Modeling and visualizing urban sprawl and carbon footprints in Phoenix metropolitan area

Urban planners are dealing with problems of urban sprawl and CO2 emissions. The multidimensional character of these phenomena requires new analysis and visualization tools that are unavailable in platforms like the Geographical Information Systems (GIS). This paper, first, presents an approach for measuring and monitoring urban sprawl and carbon footprints. Second, it offers a three-dimensional visualization method that takes into account the multi-dimensional nature of the data. The visualization of the data is based on an intuitive approach involving B-Splines and Bezier techniques to create three-dimensional surfaces. Finally the paper introduces an analysis tool for planners and decision makers to examine household carbon footprints in relation to their direct spatial neighborhood based on unstructured census data

Visualization methods for sustainable planning

In urban planning, both measuring and communicating sustainability are among the most recent concerns. Therefore, the primary emphasis of this thesis concerns establishing metrics and visualization techniques in order to deal with indicators of sustainability. First, this thesis provides a novel approach for measuring and monitoring two indicators of sustainability - urban sprawl and carbon footprints – at the urban neighborhood scale. By designating different sectors of relevant carbon emissions as well as different household categories, this thesis provides detailed information about carbon emissions in order to estimate impacts of daily consumption decisions and travel behavior by household type. Regarding urban sprawl, a novel gridcell-based indicator model is established, based on different dimensions of urban sprawl. Second, this thesis presents a three-step-based visualization method, addressing predefined requirements for geovisualizations and visualizing those indicator results, introduced above. This surface-visualization combines advantages from both common GIS representation and three-dimensional representation techniques within the field of urban planning, and is assisted by a web-based graphical user interface which allows for accessing the results by the public. In addition, by focusing on local neighborhoods, this thesis provides an alternative approach in measuring and visualizing both indicators by utilizing a Neighborhood Relation Diagram (NRD), based on weighted Voronoi diagrams. Thus, the user is able to a) utilize original census data, b) compare direct impacts of indicator results on the neighboring cells, and c) compare both indicators of sustainability visually

Short-term functional adaptation of aquaporin-1 surface expression in the proximal tubule, a component of glomerulotubular balance

Transepithelial water flow across the renal proximal tubule is mediated predominantly by aquaporin-1 (AQP1). Along this nephron segment, luminal delivery and transepithelial reabsorption are directly coupled, a phenomenon called glomerulotubular balance. We hypothesized that the surface expression of AQP1 is regulated by fluid shear stress, contributing to this effect. Consistent with this finding, we found that the abundance of AQP1 in brush border apical and basolateral membranes was augmented >2-fold by increasing luminal perfusion rates in isolated, microperfused proximal tubules for 15 minutes. Mouse kidneys with diminished endocytosis caused by a conditional deletion of megalin or the chloride channel ClC-5 had constitutively enhanced AQP1 abundance in the proximal tubule brush border membrane. In AQP1-transfected, cultured proximal tubule cells, fluid shear stress or the addition of cyclic nucleotides enhanced AQP1 surface expression and concomitantly diminished its ubiquitination. These effects were also associated with an elevated osmotic water permeability. In sum, we have shown that luminal surface expression of AQP1 in the proximal tubule brush border membrane is regulated in response to flow. Cellular trafficking, endocytosis, an intact endosomal compartment, and controlled protein stability are the likely prerequisites for AQP1 activation by enhanced tubular fluid shear stress, serving to maintain glomerulotubular balance

Visualization methods for sustainable planning

In urban planning, both measuring and communicating sustainability are among the most recent concerns. Therefore, the primary emphasis of this thesis concerns establishing metrics and visualization techniques in order to deal with indicators of sustainability. First, this thesis provides a novel approach for measuring and monitoring two indicators of sustainability - urban sprawl and carbon footprints – at the urban neighborhood scale. By designating different sectors of relevant carbon emissions as well as different household categories, this thesis provides detailed information about carbon emissions in order to estimate impacts of daily consumption decisions and travel behavior by household type. Regarding urban sprawl, a novel gridcell-based indicator model is established, based on different dimensions of urban sprawl. Second, this thesis presents a three-step-based visualization method, addressing predefined requirements for geovisualizations and visualizing those indicator results, introduced above. This surface-visualization combines advantages from both common GIS representation and three-dimensional representation techniques within the field of urban planning, and is assisted by a web-based graphical user interface which allows for accessing the results by the public. In addition, by focusing on local neighborhoods, this thesis provides an alternative approach in measuring and visualizing both indicators by utilizing a Neighborhood Relation Diagram (NRD), based on weighted Voronoi diagrams. Thus, the user is able to a) utilize original census data, b) compare direct impacts of indicator results on the neighboring cells, and c) compare both indicators of sustainability visually

The cybermatrix protocol for multidisciplinary optimization of commercial transport aircraft

Cybermatrix is a novel approach to aircraft design through multidisciplinary optimization, developed within the DLR project VicToria. It combines three aspects: representing a design problem by an approximate Karush-Kuhn-Tucker system, distributing the rows of the system among disciplinary groups, and employing large computational resources and many humans experts in a parallel fashion. For demonstration an optimization of a long-range, twin-engine transport aircraft has been performed

The Cybermatrix protocol: a link between classical aircraft design and formal multidisciplinary optimization approaches

This paper presents the cybermatrix protocol, a novel approach to multidisciplinary design optimization in the contex of multiple-fidelity disciplinary analyses, many involved disciplines and high use of high-performance computing resources. The approach is presented from its formal mathematical background to actual on-disk implementation of running processes. As the demonstration case, a twin-engine long-range transport aircraft is optimized. Four disciplines are employed: overall aircraft wing planform design, aerodynamic airfoil design using 3D RANS computations, structural wing design using global shell-element FEM model, and loads selection and evaluation process based on low fidelity aerodynamics

Cybermatrix: A novel approach to computationally and collaboration intensive MDO for transport aircraft design

This paper presents an approach to multi-disciplinary optimization (MDO) of transport aircraft developed within the DLR project VicToria that attempts to strike a balance between two broad classes of MDO approaches: those arising from the formal optimization background, and those coming from the aircraft design background. It starts from the observation that any kind of numerical design process can be viewed as an approximation of a formal optimization process, where Jacobians of cost functions may be inexact and are often not explicitly computed. Based on that, a specific MDO problem representation and a highly parallel process assembly and execution protocol (the ``cybermatrix'' protocol) is defined, as well as one possible realization on high-performance computing (HPC) resources. The approach is applied to an optimization of a long-range transport aircraft, employing disciplinary subprocesses for high-fidelity aerodynamic design of wing airfoil shapes, structural sizing of lifting surfaces, and determination and evaluation of design loads

Cybermatrix: A novel approach to computationally and collaboration intensive MDO for transport aircraft design

This paper presents an approach to multi-disciplinary optimization (MDO) of transport aircraft developed within the DLR project VicToria that attempts to strike a balance between two broad classes of MDO approaches: those arising from the formal optimization background, and those coming from the aircraft design background. It starts from the observation that any kind of numerical design process can be viewed as an approximation of a formal optimization process, where Jacobians of cost functions may be inexact and are often not explicitly computed. Based on that, a specific MDO problem representation and a highly parallel process assembly and execution protocol (the ``cybermatrix'' protocol) is defined, as well as one possible realization on high-performance computing (HPC) resources. The approach is applied to an optimization of a long-range transport aircraft, employing disciplinary subprocesses for high-fidelity aerodynamic design of wing airfoil shapes, structural sizing of lifting surfaces, and determination and evaluation of design loads