Urban walkability considering pedestrians’ perceptions of the built environment: a 10-year review and a case study in a medium-sized city in Latin America

ABSTRACT

Numerous methodologies measuring walkability have been developed over the last years. This paper reviews the Walkability Index (WI) literature of the last decade (2009–2018) and highlights some limitations in the current approaches. Only a few studies have evaluated walkability in Latin America, mainly in big cities but not in medium and small-sized cities in the region, which present their own urbanisation dynamics, security issues, sidewalk invasion problems, and poor planning. Furthermore, most WIs in the literature use objective mesoscale variables to assess walkability in a given area. This paper contributes to filling these gaps by generating new evidence from a medium-sized city in Latin America to question if characteristics of the built environment encourage walking trips, as found in the literature, are transferable among regions. The study also proposes a novel index comprised of microscale and mesoscale built environment variables to assess walkability using virtual tools and considering users’ perceptions. The WI estimation relies on ranking probability models. The results of the case study suggest that subjective Security and Traffic Safety are the most crucial factors influencing walkability in these kind of cities, which is different from what is found in the literature from cities in developed countries where Sidewalk Condition and Attractiveness are the most important factors. Security appeared to be strongly associated with a subjective dimension, represented by the fear of crime or perceived risk for crime, instead of the actual occurrence of crimes. This result evidences the importance of the physical attributes of the real world and how they are captured, judged, and processed by pedestrians. Then, regional transferability of WIs needs to be done carefully. Finally, results in this paper highlight the importance of microscale built environment characteristics in the WI formulation in these cities. Results are in line with other research in some cities of the region, which found that microscale variables such as pavement quality and presence of obstacles on the sidewalks are relevant components to promote walkability.     

Large-scale dynamic transportation network simulation: A space-time-event parallel computing approach

This paper describes a computationally efficient parallel-computing framework for mesoscopic transportation simulation on large-scale networks. By introducing an overall data structure for mesoscopic dynamic transportation simulation, we discuss a set of implementation issues for enabling flexible parallel computing on a multi-core shared memory architecture. First, we embed an event-based simulation logic to implement a simplified kinematic wave model and reduce simulation overhead. Second, we present a space-time-event computing framework to decompose simulation steps to reduce communication overhead in parallel execution and an OpenMP-based space-time-processor implementation method that is used to automate task partition tasks. According to the spatial and temporal attributes, various types of simulation events are mapped to independent logical processes that can concurrently execute their procedures while maintaining good load balance. We propose a synchronous space-parallel simulation strategy to dynamically assign the logical processes to different threads. The proposed method is then applied to simulate large-scale, real-world networks to examine the computational efficiency under different numbers of CPU threads. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the implemented parallel computing algorithm can significantly improve the computational efficiency and it can reach up to a speedup of 10 on a workstation with 32 computing threads.     

CACC车头时距与混合交通流稳定性的解析关系

研究协同自适应巡航控制(Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control，CACC)车头时距对不同CACC比例下混合交通流稳定性的影响关系，进而为CACC车头时距设计提供参考. 应用优化速度模型(Optimal Velocity Model，OVM)作为手动车辆的跟驰模型，PATH真车实验标定的模型作为CACC车辆的跟驰模型. 基于传递函数理论，推导混合交通流稳定性判别条件，计算关于CACC比例与平衡态速度的混合交通流稳定域. 分析混合交通流在任意速度下稳定所需满足的临界CACC比例与CACC车头时距的解析关系，提出随CACC比例增加的可变 CACC车头时距设计策略，并通过数值仿真实验验证所提可变CACC车头时距策略的正确性. 研究结果表明：在所提可变CACC车头时距策略下，CACC车头时距随CACC比例增加而逐渐降低，避免取值较大影响混合交通流通行能力的提升；当CACC比例大于35%时，混合交通流在任意速度下稳定.研究结果可为大规模CACC真车实验的实施提供理论设计参考.     

视讯会议系统“一键点名”功能硏究

以铁路视讯会议网工程建设标准和视讯会议系统网管的标准配置文件为基础,通过反复试验和结果分析,确定广铁集团视讯会议操作繁琐的原因,并提出相应的优化方案,提高了广铁集团视讯会议系统会议控制的效率。     

广东山区高速公路挖方边坡常见病害及防治策略

广东省山区高速公路发展迅速,但诸多挖方边坡在修建过程中就产生了不同程度的病害。这些病害产生的原因包括气候、地质条件和人为因素,给施工工期、造价及安全管理造成较大影响。鉴于塌方病害在广东地区山区高速公路挖方边坡中较为常见,根据破坏方式及影响范围的深度将其划分为浅层溜塌、浅层滑塌和深层滑塌(滑坡)。结合工程建设经验,提出了山区路堑边坡的防治策略,可为类似工程的设计、施工提供借鉴。     

VVL耦合喷油策略对GDI汽油机混合气形成的影响

利用三维仿真软件Ansys Fluent建立了GDI汽油机的仿真计算模型,就变气门升程耦合不同喷油策略对缸内气流运动和混合气形成的影响进行了模拟计算。结果表明,与大气门升程工况相比,小气门升程工况的缸内湍流运动强度、燃油蒸发和湿壁情况以及点火时刻混合气质量都明显改善;在小气门升程工况,采用两段喷油会缩短油气混合时间,过度推迟二次喷油时刻会恶化混合气质量和燃油湿壁情况;在大气门升程工况,两段喷油会改善混合气均匀性,随着二次喷油时刻推迟,燃油蒸发量增加,湿壁情况加剧,混合气质量得到改善;小气门升程工况下采用二次喷油时刻为470°曲轴转角,前后两次喷油量比例为7∶3的两段喷油方案在燃油蒸发和湿壁以及点火时刻缸内混合气质量这几个方面的效果都很好,是最合理的方案。     

Identity-based broadcast encryption with shorter transmissions

This paper describes two identity-based broadcast encryption(IBBE) schemes for mobile ad hoc networks.The first scheme proposed achieves sub-linear size cipertexts and the second scheme achieves O(1)-size ciphertexts.Furthermore, when the public keys are transmitted, the two schemes have short transmissions and achieve O(1) user storage cost, which are important for a mobile ad hoc network.Finally, the proposed schemes are provable security under the decision generalized bilinear Di?-Hellman(GBDH) assumption in the random oracles model.     

计算机数据安全隐患及防护措施

从分析计算机数据的物理安全和逻辑安全两个方面入手,对电磁波辐射、联网及病毒对计算机数据安全的威胁进行了论述,指出这是威胁计算机数据安全的主要因素,并提出了数据备份、数据安全删除、辐射屏蔽、病毒及入侵防护、文档加密等相应的安全防护措施和方法。     

城市轨道交通网络可靠性分析

为预防突发事件对城市轨道交通网络的影响,提高应变能力、增强运营稳定性,有必要对其网络可靠性进行分析。以上海市轨道交通网络为实证对象,基于L空间和P空间方法建立两种网络拓扑结构,分析其复杂网络的静态特性。提出针对车站删除方法的4种攻击策略,并对各种攻击策略下网络可靠性的变化进行比较分析。结果表明,轨道交通车站网络和换乘网络对随机攻击具有鲁棒性,对蓄意攻击具有脆弱性;动态攻击策略对网络可靠性的影响比静态攻击策略更大。     

基于PLC的船舶安全报警系统设计

为保证船舶安全航行,船舶一般都配备有安全报警系统。随着计算机技术、网络技术和控制技术的发展,船舶报警系统向着信息化、网络化和智能化的方向发展。本文结合当前船舶安全报警系统的实际应用需求,以PLC为核心控制器设计了一套完整的船舶安全报警系统。本文首先对系统硬件和软件的结构和功能进行简单介绍,然后针对基于PLC的机船安全报警系统各模块的硬件组态、网络组态和控制程序进行了详细的设计,最后完成了安全报警系统人机交互界面的设计。