The mounting evidence about the impacts of climate change on human health presents an urgent need... more The mounting evidence about the impacts of climate change on human health presents an urgent need to understand the implication of rising temperatures on the inhabitants of cities, where the majority of people now live. Acute increases in the magnitude, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events has the potential for causing major disruptions in commerce, social process, and human fatalities, especially among vulnerable populations (e.g. older adults, pre-existing health conditions, those with limited coping capacity). One such event is extreme heat, which causes more deaths across the globe per year than all other natural disasters combined. While numerous studies confirm and describe the creation of and processes that mediate urban heat islands (UHIs), few examine the opportunities for mediating microclimate through alternative physical design of the built environment. In this study, we ask two research questions: (1) what built environment characteristics help to explain t...
Amidst the chaotic growth of Asian cities, the expansion of urban infrastructure in the Middle Ea... more Amidst the chaotic growth of Asian cities, the expansion of urban infrastructure in the Middle East’s Gulf region is arguably outpacing any other region on the planet. Yet, we have a limited understanding of the types of urban form or the extent to which this rapid urbanization is giving rise to sustainable patterns of growth. We ask, what is the pace and character of urban growth in one Middle East city, Doha, Qatar. By using remotely sensed imagery from 1987 to 2013, we examined the pace, quality, and characteristics of urban growth. We further use the results to create a typology of urban growth that integrates historical and spatial dimensions for describing the qualitative aspects of growth and its implications on regional landscapes. Our results suggest that Doha is creating development patterns similar to many Western cities and that planners may need to consider whether the emerging urban form offers opportunities for more sustainable growth in the future.
Floods are major social and environmental concerns in many urban areas. We investigated how chang... more Floods are major social and environmental concerns in many urban areas. We investigated how changes in land cover, sociodemographic conditions, and meteorological factors affect flood damage in districts of South Korea. Using historical maps and spatial analysis, we showed that flood damages increased in the areas where rapid urbanization happened without coordinated urban planning. High flood damage areas are not spatially randomly distributed, and the hotspots of high damage areas are concentrated in population centers that underwent rapid development after 1975. Additionally, human modifications of natural channels further exacerbated flood risks during the development stage and subsequent periods. Total annual precipitation is positively related to the flood damage at a higher spatial unit. This study underscores the importance of understanding the historical–geographical conditions, and how humans either increased or reduced the flood damage through social and infrastructure in...
The urban heat island (UHI) concept describes heat trapping that elevates urban temperatures rela... more The urban heat island (UHI) concept describes heat trapping that elevates urban temperatures relative to rural temperatures, at least in temperate/humid regions. In drylands, urban irrigation can instead produce an urban cool island (UCI) effect. However, the UHI/UCI characterization suffers from uncertainty in choosing representative urban/rural endmembers, an artificial dichotomy between UHIs and UCIs, and lack of consistent terminology for other patterns of thermal variation at nested scales. We use the case of a historically well-enforced urban growth boundary (UGB) around Portland (Oregon, USA): to explore the representativeness of the surface temperature UHI (SUHI) as derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature data, to test common assumptions of characteristically “warm” or “cool” land covers (LCs), and to name other common urban thermal features of interest. We find that the UGB contains heat as well as sprawl, inducing a sharp...
Urban heat is a growing environmental concern in cities around the world. The urban heat island e... more Urban heat is a growing environmental concern in cities around the world. The urban heat island effect, combined with warming effects of climate change, is likely to cause an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events. Alterations to the physical, built environment are a viable option for mitigating urban heat, yet few studies provide systematic guidance to practitioners for adapting diverse land uses. In this study, we examine the use of green infrastructure treatments to evaluate changes in ambient temperatures across diverse land uses in the city of Portland, Oregon. We apply ENVI-met® microclimate modeling at the city-block scale specifically to determine what built environment characteristics are most associated with high temperatures, and the extent to which different physical designs reduce ambient temperature. The analysis included six green infrastructure interventions modeled across six different land-use types, and indicated the varying degrees to whic...
... J of the American Society for Information Science 51(3):246–259 Hwang D, Karimi HA, Byun DW (... more ... J of the American Society for Information Science 51(3):246–259 Hwang D, Karimi HA, Byun DW (1998) Uncertainty analysis of environmental models within GIS environments. Computers and Geosciences 24(2):119–130 Page 12. 476 Ashton Shortridge, Joseph Messina ...
Ecological variables are inherently spatial with arrangement on the landscape often directly attr... more Ecological variables are inherently spatial with arrangement on the landscape often directly attributed to underlying processes. Historically, assumptions regarding the relationships among scale, pattern, and process have been used to characterize landscapes as well as compare multiple landscapes or changes in landscapes over time. Despite the utility of landscape comparisons, they often fail to adequately link scale, pattern, or process,
Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2005. IGARSS '05., 2005
One of the biggest drawbacks of land cover mapping from remotely sensed images relates to spatial... more One of the biggest drawbacks of land cover mapping from remotely sensed images relates to spatial resolution, which determines the level of spatial details depicted in an image. Fine spatial resolution images from satellite sensors such as IKONOS and QuickBird are now ...
One of the biggest drawbacks of land cover mapping from remotely sensed images relates to spatial... more One of the biggest drawbacks of land cover mapping from remotely sensed images relates to spatial resolution, which determines the level of spatial details depicted in an image. Fine spatial resolution images from satellite sensors such as IKONOS and QuickBird are now available. However, these images are not suitable for large-area studies, since a single image is very small and
This study investigates the "pixel-swapping" optimization algorithm for predicting sub-... more This study investigates the "pixel-swapping" optimization algorithm for predicting sub-pixel land cover distribution. Two limitations of this method, the arbitrary spatial range value and the arbitrary exponential model of spatial autocorrelation are assessed. Various weighting functions, as alternatives to the exponential model, are evaluated in order to derive the optimum weighting function. Two different simulation models were employed to develop
ABSTRACT This study examined the relationship between urban form and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissio... more ABSTRACT This study examined the relationship between urban form and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from urban area in fifty cities in Japan. The digital maps of administrative boundary were used to clip urban regions from scenes of the satellite images. The clipped images were classified into a binary class: urban built-up and others. The sectoral data for the CO2 emissions at the municipality level in 2005 were obtained from published sources. We used two types of approaches to quantify urban forms. The first method involved landscape metrics which describe compactness and complexity of settlement patches. Second method, which we developed, quantifies the reduction rate of urban area from the city center by applying ring-shaped buffers. The results indicated that there were correlations beteen spatial indices of urban form and sectoral CO2 emissions for the residential and passenger transport sectors. The inverse relationship between the compactness index and CO2 emissions in our study suggest that less fragmented and compact cities emit less CO2 from the passenger transportation sector than the sprawled cities. Our study indicates that less complex cities lower residential per capita CO2 emissions but too dense settlements in mono-centric form may lead to greater per capita CO2 emissions. Complexity seems to have less significant for CO2 emissions in general. Our research also favors a high income, smaller population size and denser city for lower CO2 emissions.
Geoscience and Remote Sensing IEEE International Symposium, 2008
We developed a method for revealing the intra-urban features and estimating population density us... more We developed a method for revealing the intra-urban features and estimating population density using remotely sensed imagery. Remotely sensed imagery has been widely used in urban studies. However, the moderate-resolution optical data (e.g. Landsat) is often too coarse for delineating urban features, since urban areas are far more heterogeneous than most other land cover types. Therefore, we employed both optical
We developed a method for revealing the intra-urban features and estimating population density us... more We developed a method for revealing the intra-urban features and estimating population density using remotely sensed imagery. Remotely sensed imagery has been widely used in urban studies. However, the moderate-resolution optical data (e.g. Landsat) is often too coarse for delineating urban features, since urban areas are far more heterogeneous than most other land cover types. Therefore, we employed both optical and synthetic aperture radar images for estimating population density inside urban areas. This research indicated that the integrated features of the optical and SAR images can increase the accuracy for estimating population density.
... Montz, Tobin, and Medford (1989) noted that urban flooding, which occurs in or near most scho... more ... Montz, Tobin, and Medford (1989) noted that urban flooding, which occurs in or near most school districts, could focus students upon ... For ex-ample, Eve Gruntfest and colleagues at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs have developed an interactive learning module ...
With globalization, research in urban sustainability shows rapid increase in studies seeking a be... more With globalization, research in urban sustainability shows rapid increase in studies seeking a better transformative shift in social, cultural, and economic values for future cities. In this context, our research pursues, in two sections, strategies for resilient neighborhood development that is consistent with new approaches to urban and regional planning. We begin with reviewing current and past urban development strategies from different regions of the world, with emphasis on dimensions of urban design. These cases are Singapore, New York (USA), and Southeast Creek (California, USA). We follow with our ongoing collaborative research between Portland State University and Qatar University, which applies lessons learned in analyzing neighborhood scale development strategies for sustainable urbanism in the Gulf Region. The main question is what are the differences in development rates between different neighborhoods in the city and how do the urban designs contribute to livability? With a focus on the Greater Doha region, one of the fastest urbanizing regions of the world, we examine the relationship between land cover change and the street temperature, as a proxy to urban livability. The anticipated differences are explained by examining land cover attributes: streets, buildings, surface materials, building construction materials, and building heights. The findings from both sections lead to strategies that enable coping with the temporal changes in the infrastructure to create habitable forms of development. To that end, we describe an urban development strategy that considers a sustainable city starting from an understanding of differences in neighborhoods, and scaling up to the whole city and region. This paper was made possible by NPRP grant # NPRP 5-074-5-5015 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.
The mounting evidence about the impacts of climate change on human health presents an urgent need... more The mounting evidence about the impacts of climate change on human health presents an urgent need to understand the implication of rising temperatures on the inhabitants of cities, where the majority of people now live. Acute increases in the magnitude, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events has the potential for causing major disruptions in commerce, social process, and human fatalities, especially among vulnerable populations (e.g. older adults, pre-existing health conditions, those with limited coping capacity). One such event is extreme heat, which causes more deaths across the globe per year than all other natural disasters combined. While numerous studies confirm and describe the creation of and processes that mediate urban heat islands (UHIs), few examine the opportunities for mediating microclimate through alternative physical design of the built environment. In this study, we ask two research questions: (1) what built environment characteristics help to explain t...
Amidst the chaotic growth of Asian cities, the expansion of urban infrastructure in the Middle Ea... more Amidst the chaotic growth of Asian cities, the expansion of urban infrastructure in the Middle East’s Gulf region is arguably outpacing any other region on the planet. Yet, we have a limited understanding of the types of urban form or the extent to which this rapid urbanization is giving rise to sustainable patterns of growth. We ask, what is the pace and character of urban growth in one Middle East city, Doha, Qatar. By using remotely sensed imagery from 1987 to 2013, we examined the pace, quality, and characteristics of urban growth. We further use the results to create a typology of urban growth that integrates historical and spatial dimensions for describing the qualitative aspects of growth and its implications on regional landscapes. Our results suggest that Doha is creating development patterns similar to many Western cities and that planners may need to consider whether the emerging urban form offers opportunities for more sustainable growth in the future.
Floods are major social and environmental concerns in many urban areas. We investigated how chang... more Floods are major social and environmental concerns in many urban areas. We investigated how changes in land cover, sociodemographic conditions, and meteorological factors affect flood damage in districts of South Korea. Using historical maps and spatial analysis, we showed that flood damages increased in the areas where rapid urbanization happened without coordinated urban planning. High flood damage areas are not spatially randomly distributed, and the hotspots of high damage areas are concentrated in population centers that underwent rapid development after 1975. Additionally, human modifications of natural channels further exacerbated flood risks during the development stage and subsequent periods. Total annual precipitation is positively related to the flood damage at a higher spatial unit. This study underscores the importance of understanding the historical–geographical conditions, and how humans either increased or reduced the flood damage through social and infrastructure in...
The urban heat island (UHI) concept describes heat trapping that elevates urban temperatures rela... more The urban heat island (UHI) concept describes heat trapping that elevates urban temperatures relative to rural temperatures, at least in temperate/humid regions. In drylands, urban irrigation can instead produce an urban cool island (UCI) effect. However, the UHI/UCI characterization suffers from uncertainty in choosing representative urban/rural endmembers, an artificial dichotomy between UHIs and UCIs, and lack of consistent terminology for other patterns of thermal variation at nested scales. We use the case of a historically well-enforced urban growth boundary (UGB) around Portland (Oregon, USA): to explore the representativeness of the surface temperature UHI (SUHI) as derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature data, to test common assumptions of characteristically “warm” or “cool” land covers (LCs), and to name other common urban thermal features of interest. We find that the UGB contains heat as well as sprawl, inducing a sharp...
Urban heat is a growing environmental concern in cities around the world. The urban heat island e... more Urban heat is a growing environmental concern in cities around the world. The urban heat island effect, combined with warming effects of climate change, is likely to cause an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events. Alterations to the physical, built environment are a viable option for mitigating urban heat, yet few studies provide systematic guidance to practitioners for adapting diverse land uses. In this study, we examine the use of green infrastructure treatments to evaluate changes in ambient temperatures across diverse land uses in the city of Portland, Oregon. We apply ENVI-met® microclimate modeling at the city-block scale specifically to determine what built environment characteristics are most associated with high temperatures, and the extent to which different physical designs reduce ambient temperature. The analysis included six green infrastructure interventions modeled across six different land-use types, and indicated the varying degrees to whic...
... J of the American Society for Information Science 51(3):246–259 Hwang D, Karimi HA, Byun DW (... more ... J of the American Society for Information Science 51(3):246–259 Hwang D, Karimi HA, Byun DW (1998) Uncertainty analysis of environmental models within GIS environments. Computers and Geosciences 24(2):119–130 Page 12. 476 Ashton Shortridge, Joseph Messina ...
Ecological variables are inherently spatial with arrangement on the landscape often directly attr... more Ecological variables are inherently spatial with arrangement on the landscape often directly attributed to underlying processes. Historically, assumptions regarding the relationships among scale, pattern, and process have been used to characterize landscapes as well as compare multiple landscapes or changes in landscapes over time. Despite the utility of landscape comparisons, they often fail to adequately link scale, pattern, or process,
Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2005. IGARSS '05., 2005
One of the biggest drawbacks of land cover mapping from remotely sensed images relates to spatial... more One of the biggest drawbacks of land cover mapping from remotely sensed images relates to spatial resolution, which determines the level of spatial details depicted in an image. Fine spatial resolution images from satellite sensors such as IKONOS and QuickBird are now ...
One of the biggest drawbacks of land cover mapping from remotely sensed images relates to spatial... more One of the biggest drawbacks of land cover mapping from remotely sensed images relates to spatial resolution, which determines the level of spatial details depicted in an image. Fine spatial resolution images from satellite sensors such as IKONOS and QuickBird are now available. However, these images are not suitable for large-area studies, since a single image is very small and
This study investigates the "pixel-swapping" optimization algorithm for predicting sub-... more This study investigates the "pixel-swapping" optimization algorithm for predicting sub-pixel land cover distribution. Two limitations of this method, the arbitrary spatial range value and the arbitrary exponential model of spatial autocorrelation are assessed. Various weighting functions, as alternatives to the exponential model, are evaluated in order to derive the optimum weighting function. Two different simulation models were employed to develop
ABSTRACT This study examined the relationship between urban form and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissio... more ABSTRACT This study examined the relationship between urban form and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from urban area in fifty cities in Japan. The digital maps of administrative boundary were used to clip urban regions from scenes of the satellite images. The clipped images were classified into a binary class: urban built-up and others. The sectoral data for the CO2 emissions at the municipality level in 2005 were obtained from published sources. We used two types of approaches to quantify urban forms. The first method involved landscape metrics which describe compactness and complexity of settlement patches. Second method, which we developed, quantifies the reduction rate of urban area from the city center by applying ring-shaped buffers. The results indicated that there were correlations beteen spatial indices of urban form and sectoral CO2 emissions for the residential and passenger transport sectors. The inverse relationship between the compactness index and CO2 emissions in our study suggest that less fragmented and compact cities emit less CO2 from the passenger transportation sector than the sprawled cities. Our study indicates that less complex cities lower residential per capita CO2 emissions but too dense settlements in mono-centric form may lead to greater per capita CO2 emissions. Complexity seems to have less significant for CO2 emissions in general. Our research also favors a high income, smaller population size and denser city for lower CO2 emissions.
Geoscience and Remote Sensing IEEE International Symposium, 2008
We developed a method for revealing the intra-urban features and estimating population density us... more We developed a method for revealing the intra-urban features and estimating population density using remotely sensed imagery. Remotely sensed imagery has been widely used in urban studies. However, the moderate-resolution optical data (e.g. Landsat) is often too coarse for delineating urban features, since urban areas are far more heterogeneous than most other land cover types. Therefore, we employed both optical
We developed a method for revealing the intra-urban features and estimating population density us... more We developed a method for revealing the intra-urban features and estimating population density using remotely sensed imagery. Remotely sensed imagery has been widely used in urban studies. However, the moderate-resolution optical data (e.g. Landsat) is often too coarse for delineating urban features, since urban areas are far more heterogeneous than most other land cover types. Therefore, we employed both optical and synthetic aperture radar images for estimating population density inside urban areas. This research indicated that the integrated features of the optical and SAR images can increase the accuracy for estimating population density.
... Montz, Tobin, and Medford (1989) noted that urban flooding, which occurs in or near most scho... more ... Montz, Tobin, and Medford (1989) noted that urban flooding, which occurs in or near most school districts, could focus students upon ... For ex-ample, Eve Gruntfest and colleagues at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs have developed an interactive learning module ...
With globalization, research in urban sustainability shows rapid increase in studies seeking a be... more With globalization, research in urban sustainability shows rapid increase in studies seeking a better transformative shift in social, cultural, and economic values for future cities. In this context, our research pursues, in two sections, strategies for resilient neighborhood development that is consistent with new approaches to urban and regional planning. We begin with reviewing current and past urban development strategies from different regions of the world, with emphasis on dimensions of urban design. These cases are Singapore, New York (USA), and Southeast Creek (California, USA). We follow with our ongoing collaborative research between Portland State University and Qatar University, which applies lessons learned in analyzing neighborhood scale development strategies for sustainable urbanism in the Gulf Region. The main question is what are the differences in development rates between different neighborhoods in the city and how do the urban designs contribute to livability? With a focus on the Greater Doha region, one of the fastest urbanizing regions of the world, we examine the relationship between land cover change and the street temperature, as a proxy to urban livability. The anticipated differences are explained by examining land cover attributes: streets, buildings, surface materials, building construction materials, and building heights. The findings from both sections lead to strategies that enable coping with the temporal changes in the infrastructure to create habitable forms of development. To that end, we describe an urban development strategy that considers a sustainable city starting from an understanding of differences in neighborhoods, and scaling up to the whole city and region. This paper was made possible by NPRP grant # NPRP 5-074-5-5015 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.
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Papers by Yasuyo Makido