María Dolores Andújar-Montoya

A Comprehensive System for Monitoring Urban Accessibility in Smart Cities

The present work discusses the possibilities offered by the evolution of Information and Communication Technologies with the aim of designing a system to dynamically obtain knowledge of accessibility issues in urban environments. This system is facilitated by technology to analyse the urban user experience and movement accessibility, which enabling accurate identification of urban barriers and monitoring its effectiveness over time. Therefore, the main purpose of the system is to meet the real needs and requirements of people with movement disabilities. The information obtained can be provided as a support service for decision-making to be used by city government, institutions, researchers, professionals and other individuals of society in general to improve the liveability and quality of the lives of citizens. The proposed system is a means of social awareness that makes the most vulnerable groups of citizens visible by involving them as active participants. To perform and implement the system, the latest communication and positioning technologies for smart sensing have been used, as well as the cloud computing paradigm. Finally, to validate the proposal, a case study has been presented using the university environment as a pre-deployment step in urban environments.

Data Structures Modelling for Citizen Tracking Based Applications in Smart Cities

Internet of Things is a promising paradigm for designing context-aware systems. The information provided can be used for understanding the environment and providing intelligent services to the citizen. There are several studies on the information acquisition of Smart Cities. This work is focused on citizens’ traceability technologies and the data structures involved in representing and querying this information. A location and route data structure is proposed for handling data from different sources and devices, and meet the requirements of citizens’ flow management in Smart Cities.

Citizen Participation in Urban Planning-Management Processes - Assessing Urban Accessibility in Smart Cities

The concept of Smart City, supported by the latest technological advances in the field of Information and Communication Technology, offers great potential to meet the challenges of cities in the economic globalization context. As a consequence, the present work is focused on the deployment of these technologies through public participation activities to generate knowledge for the processes of urban planning, design and management.The methodology proposed in this work allows obtaining information about accessibility problems directly from citizens, based on their own experience. Citizens have a communication channel that allows them to inform, at any time and in any place, about all the accessibility problems they encounter when they move around a city in their daily activity. The work presents a Case Study focused on a experience of citizen participation which has been developed to evaluate the accessibility of urban environments in Benalúa neighbourhood of Alicante in Spain. A diverse group of neighbors of different ages, gender and abilities have participated in the experience. After the experimentation it was concluded that the research offers new forms of communication to facilitate information flows between the Administration and citizens, allowing their integration and feedback.

Accessibility Index for Smart Cities

There is a growing social awareness about accessibility. The accessibility in cities and public spaces has become in an important issue in official agendas due to recent European directives. There are several studies on the way to improve accessibility in cities but they do not offer the possibility of view if solutions applied are valid over time. This paper proposes a method to measure the degree of accessibility of a city or urban area by using data from conflicting accessibility points collected by the own citizens. It will allow us to visualize in a concise way how accessible a city is and its progression in the time.

Unexpected consequences in the operation of urban environments

The purpose of this paper is to study the unexpected consequences in the operation of urban environments. Prediction within the urban planning process often presents difficulties and unintended consequences. It is not enough to develop a good project. Unexpected consequences are possible because of the environment. The authors argue that these problems of uncertainty can be minimized with citizen participation and the use of new technologies.,The problem of how urban planning initiatives result in unexpected consequences is described. These effects are determined by studying a series of cities and real urban environments. A case study on urban accessibility is developed for a better understanding of the problem.,Avoiding unexpected consequences in the operation of urban environments is strongly linked to the concept of Smart City 3.0. This concept is based on the co-creation. In this line to address the problem, a citizen-centric methodology using the latest information and communications technologies and internet of things technologies is presented. As a practical application, different categories of unexpected events related to the Faculty of Education building at the University of Alicante have been identified as a consequence of the impact of its environment. An uncomfortable or non-accessible environment causes unforeseen behaviour of individuals.,There are no analytical tools to investigate how aspects of the urban environment cause uncertainty about the acceptance of projects by future citizen users. This work takes a step forward in that direction.

Urban and Building Accessibility Diagnosis using 'Accessibility App' in Smart Cities - A Case Study.

In the context of economic and technological changes arised from globalization, cities face the challenge of conceiving models capable of combining both competitiveness and sustainable urban development. The increasing body of knowledge in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers methods to exploit the huge potential of technological advances, enabling to increase productivity of industrial and business processes and improving the liveability of cities. One of the most important aspects that influence the liveability of cities is the ability to be an inclusive city. Thus, Smart Cities require an inclusive urban life, and they are characterized by being accessible cities. In this regard, this paper describes a method using the latest ICT for the analysis and diagnosis of the accessibility in buildings and urban environments. This method allows the collection of information on accessibility issues through the collaboration of citizens, as well as to organize and display it, so that administrations and institutions responsible for addressing accessibility issues can use it in order to take actions. In this context, a practical application of the method has been performed through a case study in the University of Alicante, with the objective of showing a real diagnosis of urban and building accessibility.

A Context-Driven Model for the Flat Roofs Construction Process through Sensing Systems, Internet-of-Things and Last Planner System

The main causes of building defects are errors in the design and the construction phases. These causes related to construction are mainly due to the general lack of control of construction work and represent approximately 75% of the anomalies. In particular, one of the main causes of such anomalies, which end in building defects, is the lack of control over the physical variables of the work environment during the execution of tasks. Therefore, the high percentage of defects detected in buildings that have the root cause in the construction phase could be avoidable with a more accurate and efficient control of the process. The present work proposes a novel integration model based on information and communications technologies for the automation of both construction work and its management at the execution phase, specifically focused on the flat roof construction process. Roofs represent the second area where more defects are claimed. The proposed model is based on a Web system, supported by a service oriented architecture, for the integral management of tasks through the Last Planner System methodology, but incorporating the management of task restrictions from the physical environment variables by designing specific sensing systems. Likewise, all workers are integrated into the management process by Internet-of-Things solutions that guide them throughout the execution process in a non-intrusive and transparent way.

AN INITIAL APPROACH USING AUDIENCE RESPONSE SYSTEMS AS A STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING THE LEARNING PROCESS

This work has been funded by the Institute of Education Sciences of the University of Alicante and the Office of the Vice President for Studies Planning and Training Actions within the Project Networks of research in High Education teaching 2015-2016.

WORKSHOPS IN ARCHITECTURAL TECHNOLOGY: A NEW COLLABORATIVE APPROACH

This work has been funded by the Institute of Education Sciences of the University of Alicante and the Office of the Vice President for Studies Planning and Training Actions within the Project Networks of research in High Education teaching 2015-2016.