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Terminal airspace is the convergence area of air traffic flow, which is the bottleneck of air traffic management. With the rapid growth of air traffic volume, the impact of convective weather on flight operations is becoming more and more serious. To change the conditions and improve the utilization of terminal area airspace, a convective weather terminal area capacity (CWTAC) model is developed to quantify the effect of convective weather on the capacity of the terminal area in this paper. The airspace of the terminal area is divided into major airspace, minor airspace and no-impact airspace according to the distribution of the air traffic flow. Under convective weather, their permeabilities are calculated and used as input features, and the actual availability rate is set to label. Three machine learning algorithms, support vector regression (SVR), random forest (RF), and artificial neural network (ANN), are used to predict the availability rate. Then, the terminal airspace capacity under convective weather can be calculated. The historical operation data of the Guangzhou terminal area and the Wuhan terminal area are taken to test machine learning algorithms and verify the CWTAC model. It shows that all three machine learning algorithms are practical, and ANN is the best one based on mean squared error (MSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). The predicted capacity of the CWTAC model accords well with the actual flight number in the terminal airspace under convective weather. The reasons why they are not entirely consistent are also analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and fast traffic prediction is the data-based foundation for achieving traffic control and management, and the accuracy of prediction results will directly affect the effectiveness of traffic control and management. This paper proposes a new spatiotemporal periodic polynomial model for road traffic, which integrates the temporal, spatial, and periodic features of speed time series and can effectively handle the nonlinear mapping relationship from input to output. In terms of the model, we establish a road traffic speed prediction model based on polynomial regression. In terms of spatial feature extraction methods, we introduce a maximum mutual information coefficient spatial feature extraction method. In terms of periodic feature extraction methods, we introduce a periodic trend modeling method into the prediction of speed time series, and effective fusion is carried out. Four strategies are evaluated based on the Guangzhou road speed dataset: a univariate polynomial model, a spatiotemporal polynomial model, a periodic polynomial model, and a spatiotemporal periodic polynomial model. The test results show that the three methods proposed in this article can effectively improve prediction accuracy. Comparing the spatiotemporal periodic polynomial model with multiple machine learning models and deep learning models, the prediction accuracy is improved by 5.94% compared to the best feedforward neural network. The research in this article can effectively deal with the temporal, spatial, periodic, and nonlinear characteristics of speed prediction, and to a certain extent, improve the accuracy of speed prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in knowledge graphs show great promise to link various data together to provide a semantic network. Place is an important part in the big picture of the knowledge graph since it serves as a powerful glue to link any data to its georeference. A key technical challenge in constructing knowledge graphs with location nodes as geographical references is the matching of place entities. Traditional methods typically rely on rule-based matching or machine-learning techniques to determine if two place names refer to the same location. However, these approaches are often limited in the feature selection of places for matching criteria, resulting in imbalanced consideration of spatial and semantic features. Deep feature-based methods such as deep learning methods show great promise for improved place data conflation. This paper introduces a Semantic-Spatial Aware Representation Learning Model (SSARLM) for Place Matching. SSARLM liberates the tedious manual feature extraction step inherent in traditional methods, enabling an end-to-end place entity matching pipeline. Furthermore, we introduce an embedding fusion module designed for the unified encoding of semantic and spatial information. In the experiment, we evaluate the approach to named places from Guangzhou and Shanghai cities in GeoNames, OpenStreetMap (OSM), and Baidu Map. The SSARLM is compared with several classical and commonly used binary classification machine learning models, and the state-of-the-art large language model, GPT-4. The results demonstrate the benefit of pre-trained models in data conflation of named places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient monitoring of water quality parameters (WQPs) is crucial for environmental health. Drone hyperspectral images have offered the potential for the flexible and accurate retrieval of WQPs. However, a machine learning (ML)-based multi-process strategy for WQP inversion has yet to be established. Taking a typical urban river in Guangzhou city, China, as the study area, this paper proposes a machine learning-based strategy combining spectral preprocessing and ML regression models with ground truth WQP data. Fractional order derivation (FOD) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) methods were used to explore potential spectral information. Then, multiple methods were applied to select sensitive features. Three modeling strategies were constructed for retrieving four WQPs, including the Secchi depth (SD), turbidity (TUB), total phosphorus (TP), and permanganate index (CODMn). The highest R2s were 0.68, 0.90, 0.70, and 0.96, respectively, with corresponding RMSEs of 13.73 cm, 6.50 NTU, 0.06 mg/L, and 0.20 mg/L. Decision tree regression (DTR) was found to have the potential with the best performance for the first three WQPs, and eXtreme Gradient Boosting Regression (XGBR) for the CODMn. Moreover, tailored feature selection methods emphasize the importance of fitting processing strategies for specific parameters. This study provides an effective framework for WQP inversion that combines spectra mining and extraction based on drone hyperspectral images, supporting water quality monitoring and management in urban rivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During accelerated urbanization, the lack of attention to environmental protection and governance led to the formation of black-odor water. The existence of urban black-odor water not only affects the cityscape, but also threatens human health and damages urban ecosystems. The black-odor water bodies are small and hidden, so they require large-scale and high-resolution monitoring which offers a temporal and spatial variation of water quality frequently, and the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a multispectral instrument is up to the monitoring task. In this paper, the Nemerow comprehensive pollution index (NCPI) was introduced to assess the pollution degree of black-odor water in order to avoid inaccurate identification based on a single water parameter. Based on the UAV-borne multispectral data and NCPI of sampling points, regression models for inverting the parameter indicative of water quality were established using three artificial intelligence algorithms, namely extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), random forest (RF), and support vector regression (SVR). The result shows that NCPI is qualified to evaluate the pollution level of black-odor water. The XGBoost regression (XGBR) model has the highest fitting accuracy on the training dataset (R2 = 0.99) and test dataset (R2 = 0.94), and it achieved the best retrieval effect on image inversion in the shortest time, which made it the best-fit model compared with the RF regression (RFR) model and the SVR model. According to inversion results based on the XGBR model, there was only a small size of mild black-odor water in the study area, which showed the achievement of water pollution treatment in Guangzhou. The research provides a theoretical framework and technical feasibility for the application of the combination of algorithms and UAV-borne multispectral images in the field of water quality inversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of street space has attracted attention. It is important to understand the needs of different population groups for street space quality, especially the rapidly growing elderly group. Improving the quality of street space is conducive to promoting the physical leisure activities of the elderly to benefit to their health. Therefore, it is important to evaluate street space quality for the elderly. The existing studies, on the one hand, are limited by the sample size of traditional survey data, which is hard to apply on a large scale; on the other hand, there is a lack of consideration for factors that reveal the quality of street space from the perspective of the elderly. This paper takes Guangzhou as an example to evaluate the quality of street space. First, the sample street images were scored by the elderly on a small scale; then the regression analysis was used to extract the street elements that the elderly care about. Last, the street elements were put into the random forest model to assess street space quality io a large scale. It was found that the green view rate and sidewalks are positively correlated with satisfaction, and the positive effect increases in that order. Roads, buildings, sky, vehicles, walls, ceilings, glass windows, runways, railings, and rocks are negatively correlated with satisfaction, and the negative effect increases in that order. The mean satisfaction score of the quality of street space for the elderly's recreational physical activities in three central districts of Guangzhou (Yuexiu, Liwan, and Haizhu) is 2.6, among which Xingang street gets the highest quality score (2.92), and Hailong street has the lowest quality score (2.32). These findings are useful for providing suggestions to governors and city designers for street space optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A numerical approach assisted by machine learning was developed for screening and optimizing soil remediation strategies. The approach includes a reactive transport model for simulating the remediation cost and effect of applicable remediation technologies and their combinations for a target site. The simulated results were used to establish a relationship between the cost and effect using a machine learning method. The relationship was then used by an optimization method to provide optimal remediation strategies under various constraints and requirements for the target site. The approach was evaluated for a site contaminated with both arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at a former shipbuilding factory in Guangzhou City, China. An optimal strategy was obtained and successfully implemented at the site, which included the partial excavation of the contaminated soils and natural attenuation of the residual contaminated soils. The advantage of the approach is that it can fully consider the natural attenuation capacity in designing remediation strategies to reduce remediation costs and can provide cost-effective remediation strategies under variable constraints for policymakers. The approach is general and can be applied for screening and optimizing remediation strategies at other remediation sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population aging is a global issue. China is facing the same challenge, especially in its megacities, with more than 10 million permanent urban residents. These densely populated cities urgently need the scientific planning and optimization of the layout of service facilities for older people. Taking Guangzhou, a megacity in China, as an example, this study uses point-of-interest (POI) data and the ID3 machine learning decision tree algorithm to train a site selection model for service facilities for older people. The model can help to select appropriate locations for new service facilities for older people more scientifically and accurately, and it can provide targeted suggestions to optimize the layout of the service facilities for older people in Guangzhou. First, Guangzhou city is divided into 29,793 grids of 500 m × 500 m based on the range of activities of older people, and 985 grids are found to contain service facilities for older people. Then, the POI data of the grid are fed into the ID3 algorithm for training to obtain a prediction model for the selection of sites for service facilities for older people. The effective prediction rate of the model reaches 87.54%. Then, we apply the site selection model to predict the whole city of Guangzhou, and 4534 grids are suitable for service facilities for older people. In addition, considering the degree of concentration of the elderly population in each street, we further filter out 1066 priority grids as the final site selection. Finally, taking into account the situation of the streets in different districts, we propose several strategies to optimize the layout of the construction of service facilities for older people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contexts of global climate change and the urbanization process, urban flooding poses significant challenges worldwide, necessitating effective rapid assessments to understand its impacts on various aspects of urban systems. This can be achieved through the collection and analysis of big data sources such as social media data. However, existing literature remains limited in terms of conducting a comprehensive disaster impact assessment leveraging social media data. This study employs mixed-methods research, a synergy of statistical analysis, machine learning algorithms, and geographical analysis to examine the impacts of urban flooding using the case of the 2020 Guangzhou rainstorm event. The result show that: (1) analyzing social media content enables monitoring of the development of disaster situations, with varied distributions of impact categories observed across different phases of the urban flood event; (2) a lexicon-based approach allows for tracking specific sentiment categories, revealing differential contributions to negative sentiments from various impact topics; (3) location information derived from social media texts can unveil the geographic distribution of impacted areas, and significant correlations are indicated between the waterlogging hotspots and four predisposing factors, namely precipitation, proportion of built-up surfaces, population density, and road density. Consequently, this study suggests that collecting and analyzing social media data is a reliable and feasible way of conducting rapid impact assessment for disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accuracy of temperature and relative humidity (RH) profiles retrieved by the ground-based microwave radiometer (MWR) is crucial for meteorological research. In this study, the four-year measurements of brightness temperature measured by the microwave radiometer from Huangpu meteorological station in Guangzhou, China, and the radiosonde data from the Qingyuan meteorological station (70 km northwest of Huangpu station) during the years from 2018 to 2021 are compared with the sonde data. To make a detailed comparison on the performance of machine learning models in retrieving the temperature and RH profiles, four machine learning algorithms, namely Deep Learning (DL), Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and Random Forest (RF), are employed and verified. The results show that the DL model performs the best in temperature retrieval (with the root-mean-square error and the correlation coefficient of 2.36 and 0.98, respectively), while the RH of the four machine learning methods shows different excellence at different altitude levels. The integrated machine learning (ML) RH method is proposed here, in which a certain method with the minimum RMSE is selected from the four methods of DL, GBM, XGBoost and RF for a certain altitude level. Two cases on 29 January 2021 and on 10 February 2021 are used for illustration. The case on 29 January 2021 illustrates that the DL model is suitable for temperature retrieval and the ML model is suitable for RH retrieval in Guangzhou. The case on 10 February 2021 shows that the ML RH method reaches over 85% before precipitation, implying the application of the ML RH method in pre-precipitation warnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Streets are an essential element of urban safety governance and urban design, but they are designed with little regard for possible gender differences. This study proposes a safety perception evaluation method from the female perspective based on street view images (SVIs) and mobile phone data, taking the central city of Guangzhou as an example. The method relies on crowdsourced data and uses a machine learning model to predict the safety perception map. It combines the simulation of women's walking commuting paths to analyse the areas that need to be prioritised for improvement. Multiple linear regression was used to explain the relationship between safety perception and visual elements. The results showed the following: (1) There were differences in safety perceptions across genders. Women gave overall lower safety scores and a more dispersed distribution of scores. (2) Approximately 11% of the streets in the study area showed weak perceived safety, and approximately 3% of these streets have high pedestrian flows and require priority improvements. (3) Safe visual elements in SVIs included the existence of roads, sidewalks, cars, railways, people, skyscrapers, and trees. Our findings can help urban designers determine how to evaluate urban safety and where to optimise key areas. Both have practical implications for urban planners seeking to create urban environments that promote greater safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial decomposition of demographic data at a fine resolution is a classic and crucial problem in the field of geographical information science. The main objective of this study was to compare twelve well-known machine learning regression algorithms for the spatial decomposition of demographic data with multisource geospatial data. Grid search and cross-validation methods were used to ensure that the optimal model parameters were obtained. The results showed that all the global regression algorithms used in the study exhibited acceptable results, besides the ordinary least squares (OLS) algorithm. In addition, the regularization method and the subsetting method were both useful for alleviating overfitting in the OLS model, and the former was better than the latter. The more competitive performance of the nonlinear regression algorithms than the linear regression algorithms implies that the relationship between population density and influence factors is likely to be non-linear. Among the global regression algorithms used in the study, the best results were achieved by the k-nearest neighbors (KNN) regression algorithm. In addition, it was found that multi-sources geospatial data can improve the accuracy of spatial decomposition results significantly, and thus the proposed method in our study can be applied to the study of spatial decomposition in other areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]