A GIS based planning support system for assessing financial feasibility of urban redevelopment

Urban densification trends combined with redevelopment increasingly moving away from large former industrial and transport sites toward existing town centres and corridors indicate redevelopment is becoming increasingly complex, difficult to plan for and undertake. The interplay between land and property markets and planning frameworks suggest city planners and urban researchers need new tools and methodologies to gain insights into ways to deliver effective responses. Despite the need, there is a limited availability of comprehensive models to fulfil the task. This paper describes a GIS-based tool to assess parcel-level financial feasibility and housing supply associated with urban redevelopment within a precinct. The tool incorporates existing and potential built form and parameters associated with the planning framework and land and property markets. Using a real case study in a workshop, tool performance was evaluated by professional urban planners in terms of its capacity to produce metrics and visualisations of potential scenarios of redevelopment. Results indicate the usefulness of the tool for emulating land market conditions and testing scenarios of planning regulation and market changes for strategic planning purposes.     

Buildings Damages after Elazığ, Turkey Earthquake on January 24, 2020

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake that occurred on January 24, 2020, has been effective in Turkey’s eastern regions. The earthquake, with recorded peak ground acceleration (PGA) value of 0.292 g, caused the destruction or heavy damage of buildings, especially in the city center of Elaz?? province. The purpose of this paper was to share the results of detailed investigation in the earthquake-stricken area. Additionally, the causes of damages and failures observed in the buildings were compared to those that had occurred in previous earthquakes in Turkey. In this study, the damages observed in especially RC buildings as well as in masonry and rural buildings were summarized, the lessons learned were evaluated, and the results were interpreted with reference to Turkish earthquake codes. In the study, it was particularly emphasized why the building stock underwent such damage even though the buildings were exposed to earthquake acceleration well below the design acceleration values.

     

An algorithm to resolve γ-rays from charged cosmic rays with DAMPE

The DArk Matter Particle Explorer(DAMPE),also known as Wukong in China,which was launched on 2015 December 17,is a new high energy cosmic ray and γ-ray satellite-borne observatory.One of the main scientific goals of DAMPE is to observe Ge V-Te V high energy γ-rays with accurate energy,angular and time resolution,to indirectly search for dark matter particles and for the study of high energy astrophysics. Due to the comparatively higher fluxes of charged cosmic rays with respect to γ-rays,it is challenging to identify γ-rays with sufficiently high efficiency,minimizing the amount of charged cosmic ray contamination. In this work we present a method to identify γ-rays in DAMPE data based on Monte Carlo simulations,using the powerful electromagnetic/hadronic shower discrimination provided by the calorimeter and the veto detection of charged particles provided by the plastic scintillation detector. Monte Carlo simulations show that after this selection the number of electrons and protons that contaminate the selected γ-ray events at～10 Ge V amounts to less than 1% of the selected sample.Finally,we use flight data to verify the effectiveness of the method by highlighting known γ-ray sources in the sky and by reconstructing preliminary light curves of the Geminga pulsar.     

The particle background of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">X-IFU</Emphasis> instrument

In this paper we are going to review the latest estimates for the particle background expected on the X-IFU instrument onboard of the ATHENA mission. The particle background is induced by two different particle populations: the so called “soft protons” and the Cosmic rays. The first component is composed of low energy particles (< 100s keV) that get funnelled by the mirrors towards the focal plane, losing part of their energy inside the filters and inducing background counts inside the instrument sensitivity band. The latter component is induced by high energy particles (> 100 MeV) that possess enough energy to cross the spacecraft and reach the detector from any direction, depositing a small fraction of their energy inside the instrument. Both these components are estimated using Monte Carlo simulations and the latest results are presented here.     

Behavioural adaptations in talitrids from two Atlantic beaches

The aim of the present study was to test sun orientation and rhythmic activity of two sandhopper populations from two Atlantic macro-tidal beaches. A population from Le Verger beach (orientated to 346°, Ille et Vilaine, Brittany, France) and a population from Damgan (orientated to 195°, Morbihan, Brittany, France), were tested on the beach under clear sky discriminating for landscape vision. For both populations locomotor activity rhythm was recorded in the laboratory. The two beaches differed for climatic features, tidal range and for human use. Both talitrid populations resulted very well orientated toward the shoreline, and both used solar position and landscape vision to orient. However the multiple regression analysis of orientation with climatic features showed a different use of local cues by the two populations and a slight influence of tidal regime (ebbing and rising tide), in spite of the supralittoral zonation of sandhoppers. In the laboratory they showed a well defined rhythmic behaviour as well as a bimodal rhythmicity, explained as a tidal one. These results are a new brick in the complex picture of orientation and rhythm studies on sandy beach invertebrates.     

An integrated procedure to evaluate hydrological models

The growing concern for health‐related problems deriving from pollutants leaching is driving national and international administrations to support the development of tools for evaluating the effects of alternate management scenarios and identifying vulnerable areas. Cropping systems models are powerful tools for evaluating leachates under different environmental, social, and management conditions. As percolating water is the transport vehicle for pollutants transport in soil, a reliable evaluation of water balance models is a fundamental prerequisite for investigating pesticides and nitrate fate. As specific approaches for the evaluation of multi‐layer evolution of state variables are missing, we propose a fuzzy‐based, integrated indicator (I_SWC: 0, best; 1, worst) for a comprehensive evaluation of soil water content (SWC) simulations. We aggregated error metrics with others quantifying the homogeneity of errors across different soil layers, the capability of models to reproduce complex dynamics function of both time and soil depth, and model complexity. We tested I_SWC on a sample dataset where the models CropSyst and CERES‐Wheat were used to simulate SWC for winter wheat systems. I_SWC revealed that, in the explored conditions, the global assessment of the two models' performances allowed identification of CropSyst as the best (average I_SWC = 0·441, with a value of 0·537 obtained by CERES‐Wheat), although each model prevailed for some of the metrics. CropSyst presented the highest accuracy (average agreement module = 0·400), whereas CERES‐Wheat's accuracy was slightly worse, although achieved with a simplified modelling approach (average Akaike Information Criterion = − 230·44), thereby favouring large‐area applicability. The non‐univocal scores achieved by the models for the different metrics support the use of multi‐metric evaluation approaches for quantifying the different aspects of water balance model performances. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Catalonian precipitation patterns: Principal component analysis and automated regionalization

Summary A principal component analysis (PCA) based on a network including 179 pluviometric gauges is attempted in order to describe the main patterns governing precipitation in Catalonia (NE Spain). This PCA procedure is applied to the interstation covariance matrix and component loadings are then deduced from it and extensively interpreted. PCA results are used immediately after in a Davis and Kalkstein clustering process, leading to a rainfall division. The homogeneity of the different groups obtained is tested by means of the analysis of their spatial and temporal within-group variances.With 8 Figures     

Les structures gigognes: morphologie mathématique et interprétation métallogénique

Résumé Ce texte a pour but d'analyser la notion d'échelle, ou de niveau d'hétérogénéité, d'un phénomène géologique, à l'aide d'outils de morphologie mathématique tels que la «fonction intrinsèque» de la théorie des variables régionalisées de G. Matheron. Une première étude expérimentale montre comment les structures s'emboitent les unes dans les autres dans un dépôt sédimentaire comme le gisement de fer de Lorraine. Puis, en formulant théoriquement ces imbrications de structures, on montre comment les deux types de fonctions intrinsèques observés couramment, le type transitif et le type de wijsien se relient l'un à l'autre. Mais la morphologie mathématique ne peut pas dire pourquoi des structures gigognes en progression géométrique existent.

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The objective of this paper is to analyze the concept of scale in a geological set. The mathematical tool used here is the intrinsic function of the regionalized variables' theory of G. Matheron. A first experimental step shows how the structures observed in the sedimentary ore deposit of Lorraine fit into one another. The next part describe theoretically this phenomenon. The theoretical models allow to synthesize the two types of usual intrinsic functions, type transitif and de wijsien. But mathematical morphology appears to be unable to explain why these structures exist.

     

Sensitivity analysis of seismic hazard for Western Liguria (North Western Italy): A first attempt towards the understanding and quantification of hazard uncertainty

The use of logic trees in probabilistic seismic hazard analyses often involves a large number of branches that reflect the uncertainty in the selection of different models and in the selection of the parameter values of each model. The sensitivity analysis, as proposed by Rabinowitz and Steinberg [Rabinowitz, N., Steinberg, D.M., 1991. Seismic hazard sensitivity analysis: a multi-parameter approach. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 81, 796–817], is an efficient tool that allows the construction of logic trees focusing attention on the parameters that have greater impact on the hazard.In this paper the sensitivity analysis is performed in order to identify the parameters that have the largest influence on the Western Liguria (North Western Italy) seismic hazard. The analysis is conducted for six strategic sites following the multi-parameter approach developed by Rabinowitz and Steinberg [Rabinowitz, N., Steinberg, D.M., 1991. Seismic hazard sensitivity analysis: a multi-parameter approach. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 81, 796–817] and accounts for both mean hazard values and hazard values corresponding to different percentiles (e.g., 16%-ile and 84%-ile). The results are assessed in terms of the expected PGA with a 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years for rock conditions and account for both the contribution from specific source zones using the Cornell approach [Cornell, C.A., 1968. Engineering seismic risk analysis. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 58, 1583–1606] and the spatially smoothed seismicity [Frankel, A., 1995. Mapping seismic hazard in the Central and Eastern United States. Seismol. Res. Lett. 66, 8–21]. The influence of different procedures for calculating seismic hazard, seismic catalogues (epicentral parameters), source zone models, frequency–magnitude parameters, maximum earthquake magnitude values and attenuation relationships is considered. As a result, the sensitivity analysis allows us to identify the parameters with higher influence on the hazard. Only these parameters should be subjected to careful discussion or further research in order to reduce the uncertainty in the hazard while those with little or no effect can be excluded from subsequent logic-tree-based seismic hazard analyses.     

Fluvial environmental contexts for archaeological sites in the Upper Khabur basin (northeastern Syria)

Today the eastern tributaries of the Upper Khabur run dry during the summer and the landscape is devoid of trees. This picture is misleading when we try to understand archaeological sites within their former environmental context. Interdisciplinary geomorphological, archaeobotanical and ostracod research on a sequence from the Wadi Jaghjagh indicates that relatively stable, perennial flow velocities occurred during the mid 4th to mid-3rd millennium BC. Evidence was found for a gallery forest and swamp belt along the Jaghjagh during the mid-4th millennium BC. Oak park woodland was present within the region in the 3rd millennium BC and probably up to at least the 3rd century AD. Shortly after 2500 BC, Jaghjagh stream velocities probably decreased or the stream bed had changed its location. Later deposits, possibly dating to the 5th century BC, indicate similar, rather stable flow of the Jaghjagh. More recently however, about ca. AD 900 or afterwards, a flashflood-like regime occurred, which may relate to deforestation. The Wadi Khanzir sediment archives reflect the flashy intermittent regime of this stream, like it still is today, with flashflood evidence dating to the first half of the Holocene and probably dating to approximately AD 400 or later. Along the Jarrah, topsoil was eroded and redeposited by the wadi sometime between 1300 and 600 BC. This may have been caused by the intensive resettlement program of this region around 800 BC. Between about 600 and 300 BC 1.5 m of clay was deposited on the plain.