Spatial optimization for land use allocation: accounting for sustainability concerns

Land-use allocation has long been an important area of research in regional science. Land-use patterns are fundamental to the functions of the biosphere, creating interactions that have substantial impacts on the environment. The spatial arrangement of land uses therefore has implications for activity and travel within a region. Balancing development, economic growth, social interaction, and the protection of the natural environment is at the heart of long-term sustainability. Since land-use patterns are spatially explicit in nature, planning and management necessarily must integrate geographical information system and spatial optimization in meaningful ways if efficiency goals and objectives are to be achieved. This article reviews spatial optimization approaches that have been relied upon to support land-use planning. Characteristics of sustainable land use, particularly compactness, contiguity, and compatibility, are discussed and how spatial optimization techniques have addressed these characteristics are detailed. In particular, objectives and constraints in spatial optimization approaches are examined

A Divided Front: Military Dissent During the Vietnam War

Emerging from a triumphant victory in World War Two, American patriotism surged in the 1950s. Positive images in theater and literature of America’s potential to bring peace and prosperity to a grateful Asia fueled the notion that the United States could be the “good Samaritan of the entire world.”[1] This idea prevailed through the mid-1960s as three-quarters of Americans indicated they trusted their government. That positive feeling would not last, and America’s belief in its own exceptionalism would begin to shatter with “the major military escalation in Vietnam and the shocking revelations it brought.”[2] The turmoil in social and economic spheres during the 1960s combined with contradictions about America’s role in Vietnam and realization of the government’s deception regarding the nature and progress of the war itself fueled the largest movement of servicemen and veteran dissent in this nation’s history. [1] Christian G. Appy, American Reckoning (New York: The Penguin Group, 2015) 13. [2] Appy, American Reckoning, xv

Public Participation GIS for sustainable urban mobility planning: methods, applications and challenges

Sustainable mobility planning is a new approach to planning, and as such it requires new methods of public participation, data collection and data aggregation. In the article we present an overview of Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) methods with potential use in sustainable urban mobility planning. We present the methods using examples from two recent case studies conducted in Polish cities of Poznań and Łodź. Sustainable urban mobility planning is a cyclical process, and each stage has different data and participatory requirements. Consequently, we situate the PPGIS methods in appropriate stages of planning, based on potential benefits they may bring into the planning process. We discuss key issues related to participant recruitment and provide guidelines for planners interested in implementing methods presented in the paper. The article outlines future research directions stressing the need for systematic case study evaluation

From ”Sapienza” to “Sapienza, State Archives in Rome”. A looping effect bringing back to the original source communication and culture by innovative and low cost 3D surveying, imaging systems and GIS applications

Applicazione di tecnologie mensorie integrate Low Cost,web GIS,applicazione di tecniche di Computational photography per la comunicazione e condivisione dei dati, sistemi di Cloud computing.Archiviazione Grandi DatiHigh Quality survey models, realized by multiple Low Cost methods and technologies, as a container to sharing Cultural and Archival Heritage, this is the aim guiding our research, here described in its primary applications. The SAPIENZA building, a XVI century masterpiece that represented the first unified headquarters of University in Rome, plays since year 1936, when the University moved to its newly edified campus, the role of the main venue for the State Archives. By the collaboration of a group of students of the Architecture Faculty, some integrated survey methods were applied on the monument with success. The beginning was the topographic survey, creating a reference on ground and along the monument for the upcoming applications, a GNNS RTK survey followed georeferencing points on the internal courtyard. Dense stereo matching photogrammetry is nowadays an accepted method for generating 3D survey models, accurate and scalable; it often substitutes 3D laser scanning for its low cost, so that it became our choice. Some 360°shots were planned for creating panoramic views of the double portico from the courtyard, plus additional single shots of some lateral spans and of pillars facing the court, as a single operation with a double finality: to create linked panotours with hotspots to web-linked databases, and 3D textured and georeferenced surface models, allowing to study the harmonic proportions of the classical architectural order. The use of free web Gis platforms, to load the work in Google Earth and the realization of low cost 3D prototypes of some representative parts, has been even performed

Estimating daily nitrogen dioxide level: Exploring traffic effects

Data used to assess acute health effects from air pollution typically have good temporal but poor spatial resolution or the opposite. A modified longitudinal model was developed that sought to improve resolution in both domains by bringing together data from three sources to estimate daily levels of nitrogen dioxide ($\mathrm {NO}_2$) at a geographic location. Monthly $\mathrm {NO}_2$ measurements at 316 sites were made available by the Study of Traffic, Air quality and Respiratory health (STAR). Four US Environmental Protection Agency monitoring stations have hourly measurements of $\mathrm {NO}_2$. Finally, the Connecticut Department of Transportation provides data on traffic density on major roadways, a primary contributor to $\mathrm {NO}_2$ pollution. Inclusion of a traffic variable improved performance of the model, and it provides a method for estimating exposure at points that do not have direct measurements of the outcome. This approach can be used to estimate daily variation in levels of $\mathrm {NO}_2$ over a region.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AOAS642 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Modelling potential movement in constrained travel environments using rough space-time prisms

The widespread adoption of location-aware technologies (LATs) has afforded analysts new opportunities for efficiently collecting trajectory data of moving individuals. These technologies enable measuring trajectories as a finite sample set of time-stamped locations. The uncertainty related to both finite sampling and measurement errors makes it often difficult to reconstruct and represent a trajectory followed by an individual in space-time. Time geography offers an interesting framework to deal with the potential path of an individual in between two sample locations. Although this potential path may be easily delineated for travels along networks, this will be less straightforward for more nonnetwork-constrained environments. Current models, however, have mostly concentrated on network environments on the one hand and do not account for the spatiotemporal uncertainties of input data on the other hand. This article simultaneously addresses both issues by developing a novel methodology to capture potential movement between uncertain space-time points in obstacle-constrained travel environments

Mapping the results of local statistics

The application of geographically weighted regression (GWR) – a local spatial statistical technique used to test for spatial nonstationarity – has grown rapidly in the social, health and demographic sciences. GWR is a useful exploratory analytical tool that generates a set of location-specific parameter estimates which can be mapped and analysed to provide information on spatial nonstationarity in relationships between predictors and the outcome variable. A major challenge to GWR users, however, is how best to map these parameter estimates. This paper introduces a simple mapping technique that combines local parameter estimates and local t-values on one map. The resultant map can facilitate the exploration and interpretation of nonstationarity.geographically weighted regression, local statistics, mapping, nonstationarity

Achieving the state of research pertaining to GIS applications for cultural heritage by a systematic literature review

During the last decade, we have witnessed an increased interest in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), including the so-called “Historical GIS”, 3D GIS heritage and its subcategory of “SDI for cultural heritage”. Specific literature reviews, gathering and analysing the scientific production for Culture Heritage and GIS based research questions, are currently lacking. Therefore, the overall goal of this article is to provide an objective summary of the current state -of-the-art concerning how GIS has been used and what methods and analysis have been applied in the field of cultural heritage. In this sense, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of the literature on the application of GIS in cultural heritage is carried out. To do so, the WOS and Scopus databases were considered. The results show that the dominant application of GIS is in the realisation of inventory and cataloguing of archaeological and architectural heritage. As a result of the quantitative analysis, we also verify the principal sources in which most studies have been published, highlighting the "ISPRS Archives" with 14 publications, the "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" with 9, and "Proceedings of Digital Heritage" with 6 publications. These data show that the sources that most publis h mainly belong to the field of IT and Computer Science. In addition, the SLR shows that in the last three years there has been a greater tendency to use GIS to solve more specific problems of heritage through its use in conjunction with other tools such as BIM and photogrammetrySpain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness HAR2016–78113-R HAR2016–76371-

Human African trypanosomiasis amongst urban residents in Kinshasa: a case-control study.

BACKGROUND: Increasing numbers of human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) cases have been reported in urban residents of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic Congo since 1996. We set up a case-control study to identify risk factors for the disease. METHODS: All residents of the urban part of Kinshasa with parasitologically confirmed HAT and presenting for treatment to the city's specialized HAT clinics between 1 August, 2002 and 28 February, 2003 were included as cases. We defined the urban part as the area with contiguous habitation and a population density >5000 inhabitants per square kilometre. A digital map of the area was drawn based on a satellite image. For each case, two serologically negative controls were selected, matched on age, sex and neighbourhood. Logistic regression models were fitted to control for confounding. RESULTS: The following risk factors were independently associated with HAT: travel, commerce and cultivating fields in Bandundu, and commerce and cultivating fields in the rural part of Kinshasa. No association with activities in the city itself was found. DISCUSSION: In 2002, the emergence of HAT in urban residents of Kinshasa appears mainly linked to disease transmission in Bandundu and rural Kinshasa. We recommend to intensify control of these foci, to target HAT screening in urban residents to people with contact with these foci, to increase awareness of HAT amongst health workers in the urban health structures and to strengthen disease surveillance