Information technology and urban green analysis

It is well recognized that green area plays a pivotal role in improving urban environment, such as preserving water and soil, controlling temperature and humidity of air, preventing pollution, flood prevention, functioning as buffers between incompatible land uses, preserving natural habitat, and providing space for recreation and relaxation. However, due to pressures from new development both in urban fringes and urban centres, urban green and open spaces are seen to be rapidly declining in term of allocated spaces and quality. Without careful urban land use planning, many open spaces will be filled with residential and commercial buildings. Therefore, there is a need for proper planning control to ensure that the provisions of green spaces are adequately being conserved for current and future generations. The need for an urban green information system is particularly important for strategic planning at macro level and local planning at the micro level. The advent of information technology has created an opportunity for the development of new approaches in preserving and monitoring the development of urban green and open spaces. This paper will discuss the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) incorporated with other data sources such as remote sensing images and aerial photographs in providing innovative and alternative solutions in the management and monitoring of urban green. GIS is widely accepted in urban landscape planning as it can provide better understanding on the spatial pattern and changes of land use in an area. This paper will primarily focus on digital database that are developed to assist in monitoring urban green and open spaces at regional and local context. The application of GIS in the Klang Valley region or better known as AGISwlk developed since mid-1990's is currently being used by various organisations in the region. The focus of AGISwlk is not merely in providing relevant database to its stakeholders but more importantly, assist in making specific and relevant decisions with regard to spatial planning. It is also used to monitor the loss of green areas by using several temporal data sets. The method of classifying green and open spaces in the region is also being discussed. This paper demonstrates that GIS can be an effective tool in preserving and monitoring green and open spaces in an urban area. The contribution of urban green digital database in someway may leads toward landscape sustainability as to satisfy the ever changing society

Benchmarking urine storage and collection conditions for evaluating the female urinary microbiome.

Standardized conditions for collection, preservation and storage of urine for microbiome research have not been established. We aimed to identify the effects of the use of preservative AssayAssure® (AA), and the effects of storage time and temperatures on reproducibility of urine microbiome results. We sequenced the V3-4 segment of the 16S rRNA gene to characterize the bacterial community in the urine of a cohort of women. Each woman provided a single voided urine sample, which was divided into aliquots and stored with and without AA, at three different temperatures (room temperature [RT], 4 °C, or -20 °C), and for various time periods up to 4 days. There were significant microbiome differences in urine specimens stored with and without AA at all temperatures, but the most significant differences were observed in alpha diversity (estimated number of taxa) at RT. Specimens preserved at 4 °C and -20 °C for up to 4 days with or without AA had no significant alpha diversity differences. However, significant alpha diversity differences were observed in samples stored without AA at RT. Generally, there was greater microbiome preservation with AA than without AA at all time points and temperatures, although not all results were statistically significant. Addition of AA preservative, shorter storage times, and colder temperatures are most favorable for urinary microbiome reproducibility

The Ohio State University Libraries Audiovisual Assessment Interim Report

The 26-month audiovisual (AV) assessment took place from June 2017 to August 2019 with a focus on rare or unique audiovisual items. Curators and archivists within each unit identified collections or collecting areas for significance or research value. Approximately 65% of AV materials in seven library units has not been assessed. Upon completion, 18,389 audiovisual items in 32 distinct formats were individually assessed

A combined measure for quantifying and qualifying the topology preservation of growing self-organizing maps

The Self-OrganizingMap (SOM) is a neural network model that performs an ordered projection of a high dimensional input space in a low-dimensional topological structure. The process in which such mapping is formed is defined by the SOM algorithm, which is a competitive, unsupervised and nonparametric method, since it does not make any assumption about the input data distribution. The feature maps provided by this algorithm have been successfully applied for vector quantization, clustering and high dimensional data visualization processes. However, the initialization of the network topology and the selection of the SOM training parameters are two difficult tasks caused by the unknown distribution of the input signals. A misconfiguration of these parameters can generate a feature map of low-quality, so it is necessary to have some measure of the degree of adaptation of the SOM network to the input data model. The topologypreservation is the most common concept used to implement this measure. Several qualitative and quantitative methods have been proposed for measuring the degree of SOM topologypreservation, particularly using Kohonen's model. In this work, two methods for measuring the topologypreservation of the Growing Cell Structures (GCSs) model are proposed: the topographic function and the topology preserving ma

As-Built 3D Heritage City Modelling to Support Numerical Structural Analysis: Application to the Assessment of an Archaeological Remain

Terrestrial laser scanning is a widely used technology to digitise archaeological, architectural and cultural heritage. This allows for modelling the assets’ real condition in comparison with traditional data acquisition methods. This paper, based on the case study of the basilica in the Baelo Claudia archaeological ensemble (Tarifa, Spain), justifies the need of accurate heritage modelling against excessively simplified approaches in order to support structural safety analysis. To do this, after validating the 3Dmeshing process frompoint cloud data, the semi-automatic digital reconstitution of the basilica columns is performed. Next, a geometric analysis is conducted to calculate the structural alterations of the columns. In order to determine the structural performance, focusing both on the accuracy and suitability of the geometric models, static and modal analyses are carried out by means of the finite element method (FEM) on three different models for the most unfavourable column in terms of structural damage: (1) as-built (2) simplified and (3) ideal model without deformations. Finally, the outcomes show that the as-built modelling enhances the conservation status analysis of the 3D heritage city (in terms of realistic compliance factor values), although further automation still needs to be implemented in the modelling process

Discovering Scholarly Orphans Using ORCID

Archival efforts such as (C)LOCKSS and Portico are in place to ensure the longevity of traditional scholarly resources like journal articles. At the same time, researchers are depositing a broad variety of other scholarly artifacts into emerging online portals that are designed to support web-based scholarship. These web-native scholarly objects are largely neglected by current archival practices and hence they become scholarly orphans. We therefore argue for a novel paradigm that is tailored towards archiving these scholarly orphans. We are investigating the feasibility of using Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) as a supporting infrastructure for the process of discovery of web identities and scholarly orphans for active researchers. We analyze ORCID in terms of coverage of researchers, subjects, and location and assess the richness of its profiles in terms of web identities and scholarly artifacts. We find that ORCID currently lacks in all considered aspects and hence can only be considered in conjunction with other discovery sources. However, ORCID is growing fast so there is potential that it could achieve a satisfactory level of coverage and richness in the near future.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables accepted for publication at JCDL 201

HTTP Mailbox - Asynchronous RESTful Communication

We describe HTTP Mailbox, a mechanism to enable RESTful HTTP communication in an asynchronous mode with a full range of HTTP methods otherwise unavailable to standard clients and servers. HTTP Mailbox allows for broadcast and multicast semantics via HTTP. We evaluate a reference implementation using ApacheBench (a server stress testing tool) demonstrating high throughput (on 1,000 concurrent requests) and a systemic error rate of 0.01%. Finally, we demonstrate our HTTP Mailbox implementation in a human assisted web preservation application called "Preserve Me".Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 8 code blocks, 3 equations, and 3 table

Measuring the initial impacts on deforestation of Mato Grosso's program for environmental control

Although private forest use in Brazil has been regulated at least since the Forest Code of 1965, cumulative deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached 653,000 km2 by 2003 (INPE 2004). Much of this deforestation is illegal. In 1999, the State Foundation of the Environment (FEMA) in Mato Grosso introduced an innovative licensing and enforcement system to increase compliance with land use regulations. If successful, the program would deter deforestation that contravenes those regulations, including deforestation of riverine and hillside forest (permanent preservation areas), and reduction of a property's forest cover below a specified limit (the legal forest reserve requirement). This study seeks to assess whether introduction of the program affected landholder behavior in the desired direction. Simple before/after comparisons are not suitable for this purpose, because there is considerable year to year variation in deforestation due to climatic and economic conditions. Nor is it valid to assess program impacts by comparing licensed and unlicensed landholders, even though the program focused its enforcement efforts on the former. This is because, first, landholders with no intention of deforesting may choose to become licensed; and second, unlicensed landholders may be deterred from deforestation by the mere existence of a serious program that aims for universal licensing. To meet these challenges, the study applies a difference-in-difference approach to geographically explicit data. It looks for, and confirms, post-program declines in deforestation in high-priority enforcement areas relative to other areas; in more easily observed areas relative to less easily observed areas; and in areas of low remaining forest cover (where further deforestation is probably illegal) relative to high remaining forest cover. Thus, even against a backdrop of higher aggregate deforestation (driven in part by higher agricultural prices), there is evidence that the program in its early stages (before 2002) did shift landholder behavior in a direction consistent with reduced illegal deforestation. (The legality of deforestation was not however directly observed). The study hypothesizes that this behavioral change resulted from an initial perception of increased likelihood of the detection and prosecution of illegal deforestation, following announcement of the program. The study does not assess Mato Grosso's new system for environmental regulation (SLAPR) impacts following the change of state administration in 2003.Energy and Environment,Environment and Energy Efficiency,Environmental Economics&Policies,Forestry,Ecosystems and Natural Habitats