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The overall objective of the research was to evaluate the performance of the Chinese planning system on design, urban design in particular, and to search for ways to integrate urban design thinking with existing urban planning agendas to improve design control in China. The reason for undertaking this research was due to the general perception that urban design did not play the role that it deserved in China. Despite an increasing number of initiatives, the question of how to address urban design issues in planning and development control remains a source of controversy. Focusing on the Chinese planning system, the research examined the approaches, the procedures, and the general effectiveness of design control in China. The research emphasised more at a local level by taking Guangzhou as a case study. It also evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the recent urban design initiatives, namely, the Urban Design Plans for specific districts and the Model Community Program. Moreover, the research has examined the British design experience and looked in more detail at the recent experience of Glasgow. The research revealed that the main defects were the incomprehensive design concerns in local policies and plans, the inability of current statutory plans to deal with design issues, the lack of appropriate design guidance, the poor understanding of the local character, and the lack of openness and co-ordination in the planning process. Recent urban design initiatives have generated interest but have achieved limited success due to the lack of strategic level thinking. The examination of the British design experience has offered some valuable lessons. These include the incorporation of urban design principles at all levels of planning, an emphasis on the quality of the public realm, careful and detailed analysis of the local context as the basis for the development of design policy and guidance, and an appreciation of the value of public participation and involvement. Combining this understanding of the inefficiencies of China's design control with the lessons drawn from the British experience, the thesis also makes a number of recommendations for improving China's planning and development control system.

This thesis outlines the experiences of the author in conducting various research and development, projects addressing different means of representing the urban environment. These projects all fall within a fifteen year period that has been characterised by the most rapid growth and diversification of any technology in history. The document steps through four eras in the progress of these projects and, while addressing only a single viewpoint, attempts to follow the developmental thread that has linked all these activities over the years. As with all retrospective treatments of a single technology there is always a time period when a single snapshot represents the expensive state-of-the-art which, some time later, becomes derided as worthless and outdated before finally entering a phase where it may be regarded with nostalgia and perhaps new found worth. This cycle is true to all aspects of computing technology, hardware, software and applications. The rapid pace of progress with the computing industry has distorted this time frame allowing ground breaking applications of only a few years of age to be treated with derision by some of those who have only experienced the latest cutting edge of the technology. Unfortunately this temporal distortion has forced much of our computing history towards an early grave without providing a sufficient period within which fond memories might grow. This is lamentable not just for emotional reasons but mainly because many of today's techniques and technologies are based on yesterday's precedents. In order to appreciate the reasoning behind any one developmental phase of the project it is necessary to place it in its context of the available computing infrastructure both in terms of hardware and software. To this end each chapter seeks to identify the key enabling technological foundations on which the work is constructed.

<p> The main objective of this research is to examine the effect of city-level urban characteristic, such as urban form and trip generation factors, on traffic safety in general and pedestrian safety in particular. For this purpose, the information for 100 major Urban Areas (UAs) in the United States in 2010 is studied. Factor analysis is applied to construct latent variables from multiple observed variables to measure and describe urban form, macro-level trip generation, citywide transportation network features and traffic safety. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is then used to investigate how city-level urban form and trip generation affect traffic safety directly and indirectly (through mediators of transportation network features).</p><p> Based on the statistical analysis, it is found that encouraging the use of non-driving transportation modes and controlling traffic congestion, as significant mediators, are effective policies to increase overall traffic safety and pedestrian safety, respectively. In this regard, urban areas with a more even spatial distribution of job-housing balance (more polycentricity), more uniform spatial distribution of different social classes, higher urban density (less sprawl), and more connectivity in their transportation network (more accessibility) have the safest urban form designs.</p><p> Moreover, mixed land-use designs with provided local access to services and amenities, food and beverage centers, and religious organizations, followed by strict pedestrian safety standards for neighborhoods are the safest type of land use designs in urban areas. In addition, regulating the off-peak hours allowed time for heavy vehicles and changing the work schedule of workers who do not reside in the urban area can also help city planners to increase traffic safety.</p>

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. / The Marine Corps has recently embarked on the development of a Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VTUAV) to replace the aging Pioneer system. This thesis examines the critical elements this platform must possess in order to effectively support small units operating in urban environments. We address this issue by creating and exploring an agentbased simulation of a platoon conducting an urban patrol in a setting similar to those currently being encountered in Iraq. The platoon utilizes the VTUAV as an intelligence-gathering asset. We use an efficient designed experiment to generate data from the simulation scenario, and then use multiple regression and regression trees to relate the UAV capabilities to the patrol's operational effectiveness. Our results suggest that the effectiveness of a VTUAV is greatly influenced by noise in the urban warfare environment. We use a loss function, along with the regression models, to identify UAV configurations that improve operational effectiveness yet are robust to uncertainties about civilian and insurgent behavior. The VTUAV must have high communication capability, as well as accurate sensing, in order to perform well across a range of environmental conditions. / Captain, United States Marine Corps

uction efforts. This thesis explores whether a DO is suitable for urban combat operations by analyzing the results of simulations created in Map Aware Non-uniform Automata (MANA). The employment of a DO is compared to employment of a traditional Marine infantry platoon in an urban combat scenario based upon data obtained from Operation al-Fajr, conducted in Fallujah, Iraq, in November 2004. The study also examines the effects caused by varying the terrain to that of Range 200, constructed at the Marine Air Ground Training Command, Twentynine Palms, California. Modeling insights, obtained by surveying Marines with urban combat experience in Iraq, tie into the research effort. This research indicates that the DO is marginally more effective than a Traditional Platoon in urban combat. DO also shows a greater sensitivity to combat outcomes due to urban density, and produced significantly better results in terrain with a lesser density of urban structures.

The purpose of this research is to investigate how to exploit frequency and polarization techniques in reducing the effects of jamming against UAV relay communication links in an urban warfare environment. There have been early studies investigating the diversity techniques against multipath and fading problems in urban environments. A medium without any jamming issues seems almost impossible to exist in today's warfare. Basically, noise jamming issues were taken into consideration. Urbana Wireless Toolset was used as the computer simulation. Even though it is a powerful tool to predict the radio wave propagation in urban environments, due to the problems about modeling the cities (lack of detail, like the shapes of the buildings, objects and vehicles that could be found in the streets, and other details that would contribute to the propagation mechanisms), it can only give us a trend with some guidelines instead of an exact mapping of propagation.

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An attempt has been made in this study to analyze, examine, and investigate the efforts of the city of Beaumont, Texas, through its comprehensive plan and its planning process, to alleviate or combat the blighted areas of the city and to determine to what extent the comprehensive plan document has been implemented.