Members’ Publication

Many young adults are susceptible to obesity issues and the increased health risks associated with a lack of physical activity. Those who are prone to gaining weight include university students. An active transport system (walking and cycling), in combination with well-funded public transport, are essential components of a sustainable urban transport network, offering many benefits to the health of the individual, as well as the environment, economy, and society as a whole. The spatial association between active mobility (i.e. the physical activity of a human being for locomotion) of young adults and the environment, however, is poorly understood. This study presents a GIS-based model to determine association of various environmental (natural and built environment) factors with locational accessibility of active and public transport trips taken by university students. A GIS-based ensemble of Frequency Ratio (FR) and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) model was established. We analysed the characteristics of locations accessed by university students in relation to eight environmental factors including slope, elevation, land use, population density, travel time, building density, intersection density, and public transport service area. The model was applied to the Grenoble metropolitan region of France, an area well-known for policies which promote active transport. The results indicated that intersection density and land use are strongly associated with active and public transport accessibility, with weights of 0.17 and 0.16, respectively. The presence of infrastructure to support active travel, and regulation to limit vehicular speed, also improved accessibility. Approximately 50% of the area of the Grenoble metropolitan region was defined as accessible and suitable (‘moderate’ to ‘very high’ degree) for active mobility. The results of this study could allow city planners to monitor the existing status of active and public transport facilities, and identify areas that require additional work to improve accessibility.

For any development initiative to be met, planning is crucial which involves choice making for societies and individuals to pursue the stated goals. Bangladesh, a rapidly growing country, faces several problems ranging from finding the effective ways of tackling urban poverty to deal with unplanned urbanization. The emergence of a bottom-up participatory approach reflecting the needs and demand of all social strata in the plan-making process is a far cry for countries like Bangladesh. However, despite strong and firm policy guidelines for enhancing the participatory planning approach, lack of strong role of city development authorities and communication gap, their bureaucratic decision making mind setup predominantly hinders the way to ensure pro-poor participation in policy making and peoplecentered planning in Bangladesh. Therefore, this particular research focuses on the investigation of necessity and manifestation of communicative rationale in the plan-making process, challenges as well as the level of participation required in the people-centered propoor planning in Bangladesh. The overarching methodological approach adopted for this study is case study approach including the interview of a local urban planner to recognize his own spatial needs, views on urban places as well as spatial footprints in the major cities of Bangladesh followed by his notion regarding the local and national plan-making process to generate a holistic view on the modes of planning in a developing country setup like Bangladesh. This study investigates the contemporary challenges faced by major metropolises in Bangladesh (Dhaka and Khulna with a high concentration of urban poor) to ensure the bottom-up participatory planning approach with a major focus on formulating effective pro-poor urban planning through engaging the people in the national policy-making process. The analysis and discussion uses an amalgamation of both primary and secondary databases through review of relevant literatures and interview of the key informant (Local Urban Planner). Findings demonstrate that, both in the plan-making and problem identification process, the participation of the urban poor, as well as general people, was negligible. This furthermore results in the failure of the national polices and priority setting process to address the demands and needs of the urban poor properly in Bangladesh. The findings of this study will act as a baseline for wider and growing pro-poor participatory planning literature.

This article is an effort to scrutinize the role of ICT development in the chronological transformation of urban planning domain using the exploratory research approach. In this research, it is argued that the theoretical and practical understanding of urban planning should absorb and integrate the bright outcome of the rise of ICT to foster congruent future urban development. The article addresses the trends of transformation in the urban planning domain through the myopic lens of the expansion of ICT era followed by investigating the key drivers shaping the interaction between modern-day urban planning and ICT considering both the dark and bright sides into account.

The agricultural arena in thecoastalregions ofSouth-East Asiancountriesisexperiencing the mounting pressuresof the adverse effects of climate change. Controlling and predicting climatic factors are difficult and require ex-pensive solutions. The study focuses on identifying issues other than climatic factors using the Livelihood Vulner-ability Index (LVI) to measure agricultural vulnerability. Factors such as monthly savings of the farmers, incomeopportunities, damage to cultivable lands, and water availability had significant impacts on increasing commu-nity vulnerability with regards to agricultural practice. The study also identified the need for assessing vulnera-bility after certain intervals, specifically owing to the dynamic nature of the coastal region where the factorswere found to vary among the different study areas. The development of a climate-resilient livelihood vulnera-bility assessment tool to detect the most significant factors to assess agricultural vulnerability was done usingmachine learning (ML) techniques. The ML techniques identified nine significant factors out of 21 based on theminimum level of standard deviation (0.03). A practical application of the outcome of the study was the devel-opment of a mobile application. Custom REST APIs (application programming interface) were developed onthe backend to seamlessly sync the app to a server, thus ensuring the acquisition of future data without much ef-fort and resources. The paper provides a methodology for a unique vulnerability assessment technique using amobile application, which can be used for the planning and management of resources by different stakeholdersin a sustainable way.

Rapid urbanization and population growth have introduced a new phenomenon called “light pollution”, which is the result of ungoverned use of artificial lighting. Natural land cover is being replaced by impervious surface to meet the growing demand. As a result, urban areas are getting warmer compared to the surrounding rural areas. Scholarly literature confirms the relationship between light pollution and air temperature. However, the nature of direct relationship is yet to be explored. Using remote sensing and weather station data, this research reveals the nature of relationship between these two variables. The analysis confirms that a significant relationship exists which can be explained by geographically weighted regression (GWR) in a far better way compared to ordinary least square (OLS) regression. According to the GWR, overall 50% change in air temperature is influenced or affected by light pollution, where in urban areas the impact of light pollution on air temperature is higher compared to rural areas. This research also unearths that light pollution is increasing at a dissolute rate, four-fold in 10 years. With this said, considering the nexus between light pollution and air temperature along with its other negative effects the authorities are expected to take measures to reduce light pollution.

Purpose Seismic vulnerability evaluation of various public structures, especially school buildings, is very crucial for designing hazard mitigation initiatives in seismic prone areas. The city of Mymensingh is at great risk of earthquake because of its geographical location, geological structure and proximity to active faults. The city is famous for its ancient and renowned educational institutes that need to be evaluated for understanding the seismic performance of the building during an earthquake. This study aims to evaluate the seismic vulnerability of educational buildings of Mymensingh city using rapid visual screening (RVS) and index based approach. Design/methodology/approach RVS procedure includes field survey and secondary source assessment for evaluating structural vulnerability attributes. Analytical hierarchy process is applied to develop an index focusing on systematic attributes of vulnerability based on expert opinions. Then, a composite vulnerability map is developed combining both structural and systematic vulnerability score providing an equal weight. Findings This study evaluates the seismic vulnerability of 458 educational buildings of Mymensingh city and the result shows that 23.14% educational building has high, 46.29% has moderate and 26.86% has moderately low and only 3.71% buildings has the low seismic vulnerability. This study expected to be helpful in resource targeting and prioritizing seismic hazard mitigation activities for education buildings of Mymensingh city. Originality/value This study endeavors to present a comprehensive vulnerability assessment method by integrating RVS and index based approach that incorporates both structural and systematic dimensions of vulnerability. The result is expected to be helpful in the formulation of disaster prevention policy for vulnerable educational buildings and development of the earthquake-resistant building codes for the new building construction in Mymensingh city. Keywords

Sustainable development, Road services, User satisfaction, Factor Analysis, Linear Regression, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP).