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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1972

Benefits from remote sensing data utilization in urban planning processes and system recommendations

The benefits of utilizing remote sensor data in the urban planning process of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments are investigated. An evaluation of sensor requirements, a description/ comparison of costs, benefits, levels of accuracy, ease of attainment, and frequency of update possible using sensor versus traditional data acquisition techniques are discussed.

Mallon, H. J.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Visual‐Analytics Bridge Complexity and Accessibility for Robust Urban Water Planning

Urban water resources planning is complicated by unprecedented uncertainty in supply and demand. Real‐world planning often simplifies the full range of uncertainty faced by a system into a limited set of deterministic scenarios to enhance accessibility for decision‐makers and the public. However, overlooking uncertainty can expose the system to failures. On the other end of the spectrum, academically developed tools for scenario analysis rigorously quantify the combined effects of multiple sources of uncertainty, but the practical application of these models is limited by the challenges of information visualization and communication of results. In short, municipal water supply planners lack access to planning frameworks that effectively integrate a rigorous treatment of uncertainty with accessible, user‐friendly visual and interactive tools to enhance user accessibility. In this work, we fill this gap by proposing Visual‐Robust Decision Making, and demonstrate an application for the city of Santa Barbara (SB), CA. Santa Barbara faces multiple uncertainties from pending state and federal regulations to changing hydrology and water demand. The city seeks to increase its water portfolio robustness by expanding its seawater desalination plant, but must decide how much capacity to add. We introduce computational tools that assess uncertainty across nine uncertain drivers identified with the help of water planners in SB. To allow public participation in the desalination expansion decision, we develop interactive visual‐analytics to aid decision‐makers and stakeholders in navigating complex scenario analysis outcomes. Our results quantify the tradeoffs between increased capacity and system robustness and aim to enhance participation and uncertainty characterization of urban water planning efforts.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS1975

Remote sensing applications for urban planning - The LUMIS project

The Santa Monica mountains of Los Angeles consist primarily of complexly folded sedimentary marine strata with igneous and metamorphic rocks at the eastern end of the mountains. With the increased development of the Santa Monicas, a study was conducted to determine the critical land use data items in the mountains. Two information systems developed in parallel are described. One capitalizes on the City's present computer line printer system, and the second utilizes map overlay techniques on an interactive computer terminal. Results concerning population, housing, and land improvement illustrate the successful linking of ordinal and nominal data files in the interactive system.-

Paul, C. K.↗
NASA NTRS1975

LUMIS: A Land Use Management Information System for urban planning

The Land Use Management Information System (LUMIS) consists of a methodology of compiling land use maps by means of air photo interpretation techniques, digitizing these and other maps into machine-readable form, and numerically overlaying these various maps in two computer software routines to provide land use and natural resource data files referenced to the individual census block. The two computer routines are the Polygon Intersection Overlay System (PIOS) and an interactive graphics APL program. A block referenced file of land use, natural resources, geology, elevation, slope, and fault-line items has been created and supplied to the Los Angeles Department of City Planning for the City's portion of the Santa Monica Mountains. In addition, the interactive system contains one hundred and seventy-three socio-economic data items created by merging the Third Count U.S. Census Bureau tapes and the Los Angeles County Secured Assessor File. This data can be graphically displayed for each and every block, block group, or tract for six test tracts in Woodland Hills, California. Other benefits of LUMIS are the knowledge of air photo availability, flight pattern coverage and frequencies, and private photogrammetry companies flying Southern California, as well as a formal Delphi study of relevant land use informational needs in the Santa Monicas.

Paul, C. K.↗
NASA NTRS1976

Delineation of geological problems for use in urban planning

Activities of the University of Alabama in support of state and local planning commissions are reported. Demonstrations were given of the various types of remotely sensed images available from U-2, Skylab, and LANDSAT; and their uses and limitations were discussed. Techniques to be used in determining flood prone areas were provided for environmental studies. A rapid, inexpensive method for study was developed by which imagery is copied on 35 mm film and projected on existing topographic maps for measuring delta volume and growth.

Hughes, T. H.↗
DOE OSTI2025

A machine learning method of modern urban building energy modeling: A case study of Chicago

Urban-scale building energy modeling is vital for urban planning. However, it can be challenging to assimilate reliable non-geometry building data for urban-scale modeling without extensive investment. Here, this study introduces a novel approach to developing modern urban-scale building energy stock data using geographic information systems and machine learning algorithms without necessarily requiring pre-supplied non-geometric metadata. The proposed framework integrates building footprint and height data to estimate gross floor areas, and matches each building to a pool of candidate records from ComStock or ResStock—filtered to the same county and ranked by geometric similarity—demonstrate a proof-of-concept case study in Chicago for predicting energy use intensity (EUI) using scalable datasets. The model achieved a mean bias error (MBE) of 0.08 kWh/m² and root mean square error (RMSE) of 14.84 kWh/m² under full metadata input for EUI prediction. With only location inputs, the model captured 69.2 % of EUI within predicted ranges. These results demonstrate the model’s potential to support early-stage urban planning, identify candidates for energy-efficient retrofits. By removing the dependency on detailed pre-surveys or extensive building metadata, the approach overcomes a key barrier in traditional urban-scale building energy modeling, illustrating a pathway toward broader and more cost-effective application, though further multi-city validation and improved treatment of pre-1925 buildings are needed.

Energy Use Intensity↗
NASA NTRS1973

A study of the potential of remote sensors in urban transportation planning

The potential uses of remotely sensed data as applied to the transportation planning process are presented. By utilizing the remote sensing technology developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the various space programs, it is hoped that both the expense and errors inherent in the conventional data collection techniques can be avoided. Additional bonuses derived from the use of remotely sensed data are those of the permanent record nature of the data and the traffic engineering data simultaneously made available. The major mathematical modeling phases and the role remotely sensed data might play in replacing conventionally collected data are discussed. Typical surveys undertaken in the overall planning process determine the nature and extent of travel desires, land uses, transportation facilities and socio-economic characteristics. Except for the socio-economic data, data collected in the other surveys mentioned can be taken from photographs in sufficient detail to be useful in the modeling procedures.

Rietschier, D.↗
NASA NTRS1974

Interactive analysis and evaluation of ERTS data for regional planning and urban development: A Los Angeles Basin case study

The progression endemic to the ERTS Data Use Experiment SR 124 in data quality, analysis sophistication and applications responsiveness is reviewed. The roles of the variety of ERTS products, including the supporting underflight aircraft imagery at various scales, are discussed in the context of this investigation. The versatility of interpretation techniques and outputs developed and implemented via the General Electric Multispectral Information Extraction Systems is described and exemplified by both system-expository and applications-explanatory products. The wide-ranging and in-depth applications studied in the course of this experiment can be characterized as community-oriented and agency-directed. In the former, generic category, which is primarily data-contextual, problems analyzed dealt with agricultural systems, surface water bodies, snow cover, brush fire burns, forestry, grass growth, parks - golf courses - cemeteries, dust storms, grading sites, geological features and coastal water structure. The ERTS MSS band selectivity and measurements thresholds were of primary interest here. The agency-directed application areas have been user-evaluational in nature. Beginning with overall urbanized regional analysis of land cover density-development intensity, residential areas were analyzed for ascertaining if housing types could be aggregated with any degree of reliability.

Raje, S.↗
DOE OSTI2026

A Comprehensive Comparison of Building Height Products at a Global Level

The built environment continues to expand due to increasing human populations with some projections indicating additional growth of 2.5 billion persons by 2050. Buildings are a key component of the built environment and information on building height and urban morphology in general can help to better understand and address a host of development and urban planning issues including energy consumption, urbanization, population dynamics, urban heat islands, environmental degradation, and others. To date, several approaches have been developed to address the need for mapping building height at scale. These approaches can be grouped into two main categories: 1) directly measure height from remote sensing products or 2) indirectly estimate height from footprint morphology features at the building-by-building level. Due to a number of these global height datasets now being available for consumption and use across domains, there is a critical need to understand the differences displayed between these products and how the use of these may influence the outcome when applied. In this analysis, we compare and evaluate 5 global building height datasets: Global Human Settlement, World Settlement Footprint 3D, Global Building Morphology dataset, three-dimensional Global Building Footprints, and an approach developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Our analysis shows that, across 5 cities at a global scale with high-quality building height reference data, the approach developed by ORNL of inferring height at the building-by-building level is more accurate and consistent. This was evidenced by the ORNL product improving upon the baseline in all 5 cities, the only product to do so. These findings will aid researchers in choosing a global building height product that best meets their needs and provides global availability, consistency, and accuracy.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Building a Healthy Urban Design Index (HUDI): how to promote health and sustainability in European cities

As global urbanisation accelerates, alongside declining environmental quality and increasing climate challenges, it is increasingly vital for urban planners and policy makers to integrate health and wellbeing considerations into urban planning. This study introduces the Healthy Urban Design Index (HUDI), a high-resolution spatial index developed for European cities. HUDI combines policy-relevant indicators related to urban design, sustainable transportation, environmental quality, and greenspace accessibility—key factors influencing human health and well-being. Unlike existing indices, which often focus on few or large metropolitan cities and lack spatial granularity, HUDI offers high resolution and extends its scope to small-sized and medium-sized cities, home to over 50% of Europe's population.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Impact of Urbanization on Convection, Lightning, and Precipitation Over the Houston Metropolitan Area: Case Study Simulation From the TRACER Campaign

This study investigates the effects of urbanization, specifically land use change and anthropogenic emissions (AE), on convection, lightning, and surface precipitation for a case of summertime sea‐breeze convection observed over the Houston metropolitan area. The unique capabilities of the NASA‐Unified Weather Research and Forecasting model allows us to conduct a series of sensitivity experiments with complex configurations, in particular including multi‐year land model spin‐up simulations, treatment of aerosols and their precursors, and explicit cloud charging and lightning. The simulation results show that urban land use primarily alters the temporal evolution of convection, lightning, and surface precipitation, leading to late afternoon thunderstorm development. The decrease in latent heat flux from the land surface caused by urbanization weakens convection in the early afternoon, while a condition suitable for convection development is maintained in the late afternoon due to less stabilization of the lower troposphere by the weaker convection development and high sensible heat flux from the surface. On the other hand, anthropogenic aerosols directly enhance convection, lightning, and surface precipitation by increasing convective updrafts due to the aerosol‐induced convective invigoration. The combined effects of urban land use and AE lead to even stronger thunderstorms in the late afternoon, mostly consistent with observations. These results indicate that urbanization increases the probability of late afternoon thunderstorms over the Houston area during the summer season. Advanced weather forecasting models that incorporate these urbanization effects might support sustainable urban planning to better mitigate the impacts of urbanization on local weather and public safety.

Iguchi, T. [Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (U↗