City Of Brussels Research Articles

EUrope in focus: imperial formations in the fabric of the European Union

ABSTRACT In the middle of the twentieth century, when the European Union (EU) started to take shape, numerous European colonies – many with a significant Muslim population – gained independence. These two moments in history need to be read in relation to each other when thinking about “Islam in Europe”. This paper engages in such a relational reading and shifts the analytical focus from “Islam” to “Europe”, exploring the ways “EUrope” manifests itself in the city of Brussels. By combining a spatialized analysis of the European Quarter with the conceptual lens of the “palimpsest”, I seek to offer a spatiotemporal framing that renders visible the material remains of imperial formations within the fabric of “EUrope”. The paper further explores how these often unmarked layers configure EU-space as “white” and Christian, and impact the ways Muslim bodies navigate within the EU-fabric and create counterspaces.

Distribution of platinum (Pt), palladium (Pd), and rhodium (Rh) in urban tributaries of the Scheldt River assessed by diffusive gradients in thin films technique (DGT)

The performance of the newly developed DGT technique for the platinum group elements (PGEs) rhodium (Rh), platinum (Pt) and palladium (Pd) was evaluated in two tributaries of the Scheldt River, the Marque River close to the city of Lille (France), and the Zenne River which flows through the city of Brussels (Belgium). In the Marque River, an interlaboratory comparison was performed between the two laboratories where the DGT techniques dedicated to PGEs were developed (AMGC, VUB & LASIRE, U-Lille). PGEs were also analysed in an effluent of a Brussels hospital and monthly grab sampling was performed at the wastewater treatments plants (WWTPs) of Brussels. The concentrations of the 3 elements are higher in the Zenne River than in the Marque River and much higher Pt concentrations are found in the hospital effluent. Good agreement for Pt was observed between the three selected chelating resins and a relatively good agreement was observed between the two laboratories using the same chelating resin, whereas lower results were observed with the anion-exchange resin. Larger discrepancies between the two laboratories were observed for Pd and no comparison could be made for Rh due to the low natural concentrations. The results show that in small urban rivers with high impact of urbanization, WWTPs are an important source of Pt, resulting from the use of anticancer drugs in hospitals and households. The limited retention of PGEs in WWTPs results in increased concentrations in urban rivers downstream.For Pd and Rh, similar trends were found with other traffic related elements such as Cu, Zn and Pb, showing the highest concentrations in waters collecting runoff from a highway. The data show that these elements, together with Gd, can be useful to trace specific pollution sources and their dispersion.

From abundance-based to functional-based indicator species

Indicator species with high fidelity to a-priori defined groups of sites are a relevant tool to ecologically characterize plant or animal assemblages. The identification of indicator or diagnostic species is usually performed by summarizing the species abundances within each group of sites. Species with high concentration in a given group of sites are considered diagnostic of that particular group. Among the methods proposed for the determination of indicator species, only very few have considered the species functional traits. This is quite surprising, as species influence ecosystem processes via their traits. Therefore, the species functional traits should give a much better ecological characterization of a group of sites than the species abundances. The aim of this paper is thus to use the species functional characteristics to improve their diagnostic value. These characteristics include the species functional traits and all species-level indicators of environmental association. The proposed method consists of combining the species abundances and their functional characteristics into a single composite index, which can be interpreted as the species fuzzy degree of compatibility with each group of sites. The interpretation of this index in terms of fuzzy set theory allows to introduce a high degree of flexibility in the computation of the species diagnostic values. To show the behavior of the proposed index, two worked examples with data on Alpine vegetation in northern Italy and urban alien species in the city of Brussels (Belgium) are used.

Designing unmanned aerial vehicle networks for biological material transportation – The case of Brussels

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) may solve, or at least reduce, the negative impacts of road transport such as accidents, pollution and congestion. The objective of this paper is to design UAV networks for biomedical material transportation in line with the Drone4Care project. Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal (PESTEL) analysis provides an overview of the macro-environmental factors that should be considered. To identify the internal and external factors that are favourable and unfavourable to achieve this objective, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis is also performed. The raised issues are translated into a number of quantifiable scenario elements containing the most plausible up-coming events that may impact the future of UAV networks. Four location models are developed and applied to the city of Brussels and its periphery with respect to the associated market in terms of biomedical product flows (blood units or medical samples that are transported between hospitals, laboratories, and blood transfusion centres). In the context of separate case studies of scenario-based analysis, the experiments show that the use of charging stations is useful to extend the mission ranges and to gain market share. The results also show the possibility of gradually implementing the bases without requiring any major changes such as closing a base.

COVID-19 and Autism Research: Perspectives from Around the Globe.

COVID-19 and Autism Research: Perspectives from Around the Globe.

A Statistical–Dynamical Methodology to Downscale Regional Climate Projections to Urban Scale

AbstractThe demand of city planners for quantitative information on the impact of climate change on the urban environment is increasing. However, such information is usually extracted from decadelong climate projections generated with global or regional climate models (RCMs). Because of their coarse resolution and unsuitable physical parameterization, however, their model output is not adequate to be used at city scale. A full dynamical downscaling to city level, on the other hand, is computationally too expensive for climatological time scales. A statistical–dynamical computationally inexpensive method is therefore proposed that approximates well the behavior of the full dynamical downscaling approach. The approach downscales RCM simulations using the combination of an RCM at high resolution (H-RES) and a land surface model (LSM). The method involves the setup of a database of urban signatures by running an H-RES RCM with and without urban parameterization for a relatively short period. Using an analog approach, these signatures are first selectively added to the long-term RCM data, which are then used as forcing for an LSM using an urban parameterization in a stand-alone mode. A comparison with a full dynamical downscaling approach is presented for the city of Brussels, Belgium, for 30 summers with the combined ALADIN–AROME model (ALARO-0) coupled to the Surface Externalisée model (SURFEX) as H-RES RCM and SURFEX as LSM. The average bias of the nocturnal urban heat island during heat waves is vanishingly small, and the RMSE is strongly reduced. Not only is the statistical–dynamical approach able to correct the heat-wave number and intensities, it can also improve intervariable correlations and multivariate and temporally correlated indices, such as Humidex.

Reeling in Newcomers: Urban Competition around Migrant Reception in Brussels

AbstractThe management of ethnic diversity and its various forms of institutional articulation and implementation are increasingly taking place at the urban level. At the same time, urban scholars consider cities to be battlegrounds where competing groups contest the meaning and articulation of citizenship. In this article, I build on these insights to argue that competition over newcomer reception between different, linguistically divided political coalitions in the city of Brussels are mainly battles over establishing their own definition of citizenship and asserting their political influence. Building on an eighteen‐month ethnographic study in three reception offices (two Dutch‐speaking and one francophone) in Brussels, I analyse the different strategies these offices mobilize to recruit and retain newcomers. I argue that recruitment is a deliberate tool used to influence the political‐cultural demographics of the city and destabilize the linguistic power balance in Brussels. In this way, recruitment becomes a means to attract newcomers to the reception offices in the hope that they will develop a deep connection and loyalty to, and eventually identify politically with, the agency's respective political community. Theoretically, this article develops a perspective that regards the city as a field that becomes constituted in and through the contest between different urban institutions to ‘reel in’ newcomers. In this space, these institutions take up positions for and against each other and assemble strategies to influence the urban populations.

Using Remote Sensing Based Metrics to Quantify the Hydrological Response in a City

We propose a remote-sensing based metric approach to evaluate the hydrological response of highly urbanized areas and apply it to the city of Brussels. The model is set-up using 2 m resolution hyperspectral data. Next, it is upscaled to the city level, using multi-spectral Sentinel-2 data with 20 m resolution. We identify the total impervious area, the vegetation cover and the leaf area index as important metrics to derive a timeseries of spatially distributed net rainfall, runoff and infiltration from rainfall data. For the estimation of the actual evapotranspiration we use the potential evapotranspiration and the available water storage based on the interception, the depression storage and the infiltration. Additionally, we route the runoff to the outlet of selected sub-catchments. An important metric for the routing is the timing to the outlet which is approximated using the total impervious area and the hydrological distance to the outlet. We compare our approach to WetSpa model simulations and reach R 2 values of 98% for net rainfall, 95% for surface runoff, 99% for infiltration and 97% for cumulative evapotranspiration. The routing in the Watermaelbeek catchment is evaluated with discharge observations and reaches NSE values of 0.89 at a 2 m resolution and 0.88 at a 20 m resolution using an hourly timestep. At the timestep of 10 min and a 20 m resolution the NSE is reduced to 0.76. For the Roodebeek catchment we reach an NSE of 0.73 at a spatial resolution of 20 m and an hourly timestep. The results presented in this paper are optimistic for using spatial and temporal metrics retrieved from remote sensing data to quantify the water balance of urban catchments.

Heat risk assessment for the Brussels capital region under different urban planning and greenhouse gas emission scenarios

Urban residents are exposed to higher levels of heat stress in comparison to the rural population. As this phenomenon could be enhanced by both global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and urban expansion, urban planners and policymakers should integrate both in their assessment. One way to consider these two concepts is by using urban climate models at a high resolution. In this study, the influence of urban expansion and GHG emission scenarios is evaluated at 100 m spatial resolution for the city of Brussels (Belgium) in the near (2031–2050) and far (2081–2100) future. Two possible urban planning scenarios (translated into local climate zones, LCZs) in combination with two representative concentration pathways (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5) have been implemented in the urban climate model UrbClim. The projections show that the influence of GHG emissions trumps urban planning measures in each period. In the near future, no large differences are seen between the RCP scenarios; in the far future, both heat stress and risk values are twice as large for RCP 8.5 compared to RCP 4.5. Depending on the GHG scenario and the LCZ type, heat stress is projected to increase by a factor of 10 by 2090 compared to the present-day climate and urban planning conditions. The imprint of vulnerability and exposure is clearly visible in the heat risk assessment, leading to very high levels of heat risk, most notably for the North Western part of the Brussels Capital Region. The results demonstrate the need for mitigation and adaptation plans at different policy levels that strive for lower GHG emissions and the development of sustainable urban areas safeguarding livability in cities.

Comparing map-based and library-based training approaches for urban land-cover fraction mapping from Sentinel-2 imagery

An improved trade-off between resolution, coverage and revisit time, makes Sentinel-2 multispectral imagery an interesting data source for mapping the composition and spatial-temporal dynamics of urban land cover. To fully realize the potential of Sentinel-2′s high amount of available data, efficient urban mapping workflows are required. Machine learning regression is a powerful approach to produce subpixel land cover fractions from remote sensing imagery, yet it requires mixed spectra for model training for which the fractions of the land cover classes present in the pixel are known. Typically, this data is obtained by sampling spectra from the image to be unmixed, and corresponding land-cover fractions from higher-resolution land cover reference data, i.e. map-based training. We propose synthetic mixing of library spectra as an alternative for producing land cover fraction training data for regression modelling, i.e. library-based training. The approach is applied to a Sentinel-2 image of the city of Brussels (Belgium) and part of its urban fringe for mapping Vegetation, Impervious, and Soil (VIS) fractions at 20 m resolution. VIS fraction maps obtained with library-based training have mean absolute errors below 0.1 for all three surface types. The composition of these three key surface categories and their spatial distribution is well represented for the entire area in resulting maps. As a proof of concept, library-based training is compared with the map-based training approach. The more flexible library-based training not only achieves similar mapping accuracies, but in most cases, outperforms the map-based training approach in terms of bias and magnitude of error. The outcome of the research suggests that use of spectral libraries and synthetic mixing may provide an efficient modelling framework for regression-based mapping from Sentinel-2 imagery in operational contexts.

Climate sensitivity to land use changes over the city of Brussels

Prompted with the ongoing and projected climate change, a wide range of cities have committed, not only to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions but also to implement different climate change adaptation measures. These measures serve to ensure the well-being of the urban population. In practice, however, the planning of realistic adaptation measures is a complex process. Prior to starting such endeavor, it may therefore be useful to explore the maximum potential benefit that can be gained through adaptation measures. In this work, simple, extreme yet realistic adaptation measures are proposed in terms of changes in albedo and vegetation fraction. The impact of these land-use scenarios is explored by use of the land surface model SURFEX on the summer climate in terms of heat waves and the urban heat island for the city of Brussels. This is done for different periods in the future using the greenhouse gas scenario RCP8.5.

De(con)struction / (re)construction : urban scenography in Belgium in the 1960’s

In the decades following the second world war, the Belgian cities of Brussels and Liège, which didn’t suffer from any large-scale destruction during the conflict, are subjected to modernistic urban policies leading to the disappearance of whole sections of their traditional urban fabric. Helped by private agencies, cities’ administrations develop ambitious plans aiming to update their built environment and road system, in order to answer the needs of motorised traffic and modern lifestyle. This paper focuses on a practice developed in parallel to this prevailing tendency: under the direction of the city architects Jean Rombaux (Brussels) and Jean Francotte (Liège), some fragments of ancient buildings to be demolished are carefully dismantled and stored, with the aim of being reassembled in order to recreate fragments of idealised traditional townscapes. Through the examples of the Lombard-Violette and Saint-Georges blocks, respectively in the city centres of Brussels and Liège, this paper addresses the reasons behind the operations and the successive projects, and discusses the status of the results.

Enhancing the performance of Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) for urban land cover mapping using airborne lidar data and band selection

Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) is a widely applied tool to retrieve spatially explicit information on urban land cover from both hyperspectral and multispectral data, but is still prone to misclassification errors when faced with high inter-class similarity, typical of the complex urban environment. In this study we assessed multiple ways to minimize spectral confusion using airborne lidar data as an additional data source and spectral feature selection. Several approaches were tested using simulated hyperspectral data and two case studies in the city of Brussels, Belgium, one based on hyperspectral (APEX) data and one on multispectral (Sentinel-2) data. We found that the implementation of height distribution information (1) as an endmember model selection tool and (2) as a basis for additional fraction constraints at the individual pixel scale, significantly reduced spectral confusion between spectrally similar, but structurally different land cover classes (on average by 80% for the APEX case). This had a net positive effect on subpixel fraction estimations (average R2 increased from 0.34 to 0.80 and from 0.23 to 0.63 for APEX and Sentinel-2, respectively) and pixel classification accuracies (kappa increased from 0.38 to 0.6 for the APEX case). When applied to fine spatial resolution data containing many single-class pixels, endmember model selection based on height information resulted in the additional benefit of lowering computation times by 85%. Spectral feature selection successfully discarded redundant spectral information (on average retaining only 19 out of 218 bands), thereby further lowering processing times by 50%, without affecting accuracies. Despite these significant improvements, spectral confusion remained an issue between classes showing no distinction in height information, particularly pavement and soil. Future research should therefore focus on integrating the proposed approach with advanced endmember detection and selection algorithms, along with exploring innovative ways of highlighting small spectral differences using spectral transformations. The algorithm we propose constitutes a viable approach for mapping of structurally diverse ecosystems, such as urban environments, at multiple spatial scales and with varying level of thematic detail.

Alien plant species do have a clear preference for different land uses within urban environments

Since neophytes can become invasive in the future, untangling their ecological preferences is of paramount importance, especially in urban areas where they represent a substantial proportion of the local flora. Studies exploring alien species assemblages in urban environments are however scarce. This study aims to unravel alien plant species preferences for five urban land uses (densely built-up areas, open built-up areas, industrial areas, broadleaved urban forests, and agricultural areas and small landscape elements). We took the city of Brussels as a model, in which we recorded all vascular species growing spontaneously in grid cells of 1 km2. We tested two different ways of classifying the 1-km2 cells: (1) We simply associated each cell with its dominant land cover; (2) We used a fuzzy approach for which the degree of association of a given cell to a given land cover depended on the proportion of that land cover within the cell. For both classification methods, we calculated the indicator species of the resulting land cover types based on alien species only. The crisp and fuzzy classifications identified 33 and 49 species, respectively, with a clear preference for some urban land use types (from a total of 129 alien plant species analyzed). Results showed that urban land use types having apparently similar environmental conditions can actually harbor different neophyte assemblages. Fine-tuning the categorization of urban environments in future ecological studies is therefore important for understanding spatial patterns of alien species occurrence.

Bridging the Communication Gap in Multilingual Service Encounters: A Brussels Case Study

ABSTRACTThe massive influx of refugees into Europe in the past few years has given rise to different kinds of challenges among which is the challenge to successfully communicate with newly arrived immigrants. In this article, we will focus on the public service provision sector where quality of service is to a large extent determined by the capability of a service provider and his or her “client” to understand one another. The article centres on a study involving public organisations providing asylum services or (mental) healthcare services in the multilingual and multicultural city of Brussels. Several interviews were conducted to gain insight into the communication problems such organisations face, as well as their communication requirements and solutions when providing services to people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. We will focus on the types of bridging functions commonly deployed by these organisations in multilingual service encounters and on the motivations for using them. In addition, we will discuss the subject of technology-enabled communication in the context of public service provision. Finally, in presenting the results of our study we will formulate specific recommendations on how to improve the use and integration of bridging functions into common service practice.

Brussels New Pedestrian Area: The Way Toward a Slow City? ( breakout presentation )

In 2015, Brussels city transformed an important part of the Anspacht Boulevard and some of its nearest streets, in the city center, into a pedestrian area. A temporary spatial arrangement was set up during more than a year in order to test the impact of such a spatial transformation on the urban economic and social dynamics and on the mobility system. After this experimentation period, the results communicated by the city authorities seem to be rather positive. Therefore, the city plans to start the implementation of a new spatial design that will definitely transform the car boulevard into a complete pedestrian street, even if this decision goes against the opinion of some citizens, storekeepers and urban professionals. The presentation that I propose aims to explore the Brussels pedestrian area project as a potential of new urban transformations. I will start with explaining how the train, then the car, have transformed the center of Brussels. Indeed, those fast modes have been driving forces for the transformation of spatial, social and economic structures of Brussels. Starting from the understanding of this evolution, we will explore the potential of the pedestrian area to be a new driving force to transform Brussels, as the train and the car infrastructures were in the past. The hypothesis I propose is that Brussels is at the beginning of a new era, where slowness can be a factor of urban development, like speed was in the past. I will present a short analysis of the pedestrian area project as it was designed and set up. I will show the limits of the projects as it is today by focusing on the tension between the new slowness logics brought up by the project and the speed and cars logics that still influence decision making in the city design field.

Bruxelles in traduzione: 'Our city' di Maria Tarantino

Brussels in translation: Our city by Maria Tarantino This article focuses on Our city (2015), Maria Tarantino’s documentary on the city of Brussels and its growing diversity. With her work as a documentarist Tarantino is part of the generation of directors who have contributed to the rebirth of the Italian documentary film. Our city explores the relationship between migrants and their host city, an issue which has received little attention in migration literature and in the public debate until now. Drawing on Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson’s concepts of ‘border’ and ‘borderscape’, the article argues that Tarantino’s documentary film counters the mainly negative and stereotypical media coverage with a more dynamic and multifaceted image of the metropolis. More particularly, the study analyses the formal features (involving voice(s), translation, framing and editing) which support the open and radical idea of citizenship proposed in Tarantino’s film.

Transmigration: the rise of flexible migration strategies as part of superdiversity

Superdiversity implies increasing diversity within diversity, including the rise of flexible migration strategies: complex migration trajectories implying serial cross-border mobility between two or more countries. The article explores transmigration in the two main superdiverse Belgian cities of Brussels and Antwerp, based upon in-depth interviews with Brazilian, Ghanaian and Moroccan transmigrants. The article analyses the social problems related to transmigration, how these problems transcend borders and challenge urban social work and social policies at different levels. It explores why transmigration requires forms of multilevel governance to deal with people living beyond borders in the EU.

Data-mining analysis of in-sewer infiltration patterns: seasonal characteristics of clear water seepage into Brussels main sewers

Parasitic clear water infiltration is known to increase the waste water volumes in most sewerage systems. Amongst others, a problem arising from that is a significant variation of waste water pollutant concentration over time, which complicates the purification process and increases its cost. Capitalizing on new extensive databases, we propose a new method for the identification of clear water infiltration rates based on data-mining and data consolidation of long time data series. Based on a straightforward anthropogenic tracer, together with a simple but rigorous water budget, the infiltrated volumes are quantified day-by-day for the entire zone treated by a major waste water treatment plant. Brussels city is used as an example of the applicability of the method over several years, demonstrating the significant seasonal changes in sewer infiltration rates in the area and the progress achieved so far by structural sewer repair.

A quasi-equilibrium approach for market clearing in land use microsimulations

A method for market clearing in land use models with a microsimulation approach for location choice of agents is proposed. The method, based on the Bid-auction theory and random utility models, assumes that agents individually adjust their perceived expected utility by observing market prices before entering auctions for a real estate good, hence modifying their overall willingness to pay for locations. The adjustment translates into a correction of each agent’s bid level that follows the direction of supply-demand equilibrium, as they attempt to ensure their location. In each period, auctions for each available real estate good are simulated and prices are computed as the expected maximum bid of all agents in the market. The proposed method is tested for the city of Brussels, validated against real data and compared with results obtained when the bid adjustment is not included. Simulation results reproduce price trends that were observed in reality between the year 2001 and 2008, outperforming results obtained without a quasi-equilibrium bid adjustment approach. The proposed method is feasible to be implemented in large scale microsimulations and agent-based models because it does not require solving large fixed-point equilibrium problems.