Analysis of house prices to assess economic impacts of new public transport infrastructure: Madrid metro line 12.

Transportation infrastructure is known to affect the value of real estate property by virtue of changes in accessibility. The impact of transportation facilities is highly localized as well, and it is possible that spillover effects result from the capitalization of accessibility. The objective of this study was to review the theoretical background related to spatial hedonic models and the opportunities that they provided to evaluate the effect of new transportation infrastructure. An empirical case study is presented: the Madrid Metro Line 12, known as Metrosur, in the region of Madrid, Spain. The effect of proximity to metro stations on housing prices was evaluated. The analysis took into account a host of variables, including structure, location, and neighborhood and made use of three modeling approaches: linear regression estimation with ordinary least squares, spatial error, and spatial lag. The results indicated that better accessibility to Metrosur stations had a positive impact on real estate values and that the effect was marked in cases in which a house was for sale. The results also showed the presence of submarkets, which were well defined by geographic boundaries, and transport fares, which implied that the economic benefits differed across municipalities.

Iniciativa de interoperabilidad semántica en el contexto de homogenización e integración de la información ambiental. Caso de aplicación: biodiversidad

Se plantea una estrategia de interoperabilidad basada en ontologías basado en un método de adquisición del conocimiento, un marco integrado de conocimiento y una red de ontologías.

Combining statistical and semantic approaches to the translation of ontologies and taxonomies

Ontologies and taxonomies are widely used to organize concepts providing the basis for activities such as indexing, and as background knowledge for NLP tasks. As such, translation of these resources would prove useful to adapt these systems to new languages. However, we show that the nature of these resources is significantly different from the "free-text" paradigm used to train most statistical machine translation systems. In particular, we see significant differences in the linguistic nature of these resources and such resources have rich additional semantics. We demonstrate that as a result of these linguistic differences, standard SMT methods, in particular evaluation metrics, can produce poor performance. We then look to the task of leveraging these semantics for translation, which we approach in three ways: by adapting the translation system to the domain of the resource; by examining if semantics can help to predict the syntactic structure used in translation; and by evaluating if we can use existing translated taxonomies to disambiguate translations. We present some early results from these experiments, which shed light on the degree of success we may have with each approach

Transportation infrastructure impacts on firm location: the effect of a new metro line in the suburbs of Madrid

Firm location patterns emerge as a consequence of multiple factors, including firm considerations, labor force availability, market opportunities, and transportation costs. Many of these factors are influenced by changes in accessibility wrought by new transportation infrastructure. In this paper we use spatial statistical techniques and a micro-level data base to evaluate the effects of Madrid?s metro line 12 (known as Metrosur) expansion on business location patterns. The case study is the municipality of Alcorcon, which is served by the new metro line since 2003. Specifically, we explore the location patterns by different industry sectors, to evaluate if the new metro line has encouraged the emergence of a ?Metrosur spatial economy?. Our results indicate that the pattern of economic activity location is related to urban accessibility and that agglomeration, through economies of scale, also plays an important role. The results presented in this paper provide evidence useful to inform efficient transportation, urban, and regional economic planning.

El Proyecto REGENTE

Con el fin de establecer una cartografía europea unificada, se hace indispensable la conversión de las coordenadas de los Marcos de los Sistemas Geodésicos Nacionales al Marco ETRF89, lo cual sólo es posible a través de la determinación de transformaciones y superficies de ajuste desde uno a otro marco. Tal determinación requiere el conocimiento de ambas clases de coordenadas en un número muy elevado de estaciones uniformemente distribuidas, debiendo este número ser tanto mayor cuantas más irregularidades presente el Marco local. En el caso de la Península y Archipiélagos, el IGN decidió resolver el problema mediante el Proyecto REGENTE (Red Geodésica Nacional por Técnicas Espaciales), consistente en el establecimiento de una densa red GPS de alta precisión con estaciones coincidentes con vértices de ROI y con clavos de las líneas NAP. La densidad media quedó fijada en una estación por Hoja del MTN 1:50.000, es decir, de una estación por cada 300 km2. REGENTE quedará perfectamente enlazada con la red de referencia europea ETRF89 por medio de las redes ibéricas IBERIA95 y BALEAR98. REGENTE Canarias se apoya, como estación de referencia, en la estación GPS de Maspalomas, incluida en la red ITRF93.

Ontology Localization

In the context of the Semantic Web, resources on the net can be enriched by well-defined, machine-understandable metadata describing their associated conceptual meaning. These metadata consisting of natural language descriptions of concepts are the focus of the activity we describe in this chapter, namely, ontology localization. In the framework of the NeOn Methodology, ontology localization is defined as the activity of adapting an ontology to a particular language and culture. This adaptation mainly involves the translation of the natural language descriptions of the ontology from a source natural language to a target natural language, with the final objective of obtaining a multilingual ontology, that is, an ontology documented in several natural languages. The purpose of this chapter is to provide detailed and prescriptive methodological guidelines to support the performance of this activity.

Mapping the firmographic mobility: a case study in a region of Madrid

Understanding the location patterns of firms within a region has proved to be an important factor to study the development of urban form. Moreover, the study of firms location patterns allows the implementation of the adequate policy strategies to increase firms location rate in certain areas, for example when practitioners are dealing with deprived zones. The aim of this paper is to map firmographic data as a function of its location over a certain period of time, and its employment weight in order to discuss which factors have a direct impact on the results and to highlight which specific areas need the adequate measures to promote employment and public transportation. As a case study, it is proposed to analyze the southwest region of Madrid. Spatial statistic methods were used for this study, which were found to be very efficient in order to evaluate which areas need special attention.

Análisis de la composición cromática en el tejido residencial de la ciudad de Madrid

En el planteamiento de la tesis se desarrolla una metodología para la construcción de la paleta cromática representativa de un espacio urbano. El objetivo principal es hallar una paleta representativa con la finalidad de determinar diferencias cromáticas entre ámbitos urbanos de época y composición urbana distinta. En el estado del arte se describe en primer lugar la teoría del color resaltando los factores que influyen en el proceso cromático perceptivo; en segundo lugar se hace un estudio clasificatorio de diferentes sistemas cromáticos y la teoría de la verbalidad del color y por último se hace un análisis del espacio público puntualizando en la relación entre la morfología y el factor cromático. Para la construcción de las paletas cromáticas se lleva a cabo un procesamiento informático de fotografías digitales con una aplicación que ha sido creada específicamente para la extracción y conversión de valores cromáticos y un proceso de filtrado con cálculo estadístico para la elección de las muestras. En el análisis también se establece una relación entre los factores urbanos y la resultante cromática, como instrumento para determinar las correspondencias de ciertas características urbanas con el comportamiento cromático. La resultante cromática de cada espacio se establece mediante el sistema cromático HSL y su composición es valorada y comparada entre los diferentes puntos de análisis establecidos y las diferentes orientaciones. Finalmente, en base a las paletas cromáticas se plantea una comparativa entre espacios urbanos de la ciudad de Madrid con la finalidad de establecer diferencias cromáticas entre planteamientos urbanos de distinta índole morfológica y constructiva. ABSTRACT In the approach of the thesis is developed a methodology for the construction of a representative palette of urban space. The main objective is to find a representative palette in order to determine color differences between urban areas of different age and urban composition. In the prior art is described first color theory highlighting the factors that influencing the perceptual color process; in second it is a qualifying study of various color systems and the theory of color verbality and finally is an analysis of public space pointing in the relationship between morphology and the color factor. For the construction of the color palette is carried out computer processing of digital photos in an application that has been created specifically for the extraction and conversion of color values and a filtering process with statistical calculation for the election of the samples. In analyzing a relationship between urban factors and the resulting color as an instrument is also set to determine the correlation of certain urban characteristics with the color behavior. The resulting color of each space is set by the HSL color system and its composition is evaluated and compared between the different established points of analysis and different orientations. Finally, based on the color palettes, arises a comparison between urban spaces in the city of Madrid with the aim of establishing color differences between urban approaches of different morphological and constructive nature.