Blog 6 – Finalization of the Project

Posted on April 3, 2014 by shawnmhe

Here is our last blog of the CityStudio Street Furniture Project. We will summarize our accomplishments, lesson learnt, as well as our contributions to the city of Vancouver.

ACHIEVEMENTS

The Vancouver Bin Optimization project aims at updating the existing receptacle placement system by providing easier access to users and garbage pick-up trucks to help keep the streets of Vancouver clean. On a larger scale, this project is another step to reaching the Vancouver Greenest City 2020 Action Plan.

Receptacle placements are determined by flowcharts designed by the City of Vancouver. After brainstorming different possible ways to sort the litter can flowcharts, we decided that separating flowcharts based on zoning areas was appropriate. We have created Residential, Commercial, Seawall, School, Beach and Downtown flowcharts, each of which have different specifications.

After a review with members of the City of Vancouver Street Activities Division, we simplified some of our flowcharts to make them more practical for everyday use. With the intended use of our deliverables being flowcharts which determine placement of litter cans, a comprehensive flowchart was an important part of our final product. Our intention was to create a system that streamlines the process of litter can placement, and we believe that we created such a system. When comparing the proposed litter can distribution to the current system in the Downtown area, we have observed that there is a slight shift in receptacle placement that we believe will be more efficient for garbage pick-up.

The Poster we made as the final presentation.

Here is us at the Poster Session in Kaiser 2020, UBC Vancouver Campus.

L to R: Tyler Dickens, Richard Wu, York Liaw, Tijana Sljivic, Shawn He, Mona Dahir

LESSONS LEARNT

This project was an excellent learning experience for each member of this team. One important lesson learnt was to contact outside sources for information if needed, because as a future engineer, you will be acquiring various information from many different companies and it is best to build these networks as soon as possible. Another valuable lesson is that projects are extremely complex because there are so many aspects we need to look at. Considering that this is a student project, an actual project will need a large amount of preparation; societal and economic factors need to be considered, which was not a major consideration in this project.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE COMMUNITY

An improvement of the system was making the receptacle placement more sustainable by organizing the cans so that they are more accessible to the garbage-trucks. In the previous system, the trucks had a harder time picking up the cans because the placement was disorganized. The solution to this issue was to design a litter receptacle placement plan for each zone; this adjustment provided the opportunity touch on specific criterias for each zone, allowing cans to be placed at centralized high-demand areas, which reduced the environmental and economic impacts of redundant or unorganized bin placements.

This project is considered a small, yet important, step in the implementation of Vancouver Greenest City 2020 Action Plan. The optimized litter receptacle placements will create a more accessible system for users, and also help increase the efficiency of the entire waste collection system in the city.

Hubbub #2 held by CityStudio at Vancouver City Hall.

L to R: Tyler Dickens, Shawn He, York Liaw, Mona Dahir, Richard Wu, and Tijana Sljivic

Thank you for following the project with our blogs, we hope you enjoyed them. 🙂

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Blog 5 – Implementation Process

Posted on April 3, 2014 by tdickens

As our project finishes, you may be asking some questions about our project. We have taken the time to answer a few of them below:

 

How did we implement our project?

After we received the original  flow chart from the City of Vancouver, we set out to find ways to improve upon their existing system. After much brainstorming, we came to the conclusion that the flowchart would be more effective if it were to be separated into different criteria. We decided that land zoning was a good way to make a more efficient system for litter receptacle placement. By separating the flowcharts into land zonings, we were able to consider the specific needs of different areas throughout Vancouver. From there, it was a matter of looking needs such as pedestrian counts, food distributors and bus routes. We found these categories to be practical in systematically placing litter receptacles. The system we put in place does not place redundant cans, and takes into account the different flow charts to provide a cohesive system without redundancies. This was most difficult to achieve in the downtown core, where we see overlaps in zones. This is why we made a separate flow chart for Downtown Vancouver, which takes into account the specific needs that come with high density areas.

 

What went well? What did not go well?

As with any group project, there are unanticipated ups and downs. Despite having a successful project, we can look back our experience and see that there are things that could have gone better. The first area of improvement would have come from a more realistic understanding of our workload for this project. With the amount of variables that need to be considered, and the sheer amount of litter receptacles that need to be placed or mapped, this project was deceptively work intensive. The mapping itself took many more hours than we thought it would. This came from underestimating the number of receptacles that are needed in a large city such as Vancouver. It is one thing to be given a number for the quantity available and needed, but it is quite another to plan out their placement one by one. Another aspect that we could have handled more effectively is the retrieval of information from other sources, such as the Parks Board of Vancouver or Translink. This information would have provided us with a better informed final product.

Despite the above, there many aspects of the project that went very well. We worked well as a team, and provided constructive criticism of our work. Our brainstorming sessions always were productive, and we managed to avoid any conflict within the group. We met at least once a week, Wednesdays from 10 am to 12 pm. When needed, we would frequently make time available on the weekends or during the week to meet. Everyone was very flexible. The flowchart design itself went very well. We made around two or three rough drafts of each flowchart before presenting them to the client. We would peer-review our work and make the changes that we deemed best. Overall, we ended up with a consistent, quality project that aligned on our design goals.

 

Where did our end product deviate from our original vision?

After we received feedback from the City of Vancouver, we came to realize that our original flowcharts were a little too intricate for practical use. We took their feedback and slimmed down some aspects of our flowcharts. A major change came from the fact that the downtown area was deemed to be too complicated with the inclusion of parks, schools and beaches. We kept the Seawall as a part of Downtown, but we realized that there wasn’t much difference between the parks, schools and beaches that are Downtown as opposed to the ones that are located in the rest of Vancouver.

Another piece of input that we gained from our review was the realization that the Parks Board and the City of Vancouver Engineering Department do not have a very open dialogue between them. They are separate entities, and this makes it difficult to gain information from one side while doing a project with the other. We were informed that the City does not know the quantity nor the placement of the litter receptacles in the parks, beaches and schools of Vancouver. This spurred the reworking of the respective flowcharts to reflect the perimeter of these areas, and not the areas themselves. Inside these areas are managed by the Parks Board and the School District, so the placement and quantity is up to the respective organization.

 

How did our project turn out?

After all of our brainstorming, planning, draft flowcharts and reviews, we finally came away with a finished product. We managed to have working, effective flowcharts. To prove that our work is usable, we proceeded to provide a sample distribution of litter receptacles for the downtown area. We mapped the area with the criteria we set for Downtown, and the result is pleasing. We used less large cans than we anticipated, and we still maintain an effective, user-friendly distribution for the pedestrians of Vancouver. Since we used roughly half of the available “Large” garbage cans (240 L in volume), there is the option to place more in the problem areas of Vancouver, perhaps around Rogers Arena, BC Place, and skytrain stations. Alternatively, we could place them in busier areas such as Granville, Burrard, Cambie and Broadway. In the end, we have some room to add to the distribution if needed, but we believe that our distribution covers the city well.

Below is the map we created for 355 cans in the downtown of Vancouver.

 

 

 

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Blog #4 – Details of the Project Implementation Plan

Posted on March 19, 2014 by shawnmhe

Our task for this project was to place 1500 garbage cans around the City of Vancouver. To meet this goal, we created new flow charts based on the old chart previously given to us by one of our clients. There are four flow charts that apply to seven zones respectively: beaches, parks, schools, residential, commercial and downtown.

 

Tijana and Tyler were responsible for the creation of the residential flow chart. To provide rationales for their choices, they looked at Google earth and pedestrian flow charts. Here is what they found:

1.) There are generally no garbage cans placed on the street

2.) If there are litter cans in residential areas, they are typically found at sheltered bus stops

So what Tijana and Tyler decided on was to base a model around sheltered bus stops. This seemed to be in areas of highest pedestrian traffic, and made for the most efficient allocation of litter cans.

Here is the decision tree they made for Residential Areas.

Richard and York were responsible for the creation of the commercial flow chart. Their methods were very similar to Tijana and Tyler’s, but they focused more on the numbers of pedestrian flow and the amount of “street food” vendors on the street. Street food is a term Richard and York coined to define coffee shops, food stalls and fast food joints. They also focused on the main factors which affect the pedestrian traffic numbers in commercial areas, including bus stops and the number of nearby businesses. In creating the flow chart, a lot of inspiration was drawn from the original flow chart given to the group by the client.

Here is a look at their current work.

Mona and Shawn were responsible for making the flowcharts for Beaches, Parks and schools. Their methodology in finding the most influential factors was based on the size of the facilities. From their understanding, the larger the facility, the more users, thereby, the more demands for litter cans. For Parks, they considered the determining factor is the size of the park, described in the terms of areas. They also counted in the influence of nearby amenities, which potentially increases the demand for litter cans being placed close to the amenities. When creating the flowchart for Beaches, they took the number of visitors per day at the beach as their major factor; some additional demands came from the food stores that are next to the beach. As for Schools, they looked at the number of students at the school, which fairly described how big the school is, and how many litter cans are demanded.

Below are the decision flow charts for Parks, Beaches, and Schools.

For the creation of the Downtown/Granville Island flowchart, everyone considered mainly placing all 300 large litter cans in the area. The flow chart here was based on all the areas present downtown, such as residential, commercial, beaches/parks and business improvement areas (BIA). A separate flow chart was created for downtown due to the fact that it is very densely populated and visited. This flow chart was ultimately a combination of the commercial, downtown and parks and beaches flowchart which strictly apply for this location.

The resources required for the implementation of this project, such as garbage cans and labor, will be provided by the City of Vancouver. The expected costs will also be provided by the City of Vancouver; the monetary value of the implementation of this project was not given to us.

The estimated time to complete each flow chart will be a week. There are no safety issues that have arose, nor are there any other risk issues. My group has concluded that this project will be a success if it is well received by the client, and if we use it to modify their existing flow chart.

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Blog Post #3-Brainstorming and Proposed Schedule

Posted on March 15, 2014 by tsljivic

As our project jumped into full swing, we developed a few techniques to help us choose one idea over another and efficiently work together while brainstorming.

Brainstorming

Prior to starting our project we were given preliminary data sets and information as well as a flow chart of the present bin placement system in Vancouver. We figured that the best way for us to create a better system was to modify or even change the existing one. To do this we split up our flow chart into four different categories: Commercial, Residential, Parks/Beaches and Downtown.

To best make use of our time we split up the categories amongst all of us. Two people were assigned one category and then everyone helped create the flowchart for downtown (because it was the biggest/most complicated area). This way everyone focused on one aspect and put a lot of detail into specific rules and regulations for their own part.

While creating our flow chart, a lot of different factors had to be taken into account. Some of the major components we looked into were: bus stops, benches, fast food restaurants and streets with a lot of development. While brainstorming different scenarios it was interesting to see how much thought actually goes into planning these sorts of things.

Here is a look into our thought process for the Residential sector:

 

Schedule

 

Here is our proposed schedule for the completion of our project:

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Our Ongoing Progress-Blog Post #2

Posted on March 7, 2014 by tsljivic

The Beginning Stages of our Project Planning and Development

After meeting with the City of Vancouver and City Studio representatives and engineers we received a lot of helpful information and interesting ideas for beginning the preliminary stages of our project.

 

 

Our main goal is to help the City of Vancouver keep its streets CLEAN from litter content and find a way to EFFICIENTLY place every bin so that daily pick-up is reduced from 3 to 2 times a day.

 

Did you know that the City spends approximately $1.5 million every year just on garbage pick-up? There are three rounds everyday; once during the day and twice at night. We want to try and place the bins in a clever way so that they don’t all fill up as quickly as they do now but are still close enough to prevent people from littering.

 

Project constraints:

There are 7 different types of bins scattered along the streets of Vancouver. Of those 7 there are:

-300 Large bins (240L)

-1200 Standard bins (80-100L)

Total = 1500 bins

 

      

Project Research:

We are currently reviewing precedent examples for initiatives in other cities. We are looking into cities such as Portland and Seattle for progressive examples of street furniture. We believe that Portland and Vancouver share similarities in many ways, so it should be easy to  bring over ideas from these cities. Also, we are looking into Copenhagen for examples of procedure. These precedent examples should give us a direction for best practice in Vancouver.

Another part of our research is looking at traffic maps and layouts in order to locate the heavy traffic intersections/street blocks as our primary targets. These primary targets will be analysed in a more detailed fashion, for example sufficiency of receptacle volumes and efficient accessibility. Additionally, we will be looking at the West Broadway Corridor (where the 99 B line runs), major downtown streets and intersections near Skytrain stations (where there are high volumes of pedestrian traffic) to determine where garbage bins will be allocated. Do you ever notice that at certain times of the day, garbage cans are pretty much filled to max capacity in these areas? Folks, we are working towards a solution to a problem that will help keep our and your neighborhood clean!

Application:

We hope to be able to apply our findings in two ways. The first, in a remodel of the current flow chart that describes the procedure of litter receptacle placement in different scenarios. We hope to update this information and add a few more dimensions to it.

The second way, which may be difficult given our time constraint, would be to provide a GIS model for litter receptacle placement in Vancouver. With the proper data and layers we believe this is a possible outcome

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Welcome to Team 11’s Blog Post #1

Posted on February 3, 2014 by tsljivic

 

We cannot WAIT to start our project! 
Tijana Sljivic, Richard Wu, Tyler Dickens, Shawn He, York Liao and Mona Dahir

HELLO and WELCOME to Team 11’s journey in helping increase the sanitation along the streets of Vancouver and making it the greenest city in the world! We are all very excited by the opportunity to combine our growing interest of sustainability with City Studio in providing developmental solutions for Vancouver’s waste disposal plan and contributing to future guidelines of bin placement. Our goal is to further develop the guideline for placement of new litter receptacles by reviewing relevant audit material of existing litter receptacles and thinking outside of the box for new ideas. Along with the help of our mentor Zaid, we are looking forward to strengthening our individual assets and learning from one another during this experience.

 

Organization Background:

The project we were assigned to involves multiple organizations but the two primary ones are City Studio and the City of Vancouver. In the aim of implementing the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, the City of Vancouver established a multi-institutional collaboration between the city and post-secondary institutions in developing projects and research targeting urban sustainability. CityStudio is an organization that connects students with the  City of Vancouver to implement these projects and research. Over the years, they have built a network of partnering courses at 6 universities in which students collaborate, design and research interdisciplinary urban sustainability projects. With these projects students are given the opportunities to become leaders, create designs and more importantly, gain skills and experience in making their home the greenest city in the world.

 

Beneficiaries:

Through this project we hope to improve the well-being of the general public, as well as to ease the work load of Sanitary Engineers. By having an outside look at the current sanitary system, we hope to have a positive impact by contributing new ideas and adding to the existing protocol. We hope to find ways to improve the efficiency of the system, which will benefit the pedestrian traffic in the area, as well as shop owners and sanitary workers.

 

Group Members:

 Shawn M He:

Hi, I am Shawn. I am currently in my second year pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering at UBC. I am interested in engineering, cinematography and architecture, especially architectural spatialization and its impacts on users. I am excited to get hands on this project, and to explore optimizations in forging a more sustainable city.

 Mona Dahir:

Hello, I am Mona Dahir. I am also a second year Civil Engineering student. I am excited to be involved in a project that will help make my home a more sustainable place to live in. I enjoy biking, playing soccer, and being a food coniessuer. An interesting fact about me is that I am a first degree black belt in Taekwondo.

Tijana Sljivic:

Hello, my name is Tijana but many people like to call me TJ for short. I am currently in my second year of Civil Engineering at UBC and hope to one day pursue a Master’s Degree in Architecture with emphasis on structural analysis. I am very excited to start working with City Studio as well as my group members and mentor Zaid because I know together we will make a great team in providing the city exceptional solutions in regards to increasing the efficiency of litter disposal and improving street sanitation.

Richard Wu:

Hi, my name is Richard and I am in my second year at UBC in civil engineering. I am interested in focusing my studies in either structural or transportation engineering in later years. I am very excited to get started with this community project, it is different from the usual lectures and homework; I think it is a nice breath of fresh air. I look forward to working with my group, our mentor and the City of Vancouver.

York Liao:

Hello, my name is York and I am currently in my second year at University of British Columbia in civil engineering. I am hoping to pursue in the field of construction management and structural design.  I would be privileged to work with CityStudio and contributed to the greenest city 2020 action plan; I am also excited to work with my group and our mentor in planning a more vibrant and sustainable Vancouver city.  Outside of that, I am a very outgoing person; I enjoy playing jazz and concert music, as well as enjoy playing various sports such as badminton and basketball.

Tyler Dickens:

 Hi, my name is Tyler and I am very excited to be working with City Studio on this project! City Studio has some great iniitatives, and I hope to be able to contribute to this one. I am a second year civil engineering student at UBC, and I have a huge interest in the field. It is exciting for me to be apart of a project with real world applications, and I hope to help City Studio work towards Vancouver’s goal of greenest city in the world by 2020. I am eager to start working on this project and see where it leads to.

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Hello world!

Posted on January 29, 2014 by ZA

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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