A study on dynamic state information (DSI) around users for safe urban life

To select each node by devices and by contexts in urban computing, users have to put their plan information and their requests into a computing environment (ex. PDA, Smart Devices, Laptops, etc.) in advance and they will try to keep the optimized states between users and the computing environment. However, because of bad contexts, users may get the wrong decision, so, one of the users’ demands may be requesting the good server which has higher security. To take this issue, we define the structure of Dynamic State Information (DSI) which takes a process about security including the relevant factors in sending/receiving contexts, which select the best during user movement with server quality and security states from DSI. Finally, whenever some information changes, users and devices get the notices including security factors, then an automatic reaction can be possible; therefore all users can safely use all devices in urban computing.

Migración y urbanización: las barriadas limeñas: un caso de integración a la vida urbana = Migration and urbanization: The barriadas" of Lima: an example of integration into urban life"

Los documentos del Seminario fueron publicados por UNESCO en 1961 con el título: La urbanización en América Latina/Urbanization in Latin America

Impacts of urban life on water quality and fish larvae communities in two creeks of the Brazilian Amazon

Este estudo teve como objetivo investigar o impacto das atividades antropogênicas da cidade de Belém pela comparação da qualidade da água e das comunidades de larvas de peixes em dois igarapés que desembocam no rio Guamá. Um dos igarapés atravessa um subúrbio pobre e populoso de Belém, enquanto o outro é localizado em uma ilha de Belém, declarada Área de Proteção Ambiental desde 1997. Dois pontos de coletas foram definidos em cada igarapé e monitorados durante oito horas, a cada três meses e durante um ano. O igarapé em região urbana apresentou fortes alterações na qualidade da água, durante o ano todo e em todas as marés, e isto deve se essencialmente a presença de um elevado número de coliformes termotolerantes. Poucas larvas foram encontradas. A água foi considerada imprópria para uso e atividades humanas, assim como para a vida aquática. O igarapé da ilha apresentou primeiros sinais de contaminação por nutrientes e bactéria durante o período chuvoso, parcialmente decorrente de fontes de poluição difusa. Em ambos os córregos, as comunidades larvais foram quase exclusivamente compostas de clupeiformes. Todos os estágios de desenvolvimento larval foram encontrados. Densidades e proporções mais elevadas de larvas recém eclodidas foram registradas durante a estação seca e associadas à presença de nitrato. Resultados apontam a necessidade de desenvolver um sistema de drenagem urbano para esgoto e água pluvial na maior brevidade, e recomenda um estudo de monitoramento integrado do igarapé na Área de Proteção Ambiental.

Material Culture and Quality of Urban Life

Material Culture and Quality of Urban Life

Changes in the ways of life of farmers in the northwest of Portugal after 1980

ABSTRACT This study analyzes the changes from 1980s in the lifestyles of families of pluriactive and exclusively agricultural farmers in the northwest of Portugal caused by the income arising from the migration of at least one member of the family to another country in the European Union and the narrowing of the labor and consumer markets among the villages, towns and cities. The theoretical framework used to analyze the changes in the way of life of the pluriactive farmers was based on Giddens' theory of structuration, which denies both the absolute determinism of the structure on the subject and the freedom of unrestrained action of these same subjects. The study was carried out with the application of a survey to 78 farmers, divided into "pluriactive" and "exclusively agricultural" farmers. The findings pointed out to a greater aquisition of modes of urban life by pluriactive farmers compared with the exclusively agricultural farmers and showed a generational bias in this process of acculturation.

Contexts-management strategy in considering the security in urban computing based on urban design

Urban Computing (UrC) provides users with the situation-proper information by considering context of users, devices, and social and physical environment in urban life. With social network services, UrC makes it possible for people with common interests to organize a virtual-society through exchange of context information among them. In these cases, people and personal devices are vulnerable to fake and misleading context information which is transferred from unauthorized and unauthenticated servers by attackers. So called smart devices which run automatically on some context events are more vulnerable if they are not prepared for attacks. In this paper, we illustrate some UrC service scenarios, and show important context information, possible threats, protection method, and secure context management for people.

Ecosystem services and urban vegetation coverage in Belém: the influence on noise pollution, air pollution and climate regulation

A ligação entre as zonas urbanas e as questões ambientais ficam mais próximas na medida em que cresce a conscientização global de conservar, melhorar e valorizar os serviços ambientais prestados pela natureza para a sustentabilidade da vida, dentro e fora da cidade. Cobertura vegetal (ou cobertura verde) está dentre as principais fontes de tais serviços. Uma vez que o processo de urbanização se mostra irreversível e os problemas ambientais urbanos se alastram em tamanho e extensão, a presença do verde está diretamente relacionada aos indicadores de qualidade de vida urbana. Como reflexo do processo de urbanização, a cidade de Belém perdeu uma grande porcentagem de seus ecossistemas naturais, de modo que este trabalho se concentrou em analisar alguns serviços ecossistêmicos—qualidade do ar, poluição do ar e regulação do clima - fornecidos pela qualidade e pela quantidade de cobertura vegetal local, considerando as alterações na distribuição espaço-temporal, em três distritos administrativos. Um marco teórico foi construído e analisado; a cobertura vegetal foi calculada, utilizando-se NDVI e Cobertura Vegetal Fracional em imagens do LANDSAT 5, ao longo de um período de 23 anos. A partir de uma proposta de escala mais detalhada de NDVI, análises quantitativas e qualitativas da cobertura verde evidenciaram perda significativa de cobertura muito densa, densa, moderada e aumento de áreas de pouca ou nenhuma vegetação. Ademais, lesão das áreas verdes sinalizou tendências de aumento da poluição do ar, da poluição sonora e da temperatura. A carência de dados relacionados ao meio ambiente não deixa dúvida sobre a urgência de investimento nos serviços ambientais provenientes da cobertura vegetal, para a sustentabilidade urbana em Belém, cujos cenários previstos são de drásticas perdas de área verde. Mais pesquisas e iniciativas de instituições públicas e privadas são necessárias para a contribuição aos serviços ambientais em Belém e, consequentemente, ao bem-estar público.

Population trends : hearings before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Urban Growthof the Committee on Banking and Currency, House of Representatives, Ninety-first Congress, first session on population trends.

Pt. 1 of a 3 pt. work. Pt. 2 has title: The quality of urban life.

Flanerie: A post -reflexive mode of urban research inquiry

Urban ethnographic studies in social science usually proceed from within a pre-figured research framework that guides field activity and filters what is considered see-worthy and study-worthy to those phenomena which are in some way necessary for the fulfillment of specific research agendas. Reliance on formalized ethnographic research methods to explore the city, and the reflex to intellectualize that which is observed by using them, frequently leads to the neglect of much of what comprises the ethnographic richness of city-life through an overly-contemplative intellectuocentrism. ^ Flânerie, an avocational, proto-sociological ethnographic mode of urban exploration and observation originating in early-nineteenth-century Paris, is representative of an alternate approach to exploration and study of the city—one less subject to a compressed horizon of ethnographic experience. It affords insight into a broad range of phenomena taking place in interstitial urban space and time which often escape the instrumentally overly-determined gaze of professionalist research inquiry. ^ The present work addressed the fact that the concept of flânerie , though occasionally invoked in discussions of methodology in urban sociology and cultural studies, had not been subjected to a systematic attempt to relate it to the research methods of these disciplines. Though as a typological figure the flâneur is thought to have disappeared long ago, practices represented by the concept continue to be engaged in by persons inside and outside of academia who approach city life and social science with a perspective somewhat transcending the reified dichotomies of private-professional and art-and-science. This study transferred aspects of the experience of the city embodied in the flâneur to the realm of ethnographic urban studies and the building of grounded social theory, finding flânerie to be crucial to the development of a refined knowledge of urban life, and an important means by which previously overlooked social phenomena and silenced avenues of research inquiry might be exposed. ^ The conclusions reached found a “flâneuristic” approach to the city as being beneficial to research practice and the vitalization of urban ethnographic inquiry, by affording opportunities for exposure to, and immersion within, an expanded range of quotidian social phenomena that have frequently escaped the academicist gaze. ^

A Global Review on Peri-Urban Development and Planning

Urban regions worldwide are increasingly facing the challenge of dealing with highly dynamic metropolitan growth and, at the same time, institutional changes like decentralisation and globalisation. These kinds of changes express themselves most evidently in peri-urban areas, where urban and rural life meets. These peri-urban areas in particular have been the stage for rapid physical, social and economic transformations, both in developed and developing countries. Peri-urbanization takes place here. Based on literature review, this paper presents an effort to identify generic attributes of peri-urbanisation and the way in which development planning tends to reply. Three major attributes are identified: peri-urban space (the spatial expression of peri-urban development), peri-urban life (the functional appearance of land uses, activities and peri-urban innovation), and peri-urban change (a causal and temporal perspective featuring flows and drivers of change). It is also shown that prevalent institutional replies in planning and development generally fail to acknowledge the dynamic and increasingly fragmented attributes of global peri-urbanisation.

Negotiating Community and Nation in Chợ Lớn: Nation-building, Community-building and Transnationalism in Everyday Life during the Republic of Việt Nam, 1955-1975

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Light coloured and draining wearing courses for low-impact urban pavements

Urban health and well-being are becoming current issues of modern cities due to local climate change and environmental noise. The Urban Heat Island and the Urban Noise Island have a direct impact on the economic, social, and environmental aspects of urban life, negatively affecting the well-being of worldwide citizens. The present research is focused on the study of innovative materials employed in the production of wearing course mixtures aiming to mitigate these phenomena. In particular, a synthetic transparent binder substituting bitumen and recycled aggregates produced from construction and demolition waste. Four mixtures were analysed. Among them, Mix 1 and Mix 2 are conventional wearing courses. The first is exclusively made of natural aggregates, while the second is constituted of 45 % of recycled aggregates (RA). Mix 3 and Mix 4 are draining wearing courses and, in this case, Mix 4 was produced by using 55 % of RA. Laboratory tests were required to fully characterize all the produced samples, allowing a proper comparison of results. Overall, all the mixtures studied provide prominent results suggesting potential applications of these innovative wearing courses in cycle lanes, historical centres, plazas, and parking lots. Among the conventional mixtures, Mix 2 is the most likely to assure the best performance in terms of road safety, efficiency, and durability while as far as the draining mixtures are concerned, Mix 4 is preferable due to its high content of recycled aggregates.