Members’ Publication

Pedestrian road-crossing strategy is one of the most important pedestrian road-crossing behaviors. The safety of the pedestrians often depends on it. Among the road-crossing strategies, rolling gap crossing strategy is the riskiest one. The objective of this research was to explore the factors that influenced pedestrians’ decision to cross the road by rolling gap crossing at intersection. Data regarding road-crossing strategy of the pedestrians, their characteristics, their road-crossing behavior, intersection geometry, and traffic environmental condition were collected through videography survey method, on-site observation, and secondary source from six intersections of Dhaka, Bangladesh. A binary logistic regression model was developed in this study by using the collected data. Results of the developed model showed that seven statistically significant factors strongly influenced pedestrians’ decision to cross the road by rolling gap crossing at intersections. These factors were intersection control type, median width, vehicle flow, available gap on the road, age group of the pedestrians, their crossing group size, and their behavior of crosswalk usage. The results of this study would help the policymakers to take proper interventions to alleviate pedestrian safety problems.

Urbanization causes enormous land use and land cover (LULC) changes, which creates a significant impacts on land surface temperature (LST) in rapidly growing mega-cities. The substantial increment of the LST creates urban heat island (UHI) effects in cities. This study first identified the pattern of the LULC changes, and later, investigated their impacts on LST in Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) areas for the years of 1999, 2009 and 2019 using Landsat TM/OLI satellite images. This study explored the impact of LULC change on LST through LST distribution in different land use categories, cross-section profile of LULC wise LST variability, and a correlation between LULC indexes (NDVI, NDBI, NDBaI & NDWI) and LST. The Multi-Layer Perceptron-Markov Chain (MLPMC) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) methods were utilized to simulate the LULC and LST maps, respectively, for the years of 2029 and 2039. The accuracy of LULC and LST simulation models are more than 85% and 90% , respectively, based on the validation results. Simulation results show if the current trend of urban growth continues, 70% and 88% of RCC area will experience temperature more than 38 �C in 2029 and 2039, respectively. Such impacts need to be considered and evaluated immediately for ensuring sustainable urbanization and natural resource management in the RCC area. This study will be helpful for urban planners and environmental engineers to understand the impacts of LULC change (e.g. loss of vegetation cover, agricultural land and water bodies to accommodate extensive urban growth) on LST and to propose appropriate policy measures to control it.

Access to land is very important for socially and economically disadvantaged people, from the countries where agriculture is the main source of employment to improve their livelihoods. It brings an opportunity for producing their livelihoods reducing extreme poverty. Land management is a tool being employed by the governments around the world to contribute in this respect. In Bangladesh Guchchogram/ Cluster Village projects are done for rehabilitating rural land less people to reduce poverty. Successful implementation of such projects will help in reducing poverty, migration and improving socio economic condition of rural poor. This paper focuses on evaluating cluster village projects whether they are improving the socio economic status of the people.

Reduced sediment deposition, land subsidence, channel siltation, and salinity intrusion has been an unintended consequence of the construction of polders in the south western delta of Bangladesh in the 1960s. Tidal River Management (TRM) is a process that is intended to temporarily reverse these processes and restore sediment deposition and land elevation at the low-lying sites, known as ‘beels’, where TRM is carried out. However, there is limited evidence to prioritise sites for TRM on the basis of its potential effectiveness at alleviating flooding. In this study, the south western delta of Bangladesh was classified according to different flood susceptible zones. In south western Bangladesh, the major portion of agricultural and aquaculture land is located within flood susceptible zones (65% and 81%, respectively). 44.5% of the total population in embanked regions live in areas classified as being flood susceptible. This study identified 106 ‘beels’ suitable for TRM. Modelling of potential sediment deposition predicted that the consequent increase in land elevation could be up to 1.4 m in five years, which would alleviate land subsidence and modify several geomorphological factors such as aspect, slope, curvature, and Stream Power Index (SPI). Implementation of TRM at these sites could potentially reduce the probability of annual flooding from 0.86 (on average) to 0.57 (on average). Therefore, TRM could lower the flood susceptible area by 35% in suitable ‘beels’. Whilst during the implementation of TRM agriculture has to cease for a few years, a systematic programme of TRM could result in a long-term increase in agricultural production by reducing flood susceptibility of agricultural lands in delta regions.

Although the rate of road crashes and their severity is relatively higher in developing countries, there is still a lack of research on pedestrian-vehicle crash severity in these contexts, particularly in Bangladesh. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the contributing environmental, road, and vehicular factors that influenced pedestrian—single-vehicle crash severity in Dhaka, a megacity and the capital of Bangladesh. A binary logistic regression model was developed in this study by analyzing a data set of pedestrian—single-vehicle crashes involving casualties in Dhaka from 2010 to 2015. The model identified seven significant factors influencing pedestrian-vehicle crash severity. Significant factors increasing the likelihood of fatal crashes included crashes during adverse weather, dawn/dusk period, night period (where street light was absent), off-peak period, crashes where road divider was unavailable, road geometry was straight and flat, and crashes those were occurred by heavier vehicles. Besides, crashes at three-legged intersections were less likely to be fatal. Both similarities and differences were found among the significant factors influencing pedestrian-vehicle crash severity in Dhaka from the findings of the developed countries. The findings of this study would help transport engineers and planners to design safer roadways for both pedestrians and vehicles.

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.