Urban heat and residential electricity consumption: A preliminary study

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a well-documented phenomenon occurring in cities across the world resulting in city centres often being several degrees warmer than their surroundings. This local elevation in temperatures could potentially impact upon local energy consumption, with residents in the warmer central section of the city using more energy to cool their homes in summer and less energy to warm them in winter. This study uses a combination of Geographical Information System techniques and Remote Sensing data (MODIS LST and NDVI), as a preliminary investigation, to assess the spatial relationship between UHI, urban greenspace, household income and electricity consumption in Birmingham, UK. It provides simple and repeatable steps, based on freely available datasets, for urban planners, industry, human and physical geographers, and non-specialists to reproduce the analyses. The results show that, the present impact of the UHI is limited and instead highlights the dominance of household income over local climate in explaining consumption patterns across Birmingham.     

Public climate-change skepticism,energy preferences and political participation

Many studies have shown a general decline of public concern about climate change or vice versa a rise in public climate-change skepticism, in particular in the U.S. and other Anglo-Saxon countries. There is a vivid debate on whether this is a global phenomenon, on which factors explain the decline, and on the broader societal implications of these trends in the context of the transformation toward a low-carbon society. We add to this literature by presenting the results of a recent general population survey in Germany in which we looked for systematic linkages between public climate-change skepticism on one hand, and energy preferences and political participation on the other. Germany is an interesting testbed as it is currently involved in a large-scale restructuring of its system of energy supply toward renewable energy sources (the “Energiewende”). Our results indicate that climate-change skepticism has not diffused widely in Germany, but that it correlates with less support of renewable energy sources. However, skepticism correlates negatively with political participation, and there is no strong political outlet for public climate-change skepticism in Germany. Alternative potential barriers for the successful implementation of the “Energiewende” are also discussed.     

Mental Maps and Fuzziness in Space Preferences*

Mental maps are widely used to represent aggregate residential preferences in a population. This study examines the contention by researchers that the dominant viewpoint in a group in terms of residential desirability is not affected by the fuzziness in individual space preferences. Results indicate that a significant misrepresentation of group preferences can result when fuzziness of individual preferences is overlooked. The use of ordinal scales to generate mental maps is likely to distort the actual pattern of residential preferences that dominates in the group because of the failure of the ranking approach to account for imprecision and ambiguity in individual preferences. Because interval scales used in rating or evaluating tasks do not force individuals to give a crisp judgement of places, they are more adequate than ordinal scales for mental mapping and for behavioral analysis.     

Are Workers Attracted to Social Interaction Opportunities? A Study of Face-to-Face Contact Opportunities by Occupation and Industry

The spatial structure of a region is known to affect the degree of face-to-face interaction opportunities for a city’s residents. These interaction opportunities are important building blocks in aspects of economic production. To date, though, there is scant empirical evidence linking interaction opportunities to worker locations. In this article, using a spatial measure of social interaction potential (SIP), we seek to discover whether, and by how much, opportunities for interaction differ at home and work locations for workers within different industry and occupation groups in U.S. metropolitan areas. Based on the time-geographic concept of joint accessibility, SIP is sensitive to population and employment densities, as well as travel times associated with worker commutes in a region. We compare SIP at the census tract level of geography both within and between Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) nationally and test SIP distributions by occupation and industrial categories using nonparametric Kruskal–Wallis and Dunn tests. The study finds that several categories of higher skill and creative workers live and work in higher SIP areas. These findings provide evidence in support of theories of knowledge creation that rely on spontaneous face-to-face interaction and also indicate the effect of lifestyle preferences in location choices for highly skilled and arts workers.     

The invasion of the intertidal canopy-forming alga Fucus serratus L. to southwestern Iceland: Possible community effects

The intertidal serrated wrack, Fucus serratus L. (Fucales: Phaeophyceae), has become an abundant canopy-forming alga along a ca. 100 km stretch of shore in southwestern Iceland in the last century. Its distribution has not changed noticeably since a survey in 1975/1976. Many experimental studies have shown that canopy-forming algae can have profound effects on the community structure. Although such experiments involving F. serratus are few it was decided to test predictions from these experiments on a geographical scale by comparing community compositions within the area where F. serratus is a dominant algae (since at least 1975/1976) with an adjacent area of similar size where F. serratus is absent (with a single exception without consequences). The work is based on measurements on some 372 stations in the F. serratus area, termed region A, and 227 stations from the F. serratus-free area, termed region B. Percentage cover of algae and sessile invertebrates was estimated on 2 m² on each station and animals collected from 800 cm² from each station. The vertical distribution of F. serratus was most similar to that of Fucus distichus and the two species often grew intermingled on the lower part of the shore. F. serratus appeared to have reduced the cover of F. distichus in the lowermost part of the shore, while having little or no effect on other canopy-forming species. The low abundance of Semibalanus balanoides in the F. serratus area (region A) is in line with experiments showing detrimental effect on this barnacle by whiplash of F. serratus. In general algal grazers were more abundant in region A, consistent with the greater attractiveness of F. serratus than other canopy-forming species to grazers, although this may be partly explained by the abundance of understorey algae in region A.     

The use of GIS tools to support decision-making in the expansion of chain stores

This article deals with a network competitive localization problem in which a firm seeks to determine the location of a new facility, which competes with all the facilities operating in the market, both belonging to the same firm and to the competing firms. In this context, two frequently conflicting objectives are involved: maximization of the total market share captured by the firm and minimization of market share losses for its existing facilities due to being captured by the new facility (cannibalization). We formulate the location problem as a multi-objective optimization model. Some GIS tools that provide some maps representing the market share and the cannibalization effect are proposed. This allows for the visualization of the effects produced by the opening of a new facility in the market and the trade-offs between the objectives. Finally, the advantages of using these tools have been shown by means of an application to a real data case.     

Latent lifestyle preferences and household location decisions

Lifestyle, indicating preferences towards a particular way of living, is a key driver of the decision of where to live. We employ latent class choice models to represent this behavior, where the latent classes are the lifestyles and the choice model is the choice of residential location. Thus, we simultaneously estimate lifestyle groups and how lifestyle impacts location decisions. Empirical results indicate three latent lifestyle segments: suburban dwellers, urban dwellers, and transit-riders. The suggested lifestyle segments have intriguing policy implications. Lifecycle characteristics are used to predict lifestyle preferences, although there remain significant aspects that cannot be explained by observable variables.

To tax,or not to tax: preferences for climate policy attributes

Many countries around the world respond to global warming and its consequences with various policy instruments. In the economic literature, policy instruments have typically been analysed with respect to efficiency, but little effort has been expended to understand public preferences for these instruments. In an internet-based choice experiment to address this shortcoming, Swedes were asked to choose between two alternative hypothetical policy instruments, each of which reduces CO₂ emissions by the same amount. The hypothetical policy instruments were characterized by a number of specific attributes. By varying the levels of each of the attributes, respondents indirectly reveal their preferences for these attributes. Half of the respondents are faced with choices labelled ‘tax’ and ‘other’, and the other half are faced with unlabelled choices (hypothetical instruments). The results show that Swedes tend to dislike the term ‘tax’ and show a preference for instruments with a positive effect on environment-friendly technology and climate awareness. A progressive-like cost distribution is preferred to a regressive cost distribution, and the private cost is negatively related to the choice of policy.     

福州市区居民环城游憩偏好研究

随着福州环城游憩带发展日趋成熟,福州市区居民的环城游憩需求也日益旺盛,其游憩偏好在很大程度上决定了福州环城游憩带游憩功能的发挥.文章采用问卷调查的方法,从游憩形式、游憩吸引物及游憩区位3个方面分析了福州市区居民的环城游憩偏好特征及影响因素,并结合市区居民的环城游现状,为福州环城游憩带的发展提出合理化的建议.     

Numerical assessment of liquefaction mitigation effects on residential houses: Case histories of the 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-offshore earthquake

In this study, the effectiveness of liquefaction countermeasures for residential houses was explored using a fully coupled dynamic effective-stress finite element procedure. Numerical analyses were conducted on two wooden houses that were damaged to different degrees due to dune liquefaction during the 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-offshore earthquake. House A, which was only improved by horizontal drainage pipes to lower the ground water level, was completely destroyed; however, house B, which was improved by a horizontal drainage system, soil–cement mixtures, and steel-pipe piles, was slightly deformed. Numerical results show that the effects of the sand dune slope on the damage to the two houses were somewhat different. For house B, it was found that the steel-pipe piles were more effective. Two countermeasures generally led to a greater degree of reduction in both lateral and vertical displacements of house B than only a single countermeasure employed. In addition, the combined implementation of steel-pipe piles and soil–cement mixtures was the most effective among the cases with two countermeasures.