43 research outputs found

    Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present

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    This is the final version. Available on open access from MDPI via the DOI in this recordThis is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/Manifestos Ancient Present)This volume brings together the work of practitioners, communities, artists and other researchers from multiple disciplines. Seeking to provoke a discourse around displacement within and beyond the field of Humanities, it positions historical cases and debates, some reaching into the ancient past, within diverse geo-chronological contexts and current world urgencies. In adopting an innovative dialogic structure, between practitioners on the ground - from architects and urban planners to artists - and academics working across subject areas, the volume is a proposition to: remap priorities for current research agendas; open up disciplines, critically analysing their approaches; address the socio-political responsibilities that we have as scholars and practitioners; and provide an alternative site of discourse for contemporary concerns about displacement. Ultimately, this volume aims to provoke future work and collaborations - hence, manifestos - not only in the historical and literary fields, but wider research concerned with human mobility and the challenges confronting people who are out of place of rights, protection and belonging

    A review of the housing market-clearing process in integrated land-use and transport models

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    The land-use/transport interaction (LUTI) modeling framework has become the current state of best practice for analyzing the interdependency between the land-use and transportation systems. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the housing market-clearing mechanisms used in operational LUTI models. Market clearing is a critical component of modeling housing markets, but a systematic review and critique of the current state of the art have not previously been undertaken. In the review paper, the theoretical foundations for modeling household location choice are reviewed, including bid-rent and random utility theories. Five LUTI models are discussed in detail: two equilibrium models, MUSSA and RELU-TRAN, and three dynamic disequilibrium models, UrbanSim, ILUTE, and SimMobility. The discussion focuses on the following key points: the assumptions embedded in the models, the aggregation level of households and locations, computational cost and operationalization of the models. One of the challenges is that there are rarely any empirical studies that compare the performance of equilibrium and dynamic models in the same study context. Future research is recommended to empirically investigate the pros and cons of the two modeling approaches and compare the model performances for their representativeness of real-world behavior, computational efficiencies, and abilities for policy analysis. More sophisticated studies about the impacts of agents’ behavior on the housing market-clearing process are also recommended

    Greening Cities Shaping Cities

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    The topic of pinpointing Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in the urban context has been cultivating interest lately from different scholars, urban planning practitioners and policymakers. This Special Issue originates from the Greening Cities Shaping Cities Symposium held at the Politecnico di Milano (12–13 October 2020), aiming at bridging the gap between the science and practice of implementing NBS in the built environment, as well as highlighting the importance of citizen participation in shared governance and policy making. The Special Issue received contributions from all over the world, from Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, Brazil, Portugal, Denmark, France, Bulgaria, Sweden, Hungary, Spain, the UAE, the UK, and the USA

    Greening Cities Shaping Cities: Pinpointing Nature-Based Solutions in Cities between Shared Governance and Citizen Participation

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    The topic of pinpointing Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in the urban context has been cultivating interests lately from different scholars, urban planning practitioners and policymakers. This Special Issue originates from the Greening Cities Shaping Cities Symposium held at the Politecnico di Milano (12–13 October 2020), aiming at bridging the gap between the science and practice of implementing NBS in the built environment, as well as highlighting the importance of citizen participation in shared governance and policy making. The Special Issue was also made open to other contributions from outside the symposium in order to allow for contributions from a major scientific and practical audience wherever possible. Indeed, we have gathered contributions from Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, Brazil, Portugal, Denmark, France, Bulgaria, Sweden, Hungary, Spain, the UAE, the UK, and the USA

    An overview of agent-based traffic simulators

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    Individual traffic significantly contributes to climate change and environmental degradation. Therefore, innovation in sustainable mobility is gaining importance as it helps to reduce environmental pollution. However, effects of new ideas in mobility are difficult to estimate in advance and strongly depend on the individual traffic participants. The application of agent technology is particularly promising as it focuses on modelling heterogeneous individual preferences and behaviours. In this paper, we show how agent-based models are particularly suitable to address three pressing research topics in mobility: 1. Social dilemmas in resource utilisation; 2. Digital connectivity; and 3. New forms of mobility. We then explain how the features of several agent-based simulators are suitable for addressing these topics. We assess the capability of simulators to model individual travel behaviour, discussing implemented features and identifying gaps in functionality that we consider important

    Towards a Value Sensitive Design Framework for Attaining Meaningful Human Control over Autonomous Weapons Systems

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    The international debate on the ethics and legality of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) as well as the call for a ban are primarily focused on the nebulous concept of fully autonomous AWS. More specifically, on AWS that are capable of target selection and engagement without human supervision or control. This thesis argues that such a conception of autonomy is divorced both from military planning and decision-making operations as well as the design requirements that govern AWS engineering and subsequently the tracking and tracing of moral responsibility. To do this, this thesis marries two different levels of meaningful human control (MHC), termed levels of abstraction, to couple military operations with design ethics. In doing so, this thesis argues that the contentious notion of ‘full’ autonomy is not problematic under this two-tiered understanding of MHC. It proceeds to propose the value sensitive design (VSD) approach as a means for designing for MHC

    Institutionalising smart city research and innovation: from fuzzy definitions to real-life experiments

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    By exploring and defining characteristics of a smart city research and innovation centre, we contribute to the discussion on smart city development capacity. To do so, using a qualitative method, we review definitions of the concept and map international groups and institutes affiliated with this domain. Our main result is an overview of global research centres dealing with smart cities. One of the key implications of this paper is that instead of a strict definition, the important aspect appears in the framing provided by the complex real-life challenges that require and enable cross-disciplinary research, even though the concept keeps evolving

    Agent-based modelling – a new method for investigating environmental problems

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    The agent-based modelling (ABM) represents a newly emerged domain with multiple applications. They started to develop in late 1940’s and they reached maturity in 2000’s – 2010’s. Nowadays, more and more studies are being made using ABM, proving that they are a powerful tool in exploring patterns, interactions and behaviours. As their name suggest, they rely on agents. There is still no formal definition for agents, but they are considered to be autonomous entities, capable of having a certain behaviour and to interact with other agents and/or with the environment they belong to. The environment, the agents and the interactions established form the ABM. Even though this type of models has evolved from mathematics, thanks to computer development, and especially computer graphics, they now offer the possibility to visually explore certain behaviours and to identify a pattern. Also, of great importance and contributing directly to the ABMs application expansion, is the development of a variety of toolkits used for designing agent-based models. Many of the toolkits are open source and continuously implement more simplified programming language. These are the main reasons for which ABMs are used nowadays in a very wide range of domains – from ecology to healthcare and medicine, from archaeology to stock markets, from combats and air traffic control to emergency situations, from social and natural sciences to robotics
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