Heat risk assessment for the Brussels capital region under different urban planning and greenhouse gas emission scenarios

Urban residents are exposed to higher levels of heat stress in comparison to the rural population. As this phenomenon could be enhanced by both global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and urban expansion, urban planners and policymakers should integrate both in their assessment. One way to consider these two concepts is by using urban climate models at a high resolution. In this study, the influence of urban expansion and GHG emission scenarios is evaluated at 100 m spatial resolution for the city of Brussels (Belgium) in the near (2031-2050) and far (2081-2100) future. Two possible urban planning scenarios (translated into local climate zones, LCZs) in combination with two representative concentration pathways (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5) have been implemented in the urban climate model UrbClim. The projections show that the influence of GHG emissions trumps urban planning measures in each period. In the near future, no large differences are seen between the RCP scenarios; in the far future, both heat stress and risk values are twice as large for RCP 8.5 compared to RCP 4.5. Depending on the GHG scenario and the LCZ type, heat stress is projected to increase by a factor of 10 by 2090 compared to the present-day climate and urban planning conditions. The imprint of vulnerability and exposure is clearly visible in the heat risk assessment, leading to very high levels of heat risk, most notably for the North Western part of the Brussels Capital Region. The results demonstrate the need for mitigation and adaptation plans at different policy levels that strive for lower GHG emissions and the development of sustainable urban areas safeguarding livability in cities

The data concept behind the data: From metadata models and labelling schemes towards a generic spectral library

Spectral libraries play a major role in imaging spectroscopy. They are commonly used to store end-member and spectrally pure material spectra, which are primarily used for mapping or unmixing purposes. However, the development of spectral libraries is time consuming and usually sensor and site dependent. Spectral libraries are therefore often developed, used and tailored only for a specific case study and only for one sensor. Multi-sensor and multi-site use of spectral libraries is difficult and requires technical effort for adaptation, transformation, and data harmonization steps. Especially the huge amount of urban material specifications and its spectral variations hamper the setup of a complete spectral library consisting of all available urban material spectra. By a combined use of different urban spectral libraries, besides the improvement of spectral inter- and intra-class variability, missing material spectra could be considered with respect to a multi-sensor/ -site use. Publicly available spectral libraries mostly lack the metadata information that is essential for describing spectra acquisition and sampling background, and can serve to some extent as a measure of quality and reliability of the spectra and the entire library itself. In the GenLib project, a concept for a generic, multi-site and multi-sensor usable spectral library for image spectra on the urban focus was developed. This presentation will introduce a 1) unified, easy-to-understand hierarchical labeling scheme combined with 2) a comprehensive metadata concept that is 3) implemented in the SPECCHIO spectral information system to promote the setup and usability of a generic urban spectral library (GUSL). The labelling scheme was developed to ensure the translation of individual spectral libraries with their own labelling schemes and their usually varying level of details into the GUSL framework. It is based on a modified version of the EAGLE classification concept by combining land use, land cover, land characteristics and spectral characteristics. The metadata concept consists of 59 mandatory and optional attributes that are intended to specify the spatial context, spectral library information, references, accessibility, calibration, preprocessing steps, and spectra specific information describing library spectra implemented in the GUSL. It was developed on the basis of existing metadata concepts and was subject of an expert survey. The metadata concept and the labelling scheme are implemented in the spectral information system SPECCHIO, which is used for sharing and holding GUSL spectra. It allows easy implementation of spectra as well as their specification with the proposed metadata information to extend the GUSL. Therefore, the proposed data model represents a first fundamental step towards a generic usable and continuously expandable spectral library for urban areas. The metadata concept and the labelling scheme also build the basis for the necessary adaptation and transformation steps of the GUSL in order to use it entirely or in excerpts for further multi-site and multi-sensor applications

Images of Industrial Life and Vocational Training: Scouting as a Liminal Space for Educating a Workers’ Elite in 1920s Luxembourg

This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely photographs of apprentices of the Luxembourg steel conglomerate ARBED, and analyzes how young workers are depicted in these images. The paper draws on a collection of 2,251 glass plate negatives (re)presenting ARBED’s industrial cosmos, including its vocational school the Institut Emile Metz. The roughly 160 images of apprentices contained in the collection put on display the apprentices’ bodies and a variety of activities in different contexts. The images’ contents testify to the institute’s programmatic hybridity and the constant (re-)mix of formal and semi-formal learning activities intended to educate natural, urban, mobile and communal men and future workers. Our focus is on Boy Scouts activities in a variety of different environments, which have functioned as a liminal space for educating a workers’ elite, mitigating the risks of industrialization and fostering social harmony and cultural belonging

Hautnah. Materialität der Moderne und sensomotorische Ansätze der Berufsbildung im "Zeitalter des Stahles"

Introduction: Das “Zeitalter des Stahles” In seinem Passagen-Werk, das der Überlieferung nach zwischen 1927 und 1940 entstanden ist, widmet sich Walter Benjamin den kunstvollen Eisen- und Glaskonstruktionen der Pariser Arkaden, die der modernen Großstadt nicht nur eine bisher unbekannte räumliche Atmosphäre gaben, sondern auch einen neuen Lebensstil prägten (Benjamin 1991). In der Tat wurden urbane Räume mehr und mehr durch bauliche und technische Raffinessen bestimmt, die, als Zeugen eines neuen Zeitalters, erst durch Werkstoffe wie Eisen und Stahl entstehen konnten. Im Jahre 1930 wurde vom Deutschen Werkbund, dem unter anderem Künstler, Konstrukteure und Architekten angehörten, der Band „Eisen und Stahl“ herausgegeben. Dieser enthielt 97 Schwarz-Weiß-Photographien von Albert Renger-Patzsch. Der Band machte bereits kurz nach seiner Publikation Furore und dokumentiert die herausragende Rolle der Photographie bei der Propagierung des neuen Zeitalters. Die Einleitung zu „Eisen und Stahl“ wurde vom damaligen Generaldirektor der Vereinigten Stahlwerke Albert Vögler geschrieben. Vögler (Renger-Patzsch 1930, S. 1 ff.) betonte den enormen kulturellen Einfluss von Eisen und Stahl, deren Materialeigenschaften seiner Auffassung nach nicht nur Alltagsdinge, Architektur, Technik und Ökonomie, sondern auch das intellektuelle Leben und die Ökologie ganzer Landschaften gravierend verändert hatten. Konsequenterweise bezeichnete Vögler daher das ausgehende 19. und beginnende 20. Jahrhundert als „Zeitalter des Stahles“ (ebd., S. 1), das er als eine grundlegend neue Welt beschrieb. Auslöser für diese neue Welt waren seiner Meinung nach spezifische Materialien, vor allem aber Eisen und Stahl, die unterschiedliche Härte- und Reinheitsgrade der Eisenerzverarbeitung repräsentierten und die nach und nach neue ästhetische Formen und menschliche Erfahrungen ermöglichten, welche wiederum vor allem von Ingenieuren, Konstrukteuren, Künstlern, Industriearbeitern und Angestellten geplant und ermöglicht wurden. Die rasant verlaufende internationale technische Entwicklung der Eisengewinnung und Stahlproduktion ermöglichte nicht nur die massenhafte Produktion von Waren und Gütern (bei denen Material, Form und Funktion auf neue Weise interagierten), sondern erschloss auch globale Märkte für Konsumenten. (...

Humanitarian Photography Beyond the Picture: David “CHIM” Seymour’s Children of Europe

This book chapter concentrates on photography as a technology that goes beyond the image. The chapter looks at documentary photography as an institutional and material practice of humanitarian ‘propaganda’ and discusses how notions of childhood intensified the urgency of humanitarian campaigns. It analyzes how UNESCO carefully selected and edited David Seymour’s photographs of children of war-devasted Europe, and how the organization adapted and exploited his photographs for its own ends. Besides tracing these practices of meaning making, the chapter also looks at the itinerary of one of Seymour’s most fascinating photographs and the different stories that have evolved around it to the present day. In a nutshell, the essay suggests that photographs, by both providing information and stimulating imagination, become actors of meaning making and storytelling. Photographs did not only help UNESCO manage public consent and add urgency to humanitarian causes; they also triggered public debate on social media, cooperated in historical research, and inspired literary work

The image of Industrial Life and Vocational Training: Scouting as Liminal Learning Space (Luxembourg, 1920s)

While there is a large body of research on corporate photography, little has been written about the visualisation of young workers. This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely photographs of apprentices of the Luxembourg steel-manufacturing conglomerate ARBED, and analyses how these young workers were visualised. The paper draws on a collection of approximately 2,250 glass plate negatives of ARBED’s industrial cosmos, originally stored at the company’s vocational school, the Institut Emile Metz, and now archived at Luxembourg’s Centre national de l’audivisuel (CNA). The roughly 160 images of young apprentices contained in the collection put on display the apprentices’ bodies and activities in various contexts and environments – in the classroom, the school yard, and the gym; in workshops and the institute’s psychophysiological laboratory; at the Belgian coast, in Luxembourg’s forests, and in urban spaces like London. A selected number of images were published in promotional brochures, showcasing these places, spaces, and activities and their different levels of “cultured” and “natural” properties. Thematically, the paper concentrates on (1) corporate photography as a means of identity formation by depicting apprentices in various places and spaces; (2) the creation of workers as cultured men and ideally educated workers through a diversity of recreational activities; and, most importantly, (3) the question of how leisure activities served as liminal spaces to stabilise the work sphere and how social and cultural belonging was visually forged between urban and natural landscapes, between industrialisation and ‘nature’ in order to make apprentices fit for Western industrialised societies. The images and their contents testify to a constant mix and re-mix of different learning environments intended to educate the natural, urban, mobile, and communal future worker in order to achieve societal harmony – also by including pre-industrial spaces and open-air activities as liminal spaces for experimentation that were set apart from the profane while mitigating the risks of industrialisation