Browsing by Author "Vaz, Eric"
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- A local spatial analysis criterion of post-traumatic brain injury and accessibility to public transportationPublication . Vaz, Eric; Foster, Akeem; Cusimano, MichaelReported cases of traumatic brain injuries are increasing among the Canadian population. With an annual rate of 187,000 reported cases a year and growing, there is an extrapolated growth of 239,000 cases of traumatic brain injuries occurring annually by 2036. As Ontario intends to be a completely accessible province for those with disabilities by 2025, this paper utilizes GIS to visualize and better understand the relationship between post- TBI residents living in Brampton and their accessibility to public transportation. As Brampton is currently the most expensive city to insure a vehicle because of frequent collisions occurring within the city, creating a more accessible, reliable, and efficient public transportation system can integrate those who have experienced a traumatic brain injury back into society while reducing the required use of a personal vehicle. This will contribute to a safer city, as there are fewer vehicles on the road at risk of being involved in a road accident. There are also further benefits to this, as it will also reduce levels of congestion in the foreseeable future.
- An exploratory landscape metrics approach for agricultural sustainabilityPublication . Vaz, Eric; De Noronha, Maria Teresa; Nijkamp, PeterSocio-economic growth and urban change have been an increasing concern for decision makers in recent decades. Led by the creation of new infrastructures to support economic activity, periurban areas have mostly become adversely affected and the consequences for the ecological but also the rural landscape have become a lasting concern. The monitoring and mapping of land-use change, especially in areas where urban change has been high, is crucial. The collision between traditional economic activities related to agriculture in tourist areas such as the Algarve and current demand for tourism infrastructures in urban regions is also leading to loss of economic activity. This paper uses a combined Geographical Information System approach with remotesensing imagery and land cover databases to perform a Markov analysis for the purpose of quantifying changes in agricultural areas. The paper then expands on the nature of the agricultural changes observed, and offers a multi-temporal assessment by means of landscape metrics in order to understand the shifting land-use patterns for the Algarve in land use planning and regional economic equilibrium: (1) forest regions become transformed into agricultural areas and agricultural areas become urban; (2) areas which are initially agricultural become scattered residential regions created by economic investors; and (3) changes in the land-use have a cyclical nature in which in the course of the economic recession we may witness a shift in this effect brought about a decrease in tourism and focus on traditional sectors.
- Analysis of regional innovation performance in Portugal – results from an external logistic biplot methodPublication . Vicente Galindo, Purificación; Noronha, Teresa de; Nijkamp, Peter; Vaz, EricPortuguese strategic choices regarding innovation and R&D policy have, over the past two decades, produced various positive achievements, in which the regions of Lisbon and Algarve have taken the lead, and are the only ones in the country to converge towards the European average growth rate. Regarding the other Portuguese regions – despite significant national growth rates in the 1990s as well as a successful attempt to cope with the EMU –, these are lagging behind the EU average with respect to gross production, investment or employment generation. Meanwhile, one of the greatest public policy efforts was to diffuse much of the European funds across the entrepreneurial sector. After a long pathway, it is now timely to evaluate the firms‟ contribution to national and regional growth, their obstacles and impacts. For the purpose of this paper, innovation is used here as a major contributor to the policy evaluation process referred to above. Our investigation aims to explain the present performance of Portuguese firms located throughout the country and to explore those innovation determinants that have a region-specific connotation. To provide a thorough investigation, our analysis defines, on a regional basis, a set of firms‟ behavioural patterns regarding innovation. In our modelling, we employ a new methodology, viz. the External Logistic Biplot method, which is applied to an extensive sample of innovative institutions in Portugal. Variables such as „Promoting knowledge‟, „Management skills‟, „Promoting R&D‟, „Knowledge transfer‟, „Promoting partnership & cooperation‟, and „Orientation of public measures‟ have been identified as crucial determinants in earlier studies and are now used to describe regional institutional profiles. Such profiles exhibit a great variety in the way they combine these determinants to promote regional innovation. The creation of a gradient of capacity to dynamically innovate associated with each firm makes it possible to analyse the innovation gradient of each region in Portugal. Our paper presents and systematically investigates these findings and then reaches some policy conclusions.
- Business topographies. A spatiotemporal analysis of 150 years of Indian businessPublication . Vaz, Eric; Noronha, Teresa de; Shafizadeh, H.; Kumar, S.; Nijkamp, PeterOne of the most growing entrepreneurial landscapes has been without a doubt in the last decade India. India, with a total population of almost 1.2 billion inhabitants, is a land of immense business opportunity within a highly competitive market. Before the eighties however, India was mainly a rural country, with a large contrast of the nexus between city and periphery. With the emergence of young generation of entrepreneurs, the economy has been growing at a rate of 8-10% for the last 20 years.
- Does land use and landscape contribute to self-harm? A sustainability cities frameworkPublication . Vaz, Eric; Shaker, Richard Ross; Cusimano, Michael D.; Loures, Luis; Jokar Arsanjani, JamalSelf-harm has become one of the leading causes of mortality in developed countries. The overall rate for suicide in Canada is 11.3 per 100,000 according to Statistics Canada in 2015. Between 2000 and 2007 the lowest rates of suicide in Canada were in Ontario, one of the most urbanized regions in Canada. However, the interaction between land use, landscape and self-harm has not been significantly studied for urban cores. It is thus of relevance to understand the impacts of land-use and landscape on suicidal behavior. This paper takes a spatial analytical approach to assess the occurrence of self-harm along one of the densest urban cores in the country: Toronto. Individual self-harm data was gathered by the National Ambulatory Care System (NACRS) and geocoded into census tract divisions. Toronto’s urban landscape is quantified at spatial level through the calculation of its land use at di erent levels: (i) land use type, (ii) sprawl metrics relating to (a) dispersion and (b) sprawl/mix incidence; (iii) fragmentation metrics of (a) urban fragmentation and (b) density and (iv) demographics of (a) income and (b) age. A stepwise regression is built to understand the most influential factors leading to self-harm from this selection generating an explanatory model.
- Exploratory landscape metrics for agricultural sustainabilityPublication . Vaz, Eric; Noronha, Teresa de; Nijkamp, PeterSocioeconomic growth and urban change have been an increasing concern for decision makers in recent decades. The monitoring, mapping, and analysis of agricultural land use change, especially in areas where urban change has been high, is crucial. The collision between traditional economic activities related to agriculture in tourist areas such as the Algarve and current demand for tourism infrastructures in urban regions is also leading to loss of economic activity. This article uses a combined geographical information system approach with CORINE land cover datasets to perform a Shannon’s diversity index quantifying changes in agricultural areas. The article then expands on the nature of the agricultural changes observed, and offers a multi-temporal assessment by means of landscape metrics in order to understand the shifting land use patterns for the Algarve in land use planning and regional economic equilibrium: a) forest regions become transformed into agricultural areas and agricultural areas become urban; b) areas that are initially agricultural become scattered residential regions created by economic investors; and c) agricultural land use changes have a cyclical nature in which—in the course of the economic recession—such dynamic effects brought about a decrease in tourism and focus on traditional sectors.
- Framing urban habitats: the small and medium towns in the peripheriesPublication . Noronha, Teresa de; Vaz, EricThis paper proposes an integrative vision of the role of small and medium towns in the developing world. A conceptual framework is explored on the role of sustainable regions and the effects as well as the causalities of urbanisation within the changing dynamics of cities. The new urban habitats that are formed bring not only a direct impact of population pressures on fragile regions, but this new urban habitats, lead to classical economic models that extent into patterns where developing countries can be main actors in the trends of regional innovation dynamics.
- Gravitational models and spatial foresight: from agricultural policy to agricultural lossPublication . Vaz, Eric; Noronha, Teresa deThis paper discusses the issue and proposes a spatial land-cover accounting methodology to assess the impacts and changes occurred in the rural world, Portugal serving as a case study. So, furthermore, this paper aims to respond from a spatial perspective to the following questions: (i) Which are the most significant changes in Portuguese agricultural systems and where did they occur? (ii) Do municipalities in Portugal show dense agricultural regions that were lost, and if so, are they related to urban regions? The methods apply gravitational models to identify the compactness of agricultural areas within the different regions and detect the most significant land use variations. By comparative analyses of the different agricultural land classes, the variations in agricultural land use changes were detected. Also, the comparison of these values in a best-fit with Euclidean distances of artificial land-use questions the consequences of land-use change in Portugal over the last two decades. Finally, this paper demonstrates that the existence of spatial inventories such as the CORINE Land Cover, currently in its third assessment, provides useful information for the assessment of agricultural land-use dynamics.
- Green infrastructure, climate change and spatial planning: learning lessons across bordersPublication . Samora-Arvela, André; Ferrao, Joao; Ferreira, Jorge; Panagopoulos, Thomas; Vaz, EricClimate change will further induce a generalized rise in temperature, heat waves, exacerbation of heat island effect, alteration of the precipitation regime variability with higher occurrence of high precipitation and flood events, reduction of quantity and quality of freshwater resources, disruption of agricultural production, leading to food security risk, degradation of recreational and aesthetic amenities, and loss of biodiversity. On other hand, Green Infrastructure, that is, the network of natural and semi-natural spaces within and around urban spaces, brings a constructive and protecting element that may mitigate and adapt to the local level impacts of climate change, strengthening local resilience. This paper presents a comparative study of various green infrastructures' implementation based on analytics in the United States of America, United Kingdom and Portugal, and focuses on the degree of its alignment with the public policies of mitigation and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. Pursuant to the identification of successes and failures, this paper infers common strategies, goals and benchmarking on outcomes for more adequate decision implementation and sustainable spatial planning, considering the importance of green infrastructure.
- How corporations deal with reporting sustainability: Assessment using the multicriteria logistic biplot approachPublication . Vicente Galindo, Purificacion; Vaz, Eric; De Noronha, Maria TeresaThis paper suggests a new methodology capable of accessing in detail the contribution of companies to countries' sustainability related to economic performance. The concept of sustainability has been brought up in several debates, leading to a clearer understanding of its progress in recent decades. The most adequate indicators to achieve a unique value to define sustainability have been identified. However, specific behaviors of economic agents such as exist in particularly large organizations, have rarely been exposed and evaluated regarding their positive or negative contribution to the increase of sustainability throughout the world. This paper proposes an integrated approach incorporating an evaluation of the positive and negative contributions to sustainability by means of a logistic biplot application. This allows the creation of a summarized index that combines all single sustainability indicators. These synthetic indices allow the positioning of each of the companies in a geometric representation for an original exploration of the sustainability paradigm. The supplied method permits accessing and evaluating information concerning specific behaviors of economic agents such as big companies. In our paper, we have followed the engagements towards sustainability of big corporations, individually or as groups, across the different activity sectors in Portugal and Spain.
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