2026-10-23

7 arXiv categories· 96 journals· 3213 candidates — 7 worth your time· 73 without an open abstract

Headline

Speed harmonization with connected autonomous vehicles under varying traffic management configurations

Today, together

tag shift
no tag ran above its 30-day average
shares references
no items share references today counted over the 7 papers published above
on the same shoulders
4 of the day's papers cite Travel and the Built Environment (Reid Ewing, Robert Cervero 2010) counted over the 66 of this day's 80 named papers whose reference lists we have — standing on the same older work is not the same as being about the same thing
first appearance
NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre; National University; New Generation University College; and 1 more none of them on a paper we published in the 133 days before this issue

Two counts, not one counted twice: every row here but “on the same shoulders” counts the papers published above, and that one counts every paper this day named — those and the ones under Also published today, whose abstracts we could not read.

Evaluated across varied data-sharing levels and CAV fleet sizes, three traffic management center configurations for speed harmonization in urban networks were tested using multi-agent reinforcement learning with validation in Hamburg. Thematic analysis of 132 interviews conducted between 2020 and 2024 evaluated how socio-environmental valuation methods function across three power dimensions in UK urban planning. Using Landsat imagery from 2004 to 2024, remote sensing analysis measured land use changes and surface temperatures in Cuttack, India, where built-up areas expanded by 50.52%.

datapublished: Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice

Seunghyeon Lee, Hyunsoo Yun, Seung Woo Ham, et al.
Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice

Seoul National University

Traffic control and management · Transportation Planning and Optimization · Traffic Prediction and Management Techniques · Seoul National University · New Generation University College · National University

Impact of traffic management center functionality on speed harmonization in urban networks under mixed traffic environments

The study evaluated three traffic management center (TMC) configurations—centralized, hybrid, and decentralized—for CAV speed harmonization in urban networks using multi-agent reinforcement learning across varied data-sharing levels and fleet sizes of 20 and 40 vehicles, including validation in the TAVF-Hamburg network. Fully centralized training and execution produced the most stable improvements, whereas hybrid configurations suffered severe performance drops under limited data conditions with smaller CAV fleets but recovered as fleet sizes doubled. Fully decentralized independent learners demonstrated inconsistent performance across all data and fleet conditions.

Why it matters — This reveals that traffic management authority and data-sharing capabilities cannot be designed independently, proving that centralized control is crucial for stabilizing traffic flows during early, low-penetration autonomous vehicle deployments when network data is sparse.

Caveat: The findings rely on microsimulations with low counts of simultaneously controlled vehicles, which may not capture dynamics in saturated, real-world networks with high CAV penetration rates.

Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice · doi

published: Discover Cities

M. H. Jordan, Daniel Black
Discover Cities

University of Bristol

Urban Planning and Governance · Urban Planning and Valuation · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · University of Bristol · NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre

Understanding socio-economic valuation in UK urban development through the lens of power

Through thematic analysis of 132 interviews (123 secondary, 9 primary) conducted between 2020 and 2024, this paper evaluates how socio-environmental valuation methods are used in UK urban planning across three power dimensions: resources, norms, and structures. The analysis reveals that institutional control over regulation and resources allows dominant economic growth narratives to consistently marginalise socio-environmental and health metrics.

Why it matters — It demonstrates that technical urban valuation tools fail to alter planning outcomes because underlying national power structures actively reinforce economic priorities over social metrics.

Caveat: The findings rely exclusively on qualitative interview analysis and may reflect subjective stakeholder perceptions rather than measurable planning outcomes.

Discover Cities · doi

published: Discover Cities

Tanmaya Mallick, Sibabrata Das, Bubun Mahata
Discover Cities

Ravenshaw University

Urban Heat Island Mitigation · Remote Sensing and Land Use · Land Use and Ecosystem Services · satellite imagery · Ravenshaw University

Analysis of spatiotemporal dynamics of land use land cover pattern and Urban thermal environment in Cuttack City based on remote sensing data

Using Landsat imagery from 2004 to 2024, this study measured land use changes and surface temperatures in Cuttack, India, finding that built-up areas expanded by 50.52% from 48.95 km² to 73.68 km². Over this two-decade period, the mean land surface temperature increased from 30.89 °C to 42 °C, with 40% of the urban area exhibiting strong ecological thermal stress based on the Urban Thermal Field Variance Index. Normalised difference built-up index values correlated positively with land surface temperature, whereas water indices showed a negative correlation.

Why it matters — It quantifies a 11.11 °C surge in surface temperature for a rapidly urbanising secondary Indian city, replacing vague assumptions of warming with precise long-term thermal index measurements.

Discover Cities · doi

published: Applied Geography

Samuel Norton Chambers
Applied Geography

Arizona State University

Thermoregulation and physiological responses · Climate Change and Health Impacts · Migration, Health, Geopolitics, Historical Geography · weather and climate data · Arizona State University

Reconstructing the environmental and temporal contexts of heat-related deaths on the Arizona Borderscape through a multivariate typology of heat exposure

Using a dataset of heat-related mortality records from 2000 to 2025 in southern Arizona, this study modeled physiological heat storage by combining terrain exertion, radiant heat, and monthly weather metrics across post-mortem interval estimates. The analysis identified seven distinct Thermal Exposure Regimes rather than uniform spatial risk, with documented remains concentrated disproportionately within two specific intermediate regimes.

Why it matters — By replacing static spatial indices with dynamic physiological modeling, this approach reconstructs localized environmental risk factors even when the exact date and location of death are uncertain.

Caveat: The framework relies on estimated post-mortem intervals and modeled environmental conditions, which introduce uncertainty regarding the exact timing and location of fatalities.

Applied Geography · doi

preprint

Germán Pardo-González, Shaghayegh Vosough, Katerina Papadaki, et al.
arXiv cs.MA

traffic assignment

Learning to Incentivise: Using Reinforcement Learning for Sustainable Urban Mobility

This study applies multi-agent reinforcement learning within a traffic simulation to dynamically distribute monetary incentives to drivers, encouraging rerouting to optimize societal benefits. Assuming an unlimited budget, the framework decreases total travel time by 16% at a cost equal to 11% of baseline travel duration, or cuts CO2 emissions by 9%. Combining travel time and emission objectives in the reward function yields simultaneous reductions in both metrics over the User-Equilibrium baseline.

Why it matters — The method offers a politically viable alternative to unpopular or legally restricted road pricing models by shifting traffic management strategies from punitive tolls to positive driver incentives.

Caveat: The evaluated outcomes rely on ideal conditions with an unlimited incentive budget and synthetic traffic simulations rather than field-tested behavioral responses.

arXiv · pdf · doi

preprint

Cillian Hourican, Debraj Roy
arXiv physics.soc-ph

Beyond city pairs: Higher-order information in urban growth across borders

An analysis of cross-border and domestic urban growth across 8,808 functional urban areas using higher-order information measures and gridded national accounts GDP data reveals that negative O-information appears in 29.93% of cross-border triplets compared to 2.00% of domestic triplets. This fifteen-fold disparity decreases to fourfold when controlling for dependence strength, and target-specific decompositions demonstrate how growth information combines across regions. Furthermore, administrative subdivisions yield mean O-information within expected ranges for randomized spatial maps.

Why it matters — Researchers can no longer evaluate inter-urban spatial dependence using simple pairwise models, as higher-order interaction structures change fundamentally when crossing national boundaries versus internal administrative divisions.

Caveat: The reliance on gridded GDP estimates derived from national accounts rather than direct local economic measurements requires establishing actual economic connections independently.

arXiv · pdf

preprint

Yunfei Bai, Aaron Tesfa Tsion, Raúl Rosales, et al.
arXiv physics.soc-ph

Building Energy and Comfort Optimization · Building energy efficiency and sustainability · Integrated Energy Systems Optimization · machine learning · London · King's College London

Fabric retrofit scenario analysis under uncertainty for an urban housing stock using machine learning

The authors developed an uncertainty-aware framework using CatBoost to predict Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) energy-cost and emission scores from 17 Energy Performance Certificate descriptors across 103,414 dwellings in Westminster, London. CatBoost achieved mean absolute errors of 3.487 SAP and 4.379 Environmental Impact points, finding that roof insulation yields the highest per-dwelling savings at £203 annually (176–229 range), while wall insulation saves the most portfolio-wide at £6.09 million annually (5.69–6.72 million range). For dwellings requiring three full retrofits, sequencing roof, wall, then window upgrades a year apart accumulated 54% more cost savings over three years compared to the reverse order.

Why it matters — This approach quantifies the compounding financial benefits of retrofit ordering, proving that upgrade sequencing significantly affects short-term cumulative savings even when the final building package remains identical.

Caveat: The performance predictions and economic savings rely exclusively on administrative Energy Performance Certificate descriptors rather than direct, in-situ energy metering.

arXiv · pdf

Still cited

Shushi Peng, Shilong Piao (2011), Surface Urban Heat Island Across 419 Global Big Cities 1 of today's items cite it · 12 of 3384 in the archive stand on it

Also published today

These appeared today in journals we track. Their abstracts are not openly available, so we cannot summarise them.