Sustainable Spatial Planning based on Ecosystem Services, Green Infrastructure and Nature-Based Solutions

Theoretical and methodological contributions as well as critical discussions on policy implementation characterize this Special Issue, with special reference to the following themes and research questions: 1) Integration of ecosystem services within spatial plans and strategic environmental assessment: “What function do ecosystem services play, or could play, within plan-making processes and strategic environmental assessments?”; “What are the most important challenges in putting integration into practice, and/or the most significant obstacles to achieving integration?”; and “What roles do scientific and technical expertise vs. community values and local knowledge play in integrating ecosystem services within spatial plans and environmental assessments?”; 2) Consideration and use of green infrastructure within spatial plans: “What function do green infrastructure play within plan-making processes?”; “What kinds of spatial plans are most suited for, or most effective in, designing and implementing green infrastructure?”; and “Does scale (local, regional, etc.) make a difference in the way green infrastructure are implemented within spatial plans?”; 3) Relationship between nature-based solutions and spatial plans: “Since nature-based solutions are increasingly promoted at the very strategic level, i.e., that of broad policies, and implemented at the very detailed level, i.e., that of projects, what is the role of nature-based solutions within spatial plans?” and “What tools are at planners’ disposal to effectively integrate nature-based solutions in planning processes and promote their use, especially in urban contexts?”

Abstracts of the Second Urban Sound Symposium

Following the successful first Urban Sound Symposium held at Ghent University in 2019, the second edition in 2021 had to face the challenges of the pandemic. The symposium turned this challenge into an opportunity for giving easier access to practitioners and experts from around the globe who are confronted with urban sound in their professional activities. It was organized simultaneously in Ghent, Montreal, Nantes, Zurich, London and Berlin by researchers at Ghent University, Mc Gill University, Université Gustave Eiffel, EMPA, University College London and TU Berlin. The online event created opportunities for interaction between participants at poster-booths, virtual coffee tables, and included social activities

Neo-spaces for urban livability? Urbanites' versatile mental images of green roofs in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland

Within the context of enhancing sustainable and livable urban environments, one aim is to establish multifunctional green infrastructure (GI). We argue that in order to successfully plan and manage the development of GI, an inclusive and future-oriented stance concerning the needs and expectations of urbanites is required. By using green roofs as an example, the aim of this paper was to offer insights into how people envisage novel GI in urban environments and to reveal the scope of meanings and values people attach to these kinds of green infrastructure. We present results based on 149 stories collected with the method of empathy-based stories. Respondents were asked to use their imagination to produce mental images of not-yet-existing green roofs in different urban situations. Our results reflect a rich set of dimensions of green roofs that the respondents vividly imagined. Green roofs may contribute to the livability of urban areas in multiple ways, such as strengthening social cohesion, providing space for everyday renewal and restoration, offering interesting sceneries and multisensory experiences, softening the hard cityscape, showing ephemeral events and making experiences of "height" possible, as well as increasing the "contact with nature" experiences for residents, e.g. through biodiverse nature in the middle of built environments. Furthermore, the need for local, customized solutions that offer different benefits and experiences was expressed. Using both qualitative and quantitative analyses, we idealized four green roof meta-types for understanding the diverse expectations people may have for green roofs in urban area: Urban farm, Oasis, Urban hill and Meadow. Based on our results we suggest that comprehensive experiences and needs of people should be taken into account when designing urban green roofs or urban green in general not only, e.g. visual pleasure. Also, site- and user-specific solutions should be considered instead of generally applied ones. Our results offer tools for, e.g. urban planners to understand the value of diverse green roof solutions to the user. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe

ALT-C 2011 Abstracts

This is a PDF of the abstracts for all the sessions at the 2011 ALT conference. It is designed to be used alongside the online version of the conference programme. It was made public on 1 September, with a "topped and tailed" made live on 2 September

GIS in Healthcare

The landscape of healthcare is dynamic, gradually becoming more complicated with factors beyond simple supply and demand. Similar to the diversity of social, political and economic contexts, the practical utilization of healthcare resources also varies around the world. However, the spatial components of these contexts, along with aspects of supply and demand, can reveal a common theme among these factors. This book presents advancements in GIS applications that reveal the complexity of and solutions for a dynamic healthcare landscape

Contexts and Contributions: Building the Distributed Library

This report updates and expands on A Survey of Digital Library Aggregation Services, originally commissioned by the DLF as an internal report in summer 2003, and released to the public later that year. It highlights major developments affecting the ecosystem of scholarly communications and digital libraries since the last survey and provides an analysis of OAI implementation demographics, based on a comparative review of repository registries and cross-archive search services. Secondly, it reviews the state-of-practice for a cohort of digital library aggregation services, grouping them in the context of the problem space to which they most closely adhere. Based in part on responses collected in fall 2005 from an online survey distributed to the original core services, the report investigates the purpose, function and challenges of next-generation aggregation services. On a case-by-case basis, the advances in each service are of interest in isolation from each other, but the report also attempts to situate these services in a larger context and to understand how they fit into a multi-dimensional and interdependent ecosystem supporting the worldwide community of scholars. Finally, the report summarizes the contributions of these services thus far and identifies obstacles requiring further attention to realize the goal of an open, distributed digital library system

Geographic Information Systems and Science

Geographic information science (GISc) has established itself as a collaborative information-processing scheme that is increasing in popularity. Yet, this interdisciplinary and/or transdisciplinary system is still somewhat misunderstood. This book talks about some of the GISc domains encompassing students, researchers, and common users. Chapters focus on important aspects of GISc, keeping in mind the processing capability of GIS along with the mathematics and formulae involved in getting each solution. The book has one introductory and eight main chapters divided into five sections. The first section is more general and focuses on what GISc is and its relation to GIS and Geography, the second is about location analytics and modeling, the third on remote sensing data analysis, the fourth on big data and augmented reality, and, finally, the fifth looks over volunteered geographic information.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Arabic Fluency Assessment: Procedures for Assessing Stuttering in Arabic Preschool Children

The primary aim of this thesis was to screen school-aged (4+) children for two separate types of fluency issues and to distinguish both groups from fluent children. The two fluency issues are Word-Finding Difficulty (WFD) and other speech disfluencies (primarily stuttering). The cohort examined consisted of children who spoke Arabic and English. We first designed a phonological assessment procedure that can equitably test Arabic and English children, called the Arabic English non-word repetition task (AEN_NWR). Riley’s Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI) is the standard way of assessing fluency for speakers of English. There is no standardized version of SSI for Arabic speakers. Hence, we designed a scheme to measure disfluency symptoms in Arabic speech (Arabic fluency assessment). The scheme recognizes that Arabic and English differ at all language levels (lexically, phonologically and syntactically). After the children with WFD had been separated from those with stuttering, our second aim was to develop and deliver appropriate interventions for the different cohorts. Specifically, we aimed to develop treatments for the children with WFD using short procedures that are suitable for conducting in schools. Children who stutter are referred to SLTs to receive the appropriate type of intervention. To treat WFD, another set of non-word materials was designed to include phonemic patterns not used in the speaker’s native language that are required if that speaker uses another targeted language (e.g. phonemic patterns that occur in English, but not Arabic). The goal was to use these materials in an intervention to train phonemic sequences that are not used in the child’s additional language such as the phonemic patterns that occur in English, but not Arabic. The hypothesis is that a native Arabic speaker learning English would be expected to struggle on those phonotactic patterns not used in Arabic that are required for English. In addition to the screening and intervention protocols designed, self-report procedures are desirable to assess speech fluency when time for testing is limited. To that end, the last chapter discussed the importance of designing a fluency questionnaire that can assess fluency in the entire population of speakers. Together with the AEN_NWR, the brief self-report instrument forms a package of assessment procedures that facilitate screening of speech disfluencies in Arabic children (aged 4+) when they first enter school. The seven chapters, described in more detail below, together constitute a package that achieves the aims of identifying speech problems in children using Arabic and/or English and offering intervention to treat WFD

Public libraries, museums and physical convergence. Context, issues, opportunities: a literature review. Part 2

There has recently been a growth in physical convergence in cultural heritage domains. The second of a two-part article that considers this trend with particular regard to public libraries and museums provides an overview of factors to be considered by those planning or developing physically converged services. This has been achieved through thematic analysis of a review of international literature from both domains. It begins with consideration of obstacles to convergence, ethical challenges, organisational and strategic complexity, organisational culture and resistance. It moves on to discuss factors, general and physical, that can lead to success in convergence: vision, strategy and planning, communication and trust, for example, and, how these can be led and managed. It also considers the role of professional education and training, the benefits of convergence, for example, improved cultural offer and visibility, financial savings, with viewpoints from around the world. Part 2 ends with a critical note on the ‘convergence narrative’, and a conclusion that focuses on physical convergence which draws on both Parts