1,720,956 research outputs found
Some smart solutions towards rapid urbanization in Albanian cities
Get PDFIn the last two decades, Albania is going through the most dynamic economic, urban, and industrial transformations in its history. Economic opportunities in Albanian’s cities are fueling rural to urban migration on a massive scale. The resettlement is thought to be one of the largest sustained migrations the country has ever seen, involving the relocation of a lot people from rural to urban areas each year.
For the last past decades, Albania transportation system was a combination of bicycles, mass transit, and walking. Today, with a growing fleet of privately owned vehicles and low density development, Albania’s is quickly becoming a car-dependent society.
Meanwhile the growth of Albania’s economy has improved the living standarts, swelling city populations, increased housing floor area, and the trend toward automobile dependency, have contributed to a host of environmental, health, and security concerns. Urban air and water quality are deteriorating, and greenhouse gas emissions are increasing rapidly. Cars flood city roads, causing severe traffic congestion and jeopardizing community livability.
How Albania’s cities can manage the massive influx of new residents in the next two decades will set the framework for growth over the next years and beyond. The current urbanization pattern of sprawling, auto-dependent development poses a threat to public health, quality of life, the economy, and national security, and also strains natural and social resources. Albania most probably can correct its inefficient use of resources and avoid environmental deterioration by pursuing a “smart growth” pathway, which offers an integrated approach to development. This paper aims to propose some smart strategies for the solutions towards a rapid urbanization of Albanian cities, mostly of the Tirana capital
Urban land value and map of land values
Get PDFLand is the gift of nature to mankind. It provides continuity and progress. Land is not only our biggest asset, but at the same time, the whole real source. As immovable property, land constitutes one of the most valuable assets for the country and individuals. Because land is so important, the correct determination of its value for any evaluation purposes attracts special attention. There are different purposes the land is valuating for, like buying and selling, mortgage, financial reporting, development and redevelopment, etc. Regardless of the purpose of valuation, the market value is the most required kind of value and the main basis of evaluation of the land. In their daily work, the appraisers are based generally on the market transactions, but more and more are added cases when the value maps are used on valuations. This paper firstly deals with the methods and procedures for the evaluation of urban land, even in individual and mass valuation and concludes that their applications provide us significant differences in values that can`t be negligible. Finally, after working out these differences, relevant recommendations for the "spaces" where the maps of value can be used, are given
The model for determination the market value of residential properties based on their surface
Get PDFThe purpose of this paper is to propose a model for determining the market value of residential properties (apartments) based on their surface. Every residential property can be viewed as consisting of a bundle of attributes, some related to the physical features of the property, some related to the location and a third group related to the building design. One of the attributes of the building design is the surface of the property. Currently, the sale market of apartments makes differentiation in value (sales at half of value) only for large balconies (terraces) surfaces, while the surface in itself can be divided into primary surface (living room, bedroom) and ancillary surface (corridor, bathroom, balcony). The distinguishing feature of the apartments built in the last 20-year is the consumption of a considerable surface of the total area for the ancillary facilities. This paper, through a case study in Tirana City tends to provide a model of inclusion differently in the value of primary and ancillary surfaces
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The analysis of Performance and Capacity at a Roundabout with metering signals
Get PDFThis paper aims to describe a method for the analyzing of capacity and performance of roundabout operating with metering signals. The use of metering signals is a found as a measure to avoid the need of a fully signalized intersection, when the low capacity conditions are observed during peak demand flow periods. Roundabout metering signals are often installed on selected roundabout approaches and used on a part time basis, since they are required, when heavy demand conditions occur during peak periods. These metering signals are used normally for alleviating the excessive delay and queues, due to the gaps created in the circulating stream. The basic principles of the operation of roundabout metering signals shall be explained. This paper shall present some analysis results, when operating with metering signals. A case study for some crucial roundabouts in Albania, shall be part of the results and conclusions must be considered to reevaluate the need, when to use metering signals, or not, at the existing congested roundabouts
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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