Search results for " Sustainable Cities"

Evaluating the citywide Edinburgh 20mph speed limit intervention effects on traffic speed and volume: A pre-post observational evaluation.

2021

Objectives Traffic speed is important to public health as it is a major contributory factor to collision risk and casualty severity. 20mph (32km/h) speed limit interventions are an increasingly common approach to address this transport and health challenge, but a more developed evidence base is needed to understand their effects. This study describes the changes in traffic speed and traffic volume in the City of Edinburgh, pre- and 12 months post-implementation of phased city-wide 20mph speed limits from 2016–2018. Methods The City of Edinburgh Council collected speed and volume data across one full week (24 hours a day) pre- and post-20mph speed limits for 66 streets. The pre- and post-sp…

Urban Services to Ecosystems - Green Infrastructure Benefits from the Landscape to the Urban Scale

2021

The aim of this book is to bring together multidisciplinary research in the field of green infrastructure design, construction and ecology. The main core of the volume is constituted by contributions dealing with green infrastructure, vegetation science, nature-based solutions and sustainable urban development. The green infrastructure and its ecosystem services, indeed, are gaining space in both political agendas and academic research. However, the attention is focused on the services that nature is giving for free to and for human health and survival. What if we start to see things from another perspective? Our actions shall converge for instance to turn man-made environment like cities f…

Smart cities and the role of IS research in improving urban life

2016

A methodology for assessing the impact of salinity gradient power generation in urban contexts

2018

Abstract The paper proposes a methodology to assess the potential impact of salinity gradient power technology in urban contexts. The idea to employ such energy source in urban contexts derives from the observation that, among the energy districts outputs, low-salinity treated wastewater can be used to produce electricity if a suitable source of high salinity feed (seawater of a salt-works) is also available. The methodology uses the HOMER software for assessing the district’s electric energy production, consumption and exchange with the main grid. Then, starting from the total gross surface and the number of inhabitants of the district, some possible realistic scenarios characterized by di…

Ethnographic Knowledge in Urban Planning:Bridging the Gap between the Theories of Knowledge-Based and Communicative Planning

2021

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. ‘Knowledge-based’ approaches have recently made a breakthrough in urban planning. How to develop balance in knowledge-based planning between abstract and scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and ‘local knowledge’ on the other hand has been long debated. To this debate, we add a form of knowledge with potential for sustainable urban planning, i.e. ethnographic knowledge that could transmit an understanding of urban dwellers’ daily practices and values to planning organisations. Theoretical literature is the foundation of our argument, which we illustrate with a case study involvin…

Urban environment and cognitive and motor function in children from four European birth cohorts

2021

[EN]Background: The urban environment may influence neurodevelopment from conception onwards, but there is no evaluation of the impact of multiple groups of exposures simultaneously. We investigated the association between early-life urban environment and cognitive and motor function in children. Methods: We used data from 5403 mother-child pairs from four population-based birth-cohorts (UK, France, Spain, and Greece). We estimated thirteen urban home exposures during pregnancy and childhood, including: built environment, natural spaces, and air pollution. Verbal, non-verbal, gross motor, and fine motor functions were assessed using validated tests at five years old. We ran adjusted multi-e…

Neighborhood resources associated with active travel in older adults: A cohort study in six European Countries

2020

Objectives: To study associations between perceived neighborhood resources and time spent by older adults in active travel. Methods: Respondents in six European countries, aged 65–85 years, reported on the perceived presence of neighborhood resources (parks, places to sit, public transportation, and facilities) with response options “a lot,” “some,” and “not at all.” Daily active travel time (total minutes of transport-related walking and cycling) was self-reported at the baseline (n = 2,695) and 12–18 months later (n = 2,189). Results: Reporting a lot of any of the separate resources (range B’s = 0.19–0.29) and some or a lot for all four resources (B = 0.22, 95% confidence interval [0.09, …

Have information technologies forgotten pedestrians?

2018

Worldwide, pedestrians make up close to half of all motor-vehicle related fatalities but disproportionally little of the research in Information Technologies (IT) in general and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in particular has aimed at pedestrian safety improvements. This paper analyses and compiles three different ways so that IT and ITS can be used in order to improve mobility and safety of pedestrians in urban spaces: (a) for contacting and/or being localized, (b) for guidance (leading/navigating), (c) for alerting or informing of a danger. The aim is to categorize recent experiences where ITS can improve pedestrians’ mobility and safety so that new ideas based on ITS will be d…

Correlation of wood-based components and dewatering properties of waste activated sludge from pulp and paper industry.

2010

Large amounts of wet sludge are produced annually in municipal and industrial wastewater treatment. Already in pulp and paper industry, more than ten million tons of primary sludge, waste activated sludge, and de-inking sludge is generated. Waste activated sludge contains large quantities of bound water, which is difficult to dewater. Low water content would be a matter of high calorific value in incineration but it also has effects on the volume and the quality of the matter to be handled in sludge disposal. In this research waste activated sludges from different pulp and paper mills were chemically characterised and dewatered. Correlations of chemical composition and dewatering properties…

Towards sustainable mobility : Transformative scenarios for 2034

2022

Highlights • Increasing the share of walking and cycling is one of the building blocks of sustainable mobility transformation. • We organised an online Delphi survey for 30 walking and cycling experts during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic. • Disaggregative Delphi analysis is elaborated based on the systemic restructuring of qualitative data. • Transport experts’ views of the future are described in the form of five walking and cycling scenarios up to 2034. • The results can be used for strategic transport planning and policy, and for identifying instruments for walking and cycling promotion in urban areas. Increasing the share of walking and cycling is one of the building blocks of sus…