There is an urgent need for holistic tools to assess the health impacts of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies relating to increasing public green spaces. Urban vegetation provides numerous ecosystem services on a local scale and is therefore a potential adaptation strategy that can be used in an era of global warming to offset the increasing impacts of human activity on urban environments. In this study, we propose a set of urban green ecological metrics that can be used to evaluate urban green ecosystem services. The metrics were derived from two complementary surveys: a traditional remote sensing survey of multispectral images and Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data, and a survey using proximate sensing through images made available by the Google Street View database. In accordance with previous studies, two classes of metrics were calculated: greenery at lower and higher elevations than building facades. In the last phase of the work, the metrics were applied to city blocks, and a spatially constrained clustering methodology was employed. Homogeneous areas were identified in relation to the urban greenery characteristics. The proposed methodology represents the development of a geographic information system that can be used by public administrators and urban green designers to create and maintain urban public forests.
The climate of a city influences the ways in which its outdoor spaces are used. Especially, public spaces intended for use by pedestrians and cyclists, such as parks, squares, residential and commercial streets, and foot and cycle paths will be used and enjoyed more frequently if they have a comfortable and healthy climate. Due to the predicted global temperature increase, urban climate is likely to become more uncomfortable, especially in summer when an increase in heat stress is expected. Urban forestry has been proposed as one approach for mitigating the human health consequences of increased temperature resulting from climate change. The aims of the current research were to (a) provide a transferable methodology useful for analyzing the effect of urban trees on surface temperature reduction, particularly in public spaces, and (b) provide high-resolution urban mapping for adaptation strategies to climate change based on green space projects. To achieve the established aims, we developed a methodology that uses multisource data: LiDAR data, high-resolution Landsat imagery, global climate model data from CMIP5 (IPPC Fifth Assessment), and data from meteorological stations. The proposed model can be a useful tool for validating the efficiency of design simulations of new green spaces for temperature mitigation. ARTICLE HISTORY
Cities are human ecosystems. Understanding human ecology is important for designing and planning the built environment. The ability to respond to changes and adapt actions in a positive way helps determine the health of cities. Recently, many studies have highlighted the great potential of photographic data shared on the Flickr platform for the analysis of environmental perceptions in landscape and urban planning. Other research works used panoramic images from the Google Street View (GSV) web service to extract urban quality data. Although other researches have used social media to characterize human habitat from an emotional point of view, there is still a lack of knowledge of the correlation between environmental and physical variables of the city and visual perception, especially at a scale suitable for urban planning and design. In ecology, the environmental suitability of a territory for a given biological community is studied through species distribution models (SDM). In this work we have adopted the state of the art of SDM (the ensemble approach) to develop a methodology transferable to cities with different sizes and characteristics that uses data deriving from many sources available on a global scale: social media platform, Google internet services, shared geographical information, remote sensing and geomorphological data. The result of our application in the city of Livorno offers important information on the most significant variables for the conservation, planning and design of urban public spaces at the project scale. However, further research developments will be needed to test the model in cities of different sizes and geographic locations, integrate the model with other social media, other databases and with traditional surveys and improve the quality of indicators that can be derived from information shared on the Internet.
Human well-being is affected by the design quality of the city in which they live and walk. This depends primarily on specific physical characteristics and how they are aggregated together. Many studies have highlighted the great potential of photographic data shared on the Flickr platform for analyzing environmental perceptions in landscape and urban planning. Other researchers have used panoramic images from the Google Street View (GSV) web service to extract data on urban quality. However, at the urban level, there are no studies correlating quality perceptions detected by social media platforms with spatial geographic characteristics through geostatistical models. This work proposes the analysis of urban quality in different areas of the Livorno city through a methodological approach based on Geographical Random Forest regression. The result offers important insights into the physical characteristics of a street environment that contribute to the more abstract qualities of urban design.
The climate of a city influences the ways in which its outdoor spaces are used. Especially, public spaces intended for use by pedestrians and cyclists, such as parks, squares, residential and commercial streets, and foot and cycle paths will be used and enjoyed more frequently if they have a comfortable and healthy climate. Due to the predicted global temperature increase, urban climate is likely to become more uncomfortable, especially in summer when an increase in heat stress is expected. Urban forestry has been proposed as one approach for mitigating the human health consequences of increased temperature resulting from climate change. The aims of the current research were to (a) provide a transferable methodology useful for analyzing the effect of urban trees on surface temperature reduction, particularly in public spaces, and (b) provide high-resolution urban mapping for adaptation strategies to climate change based on green space projects. To achieve the established aims, we developed a methodology that uses multisource data: LiDAR data, high-resolution Landsat imagery, global climate model data from CMIP5 (IPPC Fifth Assessment), and data from meteorological stations. The proposed model can be a useful tool for validating the efficiency of design simulations of new green spaces for temperature mitigation.
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