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Urban Development Simulator: An interactive decision support tool for urban planners enabling citizen’s participation.
Full text linkThe Urban Development Simulator is currently under development within the FP7 EU project urbanAPI (2011-2014). The simulation tool is developed for the city of Ruse in remote northern Bulgaria at the Romanian border as a support for the local urban planners and politicians to evaluate high level planning decisions defined as use cases.
The tool is developed as generic simulation framework, thus the framework can be applied for other cities too, to generate tailor-made urban planning support tools, if the necessary geospatial data about future planning scenarios and related statistical data describing the socio-economic state and future expectations are available.
The tool enables urban planners to estimate the impact of different urban development scenarios and visualises spatial changes through dynamic GIS maps depicting the results of the simulations. It is based on the analysis of geospatial data and uses an Agent-based modelling approach to simulate the development in the city. While other urban development simulation tools usually model urban growth in the urban fringe, the Urban Development Simulator concentrates on intra-urban development, as the City of Ruse turns out as a shrinking city which is starting to recover since the last years – reorganizing the intra-urban structure.
The tool has a complex user interface and a web interfaces to interact with the local citizens. Thus different planning scenarios and their effects can be visualized (also in 3D) via the web interface and the opinion of the local residents can be involved into the planning decisions by voting for selected planning decisions as preference of the citizens. The spatial pattern of the preferences serves as an input for the parameterization of the Agent-based model to simulate the development trends within the different areas of the city. Scenarios can be simulated what would be, if the urban planners would follow the citizens’ preferences. This enables the decision makers to adapt their urban development plans by considering the preferences of the citizens. Effects on e.g. the final energy demand and CO2 emissions for residential buildings are further calculated for the different development scenarios.
The model runs as a Java web-start application and is hosted on a server at the AIT with remote access for the Ruse users. For the model development the simulation platform MASGISmo (Multimethod Agent-based (ABM) System dynamics (SD), GIS modelling platform) has been applied, a framework originally developed during several prior projects to combine a bottom up agent-based simulation method (ABM) with a top down – system dynamics (SD) approach. This platform is programmed in Java connected to several external tools as a PostgreSQL (PostGIS) database, Vensim a (SD) tool and uses RepastJ as core ABM tool. For the purpose of the Urban Development Simulator the GIS capability of the platform was enhanced with more powerful GIS features, thus new planning scenarios can directly be introduced within the tool by the urban planners.
The paper will concentrate on the description of the structure of the Urban Development Simulator, further more explain the participatory citizen’s integration
New concepts for urban highways control
Full text linkIn recent decades a significant increase in traffic demand has occurred. This trend is especially present in dense populated areas where daily traffic congestions during rush hours occur regularly. Congestions are significant in road traffic where they can simultaneously reduce public transportation level of service (LoS) also. As consequence, even more people are using their car additionally increasing the congestion problem. Classic solution for solving the road traffic congestion problem is infrastructure build up. Today’s dense urban areas mostly do not allow this approach because of the lack of available building space. More advanced road traffic control solutions from the domain of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are being more and more applied to optimally use the existing infrastructure (Papageorgiou et al., 2003.). Such solutions include coordination between several consecutive crossroads, dynamic traffic assignment, driver informing systems, etc. One of the ITS application areas is related to urban highways which present a class of highways used as a city bypass or are just passing a dense urban are. Their main characteristic is that they have a larger number of on- and off-ramps often placed at small distances. Due to the small distance, mutual on-ramp influence can occur enlarging the problems of daily congestions and associated decrease of highway LoS. In order to prevent the appearance of traffic standstill or to reduce its duration control approaches as ramp metering and variable speed limit control (VSLC) are being applied (Hegyi et al., 2010.). In recent years, new cooperative concepts between several on-ramps and VSLC are used as a combined urban highway control system (Ghods et al., 2007.). This paper presents a new learning based cooperative ramp metering strategy in which several well-known ramp metering strategies (ALIENA, SWARM, HERO) are used to create a learning set for an ANFIS (Gregurić et al., 2013.) based control structure. Optimal ramp metering values are obtained for a wide range of traffic demand on the urban highway and belonging on-ramps. Optimal ramp metering values for specific traffic demand characteristics obtained from most suitable ramp metering strategies are integrated into only one control strategy. Thus, the need of applying several ramp metering strategies and switching between them is avoided. Additionally, cooperation between VSLC and vehicle control by an on-board unit is described and a discussion about possible implementation is given. Proposed cooperative urban highway management approach is tested in simulations using the city of Zagreb bypass as case study. For simulation, the macroscopic highway traffic simulator CTMsim (Kurzhanskiy et al., 2008.) is used. Used CTMsim simulator augmented to enable simulation of VSLC and cooperative ramp metering approaches
Smarter Cities – Ein Modell lebenswerter Städte
Full text linkStädte der Zukunft haben komplexe und systemische Herausforderungen wie Bevölkerungswachstum, Umweltprobleme, die Gewährleistung von flächendeckender Ver- und Entsorgung bei einer Verknappung der Ressourcen sowie gesellschaftliche Veränderungsprozesse zu bewältigen. Häufig fällt in diesem Zusammenhang die Forderung nach einer Entwicklung zu „Smarter Cities“. Doch was steckt hinter dem Begriff „Smart City“, der mittlerweile zu einem „Trendwort“ geworden ist? Was zeichnet eine „Smart City“ aus? Und vor allem: Wie und in welchen Bereichen müssen sich Städte weiterentwickeln, damit sie zu „smarter“ Cities werden können?
Aufgrund der vielfältigen Herausforderungen und der Komplexität des Systems Stadt, ist es erforderlich, Prozesse in Smart Cities aufeinander abzustimmen und zu koordinieren. Neben der Infrastrukturversorgung (Energie, Verkehr, Ver- und Entsorgung, Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien, etc.) besteht auch in den Bereichen Lebensqualität und Umwelt, Wirtschaft und Forschung sowie Verwaltung Abstimmungsbedarf. Oft wird Smart City aufgrund der Technologieorientierung der Gesellschaft mit dem Einsatz neuer Technologien in den Bereichen Energie, Mobilität und Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (ICT) gleichgesetzt. In diesem Kontext werden vielfach (technische) Systeme entwickelt, die weder angenommen werden noch den gewünschten Erfolg erzielen können. Daher ist es wichtig, nicht nur technologische Voraussetzungen für Smart Cities zu schaffen, sondern auch regulatorische sowie gesellschaftliche und soziale Fragestellungen mit einzubinden. Diese Ausweitung des Entwicklungsansatzes folgt darüber hinaus dem Prinzip der Nachhaltigkeit.
Ausgehend von einer Begriffsdefinition bzw. -abgrenzung der Smart City entwickelt diese Arbeit ein Modell, das den Prozess der Weiterentwicklung einer Stadt zu einer Smart City skizziert. Das „Smarter City Modell“ resultiert aus einem komplexen Zugang, der Wechselwirkungen und Einflüsse von Akteuren und deren Handlungsfeldern in einem städtischen Entwicklungsprozess beleuchtet. Durch iterative Prozesse wurden Experteninterviews, Fallbeispiele und einschlägige Literatur in die Modellentwicklung integriert. Neben diesen Faktoren spielen auch technische, gesellschaftliche und regulatorische Voraussetzungen und ihre Wechselwirkungen eine zentrale Rolle. Das resultierende Wissen führt zu einer integrativen Formulierung von Herausforderungen, Neuabgrenzung von Handlungsfeldern sowie zur Definition von Voraussetzungen für Smart Cities
Will the guidebook “Green and Blue spatial planning” be a value help for styrian cities to become a “Smart City”?
Full text linkThe department of spatial planning in the provincial government of Styria in Austria was participating from 2008 till 2011 in the INTERREG IVC project GRaBS. GRaBS stands for Green and Blue Space Adaptation for Urban Areas and Eco Towns. The main ideas of the project were the exchange of experiences among the 14 partners from 8 european countries and to produce an adaptation action plan concerning climate change. Due to scientific researches there are existing a lot of evidences that the climate is changing. The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are at their highest level for 3 million years and temperatures are increasing. Climate change is no longer simply something that will need to be addressed in the future, it is happening now and we will have to draw up climate change adaptation policies and strategies and implement them. Regional planning systems and urban spatial planning can help to reduce the vulnerability to the risks of flooding and heat island effects in cities. Green infrastructures including public and private parks, productive landscapes, green corridors and nets, green roofs and facades and also blue infrastructure such as water bodies, rivers, streams, sustainable drainage systems a.s.o. can mitigate the impacts of climate change. As a result of the GRaBS project and its outcome the Styrian Adaptation Action Plan, the department of spatial planning in Styria produced together with with an external office a guidebook of “Green and Blue spatial planning”. This guidebook was introduced to the planners and the biggest cities in Styria in December 2012
The Community Gardens and Kitchens, and their Contribution to the Social Development of the Marginalised Areas in Berlin: the Case Study of Beettinchen Community Garden
Full text linkOver history, food was an essential element in the cities’ establishment, and it has had a huge effect on their
location, urban context, culture, economy and social network. Urbanization facilitates and improves the
physical access to food due to the efficient infrastructure, however the residents of the marginalized areas
have vulnerable relationships with food, in addition to other socio-economic problems. That all increases the
need for alternative food systems to reduce the distance between the producer and the consumer, and
contribute to food security in those marginalized areas. These community food security projects, such as the
community gardens and the community kitchens, have become a growing international movement, especially
in the developed countries. They have been established, involved and managed by the community members,
which followed the bottom up approach. They have been used by the state and civil society as activities to
develop the marginalized areas. This paper aims to understand how community kitchens and gardens can be
integrated as a vital element of urban development of the marginalized areas in Berlin, through analyzing the
empirical aspects including the organization and the governance of these projects, the ownership of the used
land, the motivation of the people who participate in these projects and to what extent they benefit from these
projects, from the social aspects. The paper presents the case study; “Beettinchen” community garden in
Märkischen Viertel in Berlin. The analysis is based on literature research, interviews, study visits and
observations. This paper is a part of the author’s ongoing PhD research about the community kitchens and
gardens in Egypt and Germany, and how they can contribute to the urban development of the marginalized
and vulnerable areas