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Sustainable and smart public spaces play a key role in enhancing cities' potential to address current urban challenges and evaluating and implementing such plans for public spaces is a complex process. A performance model was developed to assist stakeholders in decision making, which integrates this evaluation process. Following an integrated, adaptive approach, the proposed model is based on the multisectoral, demand–supply estimation of the urban comprehensive carrying capacity and the urban smartness of alternative development plans. A comparative evaluation of the new and existing models in a case study area indicated that the holistic methodological framework of the performance model and indicators could better support identification of the best development plan for implementation. Results indicated that the performance model could assist decision makers in addressing the specific needs of individual public spaces and the common urban need for sustainability and smartness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews the structure and performance of existing freeway incident detection methods. Proposal of the filtering method to reduce the likelihood of false incident decisions occurring during short duration traffic disturbances; Temporal smoothing of detector occupancies; Testing of proposed algorithm and a set of existing algorithms with traffic and incident data.

Presents an adaptive demand-diversion predictor that reflects the drivers' choice behavior in a rapidly changing traffic environment. Integrated freeway corridor control; Influence of ramp metering and intersection signal timing; Time-variant effects of control on the traffic demand; Application on freeway entrance ramps.

Ever since European Directive 2012/27/EU, particular attention has been focused on the improvement of the energy efficiency of the public building stock. According to the directive, local public authorities, regions and municipalities, are expected to develop and implement energy efficiency retrofitting plans for their public building stocks. While conducting such plans, important challenges are raised mainly related to data collection and the manipulation of key performance indicators (KPIs) for many buildings. The present paper deals with the aforementioned challenges through (a) the evaluation of freely available tools developed in the framework of Mediterranean territorial cooperation projects, with respect to the main pillars of energy efficiency planning, and (b) the introduction of a stepwise methodology using selected tools toward a reliable energy efficiency plan extending from the classification of the building stock to the prioritization of projects in terms of a gradual renovation plan based on energy and cost criteria. The methodology is applied for a case study in Greece, which refers to 10 public buildings of the Municipality of Aigialeia in Greece. A reliable renovation plan is developed, taking into account the municipal authority's directions in a specialized decision-making scheme. It is concluded that the suggested methodology is very practical for planning purposes, while for the case studied, a 6-year gradual renovation plan is emerged until a deep retrofit of all buildings, associated with an estimated primary energy saving and CO2 emissions avoidance of more than 1850 MWh and 400 tns, respectively, with a total investment of about EUR 3 million. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in machine vision techniques have led to algorithms and integrated systems that can be applied in transportation engineering to improve surveillance and control. Despite these advances, certain problems in the effective integration of machine-vision based systems at complex intersections and complex freeway sections still remain. These are related to increasing system performance in the identification, analysis, and detection of the traffic state in real time. This work examines the feasibility of providing transformed visual input to existing machine-vision based systems, in order to gain increased efficiency and cost effectiveness of integrated transportation systems. Two transformations are developed, homography-based transformation and panoramic image reprojection. Homography-based transformation operates on video of the road scene, provided by classical cameras, and seeks to transform any view to a top-down view. This transforms the three-dimensional problem of image analysis for, e.g., road event detection to a two-dimensional one. Panoramic image reprojection employs panoramic cameras to reduce required hardware, and the complexity and cost incurred in obtaining the desired road view. The image reprojection technique allows the reconstruction of undistorted, perspectively correct views from panoramic images in real time. Tests at sites in Spain, the United Kingdom, and Greece are performed on-line and off-line in combination with operating machine-vision based incident detection systems. Test results indicate that the two methods simplify the input provided to machine vision, and reduce the workload and amount of hardware in implementing complex machine-vision based systems for incident detection. Both modules can be integrated into incident detection systems to improve their overall efficiency and ease of application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]