Spatially explicit urban green indicators for characterizing vegetation cover and public green space proximity: a case study on Brussels,Belgium

ABSTRACT

Cities often have a substantial green infrastructure, which provides local ecosystem services that improve the quality of life of urban residents. These services should be explicitly addressed in urban development policies, and areas with insufficient vegetation and limited access to public green spaces should be identified. This paper presents two spatially explicit urban green indicators that are derived using remote sensing imagery, freely available map data and spatial analysis tools from open source geospatial libraries and commercial software. The first indicator represents proportional green cover (public as well as private) in the vicinity of each building within a city. The second indicator quantifies the proximity of public green spaces as walking distances from buildings to actual park entrances. A dasymetric mapping approach was used to take spatial variations in population density into account. This allows representing the indicators from the perspective of citizens instead of buildings, which may be more meaningful for deriving statistics at city level or at the level of neighbourhoods or administrative zones. The potential use of these indicators in a planning context is discussed on a case study carried out for the city of Brussels, Belgium.     

Understanding the interplay between bus,metro, and cab ridership dynamics in Shenzhen,China

The most common mass transit modes in metropolitan cities include buses, subways, and taxicabs, each of which contribute to an interconnected complex network that delivers urban dwellers to their destinations. Understanding the intertwined usages of these three transit modes at different places and time allows for better sensing of urban mobility and the built environment. In this article, we leverage a comprehensive data collection of bus, metro, and taxicab ridership from Shenzhen, China to unveil the spatio‐temporal interplay between different mass transit modes. To achieve this goal, we develop a novel spectral clustering framework that imposes spatio‐temporal similarities between mass transit mode usage in urban space and differentiates urban spaces associated with distinct ridership patterns of mass transit modes. Five resulting categories of urban spaces are identified and interpreted with auxiliary knowledge of the city's metro network and land‐use functionality. In general, different categorized urban spaces are associated with different accessibility levels (such as high‐, medium‐, and low‐ranked) and different urban functionalities (such as residential, commercial, leisure‐dominant, and home–work balanced). The results indicate that different mass transit modes cooperate or compete based on demographic and socioeconomic attributes of the underlying urban environments. Our proposed analytical framework provides a novel and effective way to explore the mass transit system and the functional heterogeneity in cities. It demonstrates great potential for assisting policymakers and municipal managers in optimizing public transportation facility allocation and city‐wide daily commuting distribution.     

基于引力可达性的公共服务设施公平性分析模型——以福建长汀为例

公共服务设施的完善配套已成为社会文明进步的标志,其空间分布的公平程度深刻影响着城市居民的居住环境和生活质量。本文引入了威布尔的引力模型,借助Arc GIS软件平台,尝试构建基于引力可达性指数的公共服务设施公平性分析模型,并以福建长汀为例进行了实证研究,以期为公共服务设施规划提供实用的分析方法和技术支撑。     

Network Density and the Delimitation of Urban Areas

This paper examines network analysis for urban areas. The research is focused on the problem of definition and visualisation of network geography and network spaces at different scales. The urban scale of analysis is examined and different spatial indices are considered. The built environment of the city is considered as a reference environment for a road network density index. The latter is implemented in order to study the spatial interactions between network phenomena and spaces and to provide further elements for the analysis of urban shape. The study is focused in particular on understanding spatial patterns drawn by networks and in helping with the delimitation of city centres. Different approaches are used to obtain the two indices: a grid–based analysis and a spatial density estimator based on Kernel Density Estimation. The two methodologies are analysed and compared using point data for the urban road network junctions and street numbers as house location identifiers in the Trieste (Italy) Municipality area. The density analysis is also used on road network junctions' data for the city of Swindon (UK) in order to test the methodology on a different urban area.     

一种中小城市实用WebGIS架构方案

分析了一些开源WebGIS软件的实现方式,并按目前中小城市地图发布的实际需求,提出了一种利用开源软件来搭建中小城市WebGIS的系统解决方案。该方案采用开放式的多层架构,遵从OGC的WMS实现规范,使用了新颖的客户端地图页面标签定制技术,极大地提高了系统的互操作性、可扩展性和可定制性,同时也提高了中小城市数字化、网络化的效率,并且对一些基于地图的企业级网络应用也具有一定的借鉴意义。     

Crowd sensing and spatiotemporal analysis in urban open space using multi-viewpoint geotagged videos

Increasing concern for urban public safety has motivated the deployment of a large number of surveillance cameras in open spaces such as city squares, stations, and shopping malls. The efficient detection of crowd dynamics in urban open spaces using multi-viewpoint surveillance videos continues to be a fundamental problem in the field of urban security. The use of existing methods for extracting features from video images has resulted in significant progress in single-camera image space. However, surveillance videos are geotagged videos with location information, and few studies have fully exploited the spatial semantics of these videos. In this study, multi-viewpoint videos in geographic space are used to fuse object trajectories for crowd sensing and spatiotemporal analysis. The YOLOv3-DeepSORT model is used to detect a pedestrian and extract the corresponding image coordinates, combine spatial semantics (such as the positions of the pedestrian in the field of view of the camera) to build a projection transformation matrix and map the object recorded by a single camera to geographic space. Trajectories from multi-viewpoint videos are fused based on the features of location, time, and directions to generate a complete pedestrian trajectory. Then, crowd spatial pattern analysis, density estimation, and motion trend analysis are performed. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can be used to identify crowd dynamics and analyze the corresponding spatiotemporal pattern in an urban open space from a global perspective, providing a means of intelligent spatiotemporal analysis of geotagged videos.     

基于域模型的城市空间网格划分

城市网格管理系统作为解决当前城管问题的一个有效手段,最基础的一步是划分空间网格,而城市区域的划分实际上是对其中分布的地理要素进行分区存储。通过对基于域模型的城市空间网格划分的重点分析,以建设部门推荐标准“城市市政监管信息化单元网格划分与编码”中七项原则为基础,提出了一系列以地理要素细分城市空间网格的方法,并给出了实验结果。     

The grey-green divide: multi-temporal analysis of greenness across 10,000 urban centres derived from the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL)

ABSTRACT

The presence of green spaces within city centres has been recognized as a valuable component of the city landscape. Vegetation provides a variety of benefits including energy saving, improved air quality, reduced noise pollution, decreased ambient temperature and psychological restoration. Evidence also shows that the amount of vegetation, known as ‘greenness’, in densely populated areas, can also be an indicator of the relative wealth of a neighbourhood. The ‘grey-green divide’, the contrast between built-up areas with a dominant grey colour and green spaces, is taken as a proxy indicator of sustainable management of cities and planning of urban growth. Consistent and continuous assessment of greenness in cities is therefore essential for monitoring progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11. The availability of multi-temporal greenness information from Landsat data archives together with data derived from the city centres database of the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) initiative, offers a unique perspective to quantify and analyse changes in greenness across 10,323 urban centres all around the globe. In this research, we assess differences between greenness within and outside the built-up area for all the urban centres described by the city centres database of the GHSL. We also analyse changes in the amount of green space over time considering changes in the built-up areas in the periods 1990, 2000 and 2014. The results show an overall trend of increased greenness between 1990 and 2014 in most cities. The effect of greening is observed also for most of the 32 world megacities. We conclude that using simple yet effective approaches exploiting open and free global data it is possible to provide quantitative information on the greenness of cities and its changes over time. This information is of direct interest for urban planners and decision-makers to mitigate urban related environmental and social impacts.     

Evaluation of Land Suitability for Urban Land‐Use Planning: Case Study Dhaka City

The aim of this research is evaluation of land suitability for urban land‐use planning. Four factors and fourteen criteria were selected for suitability analysis and land‐use planning. Factors and criteria were defined based on literature survey, experts’ opinions, local contexts and availability of data. GIS‐based Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used as a Multi‐criteria Decision Making model. The study was conducted on a selected area of Dhaka city, which is one of the fastest growing mega‐cities of the world. The research result shows that highly suitable area (13%) should be used for urban residential zone; moderately suitable area (35%) should be designated as mixed use zone; low suitable area (42%) should be reserved for agricultural use and open spaces; and not suitable area (10%) should be protected from any types of activities except agriculture. The research approached an urban land‐use planning at a regional scale.     

Assessment of changes in urban green spaces of Mashad city using satellite data

Green spaces play important functions in urban environments. Reducing air pollution, providing shade and habitat for arboreal birds, producing oxygen, providing shelter against winds, recreational and aesthetic qualities and architectural applications are the main functions of urban green spaces. With the rapid change of urban area in Mashad city during the past decades, green spaces have been fragmented and dispersed causing impairment and dysfunction of these important urban elements. The objective of this study was to detect changes in extent and pattern of green areas of Mashad city and to analyze the results in terms of landscape ecology principles and functioning of the green spaces. In this research, we classified a Landsat TM and an IRS LISS-III image belonging to the years 1987 and 2006, respectively. We then used a post-classification comparison to determine the changes in green space areas of Mashad city during the 19 years covered by the images. Then, we applied landscape ecology calculations to derive metrics that quantified pattern of the changes in the green areas. The results showed that during 19 years from 1987, a significant decrease had occurred in the extent of urban green spaces with a concomitant fragmentation resulting in downgrading and destruction of the functions and services these areas provide. We conclude that the general quality of life in the central parts of the city has been diminished. We also state that a combination of remote sensing image classification, landscape metrics assessment and vegetation indices can provide a tool for assessing life quality and its trend for urban areas.     

Development of CityGML Application Domain Extension for Indoor Routing and Positioning

CityGML is an open data model for storage and exchange of 3D city models. It is categorised into thirteen thematic classes, i.e., buildings, tunnels, bridges, etc., lacking the other themes such as indoor routing and positioning. With the amplified use of indoor routing and positioning, the need for prerequisite notion of detailed semantic, as well as geometric information of the 3D building data has grown. We intend to extend the CityGML schema to add attributes of indoor features using the facility of Application Domain Extension (ADE) provided by the OGC CityGML 2.0. In this study, we aim to showcase the formation of Indoor Routing and Positioning ADE along with the process concerning its development, such as the 3D model design, network dataset creation, routing, positioning and Unified Modeling Language based ADE application schema generation. This research would help the users to easily store and exchange 3D city data on which they can perform routing and positioning inside the buildings with enhanced semantic and geometric properties.     

Urban Open Space Study Based on Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems（GIS）

Open space is treated in many cultures as the common area where people conduct functional and ritual activities that bind a community in the normal routines of daily life or in penodic festivities.From the historical perspective,open space should be supportive,democratic,and meaningful.On the one hand,human culture shapes and reshapes its open spaces,whereas,on the other,open spaces can help to create a more humane culture.This duality suggests that the relationship of open space to public life is dynamic and reciprocal.New forms of public life require new spaces,and vice versa.     

A generic space definition framework to support seamless indoor/outdoor navigation systems

Contemporary public buildings are becoming conglomerates of open, semi‐open and closed spaces, with indoor, outdoor and underground sections. For humans and robots to navigate seamlessly through such environments, new flexible approaches need to be developed. Navigation systems generally rely on a network (nodes and edges) as an abstraction of underlying space availability. However, indoor and outdoor networks have different origins. While indoor systems rely on indoor space subdivision approaches, current outdoor systems utilize road‐based network approaches. Linking such networks via particular nodes is possible but restrictive. Many spaces in the built environment are not strictly indoor or outdoor spaces and are thus often omitted from navigation networks, further limiting navigation options. To overcome these shortcomings, we introduce a new space definition framework in which the entire built environment is categorized into indoor, outdoor, semi‐indoor and semi‐outdoor spaces. We provide strict definitions for the four space categories. Our framework allows the same navigation network extraction approaches to be used and therefore enables seamless indoor/outdoor path computation for single or combinations of locomotion modes. The notions of semi‐indoor and semi‐outdoor spaces offer new options for further tailoring of the navigation path with respect to environmental factors, which we demonstrate with two use cases.     

Finding outdoor boundaries for 3D space‐based navigation

Outdoor navigation is widely used in daily life, but faces various issues related to the fidelity of outdoor navigation networks. For instance, agents (pedestrians) are often guided via unrealistic detours around places without clear paths (e.g., squares) or if there are vertical constraints such as overpasses/bridges. This is partly explained by the fact that the main sources of navigation networks in current outdoor navigation are two‐dimensional road/street networks. Utilizing a three‐dimensional space‐based navigation model, compatible with some indoor approaches, is a popular way to address the above‐mentioned issues. A 3D space‐based navigation model is generated by treating 3D spaces as nodes and the shared faces as edges. Inputs of this model are enclosed 3D spaces (volumes). However, outdoor spaces are generally open and unbounded. This article puts forward an approach to enclose outdoor spaces and mimic the indoor environments to derive a network based on connectivity and accessibility of spaces. The approach uses 2.5D maps and consists of three major steps: object footprint determination, footprint classification and space creation. Two use cases demonstrate the proposed approach. Enclosing outdoor spaces opens a new research direction toward providing seamless indoor/outdoor navigation for a range of agents.     

带状工程平面位移监测技术方法的探讨

随着中国城市化进程的推进,城市人口激增,促使城市建设迅猛发展,特别是地铁工程建设的飞速发展,迫使工期急剧缩短。这对地铁工程的施工安全提出了新的挑战。近几年来,在各地加快地铁建设的同时,期间出现的事故相应增多,随着地面塌落、冒顶、透水等问题的出现,给建设单位、施工人员带来了巨大的安全隐患。本文结合近年来地铁的施工监测工作,介绍一种新的平面位移监测方法,对带状工程(长基坑或者U型槽)的平面位移监测方法进行探讨。     

“互联网+”城市智慧停车模式研究

当前,在中国快速城市化过程中,城市停车位"一位难求"和小汽车"无处安放"的矛盾日益突出。本文调研分析了目前城市停车位资源、停车现状及实际应用需求,研究了"互联网+"城市智慧停车模式,综合利用移动通信、GPS、GIS等技术,开发了城市智慧停车系统,汇聚城市中不同位置的停车场信息,实现停车位资源的实时更新、查询、预订、错时分享及停车位路线导航等服务。本文研究将高效地利用现有停车场和停车位资源,有效缓解停车供需矛盾,也将大大促进智慧交通、智慧城市的建设。     

多尺度地图空间居民地语义相似度计算方法

地图综合的本质是一种空间相似变换,制图者在相似原则的指导下实施概括,读图者从包含相似性的地图中形成心象地图、重构现实世界。因此,多尺度地图空间中的相似关系研究非常重要。然而,由于相似的可计算性差,且其计算的目的在于揭示更深层次的信息,地图综合中相似关系尤其是语义相似关系的研究相对较少。针对这一问题,本文以语义功能区约束下的大比例尺街区式居民地合并（1∶1750至1∶4000）为例,基于匹配距离模型计算建筑物合并中的语义相似度,得到语义相似度在关键比例尺节点的值,并对结果进行分析、评价。试验表明,语义功能区约束下的建筑物合并符合读图者的地图认知需求,本文所述方法有助于地图更好地发挥信息传输载体的作用。     

The Application of GIS in Education Administration: Protecting Students from Hazardous Roads

Though enrolment by proximity is an official educational policy in Iran, the lack of clearly defined school attendance areas has resulted in an informal open enrolment system where parents may choose public schools outside their residential areas. Two major consequences of parental choice are longer commutes to schools and increased use of motor vehicle transport. To delineate school attendance areas for public female junior high schools in the city of Rasht in Northern Iran, this research used the multiplicatively weighted Voronoi diagram (MWVD) technique to construct school attendance areas. The approach was shown to be useful in developing countries like Iran where accident fatalities are not only disproportionately high but the public school system lacks sufficient educational diversity to offset the societal costs of opting out of neighbourhood schools. A GIS-based specialist package was used for constructing the proposed school attendance areas. Given the MWVD utility in demarcating spaces so that all journeys within them are closest to a chosen point, the research concluded that proposed school attendance areas can result in shorter and more convenient commutes on foot for students. This can eliminate the need to travel by vehicle for the overwhelming majority of students and thus make their journeys more convenient and safer.     

A quantitative framework for analysing long term spatial clustering and vegetation fragmentation in an urban landscape using multi-temporal landsat data

Rapid urbanization threatens urban green spaces and vegetation, demonstrated by a decrease in connectivity and higher levels of fragmentation. Understanding historic spatial and temporal patterns of such fragmentation is important for habitat and biological conservation, ecosystem management and urban planning. Despite their potential value, Local Indicators of Spatial Autocorrelation (LISA) measures have not been sufficiently exploited in monitoring the spatial and temporal variability in clustering and fragmentation of vegetation patterns in urban areas. LISA statistics are an important structural measure that indicates the presence of outliers, zones of similarity (hot spots) and of dissimilarity (cold spots) at proximate locations, hence they could be used to explicitly capture spatial patterns that are clustered, dispersed or random. In this study, we applied landscape metrics, LISA indices to analyse the temporal variability in clustering and fragmentation patterns of vegetation patches in Harare metropolitan city, Zimbabwe using Landsat series data for 1994, 2001 and 2017. Analysis of landscape metrics showed an increase in the fragmentation of vegetation patches between 1994–2017 as shown by the decrease in mean patch size, an increase in number of patches, edge density and shape complexity of vegetation patches. The study further demonstrates the utility of LISA indices in identifying key hot spot and cold spots. Comparatively, the highly vegetated northern parts of the city were characterised by significantly high positive spatial autocorrelation (p < 0.05) of vegetation patches. Conversely, more dispersed vegetation patches were found in the highly and densely urbanized western, eastern and southern parts of the city. This suggest that with increasing vegetation fragmentation, small and isolated vegetation patches do not spatially cluster but are dispersed geographically. The findings of the study underline the potential of LISA measures as a valuable spatially explicit method for the assessment of spatial clustering and fragmentation of urban vegetation patterns.     

A graph-based approach for the structural analysis of road and building layouts

A better understanding of the relationship between the structure and functions of urban and suburban spaces is one of the avenues of research still open for geographical information science. The research presented in this paper develops several graph-based metrics whose objective is to characterize some local and global structural properties that reflect the way the overall building layout can be cross-related to the one of the road layout. Such structural properties are modeled as an aggregation of parcels, buildings, and road networks. We introduce several computational measures (Ratio Minimum Distance, Minimum Ratio Minimum Distance, and Metric Compactness) that respectively evaluate the capability for a given road to be connected with the whole road network. These measures reveal emerging sub-network structures and point out differences between less-connective and more-connective parts of the network. Based on these local and global properties derived from the topological and graph-based representation, and on building density metrics, this paper proposes an analysis of road and building layouts at different levels of granularity. The metrics developed are applied to a case study in which the derived properties reveal coherent as well as incoherent neighborhoods that illustrate the potential of the approach and the way buildings and roads can be relatively connected in a given urban environment. Overall, and by integrating the parcels and buildings layouts, this approach complements other previous and related works that mainly retain the configurational structure of the urban network as well as morphological studies whose focus is generally limited to the analysis of the building layout.