GISualisation: a tool for visually supporting planning processes

The evaluation of quality of life in cities can be supported by the analysis of data coming from different sources and describing different aspects such as economic, social, environmental, energy, housing or mobility issues. Nevertheless, the analysis of such big amounts of data is difficult so that only expert technicians can access to their inner contents. Furthermore, the outcomes of these analyses are often presented in static outcomes which reproduce the reasoning of technicians who have not expertise in urban studies. Thus, planners and decision-makers have to base their own choices on given outcomes without opportunities for personally investigating the inner contents of data. In order to facilitate the data exploration and readability by non-technicians, a GIS-based visualization tool, namely “GISualisation”, has been realized to give to both planners and actors involved in planning processes, a decision support system useful to visualize the inter-relations between data which describe cities. The tool is a web-based interactive visual tool, which works on geo-referenced dynamic maps, currently created with free Web GIS applications. GISualisation displays data on a map and offers the possibility to select and filter data by single attributes, allowing users to interact readily with large databases and customise the visualisation of information. Thus, the tool offers a simple interface to visualise GIS data on the basis of users’ requests, providing a support for planners and decision-makers to explore data and detect issues of inefficiency, ineffectiveness or critical areas which needs further reasoning on their planning or design. Furthermore, it can be used in collaborative and participatory session so to improve the information sharing among participants. Depending on the case study, the tool can be adapted and customized to visualise different type of data, ensuring user-friendliness and possibility to explore the relationships between data. GISualisation has already been applied in investigating inefficiencies in a public transport system (Pensa, Masala, Arnone, & Rosa, 2013), in studying pedestrian paths in an urban area, in analysing urban population health and in the evaluation of social housing projects. Further developments will include the integration with the interactive Visualisation Tool (InViTo) (Pensa, Masala, & Lami, 2013; Pensa & Masala, 2014) and the possibility to include real-time data feeds. Through GISualisation, data on quality of life can be investigated and visually analysed so to offer a new tool to actors involved in planning process for detecting critical areas and improving the urban planning process

Design in the Age of Information: A Report to the National Science Foundation (NSF)

The Information Age is upon us - it has become a global force in our everyday lives. But the promise of significant benefits from this revolution, which has been driven largely by technologists, will not be realized without more careful planning and design of information systems that can be integral to the simultaneously emerging user-cultures. In cultural terms, information systems must be effective, reliable, affordable, intuitively meaningful, and available anytime and everywhere. In this phase of the information revolution, design will be essential

Advanced power system protection and incipient fault detection and protection of spaceborne power systems

This research concentrated on the application of advanced signal processing, expert system, and digital technologies for the detection and control of low grade, incipient faults on spaceborne power systems. The researchers have considerable experience in the application of advanced digital technologies and the protection of terrestrial power systems. This experience was used in the current contracts to develop new approaches for protecting the electrical distribution system in spaceborne applications. The project was divided into three distinct areas: (1) investigate the applicability of fault detection algorithms developed for terrestrial power systems to the detection of faults in spaceborne systems; (2) investigate the digital hardware and architectures required to monitor and control spaceborne power systems with full capability to implement new detection and diagnostic algorithms; and (3) develop a real-time expert operating system for implementing diagnostic and protection algorithms. Significant progress has been made in each of the above areas. Several terrestrial fault detection algorithms were modified to better adapt to spaceborne power system environments. Several digital architectures were developed and evaluated in light of the fault detection algorithms

Ecology-based planning. Italian and French experimentations

This paper examines some French and Italian experimentations of green infrastructures’ (GI) construction in relation to their techniques and methodologies. The construction of a multifunctional green infrastructure can lead to the generation of a number of relevant bene fi ts able to face the increasing challenges of climate change and resilience (for example, social, ecological and environmental through the recognition of the concept of ecosystem services) and could ease the achievement of a performance-based approach. This approach, differently from the traditional prescriptive one, helps to attain a better and more fl exible land-use integration. In both countries, GI play an important role in contrasting land take and, for their adaptive and cross-scale nature, they help to generate a res ilient approach to urban plans and projects. Due to their fl exible and site-based nature, GI can be adapted, even if through different methodologies and approaches, both to urban and extra-urban contexts. On one hand, France, through its strong national policy on ecological networks, recognizes them as one of the major planning strategies toward a more sustainable development of territories; on the other hand, Italy has no national policy and Regions still have a hard time integrating them in already existing planning tools. In this perspective, Italian experimentations on GI construction appear to be a simple and sporadic add-on of urban and regional plans

First Annual Workshop on Space Operations Automation and Robotics (SOAR 87)

Several topics relative to automation and robotics technology are discussed. Automation of checkout, ground support, and logistics; automated software development; man-machine interfaces; neural networks; systems engineering and distributed/parallel processing architectures; and artificial intelligence/expert systems are among the topics covered

Spatial planning in a complex unpredictable world of change:Towards a proactive co-evolutionary type of planning within the Eurodelta

This book is a message to be humble before truth and reality and to relinquish the idea of controlling them. Planners do not have that much control. In retrospect, it was easy to conclude that in conditions of constant population growth and with an economy in fairly good shape, a linear model of urban development would be relatively easy to maintain: the origin of the idea of certainty and control. The population in the Western world is no longer growing though; on the contrary, many regions and cities are facing population decline. Added to that, the economy is proving quite uncertain as well. The two together impact on spatial development. This all means that we have to consider a fundamentally different perspective on the role of spatial planning and its position in urban and rural development. Instead of planning aiming to achieve controlled development, it might get more out of the various autonomous processes affecting urban and the rural areas. In addition to planners being experts or mediators, we might appreciate planners becoming managers of change, transition managers, adaptive responders and social entrepreneurs, supporting and guiding the various parties within urban and rural areas to find the positions which suit them best.This book acknowledges these new identities and positions, with the planner acting as a manager of change. This book tries to present arguments in support of a discipline of spatial planning which adopts a different stance to the world, a more adaptive stance, and with a keen eye for self-organization processes: an eye for non-linear kinds of planning in a world of change.<br/