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Los humedales de las ciudades chilenas constituyen uno de los ecosistemas urbanos más afectados por los desarrollos inmobiliarios. A pesar de sus valores en recreación y en biodiversidad, sufren una constante pérdida de superficie, debido a deficientes procesos de planificación urbana. Sin embargo, ante el auge de las ciudades verdes y sustentables, se están revalorizando por medio de proyectos de restauración y de parques urbanos abiertos, de valor natural para el bienestar de los hábitats y la población. En este sentido, propiciar una accesibilidad con una infraestructura adecuada aportará a mejorar la calidad de vida de los habitantes y por supuesto del entorno urbano, concretamente a través de la integración de infraestructura verde-azul (blue-green infrastructure). Con la finalidad de contribuir al acceso a la naturaleza en ciudades, se realiza aquí un análisis de accesibilidad a pie, a una red de humedales llamada “La Ruta del Agua”, mediante una encuesta de percepción. Los humedales urbanos evaluados son 5 ecosistemas con distintos entornos barriales en Concepción Metropolitano (Chile). Si bien se trata de un caso de estudio local, representa una contribución metodológica relevante, dada la existencia de una gran cantidad de humedales urbanos degradados en Latinoamérica y en peligro de desaparecer. Los resultados de acceso muestran que los humedales son accesibles por vía de la caminata, pero el hecho de que sean poco visitados, pese a su cercanía a las zonas residenciales, revela su falta de integración como espacios abiertos, verdes, ricos en biodiversidad y aptos para la recreación en la ciudad de Concepción. Los resultados de este estudio son valiosos para el diseño de futuros de proyectos de parques en humedales, parques que deben considerar los valores ecosistémicos, la biodiversidad y la recreación para el bienestar de las personas.

Urban green spaces have shown to be beneficial for the physical and mental wellbeing of the general population—which particularly holds true during an unprecedented, stressful situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In urban settings characterized by structural inequality, scarce access to green spaces in a neighborhood can affect the wellbeing of its inhabitants and lower overall resilience of a community. Assuming that the effects of confinement and working from home produce an increased demand for recreational and sports activities, this paper looks to assess the level of preparedness and accessibility of green spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic, considering individual and public measures to avoid contagion. The assessment is carried out through an online exploratory survey and accessibility calculations that are applied to two Chilean cities with a Mediterranean climate, Talca and Chillán. The study considers the quality of green spaces based on (i) official statistics and (ii) a questionnaire directed toward residents. We found that high-quality urban green spaces are accessible to residents of both cities, but rather limited in December 2020 due to low levels of preparedness. Considering the qualities of existing urban green spaces allows for a more precise estimate of their contribution to the wellbeing of neighborhoods, and consequently facilitates better recommendations for urban plans and policies.

Citizen participation should be an essential part of an urban planning process if the needs of the local population are to be addressed. Citizen participation should also improve acceptance of private construction projects by residents that live in or near such development. A complementary form of citizen participation to public planning meetings is to permit citizen engagement via Web 2.0 technologies, which also has the potential to get citizens involved that are usually difficult to reach. We aim to build a social, i.e. participatory, planning platform that allows technology savvy citizens to inform themselves of future and ongoing development projects and to also discuss them online. In this work we discuss the functional needs and context-of-use constraints of such an e-planning platform. A conceptual model of the technical architecture is outlined and a prototype implementation is presented. This prototype is built on free and open source software components, including a social network, to enable platform adoption in other locations. Finally, we discuss the research needs that are to be addressed if the development of participatory e-planning platforms should advance.

Recent disasters, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, have drawn attention to the potential role of citizens as active information producers. By using location-aware devices such as smartphones to collect geographic information in the form of geo-tagged text, photos, or videos, and sharing this information through online social media, such as Twitter, citizens create Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). To effectively use this information for disaster management, we developed a VGI framework for the discovery of VGI. This framework consists of four components: (i) a VGI brokering module to provide a standard service interface to retrieve VGI from multiple resources based on spatial, temporal, and semantic parameters; (ii) a VGI quality control component, which employs semantic filtering and cross-referencing techniques to evaluate VGI; (iii) a VGI publisher module, which uses a service-based delivery mechanism to disseminate VGI, and (iv) a VGI discovery component to locate, browse, and query metadata about available VGI datasets. In a case study we employed a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) strategy, open standards/specifications, and free/open data to show the utility of the framework. We demonstrate that the framework can facilitate data discovery for disaster management. The addition of quality metrics and a single aggregated source of relevant crisis VGI will allow users to make informed policy choices that could save lives, meet basic humanitarian needs earlier, and perhaps limit environmental and economic damage.