In traditional urban geography, city contact research is a classic study element in city research. In general, researchers use the traditional gravity model to characterize the contacts that exist between two cities. ...In traditional urban geography, city contact research is a classic study element in city research. In general, researchers use the traditional gravity model to characterize the contacts that exist between two cities. The traditional gravity model assumes ideal conditions, but these preconditions and their results often do not exist in realistic conditions. Thus, we used a modified gravity model to characterize the city contacts within a specific region. This model considers factors such as intercity complementarities, government intervention, and the diversity of the transportation infrastructure which is characterized as the transportation distance instead of the traditional Euclidean distance. We applied this model to an empirical study of city contact in the Zhujiang(Pearl) River Delta(PRD) of China. The regression results indicated that the modified gravity model could measure city contact more accurately and comprehensively than the traditional gravity model, i.e., it yielded a higher adjusted R2 value(0.379) than the traditional gravity model result(0.259). Our study also suggests that, in addition to urban-regional and metropolitan development, the complementarities of the basic functions of cities at the administrative and market levels, as well as the corporeal and immaterial levels, play very significant roles in the characterization of city contact. Given the complexity of city contact, it will be necessary to consider more relevant influential factors in the modified gravity model to characterize the features of city contact in the future.展开更多
The relatively high percentage of people with disabilities in Europe combined with the facts of ageing population, strong relation of impairment to age, and as State of the Art shows, dissatisfaction or even unawarene...The relatively high percentage of people with disabilities in Europe combined with the facts of ageing population, strong relation of impairment to age, and as State of the Art shows, dissatisfaction or even unawareness of people with disabilities of available assistive technology are revealing the necessity to incorporate a user-centric approach that beyond 2nd generation practices will achieve to provide embedded and built-in accessibility solutions, as well as toolkits for developers, for "engraving" accessibility in existing and emerging mass-market ICT-based products, aiming to make accessibility open, plug and play, personalised and configurable, realistic and applicable in various contexts, keeping always the user in the loop. The AEGIS (Accessibility Everywhere: Groundwork, Infrastructure, Standards) IP (Integrated Project) of the 7th European Framework Programme seeks to determine whether 3rd generation access techniques will provide a more accessible, more exploitable and deeply embeddable approach in mainstream ICT (information and communication technologies). This paper presents the holistic UCD (user-centered design) implementation plan, upon which AEGIS has been based in order to achieve its targets, starting from modelling its target users, in the most efficient way possible.展开更多
基金Under the auspices of National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.41271177)Guangdong Natural Science Foundation(No.S2012010008902)
文摘In traditional urban geography, city contact research is a classic study element in city research. In general, researchers use the traditional gravity model to characterize the contacts that exist between two cities. The traditional gravity model assumes ideal conditions, but these preconditions and their results often do not exist in realistic conditions. Thus, we used a modified gravity model to characterize the city contacts within a specific region. This model considers factors such as intercity complementarities, government intervention, and the diversity of the transportation infrastructure which is characterized as the transportation distance instead of the traditional Euclidean distance. We applied this model to an empirical study of city contact in the Zhujiang(Pearl) River Delta(PRD) of China. The regression results indicated that the modified gravity model could measure city contact more accurately and comprehensively than the traditional gravity model, i.e., it yielded a higher adjusted R2 value(0.379) than the traditional gravity model result(0.259). Our study also suggests that, in addition to urban-regional and metropolitan development, the complementarities of the basic functions of cities at the administrative and market levels, as well as the corporeal and immaterial levels, play very significant roles in the characterization of city contact. Given the complexity of city contact, it will be necessary to consider more relevant influential factors in the modified gravity model to characterize the features of city contact in the future.
文摘The relatively high percentage of people with disabilities in Europe combined with the facts of ageing population, strong relation of impairment to age, and as State of the Art shows, dissatisfaction or even unawareness of people with disabilities of available assistive technology are revealing the necessity to incorporate a user-centric approach that beyond 2nd generation practices will achieve to provide embedded and built-in accessibility solutions, as well as toolkits for developers, for "engraving" accessibility in existing and emerging mass-market ICT-based products, aiming to make accessibility open, plug and play, personalised and configurable, realistic and applicable in various contexts, keeping always the user in the loop. The AEGIS (Accessibility Everywhere: Groundwork, Infrastructure, Standards) IP (Integrated Project) of the 7th European Framework Programme seeks to determine whether 3rd generation access techniques will provide a more accessible, more exploitable and deeply embeddable approach in mainstream ICT (information and communication technologies). This paper presents the holistic UCD (user-centered design) implementation plan, upon which AEGIS has been based in order to achieve its targets, starting from modelling its target users, in the most efficient way possible.