City Of Augsburg Research Articles

Identification of an Unknown Stationary Emission Source in Urban Geometry Using Bayesian Inference

Estimating the parameters of an unidentified toxic pollutant source is crucial for public safety, especially in densely populated urban areas. Implementing source term estimation methods in real-world urban environments is challenging due to complex phenomena and the absence of concentration observational data. This work combines a computational fluid dynamics numerical simulation with the Metropolis–Hastings MCMC algorithm to identify the location and quantify the release rate of an unknown source within the geometry of Augsburg city center. To address the lack of concentration measurements, synthetic observations are generated by a forward dispersion model. The methodology is tested using these datasets, both as directly calculated by the forward model and with added Gaussian noise under different source release and wind flow scenarios. The results indicate that in most cases, both the source location and the release rate are estimated accurately. Although a higher performance is achieved using synthetic datasets without additional noise, high accuracy predictions are also obtained in many applications of noisy measurement datasets. In general, the outcomes demonstrate that the presented methodology can be a useful tool for estimating unknown source parameters in real-world urban applications.

ASPECTS OF NEW HIGH GERMAN LANGUAGE FORMATION OF THE 18th CENTURY (Gabriel Bodenehr’s Plan of Kamianets-Podilskyi, 1726)

The research examines the peculiarities of the formation of the German language in the New High German period using the example of the plan of the Ukrainian city in Podil – Kamianets-Podilskyi. This document was created in 1726 in the city of Augsburg (northern Germany) by the famous German engraver and cartographer Gabriel Bodenehr. The work aims to study the process of the formation of the New High German language at its early stage in historical, cultural, regional and linguistic contexts; to illustrate them on the example of the text of the explication of the city plan. The task of this research is to characterize the peculiarities of the process of normalization of the German language in the New High German period; to determine changes in language levels on the example of the German text of the explanation of the city plan of Kamianets-Podilskyi. To achieve the specified goal and solve the tasks, the following research methods were used: descriptive, comparative-historical, biographical, comparative, and linguistic. As a result of the research, it was found that the text of the plan, although it was written in the New High German period, which is characterized by the desire to create a language standard and the departure from regional dialects, still retains its regional flavour and reference to the written norm of the Viennese chancellery. The conducted research proved that the orthographic and phonetic levels were most affected by the region, where there are significant variations of graphemes in marking the length and shortness of the sound, qualitative changes in vowel sounds, orthographic and graphic features of consonant markings, gravitation to the norms of the Viennese chancellery, as well as a gradual rejection of orthographic norms of the Middle High German period. Certain changes at the morphological level were found in the explication text, which testifies to the formation and consolidation of some grammatical categories (tense forms of verbs, use of passive constructions, declension of nouns and adjectives). The information focus of the text determines its lexical content, which can be seen in the author’s extensive use of anthroponyms (names of architectural and church buildings) and toponyms. The historical and cultural context of the development of the city of Kamianets-Podilskyi is reflected in the author’s use of proper names (names of historical figures, religious orders, political and military groups) and a significant number of borrowings from French, Turkish/Arabic, Latin, and Italian languages. It has been established that the syntactic level is the most normalized and closest to the modern German language. Therefore, the conducted linguistic analysis of the text of the city plan testified that in the first half of the 18th century, there was no complete unification of the written norm of the German literary language. However, separate attempts were made to standardize it. Among the promising research areas, it is worth conducting a comparative analysis of other city plans of this period in order to identify common features in the development of the German language.

High-Precision Microscale Particulate Matter Prediction in Diverse Environments Using a Long Short-Term Memory Neural Network and Street View Imagery.

In this study, we propose a novel long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network model that leverages color features (HSV: hue, saturation, value) extracted from street images to estimate air quality with particulate matter (PM) in four typical European environments: urban, suburban, villages, and the harbor. To evaluate its performance, we utilize concentration data for eight parameters of ambient PM (PM1.0, PM2.5, and PM10, particle number concentration, lung-deposited surface area, equivalent mass concentrations of ultraviolet PM, black carbon, and brown carbon) collected from a mobile monitoring platform during the nonheating season in downtown Augsburg, Germany, along with synchronized street view images. Experimental comparisons were conducted between the LSTM model and other deep learning models (recurrent neural network and gated recurrent unit). The results clearly demonstrate a better performance of the LSTM model compared with other statistically based models. The LSTM-HSV model achieved impressive interpretability rates above 80%, for the eight PM metrics mentioned above, indicating the expected performance of the proposed model. Moreover, the successful application of the LSTM-HSV model in other seasons of Augsburg city and various environments (suburbs, villages, and harbor cities) demonstrates its satisfactory generalization capabilities in both temporal and spatial dimensions. The successful application of the LSTM-HSV model underscores its potential as a versatile tool for the estimation of air pollution after presampling of the studied area, with broad implications for urban planning and public health initiatives.

Deliberation in times of crisis – how can citizens’ councils deal with pressing political issues like the Corona pandemic?

The Corona pandemic was one of the most challenging political events of the last decades in Europe in which many important political issues had to be decided within a very short space of time. Deliberative, sortition-based formats offer new approaches to strengthen democracy in times of crisis but have so far mainly been used for fundamental issues that have been under discussion for a long time. In Germany, four Corona Citizens’ Councils were organized at different levels to deal with the highly dynamic pandemic situation. The first was on local level and took place in the city of Augsburg, the next and most prominent one in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg (‘Bürgerforum Corona’), being held monthly over a period of 13 months. Another one was organized in the state of Saxony, a fourth one in Thuringia. The article examines the background, the methodological quality and the outcomes of three Corona Citizens’ Councils in Germany. The article compares the three Citizens’ Councils and draws conclusions about the crisis-management capacities of deliberative formats in dealing with pressing political issues in highly dynamic situations.

Application of CFD Modelling for Pollutant Dispersion at an Urban Traffic Hotspot

Health factors concerning the well-being of the urban population urge us to better comprehend the impact of emissions in urban environments on the micro-scale. There is great necessity to depict and monitor pollutant concentrations with high precision in cities, by constructing an accurate and validated digital air quality network. This work concerns the development and application of a CFD model for the dispersion of particulate matter, CO, and NOx from traffic activity in a highly busy area of the city of Augsburg, Germany. Emissions were calculated based on traffic activity during September of 2018 with COPERT Street software version 2.4. The needed meteorological data for the simulations were taken from a sensor’s network and the resulting concentrations were compared and validated with high-precision air quality station indications. The model’s solver used the steady-state RANS approach to resolve the velocity field and the convection–diffusion equation to simulate the pollutant’s dispersion, each one modelled with different molecular diffusion coefficients. A sensitivity analysis was performed to decide the most efficient computational mesh to be used in the modelling. A velocity profile for the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) was implemented into the inlet boundary of each simulation. The cases concerned applications on the street level in steady-state conditions for one hour. The results were evaluated based on CFD validation metrics for urban applications. This approach provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art 3D digital pollution network for the area, capable of assessing contamination levels at the street scale, providing information for pollution reduction techniques in urban areas, and combining with existing sensor networks for a more thorough portrait of air quality.

Improved daily estimates of relative humidity at high resolution across Germany: A random forest approach

The lack of readily available methods for estimating high-resolution near-surface relative humidity (RH) and the incapability of weather stations to fully capture the spatiotemporal variability can lead to exposure misclassification in studies of environmental epidemiology. We therefore aimed to predict German-wide 1 × 1 km daily mean RH during 2000–2021. RH observations, longitude and latitude, modelled air temperature, precipitation and wind speed as well as remote sensing information on topographic elevation, vegetation, and the true color band composite were incorporated in a Random Forest (RF) model, in addition to date for capturing the temporal variations of the response-explanatory variables relationship. The model achieved high accuracy (R2 = 0.83) and low errors (Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 5.07%, Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 5.19% and Mean Percentage Error (MPE) of - 0.53%), calculated via ten-fold cross-validation. A comparison of our RH predictions with measurements from a dense monitoring network in the city of Augsburg, South Germany confirmed the good performance (R2 ≥ 0.86, RMSE ≤ 5.45%, MAPE ≤ 5.59%, MPE ≤ 3.11%). The model displayed high German-wide RH (22y-average of 79.00%) and high spatial variability across the country, exceeding 12% on yearly averages. Our findings indicate that the proposed RF model is suitable for estimating RH for a whole country in high-resolution and provide a reliable RH dataset for epidemiological analyses and other environmental research purposes.

Jüdische Spenden und Stiftungen im fraktalen Raum des Heiligen Römischen Reichs

Abstract The essay deals with the donation activities of Jewish people in the Franconian area during the 18th century. Helping those in need was an integral part of religious practice. Donations to co-religionists as well as to Christian institutions and individuals can be proven regularly. The five charitable foundations, which were set up by wealthy members of the Bamberg rural Jewish community, also served the purpose of maintaining the memory of the founder and his family in the long term. With the proceeds from the foundation capital, scholarships were financed and needy relatives supported. They represented important references for the family members, who often lived scattered. Thus had an effect of forming a Common identity. The case of Meyer Levi, who at the same time established religious foundations in the Franconian rural community of Zeckendorf and the suburban community of Pfersee beyond the gates of the imperial city of Augsburg, documents that the supra-regional and cross-territorial interdependencies of Jewish society can be seen within the Zedaka.

Quantifying urban heat exposure at fine scale - modeling outdoor and indoor temperatures using citizen science and VHR remote sensing

Global warming and advancing urbanization lead to an increased heat exposure for city dwellers. Especially during summertime heatwaves, extreme daytime as well as high nighttime temperatures expose vulnerable people to potentially deadly heat risk. This applies specifically to indoor air temperatures, since people spend a lot of their time indoors. Against this background, this study relates outdoor and indoor air temperature measurements to area-wide geospatial data regarding summertime urban heat in the city of Augsburg, Germany. Air temperature data is collected from formalized as well as citizen science measurements, while remote sensing data with very-high spatial resolution (VHR) is utilized for assessment of their drivers and influencing factors. A land use regression approach is developed for city-wide modeling of outdoor and indoor air temperatures at the level of individual residential buildings. Daytime outdoor temperatures could be largely explained by vegetation parameters and imperviousness, whereas nighttime temperatures were more related to the building stock and radiation properties. For indoor temperatures, building density as well as building height and volume are additionally relevant. Outdoor air temperatures could be modeled with higher accuracies (mean absolute error (MAE) < 0.5 °C) compared to indoor temperatures (MAE < 1.5 °C), whereas outdoor and indoor modeling results are consistent with well-known patterns across different local climate zones (LCZ).

High-resolution intra-urban assessments of future heat events and heat waves for the city of Augsburg, Germany

Under consideration of climate change, high-resolution (100 m × 100 m) assessments of heat events were performed for Augsburg, Southern Germany, for the extended summer season (May–September). Heat (anomaly) days were defined as days exceeding absolute (relative) temperature thresholds. The focus is on the assessment of how the number and duration of events change under future climate conditions and how e.g., green spaces or sealed areas affect the intra-urban structure of heat (anomaly) events. Assessments were performed under consideration of two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The method is based on a two-step statistical approach: a novel analog technique (Normal VECtor of circulation patterns, NVEC) to downscale large-scale information on point observation and a spatial model (Multiple Linear Regression, MLR) for estimating temperature patterns across the entire urban area. The model calibration and validation were performed by an urban meteorological network of 38 monitoring stations for air temperature. Results show that differences between RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 are only small until 2040. At the end of the 21st century, the number of heat days for RCP8.5 is four times higher than under consideration of RCP4.5 and 33 times higher than within the reference period (1970–2000) leading to more and longer lasting events.

MDAS: a new multimodal benchmark dataset for remote sensing

Abstract. In Earth observation, multimodal data fusion is an intuitive strategy to break the limitation of individual data. Complementary physical contents of data sources allow comprehensive and precise information retrieval. With current satellite missions, such as ESA Copernicus programme, various data will be accessible at an affordable cost. Future applications will have many options for data sources. Such a privilege can be beneficial only if algorithms are ready to work with various data sources. However, current data fusion studies mostly focus on the fusion of two data sources. There are two reasons; first, different combinations of data sources face different scientific challenges. For example, the fusion of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and optical images needs to handle the geometric difference, while the fusion of hyperspectral and multispectral images deals with different resolutions on spatial and spectral domains. Second, nowadays, it is still both financially and labour expensive to acquire multiple data sources for the same region at the same time. In this paper, we provide the community with a benchmark multimodal data set, MDAS, for the city of Augsburg, Germany. MDAS includes synthetic aperture radar data, multispectral image, hyperspectral image, digital surface model (DSM), and geographic information system (GIS) data. All these data are collected on the same date, 7 May 2018. MDAS is a new benchmark data set that provides researchers rich options on data selections. In this paper, we run experiments for three typical remote sensing applications, namely, resolution enhancement, spectral unmixing, and land cover classification, on MDAS data set. Our experiments demonstrate the performance of representative state-of-the-art algorithms whose outcomes can serve as baselines for further studies. The dataset is publicly available at https://doi.org/10.14459/2022mp1657312 (Hu et al., 2022a) and the code (including the pre-trained models) at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7428215 (Hu et al., 2022b).

Front Matter

EDITORAmy Cooper Cary (2020–2023), Marquette UniversityEditorial BoardSumayya Ahmed (2019–2023), Simmons UniversityShirley Franco (2022–2026), Universidade de BrasiliaRebecca Hankins (2022–2023), Texas A&amp;M University LibrariesKatharina Hering (2019–2023), German Historical InstituteEric Hung (2020–2024), Music of Asian America Research CenterJessica Lacher-Feldman (2020–2024), University of RochesterMark Matienzo (2021–2025), Stanford University LibrariesMarlee Newman (2021–2025), Archival ConsultantSylvia Welsh (2020–2024), Harvard UniversityReviews EditorRose Buchanan (2021–2024), National Archives and Records AdministrationStephanie Luke (2021–2024), University of Illinois at Urbana‐ChampaignAmerican Archivist (ISSN 0360-9081) is published semiannually (Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter) by:The Society of American Archivists17 North State Street, Suite 1425, Chicago, IL 60602-3315 USATel 866-722-7858 or 312-606-0722 Fax 312-606-0728 www.archivists.orgThe entire run of American Archivist—from 1938 to date—may be accessed at AmericanArchivist.org.Subscription rate; $289Articles and Ideas:Amy Cooper Cary, Editor, AmericanArchivist@archivists.orgReviews (books, exhibits, tools, resources):Rose Buchanan and Stephanie Luke, Reviews Editor, ReviewsEditor@archivists.orgProduction and Advertising:Abigail Christian, Editorial and Production Manager, achristian@archivists.orgHannah Stryker, Editorial and Program Coordinator, hstryker@archivists.orgGerman archivists participate in a training course on disaster and emergency response at the Augsburg City Archive in 2016. Guided by a conservator, small groups practiced the handling, packaging, and transport of damaged materials. In his article, “Together We Are Strong”: Emergency Associations for the Protection of Germany's Cultural Heritage, Rainer Jedlitschka discusses the creation and development of several emergency associations in Germany that have collaborated to offer mutual support in the event of natural and human‐made disasters. Read more about the role and success of the new networks and German archivists' new experience and preparedness. Photo courtesy of Kerstin Lengger, Augsburg City Archive.

Imperial Power Representation and Self-presentation of Charles V of Habsburg

The power representation was an important indicator of the political culture of the Early Modern Era. It required grandeur with solemnity and festivities. An important role in the policy of any state is played by the image that can influence the assessment of its power and wealth. Empire. He applied the experience of ancient Rome in the form of triumphs and&#x0D; other mass spectacles. This phenomenon appears during the reign of Emperor&#x0D; Maximilian I and Pope Julius II. The Emperor gained experience in creating tri-&#x0D; umphs as the Habsburg dynasty’s sphere of influence expanded in Europe. Triumphs were organized in Spain and then in Italy. And obviously, these actions helped the Emperor to impress both opponents and allies. The Emperor promoted himself as a victorious commander and ruler. Power representation also manifested itself in a large number of portraits of&#x0D; European rulers, including Charles V, painted by great artists, among whom Titian Vecellio stood out in particular. Besides, during the Reformation, a significant number of reformers’ portraits were painted by the apologists of Lutheranism. But the most striking episode of the representation of that time was viewed in the triumph of Charles V during the entry of both the Emperor’s supporters and the Lutheran leaders into the city of Augsburg before the Diet of Augsburg in 1530.&#x0D; This tendency was very clearly manifested in the 16th century in the policy of Emperor Charles V of Habsburg, who sought to create a universal Catholic

Між королем і містом: єврейська громада Аугсбурга і влада у XIV-XV століттях

In the late Middle Ages on the territory of the cathedral city of Augsburg were two Jewish settlements, which were formed in the XII-XIII cent. In High Middle Ages, the administration of the Jewish community was made through the mediation of city, bishop and king. However, in the XIV-XV cent. the main interaction regarding the settlement of the life of the Jewish community took place between the king and the city. At the same time, were formed the main legal acts, which regulated the relations between the local population and the Jewish community, its social status. Augsburg Jews were under the jurisdiction of the king and paid taxes to the state treasury in exchange for security guarantees. Legal regulation of the Jewish population of Augsburg, the resolution of disputes between Christians and Jews was carried out with the participation of the city or a person appointed by the king. The city council tried to take precedence in the tax collection procedure, which was perceived by the king as an encroachment on his authority. Such conflicts were resolved by imposing fines on the city or through the courts. In addition, members of the Jewish community were lenders to both the ruler and the burghers and the city council, which often led to misconduct against Jews by the authorities, including arrests and extortion of debtors, and de facto write-offs of the debts. The change in the Jewish community of Augsburg, as in other German medieval cities, depended on the waves of the plague, which often led to pogroms, organized on baseless accusations of causing the disease, followed by the expulsion of the Jewish population from the city. At the same time, most debtors were given the opportunity not to pay debts to their lenders. Besides, the property of the Jewish community passed into the hands of the emperor and princes. From the XV cent., Augsburg, following the example of other German cities, introduced special markings for the Jewish population.

Heat adaptation measures in private households: an application and adaptation of the protective action decision model

Extreme heatwaves will occur more frequently and with higher intensity in future. Their consequences for human health can be fatal if adaptation measures will not be taken. This study analyses factors related to heat adaptation measures in private households in Germany. During the summer months of 2019, indoor temperatures were measured in over 500 private households in the City of Augsburg, Germany, accompanied by a survey to find out about heat perception and adaptation measures. Hypotheses deducted from the Protective Action Decision Model were tested using one-way ANOVAs, regression analysis and in the end a multiple hierarchical regression model. The results of the hypotheses tested imply an influence of knowledge and heat risk perception of heat adaptation behaviour and an influence of age on heat risk perception. The results of the regression model show an influence of the efficacy-related attribute, of age, indoor temperature, subjective heat stress and health implications to heat adaptation behaviour. In the end, this study proposes adjustments to the PADM according to the results of the hierarchical regression analysis.

Combined land-use and street view image model for estimating black carbon concentrations in urban areas

In this study, we developed a novel land-use street view image random forest (LUSRF) model to estimate the equivalent black carbon (eBC) concentration based on land-use random forest (LURF) and street view imagery (SVI) models and compared their accuracy and precision in the urban city of Augsburg, Germany. The variables of the LUSRF model were constructed by combining LURF and SVI model variables (i.e., land-use, street scene, and meteorological factors). Stratified cross-validation (CV) was used to validate the model performance. Based on R2 and IA (Index of Agreement), LUSRF has superiority (average-R2: 0.73, average-IA: 0.91) compared to the LURF (average-R2: 0.52, average-IA: 0.81) and SVI model (average-R2: 0.68, average-IA: 0.89) in the urban city of Augsburg during the observed period. The main driving factors of the LUSRF model for BC estimation were different in heating and non-heating periods (i.e., elevation, the proportion of moving cars, and relative humidity for the non-heating period; and elevation, the proportion of building, and relative humidity for the heating period), which improves the estimation accuracy of eBC concentration and its sources. The model verification in other areas (i.e., suburban and small towns) further proved that the model has certain generalizability. Overall, the LUSRF model will provide insight for epidemiological studies in urban areas as a personal exposure assessment.

Living in a ‘free jail’: Asylum seekers' and local residents' experiences of discomfort with asylum seeker accommodation

This paper shows how asylum seeker accommodation produces a politics of discomfort among both asylum seekers as well as local residents. The paper compares two collective asylum centres located in the city of Augsburg, Germany, one of which is a nationally renowned refugee integration project, the ‘Grandhotel Cosmopolis’, the other, a state-run asylum centre. Data was obtained through participant observation and semi-structured interviews between September 2016 and November 2017. Drawing on carceral geographies, the paper identifies three mechanisms through which the material and institutional standards of asylum accommodation generate discomfort among and between asylum seekers and local residents, which are self-mortification, depersonalization and role-breakdown. Through the sharing of rooms and facilities, asylum accommodation contributes to asylum seekers' self-mortification, referring to changes in the conceptions and beliefs of oneself. The comparison of the two cases highlights how large asylum centres depersonalize asylum seekers by creating images of a homogenized ‘mass’ and contribute to role-breakdown, meaning a reduction of individuals' identities performed with regard to work, home or family life. National discourses of asylum seekers as dangerous merged with the space of asylum accommodation, thereby preventing social interaction ‘as neighbours’ between asylum seekers and local residents. Overall, the paper exposes how a politics of discomfort utilizes affect as a governmental device, thereby turning asylum accommodation into a carceral space by creating social distance and ‘moral closure’.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on myocardial infarction care

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on acute myocardial infarction (AMI) care, and to identify underlying stressors in the German model region for complete AMI registration. The analysis was based on data from the population-based KORA Myocardial Infarction Registry located in the region of Augsburg, Germany. All cases of AMI (n = 210) admitted to one of four hospitals in the city of Augsburg or the county of Augsburg from February 10th, 2020, to May 19, 2020, were included. Patients were divided into three groups, namely pre-lockdown, strict lockdown, and attenuated lockdown period. An additional survey was conducted asking the patients for stress and fears in the 4 weeks prior to their AMI. The AMI rate declined by 44% in the strict lockdown period; in the attenuated lockdown period the rate was 17% lower compared to the pre-lockdown period. The downward trend in AMI rates during lockdown was seen in STEMI and NSTEMI patients, and independent of sex and age. The door-to-device time decreased by 70–80% in the lockdown-periods. In the time prior to the infarction, patients felt stressed mainly due to fear of infection with Sars-CoV-2 and less because of the restrictions and consequences of the lockdown. A strict lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic had a marked impact on AMI care even in a non-hot-spot region with relatively few cases of COVID-19. Fear of infection with the virus is presumably the main reason for the drop in hospitalizations due to AMI.

Assessing local daily temperatures by means of novel analog approaches: a case study based on the city of Augsburg, Germany

Within the scope of urban climate modeling, weather analogs are used to downscale large-scale reanalysis-based information to station time series. Two novel approaches of weather analogs are introduced which allow a day-by-day comparison with observations within the validation period and which are easily adaptable to future periods for projections. Both methods affect the first level of analogy which is usually based on selection of circulation patterns. First, the time series were bias corrected and detrended before subsamples were determined for each specific day of interest. Subsequently, the normal vector of the standardized regression planes (NVEC) or the center of gravity (COG) of the normalized absolute circulation patterns was used to determine a point within an artificial coordinate system for each day. The day(s) which exhibit(s) the least absolute distance(s) between the artificial points of the day of interest and the days of the subsample is/are used as analog or subsample for the second level of analogy, respectively. Here, the second level of analogy is a second selection process based on the comparison of gridded temperature data between the analog subsample and the day of interest. After the analog selection process, the trends of the observation were added to the analog time series. With respect to air temperature and the exceedance of the 90th temperature quantile, the present study compares the performance of both analog methods with an already existing analog method and a multiple linear regression. Results show that both novel analog approaches can keep up with existing methods. One shortcoming of the methods presented here is that they are limited to local or small regional applications. In contrast, less pre-processing and the small domain size of the circulation patterns lead to low computational costs.

ASSiST - A Superconducting Fault Current Limiter in a Public Electric Power Grid

For installation in the public electric power grid of the city of Augsburg, Germany, a resistive superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) was designed, constructed, tested and operated in the framework of a partially funded project &#x2018;ASSiST&#x2019;. Right from the beginning, it was agreed to aim for a prolonged operation even after closure of the project. This endeavor has been started due to a fundamental need to limit the prospective fault currents at a feeder point of the grid and in order to create long-term operational experience on a device seamlessly integrated into commercial grid components and switchgear, thus demonstrating a high level of readiness for widespread application. It revealed that the SFCL was of robust design &#x2013; withstanding all electrical tests including a special two-phase fault and sustaining stable cryogenic conditions even during partial outages of the cooling system &#x2013; and that the technology is reducing loss by shunt reactors. Furthermore, due to the control equipment on medium voltage level, valuable insights on grid behavior could be gained. The extended operation for 4 years has clearly shown the performance and robustness of SFCL technology in feeder points on MV level and provides a reference point for further commercialization.

Quantifying spatial accessibility of general practitioners by applying a modified huff three-step floating catchment area (MH3SFCA) method

BackgroundIt is necessary to ensure sufficient healthcare. The use of current, precise and realistic methods to model spatial accessibility to healthcare and thus improved decision-making is helping this process. Generally, these methods—which include the family of floating catchment area (FCA) methods—incorporate a number of criteria that address topics like access, efficiency, budget, equity and the overall system utilization. How can we measure spatial accessibility? This paper investigates a sophisticated approach for quantifying the spatial accessibility of general practitioners. (GPs). Our objective is the investigation and application of a spatial accessibility index by an improved Huff three-step floating catchment area (MH3SFCA) method.MethodsWe modify and implement the huff model three-step floating catchment area (MH3SFCA) method and exemplary calculation of the spatial accessibility indices for the test study area. The method is extended to incorporate a more realistic way to model the distance decay effect. To that end, instead of a binary approach, a continuous approach is employed. Therefore, each distance between a healthcare site and the population is incorporated individually. The study area includes Swabia and the city of Augsburg, Germany. The data for analysis is obtained from following data sources: (1) Acxiom Deutschland GmbH (2020) provided a test dataset for the locations of general practitioners (GPs); (2) OpenStreetMap (OSM) data is utilized for road networks; and (3) the Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder (German official census 2011) provided a population distribution dataset stemming from the 2011 Census.ResultsThe spatial accessibility indices are distributed in an inhomogeneous as well as polycentric pattern for the general practitioners (GPs). Differences in spatial accessibility are found mainly between urban and rural areas. The transitions from lower to higher values of accessibility or vice versa in general are smooth rather than abrupt. The results indicate that the MH3SFCA method is suited for comparing the spatial accessibility of GPs in different regions. The results of the MH3SFCA method can be used to indicate over- and undersupplied areas. However, the absolute values of the indices do not inherently define accessibility to be too low or too high. Instead, the indices compare the spatial relationships between each supply and demand location. As a result, the higher the value of the accessibility indices, the higher the opportunities for the respective population locations. The result for the study area are exemplary as the test input data has a high uncertainty. Depending on the objective, it might be necessary to further analyze the results of the method.ConclusionsThe application of the MH3SFCA method on small-scale data can provide an overview of accessibility for the whole study area. As many factors have to be taken into account, the outcomes are too complex for a direct and clear interpretation of why indices are low or high. The MH3SFCA method can be used to detect differences in accessibility on a small scale. In order to effectively detect over- or undersupply, further analysis must be conducted and/or different (legal) constraints must be applied. The methodology requires input data of high quality.