The provision of urban green space and its accessibility: Spatial data effects in Brussels

in PLoS ONE (2018), 13(10), 0204684

Urban green space (UGS) has many environmental and social benefits. UGS provision and access are increasingly considered in urban policies and must rely on data and indicators that can capture variations ... [more ▼]

Urban green space (UGS) has many environmental and social benefits. UGS provision and access are increasingly considered in urban policies and must rely on data and indicators that can capture variations in the distribution of UGS within cities. There is no consensus about how UGS, and their provision and access, must be defined from different land use data types. Here we identify four spatial dimensions of UGS and critically examine how different data sources affect these dimensions and our understanding of their variation within a city region (Brussels). We compare UGS indicators measured from an imagery source (NDVI from Landsat), an official cadastre-based map, and the voluntary geographical information provided by OpenStreetMap (OSM). We compare aggregate values of provision and access to UGS as well as their spatial distribution along a centrality gradient and at neighbourhood scale. We find that there are strong differences in the value of indicators when using the different datasets, especially due to their ability to capture private and public green space. However we find that the interpretation of intra-urban spatial variations is not affected by changes in data source. Centrality in particular is a strong determinant of the relative values of UGS availability, fragmentation and accessibility, irrespective of datasets. [less ▲]

GIS-based modelling of shallow geothermal energy potential for CO2 emission mitigation in urban areas

in Renewable Energy (2016), 86

Due to the rapidly increasing percentage of the population living in urban centres, there is a need to focus on the energy demand of these cities and the use of renewable energies instead of fossil fuels ... [more ▼]

Due to the rapidly increasing percentage of the population living in urban centres, there is a need to focus on the energy demand of these cities and the use of renewable energies instead of fossil fuels. In this paper, we develop a spatial model to determine the potential per parcel for using shallow geothermal energy, for space heating and hot water. The method is based on the space heating and hot water energy demand of each building and the specific heat extraction potential of the subsurface per parcel. With this information, along with the available space per parcel for boreholes, the percentage of the energy demand that could be supplied by geothermal energy is calculated. The potential reduction in CO2 emissions should all possible geothermal energy be utilised, is also calculated. The method is applied to Ludwigsburg, Germany. It was found that CO2 emissions could potentially be reduced by 29.7% if all space heating and hot water requirements were provided by geothermal energy, which would contribute to the sustainability of a city. The method is simple in execution and could be applied to other cities as the data used should be readily available. Another advantage is the implementation into the web based Smart City Energy platform which allows interactive exploration of solutions across the city. [less ▲]

On MAUP, neighbourhood definitions and the measure of urban sprawl

Scientific Conference (2013)