Game engines in urban planning: visual and sound representations in public space

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Utilisation du socle 3D CityGML Nantes - Secteur centre-ville

Ce rapport technique vise à rendre compte des premiers tests de la donnée à composante spatiale (socle 3D, couverture partielle du secteur centre-ville) transmise par Nantes Métropole et la ville de Nantes au CRENAU - UMR AAU en mars 2015

Is the noise still going on? Predicting repeat noise complaints with historical time course and random forest classifiers

Noise can have serious adverse effects on residents' physical and mental health. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Westminster in London has seen a continuous increase in noise complaints, with a significant number of repeat complaints from the same address within a short time scale. The authorities' ability to respond to complaints is challenged. This study explores a method for predicting and identifying repeat complaints to improve the efficiency of the authorities in dealing with noise complaints. Taking the noise complaint records of the City of Westminster during 2018–2022 as research objects, the research explores the cumulative distribution characteristics and clustering pattern of noise complaints in different spatial and temporal dimensions. On this basis, for a noise complaint from a specific address, the study fits random forest classifiers to predict whether the same address is likely to have another noise complaint in future time scales. It is found that about 18.5% of all complaints had at least one previous complaint at the same address in the previous 7 days; during the lock-down period caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, areas with active commercial activities and higher housing prices experienced a significant decrease in complaints, while areas adjacent to parks and green spaces can share a similar upward trend in noise complaints. Prediction of repeat noise complaints with random forest classifiers is proved feasible. F1 scores of models to predict repeat complaints within 0 to 2nd days, 0 to 7th days and 0 to 30th days in the future are 0.55, 0.66 and 0.75, respectively. Suggestions are provided for local authorities to improve resource allocation related to noise complaint management

How far is far enough? Towards an adaptive and " site-centric " modelling integrating co-visibility constraints for optimal land use

International audienceIn this article, we propose a renewed site-centric solution that allows us to characterize a specific region of interest by defining the extent of the surroundings that influence sunlight exposure. The proposed method is a mix of an adaptive refinement and a visual-based clipping technique. This method has been implemented in the SketchUp context and applied to three sites located next to the French historical thermal town of Aix-les-Bains

Off-label long acting injectable antipsychotics in real-world clinical practice: a cross-sectional analysis of prescriptive patterns from the STAR Network DEPOT study

Introduction Information on the off-label use of Long-Acting Injectable (LAI) antipsychotics in the real world is lacking. In this study, we aimed to identify the sociodemographic and clinical features of patients treated with on- vs off-label LAIs and predictors of off-label First- or Second-Generation Antipsychotic (FGA vs. SGA) LAI choice in everyday clinical practice. Method In a naturalistic national cohort of 449 patients who initiated LAI treatment in the STAR Network Depot Study, two groups were identified based on off- or on-label prescriptions. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to test several clinically relevant variables and identify those associated with the choice of FGA vs SGA prescription in the off-label group. Results SGA LAIs were more commonly prescribed in everyday practice, without significant differences in their on- and off-label use. Approximately 1 in 4 patients received an off-label prescription. In the off-label group, the most frequent diagnoses were bipolar disorder (67.5%) or any personality disorder (23.7%). FGA vs SGA LAI choice was significantly associated with BPRS thought disorder (OR = 1.22, CI95% 1.04 to 1.43, p = 0.015) and hostility/suspiciousness (OR = 0.83, CI95% 0.71 to 0.97, p = 0.017) dimensions. The likelihood of receiving an SGA LAI grew steadily with the increase of the BPRS thought disturbance score. Conversely, a preference towards prescribing an FGA was observed with higher scores at the BPRS hostility/suspiciousness subscale. Conclusion Our study is the first to identify predictors of FGA vs SGA choice in patients treated with off-label LAI antipsychotics. Demographic characteristics, i.e. age, sex, and substance/alcohol use co-morbidities did not appear to influence the choice towards FGAs or SGAs. Despite a lack of evidence, clinicians tend to favour FGA over SGA LAIs in bipolar or personality disorder patients with relevant hostility. Further research is needed to evaluate treatment adherence and clinical effectiveness of these prescriptive patterns

The Role of Attitudes Toward Medication and Treatment Adherence in the Clinical Response to LAIs: Findings From the STAR Network Depot Study

Background: Long-acting injectable (LAI) antipsychotics are efficacious in managing psychotic symptoms in people affected by severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The present study aimed to investigate whether attitude toward treatment and treatment adherence represent predictors of symptoms changes over time. Methods: The STAR Network \u201cDepot Study\u201d was a naturalistic, multicenter, observational, prospective study that enrolled people initiating a LAI without restrictions on diagnosis, clinical severity or setting. Participants from 32 Italian centers were assessed at three time points: baseline, 6-month, and 12-month follow-up. Psychopathological symptoms, attitude toward medication and treatment adherence were measured using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), the Drug Attitude Inventory (DAI-10) and the Kemp's 7-point scale, respectively. Linear mixed-effects models were used to evaluate whether attitude toward medication and treatment adherence independently predicted symptoms changes over time. Analyses were conducted on the overall sample and then stratified according to the baseline severity (BPRS < 41 or BPRS 65 41). Results: We included 461 participants of which 276 were males. The majority of participants had received a primary diagnosis of a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (71.80%) and initiated a treatment with a second-generation LAI (69.63%). BPRS, DAI-10, and Kemp's scale scores improved over time. Six linear regressions\u2014conducted considering the outcome and predictors at baseline, 6-month, and 12-month follow-up independently\u2014showed that both DAI-10 and Kemp's scale negatively associated with BPRS scores at the three considered time points. Linear mixed-effects models conducted on the overall sample did not show any significant association between attitude toward medication or treatment adherence and changes in psychiatric symptoms over time. However, after stratification according to baseline severity, we found that both DAI-10 and Kemp's scale negatively predicted changes in BPRS scores at 12-month follow-up regardless of baseline severity. The association at 6-month follow-up was confirmed only in the group with moderate or severe symptoms at baseline. Conclusion: Our findings corroborate the importance of improving the quality of relationship between clinicians and patients. Shared decision making and thorough discussions about benefits and side effects may improve the outcome in patients with severe mental disorders

Smoking status during first-line immunotherapy and chemotherapy in NSCLC patients: A case–control matched analysis from a large multicenter study

Background: Improved outcome in tobacco smoking patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) following immunotherapy has previously been reported. However, little is known regarding this association during first-line immunotherapy in patients with high PD-L1 expression. In this study we compared clinical outcomes according to the smoking status of two large multicenter cohorts. Methods: We compared clinical outcomes according to the smoking status (never smokers vs. current/former smokers) of two retrospective multicenter cohorts of metastatic NSCLC patients, treated with first-line pembrolizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy. Results: A total of 962 NSCLC patients with PD-L1 expression ≥50% who received first-line pembrolizumab and 462 NSCLC patients who received first-line platinum-based chemotherapy were included in the study. Never smokers were confirmed to have a significantly higher risk of disease progression (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.49 [95% CI: 1.15–1.92], p = 0.0022) and death (HR = 1.38 [95% CI: 1.02–1.87], p = 0.0348) within the pembrolizumab cohort. On the contrary, a nonsignificant trend towards a reduced risk of disease progression (HR = 0.74 [95% CI: 0.52–1.05], p = 0.1003) and death (HR = 0.67 [95% CI: 0.45–1.01], p = 0.0593) were reported for never smokers within the chemotherapy cohort. After a random case–control matching, 424 patients from both cohorts were paired. Within the matched pembrolizumab cohort, never smokers had a significantly shorter progression-free survival (PFS) (HR = 1.68 [95% CI: 1.17–2.40], p = 0.0045) and a nonsignificant trend towards a shortened overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.32 [95% CI: 0.84–2.07], p = 0.2205). On the contrary, never smokers had a significantly longer PFS (HR = 0.68 [95% CI: 0.49–0.95], p = 0.0255) and OS (HR = 0.66 [95% CI: 0.45–0.97], p = 0,0356) compared to current/former smoker patients within the matched chemotherapy cohort. On pooled multivariable analysis, the interaction term between smoking status and treatment modality was concordantly statistically significant with respect to ORR (p = 0.0074), PFS (p = 0.0001) and OS (p = 0.0020), confirming the significantly different impact of smoking status across the two cohorts. Conclusions: Among metastatic NSCLC patients with PD-L1 expression ≥50% receiving first-line pembrolizumab, current/former smokers experienced improved PFS and OS. On the contrary, worse outcomes were reported among current/former smokers receiving first-line chemotherapy

Soundwalking in virtual urban ambiances. Applying Game Engine Technologies in soundscape study

The purpose of this research is to develop a tool able to enhance the visual representation of urban environments through the auditory stimuli and dynamic components. Since the sixties, various qualitative studies have been conducted in order to reveal the role of the sonic environment in defining the physical and psychological wellbeing of the city-dwellers. Nevertheless, in urban planning practices and current regulations the sonic environment is often considered in term of pollutant (noise pollution) that need to be treated by applying quantitative approaches such as noise control strategies. The cause of this contradiction can be attributed, among other factors, by the lack of tools able to qualitatively describe the urban ambiances. The innovative technologies tested in this research, such as online location-based services and game engine systems, were used to develop devices able to provide a temporal and multimodal representation of the city. These devices explore the transposition, in a virtual environment, of the soundwalk conceived as an efficient technique for analyzing the sensible forms of the urban environment. The test of these digital tools allowed us to highlight limits and potentialities of the technologies employed

Ego-city. Automatic textual description of urban ambiences’ factors

Part of topic : Projecting and manufacturing the ambiances of tomorrowInternational audienceThe dual experience of the city provided by our connected devices can be used to create an alternative representation of the city. This paper presents a method to automatically translate the physical parameters, from a morphological analysis of the space surrounding the user along a path, into a textual description. As these physical parameters are those perceived by the pedestrian, this description can be used to provide a navigation system based on ambiences’ factors. The methodology and a case study of this approach are presented showing a promising and innovative wayfinding solution