Behavioural Contagion in Hong Kong Urban Space under Mass Psychological Distress.

Psychological factors affecting human behaviour ‘a priori’ are largely underestimated in the contemporary urban debate. Mass psychological distress is not considered as a factor affecting urban dynamics within city-spaces. This study compares activities, preferences, and psychological dynamics related to behavioural contagion theory towards urban spaces in Hong Kong before and after COVID-19. Results showed significant transitions in preferences among shopping malls and urban green spaces for stationary uses, paired with substantial changes at the destination decision-making process. Other than behavioural tendencies, these results provide directions for discussing the integration of mass psychological distress into future urban scenarios design.    Keywords: behavioural contagion, mass psychological distress, urban space, Hong Kong.    eISSN: 2398-4287© 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.   

Evaluating urban land carrying capacity based on the ecological sensitivity analysis: a case study in Hangzhou, China.

In this study, we present the evaluation of urban land carrying capacity (ULCC) based on an ecological sensitivity analysis. Remote sensing data and geographic information system (GIS) technology are employed to analyze topographic conditions, land-use types, the intensity of urban development, and ecological environmental sensitivity to create reasonable evaluation indicators to analyze urban land carrying capacity based on ecological sensitivity in the rapidly developing megacity of Hangzhou, China. In the study, ecological sensitivity is grouped into four levels: non-sensitive, lightly sensitive, moderately sensitive, and highly sensitive. The results show that the ecological sensitivity increases progressively from the center to the periphery. The results also show that ULCC is determined by ecologically sensitive levels and that the ULCC is categorized into four levels. Even though it is limited by the four levels, the ULCC still has a large margin if compared with the current population numbers. The study suggests that the urban ecological environment will continue to sustain the current population size in the short-term future. However, it is necessary to focus on the protection of distinctive natural landscapes so that decision makers can adjust measures for ecological conditions to carry out the sustainable development of populations, natural resources, and the environment in megacities like Hangzhou, China

Monitoring of the 2008 Chaitén Eruption Cloud Using MODIS Data and its Impacts

This chapter presents the monitoring of the 2008 Chaitén eruption cloud using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and its impacts. The 8-day MODIS data from 3 to 10 May 2008 were used to track the movement and dispersion of the eruption cloud of the Chaitén volcano in Chile following the eruption on 2 May 2008. For detecting volcanic particulates, the procedure is adopted based on the brightness temperature difference (BTD) algorithm, by which the thermal infrared channels were centered on 11–12 μm of multispectral satellite sensors. The BTD is generally negative for volcanic ash but positive for ice and water vapor. The eruption cloud was found to drift northeastward, eastward, and southeastward crossing the central and northern part of Argentina and over the Atlantic Ocean. The timing of heavy rainfall in South Africa during May–June, in central Australia during June 2008 and in Hong Kong during June (the wettest since record began in 1884), was considered to have been connected to the dispersion of the particulates from this Chaitén eruption to further impact downstream

Design of Rapidly Assembled Isolation Patient Ward – IT-Supported Collaborative Design Process between Architects and Medical Officers

An important feature of the 2003 SARS outbreak in Canada, Singapore, and Hong Kong was that many health care workers (HCWs) developed SARS after caring for patients with SARS. This has been ascribed to inadequate or ineffective patient isolation. However, it is difficult for dense cities to provide sufficient isolation facilities within a short period of time. This has raised concerns from the public for new strategies in the planning and design of isolation facilities. Considering that SARS or other infectious diseases could seriously damage our society’s development, isolation facilities that could be rapidly and economically constructed with appropriate environmental controls are essential. For this reason, the design team of the Department of Architecture collaborated with a special task force from the Faculty of Medicine, who are the frontline medical officers treating the SARS patients, to design Rapidly Assembled Isolation Patient Wards. Both architecture and medicine are well established disciplines, but they have little in common in terms of the mode of knowledge construction and practice. This induced much intellectual exploration and research interest in conducting this study. The process has provided an important reference for cross disciplinary studies between the architectural and medical domains

Analysis for Soil Moisture in Jiangsu Province, China, Using GLDAS Data

In this chapter, we present the analysis for the evolution characteristics of temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture. We choose a newly developed method that is based on the information flow (IF) concept to research the causality between annual mean temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture in Jiangsu province, China, from 1961 to 2011 by using the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS). The correlation and the causality of air temperature and precipitation on soil moisture were compared and discussed. The causality value of 0–10 cm layer is significantly different from zero, while the deeper, in comparison to the surface layer, is negligible. This result unambiguously shows the causality in the sense that the precipitation increase and the temperature decrease are causing the shallow soil moisture to increase. Temperature and all layers of soil moisture have a negative correlation, but precipitation inverses. Precipitation strongly has the greatest effects on soil moisture in the surface layer, though the rest layers are not obvious

Detection and Statistics of Offshore Aquaculture Rafts in Coastal Waters

Offshore aquaculture is critical for a marine fishery economy. The spatial distribution of aquaculture that characterizes it plays a vital role in the sustainable development of marine resources and the protection of the marine environment. In recent years, China’s aquaculture has developed rapidly; specifically, the scale of aquaculture has dramatically expanded, and large-scale aquaculture has gradually grown in popularity. Although high-resolution satellite data can accurately extract aquaculture areas, the extraction of a large area of the sea area requires a copious amount of data. In contrast, medium-resolution satellite images allow for the extraction of aquaculture areas from large sea areas with a smaller amount of data, offering significant advantages. Therefore, we used Landsat8 satellite data to extract and count the number of aquaculture rafts based on the Hough transform and Canny edge detection methods. We tested the accuracy of this method by selecting Haizhou Bay as the study area for the experiment and accuracy verification and found that the automatic extraction accuracy for the number of aquaculture rafts was more than 90%. Additionally, we calculated statistics on the number of aquaculture rafts in Haizhou Bay over the past seven years. The findings presented in this paper offer a significant reference value for local marine utilization, marine environment protection, and marine disaster prevention and mitigation

Surface Urban Heat Island Analysis of Shanghai (China) Based on the Change of Land Use and Land Cover

In this paper, we present surface urban heat island (SUHI) analysis of Shanghai (China) based on the change in land use and land cover using satellite Landsat images from 2002 to 2013. With the rapid development of urbanization, urban ecological and environmental issues have aroused widespread concern. The urban heat island (UHI) effect is a crucial problem, as its generation and evolution are closely related to social and economic activities. Land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) is the key in analyzing the UHI effect. Shanghai, one of China’s major economic, financial and commercial centers, has experienced high development density for several decades. A tremendous amount of farmland and vegetation coverage has been replaced by an urban impervious surface, leading to an intensive SUHI effect, especially in the city’s center. Luckily, the SUHI trend has slowed due to reasonable urban planning and relevant green policies since the 2010 Expo. Data analyses demonstrate that an impervious surface (IS) has a positive correlation with land surface temperature (LST) but a negative correlation with vegetation and water. Among the three factors, impervious surface is the most relevant. Therefore, the policy implications of land use and control of impervious surfaces should pay attention to the relief of the current SUHI effect in Shanghai

Investigating Spatial Distribution of Green-Tide in the Yellow Sea in 2021 Using Combined Optical and SAR Images

Optical remote sensing is limited to clouds and rain. It is difficult to obtain ground object images in severe weather. Microwave remote sensing can penetrate clouds and rain to obtain ground object images. Therefore, this paper combines optical and microwave data to analyze the time and space of the green-tide in the Yellow Sea in 2021. Compared with a single data source, the distribution characteristics increase the frequency of time observation and show the green-tide changes in more detail. The continuous remote sensing observation time is 80 days. Ulva prolifera has experienced discovery (mid-late May), development (mid-late May to early June), outbreak (early June to mid-late June), decline (late June to mid-July), and extinction (late July to mid-August) in five stages; the development period drifts along the northeast direction, the outbreak period drifts along the northwest direction, the decline and extinction periods are mainly in the Rizhao and Qingdao waters. Ulva prolifera has a tendency to drift northward as a whole, drifting through Yancheng, Lianyungang, Linyi, Rizhao and Qingdao waters eventually landing on the coast of Qingdao and gradually disappearing

Analyzing the Effects of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) on Soil Moisture (SM) in Coastal Areas of Eastern China

In this paper, we applied the re-analysis data cobe-SST (cobe-sea surface temperature) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) surface soil moisture (SM) data from 1961 to 2011 by using regional correlation analysis and time series causality analysis to trace annual variations in and identify the abnormal relationship of sea surface temperature (SST) in the eastern China Sea and SM in eastern China (EC). We also used satellite Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) SST and AMSR-E SM data to examine the correlation of SST and SM in EC from 2004–2009. The results show that the SST in the eastern China Sea has experienced a warming trend since 1987, whereas the SM in EC has shown a drying trend since 1978. Before 1967 and after 1997, SST and SM changed during opposite phases, whereas from 1967 to 1997 they changed during the same phase. The differences between them may result from the abnormal summer precipitation causing abnormal SM. According to the regional correlation analysis, SST of the East China Sea is significantly related to SM in the southeast coastal area, and temporal sequence causality analysis shows that SST is correlated with and has higher influence on SM than vice versa. SM during spring and autumn shows a similar correlation with SST during the four seasons, so that SM in spring and autumn is positively correlated with SST in autumn and negatively correlated with SST in other seasons. SM in summer and winter correlated with SST in the four seasons, contradicting the foregoing conclusions. All these findings indicate that the thermodynamic state of the eastern China Sea has affected SM in EC