Troublesome trade-offs: balancing urban activities and values when securing a city-centre governmental quarter

Background Homeland security measures increasingly affect urban life and activities. Standoff distance, which prevents unscreened vehicles from approaching within a certain distance of a building, is a widely applied measure when protecting buildings against attacks with vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. This measure both is rather inexpensive and has few negative externalities when implemented in rural areas. Unfortunately, sites with protection needs often are situated in city centres. Methods We apply the so-called Security Function Framework to illuminate the externalities or the ‘troublesome trade-offs’ between protecting a high-value site against vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices and protecting other urban values. Results This paper demonstrates that standoff creates challenges for other important values, such as functional office spaces for all employees, deliveries and emergency vehicle access. Simultaneously, standoff creates opportunities for reinforcing social-responsibility requirements, such as accessibility for pedestrians and environmental considerations. Conclusions Security measures can have both negative and positive externalities and planning might alleviate some of the negative ones

The use of response surfaces in specifying transport strategies

Integrated transport strategies can involve a wide range of measures, each varying in the intensity with which it is applied. Objective functions can be specified to reflect public policy objectives, and their value will change as changes are made in the measures included and their intensity, generating a response surface. This process has been used in earlier research to identify the optimum combination of measures for a given objective function. In this paper the data generated is used to explore the shape of the response surface around the optimum as individual policy measures are varied in intensity. Results are presented for three cities, using different models. They indicate particular sensitivity to changes in pricing and service frequency, and greater sensitivity for economic objective functions than those which include environmental attributes. Performance is particularly sensitive when public transport is deregulated. Changes in objective function also lead to marked changes in the optimum values for pricing measures. Road pricing performance is very sensitive to the definition of the charging method. Response surfaces have been shown to be particularly useful in indicating sensitivity to a given policy instrument; in determining the loss of benefit if a sub-optimal level is required; and in assessing robustness of strategies against changes in objectives

The use of response surfaces in specifying transport strategies

Integrated transport strategies can involve a wide range of measures, each varying in the intensity with which it is applied. Objective functions can be specified to reflect public policy objectives, and their value will change as changes are made in the measures included and their intensity, generating a response surface. This process has been used in earlier research to identify the optimum combination of measures for a given objective function. In this paper the data generated is used to explore the shape of the response surface around the optimum as individual policy measures are varied in intensity. Results are presented for three cities, using different models. They indicate particular sensitivity to changes in pricing and service frequency, and greater sensitivity for economic objective functions than those which include environmental attributes. Performance is particularly sensitive when public transport is deregulated. Changes in objective function also lead to marked changes in the optimum values for pricing measures. Road pricing performance is very sensitive to the definition of the charging method. Response surfaces have been shown to be particularly useful in indicating sensitivity to a given policy instrument; in determining the loss of benefit if a sub-optimal level is required; and in assessing robustness of strategies against changes in objectives.

Data from: Intensity-modulated proton therapy decreases dose to organs at risk in low-grade glioma patients: results of a multicentric in silico ROCOCO trial

Background and Purpose Patients with low-grade glioma (LGG) have a prolonged survival expectancy due to better discriminative tumor classification and multimodal treatment. Consequently, long-term treatment toxicity gains importance. Contemporary radiotherapy techniques such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT), Tomotherapy (TOMO) and intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT) enable high-dose irradiation of the target but they differ regarding delivered dose to organs at risk (OARs). The aim of this comparative in silico study was to determine..