Évaluation de la comptabilité visuelle des sites avec certains types d’activités

Cet article analyse le problème de l'élaboration d'une méthodologie qui tient compte de la compatibilité visuelle entre activités et paysages (sites) pour le choix de l'affectation d'une activité sur un site. Cette comparaison peut être effectuée par un citoyen et/ou un spécialiste, en se référant aux « qualités » esthétiques. Cette méthode peut faciliter l'intégration des facteurs esthétiques aux autres facteurs utilisés pour le choix d'un type de développement pour un site. Ceux-ci sont la rentabilité économique, les facteurs sociaux, « écologiques » et esthétiques. Cet article analyse spécifiquement 5 types d'activités étudiés sur 45 sites. On a interrogé 84 personnes sur les « qualités » esthétiques des sites. Pour ce faire, on a présenté des diapositives comparant un site avec un type d'activité pour connaître l'opinion des gens sur la compatibilité visuelle. Les résultats de ces tests furent structurés sous forme de matrices de préférence, pour lesquelles une mesure de consensus et d'uniformité fut calculée. Un rang relatif des sites fut déterminé selon une moyenne du nombre de fois que chaque site était préféré à l'autre site et le résultat fut donné sous forme d'une échelle algorithmique multidi-mensionnelle. En dernier lieu on a tenté de classer les sites en fonction de chaque activité.This paper addresses the problem of elaborating a practical methodology to establish land use landscape compatibilities based on the aesthetic values of laymen and/or specialists. Such a procedure can then be applied to the general problem of rationalizing economic, environmental, social and aesthetic factors to allocate competing land use activities to development sites. Specifically, the paper considers the allocation of 5 possible land use activities to a set of 45 sites based on the consensus of aesthetic opinions of 84 respondents. In order to collect opinions on the rating of each site for each activity within a reasonable length of time, transparencies of the sites and activities were used. Data from these tests were organized in the form of preference matrices for which measures of agreement and consistency were calculated. Relative ranking of sites for each activity was determined, based on the average percentage of times each site was preferred to each other site and the results of a multidimensional scaling algorithm. An attempt was then made to allocate sites to specific activities

Flood vulnerability and risk assessment of urban traditional buildings in a heritage district of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Flood hazard is increasing in frequency and magnitude in major South East Asian metropolitan areas due to fast urban development and changes in climate, threatening people's property and life. Typically, flood management actions are mostly focused on large-scale defences, such as river embankments or discharge channels or tunnels. However, these are difficult to implement in town centres without affecting the value of their heritage districts and might not provide sufficient mitigation. Therefore, urban heritage buildings may become vulnerable to flood events, even when they were originally designed and built with intrinsic resilient measures, based on the local knowledge of the natural environment and its threats at the time. Their aesthetic and cultural and economic values mean that they can represent a proportionally high contribution to losses in any event. Hence it is worth investigating more localized, tailored mitigation measures. Vulnerability assessment studies are essential to inform the feasibility and development of such strategies. In this study we propose a multilevel methodology to assess the flood vulnerability and risk of residential buildings in an area of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, characterized by traditional timber housing. The multiscale flood vulnerability model is based on a wide range of parameters, covering building-specific parameters, neighbourhood conditions and catchment area conditions. The obtained vulnerability index shows the ability to reflect different exposure by different building types and their relative locations. The vulnerability model is combined with high-resolution fluvial and pluvial flood maps providing scenario events with 0.1 % annual exceedance probability (AEP). A damage function of generic applicability is developed to compute the economic losses at individual building and sample levels. The study provides evidence that results obtained for a small district can be scaled up to the city level, to inform both generic and specific protection strategies

Flood Vulnerability Assessment of Urban Traditional Buildings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Flood hazard is increasing in frequency and magnitude in Southeast Asia major metropolitan areas due to the effects of fast urban development and changes in climate, threatening people's properties and life. Typically, flood management actions are mostly focused on large scale defenses, such as river embankments or discharge channels or tunnels. However, these are difficult to implement in historic centres without disturbing their heritage value, and might not provide sufficient mitigation in these areas. Therefore urban heritage buildings may be particularly exposed to flood events, even when they were originally designed and built with intrinsic resilient measures, based on the local knowledge of the natural environment and its threats at the time. Their attractiveness, cultural and economic values, means that they can represent a proportionally high contribution to losses of any event. Hence it is worth to pursue more localised, tailored, mitigation measures. Vulnerability assessment studies are essential to inform the feasibility and development of such strategies. In the present paper we propose a multi-level methodology to assess the flood vulnerability of residential buildings in an area of Kuala Lumpur Malaysia characterised by traditional timber housing. The multi-scale flood vulnerability model is based on a wide range of parameters, covering building specific parameters, neighbourhood conditions and catchment area condition. Parameters for 163 buildings were measured in detail by a field surveys integrated with Google Street View. The vulnerability model is combined with high resolution fluvial and pluvial flood maps providing likely water depths for a range of different flood return periods. The obtained vulnerability index shows ability to reflect different exposure by different building types and their relative locations. The study provides evidence that results obtained for a small district can be scaled up at city level, to inform both generic and specific protection strategies. The paper discusses these in relation to a scenario event of 0.1 % Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP), based on hydrological and hydraulic models developed for the Disaster Resilient Cities Project

On the strong energy dependence of the e^+e^- to ppbar amplitude near threshold

We study the energy dependence of the e^+e^- to ppbar cross section close to the two-nucleon threshold, recently reported by the BaBar collaboration. Our analysis also includes the pbarp to e^+e^- data collected by PS170 collaboration and the e^+e^- to NNbar data from the FENICE collaboration. We show that the near-threshold enhancement in the e^+e^- to ppbar cross section can be explained by the final-state interaction between proton and antiproton in the 3S1 partial wave, utilizing the Juelich nucleon-antinucleon model. As a consequence, the strong dependence of the proton electromagnetic form factors on the momentum transfer close to the two-nucleon threshold is presumably also driven by this final-state interaction effect. This result is in line with our previous studies of the near-threshold enhancement of the ppbar invariant mass spectrum seen in the J/Psi to gamma ppbar decay by the BES collaboration and in the B+ to ppbar K+ decay by the BaBar collaboration.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, Fig. 2 modified, conclusions unchange

Measurement of inclusive D*+- and associated dijet cross sections in photoproduction at HERA

Inclusive photoproduction of D*+- mesons has been measured for photon-proton centre-of-mass energies in the range 130 < W < 280 GeV and a photon virtuality Q^2 < 1 GeV^2. The data sample used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 37 pb^-1. Total and differential cross sections as functions of the D* transverse momentum and pseudorapidity are presented in restricted kinematical regions and the data are compared with next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD calculations using the "massive charm" and "massless charm" schemes. The measured cross sections are generally above the NLO calculations, in particular in the forward (proton) direction. The large data sample also allows the study of dijet production associated with charm. A significant resolved as well as a direct photon component contribute to the cross section. Leading order QCD Monte Carlo calculations indicate that the resolved contribution arises from a significant charm component in the photon. A massive charm NLO parton level calculation yields lower cross sections compared to the measured results in a kinematic region where the resolved photon contribution is significant.Comment: 32 pages including 6 figure

Measurement of the diffractive structure function in deep inelastic scattering at HERA

This paper presents an analysis of the inclusive properties of diffractive deep inelastic scattering events produced in $ep$ interactions at HERA. The events are characterised by a rapidity gap between the outgoing proton system and the remaining hadronic system. Inclusive distributions are presented and compared with Monte Carlo models for diffractive processes. The data are consistent with models where the pomeron structure function has a hard and a soft contribution. The diffractive structure function is measured as a function of \xpom, the momentum fraction lost by the proton, of $\beta$, the momentum fraction of the struck quark with respect to \xpom, and of $Q^2$. The \xpom dependence is consistent with the form \xpoma where $a~=~1.30~\pm~0.08~(stat)~^{+~0.08}_{-~0.14}~(sys)$ in all bins of $\beta$ and $Q^2$. In the measured $Q^2$ range, the diffractive structure function approximately scales with $Q^2$ at fixed $\beta$. In an Ingelman-Schlein type model, where commonly used pomeron flux factor normalisations are assumed, it is found that the quarks within the pomeron do not saturate the momentum sum rule.Comment: 36 pages, latex, 11 figures appended as uuencoded fil