Evolutionary urban transportation planning? An exploration

For urban transportation planners these are challenging times. Mounting practical concerns are mirrored by more fundamental critiques. The latter come together in the observation that conventional approaches do not adequately account for the irreducible uncertainty of future developments. The central aim of this paper is to explore if and how an evolutionary approach can help overcome this limit. Two core-hypotheses are formulated. The first is that the urban transportation system behaves in an evolutionary fashion. The second hypothesis is that because of this, urban transportation planning needs also to focus on enhancing the resilience and adaptability of the system. Changes in transport and land use development patterns and policies and in the broader context in the post-war period in the Amsterdam region are analysed in order to illustrate the two core-hypotheses. In the conclusions more general implications are drawn.evolutionary economics, urban economics, transportation planning

Rule-based cloud service localisation

The fundamental purpose of cloud computing is the ability to quickly provide software and hardware resources to global users. The main aim of cloud service localisation is to provide a method for facilitating the internationalisation and localisation of cloud services by allowing them to be adapted to different locales. We address lingual localisation by providing a service translation using the latest web-services technology to adapt services to different languages and currency conversion by using realtime data provided by the European Central Bank. Units and Regulatory Localisations are performed by a conversion mapping, which we have generated for a subset of locales. The aim is to provide a standardised view on the localisation of services by using runtime and middleware services to deploy a localisation implementation

Green buildings and design for adaptation: strategies for renovation of the built environment

The recent EU Directives 2010/31 and 2012/27 provide standards of nearly zero energy buildings for new constructions, aiming at a better quality of the built environment through the adoption of high-performance solutions. In the near future, cities are expected to be the main engine of development while bearing the impact of population growth: new challenges such as increasing energy efficiency, reducing maintenance costs of buildings and infrastructures, facing the effects of climate change and adjusting on-going and future impacts, require smart and sustainable approaches. To improve the capability of adaptation to dynamics of transformation, buildings and districts have to increase their resilience, assumed as ‘the capacity to adapt to changing conditions and to maintain or regain functionality and vitality in the face of stress or disturbance’ (Wilson A., Building Resilience in Boston, Boston Society of Architects, 2013). This paper describes the research methodology, developed by the Department of Architecture, a research unit of Technology for Architecture, to perform the assessment of resilience of existing buildings, as well as the outcomes of its application within Bologna urban context. This methodology focuses on the design for adaptation of social housing buildings, aiming at predicting their expected main impacts (energy consumption, emissions, efficiency, urban quality and environmental sustainability) and at developing models for renovation

INTEGRATION OF SERVICE LIFE IN THE PROCESS OF MANAGEMENT AND DESIGN OF BUILDINGS

This article approaches the regulatory framework on the service life of constructed assets and its integration into the management and design process of sustainable buildings. The importance of this study is to be found on the fact that currently, most of the building designers do not apply the integration and planning of service life into the process of management and design of constructions. Because of this, ISO (International Standard Organization) regulations are approached; said regulations are referred to the planning of service life of buildings, explaining and describing their relevance in the process of design. Basic principles of the sustainable planning, derived from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design® method in the United States and Canada, are presented as well as the relation with the aforementioned International Standard Organization regulations on the service life of buildings, specifically that of ISO 15686.Design process, Regulations, Service life, Sustainable building, Sustainable management.

Computerization of workflows, guidelines and care pathways: a review of implementation challenges for process-oriented health information systems

There is a need to integrate the various theoretical frameworks and formalisms for modeling clinical guidelines, workflows, and pathways, in order to move beyond providing support for individual clinical decisions and toward the provision of process-oriented, patient-centered, health information systems (HIS). In this review, we analyze the challenges in developing process-oriented HIS that formally model guidelines, workflows, and care pathways. A qualitative meta-synthesis was performed on studies published in English between 1995 and 2010 that addressed the modeling process and reported the exposition of a new methodology, model, system implementation, or system architecture. Thematic analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) and data visualisation techniques were used to identify and cluster the underlying implementation ‘challenge’ themes. One hundred and eight relevant studies were selected for review. Twenty-five underlying ‘challenge’ themes were identified. These were clustered into 10 distinct groups, from which a conceptual model of the implementation process was developed. We found that the development of systems supporting individual clinical decisions is evolving toward the implementation of adaptable care pathways on the semantic web, incorporating formal, clinical, and organizational ontologies, and the use of workflow management systems. These architectures now need to be implemented and evaluated on a wider scale within clinical settings

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

Good Governance: A Framework for Implementing Sustainable Land Management, Applied to an Agricultural Case in Northeast-Brazil

Land management needs to cope with persistent environmental and societal changes. This requires functional governance systems. The purpose of this research is to develop a good governance framework for the implementation of sustainable land management. Good governance theory is extensive, although its operationalization remains difficult. We derived a set of good governance attributes from the literature: (i) the functionality of the regulatory framework, (ii) the legitimacy and accountability of the actors, (iii) the fairness and transparency of the decision-making processes, and (iv) quality control and adaptiveness. These constitute a framework which, supported by guiding questions, facilitates the evaluation of governance attributes to assess sustainable land management practices. We applied the scheme to a case study in Northeast Brazil regarding sustainable land management where biological pest control is considered to be a biodiversity-related ecosystem service. Since its adoption often falls short of expectations, we scrutinized its governance system. First, experts answered our guiding questions, and second, we involved local stakeholders in the discussion of good governance attributes through the participatory approach of constellation analysis. Trust in agricultural consultants and issues of the practical application of pest control turned out to be crucial. The workshop participants requested a model farm to build more trust and experience. There was considerable demand for policy at the national planning level to formulate and monitor the content of the agricultural advisory program. Our conceptualized framework of good governance questions provides systematization for planning and steering the implementation of sustainable land management practices.BMBF, 01LL0904A, Verbundvorhaben INNOVATE: Nachhaltige Nutzung von Stauseen durch innovative Kopplung von aquatischen und terrestrischen Ökosystemfunktionen - Teilvorhaben 1: Verbundkoordination, Grüne Leber und ÖkonomieBMBF, 01LL0904E, Verbundvorhaben INNOVATE: Nachhaltige Nutzung von Stauseen durch innovative Kopplung von aquatischen und terrestrischen Ökosystemfunktionen - Teilvorhaben 5: BiodiversitätDFG, 414044773, Open Access Publizieren 2019 - 2020 / Technische Universität Berli