natural climatic conditions in urban areas can be changed by human physical environment. climate as a natural system and city as a human system have close mutual connections. urban population growth and consequent increase in urban physical expansion may lead to intensification in human activities and disturbances in the environment. this contributes to alterations in solar radiation, balance o...

the complexity of urban systems in our recent world, make it difficult to evaluation and explanation of their changes with traditional and customarily methods. in the past, remote sensing has shown an ability to detect and describe urban growth patterns at different spatial scales. with new remote sensing devices (e.g. ikonos), with innovative image processing techniques and with further develo...

  Background: Although upper-extremity disability correlates with psychosocial aspects of illness the association with sleep disturbance in upper extremity disability is less certain. To evaluate whether sleep disturbance is associated with upper-extremity disability among patients with upper extremity illness, accounting for sociodemographic, condition-related, and psychosocial factors. Method...

while risk reduction has been mainly addressed by seismologists and engineers by now, the total impact of earthquake greatly depends on urban planning factors. the effects of planning can be considered in the socio economic and physical aspects. urban planning may have a dominant role in various earthquake phases: at the time of earthquake; rescue, and emergency, as well as temporary and perman...

This study aims at creating a holistic conceptual approach systematizing the interrelation of (natural) hazards, vulnerability and risk. A general hierarchical risk meta-framework presents potentially affected components of a given system, such as its physical, demographic, social, economic, political or ecological spheres, depending on the particular hazard. Based on this general meta-framewor...

Existing urban boundaries are usually defined by government agencies for administrative, economic, and political purposes. However, it is not clear whether the boundaries truly reflect human interactions with urban space in intraand inter-regional activities. Defining urban boundaries that consider socioeconomic relationships and citizen commute patterns is important for many aspects of urban a...

desired physical form of cities has been noticeable since the beginning of urbanization, from old patterns of early civilizations to the latest urbanism’s theories, which offered to build better cities. the opinions in recent decades have expressed that compact physical form of cities is a better form than sprawl form to achieve urban sustainability. the form of the city is the embodiment of it...