Today's society is completely dependent on critical networks such as water supply, sewage, electricity, ICT and transportation. Risk and vulnerability analyses are needed to grasp the impact of threats and hazards. However, these become quite complex as there are strong interdependencies both within and between infrastructure systems. Risk and Interdependencies in Critical Infrastructures: A guideline for analysis provides methods for analyzing risks and interdependencies of critical infrastructures. A number of analysis approaches are described and are adapted to each of these infrastructures. Various approaches are also revised, and all are supported by several examples and illustrations. Particular emphasis is given to the analysis of various interdependencies that often exist between the infrastructures. Risk and Interdependencies in Critical Infrastructures: A guideline for analysis provides a good tool to identify the hazards that are threatening your infrastructures, and will enhance the understanding on how these threats can propagate throughout the system and also affect other infrastructures, thereby identifying useful risk reducing measures. It is essential reading for municipalities and infrastructure owners that are obliged to know about and prepare for the risks and vulnerabilities of the critical infrastructures for which they are responsible.

Is public transportation a right? Should it be? For those reliant on public transit, the answer is invariably "yes" to both. Indeed, when city officials propose slashing service or raising fares, it is these riders who are often the first to appear at that officials' door demanding their "right" to more service. Rights in Transit starts from the presumption that such riders are justified. For those who lack other means of mobility, transit is a lifeline. It offers access to many of the entitlements we take as essential: food, employment, and democratic public life itself. While accepting transit as a right, this book also suggests that there remains a desperate need to think critically, both about what is meant by a right and about the types of rights at issue when public transportation is threatened. Drawing on a detailed case study of the various struggles that have come to define public transportation in California's East Bay, Rights in Transit offers a direct challenge to contemporary scholarship on transportation equity. Rather than focusing on civil rights alone, Rights in Transit argues for engaging the more radical notion of the right to the city.

Each tree ring contains an image of the time when the ring formed, projected onto the ring's size, structure, and composition. Tree rings thus are natural archives of past environments, and contain records of past climate. While dendrochronologists have investigated the impact of climate on tree-ring growth by empirical statistical methods, this volume presents a process-based model complementing previous approaches. Basic ideas concerning the biology of tree-ring growth and its control by environmental factors are treated, especially for conifers. The use of the model is illustrated by means of several examples from widely differing environments, and possible future directions for model development and application are discussed. The volume provides an improved mechanistic basis for the interpretation of tree rings as records of past climate. It advances process understanding of the large-scale environmental control of wood growth. As forests are the main carbon sink on land, the results are of great importance for all global change studies. "

Rural regions in Europe are evolving under powerful boundary conditions such as globalisation, socio-cultural transformations and climate change, which in turn increases natural hazards. The regional land use and the evolvement of landscapes is increasingly shaped trends and drivers like infrastructural, energy or housing needs, globalised agricultural markets, and consumption habits. To face these challenges and to balance competitiveness with social cohesion, the "InnoLand research and development network" induces and accompanies promising land use innovations at the landscape scale in 10 European rural regions. Based on a common conceptual approach among the InnoLand partners, the development and implementation of new competitive strategies is conducted as a science-practice dialogue with strong commitment to the regional policy design for rural development. With this book, the network partners provide an overview and a comparative analysis of selected experimental regional approaches and give examples for the successful tackling of future opportunities and threats.

Vehicle accidents on the roads and highways occur every minute of every day, most often resulting in a loss of life or property damage. With advancing technology, vehicle infrastructure integration can increase road safety and transport efficiency through wireless sensor communications and other systems. These recent developments can bring inestimable economic value and will play a role in the next generation of vehicle products and traffic safety. Global Advancements in Connected and Intelligent Mobility: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential reference source that discusses the recent advances, safety, and efficiency in connected vehicles, as well as the next generation of communication network development. Featuring research on topics such as vehicular networks, telematics, and context-aware intelligence, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, traffic safety specialists, traffic control technicians, auto technicians, planning agencies, environmental managers, standardization governors, academicians, students, researchers, and industry practitioners seeking coverage on intelligent transportation systems.

This book provides an interdisciplinary lens for exploring, assessing, and coming to new understandings of smart cities and regions, focusing on the six dimensions of sensing, awareness, learning, openness, innovation, and disruption. Using a hybrid case study and correlational approach, people from diverse sectors in a variety of small to medium to large-sized cities in multiple countries (e.g., Canada, United States, Ireland, Greece, Israel, etc.) provide experience-based perspectives on smart cities together with assessments for elements pertaining to each of the six dimensions. The analysis of findings in this work surfaces a rich and interwoven tapestry of patterns from the qualitative data highlighting for example, the importance of emotion/affect, privacy, trust, and data visualizations in influencing and informing the directions of smart cities and regions going forward. Correlational analysis of quantitative data reveals the presence and strength of emerging relationships among elements assessed, shedding light on factors that may serve as starting points for understanding what is contributing to potentials for improving success in smart cities and regions.

* The most authoritative and up-to-date review of the development of the world's cities and other human settlements* The first global assessment of urban slums, the challenges they present and the ways to improve the lives of slum dwellers* Statistical annexes provide essential information on demographic, spatial & economic, housing, and environment & infrastructural indicatorsThis is the only reliable and comprehensive assessment of the world's cities, and an essential tool and reference for academics, researchers, planners, public authorities and civil society organizations around the world. The 2003 report addresses the growing problems presented by slums in an increasingly globalized world. Using extensive case studies, it analyzes the factors behind the creation of slums and reviews the policies taken towards them. It demonstrates that to meet the UN's Millennium Goals of significantly improving the lives of over 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, policies must go beyond traditional infrastructural approaches to create livelihoods, and hope, for the urban poor.

This book answers the call for New Urbanization, and proposes a "5+9+6" national spatial layout plan for the urbanization of the 770 major cities in China. This macro pattern is based on a few major metropolises at the center, and other cities supporting and benefitting from these metropolises to form a pyramid-like urban hierarchical system. The book also presents a comprehensive regionalization plan for China's New Urbanization and strategic approaches to improving the quality of this New Urbanization. Currently, China is aggressively promoting a so-called New Urbanization, which has been regarded as one of the primary ways to build a moderately prosperous society, to address critical issues related to agriculture, rural regions and farmers, to expand domestic demand and promote industrial innovation, and to realize the China Dream. From a systematic perspective and using recently released urban data, the authors analyze the current status of New Urbanization in China and also investigate the various potential problems and obstacles to its concrete implementation. Based on the analyses and investigations, the authors propose strategic directions, paths and basic principles for China's New Urbanization. In addition, they clearly identify the three different modes of New Urbanization, namely, the general mode, differentiated mode, and gradual mode. Today, many scholars argue that China's urban regions are experiencing a highly unsustainable mode of development. Chinese cities are heavily burdened by the so-called "urban diseases," which are characterized e.g. by congested traffic, polluted water and air, and a lack of open and green spaces. Traditional urbanization, which primarily focuses on economic development, must be fundamentally reformed. New Urbanization, which focuses on integrated economic development, social integration and space/environmental sustainability, or simply put, on the quality of urbanization, has been called for to provide a potential "cure" for these urban diseases. Due to the vastness of China's population and its rapidly growing economic, political and cultural relationships with the rest of the world, the book demonstrates that the success of this New Urbanization is critical not only to the future of urban China, but also the future of urbanization worldwide. The book offers a valuable reference work for all researchers, graduate student and policy makers interested in China's urban development.

The Reinvented City reflects on externity, the principal feature of a reinvented city. Three basic trends of the city are investigated; "discomposed," "generic" and "segregated" phenomena with the loss of the city as a space of social interaction and communication. Important questions are posed: What is the true public sphere in contemporary societies? What is the contemporary public space corresponding to it? In what way can the city project construct contemporary public space?

Economic and financial crises have brought the rise of unemployment, reduction of economic growth and emergence of global imbalances and tensions as countries and regions have suffered the effects of a variety of internal and external shocks. In this context of constant disruption, the scientific community has struggled to provide satisfactory answers to current economic challenges within standard frameworks. Focusing on the interconnections between innovation and resilience, this edited book contributes to a better understanding of how the crisis affects innovation and the capacity of territories to adapt and evolve. It offers both theoretical and empirical contributions that debate the notions of resilience in regional and urban contexts and serve as case studies related to innovation strategies and territorial clusters.

This book addresses the future of urbanisation on the Galapagos Islands from a systems, governance and design perspective with the competing parameters of liveability, economic and ecological, using the Galapagos as a laboratory for the theoretical and postulative understanding of evolving settlement and habitation. The Galapagos islands are one of the world's most examined and reported examples of a series of naturally evolving ecosystems. The biodiversity of these island ecosystems are the focus of tourism and the image across the world yet human settlement are part of the local ecology. While human intervention is limited, the islands are a distinctive context in which to consider the impact of human habitation as a part of our ecosystems. In this book, authors take the framework of complex adaptive systems (CAS) in which to model systems that grow and evolve, the relations between these various sectors change; systems that get more complex as they evolve. Tested and applied discretely in the two realms of natural and urban, for the first time this text will bring the two together in understanding options for the future of urban settlements on the Galapagos Islands and, by extension, consider how the approach can be used globally in other contexts.

In a knowledge economy urban form and functions are primarily shaped by global market forces rather than urban planning. As the role of knowledge in wealth creation becomes a critical issue in cities, urban administrations and planners need to discover new approaches to harness the considerable opportunities of abstract production for a global order. ""Creative Urban Regions"" explores the utilization of urban technology to support knowledge city initiatives, providing scholars and practitioners with essential fundamental techniques and processes for the successful integration of information technologies and urban production. Converging timely research on a multitude of cutting-edge urban information communication technology issues, this ""Premier Reference Source"" will make a valuable addition to every reference library.

How can government stay linked to its citizens? Across the world, governments' basic principles are turned on their heads as global markets, weakened national states, and active citizens emerge. Governments increasingly act not alone, but many governments and private groups make policy jointly - labeled 'governance'. But this raises new concerns for adequate citizen responsiveness. Leaders and parties previously considered left or right make unexpected choices - as leaders explore Third Ways, New Political Cultures, and more. As policy choices grow more complicated, they are harder to present to citizens - which undermines citizen legitimacy of parties and elected officials.

How can government maintain democratic accountability? This volume explores new answers by probing citizen involvement in specific cities and countries the world over. There is no single problem, hence no single remedy. But by contrasting key elements of national and local contexts, this volume offers lessons about how citizens are variously activated; about what works, where, and why. From specific results emerge insights about how citizens may drive policy, or be ignored, in a time of turbulence and rapid cultural change for government policy making.

These days human beings have a profound influence on aspects of the planetary ecosystem, e.g. on climate change and biodiversity, to name only two. This manual is intended to help practitioners, who are dealing with human-based rural and urban settlement-ecosystems, in the key steps towards their realization (design, implementation, and operation) and helpful for all, who are concerned about ensuring their practical sustainability. The ecosystem-approach is holistic and integrative, encompassing various disciplines like architecture, landscape architecture, environmental engineering, social sciences, life sciences, ecology, and management. It also considers issues such as energy-savings, ecological cycles, reuse, natural resources, socio-cultural background, real participation, and holistic quality management. Thus it not only explains the general concept, the steps of realization and the respective involved stakeholders, but also gives hints and tools for practitioners. The information, recommendations and tools are directed to the following target groups, among others: * Local planning authorities (giving hints for the procedure and the involved stakeholders) * Designers (holistic approach, procedures, tools) * Regulatory bodies, licensing and financing authorities (requirements for approach and procedures) * Construction and implementing firms and institutions (recommendations, tools) * Operating bodies (hints for operation, tools) The experiences are based on a joint German-Ghanaian program at Valley View University, the biggest private university in Ghana, intended to help realize the vision of a truly holistic ecological university. It was financed originally by the German Ministry of Education and Research and recently by the German Ministry for the Environment in the frame of the Climate Change Initiative of the Federal Government of Germany.

With the use of ecological models, managers and decision makers can make sure that the ecological systems affected by their decisions are accurately represented. Unfortunately, the most relevant ecological science and modeling techniques are often not used because managers are not familiar with them or find them inappropriate for their circumstances. The authors of this volume hope to close the gap between the state of the art in ecological modeling and the state of the practice in the use of models as decision-making tools. It will serve as a readable introduction to modeling for people involved in resource management and will also review specific applications of interest to more experienced modelers. The first chapters detail several successful uses of ecological models in resource management. There are then five pairs of chapters addressing important issues in ecological modeling, including barriers to the use of modeling in decision making, evolving approaches in the field, effective use of data, the toolkit approach to management, and the various scientific and technological investments required for productive modeling. Ecologists and other scientists will learn how best to focus their research for practical, real-world applications, and resource managers and other practitioners will learn the most appropriate methods of understanding dynamic processes and making projections about the implications of their decisions.

Sustainable development within urban and rural areas, transportation systems, logistics, supply chain management, urban health, social services, and architectural design are taken into consideration in the cohesive network models provided in this book. The ideas, methods, and models presented consider city landscapes and quality of life conditions based on mathematical network models and optimization. Interdisciplinary Works from prominent researchers in mathematical modeling, optimization, architecture, engineering, and physics are featured in this volume to promote health and well-being through design. Specific topics include: - Current technology that form the basis of future living in smart cities - Interdisciplinary design and networking of large-scale urban systems - Network communication and route traffic optimization - Carbon dioxide emission reduction - Closed-loop logistics chain management and operation - Modeling the effect urban environments on aging - Health care infrastructure - Urban water system management - Architectural design optimization Graduate students and researchers actively involved in architecture, engineering, building physics, logistics, supply chain management, and mathematical optimization will find the interdisciplinary work presented both informative and inspiring for further research.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible-but not simpler" Albert Einstein Traffic Theory, like all other sciences, aims at understanding and improving a physical phenomenon. The phenomenon addressed by Traffic Theory is, of course, automobile traffic, and the problems associated with it such as traffic congestion. But what causes congestion? Some time in the 1970s, Doxiades coined the term "oikomenopolis" (and "oikistics") to describe the world as man's living space. In Doxiades' terms, persons are associated with a living space around them, which describes the range that they can cover through personal presence. In the days of old, when the movement of people was limited to walking, an individual oikomenopolis did not intersect many others. The automobile changed all that. The term "range of good" was also coined to describe the maximal distance a person can and is willing to go in order to do something useful or buy something. Traffic congestion is caused by the intersection of a multitude of such "ranges of good" of many people exercising their range utilisation at the same time. Urban structures containing desirable structures contribute to this intersection of "ranges of good." xii Preface In a biblical mood, I opened a 1970 paper entitled "Traffic Control -- From Hand Signals to Computers" with the sentence: "In the beginning there was the Ford."

1. Theme and focus Few books are available to integrate the models for facilities siting, transportation, and land-use. Employing state-of-the-art quantitative-models and case-studies, this book would guide the siting of such facilities as transportation terminals, warehouses, nuclear power plants, military bases, landfills, emergency shelters, state parks, and industrial plants. The book also shows the use of statistical tools for forecasting and analyzing implications of land-use decisions. The idea is that la- use on a map is necessarily a consequence of individual, and often conflicting, siting decisions over time. Since facilities often develop to form a community, these decisions are interrelated spatially-i. e. , they need to be accessible to one another via the transportation system. It is our thesis that a common methodological procedure exists to analyze all these spatial-temporal constructs. While there are several monographs and texts on subjects related to this book's, this volume is unique in that it integrates existing practical and theoretical works on facility-location, transportation, and land-use. Instead of dealing with individual facility-location, transportation, or the resulting land-use pattern individually, it provides the underlying principles that are behind these types of models. Particularly of interest is the emphasis on counter-intuitive decisions that often escape our minds unless deliberate steps of analysis are taken. Oriented toward the fundamental principles of infrastructure management, the book transcends the traditional engineering and planning disciplines, where the main concerns are often exclusively either physical design, fiscal, socioeconomic or political considerations.

This book is about African and Asian cities. Illustrated through selected case cities, the book brings together a rich collection of papers by leading scholars and practitioners in Africa and Asia to offer empirical analysis and up-to-date discussions and assessments of the urban challenges and solutions for their cities. A number of key topics concerning housing, sustainable urban development and climate change in Africa and Asia are explored along with how policy interventions and partnerships deliver specific forms of urban development. It is intended for all who are interested in the state of the cities and urban development in Africa and Asia. Africa and Asia present, in many ways, useful lessons in dealing with the burgeoning urban population, and the problems surrounding this influx of people and climate change in the developing word.

This unique text has as its main themes the development of Greek regions and the impact of the structural policies of the European Union on their progress and prosperity. By analyzing the regional policy of the country during the last decades and presenting the current trends, the book provides evidence on the gradual reduction in regional disparities in Greece. Emphasis is given to the geographic and socio-economic characteristics of the 13 regions of Greece and the objectives of the Community Support Framework for the period 2000 - 2006. Separate chapters are devoted to the development prospects of the Greek islands, the big cities and the mountainous areas. Original maps, tables and graphs together with a comprehensive text make this book a valuable reading for administrators, diplomats, regional scientists, geographers, planners, economists, sociologists, as well as for students of social sciences.

This book examines the practice of urban resilience past and present, drawing on deeper global historical sources and detailed case-studies of contemporary Britain. It argues that resilience is neither new nor necessarily about protecting ordinary people, but part of a long struggle over the control of cities.

Uniquely focused on the contributions smart cities can make to climate change resilience, Urban Climate Adaptation and Mitigation offers evidence-based scientific solutions for improving cities' abilities to prepare for, recover from, and adapt to global climate-related events. Beginning with the observation of global environmental change, this book explores what sustainable smart projects are, how they are adopted and evaluated, and how they can address climate change challenges. It brings together a wide variety of disciplines such as planning, transportation, and waste management to address issues related to climate change adaptation and mitigation in cities.In general, many social science researchers lack cohesive, broad-based literature knowledge; Urban Climate Adaptation and Mitigation bridges this gap and informs different types of stakeholders on how they can enhance their preparation abilities to enable real-time responses and actions. Therefore, it is a valuable reference for researchers, professors, graduate students, city planners, and policy makers. Application-focused throughout, this book explores the complexities of urban systems and subsystems to support researchers, planners, and decision makers in their efforts toward developing more climate-resilient smart cities.

This book focuses on the creation of space as an activity. The argument draws not only on aspects of movement in time, but also on a cultural and specifically social context influencing the creation of the spatial habitus. The book reconsiders existing theories of time and space in the field of urban planning and develops an updated account of spatial activity, experience and space-making. Recent developments in spatial practice, specifically related to new technologies, make this an important and timely task. Integrating spatial-temporal dynamics into the way we think about cities aids the implementation of sustainable forms of urban planning. The study is composed of two different case studies. One case is based on fieldwork tracking individual movement using GPS, the other case utilises data mined from Twitter. One of the key elements in the conclusion to this book is the definition of temporality as a status rather than a transition. It is argued that through repetitive practices as habitus, time has presence and agency in our everyday lives. This book is based on the work undertaken for a PhD at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and was and accepted as thesis by University College London in 2013.

Bad architecture. Soulless. Destructive of communities. The suburbs are much-maligned places. We see this time and again in films like American Beauty and novels like The Ice Storm. But are they really as homogenous and conservative as we think they are? In this wide-ranging comparative study of England and the United States, Mark Clapson offers new interpretations on suburbia. The majority of people in both countries now live in suburbs, largely as a result of the rising affluence of the postwar period. Millions of Americans pursued an aspiration to settle away from the poorer town and city centres in new subdivisions, while in England people were keen to leave terraced streets and poorer suburban housing areas. Examining housing policies, the politics of affluence and social class, Clapson challenges deeply held myths by demonstrating the complexity of suburban life. He shows how suburbs are becoming increasingly multicultural and compares the minority experience in both countries. He analyzes voting patterns to reveal some surprising political trends. In addition, he discusses gender and the experience of community life. Throughout, he uncovers the similarities and differences in the English and American experience of suburbanization in the twentieth century. This is a timely and original account that looks beyond the stereotypes of life in the 'burbs.

This volume is a cogent empirical analysis of the interplay between a region's natural amenities and its socioeconomic evolution. It focuses on the rural sectors of America's Intermountain West region, which lies between the Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountains to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east. Coherently structured and meticulously detailed, it adds much to our understanding of the ways an area's forests, lakes, mountains, parkland and historic attractions affect residents' sense of well-being as well as the sociodemographic and economic changes they experience. The book examines patterns of growth and change linked to the emergence of 'New West' conditions, assessing their implications for the wider community as well as discussing the impact these trends could have on the consumption of natural resources. It also points to ways in which communities and their development can be managed sustainably. The tight geographical focus of this valuable resource ensures a depth of analysis which can be applied to similar regions worldwide. Based on a large-scale, random-sample survey of both full-time and seasonal residents, it provides a much-needed overview of the macro-level economic, demographic, and social transformations affecting rural communities in America. As such, the book has relevance for all researchers concerned with rural development, the changes impacting rural landscapes, and natural resource management.