Types Of Planners Research Articles

To Plan or Not to Plan? Experiences and Challenges of Older Swiss Adults Facing End-of-Life Decisions.

End-of-life (EoL) planning and the drafting of advance care directives (ACD) are challenging for older adults. As part of a mixed study, the content of 18 semi-structured interviews with Swiss community-dwelling older adults was analyzed to investigate contextual and interactional aspects that might influence their choice to complete ACD. Results show that EoL planning vary greatly. Three types of planners were highlighted: the solo planners, the collaborative planners, and the delegators. Each represents a specific way of conceiving autonomy, the usefulness of ACD and of involving third parties in the decision-making process. Whereas for solo planners, ACD is a personal, rational affair, for collaborative planners and delegators, reflection and decisions on EoL issues are interactional and iterative processes. The results suggest that health and social care professionals would benefit from taking into consideration the various types of planning, in order to provide the best support to older adults for ACD completion.

Ethical principles in an increasingly diverse planning profession: the potential impact of different types of planners

Ethical principles in an increasingly diverse planning profession: the potential impact of different types of planners

Towards A Relational Model for Emerging Urban Nature Concepts: A Practical Application and an External Assessment in Landscape Planning Education

The increasing interest in urban nature and its connection to urban sustainability and resilience has promoted the generalized use of new concepts such as green infrastructure, ecosystem services and nature-based solutions. However, due to their heterogeneous origins and interpretations, the usage and understanding of these concepts may vary considerably between different academic and professional groups, affecting their coordinated and synergistic use in integrative planning education and emphasizing the need for the exploration of clearer syntaxes and articulations between them. Accordingly, the main aim of this research was to develop a relational model and to investigate, through an external evaluation process, the benefits that these types of models can provide in higher education and in professional practice. This article presents the background theory and process that led to the development of the relational model, the outcomes of its academic implementation and the results of the assessment of both the model and the students’ work by different types of planners, researchers and practitioners. The findings show the potential of the defined relational model to integrate different concepts operating in complex socio-ecological systems and the benefits of developing, testing and validating models by linking research, education and professional practice.

Planners between the Chairs: How Planners (Do Not) Adapt to Transformative Practices

Even though the turn to practice is widely accepted in the field of urban planning, the practices of planners are empirically largely unexplored. Looking at the daily routines and practices of urban planners thus allows a deeper insight into what planning is, and how planning practices are related to innovation and transformation. To do so, we start from the assumption that behaviour is a constellation of practices, including certain activities, a set of choices and actions, patterns of behaviour or forms of interaction that is organised in a certain space or context by common understandings and rules. By conducting an online survey among planners in medium-sized German cities, we first identified a wide range of planning practices and activities in general. In a second step, we conducted a statistical cluster analysis resulting in six types of planners: (1) the ‘local-specific analysts,’ (2) the ‘experienced generalists,’ (3) the ‘reactive pragmatists,’ (4) the ‘project-oriented planners,’ (5) the ‘compensatory moderators,’ and (6) the ‘innovative designers.’ Each cluster has specific practices and activities, linked to characteristic value-sets, role interpretations and self-perceptions that might help explain the differences with regard to innovation and transformation. From the identified six groups or clusters of planners, only two clusters more or less consequently aim at innovation, experimentation and new approaches. One cluster is dedicated to collaborative practices whereas traditional practices predominate in three clusters at least, mainly because of legal requirements. This is the result of an increasing ‘formalisation’ of land-use planning, making planners focus on technical and formal practices, and, at the same time, lead to the reduced ‘attention’ to and implementation of conceptual approaches or ‘necessary’ transformative practices, including proactive approaches and strategic coordination with regard to sustainable urban development, but also comprising experiments, real labs or social innovations.

Warm-Started Optimized Trajectory Planning for ASVs

We consider warm-started optimized trajectory planning for autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) by combining the advantages of two types of planners: an A* implementation that quickly finds the shortest piecewise linear path, and an optimal control-based trajectory planner. A nonlinear 3-degree-of-freedom underactuated model of an ASV is considered, along with an objective functional that promotes energy-efficient and readily observable maneuvers. The A* algorithm is guaranteed to find the shortest piecewise linear path to the goal position based on a uniformly decomposed map. Dynamic information is constructed and added to the A*-generated path, and provides an initial guess for warm starting the optimal control-based planner. The run time for the optimal control planner is greatly reduced by this initial guess and outputs a dynamically feasible and locally optimal trajectory.

A comparison of planners' site-selection intentions towards a sustainability reward program, location, and overall costs

ABSTRACTPrevious research indicates that environmental attitudes do not always translate into environmentally sustainable behavioral intention. The current research uses sustainability reward programs as incentives for people to have environmentally friendly behavioral intentions. Specifically, this study investigates how sustainability reward program affect meeting planners' site-selection intention in comparison with other factors such as location and overall costs. While the results of the study discover that the effect of sustainability reward programs was not significant for planners' site-selection intention, considerable differences were found on the effects of other factors between different types of planners. The findings provide important theoretical and practical implications.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Route Planning in the Presence of a Threat Environment Based on a Virtual Globe Platform

Route planning is a key technology for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to fly reliably and safely in the presence of a threat environment. Existing route planning methods are mainly based on the simulation scene, whereas approaches based on the virtual globe platform have rarely been reported. In this paper, a new planning space for the virtual globe and the planner is proposed and a common threat model is constructed for threats including a no-fly zone, hazardous weather, radar coverage area, missile killing zone and dynamic threats. Additionally, an improved ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is developed to enhance route planning efficiency and terrain masking ability. Our route planning methods are optimized on the virtual globe platform for practicability. A route planning system and six types of planners were developed and implemented on the virtual globe platform. Finally, our evaluation results demonstrate that our optimum planner has better performance in terms of fuel consumption, terrain masking, and risk avoidance. Experiments also demonstrate that the method and system described in this paper can be used to perform global route planning and mission operations.

An iterative bi-level hierarchical approach for train scheduling

This paper presents an iterative bi-level hierarchical approach for train scheduling based on the concept of decentralized operational control in railway operations. The entire railway network is divided into a number of subnetworks connected at boundary stations, called interchange points. The planning of this decomposed network is done by two types of planners, namely, low and high level, handling subnetworks and interchange points respectively. The plan of the entire network is generated using an iterative approach, where at each step the low level planners generate feasible schedules for each subnetwork independently and share their version of the schedule of interchange point with the high level planners. The high level planners analyze individual schedules of the interchange point for possible conflicts, devise resolutions of the found conflicts and send back updated schedules to low level planners. On receipt, the low level planners adjust schedules to comply with boundary conditions subject to internal constraints. The iterative process continues until a global feasible solution is obtained. In current implementation, both planners use greedy heuristics to generate schedules of subnetworks and to resolve conflicts at interchange points respectively. We illustrate the concept of iterative bi-level hierarchical approach for train scheduling on a test network extracted from Indian Railways. This approach succeeds in generating feasible solutions for all tested instances in a finite number of iterations. Even though unified approach outperforms decomposed approach both in terms of schedule quality as well as response time, the use of suggested approach will become relevant where time taken by the algorithm to generate schedule of a railway network increases non-linearly with its size.

Citizens' as others in public design

Background Since the mid-2000s, has popular in South Korea. However, public design has been receiving criticism in South Korea since 2011, after being in vogue only for five or six years. The reasons for the decline are changes in the political geography, ignorance of the public, design practices without reflection, and so on. The planners and executors of public design misunderstood the meaning of or exploited the word for their profits. This study aims to uncover problems related to the concept of public design to understand and to interact with citizens and to propose a desirable model to relate with citizens. Methods Relevant literature was utilized to identify issues related to public design in this study. On the basis of these materials, not only the citizens but also the planners and executors in public design were studied by the critical narrative method. Results It was a big problem for the planners and executors of public design to consider public design as an activity to satisfy the eyes of people who experience the city in the context of its aesthetics. They understood a city as a target of spectators rather than as a space for life. However, a city is a space of life and citizens. ‘Citizens’ does not refer to community members to share their tastes, values, ideals, and so on. Citizens, who are not homogeneous members in a community but heterogeneous members in a society, do not share them. The planners and executors of public design can be divided into three types according to ways how they understand citizens. First type of planners and executors do not perceive the existence of the others. Second type of planners and executors know the existence of others, but they are considered as a problem. Third type of planners and executors understand the existence of others and explore how to communicate with them. The first type of subject is naive and ignorant. The second type of subject is self-centered and self-righteous. Not only politicians but also political designers correspond to one of two types. They have spoken as if the citizens were a single community with the term citizen. Then they superimposed their desires on the needs of citizens. It is not for citizens but for the subject of public design. These impure approaches have distorted public design practices. Conclusion Public design by a subject who does not perceive the existence of others or considers others as problems can easily degenerate into a work which embodies the subjects tastes, values, and interests. Only when citizens meet the subject who understands the existence of others and explores how to communicate with them, it becomes possible for public design to gain publicity. This type of subject can emerge only when we meet the citizens with interest, engagement, affection, and care like the relationship between a mother and her baby.

Crisis Preparedness and Meeting Planners’ Perceptions

The hospitality and tourism industry is like no other economic sector when it comes to being challenged by crisis events. Crises pose a serious threat to companies’ reputations and physical and financial health. This study explores meeting planners’ perceptions of the need for crisis planning. The data were collected from meeting planners utilizing a web survey. The results reveal little difference in the perceptions among the various types of planners, but did identify different levels of training among planners. Training and professional development activities were found to be a key predictor in the characteristics of meeting planners who have a written crisis plan.

Radiotherapy treatment planning based on Monte Carlo techniques

At the present, treatment planning systems (TPS) used in radiotherapy treatments use determinist correlations based on measurements in water to evaluate doses in the volume of interest and dose distributions around it. Nevertheless, it is well known that doses assigned with this type of planner can be problematic, especially in the presence of heterogeneities. The present work has developed a computational model using the Monte Carlo (MC) code MCNP5 (Monte Carlo N-Particle) for the simulation of a 6 MeV photon beam emitted by Elekta Precise medical linear accelerator treatment head. The model includes the major components of the accelerator head and the cube-shaped heterogeneous water tank “ RFA-300”. A low-density heterogeneity has been placed inside this water tank. It consists of a extruded polystyrene piece (97% air and 3% polystyrene) whose dimensions are 30 cm×10 cm×8 cm and with a density of 0.0311 g/cm 3. Calculations were performed for a photon beam setting 10 cm×10 cm and 20 cm×20 cm irradiation field sizes at 100 cm distance from source. The MC simulation is able to predict the absorbed dose distribution within the water tank using the *F8 or FMESH4 tally. These results have been compared with experimental values measured at the Hospital Clínic Universitari de Valencia. Dosimetric parameters calculated by simulation at the water tank and the experimental measures agreed, with an average deviation inside the heterogeneity region of 3%. Simulation results have been also compared with dose curves predicted by a commercial TPS in the same irradiation conditions, focusing attention on the accuracy that both systems reach in the dose calculation at the interphase zone and inside the heterogeneity. In contrast, TPS results overestimate the dose inside the heterogeneity and after it, with a maximum deviation of 7% for the 6 MeV photon beam and a field size of 20 cm×20 cm. We can conclude that the algorithms of computation of the TPS are not able to predict the variation of dose in the heterogeneous zones with the same accuracy as MC methods, since MCNP5 provides more trustworthy results and fits the experimental values better in the heterogeneous region.

Comparison of experimental 3D dose curves in a heterogeneous phantom with results obtained by MCNP5 simulation and those extracted from a commercial treatment planning system

Commercial planning systems used in radiotherapy treatments use determinist correlations to evaluate dose distribution around regions of interest. Estimated dose with this type of planners can be problematic, especially when analyzing heterogeneous zones. The present work is focused in quantifying the dose distribution in a heterogeneous medium irradiated by a 6 MeV photon beam emitted by an Elekta Precise Radiotherapy Unit head. Dose mapping inside the heterogeneous water phantom has been simulated with the photon and electron transport with Monte Carlo computer code MCNP5 and also, using a commercial treatment planning software in the same irradiation conditions. The calculated results were compared with experimental relative dose curves. This comparison shows that inside the heterogeneity region, the commercial algorithms are not able to predict the variation of dose in the heterogeneous zones with the same precision as MCNP5.

Battle in the Planning Office: Biased Experts Versus Normative Statisticians

Generally, rational decision-making is conceived as arriving at a decision by a correct application of the rules of logic and statistics. If not, the conclusions are called biased. After an impressive series of experiments and tests carried out in the last few decades, the view arose that rationality is tough for all, skilled field experts not excluded. A new type of planner’s counsellor is called for: the normative statistician, the expert in reasoning with uncertainty par excellence. To unravel this view, the paper explores a specific practice of clinical decision-making, namely Evidence-Based Medicine. This practice is chosen, because it is very explicit about how to rationalize practice. The paper shows that whether a decisionmaking process is rational cannot be assessed without taking into account the environment in which the decisions have to be taken. To be more specific, the decision to call for new evidence should be rational too. This decision and the way in which this evidence is obtained are crucial to validate the base rates. Rationality should be model-based, which means that not only the isolated decision-making process should take a Bayesian updating process as its norm, but should also model the acquisition of evidence (priors and tests results) as a rational process.

Battle in the Planning Office: Field Experts versus Normative Statisticians

Generally, rational decision‐making is conceived as arriving at a decision by a correct application of the rules of logic and statistics. If not, the conclusions are called biased. After an impressive series of experiments and tests carried out in the last few decades, the view arose that rationality is tough for all, skilled field experts not excluded. A new type of planner’s counsellor is called for: the normative statistician, the expert in reasoning with uncertainty par excellence. To unravel this view, the paper explores a specific practice of clinical decision‐making, namely Evidence‐Based Medicine. This practice is chosen, because it is very explicit about how to rationalize practice. The paper shows that whether a decision‐making process is rational cannot be assessed without taking into account the environment in which the decisions have to be taken. To be more specific, the decision to call for new evidence should be rational too. This decision and the way in which this evidence is obtained are crucial to validate the base rates. Rationality should be model‐based, which means that not only the isolated decision‐making process should take a Bayesian updating process as its norm, but should also model the acquisition of evidence (priors and tests results) as a rational process.

Placing Jane Jacobs within the Transatlantic Urban Conversation

After making a comparative historical survey of contemporaneous responses to her 1964 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Klemek concludes that Jane Jacobs' ideas were anticipated by urbanists in Great Britain and West Germany, and were embraced more readily by influential planners and architects in these nations and Canada than was initially the case in the United States. Unlike the almost reactionary outsider and opposition figure she seemed to be in New York, Jacobs was accepted by many types of planners and architects in these other nations, illustrating that her ideas were not as inherently anti-planning, antimodernist, or NIMBYist, as they appeared in the context of the United States.

Markets, Torts and Social Inefficiency

In this paper we examine the nexus between product markets and the legal system. We examine a model wherein oligopolists produce differentiated products that also have a safety attribute. Consumption of these products may lead to harm (to consumers and/or third parties), lawsuits, and compensation, either via settlement or trial. Firm-level costs reflect both R&D and production activities, as well as liability-related costs. Compensation is incomplete, both because of inefficiencies in the bargaining process and (possibly) because of statutorily-established limits on awards. We compare the market equilibrium safety effort and output levels to what a planner would choose. We consider two planners, one of whom is able to set safety standards, but takes the market equilibrium output as given, and one of whom can control both safety effort and output. We argue that the former type of planner is the better representative of what the tort system might do if faced with deciding upon a safety effort standard. We examine two measures of competitiveness: The number of firms, and the degree of substitutability of the products. Holding substitutability constant, an increase in the number of firms always reduces equilibrium safety effort. On the other hand, holding the number of firms constant, increasing substitutability first decreases, but ultimately increases, the equilibrium safety effort. Non-cooperative firms under-provide safety effort (relative to the restricted social planner's preferred level) when the products are relatively poor substitutes. However, when the products are sufficiently good substitutes, the non-cooperative firms over-provide safety effort. Moreover, the more firms there are in the industry, the less substitutable their products need to be in order for the equilibrium to result in over-provision of safety effort. Under-provision of safety becomes more typical as the rate of third-party exposure increases or as the amount of third-party uncompensated losses increases. Finally, we use the settlement subgame to examine the effects of alternative tort reform policies on the equilibrium provision of safety and welfare. In the presence of third-party victims, welfare can be increased even though changes in such policies may increase expected trial costs.

Process-focused and product-focused community planning: Two variations of empowering professional practice

This paper presents a structured, multi-faceted discussion of community planning as an empowering professional practice. The process-focused and the product-focused styles of community planning are developed within a conceptual model for how these two types of planners might integrate empowerment into their professional practice. The model uses stages oi rational comprehensive planning, as a basic planning method, and stages of community empowerment, as both the context and the desired planning outcome.

Routine Computing Tasks: Planning as Understanding

A system called NETWORK is described which implements the construction-integration model of Kintsch (1988) in a routine computing-task domain. This system builds a plan of action on-line for a given task from a set of plan elements. These plan elements are simple overlearned production rules that are put together by NETWORK to produce plans for novel tasks. This approach is contrasted with other types of planners as NETWORK is shown to plan solutions to a variety of tasks. Discussions focussing on the use of long-term memory, case-based reasoning, and planning and acting are presented. NETWORK takes as input a task description, uses this information to select related knowledge from its long-term memory, and constructs a network representation of the task. This network is then integrated through a spreading-activation procedure where irrelevant items in the network become deactivated, and things that appear related sustain each other's higher activation. Subsequently, a decision process chooses a plan element for firing, depending upon its level of activation with those more highly activated being considered for action first. When a plan element is found that can fire, its outcomes are added to the state of the world. The process repeats until a selection of plan elements is produced to complete the task.

Routine Computing Tasks: Planning as Understanding

A system called NETWORK is described which implements the construction‐integration model of Kintsch (1988) in a routine computing‐task domain. This system builds a plan of action on‐line for a given task from a set of plan elements. These plan elements are simple overlearned production rules that are put together by NETWORK to produce plans for novel tasks. This approach is contrasted with other types of planners as NETWORK is shown to plan solutions to a variety of tasks. Discussions focussing on the use of long‐term memory, case‐based reasoning, and planning and acting are presented.NETWORK takes as input a task description, uses this information to select related knowledge from its long‐term memory, and constructs a network representation of the task. This network is then integrated through a spreading‐activation procedure where irrelevant items in the network become deactivated, and things that appear related sustain each other's higher activation. Subsequently, a decision process chooses a plan element for firing, depending upon its level of activation with those more highly activated being considered for action first. When a plan element is found that can fire, its outcomes are added to the state of the world. The process repeats until a selection of plan elements is produced to complete the task.

Citizen participation in city planning

in recent years, physical and social planners have begun to get together around stubborn human problems in cities. Even though they have much with which to enrich each other’s work, they seem increasingly to be in conflict with one another. This paper presents a case example of one neighbourhood project in which the two types of planners made a real effort to work together to make a process of citizen participation in city planning possible.