Identifying and comparing changes in the spatial concentrations of urban poverty and affluence: a case study of inner London

There is increasing interest, both academically and politically, in the spatial concentrations of poverty and affluence within cities. Although there has been a long history of research in this area, the majority of work has been concerned with poverty rather than affluence and has relied upon methods and measurement techniques that do not take into account the spatial concentrations of poverty. This research attempts to address this problem by measuring poverty and affluence using GIS and spatial statistical methods. By utilising contemporary census data and data collected by Charles Booth one hundred years ago, the research attempts to reveal the long-term changes in the spatial concentrations of poverty and affluence within inner London.     

A GIS-based multicriteria spatial decision support system for planning urban infrastructures

The planning of urban infrastructures has important spatial implications. The evaluation of alternative courses of action in this setting requires the explicit consideration of multiple criteria as they have important social, economic, and environmental effects. This paper presents a decision support system aimed at offering the users (e.g., government or municipal agencies) a flexible and user-friendly environment to provide decision aid in urban infrastructure planning. The visualization of available alternatives on maps provides a value-added for decision support processes in urban infrastructure evaluation problems. The development of this system has been motivated by a real world urban case study.     

Integrated modelling of urban spatial development under uncertain climate futures: A case study in Hungary

To provide fundamental decision support information for climate risk assessment in Hungary, an urban spatial development model of land cover change and population age structure dynamics was developed and applied to local integrated scenarios of climate change and stakeholder-derived socio-economic change. The four integrated scenarios for Hungary produced contrasting projections for urban patterns to 2100, but peri-urbanisation around Budapest was estimated to occur under all scenarios, together with a decline in working age population in the centres of the capital and major towns. This suggests that future urban planning needs to take into consideration the potential for underutilised urban infrastructure in the centre of the capital and pressures for social service provisioning in its outskirt. The integrated scenarios and model developed can be used in future studies to test the effectiveness of inter-sectoral policy responses in adapting urban planning to multiple climate and socio-economic challenges.     

Simulating the urban spatial structure with spatial interaction: A case study of urban polycentricity under different scenarios

Polycentric urban development is gaining momentum in both scholarly research and real-life practice. This brings new demand for planning support systems to simulate and analyse the urban spatial structure in terms of polycentricity under various urban policy scenarios. With the help of emerging urban data, urban simulation techniques, and network science, this study proposes a workflow to simulate the urban spatial structure with spatial interaction as a part of the planning support system. Using Singapore as a case study, this study has explored the resulting urban spatial structure with four employment distribution strategies. The results suggest that planning practices impact urban spatial structure and its spatial interaction by redistributing urban morphological elements, such as employment in this study. Also, our results show that the physical urban spatial structure and spatial interaction are closely related. These results reinforce the role of urban planning practice to achieve a more sustainable and coherent urban built environment. Through this empirical evidence, our workflow exemplifies the potential of the planning support system to help urban planners and governments understand their urban policy regarding urban polycentricity.     

Measuring accessibility of urban scales: A trip-based interaction potential model

In the interaction process of city space and citizens’ activity pattens, the regular travel behavior under the cumulative impacts of urban land use is required to be assessed. The aim of this study is to formulate and estimate attraction choice models that provide measurements of accessibility on various scales reflecting the choice of people to travel to facilities or activity places and characterize the interaction between land use patterns and transportation facilities. Based on a dataset inclusive of big data from varied sources, measurement methodologies are proposed encompassing the multidimensional aspect of the accessibility estimation issues. We sketch the characteristics of service facilities and travel impedance in the calibration processes. Logit models and gravity models are applied to simulate the impacts of different scales of trip length on the accessibility scores. Accessibility is aggregated over spatial elements of different scales and trips and herein the spatial accessibility of study zones is estimated as well as the potential of citizens’ travel choices and activity patterns. Such spatial interaction models have potential implication for enhancing our understanding of the cumulative environmental influences on citizen’s travel behavior and vice versa. It can be a substantial part of a more composed proposal of life convenience of residential citizens reflecting the happiness of living in an urban community.     

Energy load superposition and spatial optimization in urban design: A case study

Building energy consumption accounts for a large portion of total energy-use in a city or a regional district. However, energy load spatial distribution has seldom been considered during urban design phase. And energy conservation and energy efficiency measures pay more attention to individual building than buildings in a district or regional space as a whole. If buildings with different functions are mixed together and share same energy system, the savings on system capacity and peak electricity load can be significant. In this paper, a load superposition concept is proposed. The term ‘superposition’ refers to overlapping of energy demand load curves from different buildings and so that the total peak is smaller than the sum of individual peaks. Three spatial optimization methods of demand side load management and three different schemes of energy systems are proposed in this paper. And economic analysis is recommended to evaluate the different energy systems. The applicability of different approaches and the significance of load superposition was analyzed and elaborated through a case study to offer planners a feasible way for evaluating the potential of load spatial optimization.     

A hybrid model for real time simulation of urban traffic

In this paper a hybrid model is presented to predict the behavior of traffic in urban area. Intersections and on/off-ramps are modeled by Colored Timed Petri Nets while road links are modeled by a stochastic discrete time model. It is assumed that vehicle routings at each intersection are stochastic. A Particle Filter algorithm based on the hybrid model is developed to estimate the system state. The validation of the model by using real data is discussed. The limited computational effort required makes the model suitable to be used in simulation-based control schemes for urban traffic.     

User preferences, information transactions and location-based services: A study of urban pedestrian wayfinding

Though research into location-based services (LBS) is being carried out across a number of disciplines, user aspects of LBS remains a cross-cutting theme. In this paper, the research focuses on investigating the user information requirements from LBS at individual level, with emphasis on the interactive nature of information transactions between environments, individuals and mobile devices. Based on a proposed conceptual model, urban pedestrian wayfinding experiments have been implemented in an immersive virtual reality test environment. Automated and semi-automated methods of data collection have allowed an integrated picture of participant behaviour and information preferences to be constructed and analysed. The results of this study show that there are clear user preferences in information requirements in completing wayfinding tasks. However, changes in user preferences during the wayfinding tasks do occur in response to levels of confidence, different spatial layouts and the wayfinding situations individuals encounter. The outcomes indicate that the proposed conceptual interaction model and adopted implementation approach assist in understanding user behaviour and information preferences for LBS.     

Playful public participation in urban planning: A case study for online serious games

The aim of this paper is to study the implementation of online games to encourage public participation in urban planning. Its theoretical foundations are based on previous work in public participatory geographical information systems (PP GISs), play and games, with a special focus on serious games. Serious games aim to support learning processes in a new, more playful way. We developed the concept of playful public participation in urban planning, including playful elements such as storytelling, walking and moving, sketching, drawing, and games. A group of students designed an online serious public participatory game entitled NextCampus. The case study used in NextCampus was taken from the real-world question of a possible move of a university campus to a new location in the city of Hamburg, Germany. The development of the serious public participatory game NextCampus resulted in a physical prototype, user interface design, and a computational model of the game. The NextCampus game was tested with the help of two groups of urban planning students and presented to three external experts who provided valuable recommendations for further development. The critical comments questioned the level of complexity involved in such games. The positive comments included recognition of the potential for joy and the playfulness a game like NextCampus could evoke.     

Defining and characterizing urban boundaries: A fractal analysis of theoretical cities and Belgian cities

In this paper we extract the morphological boundaries of urban agglomerations and characterize boundary shapes using eight fractal and nonfractal spatial indexes. Analyses were first performed on six archetypal theoretical cities, and then on Belgium’s 18 largest towns. The results show that: (1) the relationship between the shape of the urban boundary (fractal dimension, dendricity, and compactness) and the built morphology within the urban agglomeration (fractal dimension, proportion of buildings close to the urban boundary) is not straightforward; (2) each city is a unique combination of the morphological characteristics considered here; (3) due to their different morphological characteristics, the planning potential of Flemish and Walloon cities seems to be very different.     

A systematic review of agent-based models for autonomous vehicles in urban mobility and logistics: Possibilities for integrated simulation models

This paper provides a systematic review of studies that model future autonomous vehicles (AVs) in urban mobility and logistics using an agent-based model (ABM). Eighty relevant papers published between 2015–2020 are included. This review evaluates the quality of each model through the newly developed AAODD (Autonomous vehicle Agent-based Overview, Design concepts and Details) protocol in four perspectives: model transparency, research questions, network + agent behaviour and model execution. Then, similarities and particularities of the papers are summarised based on whether AVs are used for passenger mobility or for freight logistics.The reviewed mobility papers exhibit the ABMs’ applicability and flexibility for studying different AV operational patterns. We summarise the respective modelling specifications in research questions, data collections, model platforms, model executions, and scenario variations. Overall, by combining AVs with different technical possibilities and operational strategies, the simulation results illustrate that AVs would bring vast benefits to urban mobility networks.Unlike AVs’ usage in passenger mobility, it is still unclear how AVs will serve future urban logistics demands. Many operational patterns, including unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous robots, autonomous trucks, and autonomous cargo-hatching vehicles coexist in the research community. The number of relevant papers remains low due to the early stage of AV technology deployment. However, ABMs also prove their applicability for analysing the macro and mesoscopic impacts of freight AV transportation on urban network. The reviewed papers suggest that implementing AVs for urban logistics is more efficient and environmentally friendly than conventional delivery vehicles.Overall, ABMs are a powerful tool for simulating future urban scenarios with AVs. By calculating the average score of reviewed papers obtained via AAODD annually, we find that studies simulating AV systems in ABMs are getting more complex by combing diverse technological possibilities, supporting the simulation of more realistic future scenarios. The outcomes of reviewed ABM research reveals that AVs are a promising solution for solving current urban transport problems. Lastly, as nearly all current reviewed studies focus on AVs’ usages in either mobility or logistics, research on an integrated simulation that combines AVs for both purposes has been scarcely addressed. We discuss its necessities, possibilities, and opportunities in this paper, to steer future research in this direction.     

Urban spatial configuration and socio-economic residential differentiation: The case of Tel Aviv

This paper compares the effect of two aspects of a city’s spatial configuration – spatial separation between areas and dissimilarity in spatial integration between areas – on socio-economic residential differentiation in the city of Tel Aviv, Israel. The integration analysis is based on the space syntax methodological–conceptual framework and focuses on Tel Aviv’s core, where the main socio-economic differentiations were identified.     

The use of spatial analytical techniques to explore patterns of fire incidence: A South Wales case study

The application of mapping and spatial analytical techniques to explore geographical patterns of crime incidence is well established. In contrast, the analysis of operational incident data routinely collected by fire brigades has received relatively less research attention, certainly in the UK academic literature. The aim of this paper is to redress this balance through the application of spatial analytical techniques that permit an exploration of the spatial dynamics of fire incidents and their relationships with socio-economic variables. By examining patterns for different fire incident types, including household fires, vehicle fires, secondary fires and malicious false alarms in relation to 2001 Census of Population data for an area of South Wales, we demonstrate the potential of such techniques to reveal spatial patterns that may be worthy of further contextual study. Further research is needed to establish how transferable these findings are to other geographical settings and how replicable the findings are at different geographical scales. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the current gaps in knowledge in analysing trends in fire incidence and proposes an agenda to advance such research using spatial analytical techniques.     

Object-based land cover classification of shaded areas in high spatial resolution imagery of urban areas: A comparison study

A significant proportion of high spatial resolution imagery in urban areas can be affected by shadows. Considerable research has been conducted to investigate shadow detection and removal in remotely sensed imagery. Few studies, however, have evaluated how applications of these shadow detection and restoration methods can help eliminate the shadow problem in land cover classification of high spatial resolution images in urban settings. This paper presents a comparison study of three methods for land cover classification of shaded areas from high spatial resolution imagery in an urban environment. Method 1 combines spectral information in shaded areas with spatial information for shadow classification. Method 2 applies a shadow restoration technique, the linear-correlation correction method to create a “shadow-free” image before the classification. Method 3 uses multisource data fusion to aid in classification of shadows. The results indicated that Method 3 achieved the best accuracy, with overall accuracy of 88%. It provides a significantly better means for shadow classification than the other two methods. The overall accuracy for Method 1 was 81.5%, slightly but not significantly higher than the 80.5% from Method 2. All of the three methods applied an object-based classification procedure, which was critical as it provides an effective way to address the problems of radiometric difference and spatial misregistration associated with multisource data fusion (Method 3), and to incorporate thematic spatial information (Method 1).     

Impacts of landscape structure on surface urban heat islands: A case study of Shanghai, China

Urbanization is taking place at an unprecedented rate around the world, particularly in China in the past few decades. One of the key impacts of rapid urbanization on the environment is the effect of urban heat island (UHI). Understanding the effects of landscape pattern on UHI is crucial for improving the ecology and sustainability of cities. This study investigated how landscape composition and configuration would affect UHI in the Shanghai metropolitan region of China, based on the analysis of land surface temperature (LST) in relation to normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), vegetation fraction (Fv), and percent impervious surface area (ISA). Two Landsat ETM+ images acquired on March 13 and July 2, 2001 were used to estimate LST, Fv, and percent ISA. Landscape metrics were calculated from a high spatial resolution (2.5 × 2.5 m) land-cover/land-use map. Our results have showed that, although there are significant variations in LST at a given fraction of vegetation or impervious surface on a per-pixel basis, NDVI, Fv, and percent ISA are all good predictors of LST on the regional scale. There is a strong negative linear relationship between LST and positive NDVI over the region. Similar but stronger negative linear relationship exists between LST and Fv. Urban vegetation could mitigate the surface UHI better in summer than in early spring. A strong positive relationship exists between mean LST and percent ISA. The residential land is the biggest contributor to UHI, followed by industrial land. Although industrial land has the highest LST, it has limited contribution to the overall surface UHI due to its small spatial extend in Shanghai. Among the residential land-uses, areas with low- to-middle-rise buildings and low vegetation cover have much high temperatures than areas with high-rise buildings or areas with high vegetation cover. A strong correlation between the mean LST and landscape metrics indicates that urban landscape configuration also influences the surface UHI. These findings are helpful for understanding urban ecology as well as land use planning to minimize the potential environmental impacts of urbanization.     

Agent-based modelling of the spatial pattern of leisure visitation in forests: A case study in Wallonia,south Belgium

The leisure use of forests is a fast growing sector in European tourism. The difficulties in monitoring real usage pattern have hindered communications in tourism, conservation and public health in forested areas. In this study, we present an agent-based model to approximate forest visit patterns at the regional level, based on the visitor, residential and forest attributes. The model was then adapted locally for Wallonia, south Belgium, to predict the daily distribution of forest visits and visitor flows. The results suggest high visit rates in urban forests. In highly attractive forests that are distant from major cities, the visit rates may greatly respond to the visitor-level and environmental changes. Future empirical investigations are encouraged to build a cross-contextual understanding on visitors' decision-making mechanisms and to identify how these mechanisms may be influenced by environmental factors operating at different spatio-temporal levels.     

基于多类别支持向量机的城市交通网络模式分类研究

在网络层次上进行区域交通信号控制、交通分配和路径诱导是缓解交通堵塞的有效途径之一。为进一步提高城市交通网络分类检测的准确性,将支持向量机（Support Vector Machine）应用于交通事件的模式分类研究。通过提出一种基于多类别支持向量机的交通模式分类方法,设计了适合该检测系统的网络结构。仿真结果表明：相对于其他算法,城市交通网络的状态可分为数量有限且不同类型的模式,并且这些模式不断重复出现,当系统识别出网络处于某种模式时,就可参照事先确定的优化参数及策略进行交通控制和诱导,以缓解交通拥塞,提高交通系统的运行效率。该网络结构对于小样本数据具有检测率高、误报率低的优点,完全适用于城市交通的模式分类,同时也存在不足之处,指出了今后进一步研究的方向。     

Synthesising carbon emission for mega-cities: A static spatial microsimulation of transport CO2 from urban travel in Beijing

Developing low carbon cities is a key goal of 21st century planning, and one that can be supported by a better understanding of the factors that shape travel behaviour, and resulting carbon emissions. Understanding travel based carbon emissions in mega-cities is vital, but city size and often a lack of required data, limits the ability to apply linked land use, transport and tactical transport models to investigate the impact of policy and planning interventions on travel and emissions. Here, we adopt an alternative approach, through the development of a static spatial microsimulation of people’s daily travel behaviour. Using Beijing as a case study, we first derive complete activity-travel records for 1026 residents from an activity diary survey. Then, using the 2000 population census data at the sub-district level, we apply a simulated annealing algorithm to create a synthetic population at fine spatial scale for Beijing and spatially simulate the population’s daily travel, including trip distance and mode choice at the sub-district scale. Finally, we estimate transport CO₂ emission from daily urban travel at the disaggregate level in urban Beijing.