Road Safety from Cyclist’s Perspective

Road safety is an essential design requirement in planning processes of cycling infrastructure. An evaluation criterion for safety are accident statistics, but this criterion lacks reliability with regard to cycling accidents because many accidents are not documented. In addition, an exclusive view of accident statistics only is inadequate because road safety also includes aspects such as objective as well as subjective safety of cyclists. In order to consider the cyclist’s perspective in the planning of cycling facilities, an exploratory study, based on the concept of the Urban Emotions Inititative, was carried out in Augsburg and presented in this contribution. The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of cycling infrastructure on the cyclist's stress and the perception of safety. As a result, 1040 stress situations of 26 cyclists were measured over a distance of 5.0 km using biostatistical measurement technology. 347 stress situations refer directly to road infrastructure and perceived safety. In addition, data from traffic and urban planning as well as other self-collected data regarding objective traffic safety were used to assess the cycling infrastructure. The analysis of the study shows that the objective analysis of road infrastructure and the subjective sense of safety of the cyclists are in many cases corresponding. An interesting result was that stress situations can differ in the same types of cycling facilities. A conclusion for stress and perception of safety is that constructive detail is more detached from stress triggers than the type of cycling facilities in general. An important issue is surface design. Bumps, damaged pavement and tram rails are often stressful, especially in combination with other road users. There are no clear differences in the frequency of conflicts between car drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. The number of stressful situations, in which a pedestrian was involved, was slightly predominant. Stress situations were caused through inappropriate use of cycle lanes, problems with orientation, confusing paths and a lack of acceptance of some types of cycle facilities. Base for thiscontribution is the bachelor thesis Road Safety from Cyclists ́ Perspective (Schmidkunz, 2018)

Low-Cost-Workflow zum Laserscanning mit Smartphone und Tablet zur Effizienzsteigerung im Garten- und Landschaftsbau

Unter LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) Scanning wird eine Scanningmethode verstanden, welche auf Messung der Zeit zwischen Absenden und Auffangen des reflektierten Laserstrahls basiert (Petschek 2019). Die Technologie wird inzwischen in vielen Bereichen eingesetzt und ist unter anderem in einigen der neuesten Smartphones und Tablets seit 2020 verbaut. Aufgrund des niedrigen Investitionsaufwandes steht die Technologie der breiten Bevölkerung zur Verfügung und kann so auch von kleineren Firmen eingesetzt werden. Gerade für den Garten- und Landschaftsbau besitzt diese Technologie großes Potential, da die erreichbare Genauigkeit der Scans für die Planung im Garten- und Landschaftsbau ausreicht wie dieser Beitrag zeigt. Für kleinere Objektplanungen, z.B. ein Haus mit Garten wie hier im Beispiel, können die erforderlichen Flächen ausreichend mit den in mobilen Geräten verbauten low cost LIDAR-Scannern erfasst werden. Zudem sind die mobilen Endgeräte einfach zu bedienen. Die Ergebnisse des Scans können deshalb zur Dokumentation, als Planungsgrundlage für die herkömmliche 2D-Planung sowie für die 3D- Planung verwendet werden und bieten dadurch einen großen Mehrwert

Maintenance and Personal Safety in Neighborhood Parks: A literature and case study of MPSJ

This paper discusses the maintenance and procedure in Subang Jaya City Council (MPSJ), and on the effect on the perception of safety. Eight (n = 8) experts interviews and observations in three neighborhood parks were conducted. The findings emphasize that maintenance has significantly influenced perceived safety, and different environments have different impacts depending on context, topography, planting, and level of privacy. The location of neighborhood park (NP) 1 in a middle of housing areas and a university caters three end-users: residents, academic staffs, and students. The distinctive character of natural planting in NP3 created a different environment unlike NP2, where the planting is rather formal. Thus has considerably significant and laid different level of perceived safety. Keywords: Maintenance practice; perceived safety; expert interviews; urban parks and green spaces. eISSN 2398-4279 © 2018. 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.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ajqol.v3i13.16

Evaluating presentation formats of local climate change in community planning with regard to process and outcomes

This study synthesizes two evaluations of a local climate change planning process in a rural town in British Columbia (Canada), which was supported through landscape visualizations. First, the impact of the visualizations, based on scientific environmental modeling and presented in three different presentation formats, verbal/visual presentation, posters and a virtual globe, was evaluated with regard to immediate impacts during the process. Second, the long-term impacts on decision-making and actual outcomes were evaluated in a retrospective evaluation 22 months after the end of the initial planning process. Two results are highlighted: according to the quantitative pre-/post-questionnaires, the visualizations contributed to increased awareness and understanding. Most importantly, the retrospective evaluation indicated that the process informed policy, operational and built changes in Kimberley, in which the landscape visualizations played a role. The post interviews with key decision-makers showed that they remembered most of the visualizations and some decision-makers were further using them, particularly the posters. The virtual globe seemed to be not a "sustainable" display format suitable for formal decision-making processes such as council meetings though. That may change with the further mainstreaming of visualization technologies or mobile devices. Until then, we recommend using display formats that can be re-used following a specific planning event such as an Open House, to ensure on-going support for effective decision-making over the longer-term

Visual Climate Change Communication: From Iconography To Locally Framed 3D Visualization

Climate change is an urgent problem with implications registered not only globally, but also on national and local scales. It is a particularly challenging case of environmental communication because its main cause, greenhouse gas emissions, is invisible. The predominant approach of making climate change visible is the use of iconic, often affective, imagery. Literature on the iconography of climate change shows that global iconic motifs, such as polar bears, have contributed to a public perception of the problem as spatially and temporally remote. This paper proposes an alternative approach to global climate change icons by focusing on recognizable representations of local impacts within an interactive game environment. This approach was implemented and tested in a research project based on the municipality of Delta, British Columbia. A major outcome of the research is Future Delta, an interactive educational game featuring 3D visualizations and simulation tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation future scenarios. The empirical evaluation is based on quantitative pre/post-game play questionnaires with 18 students and 10 qualitative expert interviews. The findings support the assumption that interactive 3D imagery is effective in communicating climate change. The quantitative post-questionnaires particularly highlight a shift in support of more local responsibility

Prediction of the visual impact of motorways using GIS

Large scale transportation projects can adversely affect the visual perception of environmental quality and require adequate visual impact assessment. In this study, we investigated the effects of the characteristics of the road project and the character of the existing landscape on the perceived visual impact of motorways, and developed a GIS-based prediction model based on the findings. An online survey using computer-visualised scenes of different motorway and landscape scenarios was carried out to obtain perception-based judgements on the visual impact. Motorway scenarios simulated included the baseline scenario without road, original motorway, motorways with timber noise barriers, transparent noise barriers and tree screen; different landscape scenarios were created by changing land cover of buildings and trees in three distance zones. The landscape content of each scene was measured in GIS. The result shows that presence of a motorway especially with the timber barrier significantly decreases the visual quality of the view. The resulted visual impact tends to be lower where it is less visually pleasant with more buildings in the view, and can be slightly reduced by the visual absorption effect of the scattered trees between the motorway and the viewpoint. Based on the survey result, eleven predictors were identified for the visual impact prediction model which was applied in GIS to generate maps of visual impact of motorways in different scenarios. The proposed prediction model can be used to achieve efficient and reliable assessment of visual impact of motorways

Community-developed checklists for publishing images and image analysis

Images document scientific discoveries and are prevalent in modern biomedical research. Microscopy imaging in particular is currently undergoing rapid technological advancements. However for scientists wishing to publish the obtained images and image analyses results, there are to date no unified guidelines. Consequently, microscopy images and image data in publications may be unclear or difficult to interpret. Here we present community-developed checklists for preparing light microscopy images and image analysis for publications. These checklists offer authors, readers, and publishers key recommendations for image formatting and annotation, color selection, data availability, and for reporting image analysis workflows. The goal of our guidelines is to increase the clarity and reproducibility of image figures and thereby heighten the quality of microscopy data is in publications.Comment: 28 pages, 8 Figures, 3 Supplmentary Figures, Manuscript, Essential recommendations for publication of microscopy image dat