The adverse effects of air pollution on human health are significant, and low-cost sensors (LCSs) have gained attention as an effective supplementary monitoring approach. However, most existing LCSs require external power sources, which restricts their deployment flexibility. Due to cost limitations, the data quality from LCSs is often lower and necessitates calibration. Previous calibration studies have primarily focused on incorporating meteorological variables into the models, with limited attention to individual sensor differences and spatial positioning. In this study, an integrated wireless LCS was developed, capable of monitoring multiple indicators without dependence on external power. A multi-task calibration framework based on TabNet was proposed to calibrate fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and inhalable particulate matter (PM10) simultaneously. Compared with using only meteorological variables, the inclusion of sensor difference (SD), spatial autocorrelation (SA), and solar zenith angle (SZA) factors improved the average R-squared (R2) value for PM2.5 from 0.919 to 0.942, and for PM10 from 0.909 to 0.938. The models exhibited stable performance under ten-fold cross-validation and generalized well in field tests. Results from various generalization strategies indicated that closer proximity does not necessarily lead to better generalization performance. This study provides valuable insights for urban air quality monitoring and research related to human health.
Navigation signals play a crucial role in determining the performance and user experience of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). In recent years, GNSSs have been actively modernizing their signal architectures to meet the increasing demand for high precision, robustness, specialization, and internationalization services. However, signals of the second-generation BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-2) have been struggling to keep pace with these rapid advancements. Thus, it is necessary to design modern signals to satisfy various demands of the existing and new users. To this end, this paper systematically outlines the requirements and challenges associated with the third-generation BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3) signals from the design perspective. In addition, the comprehensive evaluation criteria and design achievements of BDS-3 signals are introduced. Further, the signal evolution during the transition from BDS-2 to BDS-3, along with strategies for user adoption, is presented. Moreover, global observation data are utilized to validate the performance of BDS-3 and other GNSS signals. The research findings presented in this study unequivocally affirm the successful realization of signal design objectives. Firstly, BDS-3 signals exhibit compatibility with BDS-2 signals, ensuring the continuity of services for existing users while facilitating a seamless transition and technological advancements. In addition, the performance of BDS-3 signals is on par with that of other modern GNSS signals, reaching the world-class level. Finally, BDS-3 signals are compatible and interoperable with various GNSS signals while supporting diverse and specialized services. The results presented in this study contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the signal architecture and evolution strategies of BDS-3 signals, offering valuable insights for the design and development of user terminals, which can maximize the multifaceted advantages of BDS.
The spatial distribution and canopy traits of urban trees regulate their ability to support ecosystem functions and societal needs in urban environments. However, the distribution of individual trees in arid urban settings and their association with land surface temperatures remain unclear. By combining Google satellite imagery and Gaofen-2 imagery, we present a “position-constraint-segmentation” method for identifying the tree crown cover of individual trees in arid urban environments. We implemented the approach in five cities in Northwest China, including one city with a continental plateau semiarid climate and four arid cities. We investigated the relationship between tree crown cover and land surface temperatures, derived from Landsat 8 imagery, across five cities. The model demonstrated a robust accuracy with an overall correlation coefficient [Formula: see text] of 0.74 (p < 0.001) between manually labeled and predicted tree counts across randomly selected image blocks. We identified a total of ~9.1 × 105 individual trees in five representative cities, including ~5.6 × 105 in Xining city. Tree crown size exhibits a unimodal distribution with a mean value of 63.7 m2, and 12.69% of trees have crown cover greater than 100 m2 in Xining city. Land surface temperatures exhibit significant variations across different urban land use types, with the lowest temperatures observed in parks and greenspaces, and the highest in commercial service areas. Tree clusters and strategic tree retention could effectively mitigate urban heat accumulation. This study presents novel individual-tree detection methods for arid cities using high-resolution remote sensing imagery, delivering fine-grained data for urban resource management beyond coarse-scale approaches. Future efforts should promote the construction of intelligent greening system adapted to climate change, and contribute to sustainable development in arid cities.
Victor Ayodele Adefisoye, Victor Ayodele Ijaware, Ayomide Olubaju
et al.
Context and Background
Proximity of residential buildings to sawmills has been considered one of the yet to be unraveled challenges facing our cities. This study aimed at proximity analysis of residents’ homes and sawmill at Ondo road axis of Ile – Ife, Osun state.
Goal and Objectives
The study uses buffering operation as a function of spatial analysis to determine the number of buildings at varying distances within the sawmill environment.
Methodology
Both primary and secondary data were used for this research. Primary data employed GNSS observation on existing sawmills in the study area. Google Earth Imagery and Base map of the study area were downloaded from Google Earth Pro and Open Street Map respectively for the purpose of secondary data. The research maintained high level of accuracy through instruments check and quality of data acquired. ArcGIS 10.7.1 and QGIS 3.12 were used for all the geo processing steps. Query was performed and buffering was done on the available number of buildings within 100m, 200m and 300m to the sawmills.
Results
Study discovered the locations of 98 existing sawmills in the study area. Their proximity to buildings with emphasis on buffered distances of 100m, 200m and 300m was determined and 1584 buildings were found to be within 300m buffer of existing sawmills. Findings established that nearly 55% of the residents’ homes in the study area were in close proximity to sawmills. Study recommends that global 300m minimum setback from a residential building to sawmill by US EPA must be adequately maintained by the residents and sawmillers. And that new sawmill industrial estate for the city that will have its buffer zone well organized and made known to the members of public and all environmental regulation agencies should be created.
ABSTRACT
Context and background
The Northern Cameroon region is characterized by an unstable and fragile ecology. The actors’ actions are structured through collaboration within the framework of projects and programs. The duration of these projects and programs are temporary. In other words, collaboration is not last long. Consequently, solutions based on innovation for environmental challenges, including land degradation and increased pressure on ecosystem, are not long term sustain.
Goal and Objectives:
In this context, this paper intends to analyze the specific challenges faced by stakeholders’ interventions in promoting innovation for sustainability of fragile ecology areas in the north Cameroon region.
Methodology:
To achieve this goal, data on stakeholders operating in the north region and agrosylvopastoral innovations was collected through structured interviews. Also, land modification and population growth data was collected online and over documentary research. These data were subjected to statistical analyses and remote sensing.
Results:
The results shows that land modification in term of degradation and deforestation is increasing significantly from the north part of the region to the south part of the region. Protected areas are not to be outdone, as they are also experiencing significant degradation because of human activities, particularly wood energy and agriculture. Stakeholders’ response to this sustainability challenge is limited in time through collaboration and agrosylvopastoral innovations. Furthermore, emergence and diffusion of innovation to combat challenges are temporally supported because of the end of project or programs stop the operation of innovations. This study has enabled understand the obstacles to the emergence of innovations, in particular the poor monitoring of the operation of innovations after projects/programs have come to an end, the poor coordination of the actors behind innovation projects. It provides levers that can be mobilized to multiply and accelerate innovation processes and thus contribute to the long-term sustainability of agro-pastoral terroir in North Cameroon.
To reveal the historical urban development in large areas using satellite data such as Landsat MSS still need to overcome many challenges. One of them is the need for high-quality training samples. This study tested the feasibility of migrating training samples collected from Landsat MSS data across time and space. We migrated training samples collected for Washington, D. C. in 1979 to classify the city’s land covers in 1982 and 1984. The classifier trained with Washington, D. C.’s samples were used in classifying Boston’s and Tokyo’s land covers. The results showed that the overall accuracies achieved using migrated samples in 1982 (66.67%) and 1984 (65.67%) for Washington, D. C. were comparable to that of 1979 (68.67%) using a random forest classifier. Migration of training samples between cities in the same urban ecoregion, i.e. Washington, D. C., and Boston, achieved higher overall accuracy (59.33%) than cities in the different ecoregions (Tokyo, 50.33%). We concluded that migrating training samples across time and space in the same urban ecoregion are feasible. Our findings can contribute to using Landsat MSS data to reveal the historical urbanization pattern on a global scale.
ABSTRACT
Context and background
Zambia has grappled with implementing the land titling from 2017 when it started the piloting of the National Land Titling Programme through the seventh National Development Plan (2017-2021). The implementation started in 2017 with a small pilot project conducted in Lusaka City in areas called Madido and Kamwala. In 2018, the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources (MLNR) signed an MoU with Medici Land Governance (MLG) to conduct another larger pilot to collect landownership information for 50,000 land parcels in Lusaka City using modern technology, such as use of drone imagery and artificial intelligence for identification of property boundaries, use of tablets and apps to collect ownership information from landowner, automation of production of survey diagrams and general plans of areas.
Goal and Objectives:
The objective of this paper is to address the issues around the use of private financing to secure tenure rights in urban areas and the issues around cultural beliefs among some communities in Lusaka, and the problems around customary land boundaries and expansions of towns affecting the cultural settings in the fringes of urban areas.
Methodology:
The MLNR, in partnership Medici Land Governance is working towards enabling the systematic titling of former farms or converted/replanned areas in order to update the existing cadastre and land information system. These are large farms in urban areas that have been replanned and even developed but landowners were still waiting for titles or former government or parastatal land that were sold.
This paper reports on the progress made thus far, the challenges and opportunities to carry out a successful systematic land titling programme. The paper also tackles issues around challenges with traditional land boundaries versus state land. The paper recommends the need to carry out comprehensive reforms around the whole land administration system. This includes developing a unified land registry with devolved authority to local authorities, improving the land administration system with linked and integrated key registers such as the National Registration Information System being developed, the Registration of Companies and Societies, and linking to more electronic payment platforms. The paper concludes that private sector participation in the land sector needs support using results-based approaches of financing by multilateral partners as envisaged in the Global Partnership for Results-Based Approaches.
Abstract. In Ukraine, the conceptual apparatus of municipal waste management in the field of their disposal has shortcomings, and in the framework of the implementation of EU legislation in Ukraine, new terms appear, which make their adjustments. This leads to uncertainty, ambiguity, discrepancy and misuse of concepts by waste actors, scientists, authors and more. To begin reforming the waste system, it is necessary to clarify the shortcomings of the past conceptual framework and clearly form an understanding of the new.
This study is designed to analyze the conceptual apparatus of safe waste management in the field of disposal and in the implementation of EU legislation in Ukraine, namely the terminology before and after waste management reform, finding common and divergent, identifying shortcomings in interpretations and own vision of such definitions.
In writing this article used a theoretical method, a method of studying regulatory and instructional documents, synthesis, analysis, comparison, grouping. The theoretical basis was the work of Ukrainian scientists, graduate students, the regulatory framework of Ukraine and the EU in the field of waste.
At the end of the study, four groups of terms were formed, each of which clarifies the pros and cons of defining the terms, as well as suggested ways to improve the conceptual framework for safe waste in the field of disposal and implementation of EU legislation in Ukraine.
Keywords. Conceptual apparatus, term, waste, landfill, implementation of EU legislation.
With the Artemis program, NASA plans to collaborate with commercial and international partners to land in 2024 human beings on the Moon and then to establish a permanent "base camp” by the end of the
decade.
Challenges ahead are numerous: the Moon "base camp” will have to meet very stringent requirements in terms of operations, logistics, and safety of life; moreover, a permanent base on the Moon will have to be affordable and sustainable, i.e., its cost will need to be assessed over its life-cycle, under a long term technical, economic, and political perspective.
The exploration of the Moon with human and robotic missions and its colonization, through the establishment of a permanent base, will require many vital supporting infrastructures, such as communication networks and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems.
The expansion of organic production in Ukraine is in line with global trends in the agricultural sector in the direction of greening of agricultural land use, accompanied by reducing the level of anthropogenic pressure on land resources, ensuring high quality crop products and maintaining a clean environment.
The only means of creating spatial conditions for the harmonious functioning of organic land use within the territories of state research institutions and enterprises is the appropriate land management mechanism, which is currently lacking. Therefore, it is important to solve this problem by its creation and implementation in the practice of economic entities.
The purpose of this study is to improve scientific and methodological approaches to the development of experimental land management projects for the organization of the territory for the production of organic products within the land use of state research institutions and enterprises. For this purpose the following tasks were solved: analysis of the current state of development of relevant land management projects and their legal support, determination of structural features and placement of relevant elements of the organization of the territory for organic crop production, substantiation of ecological and economic optimization of agricultural land structure and crop rotation.
The necessity of attracting scientific and practical conclusions to resolve
controversial issues in the land management industry is substantiated. The practical
experience of applying the scientific and practical conclusion and conducting
scientific research in solving the problem associated with the correction of
technical errors in the state land cadastre is considered.
The analysis and justifiably technical error in the data of the State Land
Cadastre on the change in the purpose of the land for the construction and
maintenance of an apartment building from erroneous purpose for conducting
agricultural production was carried out.
The list of documents that must be submitted together with the application to
the cadastral registrar on making amendments based on a technical error of
information about the land registered in the State Land Cadastre is given.
It is noted that it is necessary to start the practice of creating scientific and
legal conclusions to resolve controversial and complex issues in land management
with the involvement of leading scientists in the industry and specialized research
institutions.
3D city models, which are important items of content on the virtual globe, are characterized by complicated structures and large amounts of data. These factors make the visualization of 3D city models highly dependent upon the performance of computer hardware. Thus, achieving the efficient rendering of 3D city models using different hardware performance levels represents one of the key problems currently facing researchers. This paper proposes a time-critical adaptive visualization method that first estimates the possible rendering time for each model according to the data structure of the model in addition to the CPU/GPU performance of the computer. It then dynamically adjusts the rendering level for each model based on the results of an estimation of the rendering time to ensure that the final scene can be completed within a given time. To verify the effectiveness and flexibility of this method, it is applied using different computers. The results show that the adaptive visualization method presented in this paper not only can adapt to computers with different levels of performances but also demonstrates an obvious improvement in the time estimation precision, visual effects, and optimization speed relative to existing adaptive visualization methods.
A. S. Garov, I. P. Karachevtseva, E. V. Matveev
et al.
We are developing a unified distributed communication environment for processing of spatial data which integrates web-, desktop- and mobile platforms and combines volunteer computing model and public cloud possibilities. The main idea is to create a flexible working environment for research groups, which may be scaled according to required data volume and computing power, while keeping infrastructure costs at minimum. It is based upon the "single window" principle, which combines data access via geoportal functionality, processing possibilities and communication between researchers. Using an innovative software environment the recently developed planetary information system (<a href="http://cartsrv.mexlab.ru/geoportal"target="_blank">http://cartsrv.mexlab.ru/geoportal</a>) will be updated. The new system will provide spatial data processing, analysis and 3D-visualization and will be tested based on freely available Earth remote sensing data as well as Solar system planetary images from various missions. Based on this approach it will be possible to organize the research and representation of results on a new technology level, which provides more possibilities for immediate and direct reuse of research materials, including data, algorithms, methodology, and components. The new software environment is targeted at remote scientific teams, and will provide access to existing spatial distributed information for which we suggest implementation of a user interface as an advanced front-end, e.g., for virtual globe system.
Despite the large and growing prominence of online and mobile maps, they have not been broadly and systematically examined with a lens informed by traditional cartography. Using an approach rooted in cartographic theory and a unique dataset of 382 publicly-displayed local maps, we identify the collective wisdom of hundreds of cartographers with respect to a number of cartographic design decisions. We compare our findings to the approaches taken in popular online and mobile map platforms and develop suggestions for incorporating the collective wisdom of cartographers into these systems. Our suggestions include the adoption of location-aware cartography, in which cartographic approaches are intelligently varied based on the type of location being viewed. We provide mockup designs of online and mobile maps that implement our suggestions and discuss means by which the surprising gap between online and mobile maps and traditional cartography may be bridged.