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Rapid transitions induced by migration flows and socio-economic developments brought about massive changes in urbanization processes and resulted in increasingly uncertain futures. The implications and complexities of the ensuing urbanization patterns are difficult to predict and project into the future. While most studies are focused on large cities and major urban centers, urbanization processes in small and medium-sized cities have garnered little scholarly and political attention. To understand future urbanization patterns, we used the TOPOI method, a novel approach for classifying territorial settlements, and spatial autoregressive models to examine contrasting futures of population growth and shrinkage in one small and one medium-sized city in Lower Saxony, Germany. Results revealed that despite planning frameworks, high population density and functional mix, respectively, were insufficient mechanisms to reduce land take. Contrary to current assumptions on the functional mix of small and medium-sized towns, our findings showed that more than half of the settlements across the study area accommodated three or more functions. Since the share of residential buildings and functional mix strongly influenced land take, further research is needed to understand their implications on sustainable urban planning. Shrinking towns in Lower Saxony continue to present multidimensional challenges and emphasize the need for transforming local planning cultures and institutional frameworks to sustainably manage and repurpose these potentially vacant areas.

At present, the annual loads from long-term series simulations are mostly used for the evaluation of rainwater management and treatment measures although the relevance of the temporal distribution of both pollution and quantity has a recognizable influence on the performance of the treatment. With the idea of dynamizing the simulation output values in relation to (i) single rainfall events, (ii) specific catchment characteristics, and (iii) the duration of the dry period between two rainfall events measurement devices and scenario studies were established in a joint research project in Lower Saxony. First measurement results of surface runoff qualities of an urban sub-catchment in Braunschweig/Germany are presented in a high temporal definition for several pollution parameters. A correlation analysis was performed identifying additional explanatory parameters that have an influence on the first flush effect, such as rainfall characteristics or antecedent dry period. First calculations of the possible reduction in the decentralized storm water treatment by disconnecting the first flush showed values of 42–65%, depending on the pollution parameters. The comparative evaluation of the data with different statistical methods shows that the uncertainties in the calculation of rainwater pollution, or the duration of the first flush, are still very high and do not yet allow researchers to derive a pollution forecast for, e.g., a throttle control solely from the recording of the rain and area characteristics.

Deep Learning (DL) based identification and detection of elements in urban spaces through Earth Observation (EO) datasets have been widely researched and discussed. Such studies have developed state-of-the-art methods to map urban features like building footprint or roads in detail. This study delves deeper into combining multiple such studies to identify fine-grained urban features which define streetscapes. Specifically, the research focuses on employing object detection and semantic segmentation models and other computer vision methods to identify ten streetscape features such as movement corridors, roadways, sidewalks, bike paths, on-street parking, vehicles, trees, vegetation, road markings, and buildings. The training data for identifying and classifying all the elements except road markings are collected from open sources and finetuned to fit the study’s context. The training dataset is manually created and employed to delineate road markings. Apart from the model-specific evaluation on the test-set of the data, the study creates its own test dataset from the study area to analyze these models’ performance. The outputs from these models are further integrated to develop a geospatial dataset, which is additionally utilized to generate 3D views and street cross-sections for the city. The trained models and data sources are discussed in the research and are made available for urban researchers to exploit.

Duisburg, Essen, Univ., Diss., 2006 In the last fifteen years, the term supportive healthcare environment became widespread within the healthcare services, the market stimulated providers to find ways to attract the patients. At the same time, academic research followed with the newly presented focal goal of the relationship between stress and healing as well as enhancing the influence that the medical environments have on patients, staff, and medical work processes. The concept of supportive environments refers to environmental characteristics that reduce stress and evoke positive responses from their users on physical, social, and emotional levels. The supportive design goes one major step further by emphasizing the importance of creating environments which facilitate the associated work processes. However, the healthcare managers and designers focus the attention to the design of hospitals which are becoming a small constituent of the whole health care delivery system. Yet, nowadays, ambulatory care has become the major player. It is a fact, that there is a need to focus on the design of medical environments where the ambulatory care is provided. In this thesis it was approached that accurate methods have to be developed which should be used by the designers to define and to recognize the issues of those environments and their influence on the work process and users. In general the relationships between people and the designed environment is the major concern of the ergonomics-oriented environmental design research. The thesis embraces a broad literature review. That provided an understanding of the knowledge base of designing medical environments. The knowledge base is classified into two main sections; healthcare design and human factors. In addition to that, case studies that were performed in Egypt and Germany applied a quantitative and qualitative mixed methodology approach, using a combination of methods and tools. The case studies involved purposive sampling from various medical disciplines and healthcare facility types, such as medical offices, medical centers, and outpatient departments in hospitals. The fact that the case studies were performed in Egypt and Germany has allowed cross-cultural differences to be identified. It has been assumed that the natural surrounding (being where the problem occurs) is the best place to study the problem, and also the best way to evaluate the methods used in the investigation. The approach proposed in this thesis is the design strategy where, first the designer is bridging between several disciplines to built interdisciplinary vision and design considerations, and second mixing the use of methods and instruments to determine what staff and patients do know and what they need in the medical environment. Environmental design research affects designed spaces, which in turn affect how people use, inhabit, or are exposed to them. On this conceptual background, designing a medical environment is a significant issue for designers. The work presented and the structure of this thesis will support the efforts of designers to create effective and affective medical environments. This concept includes two challenges for designers, creating medical environments to be both functionally effective (“it is going well”) as well as to be emotionally affective (“it is affecting well”).

Das Lob bei Festen der Erinnerung ist immer am richtigen Platze, ist es doch der einzig mögliche Ausdruck des Glücks, der Dankbarkeit, der Anerkennung für geleistete Dienste, für das gegebene Vorbild, für erwiesene Menschlichkeit, für die Übertragung von Generation zu Generation eines großen nachahmungswürdigen Beispiels das wir feiern, in der Hoffnung uns auch selbst daran zu bilden und erbauen. Es ist das Setzen eines Denkmals, einer der schönsten Aufgaben der Kunst die leider jetzt nicht oft gewürdigt wird, weil man glaubt, daß Denkmäler, die ja ihrer Natur entsprechend, rühmliches über den Gegenstand ihrer Verherrlichung aussagen, lügen. Doch dem ist nicht so. Sie rühmen ja nur was sie zeigen und lügen oder betrügen nur dann wenn das, was sie zeigen nicht schön und lobenswert, sondern nur eitel und keck oder gar unmenschlich ist, auch dann wenn die Künstler und ihr Publikum eben gerade das Unmenschliche für lobenswert halten und das Häßliche, die Härte, für Tapferkeit ausgeben. Es mag ja sein, daß sie es nicht besser wissen und wir müssen alle in Demut einsehen, daß wir, wenn wir Werturteile fallen, uns irren können, ja zum unweigerlichen Irrtum verurteilt wären, wenn uns nicht, aus dem großen Schatz der Vergangenheit, Kunst und Geschichte Vorbilder zeigten, die uns besser begreifen lassen, was die Kultur des verdienten Ruhmes und der Liebe uns zu bieten hat und wir erkennen, wie sehr wir diesem historischen Betrachten das, wenn wir einmal mit ihm angefangen haben, uns nicht mehr los läßt, für die Gestaltung unseres eigenen Lebens in Dankbarkeit verpflichtet sind.