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1. Parks are Critical Urban Infrastructure: Perception and Use of Urban Green Spaces in NYC During COVID-19

   https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202008.0620.v1  

   Lopez, B. (August 2020, Preprints)

   null (Ed.)

   Urban green spaces provide a range of environmental and health benefits, which may become even more critical during times of crisis such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. However, with a radical shift in mobility, additional concerns over safety, and access temporarily restricted during the implementation of social distancing policies, the experience and use of urban green spaces may be reduced. This is particularly concerning for densely populated cities like New York, considered the first U.S. epicenter or vanguard of the outbreak. To better understand the impact of COVID-19 on the perception and use of urban green spaces, we conducted a social survey during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City (May 13 - June 15, 2020). The results of the survey show respondents continued to use urban green spaces during the pandemic and consider them to be more important for mental and physical health than before the pandemic began. However, the study revealed a pattern of concerns residents have about green space accessibility and safety, and found key differences between the concerns and needs of different populations, suggesting a crucial role for inclusive decision-making, support for additional management strategies, and urban ecosystem governance that reflect the differential values, needs and concerns of communities across the City. As urban centers face looming budget cuts and reduced capacity, this study provides some empirical evidence to illustrate the value of urban green spaces as critical urban infrastructure, and may have implications for funding, policy, and management, of urban green spaces in NYC, with potential applications to other cities, particularly during times of crisis. 

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2. Facilitating Spaces of Urban Agroecology: A Learning Framework for Community-University Partnerships

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.00143  

   Nicklay, Jennifer A.; Cadieux, K. Valentine; Rogers, Mary A.; Jelinski, Nicolas A.; LaBine, Kat; Small, Gaston E. (October 2020, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems)

   null (Ed.)
3. Numerical simulation of the coastal flooding in urban centres with underground spaces

   https://doi.org/10.3850/IAHR-39WC2521711920221660  

   Peng, Yong; Ofterdinger, Ulrich S; Miller, Aaron; Meneely, John; McKinley, Jennifer; Laefer, Debra; Bertolotto, Michela (January 2022, International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR))

   Across coastal urban centres, underground spaces such as storage areas, transportation corridors, basement car parks, public facilities, retail & office and private spaces present a priority risk during flood events with respect to timely evacuation. However, these underground spaces are commonly not considered in urban flood prediction models, in many cases because the location and geometry of these underground spaces are often poorly known. In order to improve urban flood prediction models, various identified underground spaces have been included into the urban flood simulation presented in this paper. Here, the Software MIKE+ is adopted to simulate the coastal flood scenarios for the urban centre of the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. In the simulation, unstructured triangular grids are used. Based on the numerical simulation, urban flood depth and flooding rates into the underground spaces can be obtained. Based on the comparison of simulated urban flood scenarios with and without underground spaces, the impact of underground spaces on street-level inundation and flood routing is evaluated. It can be observed that the inclusion of underground space has a significant impact on the flood routing process. Moreover, the underground spaces also present priority risk areas during flood events with respect to timely evacuation and to this end, underground spaces cannot be ignored in real urban flood prediction. The presented study can be used to increase communities’ emergency preparedness and flood resilience 

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4. Deep Umbra: A Generative Approach for Sunlight Access Computation in Urban Spaces

   https://doi.org/10.1109/TBDATA.2024.3382964  

   Omar, Kazi_Shahrukh; Moreira, Gustavo; Hodczak, Daniel; Hosseini, Maryam; Colaninno, Nicola; Lage, Marcos; Miranda, Fabio (April 2025, IEEE Transactions on Big Data)
5. Wind Field Prediction in Urban Spaces for small Unmanned Aerial Systems using Convolutional Autoencoders

   https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-3605  

   Vuppala, Rohit K; Kara, Kursat (June 2022, 2022 AIAA Aviation Forum)