Visual communication in urban planning and urban design

This report documents the current status of visual communication in urban design and planning. Visual communication is examined through discussion of standalone and network media, specifically concentrating on visualisation on the World Wide Web(WWW).Firstly, we examine the use of Solid and Geometric Modelling for visualising urban planning and urban design. This report documents and compares examples of the use of Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) and proprietary WWW based Virtual Reality modelling software. Examples include the modelling of Bath and Glasgow using both VRML 1.0 and 2.0. A review is carried out on the use of Virtual Worldsand their role in visualising urban form within multi-user environments. The use of Virtual Worlds is developed into a case study of the possibilities and limitations of Virtual Internet Design Arenas (ViDAs), an initiative undertaken at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. The use of Virtual Worlds and their development towards ViDAs is seen as one of the most important developments in visual communication for urban planning and urban design since the development plan.Secondly, photorealistic media in the process of communicating plans is examined.The process of creating photorealistic media is documented, examples of the Virtual Streetscape and Wired Whitehall Virtual Urban Interface System are provided. The conclusion is drawn that although the use of photo-realistic media on the WWW provides a way to visually communicate planning information, its use is limited. The merging of photorealistic media and solid geometric modelling is reviewed in the creation of Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality is seen to provide an important step forward in the ability to quickly and easily visualise urban planning and urban design information.Thirdly, the role of visual communication of planning data through GIS is examined interms of desktop, three dimensional and Internet based GIS systems. The evolution to Internet GIS is seen as a critical component in the development of virtual cities which will allow urban planners and urban designers to visualise and model the complexity of the built environment in networked virtual reality.Finally a viewpoint is put forward of the Virtual City, linking Internet GIS with photorealistic multi-user Virtual Worlds. At present there are constraints on how far virtual cities can be developed, but a view is provided on how these networked virtual worlds are developing to aid visual communication in urban planning and urban design

Design and test of readout electronics for medical and astrophysics applications

The applied particle physics has a strong R&D tradition aimed at rising the instrumentation performances to achieve relevant results for the scientific community. The know-how achieved in developing particle detectors can be applied to apparently divergent fields like hadrontherapy and cosmic ray detection. A proof of this fact is presented in this doctoral thesis, where the results coming from three different projects are discussed in likewise macro-chapters. A brief introduction (Chapter 1) reports the basic features characterizing a typical particle detector system. This section is developed following the data transmission path: from the sensor, the data moves through the front-end electronics for being readout and collected, ready for the data manipulation. After this general section, the thesis describes the results achieved in two projects developed by the collaboration between the medical physics group of the University of Turin and the Turin section of the Italian Nuclear Institute for Nuclear Physics. Chapter 2 focuses on the TERA09 project. TERA09 is a 64 channels customized chip that has been realized to equip the front-end readout electronics for the new generation of beam monitor chambers for particle therapy applications. In this field, the trend in the accelerators development is moving toward compact solutions providing high-intensity pulsed-beams. However, such a high intensity will saturate the present readout electronics. In order to overcome this critical issue, the TERA09 chip is able to cope with the expected maximum intensity while keeping high resolution by working on a wide conversion-linearity zone which extends from hundreds of pA to hundreds of μA. The chip gain spread is in the order of 1-3% (r.m.s.), with a 200 fC charge resolution. The thesis author took part in the chip design and fully characterized the device. The same group is currently working on behalf of the MoVeIT collaboration for the development of a new silicon strip detector prototype for particle therapy applications. Chapter 3 presents the technical aspects of this project, focusing on the author’s contribution: the front-end electronics design. The sensor adopted for the MoVeIT project is based on 50 μm thin sensors with internal gain, aiming to detect the single beam particle thus counting their number up to 109 cm2/s fluxes, with a pileup probability < 1%. A similar approach would lead to a drastic step forward if compared to the classical and widely used monitoring system based on gas ionization chambers. For what concerns the front-end electronics, the group strategy has been to design two prototypes of custom front-end: one based on a transimpedance preamplifier with a resistive feedback and the other one based on a charge sensitive amplifier. The challenging tasks for the electronics are represented by the charge and dynamic range which are respectively the 3 - 150 fC and the hundreds of MHz instantaneous rate (100 MHz as the milestone, up to 250 MHz ideally). Chapter 4 is a report on the trigger logic development for the Mini-EUSO detector. Mini-EUSO is a telescope designed by the JEM-EUSO Collaboration to map the Earth in the UV range from the vantage point of the International Space Station (ISS), in low Earth orbit. This approach will lay the groundwork for the detection of Extreme Energy Cosmic Rays (EECRs) from space. Due to its 2.5 μs time resolution, Mini-EUSO is capable of detecting a wide range of UV phenomena in the Earth’s atmosphere. In order to maximize the scientific return of the mission, it is necessary to implement a multi-level trigger logic for data selection over different timescales. This logic is key to the success of the mission and thus must be thoroughly tested and carefully integrated into the data processing system prior to the launch. The author took part in the trigger integration in hardware, laboratory trigger tests and also developed the firmware of the trigger ancillary blocks. Chapter 5 closes this doctoral thesis, with a dedicated summary part for each of the three macro-chapters

The importance of reputation in the auditing of companies: A game theory analysis

Numerous, mainly empirical, studies of auditing behaviour have recently looked at the “reputation” of the auditor and the size of fees it attracts. Our model of the auditing market advances the study of the fundamental principles involved in determining behaviour in relation to the rewards and penalties using an extensive-form game of the auditing process. We set up a two-player fraud detection game with bribes, bonuses and fines faced by an auditor. Our model yields that the auditor’s reputation, reflected in the size of bonuses, is critical to establishing a non-fraudulent behaviour by the client. Hence the model confirms expected behaviour. We further find the new insight, that while the existence of penalties deters fraud by the client, their size is not critical. This is a new understanding of what determines auditor behaviour. It is the perception of a possible penalty that moves the auditor in the direction of executing a thorough investigation using his acquired expertise

Design and analysis of a scalable terabit multicast packet switch : architecture and scheduling algorithms

Internet growth and success not only open a primary route of information exchange for millions of people around the world, but also create unprecedented demand for core network capacity. Existing switches/routers, due to the bottleneck from either switch architecture or arbitration complexity, can reach a capacity on the order of gigabits per second, but few of them are scalable to large capacity of terabits per second. In this dissertation, we propose three novel switch architectures with cooperated scheduling algorithms to design a terabit backbone switch/router which is able to deliver large capacity, multicasting, and high performance along with Quality of Service (QoS). Our switch designs benefit from unique features of modular switch architecture and distributed resource allocation scheme. Switch I is a unique and modular design characterized by input and output link sharing. Link sharing resolves output contention and eliminates speedup requirement for central switch fabric. Hence, the switch architecture is scalable to any large size. We propose a distributed round robin (RR) scheduling algorithm which provides fairness and has very low arbitration complexity. Switch I can achieve good performance under uniform traffic. However, Switch I does not perform well for non-uniform traffic. Switch II, as a modified switch design, employs link sharing as well as a token ring to pursue a solution to overcome the drawback of Switch 1. We propose a round robin prioritized link reservation (RR+POLR) algorithm which results in an improved performance especially under non-uniform traffic. However, RR+POLR algorithm is not flexible enough to adapt to the input traffic. In Switch II, the link reservation rate has a great impact on switch performance. Finally, Switch III is proposed as an enhanced switch design using link sharing and dual round robin rings. Packet forwarding is based on link reservation. We propose a queue occupancy based dynamic link reservation (QOBDLR) algorithm which can adapt to the input traffic to provide a fast and fair link resource allocation. QOBDLR algorithm is a distributed resource allocation scheme in the sense that dynamic link reservation is carried out according to local available information. Arbitration complexity is very low. Compared to the output queued (OQ) switch which is known to offer the best performance under any traffic pattern, Switch III not only achieves performance as good as the OQ switch, but also overcomes speedup problem which seriously limits the OQ switch to be a scalable switch design. Hence, Switch III would be a good choice for high performance, scalable, large-capacity core switches

Adapting to Computer Science

Although I am not an engineer who adapted himself to computer science but a mathematician who did so, I am familiar enough with the development, concepts, and activities of this new discipline to venture an opinion of what must be adapted to in it. Computer and Information Science is known as Informatics on the European continent. It was born as a distinct discipline barely a generation ago. As a fresh young discipline, it is an effervescent mixture of formal theory, empirical applications, and pragmatic design. Mathematics was just such an effervescent mixture in western culture from the renaissance to the middle of the twentieth century. It was then that the dynamic effect of high speed, electronic, general purpose computers accelerated the generalization of the meaning of the word computation This caused the early computer science to recruit not only mathematicians but also philosophers (especially logicians), linguists, psychologists, even economists, as well as physicists, and a variety of engineers. Thus we are, perforce, discussing the changes and adaptations of individuals to disciplines, and especially of people in one discipline to another. As we all know, the very word discipline indicates that there is an initial special effort by an individual to force himself or herself to change. The change involves adaptation of one\u27s perceptions to a special way of viewing certain aspects of the - world, and also one\u27s behavior in order to produce special results. For example we are familiar with the enormous prosthetic devices that physicists have added to their natural sensors and perceptors in order to perceive minute particles and to smash atoms in order to do so (at, we might add, enormous expense, and enormous stretching of computational activity). We are also familiar with the enormously intricate prosthetic devices mathematicians added to their computational effectors, the general symbol manipulators, called computers

What do politicians think of the common consolidated corporate tax base? A Belgian case study

This paper analyzes the views of Belgian politicians on the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB), an ambitious project to harmonize corporate taxation in the EU. Applying case study methodology, the results show that most politicians were proponents of this new tax system. During the discussions in several political institutions, the politicians referred to the macro-economic impact, the legal certainty and their party’s view to found their opinion. Besides several agreements, certain aspects of CCCTB like the optionality and the applied tax rate involved clear differences in view between left and right-wing politicians, which could hamper a political agreement on CCCTB