Hasil untuk "Metropolitan areas"

Jian Peng, Pan Xie, Yan-xu Liu et al.

L. Jarosz

Pierre-François Wilmotte

This study quantifies the economic importance of the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR) and its wider metropolitan area within the Belgian economy. Brussels – broadly defined – remains by far the country's leading economic hub. However, since 2003, growth in economic activity has been weaker in BCR than in its surrounding areas and the rest of the country. There are two reasons for this: on the one hand, BCR is heavily exposed to declining economic sectors; and on the other, it has experienced weaker growth in expanding sectors, particularly in market services. The activities which underpin economic growth in BCR are primarily linked to political and economic command functions: public administration, corporate management, financial services, etc. This specialisation highlights the complementarities and interdependencies between BCR and the rest of the country. By contrast, the economic structure of the outskirts of the Brussels metropolitan area resembles that of the rest of the country, specialising in goods production, transport and logistics, and market services.

Andreza Garcia de GOUVEIA, Ana Lucia Nogueira de Paiva BRITTO, Rosa Maria FORMIGA-JOHNSSON

Resumo No Brasil, a Lei Federal n. 14.026/2020 estabeleceu como meta a universalização do abastecimento de água a todos os brasileiros até 2033. Considerando que as informações do Censo Demográfico do IBGE são essenciais para o planejamento e a formulação de programas voltados à universalização do acesso aos serviços de abastecimento de água tratada, o presente trabalho discute o papel do Censo nessa perspectiva. A partir de uma pesquisa documental e de entrevistas de campo, evidenciou-se que, apesar dos avanços no levantamento de dados estatísticos sobre as formas de abastecimento domiciliar, os atuais atributos utilizados pelo Censo do IBGE ainda não são suficientes para caracterizar adequadamente o acesso à água dos diversos grupos sociais e espaços geográficos que compõem o País.

Qiuyi Zhang, Ronghui Huang, Changhua Zhu et al.

Abstract In the pursuit of sustainable urban planning, integrating land use simulation with carbon storage assessment is crucial for achieving the “dual carbon” goals. This study focuses on the Fuzhou Metropolitan Area, utilizing land use data from 2000, 2010, and 2020. By establishing three future development scenarios—natural, urban, and dual-carbon target scenarios—based on the “Fuzhou Metropolitan Area Development Plan,” this research employ the Patch-generating Land Use Simulation (PLUS) and the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) models. The analysis reveals that from 2000 to 2020, the areas of cultivated land, forest land, grassland, and water bodies decreased, while construction land and bare land increased. Notably, the nighttime lighting factor significantly impacts land use changes, with elevation playing a crucial role in changes to water bodies and bare land. Under natural and urban development scenarios, carbon storage exhibits a downward trend, whereas the dual-carbon target scenario limits construction land expansion and reverses this trend, resulting in increased carbon storage. Based on these insights, this study proposes a three-stage urban planning strategy: strengthening carbon assessment in the early stages, fostering cross-departmental collaboration during implementation, and ensuring dynamic monitoring and adaptive adjustments in the later stages. This approach aims to harmonize urban development with ecological conservation, thereby maximizing economic and ecological benefits and supporting the achievement of the “dual carbon” policy goals.

Uriyoán Colón-Ramos, Emma C. Lewis, Anna Claire Tucker et al.

BackgroundHigh dietary quality can protect against diet-related chronic diseases. In the United States, racial and ethnic minorities and those with lower incomes consistently exhibit lower dietary quality. Independently-owned restaurants are a common prepared food source in minority low-income communities, but there are significant knowledge gaps on how to work with these restaurants to offer healthy food, due to underlying and dynamic complexities associated with providing healthy food options.MethodsThe Focus on Restaurant Engagement to Strengthen Health (FRESH) study addresses this complex problem by leveraging systems science approaches to work with independently-owned restaurants. FRESH has two interrelated objectives: (1) to test impact on regular customer dietary quality via a multisite cluster randomized controlled trial in two low-income urban areas (Baltimore and the Washington DC metropolitan area), and (2) to use systems science approaches to develop, parameterize, and calibrate a simulation model. The intervention is theory-and practice-based, comprising three phases: restaurant engagement, low-sugar beverages and healthy meals. The FRESH intervention will be implemented for 12 months in a total of 24 intervention and 24 comparison restaurants. The study is powered to detect a 5-point change in the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) score of regular customers, which would signify a meaningful shift toward healthier eating patterns.DiscussionThe FRESH study will test a novel, multilevel, multisite intervention that aims to improve access to healthier prepared food options among small, independently-owned restaurants located in under-resourced settings. The design of the FRESH intervention and its evaluation are described, as well as plans for the development of a system dynamics simulation model for policymakers and other stakeholders to virtually test future restaurant-based interventions.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov, identifier, NCT05869149.

Felipe Queiroz Miano, César Augusto Moreira, Vânia Rosolen et al.

Abstract Wetlands are highly complex and notorious importance in storing, supplying water and re-charging aquifers. Approximately 20% of the Brazilian territory is covered by wetlands and, de-spite their importance, the zoning of these areas is neglected, even after several water crisis events in the country. In this context, the present article aims to monitor and evaluate the surface dynamics of a closed wetland located in the Metropolitan Region of Piracicaba, São Paulo, which presents critical indices in water availability. For monitoring the wetland and the water table on the surface, monthly aerial surveys of high spatial resolution were carried out with Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAs) over a period of one year, and together, measurements of water levels were carried out in subsurface through wells implemented in the study area. As a result, the Irati Formation present in the region is decisive for the existence of the wetland due to the low permeability of the soil, as well as the rainfall rate (1,036.2 mm) and evapotranspiration (1,307.1 mm), which directly contribute to the evolution of the surface water table and regulate the height of the water level in the subsurface and on the slopes of the contribution basin throughout the year.

Laura Kasper, Alison C. Coogan, Lilia G. Lunt et al.

Introduction: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) has shown promise for certain types of breast cancer to improve outcomes and reduce recurrence of disease. This study seeks to determine whether differences exist in the rates that breast cancer patients receive NAC versus surgery first based on area of residence. Methods: The National Cancer Database (NCDB) was queried for women with a diagnosis of breast cancer, where NAC was considered between 2004 and 2019. Analyses were stratified according to histopathologic subtype and geographic location as defined by the NCDB. Results: Of the 135,900 included patients, 53.9% received NAC and 46.1% had surgery first. In rural areas, patients were more likely to have received surgery first (51.6%) as opposed to NAC (48.4%) (P < 0.0001). In large metro areas, there was a greater proportion of patients receiving NAC than surgery first in all subtypes except for those with node-negative disease. Cases with any node positive disease, HER2 positive with tumor stage T1c or higher, triple negative with tumor stage T1c or higher, and stage 3, ER positive cancer were all found to have statistically significant (P < 0.0001) differences in treatment across the urban-rural continuum. Conclusions: Patients with breast cancer who are eligible for NAC treatment receive it at a lower proportion in rural areas than in metropolitan cities. Future studies are needed to determine whether this treatment difference influenced the clinical outcomes of the patients.

Ziheng Jiang, Wenhan Yan, Chi Lu et al.

Entangled photon pairs are of crucial importance in quantum networks. For the future demands of large-scale and secure quantum communication, integrated photon sources are highly effective solutions. Here, we report entanglement distribution over a 30 km metropolitan area using on-chip broadband silicon nanowire biphoton polarization entangled source based on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. This source generates a continuous spectrum spanning the entire C-band (4.5 THz), achieving a locally detected coincidence counts of about 154 kHz within 100GHz bandwidth, making it suitable for long-distance entanglement distribution among multiple users. By combining this source with quantum entanglement, enhanced by high-precision clock synchronization that achieves an Allan variance of 56.8 ps over 600s, we observe a violation of the CHSH inequality by 27.8 standard deviations. Our results showcase the potential of silicon photonic technology as a scalable and practical platform for quantum technologies.

Matheus Sena, Mael Flament, Shane Andrewski et al.

The Quantum Internet, a network of quantum-enabled infrastructure, represents the next frontier in telecommunications, promising capabilities that cannot be attained by classical counterparts. A crucial step in realizing such large-scale quantum networks is the integration of entanglement distribution within existing telecommunication infrastructure. Here, we demonstrate a real-world scalable quantum networking testbed deployed within Deutsche Telekom's metropolitan fibers in Berlin. Using commercially available quantum devices and standard add-drop multiplexing hardware, we distributed polarization-entangled photon pairs over dynamically selectable fiber paths ranging from 10~m to 60 km, and showed entanglement distribution over up to approximately 100~km. Quantum signals, transmitted at 1324~nm (O-band), coexist with conventional bidirectional C-band traffic without dedicated fibers or infrastructure changes. Active stabilization of the polarization enables robust long-term performance, achieving entanglement Bell-state fidelity bounds between 85-99% and Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt parameter $S$-values between 2.36-2.74 during continuous multiday operation. By achieving a high-fidelity entanglement distribution with less than 1.5% downtime, we confirm the feasibility of hybrid quantum-classical networks under real-world conditions at the metropolitan scale. These results establish deployment benchmarks and provide a practical roadmap for telecom operators to integrate quantum capabilities.

Fares Nada, Amber Hussain, Tasmi R. Ahmed et al.

On the pathway to quantum key distribution on a global scale, will be the realization of metropolitan-sized Memory Assisted Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution (MA-MDI-QKD) systems. Here, we present a simplistic and intuitive stochastic model to predict key distribution rates in a MA-MDI-QKD scheme that addresses the real-world parameters inherent to free-space quantum communication channels. Specific to our algorithm, the memory-assisted based system allows us to leverage the advantage of asynchronously loaded quantum memory when predicting the distribution rates. Specifically, by focusing on metropolitan distances, we perform simulations tailored toward a system based on free-space links and field-deployable quantum memory. We show the capabilities of our model to predict key rate distributions over ranges of 10-50 km for a set of atmospheric-based parameters and selection of QM efficiencies and coherence times. This tool provides impactful insights into the deployment and optimization of practical MA-MDI-QKD networks in urban environments. Our streamlined approach is a valuable addition to existing quantum network simulators for the smooth integration of quantum networking into the field of communications engineering.

Cindy-Lee Dennis, Emily Callander, Della A Forster et al.

Introduction Postnatal depression affects up to one in six new mothers in Australia each year, with significant impacts on the woman and her family. Prevention strategies can be complicated by a woman’s reluctance to seek professional help. Peer support is a promising but inadequately tested early intervention. Very few trials have reported on the efficacy of peer support in the perinatal period and no study has been undertaken in Australia. We will explore if proactive telephone-based peer (mother-to-mother) support, provided to women identified as being at high risk of postnatal depression, impacts on clinically significant depressive symptomatology at 6 months postpartum.Methods and analysis This is a protocol for a single-blinded, multi-centre, randomised controlled trial conducted in Melbourne, Australia. Eligible women will be recruited from either the postnatal units of two maternity hospitals, or around 4 weeks postpartum at maternal and child health centres within two metropolitan council areas. A total of 1060 (530/group) women will be recruited and randomly allocated (1:1 ratio) to either—usual care, to receive the standard community postpartum services available to them, or the intervention group, to receive proactive telephone-based support from a peer volunteer for 6 months, in addition to standard community services. Primary outcome: clinically significant depressive symptomatology at 6 months postpartum as measured using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Secondary outcomes: symptoms of anxiety and/or stress, health-related quality of life, loneliness, perception of partner support, self-rated parenting, child health and development, infant feeding and health service use. The cost-effectiveness of the intervention relative to standard care will also be assessed.Ethics and dissemination Ethics approval has been obtained from La Trobe University, St. Vincent’s Hospital, the Royal Women’s Hospital, Northern Health, Victorian Department of Health and Human Services and Victorian Department of Education and Training. Written informed consent will be obtained from all participants before randomisation. Trial results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations and a higher degree thesis.Trial registration number ACTRN12619000684123; Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry.

Omer Verbas, Taner Cokyasar, Seamus Joyce-Johnson et al.

Transit is essential for urban transportation and achieving net-zero targets. In urban areas like the Chicago Metropolitan Region, transit enhances mobility and connects people, fostering a dynamic economy. To quantify the mobility and selected economic impacts of transit, we use a novel agent-based simulation model POLARIS to compare baseline service against a scenario in which transit is completely removed. The transit-removal scenario assumes higher car ownership and results in higher traffic congestion, numerous activity cancellations, and economic decline. In this scenario, average travel times increase by 14.2% regionally and 34.7% within the City of Chicago. The resulting congestion causes significant activity cancellations despite increased car ownership: 11.8% of non-work and 2.8% of work/school activities regionally, totaling an 8.6% overall cancellation rate. In the city, non-work cancellations would reach 26.9%, and work/school cancellations 7.3%, leading to a 19.9% overall cancellation rate. The impact varies between groups. Women and lower-income individuals are more likely to cancel activities than men and higher-income groups. Women account for 53.7% of non-work and 53.0% of total cancellations. The lowest 40% income group experiences 50.2% of non-work and 48.0% of overall cancellations. Combined, activity cancellations, travel time losses, and increased car ownership cost the region $35.4 billion. With annual public transit funding at $2.7 billion, the ratio is 13 to 1, underscoring transit's critical role in mobility, equity, and economic health.

E. Sherafat, B. Farooq

Over the last decade, Autonomous Delivery Robots (ADRs) have transformed conventional delivery methods, responding to the growing e-commerce demand. However, the readiness of ADRs to navigate safely among pedestrians in shared urban areas remains an open question. We contend that there are crucial research gaps in understanding their interactions with pedestrians in such environments. Human Pose Estimation is a vital stepping stone for various downstream applications, including pose prediction and socially aware robot path-planning. Yet, the absence of an enriched and pose-labeled dataset capturing human-robot interactions in shared urban areas hinders this objective. In this paper, we bridge this gap by repurposing, fusing, and labeling two datasets, MOT17 and NCLT, focused on pedestrian tracking and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), respectively. The resulting unique dataset represents thousands of real-world indoor and outdoor human-robot interaction scenarios. Leveraging YOLOv7, we obtained human pose visual and numeric outputs and provided ground truth poses using manual annotation. To overcome the distance bias present in the traditional MPJPE metric, this study introduces a novel human pose estimation error metric called Mean Scaled Joint Error (MSJE) by incorporating bounding box dimensions into it. Findings demonstrate that YOLOv7 effectively estimates human pose in both datasets. However, it exhibits weaker performance in specific scenarios, like indoor, crowded scenes with a focused light source, where both MPJPE and MSJE are recorded as 10.89 and 25.3, respectively. In contrast, YOLOv7 performs better in single-person estimation (NCLT seq 2) and outdoor scenarios (MOT17 seq1), achieving MSJE values of 5.29 and 3.38, respectively.

Daniele Rege Cambrin, Luca Colomba, Paolo Garza

Forest wildfires represent one of the catastrophic events that, over the last decades, caused huge environmental and humanitarian damages. In addition to a significant amount of carbon dioxide emission, they are a source of risk to society in both short-term (e.g., temporary city evacuation due to fire) and long-term (e.g., higher risks of landslides) cases. Consequently, the availability of tools to support local authorities in automatically identifying burned areas plays an important role in the continuous monitoring requirement to alleviate the aftereffects of such catastrophic events. The great availability of satellite acquisitions coupled with computer vision techniques represents an important step in developing such tools. This paper introduces a novel open dataset that tackles the burned area delineation problem, a binary segmentation problem applied to satellite imagery. The presented resource consists of pre- and post-fire Sentinel-2 L2A acquisitions of California forest fires that took place starting in 2015. Raster annotations were generated from the data released by California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Moreover, in conjunction with the dataset, we release three different baselines based on spectral indexes analyses, SegFormer, and U-Net models.

Wen-Yu Dong, Shaoshi Yang, Ping Zhang et al.

Cooperative satellite-aerial-terrestrial networks (CSATNs), where unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are utilized as nomadic aerial relays (A), are highly valuable for many important applications, such as post-disaster urban reconstruction. In this scenario, direct communication between terrestrial terminals (T) and satellites (S) is often unavailable due to poor propagation conditions for satellite signals, and users tend to congregate in regions of finite size. There is a current dearth in the open literature regarding the uplink performance analysis of CSATN operating under the above constraints, and the few contributions on the uplink model terrestrial terminals by a Poisson point process (PPP) relying on the unrealistic assumption of an infinite area. This paper aims to fill the above research gap. First, we propose a stochastic geometry based innovative model to characterize the impact of the finite-size distribution region of terrestrial terminals in the CSATN by jointly using a binomial point process (BPP) and a type-II Mat{é}rn hard-core point process (MHCPP). Then, we analyze the relationship between the spatial distribution of the coverage areas of aerial nodes and the finite-size distribution region of terrestrial terminals, thereby deriving the distance distribution of the T-A links. Furthermore, we consider the stochastic nature of the spatial distributions of terrestrial terminals and UAVs, and conduct a thorough analysis of the coverage probability and average ergodic rate of the T-A links under Nakagami fading and the A-S links under shadowed-Rician fading. Finally, the accuracy of our theoretical derivations are confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations. Our research offers fundamental insights into the system-level performance optimization for the realistic CSATNs involving nomadic aerial relays and terrestrial terminals confined in a finite-size region.

Macarena C. Garcia, L. Rossen, B. Bastian et al.

PROBLEM/CONDITION A 2017 report quantified the higher percentage of potentially excess (or preventable) deaths in nonmetropolitan areas (often referred to as rural areas) compared with metropolitan areas. In that report, CDC compared national, regional, and state estimates of potentially excess deaths among the five leading causes of death in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan counties for 2010 and 2014. This report enhances the geographic detail by using the six levels of the 2013 National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) urban-rural classification scheme for counties and extending estimates of potentially excess deaths by annual percent change (APC) and for additional years (2010-2017). Trends were tested both with linear and quadratic terms. PERIOD COVERED 2010-2017. DESCRIPTION OF SYSTEM Mortality data for U.S. residents from the National Vital Statistics System were used to calculate potentially excess deaths from the five leading causes of death among persons aged <80 years. CDC's NCHS urban-rural classification scheme for counties was used to categorize the deaths according to the urban-rural county classification level of the decedent's county of residence (1: large central metropolitan [most urban], 2: large fringe metropolitan, 3: medium metropolitan, 4: small metropolitan, 5: micropolitan, and 6: noncore [most rural]). Potentially excess deaths were defined as deaths among persons aged <80 years that exceeded the number expected if the death rates for each cause in all states were equivalent to those in the benchmark states (i.e., the three states with the lowest rates). Potentially excess deaths were calculated separately for the six urban-rural county categories nationally, the 10 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services public health regions, and the 50 states and District of Columbia. RESULTS The number of potentially excess deaths among persons aged <80 years in the United States increased during 2010-2017 for unintentional injuries (APC: 11.2%), decreased for cancer (APC: -9.1%), and remained stable for heart disease (APC: 1.1%), chronic lower respiratory disease (CLRD) (APC: 1.7%), and stroke (APC: 0.3). Across the United States, percentages of potentially excess deaths from the five leading causes were higher in nonmetropolitan counties in all years during 2010-2017. When assessed by the six urban-rural county classifications, percentages of potentially excess deaths in the most rural counties (noncore) were consistently higher than in the most urban counties (large central metropolitan) for the study period. Potentially excess deaths from heart disease increased most in micropolitan counties (APC: 2.5%) and decreased most in large fringe metropolitan counties (APC: -1.1%). Potentially excess deaths from cancer decreased in all county categories, with the largest decreases in large central metropolitan (APC: -16.1%) and large fringe metropolitan (APC: -15.1%) counties. In all county categories, potentially excess deaths from the five leading causes increased, with the largest increases occurring in large central metropolitan (APC: 18.3%), large fringe metropolitan (APC: 17.1%), and medium metropolitan (APC: 11.1%) counties. Potentially excess deaths from CLRD decreased most in large central metropolitan counties (APC: -5.6%) and increased most in micropolitan (APC: 3.7%) and noncore (APC: 3.6%) counties. In all county categories, potentially excess deaths from stroke exhibited a quadratic trend (i.e., decreased then increased), except in micropolitan counties, where no change occurred. Percentages of potentially excess deaths also differed among and within public health regions and across states by urban-rural county classification during 2010-2017. INTERPRETATION Nonmetropolitan counties had higher percentages of potentially excess deaths from the five leading causes than metropolitan counties during 2010-2017 nationwide, across public health regions, and in the majority of states. The gap between the most rural and most urban counties for potentially excess deaths increased during 2010-2017 for three causes of death (cancer, heart disease, and CLRD), decreased for unintentional injury, and remained relatively stable for stroke. Urban and suburban counties (large central metropolitan and large fringe metropolitan, medium metropolitan, and small metropolitan) experienced increases in potentially excess deaths from unintentional injury during 2010-2017, leading to a narrower gap between the already high (approximately 55%) percentage of excess deaths in noncore and micropolitan counties. PUBLIC HEALTH ACTION Routine tracking of potentially excess deaths by urban-rural county classification might help public health departments and decision-makers identify and monitor public health problems and focus interventions to reduce potentially excess deaths in these areas.

Benjamin C. Auld, Bridget Abell, Prem S. Venugopal et al.

Abstract Background Geographical context is an important consideration for health system design to promote equality in access to care for patients with childhood heart disease (CHD), particularly those living in regional, rural, and remote areas. To help inform future policy and practice recommendations, this study aimed to (i) describe the geographic distribution of high-risk CHD patients accessing an Australian state-wide specialist service and (ii) estimate travel time for accessing healthcare via general practitioners (primary), nearest paediatric centre (secondary) and specialist paediatric cardiac centre (tertiary). Methods Participants included a cohort of children (0–18 year) who accessed state-wide specialist CHD services over a 3-year period (2019–2021) in Queensland, Australia. Locations for patient residence, general practitioner, closest paediatric centre and tertiary cardiac centre were mapped using geographical information system (GIS) software (ArcGIS Online). Travel distance and times were estimated using a Google Maps Application Programming Interface (API). Results 1019 patients (median age 3.8 years) had cardiac intervention and were included in the sample. Of this cohort, 30.2% lived outside the heavily urbanised South East Queensland (SEQ) area where the tertiary centre is located. These patients travel substantially further and longer to access tertiary level care (but not secondary or primary level care) compared to those in SEQ. Median distance for patients residing outside SEQ to access tertiary care was 953 km with a travel time of 10 h 43 min. This compares to 5.5 km to the general practitioner and 20.6 km to a paediatric service (8.9 and 54 min respectively). Conclusion This geographical mapping of CHD services has demonstrated a key challenge inherent in providing specialist cardiac care to children in a large state-based healthcare system. A significant proportion of high-risk patients live large distances from tertiary level care. The greater accessibility of primary care services highlights the importance of supporting primary care physicians outside metropolitan areas to acquire or build the ability and capacity to care for children with CHD. Strengthening local primary and secondary services not only has the potential to improve the outcomes of high-risk patients, but also to reduce costs and burden associated with potentially avoidable travel from regional, rural, or remote areas to access specialist CHD services.

Victoire Michal, Jon Wakefield, Alexandra M. Schmidt et al.

We consider random forests and LASSO methods for model-based small area estimation when the number of areas with sampled data is a small fraction of the total areas for which estimates are required. Abundant auxiliary information is available for the sampled areas, from the survey, and for all areas, from an exterior source, and the goal is to use auxiliary variables to predict the outcome of interest. We compare areal-level random forests and LASSO approaches to a frequentist forward variable selection approach and a Bayesian shrinkage method. Further, to measure the uncertainty of estimates obtained from random forests and the LASSO, we propose a modification of the split conformal procedure that relaxes the assumption of identically distributed data. This work is motivated by Ghanaian data available from the sixth Living Standard Survey (GLSS) and the 2010 Population and Housing Census. We estimate the areal mean household log consumption using both datasets. The outcome variable is measured only in the GLSS for 3\% of all the areas (136 out of 5019) and more than 170 potential covariates are available from both datasets. Among the four modelling methods considered, the Bayesian shrinkage performed the best in terms of bias, MSE and prediction interval coverages and scores, as assessed through a cross-validation study. We find substantial between-area variation, the log consumption areal point estimates showing a 1.3-fold variation across the GAMA region. The western areas are the poorest while the Accra Metropolitan Area district gathers the richest areas.

Alessandro Traspadini, Marco Giordani, Giovanni Giambene et al.

Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) are expected to be a key component of 6th generation (6G) networks to support broadband seamless Internet connectivity and expand the coverage even in rural and remote areas. In this context, High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) can act as edge servers to process computational tasks offloaded by energy-constrained terrestrial devices such as Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and ground vehicles (GVs). In this paper, we analyze the opportunity to support Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) via HAP in a rural scenario where GVs can decide whether to process data onboard or offload them to a HAP. We characterize the system as a set of queues in which computational tasks arrive according to a Poisson arrival process. Then, we assess the optimal VEC offloading factor to maximize the probability of real-time service, given latency and computational capacity constraints.