Post-disaster spatial reconstruction from the perspective of a rural settlement niche in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River

Post-disaster recovery and reconstruction provide an effective way to reduce the disaster vulnerability of, and promote leapfrog development in, an affected area. To date, studies that have used administrative boundaries to investigate the reconstruction of settlement space have not been able to clearly define the real boundaries of land use changes or quantify the degree of response to the ‘Build-Back-Better’ initiative, and have lacked any consideration of the fourth reconstruction stage–development period(10 years). This study constructed a mountain settlement niche and analyzed the characteristics, spatial reconstruction, and drivers of rural settlements during 2009–2019 in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River, southwest China. The results showed the following:(1) Natural factors were the basis for the formation and development of mountain settlement niches. The scale of the settlement niche and its land use structure depended on the physical geography features and the ethnic farming and grazing traditions. The settlement niche provided a realistic boundary for the spatial reconstruction.(2) The layout of residential land around cropland was the common feature of the mountain settlement niche. Of all the land use types, the roads and rural residential lands showed the most change over the 10 years;13,860 residential patches increased in size and 4,742 patches were abandoned.(3) The area of orchards, planted to reconstruct the economy in the mountains, increased by nearly 2.5 times.(4) Collapses, landslides, and debris flow disasters and the ecological red line influenced the spatial reconstruction. While the main focus of post-disaster recovery is spatial reconstruction, initiatives should include economic and spiritual recovery, and should also achieve sustainable development of the region.

Spatial evolution and spatial production of traditional villages from "backward poverty villages" to "ecologically well-off villages": Experiences from the hinterland of national nature reserves in China

With the rapid urbanization process,the space of traditional villages in China is undergoing significant changes.Studying the spatial evolution of traditional villages is significant in promoting rural spatial transformation and realizing rural revitalization and sustainable rural development.Based on the traceability analysis of spatial production theory,this paper constructed an analytical framework for the spatial production evolution of traditional villages,analyzed the spatial evolution process and characteristics of traditional villages by using buffer analysis,spatial syntax,and other research methods,and revealed the characteristics of the spatial production evolution of traditional villages and the driving mechanism.The results show that:(1)The village spatial formation and development follow the village life cycle theory and usually develop from embryonic villages to diversified and integrated villages;(2)The evolution of village spatial production is characterized by the diversity of material space,the sublimation of daily life space,and the integration of social system space and generalization of emotional space;(3)The evolution of village spatial production from backward and poor village to ecologically well-off village is influenced by a combination of factors;(4)The village has formed a spatial structure of"people-land-scape-culture-industry",realized comprehensive reconstruction and spatial reproduction.The study results reflect the spatial evolution characteristics of traditional villages in mountainous areas in a more comprehensive way,which helps to promote the protection and development of traditional villages in mountainous areas and,to a certain extent,provides a reference for the development of rural revitalization.

The Social Governance Community in Transforming Neighborhoods:A Spatial Reconstruction Perspective

The strategies of rapid urbanization and rural revitalization have fostered the emergence of transforming neighborhoods. Using a framework integrating multiple spatial attributes that embeds the administrative nature of space in its social nature and raises the level of its governance, this paper provides theoretical generalizations for the social governance communities of transforming neighborhoods on the basis of a typology that divides them into four types: social governance communities of individually constructed neighborhoods, social governance communities in post-demolition constructed neighborhoods, social governance communities in immigrant constructed neighborhoods, and social governance communities in collectively constructed neighborhoods. Social governance communities of transforming neighborhoods emerge in the course of spatial reconstruction and redevelopment of production. At the stage of space reconstruction, the administrative nature of space plays its part in developing differentiated spatial governance features, while the social nature of space takes effect through the establishment of four types of social governance community social networks: the loosely connected network, the multiple components network, the close interest network and the highly associated network. At the stage of space production, the social nature of space is embedded in governance and takes effect through the integration of top-down administrative control and bottom-up resident autonomy. Consequently, we see the generation of four governance strategies of administration that adjust the autonomy of social governance communities: 'control-superficial governance,' 'guidance-deliberative governance,' 'support-collaborative governance,' and 'leading-governance by the people.' In terms of theory, this study conducts a theoretical dialogue with the existing 'controlled autonomy' and 'autonomy with administrative elimination,' and in terms of practice, it has implications for strengthening popular rule by neighborhood social governance communities and filling the ability gap in such communities.

Boosting Multi-modal Ocular Recognition via Spatial Feature Reconstruction and Unsupervised Image Quality Estimation

In the daily application of an iris-recognition-at-a-distance(IAAD)system,many ocular images of low quality are acquired.As the iris part of these images is often not qualified for the recognition requirements,the more accessible periocular regions are a good complement for recognition.To further boost the performance of IAAD systems,a novel end-to-end framework for multi-modal ocular recognition is proposed.The proposed framework mainly consists of iris/periocular feature extraction and matching,unsupervised iris quality assessment,and a score-level adaptive weighted fusion strategy.First,ocular feature reconstruction(OFR)is proposed to sparsely reconstruct each probe image by high-quality gallery images based on proper feature maps.Next,a brand new unsupervised iris quality assessment method based on random multiscale embedding robustness is proposed.Different from the existing iris quality assess-ment methods,the quality of an iris image is measured by its robustness in the embedding space.At last,the fusion strategy exploits the iris quality score as the fusion weight to coalesce the complementary information from the iris and periocular regions.Extensive experi-mental results on ocular datasets prove that the proposed method is obviously better than unimodal biometrics,and the fusion strategy can significantly improve therecognition performance.

3D image reconstruction with controllable spatial filtering based on correlation of multiple periodic functions in computational integral imaging

We propose a novel method of slice image reconstruction with controllable spatial filtering by using the correlation of periodic delta-function arrays （PDFAs） with elemental images in computational integral imaging. The multiple PDFAs, whose spatial periods correspond to object＇s depths with the elemental image array （EIA）, can generate a set of spatially filtered EIAs for multiple object depths compared with the conventional method for the depth of a single object. We analyze a controllable spatial filtering effect by the proposed method. To show the feasibility of the proposed method, we carry out preliminary experiments for multiple objects and present the results.

Space reconstruction process and internal driving mechanisms of Taobao villages in metropolitan fringe areas:A case study of Lirendong village in Guangzhou,China

This paper examines the process and internal mechanisms of rural ecommerce industry agglomeration and space reconstruction in metropolitan fringe areas,employing Lirendong village in Guangzhou,China,as a case study.Questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews were utilized and interpreted through the perspective of the actor-network theory.The results show that,in Lirendong village,local government,processing enterprises,rural collectives,e-commerce entrepreneurial talent,and other key actors participate in the pursuit and realization of suburban land value according to their action logic.Actors jointly evolved and constructed the phased industrial processes and space value accumulation process of the e-commerce industry.The reconstruction process experienced three stages,including the government-led agricultural decentralization stage,the market-oriented industrialization stage,and the Internet+stage dominated by the social network of fellow villagers.The development process has evolved from the dominance of exogenous forces to that of endogenous forces,and,as a result,the types and structures of rural land use are diversified.The spatial texture and rural environment of the traditional country gradually disappeared,forming a diversified mixed form of urban-rural land and mixed-use landscape of industrial,commercial,and residential land in vertical space.At the same time,the social network changed from a single and homogeneous social network of acquaintances to a multiple network of strangers.

Reconstruction of Lu-level cropland areas in the Northern Song Dynasty （AD976-1078）

Based on data on taxed-cropland area and on the number of households in historical documents, a probabilistic model of cropland distribution and a cropland area allocation model were designed and validated. Cropland areas for the years AD976, 997, 1066, and 1078 were estimated at the level of Lu（an administrative region of the Northern Song Dynasty）. The results indicated that（1） the cropland area of the whole study region for AD976, 997, 1066, and 1078 was about 468.27 million mu（a Chinese unit of area, with1 mu=666.7m2）, 495.53 million mu, 697.65 million mu, and 731.94 million mu, respectively. The fractional cropland area（FCA） increased from 10.7% to 16.8%, and the per capita cropland area decreased from 15.7 mu to 8.4 mu.（2） With regard to the cropland spatial pattern, the FCA of the southeast, north, and southwest regions of the Northern Song territory increased by 12.0%, 5.2%, and 1.2%, respectively. The FCA of some regions in the Yangtze River Plain increased to greater than 40%, and the FCA of the North China Plain increased to greater than 20%. However, the FCA of the southwest region（except for the Chengdu Plain） in the Northern Song territory was less than 6%.（3） There were 84.2% Lus whose absolute relative error was smaller than 20% in the mid Northern Song Dynasty. The validation results indicate that our models are reasonable and that the results of reconstruction are credible.

Minimizing the effects of unmodulated light and uneven intensity profile on the holographic images reconstructed by pixelated spatial light modulators

A simple and effective approach is proposed to minimize the effect of unmodulated light and uneven intensity caused by the pixelated structure of the spatial light modulator in a holographic display. A more uniform image is produced by purposely shifting the holographic images of multiple reconstructed lights with different incident angles from the zero-diffraction-order and overlapping those selected different orders. The simulation and optical experimental results show that the influence of the zero-diffraction-order can be reduced, while keeping the good uniformity of the target images by this new approach.

The influence of the characteristics of a collection of particles on the scattered spectral density and its applications

The far-zone scattered spectral density of a light wave on the scattering from a collection of particles is investigated, and the relationship between the character of the collection and the distribution of the scattered spectral density is discussed. It is shown that both the number of particles and their locations in the collection play roles in the distribution of the far-zone scattered spectral density. This phenomenon may provide a potential method to reconstruct the structure character of a collection of particles from measurements of the far-zone scattered spectral density.