Quality of government, land and rural development

Land is an important asset in rural areas. Access to land for the rural population has an impact on rural development. This contribution reviews, based on research and reports written in the context of the Horizon 2020 project RURALIZATION, the relationship between quality of government, access to land and rural development.

An Integrated Framework to Evaluate Information Systems Performance in High-Risk Settings: Experiences from the iTRACK Project

Evaluation and testing are significant steps in developing any information system. More attention must be devoted to these steps if the system is to be used in high-risk contexts, such as the response to conflict disasters. Several testing methodologies are designed to guarantee that software fulfills technology requirements; others will assure...

Quality of AM implants in biomedical application

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, particularly those based on powder bed fusion (PBF), most notably, selective laser melting (SLM) for metals, have in recent years emerged as unique fabrication methods for patient-specific implants made of metals and their alloys. The ability to manufacture complex geometries together with the other...

Subjective and objective quality assessment for volumetric video

Volumetric video (VV) is a novel form of video that allows recreation of real-world scenes in 3D with users consuming the content from any viewpoint they desire. This makes VV best suited for augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) applications. This freedom necessitates increased user interaction with the VV itself, which brings new...

Metropolitan Landscape: Definition, Mapping, and Governance

This chapter revisits the most significant international definitions of the metropolitan landscape. It shows methods of mapping and measuring the metropolitan landscape, most of them developed at TU Delft. Additionally, it discusses one of the tools that can be used to develop the metropolitan landscape and reflect on its qualities and...

Regression Analysis: Quantitative exploration of interactions between the built environment and spatial behaviour

In many graduation projects in Spatial Planning and Strategy (SP&S), empirical research and spatial design are intertwined. This chapter introduces regression analysis; a ’family’ of related models of quantitative statistical analysis in empirical research. It is very appropriate to study interactions between the built urban environment and...

Thermal Energy Recovery from Drinking Water Systems: Assessing Water Quality and Downstream Temperature Effects

Climate change demands for sustainable options for heating and cooling of buildings. Low-temperature thermal energy can be abstracted from the drinking water distribution system (DWDS); this is called thermal energy from drinking water (TED). The possible use of TED as a secondary function of the DWDS raises the question whether this...

2.11 - Wind Turbine Reliability - Maintenance Strategies

Wind turbine technologies are evolving rapidly in terms of complexity and size and there is an urgent need for cost-effective Operations and Maintenance (O&amp;M) strategies to increase the profitability of wind power assets.<br/><br/>Component reliability as well as maintenance strategies have the greatest effect on O&amp;M planning and costs,...

From Wastescapes Towards Regenerative Territories. A Structural Approach for Achieving Circularity

In this chapter, the understanding of circularity goes beyond material resource management, deepening the spatial implications of a more circular management and use of wastescapes, investigated at the urban and metropolitan scale. Besides the health (care) related challenges presented by the current outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,...

Data validation and data quality assessment

Once data have been recorded, data validation procedures have to be conducted to assess the quality of the data, i.e. give a confidence grade. Furthermore, gaps may occur in time series and, depending on the purposes, these can be given values by application of e.g. interpolation. Since both aspects are strongly correlated, this chapter gives an...

Data Assimilation as a Tool to Improve Chemical Transport Models Performance in Developing Countries

Particulate matter (PM) is one of the most problematic pollutants in urban air. The effects of PM on human health, associated especially with PM of ≤2.5μm in diameter, include asthma, lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. Consequently, major urban centers commonly monitor PM2.5 as part of their air quality management strategies. The Chemical...

Strategic and Managerial Decision-Making for Sustainable Management: Factors and Remedies for Information Overload

In the past century, the amount of information that is generated has increased at an exponential rate. As a result of this information saturation process or ‘information overload’, people cannot keep pace with the information flowing towards them. Organizations can take steps towards sustainability by improving the health conditions in their...

Housing Pathology

Housing pathology can be defined as a holistic approach to understand the nature and life cycle of residential buildings and their environment, in order to identify, investigate, and diagnose deficiencies, specify preventive measures and remedial interventions, and evaluate their effects. Though buildings can physically exist long after being...

Impact of Competition on Quality of Service in Demand Responsive Transit

Demand responsive transportation has the potential to provide efficient public door-to-door transport with a high quality. In currently implemented systems in the Netherlands, however, we observe a decrease in the quality of service (QoS), expressed in longer travel times for the customers. Currently, generally one transport company is...