Urban Area

This paper outlines the national approach to stormwater management in Malaysia, and evolving implementation practices by State and Local government authorities. The process of departing from the traditional, monodisciplinary approach is currently going on in Malaysia. Goals of stormwater management have already shifted from the traditional storm drainage and "end of pipe" approaches towards sustainable ecological solutions more in peace with nature. The new approach is based on a deeper understanding of the cyclicity of material and energy flows in nature. The research focused on new concepts for the urban stormwater runoff and the water quality management based on integrated stormwater solutions. The USM Engineering campus is a pilot project for urban stormwater management strategy as an example of an ecologically sustainable development based approach to urban stormwater management. The concept is based on integrating stormwater best management practices into urban plann...

Three dimensional object extraction and recognition (OER) from LIDAR data has been an area of major interest in photogrammetry for quite a long time. However, most of the existing methods for automatic object extraction and recognition from LIDAR data are just based on the range information and employ parametric methods and object’s vagueness behaviour is basically neglected. Thus, these methods do not take into account the extraction and recognition complexities and may fail to reach a satisfied reliability level in complex situations. In this paper a novel approach based on the following strategies is formulated and implemented: (a) for a more comprehensive definition of the objects, information fusion concept is utilized, i.e., object’s descriptive components such as 3D structural and textural (ST) information are automatically extracted from first/last rang and intensity information of LIDAR data and simultaneously fed into the evaluation process, (b) for a more realistic expres...

Greenways are promoted for land conservation in both rural and urban areas, but less attention has been paid to the potential of greenways to serve urban biodiversity conservation goals. This paper presents results of a biodiversity planning study of a highly urbanized environment in Washington, DC (USA) that demonstrate the critical role of ecological greenways and parks in urban species conservation. The Cameron Run study raises fundamental questions about the way biodiversity is defined in urban areas, the scale of analysis required in heterogeneous urban environments, the role of sociocultural factors in urban biodiversity conservation, and the importance of regional greenway connections across the urban gradient.The Cameron Run study is a pilot project for an urban biodiversity information node (UrBIN) in the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) program of the US Geological Survey (USGS). This paper draws connections between the rapidly expanding literature on biodiversity conservation and the smaller, but growing, body of research concerning the ecology of greenways and urban areas, and it does so through the lens of landscape planning. Findings on the Cameron Run watershed are reported, and biodiversity conservation in the watershed is discussed in the context of greenway efforts at local and metropolitan scales.

Severe and widespread contamination by arsenic in groundwater and drinking water has been recently revealed in rural and sub-urban areas of the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi with similar magnitude as observed in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. This fact has prompted the need to investigate the possible mechanisms for such widespread contamination and develop suitable techniques for lowering arsenic concentrations

The paper explored the significance of residents’ experience with an array of green infrastructure in Taiping, a small town in central Peninsular Malaysia. It argued that the existence of a composite of greenery and open spaces in a town with pleasing qualities contributes to cognitive performance, through contact and participation. In particular, it examined the relationship of participation in the green spaces to residents’ cognitive well-being. Green infrastructure network is greenery and open spaces linked by walkways, streets, waterways and drainage ways around and between urban areas, at all spatial scales. In Taiping, the green infrastructure network consists of the Lake Gardens (town park), river corridors, street plantings, school playfields, neighbourhood open spaces, home gardens and loose-fit spaces such as pocket spaces in between buildings and shop-houses. Ease of access to green infrastructure network, physically and visually facilitates residents to participate in ac...

An estimated 40 % of the population in Benin lives in urban areas. The purpose of the study was to estimate malaria endemicity and the fraction of malaria-attributable fevers in health facilities in Cotonou. A health care system evaluation and a series of school parasitaemia surveys and health facility-based surveys were carried out during the dry season in of 2003, applying standard Rapid Urban Malaria Appraisal (RUMA) methodology. This study was part of a multi-site assessment supported by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership. The field work was carried out in February-March 2003. In 2002 and out of 289,342 consultations in the public health facilities of Cotonou there were 100,257 reported simple malaria cases (34.6%) and 12,195 complicated malaria cases (4.2%). In the school parasitaemia surveys, a malaria infection was found in 5.2 % of all samples. The prevalence rates of parasitaemia in the centre, intermediate and periphery zones were 2.6%, 9.0% and 2.5%, respectively. In the h...

The concentration of people in densely populated urban areas, especially in developing countries, calls for the use of monitoring systems like remote sensing. Such systems along with spatial analysis techniques like digital image processing and geographical information system (GIS) can be used for the monitoring and planning purposes as these enable the reporting of overall sprawl at a detailed level.In the present work, urban sprawl of the Ajmer city (situated in Rajasthan State of India) has been studied at a mid scale level, over a period of 25 years (1977–2002), to extract the information related to sprawl, area of impervious surfaces and their spatial and temporal variability. Statistical classification approaches have been used for the classification of the remotely sensed images obtained from various sensors viz. Landsat MSS, TM, ETM+ and IRS LISS-III. Urban sprawl and its spatial and temporal characteristics have been derived from the classified satellite images. The Shannon's entropy and landscape metrics (patchiness and map density) have been computed in terms of spatial phenomenon, in order to quantify the urban form (impervious area). Further, multivariate statistical techniques have been used to establish the relationship between the urban sprawl and its causative factors. Results reveal that land development (160.8%) in Ajmer is more than three times the population growth (50.1%). Shannon's entropy and landscape metrics has revealed the spatial distribution of the urban sprawl over a period of last 25 years.

A numerical model was developed for the computation of the wind field, air temperature and humidity in the urban canopy layer and in the atmospheric boundary layer above urban areas. The model is of k–ε type. The ensemble-spatial averaged three-dimensional Reynolds equations, equation of continuity, turbulent kinetic energy equation (k-equation), and equation for dissipation rate of turbulent energy (ε-equation) are solved together with equations of heat and moisture transfer in the air. Inside the urban canopy layer, volumes of buildings and other urban structures are accounted for by a spatial averaging procedure. With given average building height and building width for each grid mesh, effects of buildings on the momentum transfer are modelled by introducing a form drag force. Temperatures of the ground surface, building walls or roof are computed by the solution of the heat conduction equation in the ground or walls, roof. Evaporation at the ground surface is evaluated using a Bowen ratio. The exhausted heat by building air conditioning is evaluated by employing a building air conditioning model. This heat together with traffic-induced artificial heat are accounted for in the model as heat sources. A numerical model for the momentum, heat and moisture transfer in the plant canopy is also coupled to the model to investigate the effects of vegetation on the urban climate. Verification of the model against observational data in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, Japan, reveals that the model is capable of simulating the momentum, heat and mass transfer in the urban boundary layer. Especially, the model can compute air temperature, humidity and wind velocity at the street level, which cannot be computed by a general above city atmospheric circulation model.

Objectives: To establish the socio-demographic and clinical profile of children attending Early Intervention Program (EIP).Methods: Retrospective analysis of case records of 100 consecutive children examined from July 2002 to June 2004. Data regarding socio-demographic variables, clinical profile, locomotor, speech and audiology functions were recorded. Data is described in terms of frequency and mean (with SD).Results: Mean age of these children was 4.0±1.4 years. 70% were male and a similar percentage hailed from urban areas. 88% were mentally retarded with mean IQ of 50±24.3. Cerebral Palsy was seen in 50% of the children, learning disorder in 24%, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in 12% and autism in 4%. 25% of children suffered from epilepsy and 66% were unable to communicate verbally. 21% of children had strong evidence of genetic disorders. An etiological diagnosis could not be made in 31% of children.Conclusions: Awareness of developmental delay as well as of possible interventions is low in India. Speech delay is the only delay which is considered important by parents. Active involvement and early referrals from pediatricians, obstetricians and other specialists is suggested.

The present paper aims to investigate the role of creative practices for settlements, with a special focus on the'Associations of the Most Beautiful Villages' in France and Italy. The paper focuses on the critical parameters of a locality related to the attractiveness of villages from the perspective of visitors and the role of the above-mentioned Associations from the perspective of the local population. Data and information used are derived from in-depth questionnaires filled out by relevant experts from 32 villages. In order to achieve this aim, ...

... Carola Raab, PhD (E-mail: raab@unlv.nevada.edu), Assistant Professor, Jean Hertzman, PhD, CCE (E-mail: jean.hertzman@unlv.edu), Assistant ... Finally, the analysis revealed five items as Stars (“Pork Osso Bucco”; “Mira Lago Paella”; “Chilean Sea Bass”; “Rib Eye Steak”; and ...

Chiang Mai is one of the most severe smog areas in Thailand. It was the world's ranked No.1 city with the worst air quality. Has detected the PM2.5 dust concentration higher than 500 micrograms per cubic meter. Which is the value than the Thai air quality index criteria. While the way to alleviate problems from the government as a distribution of assistance, such as installing a large air purifier and water drop spraying system in some area or there are officers leading the convoy to spray water spray to various points.