinder the design process. To support the design of HCI systems, this paper reviews the categorisation of visualisation methods used in HCI. A keyword search is conducted to identify a) current HCI design methods, b) approaches of selecting these methods. The resulting design methods are filtered to create a list of just visualisation methods. These are then categorised using the approaches identified in (b). As a result 23 HCI visualisation methods are identified and categorised in 5 selection approaches (The Recipient, Primary Purpose, Visual Archetype, Interaction Type, and The Design Process).Innovate UK, EPSRC, Airbus Group Innovation

The State-of-the-Art of Set Visualization

Sets comprise a generic data model that has been used in a variety of data analysis problems. Such problems involve analysing and visualizing set relations between multiple sets defined over the same collection of elements. However, visualizing sets is a non-trivial problem due to the large number of possible relations between them. We provide a systematic overview of state-of-the-art techniques for visualizing different kinds of set relations. We classify these techniques into six main categories according to the visual representations they use and the tasks they support. We compare the categories to provide guidance for choosing an appropriate technique for a given problem. Finally, we identify challenges in this area that need further research and propose possible directions to address these challenges. Further resources on set visualization are available at http://www.setviz.net

Interactive analysis of time intervals in a two-dimensional space

Time intervals are conventionally represented as linear segments in a one-dimensional space. An alternative representation of time intervals is the triangular model (TM), which represents time intervals as points in a two-dimensional space. In this paper, the use of TM in visualising and analysing time intervals is investigated. Not only does this model offer a compact visualisation of the distribution of intervals, it also supports an innovative temporal query mechanism that relies on geometries in the two-dimensional space. This query mechanism has the potential to simplify queries that are difficult to specify using traditional linear temporal query devices. Moreover, a software prototype that implements TM in a geographical information system (GIS) is introduced. This prototype has been applied in a real scenario to analyse time intervals that were detected by a Bluetooth tracking system. This application shows that TM has the potential to support a traditional GIS to analyse interval-based geographical data