MAKING THE GOOD EASY: THE SMART CODE ALTERNATIVE

This article advocates for a new, fundamentally different plan for how cities should be coded, the Smart Code. It links urbanism and environmentalism and is strongly aligned with smart growth and sustainability. The Smart Code is offered as an alternative to the current anti-urban, conventional codes which are rigid and focus on single-use zones that separate human living space from the natural environment, as illustrated by the sprawl

Westwood Multimodal Transportation Plan

Westwood is experiencing an industrial regeneration that will change the way the area is utilized by the surrounding communities. To be proactive, Henrico County is planning for the future by creating an overlay zoning district and striving for a multimodal environment to ensure the area grows in a sustainable manner. This plan evaluates the study area, retrieves community engagement, and makes recommendations on streetscape design and public transit improvements to create a multimodal Westwood. Study area observations provided evidence that the streets in Westwood need to be redesigned to accommodate more for pedestrians and cyclists. Community outreach in the form of a survey was conducted to gather input on how the streetscape should be designed and what elements of the study area need the most attention. Results of the surveys and observations were analyzed and used to build the recommendations made for Westwood. Various types of funding options are presented to implement this plan. Sustainable, connected, and integrated transportation is essential to success and livability of the fast-growing study area. The plan aims to supply the knowledge needed to create a livable and thriving Westwood

ENHANCING USERS’ EXPERIENCE WITH SMART MOBILE TECHNOLOGY

The aim of this thesis is to investigate mobile guides for use with smartphones. Mobile guides have been successfully used to provide information, personalisation and navigation for the user. The researcher also wanted to ascertain how and in what ways mobile guides can enhance users' experience. This research involved designing and developing web based applications to run on smartphones. Four studies were conducted, two of which involved testing of the particular application. The applications tested were a museum mobile guide application and a university mobile guide mapping application. Initial testing examined the prototype work for the ‘Chronology of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah’ application. The results were used to assess the potential of using similar mobile guides in Brunei Darussalam’s museums. The second study involved testing of the ‘Kent LiveMap’ application for use at the University of Kent. Students at the university tested this mapping application, which uses crowdsourcing of information to provide live data. The results were promising and indicate that users' experience was enhanced when using the application. Overall results from testing and using the two applications that were developed as part of this thesis show that mobile guides have the potential to be implemented in Brunei Darussalam’s museums and on campus at the University of Kent. However, modifications to both applications are required to fulfil their potential and take them beyond the prototype stage in order to be fully functioning and commercially viable

Bus rapid transit

Effective public transit is central to development. For the vast majority of developing city residents, public transit is the only practical means to access employment, education, and public services, especially when such services are beyond the viable distance of walking or cycling. Unfortunately, the current state of public transit services in developing cities often does little to serve the actual mobility needs of the population. Bus services are too often unreliable, inconvenient and dangerous. In response, transport planners and public officials have sometimes turned to extremely costly mass transit alternatives such as rail-based metros. Due to the high costs of rail infrastructure, cities can only construct such systems over a few kilometres in a few limited corridors. The result is a system that does not meet the broader transport needs of the population. Nevertheless, the municipality ends up with a long-term debt that can affect investment in more pressing areas such as health, education, water, and sanitation. However, there is an alternative between poor public transit service and high municipal debt. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) can provide high-quality, metro-like transit service at a fraction of the cost of other options. This document provides municipal officials, non-governmental organizations, consultants, and others with an introduction to the concept of BRT as well as a step-by-step process for successfully planning a BRT system

Seeing the invisible: from imagined to virtual urban landscapes

Urban ecosystems consist of infrastructure features working together to provide services for inhabitants. Infrastructure functions akin to an ecosystem, having dynamic relationships and interdependencies. However, with age, urban infrastructure can deteriorate and stop functioning. Additional pressures on infrastructure include urbanizing populations and a changing climate that exposes vulnerabilities. To manage the urban infrastructure ecosystem in a modernizing world, urban planners need to integrate a coordinated management plan for these co-located and dependent infrastructure features. To implement such a management practice, an improved method for communicating how these infrastructure features interact is needed. This study aims to define urban infrastructure as a system, identify the systematic barriers preventing implementation of a more coordinated management model, and develop a virtual reality tool to provide visualization of the spatial system dynamics of urban infrastructure. Data was collected from a stakeholder workshop that highlighted a lack of appreciation for the system dynamics of urban infrastructure. An urban ecology VR model was created to highlight the interconnectedness of infrastructure features. VR proved to be useful for communicating spatial information to urban stakeholders about the complexities of infrastructure ecology and the interactions between infrastructure features.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102559Published versio

Fine recycled concrete aggregate as a material replacement in concrete production

As a fast and rapid growing nation, Malaysia undergoes a lot of development especially in construction field. Most of the building nowadays are being made mainly using concrete as it provides many favorable features such as satisfactory compressive strength, durability, availability, versatility and cost effectiveness. However, in pursuing the development era, sometimes the authorities overlooked about the construction and demolition (C&D) waste that had been created along the development progress. Construction and demolition waste is becoming a vital issue especially to the environmental aspect in many large cities in the world (Chen et al., 2002). Shen [1] describe C&D waste as the waste which generated from renovation, site clearing, demolition, construction, roadwork, land excavation and civil and building construction. Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste constitutes a major portion of total solid waste production in the world, and most of it is used in landfills .

A Framework for Integrating Transportation Into Smart Cities

In recent years, economic, environmental, and political forces have quickly given rise to “Smart Cities” -- an array of strategies that can transform transportation in cities. Using a multi-method approach to research and develop a framework for smart cities, this study provides a framework that can be employed to: Understand what a smart city is and how to replicate smart city successes; The role of pilot projects, metrics, and evaluations to test, implement, and replicate strategies; and Understand the role of shared micromobility, big data, and other key issues impacting communities. This research provides recommendations for policy and professional practice as it relates to integrating transportation into smart cities

A sub-mW IoT-endnode for always-on visual monitoring and smart triggering

This work presents a fully-programmable Internet of Things (IoT) visual sensing node that targets sub-mW power consumption in always-on monitoring scenarios. The system features a spatial-contrast $128\mathrm{x}64$ binary pixel imager with focal-plane processing. The sensor, when working at its lowest power mode ($10\mu W$ at 10 fps), provides as output the number of changed pixels. Based on this information, a dedicated camera interface, implemented on a low-power FPGA, wakes up an ultra-low-power parallel processing unit to extract context-aware visual information. We evaluate the smart sensor on three always-on visual triggering application scenarios. Triggering accuracy comparable to RGB image sensors is achieved at nominal lighting conditions, while consuming an average power between $193\mu W$ and $277\mu W$, depending on context activity. The digital sub-system is extremely flexible, thanks to a fully-programmable digital signal processing engine, but still achieves 19x lower power consumption compared to MCU-based cameras with significantly lower on-board computing capabilities.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, submitteted to IEEE IoT Journa

Single cell analysis of neutrophils NETs by Microscopic LSPR imaging system

A simple microengraving cell monitoring method for neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) released from single neutrophils has been realized using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microwell array (MWA) sheet on a plasmon chip platform. An imbalance between NETs formation and the succeeding degradation (NETosis) are considered associated with autoimmune disease and its pathogenesis. Thus, an alternative platform that can conduct monitoring of this activity on single cell level at minimum cost but with great sensitivity is greatly desired. The developed MWA plasmon chips allow single cell isolation of neutrophils from 150 μL suspension (6.0 × 105 cells/mL) with an efficiency of 36.3%; 105 microwells with single cell condition. To demonstrate the utility of the chip, trapped cells were incubated between 2 to 4 h after introducing with 100 nM phorbol 12- myristate 13-acetate (PMA) before measurement. Under observation using a hyperspectral imaging system that allows high-throughput screening, the neutrophils stimulated by PMA solution show a significant release of fibrils and NETs after 4 h, with observed maximum areas between 314–758 μm2. An average absorption peak wavelength shows a redshift of Δλ = 1.5 nm as neutrophils release NETs