Vehicle traffic congestion leads to air pollution, driver frustration, and costs billions of dollars annually in fuel consumption. Finding a proper solution to vehicle congestion is a considerable challenge due to the dynamic and unpredictable nature of the network topology of vehicular environments, especially in urban areas. Instead of using static algorithms, e.g. Dijkstra and A*, we present...

The present study attempts to investigate the relationship between spatial configuration changes of Qom and the central core in the last half century. The main objective of this study is to review the Spatial form of Qom, and analyze the effect of changes in Urban configuration on the central core of the city and the main axes of urban activities during 1946 to 2011 and ultimately, Forecast the...

BACKGROUND Blood lead concentrations (B-Pb) were measured in 3 879 Swedish school children during the period 1978-2007. The objective was to study the effect of the proximity to lead sources based on the children's home and school location. METHODS The children's home address and school location were geocoded and their proximity to a lead smelter and major roads was calculated using geographi...

Linear infrastructure such as roads, highways, power lines and gas lines are omnipresent features of human activity and are rapidly expanding in the tropics. Tropical species are especially vulnerable to such infrastructure because they include many ecological specialists that avoid even narrow (<30-m wide) clearings and forest edges, as well as other species that are susceptible to road kill, ...

Urban peripheries in many developing country cities lack basic local public goods like pavement, water, sewerage and electricity. We estimate the impacts of slum infrastructure upgrading using an experiment in urban road pavement provision in Mexico. Our findings show that homes in streets that were paved increased their value between 13 and 24%. Households living in streets that were paved obt...

We analyse two large-scale intra-city urban networks and traffic flows therein measured by GPS traces of taxis in San Francisco and Shanghai. Our results coincide with previous findings that, based purely on topological means, it is often insufficient to characterise traffic flow. Traditional shortest-path betweenness analysis, where shortest paths are calculated from each pairs of nodes, carri...

Road traffic in urban areas is recognized to be associated with urban mobility and public health, and it is often the main source of noise pollution. Lately, noise maps have been considered a powerful tool to estimate the population exposure to environmental noise, but they need to be validated by measured noise data. The project Dynamic Acoustic Mapping (DYNAMAP), co-funded in the framework of...

The development of driverless vehicles capable of moving on urban roads could provide important benefits in reducing accidents, in increasing life comfort and in providing cost savings. In this dissertation we discuss how to create a perception system allowing robots to drive on roads, without the need to adapt the infrastructure, without requiring previous visits, and considering possible the ...

The development of driverless vehicles capable of moving on urban roads could provide important benefits in reducing accidents, in increasing life comfort and in providing cost savings. In this dissertation we discuss how to create a perception system allowing robots to drive on roads, without the need to adapt the infrastructure, without requiring previous visits, and considering possible the ...

Heat vulnerability of urban populations is becoming a major issue of concern with climate change, particularly in the cities of the Southwest United States. In this article we discuss the importance of understanding coupled social and technical systems, how they constitute one another, and how they form the conditions and circumstances in which people experience heat. We discuss the particular ...