Digital Planning Tools Research Articles

Constitutional varus knee due to tibial deformity is common and represents a good indication for high tibial osteotomy in Japanese population: Consideration of 1010 knees.

This study aimed to elucidate the characteristics of varus knee deformities in the Japanese population, prevalence of various around knee osteotomy proceduresand influence of femoral and tibial bowing. Varus knee deformity was defined as a weight-bearing line ratio of <50%. A total of 1010 varus knees were selected from 1814 varus knees with weight-bearing full-length radiographs, obtained at two facilities, based on exclusion criteria. Various parameters were measured, and around knee osteotomy simulations based on the deformity centre were conducted using digital planning tools. Bowing of the femoral and tibial shafts was measured, with bowing defined as follows: ≤ -0.6° indicating lateral bowing and ≥ 0.6° indicating medial bowing. Statistical analysis was performed to investigate age-related correlations and their impact on surgical techniques. The study revealed that the proximal tibia was the centre of deformity in Japanese varus knees (42.8%), and high tibial osteotomy was frequently indicated (81.6%). Age demonstrated a mild correlation with femoral shaft bowing (r = -0.29), leading to an increase in the mechanical lateral distal femoral angle and to a decrease in the hip-knee-ankle angle and weight-bearing line ratio (r = -0.29, 0.221, 0.219). The tibial shaft bowing was unaffected by age (r = -0.022). A significant proportion of Japanese individuals with varus knees exhibit a deformity centre located in the proximal tibia, making them suitable candidates for high tibial osteotomy. No age-related alterations were discerned in tibial morphology, indicating that the occurrence of constitutional varus knees is attributable to tibial deformities in the Japanese patient cohort. Level IV.

A combination crown lengthening and implant placement guide

Surgical procedures, including crown lengthening and implant placement, have become more predictable and less invasive because of the use of digital planning tools. A method combining a cone beam computed tomography and a digital scan with a virtual planning software program is described to fabricate a combination guide for both surgical esthetic crown lengthening and guided implant placement.

GIS for Sustainable Urban Transformation in Countries With Emerging Economies

In South America, the urban population has been growing rapidly over the last century, with a share of more than 80% expected by 2020. This trend has created new challenges for city planning because municipalities must address issues caused by horizontal urban expansion and the informal occupation of peripheral areas. Frequently, the latter are not designed or equipped for the basic needs of new inhabitants. This research is based on the work of MGI, an initiative for smart, sustainable development in Piura, an intermediate city with one of the highest rates of urban sprawl in Peru. This initiative promotes climate change adaptation and mitigation based on urban analysis embodied in a sustainability profile and an action-oriented roadmap with concrete, feasible, and replicable measures and projects. One such measure is a spatial analysis, prioritising small illegal dumpsites for recovery and converting these areas into a public space using digital planning tools. This study analyses the development of the intervention to be implemented against the city´s opportunities and challenges.

Prototypical approach for an individualized standardization process in the context of intelligent construction and automation

Strategies based on an optimal balance between standardization and individualization must be implemented to successfully overcome the current low level of automation in building construction. Project-specific adaptability can be ensured by a combination of automated machine technology and digital planning tools available today. In addition to achieving economic advantages, the focus is on improving sustainability factors, which concern both material consumption and functionality and improved use of resources and energy for building production and operation. The results of research into “lightweight aerogel concrete technology” has shown that an innovative liquid material mixture with insulating properties can be successfully implemented in an automated production process. An adaptive system for standardized wall, ceiling, and floor panels was developed, which can adapt to specific functionality needs and thus address the requirements of individual building tasks while keeping economic as well as architectural factors in mind. The advanced mono-material complies with current European regulations for insulated wall structures, considering the requirements for load-bearing capacity. Due to its homogeneous insulation effect across the entire element section, the aero lightweight concrete allows for intelligent detailing and connection principles and prevents the formation of thermal bridges. The relationship between material composition, material production, construction method, and building operation is essential for a circular planning process. Robotization as a multiple fabrication technology may facilitate these parameters in one cycle. The new technology allows for the crucial transition from research to an end-to-end construction workflow that maps the entire process chain, from concept planning to design and joining principles up to fabrication and assembly.

Additively Manufactured Urban Multispecies Façades for Building Renovation

This research investigates the potential of additive manufacturing and digital planning tools for the creation of location-specific façade redesigns that can host cavity-dependent animal species and develops methods for their realization. The proposed approach is explored based on a case study of a student dormitory in need of renovation in the urban area of Munich. Based on theoretical knowledge and design experimentations that link the fields of architecture, climate-responsive design, terrestrial ecology, and digital fabrication, a set of design principles for the additive manufacturing of inhabitable ceramic tiles is conceived and transferred into a computational design tool. The conception of single tiles and the overall façade design are developed in terms of their positive climatic impact on both the animal species and humans, their nesting opportunities, their structural feasibility, and their integrability with standard ceramic façade systems. To verify the fabricability of the proposed design, a façade fragment was additively manufactured as a prototype in 1:1 scale. The initial findings presented in this paper provide a glimpse of how emerging digital technologies could provide new ways to expand current habitual architectural planning and fabrication tools, to enable the creation of site-specific solutions, and to bring together human and animal needs.

Approximations to the sustainable take-up of digital planning tools for decision making processes, according to its user. The case of TOSCA in two contexts.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the role of digital planning tools implemented in the context of sustainable development in the Global South, considering that public governance has been going through an important pivotal moment since the appearance of globalization and digitalization, where collaborative participation and hybrid approaches are becoming indispensable for planning and development. In this sense, the paper will give a brief introduction of governance in the digital Era and the use of GIS-based digital planning tools, followed by the presentation of the case study of TOSCA, or Toolkit for Sustainable City Planning and Analysis, to understand the relevance of this hybridization between human and digital processes for governance and planning. TOSCA will be presented in the context of two pilot projects, with the development and deployment of the technology between 2019 and 2020, summarizing its process and outcomes from the stakeholder perspective. The discussion chapter of this paper, collects the learnings and challenges gained during this first application of the Toolkit, and points towards the future development and its application in other regions, with the aim of understanding how its conceptualization and development could be further enhanced in order to ensure its sustainable take-up under diverse contexts and use cases.

Key action fields for nearly carbon-neutral districts: stakeholder-specific strategies and practice

In accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, many countries aim at nearly zero carbon emissions of their building sector by 2050. The research college EnEff.Buildings.2050 is a collaboration of five PhD students and their supervisors to support this goal. In this paper, five key action fields for transformation of urban districts are described, and decisive stakeholders are identified and linked to the action fields. As a case study, the urban district Mierendorff-Island in Berlin is introduced.Three strategies to support transformation are identified: Firstly, new digital planning tools should be applied to assess and improve the energetic performance of new and existing buildings and to illustrate it to decision makers. Secondly, digital processes should be combined throughout the lifecycle of a building by building information modeling (BIM). This can ensure the energetic quality and enable cost-effective construction, servicing and monitoring. Thirdly, start-ups and contractors need support for development of new business models and technical solutions, which can e.g. enable disruptive technologies. Awareness of stakeholders on the transformational state of a district enables them to identify windows of opportunity to spring into action. Framework conditions and support measures determine if they act in favour of the transformation or not.

PRECINCT SCALE LIVING LABORATORIES: CASE STUDY OF RANDWICK LIVING LAB

Abstract. The concept of Living Laboratory (LL) provides a novel grass-roots data-driven approach for collaborative design of place involving multiple stakeholders. In this paper we focused on reviewing the most common approaches utilised in the construct of user-centric LL. This is done by systematically reviewing methodologies and engagement techniques as well as presenting one LL milieu as a case study – Randwick Precinct Living Laboratory – and its key outcomes. In the case study we aimed to understand the design of a user-centric precinct scale LL where stakeholders were involved in the design of a precinct using a sketch planning approach. The novelty of the Randwick Precinct LL was the use of multi-table technologies and other digital planning tools such as a dashboard to support collaboration. The results suggest a sketch planning approach to facilitate and encourage both user-to-user and user-to-technology interaction and make the LL concept operate at precinct level. Moreover, this paper distils the lessons learned from Randwick Precinct Living Lab and explained how LL can contribute to inclusiveness, user contribution, high innovation, collaboration and consensus building.

Towards the collaborative development of machine learning techniques in planning support systems – a Sydney example

The rise of the term ‘big data’ has contributed to recent advances in computational analysis techniques, such as machine learning and more broadly, artificial intelligence, which can extract patterns from large, multi-dimensional datasets. In the field of urban planning, it is pertinent to understand both how such techniques can advance our understanding of cities, and how they can be embedded within transparent and effective digital planning tools, known as planning support systems. This research specifically focuses on two related contributions. First, it investigates the role of planning support systems in supporting a participatory data analytics approach through an iterative process of developing and evaluating a planning support system environment. Second, it investigates how specifically machine learning planning support systems can be co-designed by built environment practitioners and stakeholders in this environment to solve a real planning issue in Sydney, Australia. This paper presents the results of applied research undertaken through the design and implementation of four workshops, involving 57 participants who were involved in a co-design process. The research follows a mixed-methods approach, studying a wide array of measures related to participatory analytics, task load, perceived added value, recordings and observations. The results highlight recommendations regarding the design and evaluation of planning support system environments for co-design and their coupling with machine learning techniques. It was found that consistency and transparency are highly valued and central to the design of a planning support system in this context. General attitudes towards machine learning and artificial intelligence as techniques for planners and developers were positive, as they were seen as both potentially transformative but also as simply another technique to assist with workflows. Some conceptual challenges were encountered driven by practitioners' simultaneous need for concrete scenarios for accurate predictions, paired with a desire for predictions to drive the development of these scenarios. Insights from this work can inform future planning support system evaluation and co-design studies, in particular those aiming to support democracy enhancement, greater inclusion and more efficient resource allocation through a participatory analytics approach.

Visual Communication in Urban Design and Planning: The Impact of Mediatisation(s) on the Construction of Urban Futures

&lt;p&gt;This editorial introduces the subject matter of the thematic issue, which includes a diverse collection of contributions from authors in various disciplines including, history, architecture, planning, sociology and geography. Within the context of mediatisation processes—and the increased use of ever-expanding I&amp;amp;C technologies—communication has undergone profound changes. As such, this thematic issue will discuss how far (digital) media tools and their social uses in urban design and planning have impacted the visualisation of urban imaginations and how urban futures are thereby communicatively produced. Referring to an approach originating from the media and communication sciences, the authors begin with an outline of the core concepts of mediatisation and digitalisation. They suggest how the term ‘visualisation’ can be conceived and, against this background, based upon the sociological approach of communicative constructivism, a proposal is offered, which diverges from traditional methods of conceptualising visualisations: Instead, it highlights the need for a greater consideration towards the active role of creators (e.g., planners) and recipients (e.g., stakeholders) as well as the distinctive techniques of communication involved (e.g., a specific digital planning tools). The authors in this issue illustrate how communicative construction, particularly the visual construction of urban futures, can be understood, depending upon the kind of social actors as well as the means of communication involved. The editorial concludes with a summary of the main arguments and core results presented.&lt;/p&gt;

Shaping up the Future Spatial Plans for Urban Areas in Pakistan

Since 2007, more than fifty percent of our planet’s population is living in urban areas. In the coming decade, the rate of urbanization will be fastest in Asia and Africa. Within South Asian countries, urbanization has attained its fastest pace in Pakistan. Urban planners and agencies in Pakistan have tried various spatial plan making solutions to manage urban areas, but none have given the desired results. After a 20% increase in declared urban areas within last two decades, urban planners and policy makers are looking for a more innovative and realistic spatial planning solution, which could adjust to the uncertainties and complexities of real world. This research uses a mixed method approach comprising a two phased survey of professional planners, analyzed through the selective lexicon approach to document planners’ opinions about the reasons behind the poor performance and conformance of spatial plans. This study documents the planners’ understanding of the contemporary concept of ‘scenario planning’. To explore the solution, this paper presents a semi-systematic review of the literature on the application of the ‘scenario method in urban spatial planning’. As a result of this research, a comprehensive digital inventory of all spatial plans ever made in Pakistan has been developed. It has been found that 83% of the urban settlements in Pakistan are growing without a spatial plan and require immediate attention. Furthermore, in terms of the plan making process, twenty-seven major factors contributing to the failure of past plans have been identified and categorized under seven distinct plan making stages. Finally, a new process of spatial plan-making has been proposed, which is the fusion of scenario planning and the traditional plan-making process, backed by digital planning tools. In an era of smart cities and digitization, it is expected that the advancements in scenarios planning, coupled with a new data portal, will assist in addressing the implementation gap in practice, and result in more comprehensive data-driven spatial plans.

A framework to bridge digital planning tools' utilization gap in peri-urban spatial planning; lessons from Pakistan

As cities grow, the continued development pressure and land-use change of peri-urban areas pose a key challenge for urban planners to address. In the planning of peri-urban areas, the complexity of intertwining physical, environmental, transportation, social and institutional planning dimensions, rapidness of change, demand for precision, and subjectivity of the situations; application of digital planning tools (GIS, PSS and similar) offers a result-oriented and at times the only way out for realistic planning. Like many other countries, peri-urban growth in Pakistan is being managed by the preparation of Peri-Urban Structure Plans (PUSPs). Since, 2009, such plans have been prepared for 36 urban centres of various scale which offer a considerable size to explore the usage pattern of digital planning tools in real-world practice and learn the lessons. Despite wider development and adoption of geographic information systems (GIS) based planning support system (PSS) in spatial planning all over the world, the utilization of digital planning tools in Pakistan to support planning practise has been very limited. This research adopts a case study-based methodology to review the legal requirements of peri-urban plan-making and highlight tasks where digital planning tools can add value. It investigates why there is a paucity of up taking digital planning tools in the spatial plan preparation and documents key stumbling factors. To understand the user's perspective, a survey of (n = 108) urban planners has been undertaken using an online questionnaire. The survey assesses their understanding of the terms and their perception behind the current utilization level of digital planning tools for plan preparation. The analysis reveals a very low familiarity of urban planners with digital planning tools, particularly planning support systems, in Pakistan which is aligned with the findings from technologically advanced countries. The causes behind low utilization have been documented and grouped under three dimensions, adopted from previous research including ‘user acceptance’, ‘instrument quality’ and ‘diffusion’. Finally, the paper concludes by proposing a framework for bridging the utilization gap to improve spatial planning practice.

DESIGNING PRECINCTS IN THE DENSIFYING CITY – THE ROLE OF PLANNING SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Abstract. Australia’s cities face significant social, economic and environmental challenges, driven by population growth and rapid urbanisation. The pressure to increase housing availability will lead to greater levels of high-density and medium-density stock. However, there is enormous political and community pushback against this. One way to address this challenge is to encourage medium-density living solutions through “precinct” scale development. Precinct-scale development has the potential to include additional hard and soft infrastructure that may offset the perceived negativities of higher densities. As part of Australian research into precinct-scale development, and as part of our broader Smart Cities approach, or more specifically City Analytics approach, new digital planning tools – Envision and ESP – have been developed to support scenario planning and design needs. They utilise a data-driven and scenario planning approach underpinned by Geographic Information System (GIS) functionality.We focus on a case study in the City of Blacktown, Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. By 2036 Blacktown is forecast to grow to approximately 500,000 people (an increase of over 30 %) and 180,000 dwellings. Most new dwellings will be delivered through urban infill. The Blacktown master plan promotes higher density housing, mixed employment uses and continued improvements to the public domain. Our study provides a unique opportunity to implement this broad strategy within a specific case and location. Specifically, this paper provides information on how these digital planning tools supported Blacktown planners in identifying, co-designing and implementing a new approach for precinct level planning. It also presents the results of an evaluation of digital-planning tools in the context of the Blacktown case study.

Identification of Assembly System Configuration for Cyber-Physical Assembly System Planning

To respond to challenges created by an increase of product variants, multi-variant lines are used as today’s assembly systems. In these multi-variant lines different product variants with diverse lot sizes can be efficiently assembled. These assembly systems are characterized by modular structures that allow assembly system adaptation by reconfiguration.The variety of parameters to be considered from the product’s perspective and the correct allocation of different assembly modules increases the complexity when planning these systems. This complexity makes it difficult to successfully plan and implement production processes. Therefore, digital planning tools and models have to be used to schedule new product variants and to verify that the assembly is possible, given by the modules in the assembly line.Due to its ability to reconfigure, the actual assembly system is adaptable to different product variants. But these modifications are performed by the operator on the shop floor and are often neither properly documented nor communicated to the assembly planer. Thus, the configuration status in reality and the virtual model differ from each other. Using the outdated model for planning without taking into account the changes can result in an unrealizable assembly plan.To overcome this problem, the presented paper introduces a method and technical system to identify the actual assembly system configuration before the assembly planning is done. Due to the subsequent update of the virtual model depending on the actual configuration, the assembly planner is supported with the latest version of the assembly system configuration. Furthermore, the assembly planning process is improved, because possible failures are detected in advance in the virtual planning environment.