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  • Corrigendum to “Visitor preferences and satisfaction in Attica zoological park, Greece” [Heliyon 9 (9) (September 2020) e04935]
    Publication . Karanikola, Paraskevi; Panagopoulos, Thomas; Tampakis, Stilianos; Tampakis, Antonios
    In the original published version of this article, there were 2 minor typos in the Abstract and Conclusion sections, which reversed the intended meaning of these statements.
  • Stakeholders’ perceptions of appropriate nature-based solutions in the urban context
    Publication . Ferreira, Vera; Barreira, Ana; Loures, Luís; Antunes, Dulce; Panagopoulos, Thomas
    The concept of nature-based solutions (NBSs) has become increasingly popular among urban policymakers and planners to help them tackle the urban challenges arising from urban expansion and climate change. Stakeholders' involvement is a fundamental step, and stakeholders' perceptions and preferences can affect the development of NBS projects. This study aims to identify stakeholders' perceptions of the most critical urban challenges, the priority interventions, the preferred NBSs and the benefits of the NBSs, and to identify the determinants of these perceptions. A survey was administered to assess stakeholders' perceptions and views on implementing NBSs in two Portuguese cities with distinct urban, geographical, and socio-economic contexts. A binary logistic regression model was used to understand the determinants of the likelihood of the stakeholders' answers. According to the stakeholders, climate change is one of the main concerns in the urban context. It is usually associated with the incidence of heatwaves and water scarcity. Additionally, stakeholders are concerned about the low quantity and poor management of green spaces (GSs). They believe that it will be necessary to increase the GS, to recover some degraded areas, and to increase mobility. The preferred NBSs were planting more urban trees, making green shaded areas, and rehabilitating riverbanks. The main expected benefits were benefits for leisure and relaxation, reductions in air temperature, purer air, and improvements in public health. The results showed mostly coherent connections between the main concerns/priorities of the stakeholders and the perceived NBS benefits; however, some stakeholders did not present coherent connections, indicating low awareness of the current policy for implementing NBSs to overcome existing and future urban challenges.
  • Digital modeling of the impact of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake
    Publication . Bostenaru, Maria; Panagopoulos, Thomas
    Toys have played a role in the development of 3D skills for architects. As a continuation of this, games, a subgenre of which are city building games, the father of all is SimCity, a variant of construction management games, underlay a socio-economic model. Outgoing from a general view of the role of toys and games in building the skills of architects, we focus on the modelling of the impact of earthquakes on urban areas. The particular case considered is Lisbon 1755, set into the context of related developments such as l'Aquila 2009 and Bucharest 1977. We examined the 3D modelling of the city, which can be the base for computer games, namely the GIS based, Google Earth and Second Life. For all these modells we filled forms which are provided in the annexes, to see the usability and potential improvements, which will be considered in the model we propose. The later builds a game with a socio-economic component, but both later ones have the social component of crowd sourcing participation. The Second Life concept can be extended with narratives of chance like in board games, to realise the immersion like in a novel in the historic time depicted, organising for example virtual events in the public space framework modelled. Different Levels of Detail are identified as necessary in order to on one side identify the landmarks of the image of the city in the perception of inhabitants and tourists and on the other hand to model populations of buildings for future economic studies, based on a structural mechanics instead of statistical approach. Outgoing from this analysis we propose an own concept to model the impact of the 1755 earthquake on Lisbon. We based our concept on the analysis of the space and time aspects in the memory of the pre-disaster city, and considered 72 landmark buildings which can be symbolically modeled as spaces, based on a 2D to 3D concept. Depending on where they were situated, these have been affected by the earthquake or not. We provide besides the overview of the literature on games for architecture on urbanism purposes also this one on memory. This includes on its side a game, for lessons learned in the identification of the landmarks of the city. Apart of the game, there is a guided tour with timeline and the 3D model in itself. Codes are provided. For the analysis we used different views of the city: eye-level, silhouette (from the river) and aerial. This can be the basis of a future augmented reality application including the 3D model and the photos/ engravings of the time. The socio-economic component will be based on the modeling of material resources necessary to retrofit or reconstruct, for the detailedly considered „pombalino” buildings. But first of all identifying the urban morphology through 3D modeling is serving as a basis for master planning, especially the strategic planning of the minimal urban structure, in both preventive pre-earthquake intervention and post-earthquake reconstruction, as aimed for in the „Lisbon in motion” workshop and planned related ones.
  • The economic impact of recreational trails: a systematic literature review
    Publication . Lukoseviciute, Goda; Pereira, LN; Panagopoulos, Thomas
    Recreational trails are a type of nature-based tourism providing various activities such as hiking, biking, rafting or horseback riding. Increasing investment in infrastructure and touristic services development has resulted in higher visitor expenditure and thus contributed to economic development. This study aims to review the current economic impact assessment studies on recreational trail tourism and to extract the main economic impact determinants. A systematic literature review analysis was applied in a quantitative approach about economic models, study cases of nature-based tourism, comparison of economic impacts. A qualitative analysis was then applied with an inductive approach to compare the economic impacts of nature-based tourism forms and identify the main determinants of economic impact. This study suggests that I-O is the most suitable theoretical approach to study the economic impact of long-distance trails, while the Keynesian multiplier approach and Ad hoc model are the most suitable approaches to study the economic impact of short-distance trails.
  • Residents' preferred policy actions for shrinking cities
    Publication . Guimarães, Maria Helena; Nunes, Luis Catela; Barreira, Ana Paula; Panagopoulos, Thomas
    Cities facing a continued and prolonged process of population decline require innovative urban regeneration policies complementary to growth-oriented policies. Losing inhabitants involves a decrease in economic activity and social capital. Therefore citizens' participation in defining policies to cope with population decline is being increasingly advocated. This research focused on four shrinking cities of Portugal to capture residents' knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of their city of residence as well as the policies and actions they prioritized for dealing with the population decline. The responses from 701 questionnaires show that economic revival policies as well as safety and accessibility policies were preferred. To put these policies into action, the recovery of industrial activity, the creation of business incubators, an improvement in law enforcement, and public lighting were ranked as top priorities. Rank-ordered logistic regression models were used to understand which variables influenced the residents' rankings. We found that the evaluation of the city's characteristics impact the ranking of the policies and actions. Hence, residents show a high level of coherence when engaging in a discussion at the level of policy-making. Therefore, the findings support residents' involvement in decision-making processes regarding urban regeneration in shrinking cities.
  • Relationship between Indigenous knowledge development in agriculture and the sustainability of water resources
    Publication . Shahraki, Ali Sardar; Panagopoulos, Thomas; Ashari, Hajar Esna; Bazrafshan, Ommolbanin
    The relationship between agricultural knowledge and water management is very important. Indigenous knowledge in agriculture can improve the water crisis situation and alleviate water stress from dry and semi-arid areas. Therefore, the combination of these two impacts can improve the agricultural sector and reduce the effects of drought. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting indigenous knowledge and the sustainable management of water resources for optimal water use in agriculture in the Sistan region of Iran. Alongside field research and interviews with 40 indigenous experts and experts from the Jihad-e-Agriculture sector of the Sistan region, the required information was collected by means of a questionnaire. Using the fuzzy hierarchy process (FAHP), the factors affecting indigenous knowledge and the sustainable management of water resources for optimal water use in the Sistan region were ranked. The final rankings of the factors influencing indigenous knowledge for optimal agricultural use of water resources indicate that the educational-extensional factor, with a final weight of 0.37, is the first priority, while social factors, government support, economics, farmers’ knowledge, and information, with weights of 0.24, 0.21, 0.13, and 0.03, respectively, are the next priorities. It is recommended that the indigenous knowledge of local authorities be augmented, and that farmers be encouraged to use modern irrigation techniques to optimize the agricultural irrigation of water.
  • Spatial variability of soil properties and soil erodibility in the Alqueva reservoir watershed
    Publication . Ferreira, V.; Panagopoulos, Thomas; Andrade, R.; Guerrero, Carlos; Loures, L.
    The aim of this work is to investigate how the spatial variability of soil properties and soil erodibility (K factor) were affected by the changes in land use allowed by irrigation with water from a reservoir in a semiarid area. To this end, three areas representative of different land uses (agroforestry grassland, lucerne crop and olive orchard) were studied within a 900 ha farm. The interrelationships between variables were analyzed by multivariate techniques and extrapolated using geostatistics. The results confirmed differences between land uses for all properties analyzed, which was explained mainly by the existence of diverse management practices (tillage, fertilization and irrigation), vegetation cover and local soil characteristics. Soil organic matter, clay and nitrogen content decreased significantly, while the K factor increased with intensive cultivation. The HJ-Biplot methodology was used to represent the variation of soil erodibility properties grouped in land uses. Native grassland was the least correlated with the other land uses. The K factor demonstrated high correlation mainly with very fine sand and silt. The maps produced with geostatistics were crucial to understand the current spatial variability in the Alqueva region. Facing the intensification of land-use conversion, a sustainable management is needed to introduce protective measures to control soil erosion.
  • Managing the conflict of Human–Wildlife coexistence: A community-based approach
    Publication . Tampakis, Stilianos; Andrea, Veronika; Panagopoulos, Thomas; Karanikola, Paraskevi; Gkarmiri, Rallou; Georgoula, Theodora
    One of the most recent and pressing issues for policymakers to address is the presence of wild boars in urban and rural areas. Their aggressive spread and invasion of human-populated areas have created an alarming problem as the coexistence of wild boars and people poses serious threats to human life and property. Human-caused factors, such as residential zone expansion and land use change, have exacerbated this problem. Furthermore, natural factors, such as predator reduction and climate change effects, create favorable conditions for population growth. This study sought to gain insights into citizens’ perspectives on a current issue, specifically wild boar colonization and coexistence in urban and rural settings. Between September 2021 and November 2022, a survey was conducted in two communities of northern and central Greece, addressing 800 citizens in total. Obtained through hierarchical log-linear analysis, factor analysis and two-step cluster analysis, the findings indicate that rural citizens appear to be more concerned about agricultural production losses and the high risk of road accidents, while the invasion-level perception was high in both areas. Intensive hunting has gained widespread acceptance as a management tool for wild boar populations in both urban and rural areas, while anthropocentric (EGO) and ecocentric (ECO) social groups have emerged.
  • Historical trajectories of currently shrinking Portuguese cities: A typology of urban shrinkage
    Publication . Alves, Daniel; Barreira, Ana Paula; Guimarães, Maria Helena; Panagopoulos, Thomas
    Cities develop according to different patterns, undergoing population growth during some periods and decline (shrinkage) during others. Theories attempting to understand these behaviours include: 1) shrinkage is a natural process in the life cycle of a city, alternating with periods of growth, or 2) shrinkage is an extreme event that places cities into a continuous decline process with no return to population growth. We use retrospective data over a period of 130 years to study 25 Portuguese cities currently facing population decline, and show that both theories coexist in time and space. Five types of shrinking city are revealed: "Persistent Early Shrinkage" due to exodus from the rural periphery, "Metropolitan Shrinkage" due to the challenges of urban sprawl, "Recent Shrinkage" in de-industrialisation hotspots, "Cyclic Shrinkage" occurring in political transformation cores, and "Mild Shrinkage" due to life-style disamenity. As diversity of city population trajectories appears to be the norm in both Portugal and other Western European countries, the incorporation of this range into the management of urban transitions is recommended in order to reinforce city resilience. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  • Citizen participation in city planning and public decision assisted with ontologies and 3D semantics
    Publication . Panagopoulos, Thomas; Andrade, Rita; Barreira, Ana Paula; Rocha, A.; Restivo, F.; Reis, L. P.; Torrão, Sofia
    Sustainable development of cities implies investigating cities in a holistic way taking into account many interrelations between various urban and environmental problems. Urban models are created with the objective of helping city planners and stakeholders in their decision-making processes. Models which represent in 3 dimensions the geometric elements of a city are called 3D city models. These models are increasingly used in different cities and countries for an intended wide range of applications beyond mere visualization. Such uses are made possible by adding semantics to the geometrical aspects, leading to semantically enriched 3D city models. This can be achieved by using the primary data and ontologies to achieve the semantic enrichment of 3D city models as well as their interoperability with other urban models. Objective of the paper is to present how semantically enriched 3D city models and ontologies may help in sustainable landscape city planning.