27,136 research outputs found
Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)
This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio
Autonomic Cloud Computing: Open Challenges and Architectural Elements
As Clouds are complex, large-scale, and heterogeneous distributed systems,
management of their resources is a challenging task. They need automated and
integrated intelligent strategies for provisioning of resources to offer
services that are secure, reliable, and cost-efficient. Hence, effective
management of services becomes fundamental in software platforms that
constitute the fabric of computing Clouds. In this direction, this paper
identifies open issues in autonomic resource provisioning and presents
innovative management techniques for supporting SaaS applications hosted on
Clouds. We present a conceptual architecture and early results evidencing the
benefits of autonomic management of Clouds.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, conference keynote pape
1st INCF Workshop on Sustainability of Neuroscience Databases
The goal of the workshop was to discuss issues related to the sustainability of neuroscience databases, identify problems and propose solutions, and formulate recommendations to the INCF. The report summarizes the discussions of invited participants from the neuroinformatics community as well as from other disciplines where sustainability issues have already been approached. The recommendations for the INCF involve rating, ranking, and supporting database sustainability
Node and Place, a study on the spatial process of railway terminus area redevelopment in central London
Bertolini and Spit (1998) have argued that any significant transport node should
ideally also be a significant place in the city. However, this rarely seems to be the
case, and the resolution of this disparity, which they refer to as the 'node-place'
problem, in practice means redesigning what are currently regional-to-local transport
nodes to also function as local pedestrian nodes. This is a complex design task, made
more difficult by the fact that termini, although often located in strategic inner urban
areas, are also frequently scarred by railway structures and adjacent to large
wastelands or blighted neighbourhoods. Not surprisingly, there are as yet few success
stories, and conversely many cases where attempts to address this problem through
design have fallen below expectations. This problem, of converting railway termini and
their surrounding areas into urban places, is the subject of this thesis.
The argument proposes that the ânode-placeâ problem is fundamentally a spatial one.
Using the methodology of space syntax, together with Hillier's compound theories of
how vibrant urban places are progressively formed by the influence of the urban grid
on natural movement (Hillier et al 1993 ), and the subsequent influence this has on land
use patterns (Hillier 1996 ) and centre formation (Hillier 2000 ), the thesis investigates
the spatial structure and functioning of eleven mainline railway terminus areas in
central London. This is undertaken through a series of studies of increasing precision:
historical figure-ground analyses of station areas; syntactic analysis of station
contexts and the influence of the station on that context; detailed observation of
movement patterns and rates in station contexts; and finally the synthesis of all data
types into a single picture.
On the basis of the results of these studies, it is argued that the key to the successful
creation of an urban place out of a transport node is the same as that which prevails in
cities in general; namely that spatial configuration is critical, and that the spaces
inside and outside railway termini have to become an 'integrated part' of the local
system of pedestrian movement. In order to achieve this, space has to be re-engineered
to overcome the current tendency of stations to work as urban 'negative attractors'
through the effect of the large blockages they impose on the development of local
patterns of natural movement, in spite of the station being in itself a 'point attractor'.
A node can become a place when it also becomes a 'configurational attractor' in the
local network
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