Street-level desires, Discovering the city on foot:

In the spring of 2004, Delft University of Technology was approached by Norwich City Council with a request to participate in their project Spatial Metro. Spatial Metro was developed within the framework of Interreg IIIB. Interreg is a community initiative which aims to stimulate interregional cooperation within the EU, financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The programme aspires to strengthen economic and social cohesion throughout the EU by fostering the balanced development of the continent through cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation. The B strain of Interreg deals with transnational cooperation. As an Interreg IIIB project in the North-west European region, Spatial Metro brings together partners from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, The Netherlands and even Switzerland. The original Spatial Metro project proposal is straightforward. It claims that cities are chaotic places. It states that tourists, visiting business people, shoppers and even residents rarely have a clear or coherently expressed view of what a city has to offer geographically or thematically. The proposal assumes that people’s stay is shortened by their lack of overview of or information on what a town can offer them. As lead partner of the project, Norwich explains in quantitative terms what this means to the economy of a city: Visitors who plan a day trip to a city will stay in town for an average four to four-and-half hours and spend about £ 100. If the welcome they receive is inhospitable, the destination is confusing, and demands are not met, the same visitor will tend to leave after only two hours and spend less than £ 50. If their arrival is welcoming, the destination is safe, clean, relaxed and intelligible and if visitors can navigate their way around and their initial expectations are fulfilled or surpassed, they will stay for six to seven hours and spend more than £ 150. At first glance, these statements may seem somewhat narrow in scope. Not every city is chaotic and surely there is more to life than just money. However, placed in their proper context, these words make perfect sense. Five cities are participating in Spatial Metro: Norwich and Bristol (UK), Rouen (F), Koblenz (D) and Biel/Bienne (CH). Each of these cities is characterised by a historic city centre. Norwich itself is proud to have the most intact mediaeval street pattern of the United Kingdom. Mediaeval street patterns are the product of spontaneous urban growth and lack the sometimes rigid clarity of modern planned developments. Mediaeval street patterns are indeed difficult to navigate and pose a true challenge. Norwich also developed a successful and long-standing policy to prevent out of town shopping by strengthening the vitality of its original historic district. Such a policy requires a city to take a serious look at its economic performance. From this perspective, it is a sound approach to optimise conditions allowing people to discover a city on foot. As such, the Spatial Metro project prompted the Delft University of Technology to tap into a greater European experience that integrates aspects such as urban renaissance, built heritage, public space, pedestrian mobility, leisure economy and even sustainability. The partnership also included knowledge organisations. Each of these partners has supported the project in their own unique way. The University of East Anglia deployed its automated modelling software to visualise the original historic centres. The University Koblenz/Landau delivered a so-called Blue Box that provides on the spot information by means of Bluetooth technology. The Swiss Pedestrian Association made various contributions as a strategic and competent expert organisation on pedestrian mobility. The Delft University of Technology examined the question as to how to assess the effectiveness of the investments made in Norwich, Rouen and Koblenz. How can aspects like the accessibility and navigability of public spaces be measured? Much of the effectiveness hereof naturally depends on the way people use the public space. We used novel tools to analyse in detail the movement patterns of people visiting these three city centres. Finally, Delft decided to capture the essence of the Spatial Metro experience in a document reflecting the versatility of the transnational response to pedestrian mobility and the regeneration of the historic European city centre. The document became this book, ‘Street Level Desires’. The book aims to disseminate our experience and knowledge to further strengthen social and economic cohesion throughout Europe. &nbsp

Why GPS makes distances bigger than they are

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), are among the most important sensors for movement analysis. GPS is widely used to record the trajectories of vehicles, animals and human beings. However, all GPS movement data are affected by both measurement and interpolation error. In this article we show that measurement error causes a systematic bias in distances recorded with a GPS: the distance between two points recorded with a GPS is -- on average -- bigger than the true distance between these points. This systematic `overestimation of distance' becomes relevant if the influence of interpolation error can be neglected, which is the case for movement sampled at high frequencies. We provide a mathematical explanation of this phenomenon and we illustrate that it functionally depends on the autocorrelation of GPS measurement error ($C$). We argue that $C$ can be interpreted as a quality measure for movement data recorded with a GPS. If there is strong autocorrelation any two consecutive position estimates have very similar error. This error cancels out when average speed, distance or direction are calculated along the trajectory. Based on our theoretical findings we introduce a novel approach to determine $C$ in real-world GPS movement data sampled at high frequencies. We apply our approach to a set of pedestrian and a set of car trajectories. We find that the measurement error in the data is strongly spatially and temporally autocorrelated and give a quality estimate of the data. Finally, we want to emphasize that all our findings are not limited to GPS alone. The systematic bias and all its implications are bound to occur in any movement data collected with absolute positioning if interpolation error can be neglected.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, submitted to IJGI

Intervento del rappresentante degli studenti, dott.ssa Gisella De Rosa

Research presented in this paper was funded by a Strategic Research Cluster grant [07/SRC/I1168] by the Science Foundation Ireland under the National Development Plan. Special Issue: Web and wireless GISThe quantity and quality of spatial data are increasing rapidly. This is particularly evident in the case of movement data. Devices capable of accurately recording the position of moving entities have become ubiquitous and created an abundance of movement data. Valuable knowledge concerning processes occurring in the physical world can be extracted from these large movement data sets. Geovisual analytics offers powerful techniques to achieve this. This article describes a new geovisual analytics tool specifically designed for movement data. The tool features the classic space-time cube augmented with a novel clustering approach to identify common behaviour. These techniques were used to analyse pedestrian movement in a city environment which revealed the effectiveness of the tool for identifying spatiotemporal patterns.PostprintPeer reviewe

Interpreting Pedestrian Behaviour by Visualising and Clustering Movement Data

Recent technological advances have increased the quantity of movement data being recorded. While valuable knowledge can be gained by analysing such data, its sheer volume creates challenges. Geovisual analytics, which helps the human cognition process by using tools to reason about data, offers powerful techniques to resolve these challenges. This paper introduces such a geovisual analytics environment for exploring movement trajectories, which provides visualisation interfaces, based on the classic space-time cube. Additionally, a new approach, using the mathematical description of motion within a space-time cube, is used to determine the similarity of trajectories and forms the basis for clustering them. These techniques were used to analyse pedestrian movement. The results reveal interesting and useful spatiotemporal patterns and clusters of pedestrians exhibiting similar behaviour

Geo-Design:

Geo-Design. Advances in bridging geo-information technology and design brings together a wide variety of contributions from authors with backgrounds in urban planning, landscape architecture, education and geo-information technology presenting the latest insights and applications of geodesign. Geo-Design is here understood as a hybridization of the concepts “Geo” – representing the modelling, analytical and visualisation capacities of GIS, and “Design” – representing spatial planning and design, turning existing situations into preferred ones. Through focusing on interdisciplinary design-related concepts and applications of GIS international experts share their recent findings and provide clues for the further development of geodesign. This is important since there is still much to do. Not only in the development of geo-information technology, but especially in bridging the gap with the design disciplines. The uptake on using GIS is still remarkably slow among landscape architects, urban designers and planners, and when utilised it is often restricted to the basic tasks of mapmaking and data access. Knowledge development and dissemination of applications of geodesign through research, publications and education, therefore, remain key factors. This publication draws upon the insights shared at the Geodesign Summit Europe held at the Delft University of Technology in 2014. All contributions in the book are double blind reviewed by experts in the field

Spatial tools for diagnosing the degree of safety and liveability, and to regenerate urban areas in the Netherlands

This contribution describes the tool Social Safe Urban Design (SSUD), seen together with socio-spatial and linguistic challenges when applying space syntax in the regenerating of problem urban areas. The Space Syntax jargon is technical and needs to be translated into a language understandable and acceptable to stakeholders who are responsible for the implementation of improvement strategies acceptable for the users of a neighbourhood. Moreover, the degree of public-private interface between buildings and streets needs to be incorporated in the Space Syntax analyses. As it turns out from spatial analyses and crime registrations, there is a correlation between crime and anti-social behaviour and the spatial layout of built environments in the investigated eight pilot cases. Simultaneously, there is also a challenge to come up with locally and globally functioning spatial solutions for reducing opportunities for crime and anti-social behaviour for the neighbourhoods. Proposed solutions for three of these neighbourhoods are presented in this contribution

Sensing Human Activity: GPS Tracking

The enhancement of GPS technology enables the use of GPS devices not only as navigation and orientation tools, but also as instruments used to capture travelled routes: as sensors that measure activity on a city scale or the regional scale. TU Delft developed a process and database architecture for collecting data on pedestrian movement in three European city centres, Norwich, Rouen and Koblenz, and in another experiment for collecting activity data of 13 families in Almere (The Netherlands) for one week. The question posed in this paper is: what is the value of GPS as ‘sensor technology’ measuring activities of people? The conclusion is that GPS offers a widely useable instrument to collect invaluable spatial-temporal data on different scales and in different settings adding new layers of knowledge to urban studies, but the use of GPS-technology and deployment of GPS-devices still offers significant challenges for future research

Heart failure and promotion of physical activity before and after cardiac rehabilitation (HF-aPProACH):a study protocol

Abstract Aims Lifestyle changes, such as increasing physical activity (PA), are a cornerstone of treatment of patients with chronic heart failure (HF). However, improving PA in HF patients is challenging, and low participation rates for cardiac rehabilitation (CR) as well as relapse to low PA levels after CR are major issues. We designed a randomized controlled trial to investigate if PA monitoring with motivational feedback before and after centre‐based CR in HF patients with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) will lead to a clinically meaningful increase in physical fitness. Methods and results A randomized controlled trial will be conducted in a sample of 180 HFrEF patients (New York Heart Association Class II/III) who are referred to 12‐week standard CR. Patients will be randomized (2:1) to (1) standard of care (SoC) plus wearing a PA monitoring device (Fitbit Charge 3) with personalized step goals, feedback and motivation or (2) SoC only. The intervention lasts ±7 months: 4–5 weeks before CR, 12 weeks during CR and 12 weeks after CR. Measurements will take place at three time points. The primary endpoint is the change in the distance in 6‐min walking test (6MWT) over the entire study period. Other endpoints include step count, grip strength, quality of life and all‐cause mortality or hospitalization. Conclusions HF‐aPProACH will provide novel information on the effectiveness of remote PA stimulation and feedback before, during and after standard CR using a commercially available device to improve physical fitness in HFrEF patients

ICON.NL: coastline observatory to examine coastal dynamics in response to natural forcing and human interventions

In the light of challenges raised by a changing climate and increasing population pressure in coastal regions, it has become clear that theoretical models and scattered experiments do not provide the data we urgently need to understand coastal conditions and processes. We propose a Dutch coastline observatory named ICON.NL, based at the Delfland Coast with core observations focused on the internationally well-known Sand Engine experiment, as part of an International Coastline Observatories Network (ICON). ICON.NL will cover the physics and ecology from deep water to the dunes. Data will be collected continuously by novel remote sensing and in-situ sensors, coupled to numerical models to yield unsurpassed long-term coastline measurements. The combination of the unique site and ambitious monitoring design enables new avenues in coastal science and a leap in interdisciplinary research

Inherited variants in CHD3 show variable expressivity in Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome

Purpose: Common diagnostic next-generation sequencing strategies are not optimized to identify inherited variants in genes associated with dominant neurodevelopmental disorders as causal when the transmitting parent is clinically unaffected, leaving a significant number of cases with neurodevelopmental disorders undiagnosed. Methods: We characterized 21 families with inherited heterozygous missense or protein-truncating variants in CHD3, a gene in which de novo variants cause Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome. Results: Computational facial and Human Phenotype Ontology–based comparisons showed that the phenotype of probands with inherited CHD3 variants overlaps with the phenotype previously associated with de novo CHD3 variants, whereas heterozygote parents are mildly or not affected, suggesting variable expressivity. In addition, similarly reduced expression levels of CHD3 protein in cells of an affected proband and of healthy family members with a CHD3 protein-truncating variant suggested that compensation of expression from the wild-type allele is unlikely to be an underlying mechanism. Notably, most inherited CHD3 variants were maternally transmitted. Conclusion: Our results point to a significant role of inherited variation in Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome, a finding that is critical for correct variant interpretation and genetic counseling and warrants further investigation toward understanding the broader contributions of such variation to the landscape of human disease