Sustainability and resilience assessment of a planned floating city

Coastal urban spaces are home to a large portion of the global population. In recent times, climate change and the increasing need for new housing due to population growth are profoundly influencing these delicate realities, threatening the lifestyle of millions of people living near the coast. In response to these challenges the whole world is mobilizing with new ideas, investing in new and revolutionary projects, building ingenious infrastructures. The Korean city of Busan, in collaboration with the United Nations, has proposed the world first floating city design scheme, OCEANIX Busan. This adaptive solution to sea level rise envisions to accommodate a community of more than 10,000 residents and visitors, with the capacity to expand and house more than 100,000 people, being at the same time fully sustainable with solar panels, wind turbines, locally sourced recyclable materials and other green solutions, and with all the water used treated and recycled. Although this topic is not entirely new and there exist numerous case studies and research papers about this idea, for some reason a floating city has not yet been successful. Various designs have been presented at different times but, so far, no one has truly succeeded. Besides, it's not an everyday thing to build a floating city. These trailblazing projects face with huge responsibilities and challenges but if they turn out to be feasible and their realization turns out to be possible, floating cities could be really a way to adapt to the effects of sea level rise caused by climate change. This thesis focuses on exploring the challenges that the OCEANIX project would face and proposes, comparing and analyzing, on a theoretical basis, technical and planning elements of the world first floating city design. Through this approach, this work aims to provide enough tools to allow the reader to formulate an opinion about the real sustainability and feasibility of this innovative floating city scheme.Coastal urban spaces are home to a large portion of the global population. In recent times, climate change and the increasing need for new housing due to population growth are profoundly influencing these delicate realities, threatening the lifestyle of millions of people living near the coast. In response to these challenges the whole world is mobilizing with new ideas, investing in new and revolutionary projects, building ingenious infrastructures. The Korean city of Busan, in collaboration with the United Nations, has proposed the world first floating city design scheme, OCEANIX Busan. This adaptive solution to sea level rise envisions to accommodate a community of more than 10,000 residents and visitors, with the capacity to expand and house more than 100,000 people, being at the same time fully sustainable with solar panels, wind turbines, locally sourced recyclable materials and other green solutions, and with all the water used treated and recycled. Although this topic is not entirely new and there exist numerous case studies and research papers about this idea, for some reason a floating city has not yet been successful. Various designs have been presented at different times but, so far, no one has truly succeeded. Besides, it's not an everyday thing to build a floating city. These trailblazing projects face with huge responsibilities and challenges but if they turn out to be feasible and their realization turns out to be possible, floating cities could be really a way to adapt to the effects of sea level rise caused by climate change. This thesis focuses on exploring the challenges that the OCEANIX project would face and proposes, comparing and analyzing, on a theoretical basis, technical and planning elements of the world first floating city design. Through this approach, this work aims to provide enough tools to allow the reader to formulate an opinion about the real sustainability and feasibility of this innovative floating city scheme

Feature Papers of Drones - Volume II

[EN] The present book is divided into two volumes (Volume I: articles 1–23, and Volume II: articles 24–54) which compile the articles and communications submitted to the Topical Collection ”Feature Papers of Drones” during the years 2020 to 2022 describing novel or new cutting-edge designs, developments, and/or applications of unmanned vehicles (drones). Articles 24–41 are focused on drone applications, but emphasize two types: firstly, those related to agriculture and forestry (articles 24–35) where the number of applications of drones dominates all other possible applications. These articles review the latest research and future directions for precision agriculture, vegetation monitoring, change monitoring, forestry management, and forest fires. Secondly, articles 36–41 addresses the water and marine application of drones for ecological and conservation-related applications with emphasis on the monitoring of water resources and habitat monitoring. Finally, articles 42–54 looks at just a few of the huge variety of potential applications of civil drones from different points of view, including the following: the social acceptance of drone operations in urban areas or their influential factors; 3D reconstruction applications; sensor technologies to either improve the performance of existing applications or to open up new working areas; and machine and deep learning development

Resilience The 2nd International Workshop on Modelling of Physical Economic and Social Systems for Resilience Assessment

JRC Directorate E – Space, Security and Migration has organized the 2nd international workshop on Modelling of Physical, Economic and Social Systems for Resilience Assessment in Ispra that will consist in more than ten sessions for three days of full immersion into this topic. Interest in resilience has been rising rapidly during the last twenty years, both among policy makers and academia, as a response to increasing concern about the potential effect of shocks to individuals, civil infrastructure, regions, countries and social, economic and political institutions. The objective of the workshop is to bring together the scientific community and policy makers towards developing better policies and practices incorporating the element of resilience in various fields. This workshop has been organized in close collaboration with NIST and Colorado State University who organized in Washington on 19-21 October 2016 the 1st International workshop on the same subject. This is a follow-up of several similar events in this field. The JRC already organized a higher level event, the JRC-EPSC annual conference "Building a Resilient Europe in a Globalised World" in September 2015. These workshops aimed at identifying more strategic needs and provide an outlook of future actions. In addition, the JRC organized the first plenary session during the IDRC Davos 2016 conference entitled “Implementing resilience in a world of interconnectedness and emerging challenges” in which the JRC, NIST, Rotterdam city, the Dutch authorities and researchers from Japan presented their views and best practices on resilience implementation. Such an event constitutes an excellent opportunity for positioning JRC among the top institutions in resilience modelling with the capability to influence and steer the work of this community in close collaboration with recognized institutions around the globe.JRC.E.2-Technology Innovation in Securit

Sustainable Agriculture and Advances of Remote Sensing (Volume 1)

Agriculture, as the main source of alimentation and the most important economic activity globally, is being affected by the impacts of climate change. To maintain and increase our global food system production, to reduce biodiversity loss and preserve our natural ecosystem, new practices and technologies are required. This book focuses on the latest advances in remote sensing technology and agricultural engineering leading to the sustainable agriculture practices. Earth observation data, in situ and proxy-remote sensing data are the main source of information for monitoring and analyzing agriculture activities. Particular attention is given to earth observation satellites and the Internet of Things for data collection, to multispectral and hyperspectral data analysis using machine learning and deep learning, to WebGIS and the Internet of Things for sharing and publishing the results, among others

Interactive Demand Shifting in the context of Domestic Micro-Generation

The combination of ubiquitous computing and emerging energy technologies is radically changing the home energy landscape. Domestic micro-generation, dominated by solar photovoltaic, is increasing at a rapid pace. This represents an opportunity for creating and altering energy behaviours. However, these transformations generate new challenges that we call the domestic energy gap: domestic electricity consumption and microgeneration are out of sync. Micro-generation is mainly uncontrollable production relying on weather while domestic energy consumption tends to happen mostly during the evening. This thesis focuses on understanding and supporting new domestic practices in the context of domestic solar electricity generation, looking at ‘Demand-Shifting’. Specifically, we look at how can digital tools leverage Demand-Shifting practices in the context of domestic micro-generation? Relying on a mixed-method approach, we provide a qualitative and quantitative answer with the collaboration of 38 participating households in several field studies including two spanning more than eight months. Through a deep investigation of laundry and electric mobility routines in the context of domestic micro-generation, we emphasised a natural engagement into Demand-Shifting which appeared as a complex and time-consuming task for participants which was not visible when we analysed their quantitative data. We revealed this complexity through Participatory Data Analyses, a method we designed to analyse the data in collaboration with the participating householders. This provided us with a comprehensive view of the relationship between domestic micro-generation and daily routines. Finally, we highlight the need for timely and contextual support through the deployment of interventions in-the-wild. Building on discussions of our findings in perspective of the literature, we propose a conceptual framework to support domestic interactive Demand-Shifting