City Of Vancouver Research Articles

Simulation and experimental investigation of two hybrid solar domestic water heaters with drain water heat recovery

In this paper, the performance of two solar domestic hot waters (SDHW) with drain water heat recovery (DWHR) units is investigated. Both SDHW systems are recently installed at the Archetype Sustainable Twin Houses at Kortright Center, Vaughan, Ontario. The first SDWH system in House A consists of a flat plate solar thermal collector in combination with a gas boiler and a DWHR unit. The second SDHW system in House B includes an evacuated tube solar collector, an electric tank, and a DWHR unit. Both systems are modeled in TRNSYS, and the models are validated by experimental data. The addition of the DWHR and the flat-plate solar thermal collector would result in 1831 kWh of annual energy saving in House A. While the addition of the DWHR and the evacuated tube collector in House B would result in an annual energy saving of 1771 kWh. Subsequently, the models are used to investigate the performance of similar systems for five major Canadian cities of Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver. The conjunctions of solar thermal collectors with DWHR units are found most beneficial in Edmonton. It is also noted from experimental and simulated results that flat-plate solar collector-based water heater produced more thermal energy than the system based on the evacuated tube solar collector for all major Canadian cities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Institutionalizing a policy by any other name: in the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Plan, does climate change policy or sustainability policy smell as sweet?

This article questions the implications of a shift in dominant urban planning framework from sustainable development to climate change. The case of the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Plan (GCAP) (2010–2020) is investigated as a window to perceive and understand this shift. We begin with the stance that the primary implications of a shift from sustainability to climate change policy are in social and institutional learning about action, and as such we adopt an urban knowledge order framework for our analysis. At the organizational scale, we investigate the implications of GCAP in terms of its impact on the city structure and organization, in terms of the way it works with the public and with external organizations in designing and implementing policy, and in terms of reporting and accountability. An understanding of the construction of an urban knowledge arena as a valuable process and outcome of sustainability and climate policy work offers a pragmatic way to integrate and promote sustainability thinking across the city administration, amongst citizen-participants, and in collaboration with external partners. We see in the City of Vancouver an ecologically modernizing city, which is also learning a new, partnership-based way of wielding power and coordinating and justifying sustainability and climate change policy and action.

Attracting and Retaining Foreign Highly Skilled Staff in Times of Global Crisis: a Case Study of Vancouver, British Columbia's Biotechnology Sector

AbstractHow cities attract and retain hard‐won foreign talent in times of economic crisis is an under‐researched theme. This paper draws on surveys of firms and allied professionals in the Vancouver biotechnology sector to examine the strategies used to attract and retain highly skilled staff over a 10‐year period up to 2012. It argues that the foreign highly skilled within Vancouver's biotechnology sector were more prone to crisis at the level of the firm than they were directly vulnerable to the global financial recession of the early 2000s and 2008. In fact, these crises required firms interviewed to become highly dependent on local and regional auxiliary professionals such as human resource managers and professional immigration attorneys, in addition to spouses, in order to retain these highly skilled foreign professionals within the host city of Vancouver. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Shigella flexneri serotype 1 infections in men who have sex with men in Vancouver, Canada.

Outbreaks of shigellosis have been documented in men who have sex with men (MSM), associated with interpersonal transmission and underlying HIV infection. We observed a rise in Shigella flexneri isolates identified in a downtown tertiary-care hospital laboratory located within the city centre community health area (CHA-1) of Vancouver, Canada. The objectives of this study were to evaluate clinical outcomes of shigellosis cases among MSM admitted to hospital and to evaluate trends in Shigella cases within Vancouver, Canada. Adult rates of shigellosis were analysed by gender and health region, from 2005 to 2011, followed by retrospective chart review of all hospital laboratory-identified S. flexneri cases from 2008 to 2012. Serotyping and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) were performed on these isolates. Although shigellosis rates in men within CHA-1 did not change from 2005 to 2011 (range 33.4-68.5 per 100 000; P = 0.74), they were significantly higher than in other regions within the city of Vancouver (P ≤ 0.001) and the province of British Columbia (P ≤ 0.001). Shigella flexneri rates in men within CHA-1 increased significantly (range 2.3-51.4 per 100 000; P < 0.001), starting in 2008, and were higher than in other regions within Vancouver (P ≤ 0.01). Seventy-nine isolates of S. flexneri from 72 patients were identified by a single hospital laboratory. All patients were male and predominantly MSM (91.7%) and HIV-infected (86.1%), with most (92.6%) demonstrating CD4 counts ≥ 200 cells/μL. In total, 38.0% required hospitalization. Most (87.3%) had S. flexneri serotype 1 infection, with 72.9% of these representing a single PFGE pattern. We identified high levels of transmission of a primarily clonal strain of S. flexneri serotype 1 in our local MSM population, resulting in a substantial burden of illness and health care resource use secondary to hospital admissions.

The unmet demand for walkability: Disparities between preferences and actual choices for residential environments in Toronto and Vancouver.

Individual preferences for residential location, neighbourhood character and travel options are not always met. The availability and cost of housing and several other factors often require compromise. The primary objectives of this study were to examine neighbourhood preferences, quantify unmet demand for more walkable environments and explore associations between the built environment, travel behaviour and health after controlling for neighbourhood preference. A web-based, visually oriented residential preference survey was conducted with 1,525 adults in the Greater Toronto Area and 1,223 adults in Metro Vancouver aged 25 and older (5.8% and 11.8% of total potential recruits, respectively). Participants were randomly selected from a pre-recruited panel across a range of objectively calculated walkability and income levels at the forward sortation area level. Depending on the neighbourhood design attribute, between 45% and 64% of residents in the cities of Toronto and Vancouver strongly preferred living in walkable settings, compared with between 6% and 15% who strongly preferred auto-oriented places. Of participants who perceived their current neighbourhood as very auto-oriented, between 11% and 20% of City of Toronto participants and 6% and 30% of City of Vancouver participants strongly preferred a very walkable neighbourhood. Residents of highly walkable neighbourhoods reported walking significantly more for utilitarian purposes, taking public transit more frequently and driving fewer kilometres. Strong preferences for walking and transit-supportive neighbourhoods exist in two of Canada's largest metropolitan regions, with considerable unmet demand observed for such environments. The findings provide evidence for policies that enable walkability and inform market analysis, planning and regulatory approaches that better align with the supply and demand of more walkable neighbourhood environments. Providing increased opportunities for active transportation can have positive impacts on health-enhancing behaviours.

Multivariate Full Bayesian Hot Spot Identification and Ranking

The present study introduces a new technique for multivariate identification and ranking of hot spots based on the Mahalanobis distance. This approach aims to extend the univariate potential for safety improvement to cases in which multiple response variables are modeled jointly. Because the literature shows that ranking techniques based on Bayesian methods are superior to those that rely simply on the observed collision count, the proposed method was developed in a full Bayesian (FB) context. The new technique involves the following steps: (a) applying multivariate Poisson–lognormal regression models to the data by means of the FB method, (b) using the estimates of the Poisson posterior means for each site to compute the multivariate (Mahalanobis) distance from what is the normal Poisson mean for similar sites, and (c) preparing an ordered list of potentially hazardous sites. This method was applied to a sample of 173 signalized intersections in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for the years 2008 to 2012. The study also examines the consistency of the technique itself by analyzing the mathematical intersection of ranked sites identified in subsequent time periods. Finally, the consistency of the multivariate FB ranking was assessed against the independent (separate) univariate one that is still dominant in road safety evaluations.

A policy analysis of digital strategies: Brisbane vs. Vancouver

A growing number of cities around the world have now realised the need to strategically capitalise on the rapidly growing digital economy. In mid-2013, cities of Brisbane, Australia and Vancouver, Canada both released their 'Digital Strategy' documents to strengthen their economy by enhancing digital connections amongst citizens, business, and the whole city as a digital organisation. The paper critically investigates the digital strategies developed for the two cities to understand how they utilise the potentials of the digital economy in their respected cities and regions. The results identify fundamental differences in the two documents' core focus that firstly define different roles for the digital strategies in Brisbane vs. Vancouver, and secondly could highly affect the implications of the strategies for the two cities' overall economic development. Nevertheless, both Vancouver and Brisbane are still in the early days of implementing their digital strategies, and the paper has to be understood as a prelude to further empirical investigation.

Governing cities through participation—a Foucauldian analysis of CityPlan Vancouver

In 1995 Vancouver City Council approved new policy guidelines for future urban development that departed from the traditional model of suburban growth, instead prioritizing urban intensification. Theoretically guided by the Foucauldian governmentality approach, I argue in this paper that this shift towards intensification can be understood through an analysis of Vancouver’s extensive participatory planning process known as CityPlan. Created as an answer to conflicts around the intensification of historically evolved urban neighbourhoods, CityPlan Vancouver exemplifies a specific form of urban governance that has been understudied in geography and participation research: a governance consisting of conducting the conduct of citizens through participatory processes. The paper examines this “governing through participation” by carrying out a microanalysis of the problematizations, rationalities, and technologies of CityPlan. Such an analysis differs significantly from an evaluation of participatory planning processes against normative ideals, and thus enriches critical research on participation in urban governance.

A Full Bayesian multivariate count data model of collision severity with spatial correlation

This study investigated the inclusion of spatial correlation in multivariate count data models of collision severity. The models were developed for severe (injury and fatal) and no-injury collisions using three years of collision data from the city of Richmond and the city of Vancouver. The proposed models were estimated in a Full Bayesian (FB) context via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. The multivariate model with both heterogeneous effects and spatial correlation provided the best fit according to the Deviance Information Criteria (DIC). The results showed significant positive correlation between various road attributes and collision severities. For the Richmond dataset, the proportion of variance for spatial correlation was smaller than the proportion of variance for heterogeneous effects. Conversely, the spatial variance was greater than the heterogeneous variance for the Vancouver dataset. The correlation between severe and no-injury collisions for the total random effects (heterogeneous and spatial) was significant and quite high (0.905 for Richmond and 0.945 for Vancouver), indicating that a higher number of no-injury collisions is associated with a higher number of severe collisions. Furthermore, the multivariate spatial models were compared with two independent univariate Poisson lognormal (PLN) spatial models, with respect to model inference and goodness-of-fit. Multivariate spatial models provide a superior fit over the two univariate PLN spatial models with a significant drop in the DIC value (35.3 for Richmond and 116 for Vancouver). These results advocate the use of multivariate models with both heterogeneous effects and spatial correlation over univariate PLN spatial models.

Bridging the perceptual gap: variations in crime perception of businesses at the neighborhood level

Current research on fear of crime reveals a recurrent theme of disorder in explanations of fear of crime and perceptions of security. This disorder is scalable, ranging from proximal cues associated with specific encounters between people or defined micro locations through to distal feelings of fear about areas, activity nodes, or major pathways. The research presented here compares two samples (n = 235) of businesses surveyed during the summer of 2012 in Grandview-Woodland, a diverse neighborhood, in the City of Vancouver, Canada. A visualization technique is presented to demonstrate how aggregate cognitive maps about perception of crime can be created and used by civic agencies when determining strategies aimed at reducing fear of crime. The results show that although both samples are taken from the same geographical neighborhood, their specific location within the community generates two very distinct perceptual patterns. Differences between the impact of proximal and distal cues on perception is explored. Other variations in perception are studied including differences between males and females, business owners and employees and those who have been victims of property crime versus personal crime. The results are presented and future research directions discussed.

Improving metabolic and cardiovascular health at an early psychosis intervention program in vancouver, Canada.

Psychotic disorders most commonly appear during the late teenage years and early adulthood. A focused and rapid clinical response by an integrated health team can help to improve the quality of life of the patient, leading to a better long-term prognosis. The Vancouver Coastal Health early psychosis intervention program covers a catchment area of approximately 800,000 people in the cities of Vancouver and Richmond, Canada. The program provides a multidisciplinary approach to supporting patients under the age of 30 who have recently experienced first-break psychosis. The program addresses the needs of the treatment environment, medication, and psychological therapies. A critical part of this support includes a program to specifically improve patients’ physical health. Physical health needs are addressed through a two-pronged, parallel approach. Patients receive routine metabolic health assessments during their first year in the program, where standard metabolic parameters are recorded. Based on the results of clinical interviews and laboratory tests, specific actionable interventions are recommended. The second key strategy is a program that promotes healthy lifestyle goal development. Patients work closely with occupational therapists to develop goals to improve cardiometabolic health. These programs are supported by an active research environment, where patients are able to engage in studies with a focus on improving their physical health. These studies include a longitudinal evaluation of the effects of integrated health coaching on maintaining cardiometabolic health in patients recently admitted to the program, as well as a clinical study that evaluates the effects of low versus higher metabolic risk antipsychotic drugs on central adiposity. An additional pharmacogenomic study is helping to identify genetic variants that may predict cardiometabolic changes following treatment with antipsychotic drugs.

Environmental influence on cyanobacteria abundance and microcystin toxin production in a shallow temperate lake

The increasing frequency of harmful cyanobacterial blooms in freshwater systems is a commonly recognized problem due to detrimental effects on water quality. Vancouver Lake, a shallow, tidally influenced lake in the flood plain of the Columbia River within the city of Vancouver, WA, USA, has experienced numerous summertime cyanobacterial blooms, dominated by Aphanizomenon sp. and Anabaena sp. Cyanobacteria abundance and toxin (microcystin) levels have been monitored in this popular urban lake for several years; however, no previous studies have identified which cyanobacteria species produce toxins, nor analyzed how changes in environmental variables contribute to the fluctuations in toxic cyanobacteria populations. We used a suite of molecular techniques to analyze water samples from Vancouver Lake over two summer bloom cycles (2009 and 2010). Both intracellular and extracellular microcystin concentrations were measured using an ELISA kit. Intracellular microcystin concentrations exceeded WHO guidelines for recreational waters several times throughout the sampling period. PCR results demonstrated that Microcystis sp. was the sole microcystin-producing cyanobacteria species present in Vancouver Lake, although Microcystis sp. was rarely detected in microscopical counts. qPCR results indicated that the majority of the Microcystis sp. population contained the toxin-producing gene (mcyE), although Microcystis sp. abundance rarely exceeded 1 percent of overall cyanobacteria abundance. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) revealed that PO4–P was the main environmental variable influencing the abundance of toxic and non-toxic cyanobacteria, as well as intracellular microcystin concentrations. Our study underscores the importance of using molecular genetic techniques, in addition to traditional microscopy, to assess the importance of less conspicuous species in the dynamics of harmful algal blooms.

Speeding capsules of alienation? Social (dis)connections amongst drivers, cyclists and pedestrians in Vancouver, BC

Every commute practice possesses a different degree and quality of technological mediation. Some mobilities scholars suggest that particular types of modal mediation may either alienate the traveller from, or connect them with, their passing environment. This research draws on forty-six in-depth interviews with drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians commuting in the City of Vancouver, and their commute narratives and GPS logs, to compare the relationships that these participants have with their passing social landscapes. The results both support and productively complicate the theories of modally induced alienation and connection with other concepts such as isolation and marginalization. Intermodal empathy, as formed through multi-mode use, offers hope, at least for mobilities interactions. The article concludes with several policy recommendations.

Mapping demand for residential building thermal energy services using airborne LiDAR

Within the urban environment the building sector typically accounts for around half of the total energy used, with the majority of this demand driven by thermal services including hot water and space conditioning. Accurately quantifying and locating building energy demand is essential to aiding energy management and planning initiatives across the city. However, a shortage of techniques that enable the effective scaling of individual building energy models to larger areas is evident. To help meet this need, we present a novel approach that utilizes airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data to populate a range of residential building energy and urban form parameters, including envelope resistivity, air leakage and solar gains. These parameters are then integrated with additional spatial datasets and allow for the calculation of baseline estimates of energy demand for contiguous regions within urban areas. We illustrate the outcomes of the model by predicting energy demand across a mixed residential neighbourhood in the City of Vancouver, Canada. Results indicate that the annual estimates of thermal energy demand closely match those derived from building energy simulation software (R2=0.93, p<0.001), while monthly estimates of demand show no statistically significant differences between our results and those from the simulation software (t=−0.11, p=0.91).

Interaction between land-use change, flooding and human health in Metro Vancouver, Canada

Many regions of the world are experiencing an increase in frequency and intensity of floods. There has been increasing understanding among emergency preparedness and natural disaster planners that rapid urbanization is enhancing the risk from river flooding in urban areas. Many regions of Canada have been exposed to particularly severe floods over the course of the last few years, much of this due to land-use change. This study aims at understanding the risk of flooding for the City of Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, which is located in the Fraser River Delta. The paper presents a fast, efficient and reliable method that can be used to produce vegetation maps from advanced very high resolution radiometer images and SPOT vegetation maps. A 10-day maximum normalized difference vegetation index maps were produced to assess the dynamics of the urbanization process in Vancouver. Remotely sensed data show a significant decrease in vegetation cover in the Metro Vancouver City between 1984 and 2012. The proposed method can be used as an effective tool for raising early land-use change awareness and assist with flood risk management. Flood risk management has a substantial impact on human health and well-being in urban areas, and this flood risk information will be used to assess the impact of flooding and explore the complex relationship between land-use change, urbanization, flooding and impact on urban dwellers.

Rapidly accelerating subsidence in the Greater Vancouver region from two decades of ERS-ENVISAT-RADARSAT-2 DInSAR measurements

Rapidly accelerating ground subsidence in the south-western part of British Columbia, the third largest metropolitan area in Canada with over 2.3 million of inhabitants, is estimated using the Multidimensional Small Baseline Subset (MSBAS) advanced Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR), an effective processing strategy for multi-mission, multi-temporal SAR data. The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data used in this study consists of seven independent data sets: one ascending and one descending ERS-1/2 and ENVISAT frames, together spanning July 1995–September 2010, and three RADARSAT-2 frames spanning February 2009–October 2012. During the July 1995–October 2012 period we observe fast ground subsidence with a maximum rate of about 2cm/year in the Greater Vancouver region that includes the Fraser River Delta and the cities of Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, New Westminster and Vancouver. The rapidly accelerating subsidence is observed beneath the Vancouver International Airport, SkyTrain terminal as well as several agricultural and industrial locales. These time series suggest that the subsidence rate at the studied regions does not decrease with time, as suggested in previous studies, but remains steady or increases. These results also demonstrate the importance of acquiring and appropriately estimating longer time series, as previous studies on the same Greater Vancouver area may have misinterpreted the long term ground deformation rate and direction and underestimated the potential hazard. The long term impact of this subsidence on urban infrastructure can be significant and needs to be investigated further.

A multi-scale approach to exploring urban places in geotagged photographs

User-generated content (UGC) that contains spatial references, often referred to by the more bounded concept of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), is often touted as a potentially revolutionary data source for geographical research. This paper explores the capacity of one increasingly prevalent source of these data, geographically encoded photographs, to capture spatial expressions of place in an urban environment. Geotagged photographs were obtained from the Flickr API to build a geographic database of photographs for the city of Vancouver, Canada from 2001–2012. These data were aggregated to multiple geographic units represented as hexagonal lattices. Spatial patterns of photo aggregation were examined for tessellations that ranged from 0.25ha to 1024ha. Tags associated with each photo were also explored through the notion of ‘tag-space’ at multiple resolutions, or “scales”, of analysis through local log-odds ratios. Results indicate a significant interaction between tag-space semantics and spatial aggregation which suggests that consideration of scale effects should be integral to analysis of this type of tagged VGI for exploring citizens’ sensing of urban environments. The results indicate further that we may have to reconsider the interaction between encoded meaning, the methods used for extracting such meaning from tag-space, and exogenous and endogenous spatial scales of spatial UGC.

Estimation of Annual Average Daily Bicycle Traffic with Adjustment Factors

The purpose of this research was to investigate the estimation accuracy of annual average daily bicycle (AADB) traffic volumes when both daily and monthly adjustment factors (DFs and MFs, respectively) were used. Daily bicycle volume data for a full year were collected at 12 permanent count stations during 2010 in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and used to calculate adjustment factors for bicycle traffic. The factors were applied to estimate the AADB traffic volumes at other count stations where data were available for most of the year. A comparison between the use of MFs and seasonal factors showed that the results supported the superiority of using MFs. Detailed error analyses showed that the lowest errors were attained when the developed factors were applied to the volume data of 2010, which was the same year of the development data. For estimating the AADB with only 1 day of bicycle volume data, daily bicycle volumes were multiplied by both DFs and MFs. A disaggregate error analysis estimated the amount of error attributable to the use of DFs versus MFs. Almost 15% of the estimation error of the AADB could be attributed to the use of DFs, whereas 11% was attributed to the use of MFs. Nevertheless, the overall error of using the two factors together was about 23%. The paper also provides insights on the days and months for collection of data on bicycle volumes. Those insights could improve the design of data collection programs for bicycle traffic.

Vancouver and the 2010 Olympic Games: Physical Activity for All?

The City of Vancouver, British Columbia strategically designed and implemented a municipal health promotion Policy--the Vancouver Active Communities policy--to leverage the 2010 Olympic Games. The goal of the policy was to increase physical activity participation among Vancouver residents by 2010. In this paper, we conduct a critical policy analysis of health promotion policy documents that were available on the City of Vancouver's website. We elaborate on the background to the policy and more specifically we examine its content: the problem definition, policy goals, and policy instruments. Our analysis showed inconsistency within the policy, particularly because the implemented policy instruments were not designed to address needs of the identified target populations in need of health promotion efforts, which were used to legitimize the approval of funding for the policy. Inconsistency across municipal policies, especially in terms of promoting physical activity among low-income residents, was also problematic. If other municipalities seek to leverage health promotion funding related to hosting sport mega-events, the programs and services should be designed to benefit the target populations used to justify the funding. Furthermore, municipalities should clearly indicate how funding will be maintained beyond the life expectancy of the mega-event.

Relationship Between Socioeconomic Factors and Quality of Anticoagulation

Time in the therapeutic range (TTR) assesses the appropriateness of international normalized ratio (INR) control during warfarin therapy. Poor adherence to warfarin therapy is a major contributor to sub-therapeutic coagulation or bleeding complications. Our objective was to examine the association between socio-economic factors and TTR in the city of Vancouver, Canada.