How do we make sure that all citizens in a city have access to enough green space? An increasing part of the world’s population lives in urban areas, where contact with nature is largely reduced to... Show moreHow do we make sure that all citizens in a city have access to enough green space? An increasing part of the world’s population lives in urban areas, where contact with nature is largely reduced to street trees and parks. As optional tree planting sites and financial resources are limited, determining the best planting site can be formulated as an optimization problem with constraints. Can we locate these sites based on the popularity of nearby venues? How can we ensure that we include groups of people who tend to spend time in tree deprived areas?Currently, tree location sites are chosen based on criteria from spatial-visual, physical and biological, and functional categories. As these criteria do not give any insights into which citizens are benefiting from the tree placement, we propose new data-driven tree planting policies that take socio-cultural aspects as represented by the citizens’ behavior into account. We combine a Location Based Social Network (LBSN) mobility data set with tree location data sets, both of New York City and Paris, as a case study. The effect of four different policies is evaluated on simulated movement data and assessed on the average, overall exposure to trees as well as on how much inequality in tree exposure is mitigated. Show less
The United States is one of the few countries to have a labor provision in its Model BIT. The 2012 Model includes a more elaborate labor provision than its predecessor. The scope of applicable... Show moreThe United States is one of the few countries to have a labor provision in its Model BIT. The 2012 Model includes a more elaborate labor provision than its predecessor. The scope of applicable labor standards and the level of commitment are more demanding than in the 2004 Model and most other (model) BITs. But unlike US FTAs, it lacks a clear obligation to adopt and maintain ILO standards as a minimum, and does not allow disputes to be submitted to arbitration. Show less