City and Environment Interactions最新文献

Safe recycling of nutrients found in human excreta back to agriculture is an important component of a circular economy that can protect waterways and stabilize food prices. Although many technological advances for the recovery of these nutrients exist, large-scale implementation is lacking. A commonly cited barrier is a lack of acceptance of fertilizers from human excreta and for food products grown with such fertilizers. The food retail sector, as an intermediary between producers and consumers, is an important actor with power to influence opinions and purchasing practices. In this study, we surveyed 127 food retailers (stores) and reviewed publicly available retailer sustainability policies to assess acceptance of the use of recycled fertilizers. We gauged acceptance of three products relevant for the Swedish market – struvite, phosphorus from ash, and dehydrated urine. Most respondents felt that all three recovery techniques were unlikely to be harmful either to themselves or to the environment. It was more acceptable to use products further away from human consumption. In general, struvite and phosphorus from ash were perceived more positively. Acceptance of wastewater-derived fertilizers was largely dependent on perceived risks, especially the fate of pharmaceutical residues. While retailers in Sweden are not negative to reuse, they seem unlikely to provide strong support for nutrient recirculation from human excreta unless it becomes a greater concern for the public.

Due to climate change, it is important to study the relationship between floods and sea-level rise in coastal city resilience. In this research sea surface temperature (SST) from MODIS, wind speed, precipitation, and sea-level rise from satellite altimetry are investigated for dynamic sea-level variability. An annual SST increase of 0.1C° is observed around the Gothenburg coast. Also in the middle of the North Sea, an annual increase of about 0.2C° is evident. The annual sea surface height (SSH) trend is 3 mm on the Gothenburg coast. We have a strong positive spatial correlation between SST and SSH near the Gothenburg coast. In the next step, dynamic sea-level variability is predicted with a convolution neural network and long short term memory. Root mean square error of wind speed, precipitation, SST, and mean sea-level forecasts are ±0.84 m/s, ±48.75 mm, ±3.48C° and ±24 mm, respectively. The 5-year trends of mean seal level show a significant increase from 28 mm/year to 46 mm/year in the last 5 year periods and the rate of increase has doubled. In the final step, the water rise of 5–10 m in Gothenburg city was simulated, and in the worst scenario, more than 50 % of the city will be damaged.

More than half of the European population live in small and medium size municipalities, where climate adaptation planning is an under-researched topic within the climate change field. Many constraints might hinder the implementation of adaptation pilot projects due to lack of economic, knowledge, and technical available resources. Local institutions find difficulties in building a coherent local adaptation planning and design processes with international and national frameworks. In this context, this article proposes a methodology based on the available international frameworks to support the small communities with the aim to implement adaptation pilot projects within different sectors. In doing so, this paper tests a climate change adaptation cycle for pilot projects development in small municipalities; the first in Italy for small municipalities under 20.000 inhabitants. The proposed methodology could lead local adaptation initiatives in climate change risk assessment by supporting the research communities in developing a coherent vision for the local territories and to identify proper oriented measures to enhance demonstrative pilot projects and to increase the level of resilience in small municipalities, avoiding maladaptation.

Relationships between cities and their waters have always been evolving. In a context of transition towards sustainability, finding a balance between the urban and river spaces may contribute to the development of new resilient neighborhoods. To that end, a tailor-made multi-criteria evaluation method appears necessary to gather information not only on sustainability performances of neighborhoods projects but also on specific features linked to a balanced relationships between rivers and cities. On these observations, we develop the concept of city-river balance by focusing on the Rhone territory. It serves as a basis to design an innovative decision-support tool for comparing forward-looking visions for rhodanian neighborhoods in transition. First, this paper presents the methodological research approach taken to develop the tool. Then, it explains the structure and functioning of the tool, followed by a test application to a case study, the Jonction sector in Geneva, Switzerland. Preliminary results show that specific city-river balance components and indicators can explicitly be thematized and measured. Moreover, such a tool could unveil hidden potentialities and help stakeholders to make informed-decision through a resilient vision for the regeneration of rhodanian neighborhoods. In that sense, it promotes not only a transition towards sustainability but also the emergence of a city-river balance.

The latest directions in human-environmental relationship research focus on place-related human experiences that can help better understand pro-environmental behaviours. Investigating processes that impact the place-related self-expression and meanings of residents facilitates the understanding of potential support by citizens towards sustainability. Authors argue that understanding deep place meanings can contribute to enriching human-environment relationships through encouraging personal and collective growth towards the development of a sustainable habitat. The theoretical contribution of the study lies in the description of how the features and processes of a place may either support or interfere with its residents' ability to express their identity. This paper employs case study research methodology, particularly a theory building approach. Thematic analysis is used to analyse and present the findings. This research will help practitioners to understand how wellbeing-related place meanings can help to raise the level of the overall wellbeing of residents and what are the hindrances that can slow down this process, eventually impacting sustainability. The authors call for more research on how the mechanisms that foster deep place meanings can be incorporated into the city planning processes in Budapest.

Urban green sanitation projects occur in complicated and ambiguous contexts, local and concrete issues mingling with broader matters of law and justice, economics, and science. This essay, grounded in historical studies of communal water and sanitation initiatives, explores the relations among multiple levels of authority and engagement. It begins with physical, chemical, and biological aspects of water and wastes as individuals experience them – the phenomenology of “wet dirt” -- before moving to cultures of sanitation and hydro-social relations, contrasting these with abstract levels involved in assessing green sanitation, such as economics and law. The essay concludes with a call to explore modes of engagement in green sanitation that avoid conflicts between levels of abstraction, using gift-giving and art-making as examples.

The surface of cities is often warmer than the surface of their surroundings. This phenomenon is known as the surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect and has several adverse implications. Studies have shown that the SUHI effect tends to be weaker if urban form is characterized by sprawl or polycentrism. These findings suggest that urban heat could be mitigated if a city is less compact. By analyzing high-resolution remote-sensing land surface temperature (LST) and land-cover data for 293 European cities, this study shows that — contrary to many previous findings — sprawling or polycentric urban forms do not necessarily lead to a decrease of LSTs over urban areas. In southern European cities, sprawl could even lead to the warming of urban areas during specific daytimes, highlighting the importance of considering environmental and regional contexts when determining the role of urban form in heat mitigation. It is also crucial to consider the predominant type of land cover surrounding a city since sprawl into forested areas could have a very different effect than sprawl into agricultural areas. These results illustrate the complexity of urban form related heat mitigation and that policy- and decision-makers have to consider local and regional contexts when steering urban form.

Extreme heatwaves represent a health hazard that is expected to increase in the future, and which particularly affects urban populations worldwide due to intensification by urban heat islands. To analyze the impact of such extreme heatwaves on urban areas, urban climate models are a valuable tool. This study examines the performance of the urban climate model MUKLIMO_3 in modelling spatial air temperature patterns in the greater urban area of Bern, Switzerland, a city in complex topography, during three distinct extreme heatwaves in 2018 and 2019 over a total of 23 days. The model is validated using low-cost air temperature data from 79 (2018) and 84 (2019) measurement sites. The intercomparison of the three extreme heatwaves shows that during the first extreme heatwave 2019 at lower elevation regions in the outskirts of the city, modelled air temperature was higher than observation, which was likely due to pronounced mesoscale cold air advection. During calm and dry days, the air temperature distribution was modelled realistically over all three extreme heatwaves investigated. During daytime, modelled air temperatures were lower across all evaluation sites and all extreme heatwaves when compared to the measured values, with highest median air temperature differences of −3.7 K to −4.8 K found in the late afternoon. At night, MUKLIMO_3 generally shows a slowed cooling, so that higher air temperatures were modelled when compared to measured values, with median air temperature biases of +1.5 K to +2.8 K at midnight. By sunrise, the model biases continuously decreased, so that the lowest air temperatures at 7 a.m. were modelled with a bias of +0.2 K to +0.7 K. Peak biases exceed 7 K both during day and night. In sum, our results show that MUKLIMO_3 allows to realistically model the urban air temperature distributions during the peaks of the heatwaves investigated with the highest day and night air temperatures, which may assist in the development of heat mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of heat extremes and improve public health in cities with complex topography.

In a natural landscape, when rainfall reaches the Earth’s surface, water either percolates into the ground or it flows as run-off finally reaching a water body such as a lake or a river. Due to rapid urbanization, the natural landcover in the cities is being replaced with impervious surfaces which significantly alters the natural patterns and processes of urban landscape resulting in mismanagement of storm water and hence the flooding issues. Integrated Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI), a landscape conservation approach with nested networks of blue and green spaces (permeable pavements, bioswales, rain gardens, urban tree cover, small ponds and wetlands) can provide an alternative approach to conventional storm water management along with its multiple environmental benefits. The objective of this paper is to develop a geospatial technology-based approach for the identification of BGI network by employing graph theory and gravity model for sustainable storm water management in the city of Ahmedabad, India. The study introduces a replicable approach by integrating five key criteria i.e., slope, drainage density, land cover, hydrologic soil group and proximity to roads for Suitability Analysis, selecting core patches as nodes in a GIS environment and identifying corridors by employing the least cost path function followed by assessment of selected corridors using gravity model. Analysis of land surface characteristics reveals that Ahmedabad has a high suitability for the implementation of BGI. A variety of blue and green open spaces throughout the city such as parks, gardens and lakes form the node which are connected by a network of corridors developed by the least cost path model and gravity model. The methods and practices adopted in this research represented an innovative approach for the implementation of BGI networks for storm water management in an urban landscape.

Tehran is one of the most populous and polluted cities in Iran with a fossil fuel-dependent economy. This paper aims to assess a techno-economic and environmental feasibility of biomass-based power plant in off-grid mode to present optimal planning for reliable electrification to Tehran. To achieve this goal, size optimization and sensitivity analysis of the proposed hybrid renewable electric system (HRES) is performed by simulating a model in HOMER software to determine the most economical and environment-friendly HRES for the studied area. The assessment criteria for selection of optimal architecture are based on the lowest of net present cost (NPC), cost of energy (COE), and carbon emission quantity (CEQ). Accordingly, HOMER proposes the seven feasible HRES that among them, the biomass generator (BG), photovoltaic (PV) and Wind turbine (WT) hybrid system including 3,181 kW PV panels, 4300 kW WT, a 5,100 kW BG, 17,035 kWh battery storage and 4,415 kW converters is the most optimum power system. Besides, the aforesaid system has COE of 0.281 $/kWh and NPC of 113 M$. Techno-economic comparison of seven systems shows that the integration of PV and WT with biomass systems could be an effective method to make a cost-optimal and reliable HRES, especially in a large scale city- for low-carbon and climate-resilient communities.