Urban Environmental Quality Assessment Research Articles

Environmental Quality Assessment of Bien Hoa City, Dong Nai Province by UEQ Index

Poor surface water quality, air pollution, solid waste collection, domestic water supply, and many more environmental issues are plaguing urban areas due to policies encouraging fast urbanization but failing to synchronize infrastructure. This has heightened the importance of urban environmental management. This project conducts an urban environmental quality assessment (UEQ) in Bien Hoa City, the political, economic, cultural, and social heart of Dong Nai province, and a Grade I urban region in the Southern Key Economic Region. The PRS framework serves as the basis for the process used to establish environmental indicators, with the indicator's parameters and weight being established using a Delphi process. Seven component indicators and twenty-sixth indicators were calculated as a result. With a score of 44.4 on the UEQI, Bien Hoa City is deemed to have a merely "average" urban environment. The indicators for the individual parts are middling at best. Although Bien Hoa City's urban environmental quality index is subpar, timely improvements have steadily raised it and each of its indicators and will continue to do so.

A Scenario-Based Spatial Multi-Criteria Decision-Making System for Urban Environment Quality Assessment: Case Study of Tehran

Spatial evaluation of urban environment quality (UEQ) is a key prerequisite in urban planning and development. The main goal of this study is to present a scenario-based spatial multi-criteria decision-making system for evaluating UEQ. Therefore, stakeholder involvement was conducted and eight environmental criteria and six spatial-functional criteria were identified for five districts of Tehran. The weight of the effective criteria was calculated using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model. Then, the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) model was used to prepare UEQ maps in different scenarios, including very pessimistic, pessimistic, intermediate, optimistic, and very optimistic. Finally, the spatial distribution of the district population in different classes of UEQ was evaluated. Among the spatial-functional and environmental criteria, the sub-criteria of population density and air pollution, respectively, had the greatest impact on UEQ. In very pessimistic, intermediate, optimistic, and very optimistic scenarios, approximately 76.7, 51.8, 36.4, 23.7, and 9.8 km2 of the studied area had unsuitable UEQ conditions, respectively. In the very pessimistic scenario, about 37,000 and 1,500,000 people lived in areas with suitable and unsuitable UEQ conditions, respectively. In the very optimistic scenario, the population increased to over 917,000 in areas with suitable UEQ and decreased to 336,000 in those with unsuitable UEQ conditions in terms of both environmental and spatial-functional criteria. The research results showed that a high percentage of the population in the study area live under unsuitable UEQ conditions, which indicates the need for attention to improving the current UEQ conditions. The proposed approach is timely to gain a better understanding of the adverse impact of climate change on human well-being in marginal societies and how climate-resilient urban planning can play a significant role.

Urban environment quality assessment and its ecological factors

The article analyses the international and domestic experience of integrated approach and the process of indicators system formation for the urban environment quality assessment. The analysis of the presented indexes and indicators systems of the urban development quality showed that the ecological factors and the quality of urban environment occupy a significant place among the main components of the assessment. It is noted that during the last decade in the Russian Federation there was significantly increased an interest for the development of various indicators and mechanisms for a comprehensive assessment of the situation for solving economic, social and environmental problems in regions and cities. One of the generally accepted approach creation process results was the approval of the Methodology for the formation of the Urban Environment Quality Index. The possibilities of taking into account such ecological factors like the atmospheric air pollution, water bodies quality, the elimination of accumulated environmental damage results and a noise level were analysed in the Urban Environment Quality Index. It is concluded that at the first stage of expanding and optimizing the criteria system for calculating the Urban Environment Quality Index, it is necessary to consider the possibility of applying criteria reflecting the results of federal projects to resolve environmental problems of cities for the development of the urban environment and improving its quality.

Spatial Distribution Characteristics of Heavy Metals and Pollution Analysis Methods

With the rapid development of urban economy and the continuous increase of urban population, the discharge and improper disposal of a large number of industrial wastes, urban domestic garbage, sludge and other pollutants have led to the continuous accumulation of heavy metals in the soil, which has increased the pollution load of heavy metals in the soil, leading to the increasingly serious heavy metal pollution of urban topsoil in China. Heavy metal pollution of urban soil is one of the important indicators that can effectively reflect the status of urban environmental pollution. Therefore, the verification of urban soil environment anomalies and the application of verification data to urban environmental quality assessment, as well as the study of the evolution model of human activities affecting urban soil environment, have increasingly become the focus of attention. Based on the analysis of a large number of relevant documents and previous work, the sources, hazards and pollution status of soil heavy metal pollution in some regions of China are briefly summarized, and the characteristics of five commonly used assessment methods of soil heavy metal pollution (single pollution index method, comprehensive pollution index method, geo accumulation index method, potential ecological risk index method, principal component analysis method) are briefly analyzed and summarized, It is expected to provide some reference for the investigation and treatment of soil pollution.

Emerging paradigm shift in urban indicators: Integration of the vertical dimension

Since new urbanism strategies encourage higher density and compact city development, it is expected that the height of urban environments will increase in the next few years as a remedy for many urban problems such as urban sprawl, cost of living, and detrimental environmental impacts of horizontal development of cities. Therefore, urban designers and planners should consider the third dimension of cities according to the vertical growth paradigm that is inherently a three-dimensional (3D) socioeconomic and environmental process. While a large body of literature is focusing on horizontal or two-dimensional (2D) urban indicators, it still lacks more research to compare 2D and 3D urban indicators. In this study, urban environment quality indicators, as a prominent example of urban indicators, were measured in two and three dimensions in the central business district of Urmia in Iran. Also, a Pearson's correlation analysis was performed to find a pairwise relationship between indicators. The results of the correlation analysis revealed that most 3D indicators have no significant linear relationship with other indicators, so predicting 3D indicator values based on other indicators is a difficult or even impossible task. Comparing 2D indicators with 3D ones shows that approximately 30 percent of the study area has a different urban environmental quality if it integrates the vertical dimension with 2D indicators. In addition, measuring and modelling 3D indicators provide better locational information on urban conditions and the life of citizens than traditional 2D urban indicators. This study recommends planning for the expansion of 3D information and associated tools that lead to deeper analytical insights into 3D Urban Environmental Quality assessment.

Urban Environmental Quality Assessment by Spectral Characteristics of Mulberry (Morus L.) Leaves

In this paper, an analysis of the possibility of passive determination of the degree of environmental pollution based on data from the leaf blade of mulberry is made. With existing solutions in this area, the mulberry has been found to be under-researched. A disadvantage of the available solutions is that spectral indices are used, which is not a sufficient criterion for passively determining the degree of air pollution based on the surface characteristics of the mulberry leaves. Methods have been used to reduce the amount of data by latent variables and principal components. It has been found that a kernel variant of the principal components, combined with linear discriminant analysis, is an appropriate method for distinguishing the degree of air pollution from mulberry leaf data. The results obtained can be used to refine the approaches used to passively determine the degree of air pollution in the habitat area of the plant. Methods and software tools could be used to develop mobile applications and new approaches to remote sensing, in express determination of the degree of environmental pollution, according to data from the mulberry leaves.

Neighborhood Social and Built Environment and Disparities in the Risk of Hypertension: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Citizens’ participation in urban environmental quality assessment is important when identifying local problems in the sustainable development and environmental planning policy. The principal aim of this study was to analyze whether any social differences exist between the joint effect of built neighborhood quality and exposure to urban green spaces and the risk of hypertension. The study sample consisted of 580 participants residing in 11 districts in Kaunas city, Lithuania. Using geographic information systems (GIS), individual data on the socioeconomic status (SES) and health were linked to the participants’ perceptions of the environmental quality and exposure to green spaces (NDVI). We used multivariate logistic regression to estimate associations as odds ratios (OR). Those study participants with lower education and those study participants with higher education on low incomes rated their health significantly worse. Low SES persons residing in areas with low exposure to green spaces had a significantly higher risk of hypertension when sex, age, family status, smoking, and income were accounted for (OR 1.83, 95% CI 1.01–3.36). This citizen science study provided evidence that the social environment and the quality of the built environment had a complex effect on disparities in the risk of hypertension.

Urban Atmospheric Environment Quality Assessment by Naturally Growing Bryophytes in Central China.

Bryophytes are popular biomonitoring plants for atmospheric environments. The objectives of this study were to examine the characteristics of bryophyte communities, determine a suitable monitor species, and assess urban atmospheric environment quality by the joint use of bryophyte features and chemical properties in a large city in China. A pleurocarpous feather moss Haplocladium angustifolium was recognized as a good biomonitor of atmospheric deposition in central China by investigating bryophyte communities and habitat environment in various ecological function regions of the urban areas in Wuhan. The concentrations of trace elements, including As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, V, Pb, and Zn, in moss and soil samples from 25 sampling sites were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The concentrations of Cd and Zn in Haplocladium angustifolium collected from the entire study area were much higher than those in substrate soil. Cd was at the highest ecological risk level among the 10 elements, which contributed 34.5% to the potential ecological risk index (RI). An RI value of 392.8 indicated that urban atmospheric quality in Wuhan was in a considerable potential ecological risk. The index of atmospheric purity, regarding species richness, cover, and frequency of bryophytes, was spatially and negatively correlated with RI, also demonstrated the atmospheric quality. Effective measures should be considered to alleviate certain airborne trace element contamination and protect the environment and human health in this metropolis.

Regional urban environmental quality assessment and spatial analysis

Rapid urbanization has resulted in sudden degradation of the environmental quality of urban settlements, which are difficult to measure and quantify. The present study attempts to provide an assessment of the environmental quality by developing environmental quality index (EQI) for the Ernakulam district in Kerala, India. The index values are spatially mapped to develop an environmental quality index map for the study area under five different classes namely, very poor, poor, moderate, good, very good. The EQI values are calculated for nineteen composite variables classified under three domains namely, ecological, meteorological, and socio-economic domains. A preliminary statistical analysis and detailed principal component analysis (PCA) were performed to construct the environmental quality index for the study region. This was followed by a spatial mapping and analysis to provide a better understanding of the status of the environmental quality to the local residents, environmental planners, regional scientists and policy makers. The results obtained from the analysis show that the study area has a low overall environmental quality. The region considered in this paper has highlighting features of various settlement patterns, population distributions, and land use distributions, which indicates a clear transition in the environmental quality index of different settlement units. Hence, by selecting this region and observing various number of indicators, the real effect of urbanization on the quality of the environment was projected. The systematic methodological procedure explained in this paper can be used elsewhere also, where the study area has similar characteristics as that of the area considered in this study. The outcome of the study is applicable for present and future urban planning, building construction, land and resource management for a sustainable environment.

Social practice of urban environment quality assessment

The article describes the approaches and results of studying the urban environment quality of Stavropol city – the regional centre of southern Russia. The study is based on a questionnaire survey (carried out on a representative sample stratified in accordance with the territorial division of the urban environment into administrative regions). In total, 1172 people took part in the survey. The data are processed in SPSS (version 21). The random sampling error is about 2.0%. Assessing the level of satisfaction of the population with services in the field of culture, education, medicine, trade, housing, the work of the administration gives an idea of the quality of the urban environment and the directions of its development. According to the results of the survey, among the most acute problems requiring enhanced monitoring and operational decisions, respondents identified the problems of cultural, leisure and development activities for children and youth, and medical care for the population. In addition, some questions cause additional criticism from the respondents: personal security and safety, the quality of work of local police officers, the quality of work of management companies, the condition of sports facilities, the work of clinics, and the maintenance of cleanliness in apartment buildings. Thus, in the development strategy of a comfortable urban environment, these areas should be reflected.

Urban environmental quality assessment using remote sensing and census data

Urban planning to solve environmental problems in Latin American cities requires information that commonly does not exist or, if it does exist, is at different scales, which makes the information incomparable. Therefore, a quantitative approach is proposed to assess an urban environmental quality index (UEQI) for Cali, Colombia, integrating remote sensing and census data. Landsat TM images were used to extract biophysical indicators: land surface temperature (LST), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), leaf wetness content index (LWCI), normalized humid index (NHI), normalized difference built-up index (NDBI), and normalized difference impervious surface index (NDISI). These seven indicators were integrated with seven socioeconomic indicators obtained from census data using multivariate statistical analysis to determine the UEQ index at the commune level. The results showed consistent correlation among the indicators, and the highest values ​​of UEQI occurred in communes with less built-up areas and more green areas. There were statistically significant differences among the index at the commune level. Therefore, communes were categorized into five classes (very good, good, moderate, poor and very poor environmental quality) according to the index to determine the most critical interventions to be made by planning and decision-making institutions. This method could be applied to similar cities using large-scale administrative units.

Improving the Accuracy of Urban Environmental Quality Assessment Using Geographically-Weighted Regression Techniques.

Urban Environmental Quality (UEQ) can be treated as a generic indicator that objectively represents the physical and socio-economic condition of the urban and built environment. The value of UEQ illustrates a sense of satisfaction to its population through assessing different environmental, urban and socio-economic parameters. This paper elucidates the use of the Geographic Information System (GIS), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Geographically-Weighted Regression (GWR) techniques to integrate various parameters and estimate the UEQ of two major cities in Ontario, Canada. Remote sensing, GIS and census data were first obtained to derive various environmental, urban and socio-economic parameters. The aforementioned techniques were used to integrate all of these environmental, urban and socio-economic parameters. Three key indicators, including family income, higher level of education and land value, were used as a reference to validate the outcomes derived from the integration techniques. The results were evaluated by assessing the relationship between the extracted UEQ results and the reference layers. Initial findings showed that the GWR with the spatial lag model represents an improved precision and accuracy by up to 20% with respect to those derived by using GIS overlay and PCA techniques for the City of Toronto and the City of Ottawa. The findings of the research can help the authorities and decision makers to understand the empirical relationships among environmental factors, urban morphology and real estate and decide for more environmental justice.

An Investigation of GIS Overlay and PCA Techniques for Urban Environmental Quality Assessment: A Case Study in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The United Nations estimates that the global population is going to be double in the coming 40 years, which may cause a negative impact on the environment and human life. Such an impact may instigate increased water demand, overuse of power, anthropogenic noise, etc. Thus, modelling the Urban Environmental Quality (UEQ) becomes indispensable for a better city planning and an efficient urban sprawl control. This study aims to investigate the ability of using remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques to model the UEQ with a case study in the city of Toronto via deriving different environmental, urban and socio-economic parameters. Remote sensing, GIS and census data were first obtained to derive environmental, urban and socio-economic parameters. Two techniques, GIS overlay and Principal Component Analysis (PCA), were used to integrate all of these environmental, urban and socio-economic parameters. Socio-economic parameters including family income, higher education and land value were used as a reference to assess the outcomes derived from the two integration methods. The outcomes were assessed through evaluating the relationship between the extracted UEQ results and the reference layers. Preliminary findings showed that the GIS overlay represents a better precision and accuracy (71% and 65%), respectively, comparing to the PCA technique. The outcomes of the research can serve as a generic indicator to help the authority for better city planning with consideration of all possible social, environmental and urban requirements or constraints.

Geo-Spatial Approach for Urban Green Space and Environmental Quality Assessment: A Case Study in Addis Ababa City

Depending on the rapid growth in infrastructural developments along with the increasing of human population, quality of cities is being deteriorated globally. Assurance of environmental quality is essential for urban planning and developments. This paper presents the potential application of urban green areas as an indicator of urban environmental quality in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia based on indicators of natural parameters extracted from remotely sensed images, and socio-economic variables derived from census data. Physical environmental variables such as land-use/land-cover data, surface temperature, normalized difference vegetation index, and transformed remote sensing variables derived from three landsat images of 1986, 2000 and 2015 were analyzed for the present study. Socio-economic variables including population density and greenhouse gas emission in 2012 were used. Regression analysis, factor analysis and overlay analysis were performed after the two groups of variables were integrated. Four factors such as greenness, crowd, heat island and greenhouse gas emission were used for interpretation. By assigning different weights to each of these factors and proportion of green areas, land-use/land-cover map, environmental risk map and environmental quality index map were generated. The results show deterioration of environmental quality in the study area. It is recommended that future studies should include more parameters to provide a holistic view of the changes in greenness of the city and to try to mitigate adverse effects of development activities leading to human density and depletion of green area in the city.

ОЦЕНКА КАЧЕСТВА ГОРОДСКОЙ СРЕДЫ ПРОКОПЬЕВСКОГО ГОРОДСКОГО ОКРУГА

<p>The article gives the urban environment quality assessment for the administrative entities of the Prokopyevsky urban district. The assessment is based on the methodology developed by V. N. Fedorov and M. Yu. Aksenova. The main indicators for assessing the urban environment quality were: environmental comfort, assessed through the perception of the environmental tension level by Prokopyevskresidents; population provision with social infrastructure facilities that are active components of social relations and act as carriers, forms and ways of meeting common individual demands. Two options for calculating the transport city center accessibility indicated the level of transport infrastructure development: that for vehicle owners and that for public transportusers.Asabasisforassessingtheurbanenvironmentaestheticqualities, the V. A. Nikolaeva method was used. For greater results comparability, scoring scales are used. At the same time, respondents were asked to determine the attractiveness degree and emotional impact of the each district urban environment. The total contribution of the urban environment quality objective factors was estimated with the help of the urban environment integral quality factor.<strong></strong></p>

Urban environment quality assessment using a methodology and set of indicators for medium-density neighbourhoods: a comparative case study of Lodi and Genoa

Abstract One of the main issues in urban sustainability and environmental assessment relates to the selection of indicators (SOCCO, 2000), as there are already many international and recognised core sets (DELSANTE, 2007; LEE; CHAN 2009). Nevertheless, specific local contexts are still in need of appropriate, original indicators and indices (MALCEVSCHI, 2004). This paper deals with the urban quality assessment of medium-density neighbourhoods, which typically include dwellings but also public functions, public spaces and urban infrastructure. The evaluation method is based on a set of 74 indicators used within a specific computational method that is based on scores and defined through pairwise comparison matrices (SOCCO, 2003) to convert qualitative and quantitative evaluations into scores (0 to +100). The assessment involved two different urban contexts in the cities of Lodi and Genoa (Italy). It tests if the set can be used in other sites and cities; the results show significant findings and potentialities, but also some limitations. As significant connections have already been found between urban quality and well-being surveys of inhabitants (ORLANDO, 2007), the possibility to act comparatively in different contexts increases overall research potentiality.

AN IMPROVED SNAKE MODEL FOR REFINEMENT OF LIDAR-DERIVED BUILDING ROOF CONTOURS USING AERIAL IMAGES

Building roof contours are considered as very important geometric data, which have been widely applied in many fields, including but not limited to urban planning, land investigation, change detection and military reconnaissance. Currently, the demand on building contours at a finer scale (especially in urban areas) has been raised in a growing number of studies such as urban environment quality assessment, urban sprawl monitoring and urban air pollution modelling. LiDAR is known as an effective means of acquiring 3D roof points with high elevation accuracy. However, the precision of the building contour obtained from LiDAR data is restricted by its relatively low scanning resolution. With the use of the texture information from high-resolution imagery, the precision can be improved. In this study, an improved snake model is proposed to refine the initial building contours extracted from LiDAR. First, an improved snake model is constructed with the constraints of the deviation angle, image gradient, and area. Then, the nodes of the contour are moved in a certain range to find the best optimized result using greedy algorithm. Considering both precision and efficiency, the candidate shift positions of the contour nodes are constrained, and the searching strategy for the candidate nodes is explicitly designed. The experiments on three datasets indicate that the proposed method for building contour refinement is effective and feasible. The average quality index is improved from 91.66% to 93.34%. The statistics of the evaluation results for every single building demonstrated that 77.0% of the total number of contours is updated with higher quality index.

AN IMPROVED SNAKE MODEL FOR REFINEMENT OF LIDAR-DERIVED BUILDING ROOF CONTOURS USING AERIAL IMAGES

Abstract. Building roof contours are considered as very important geometric data, which have been widely applied in many fields, including but not limited to urban planning, land investigation, change detection and military reconnaissance. Currently, the demand on building contours at a finer scale (especially in urban areas) has been raised in a growing number of studies such as urban environment quality assessment, urban sprawl monitoring and urban air pollution modelling. LiDAR is known as an effective means of acquiring 3D roof points with high elevation accuracy. However, the precision of the building contour obtained from LiDAR data is restricted by its relatively low scanning resolution. With the use of the texture information from high-resolution imagery, the precision can be improved. In this study, an improved snake model is proposed to refine the initial building contours extracted from LiDAR. First, an improved snake model is constructed with the constraints of the deviation angle, image gradient, and area. Then, the nodes of the contour are moved in a certain range to find the best optimized result using greedy algorithm. Considering both precision and efficiency, the candidate shift positions of the contour nodes are constrained, and the searching strategy for the candidate nodes is explicitly designed. The experiments on three datasets indicate that the proposed method for building contour refinement is effective and feasible. The average quality index is improved from 91.66% to 93.34%. The statistics of the evaluation results for every single building demonstrated that 77.0% of the total number of contours is updated with higher quality index.

Urban environment quality assessment by using composite index model

Urban environments are often subject to many challenges, which make it very difficult to assess sustainability performance of urbanization. Indexing can be an appropriate systematic tool for sustainability assessment in sophisticated decision‐making situations involving simultaneous consideration of multiple qualitative and quantitative factors. In this study, a systems approach was adopted to develop a composite index called SUQCI (Sustainable Urban Quality Composite Index) in order to assess the potential of a city to become sustainable. The index is composed of 10 components containing a total number of 16 indicators. According to which, the 22 districts of Tehran City were compared in terms of sustainability of urban environment quality. The obtained results indicated that the Districts 1, 2, and 3 are in ideal sustainability conditions. These areas are among prosperous places of the city. About 59.09% of all districts were below the average SUQCI. The Districts 18 and 19 with the SUQCI values of 0.21 and 0.25 remain in critical condition. In overall, a great injustice in distribution of sustainability components is observed in Tehran so that unsustainable urban environment becomes more evident in underserved areas of the city. In recent years, increasing attempts have been made to overcome the injustice. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 34: 1473–1480, 2015

An Urban Environmental Air Quality Assessment SystemBased on GIS and Related Mathematical Models

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an effective means and important component in sustainable urban planning and management. The theory, method, technology as well as regulations on EIA have been set up stage by stage in the last decades since the official development of the first EIA system. However, there are still many problems to be solved in practical EIA activities. One of these problems is the management of spatial data as well as non-spatial data. In the past spatial data were handled manually in EIA, which proved to be inefficient. The authors combined GIS technology and air quality assessment mathematical models, and developed a system for urban air quality assessment. The system utilizes GIS functions to capture, edit, manage, and analyze spatial data involved in EIA activities, such as geographical layout of pollution sources and sensitive receivers. At the same time most of attribute data relevant to such spatial data can also be processed in GIS. In addition, a Visual Basic program was developed to call external mathematical models CALINE4 and ISCST3 to calculate parameter values indicating urban air quality. The system has been successfully applied in the Hong Kong urban planning project, and the result seems to be promising. K]Kewords:EIA, GIS, Mathematical model, Environmental air quality